Optimism Gives Way to Despair in Afghanistan

Optimism Gives Way to Despair in Afghanistan
July 2006
Arab News

Four and a half years of governance with international support, a new Constitution, presidential elections and a new Parliament, over 4 million children back in school and 4.5 million refugees back in Afghanistan — these are the achievements that were being trotted out with some satisfaction by the Afghan government and the international community until a few months ago.

Yet, in recent weeks and months the word “failure” is creeping up with greater frequency as Afghanistan enters what is being described as its most challenging year since the ouster of the Taleban in late 2001.

Insecurity has increased, the drug eradication program appears headed for failure and the security sector reforms are not yielding the desired results. The government’s authority is severely circumscribed by both insecurity and lack of capacity; the NGOs and foreign governments are finding wider areas of the country out of bounds severely hampering their aid programs and there are increasing signs of friction between President Hamid Karzai and Afghanistan’s friends.

“The possibility of failure cannot be ruled out,” a UN diplomat told this writer in a private conversation this week adding that for the first time since 2001 “the failure of the entire process was a possibility”.

The views, which are being repeated by diplomats and experts seem to mark a long distance since the parliamentary elections a few months ago that were being projected as the cap to the successful completion of the first phase, the end of the Bonn process.

While some of Karzai’s foreign supporters are criticizing the Afghan government in public, the Afghan government too has been lashing out at the donor community with the president repeatedly calling for greater apportioning of donor funds to the government and change in the military strategy.

The changeover from the upbeat optimism of 2005 to the pessimism of mid-2006 seems remarkable. Have the reconstruction efforts in the country disintegrated in the last several months?

Have the anti-government forces including the Taleban received a shot in the arm that has turned them from remnants into a formidable foe? Or is it simply that the consequences of the intrinsic problems in the reconstruction efforts are beginning to make themselves felt?

The reconstruction of Afghanistan was not preceded by a peace agreement but by an invasion, points out an observer of Afghan politics. The American— led invasion paved the way for the ouster of the Taleban but the immediate needs of the US in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks overshadowed any discussions on subsequent nation— building. Faced with a power vacuum the government of Hamid Karzai was hurriedly installed but this led to the most perfunctory decision making process.

Having created its own quick blueprint for reconstruction, the world community and the Afghan government it installed have focused largely on fulfilling it, adopting short cuts and making compromises to meet the pre-selected benchmarks of success. If some people and governments are focusing their criticism on President Karzai for not having delivered, they must also take a great share of the blame for having opted for individualism over institution building.

Many of the compromises in the past few years have been made with a view to keeping Hamid Karzai in power and in a position of strength on the assumption that there is no one else capable of delivering. The result has been marginalization of some important political factions in decision— making and the weakening of the polity and state institutions.

In the run-up to the parliamentary elections, for example, rules were changed to keep political parties out of the fray. A process of vetting the antecedents of candidates undertaken with the professed intention of weeding out criminals satisfied no one and the process of national reconciliation has lacked both logic and transparency.

With the exception of some NGOs with long-term commitments to the country, the international donor programs have largely concentrated on clocking up numbers and deadlines as a measure of their success in rebuilding the country. This ensures impatience with the far slower process of capacity building and involving local community that would have led to a greater degree of stability.

The result has been a huge gap between the high expectations built up after the ouster of the Taleban and the actual delivery, a fertile ground for breeding dissatisfaction and the lack of support to state institutions, bringing Afghanistan to a critical situation.
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