Afghanistan 2007

Afghanistan 2007

South Asia Journal

Afghanistan completed its sixth year since the removal of the Taliban with an erratic record of post conflict reconstruction and rebuilding. Though designated as a ‘post-conflict’ country since November 2001, the country continued to see pitched battles with Taliban in large parts of Southern Afghanistan as well as intermittent incidents of violence in others parts of the country. The capital Kabul saw explosions, suicide bombings and rocket attacks and Taliban activities crept closer to the capital. The province of Ghazni was used as a base by the Taliban for their kidnapping of the Korean hostages, an event which also allowed the Taliban to openly hold a press conference, the first since 2001.
In several parts of the South, the Taliban were able to hold districts for varying lengths of time until the government and international forces were able to take control again. There were repeated calls for more troops contribution from the NATO countries, but numbers continued to fall short of what was required given the magnitude of problem. The resource constraint as well as operational methods used by some of the countries also led to heavy reliance on air power and concurrently high rates of civilian casualties. While no exact numbers were made public, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour expressed concern over the civilian casualties during her visit to Afghanistan, terming it “alarming.”
The year also saw a change in the command and control structure of NATO-led ISAF. The rotational system of command where a single NATO member country assumed command was replaced and the ISAF troops will henceforth be commanded an American general in perpetuity.
Other developments on the security front saw the Afghan National Army grow at a slow incremental rate and this year saw greater emphasis on the need for building up the Afghan National Police. Alarmingly, the call for rearming village communities as a means of meeting the shortfall of regular forces, both international and national, continued to gain ground. The first step saw the deployment of the auxiliary police, drawn from the local community and under the command of local commanders. The auxiliary police were deployed with less training than the regular forces.
While government and international forces claimed that they had turned the corner and forced the Taliban to adopt desperate strategies like suicide bombings there appeared to be no let up in the violence. A major suicide bombing in the relatively peaceful province of Baghlan towards the end of the year shocked the country claiming the lives of several parliamentarians visiting the province, including the spokesman of the United National Front and former Minister of Commerce, Syed Mustafa Kazemi.
The United National Front emerged as the political opposition to the government this year, bringing together members of the Northern Alliance, as well as powerful former commanders and members of the royal family who had not played an overt political part in recent years. The year also saw the death of the last king of Afghanistan, Zahir Shah, who had returned to the country as the ‘father of the nation’.
The country’s parliament, dominated by members of the United National Front also continued to function as an opposition, coming into regular confrontation with the government. The most visible conflict arose after the parliament dismissed two ministers for non performance. While President Hamid Karzai accepted one dismissal he challenged the other seeking and obtaining a Supreme Court decision against it. However Parliament refused to accept it, claiming that the government was trying to subvert parliamentary prerogative, and the country saw the bizarre spectacle of a foreign minister who dealt with foreign countries and the international community while parliament refused to accept his authority.
The parliament also succeeded in passing a resolution seeking to grant amnesty to all those who had participated in the ‘jehad’ of the last few decades, immunizing warlords and their followers from any prosecution for war crimes or criminal acts. The amnesty, though criticised by the international community, was made into legislation with presidential assent with minor changes. Despite having accepted the plan for transitional justice, the government dragged its feet on implementing any part of it.
President Karzai’s apparent ‘weakness’ was the subject of some criticism from some of the international partners who also drew attention to the inefficiency and corruption in governance. The Afghan government on its part continued seeking greater ownership over the aid being routed into this country. With an estimated 75% of the aid flowing into the ‘external’ budget(i.e. not through the government), the government argued that it can neither build capacity nor assert its authority without control over resources. The international aid community however argued that lack of capacity and endemic corruption in the government prevents it from routing its resources through the government. A significant portion of the aid through the external budget however flows out of the country leading to resentment in the local population. An assessment of the $1.36 billion spent in the Afghan year1384 revealed that the local impact was 31.2%.
Whatever the arguments, the limited efficacy of the aid delivered to Afghanistan so far is clearly visible on the ground. The conflict with the Taliban and the violence occupy the major portion of attention on Afghanistan and the more insidious violence gets much less notice. Though larger numbers of children enrolled in schools and health services improved in some parts of the country, the 2007 National Human Development Report revealed that human development indicators were lower than what was estimated at the time the reconstruction began.
Afghanistan’s HDI ranking was 174, only above the three lowest countries of Niger, Sierra Leone and Mali. The NHDR for 2007, the second since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban, reveals a literacy rate of 23.5%, down from the 2004 assessment which put it at 28.7%. Life expectancy is also lower at 43.1 years compared to 44.5 in the past. International aid still fell woefully short of requirements, while government revenues remained at a dismal 7% of the GDP. Disbursement of aid over 2002-2005 was $83 per capita, even though the Afghan government estimated at a minimum of $168 per capita was needed for minimal stablisation.
According to the latest National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment, 30% of the population remains below the minimum level of dietary energy consumption and only 31% has access to safe drinking water. The rate of infant mortality has dropped from 165 per 1000 to 135 per 1000, but the maternal mortality ratio has remained unchanged at 1600 per 100,000 live births, one of the highest in the world.
The situation of women in Afghanistan remains one of the most dismal and the country has a Gender Development Index which ranks it alongside Niger. Despite the removal of the Taliban who were seen as one of the most important reasons for oppression of women, the situation of women has improved only tangentially. Though the country has one of the highest number of women parliamentarians thanks to reservation of seats in the first parliamentary elections, the women parliamentarians are severely disempowered to exercise their roles. There are few women in public service and even fewer in high office. Women’s rights has remained more a token declaration with token representation in the form of one woman cabinet minister and one woman governor.
Violence against women continued in many horrific forms, most patently in the domestic sphere with considerable evidence of forced marriages including child marriages and domestic violence. The practice of suicides and self immolations by women desperate to escape their marriage received some public attention but apart from sporadic and isolated efforts there was little to signal the engagement of either the international community or the Afghan government on this issue. Those working in the area of gender rights continued their effort to reverse or mitigate the worst impacts of customary law and practice which treat women as property. The conflation of several trends – the customary practices, war, the displacement of populations, the return of refugees, the advent of the consumer culture and its commodification of women and the attempts to introduce a more liberal approach – sees an increasingly confrontational approach on the issue of women’s role, rights and participation in the public space.

The country recorded a high growth rate but the economic progress has been patchy and uneven, its inequality hidden behind a façade of glitzy malls in capital cities, new shops and businesses, palatial houses and plenty of hot money that prop up an artificial economy.
Much of the ostentatious wealth was attributed to the narco-economy. The year saw a record opium cultivation. With this Afghanistan, already the world’s single largest supplier of opium, also surpassed any other country in history to have produced opium on such a large scale. An increased acreage of 17% combined with good weather conditions forecasts an increase in opium production by 34%. There were continuing differences of opinion within the international community on the best counter narcotics strategy. At the level of implementation, actions continued to be carried out in selective areas to crackdown on opium farmers with very little enforcement on interdiction, or high value targets like drug traffickers.
Attention continued to be drawn to the linkages between criminals, drug traffickers, terrorists and anti-government elements but yielded little results with security operations continuing in a fractured manner- the US Coalition forces responsible for the war against terror, the NATO-led ISAF responsible for counter insurgency and the police entrusted to deal with counter narcotics. One southern district of Helmund alone accounting for an increase of 48% in opium cultivation.
Helmund proved to be a critical location in more ways than one. The Musa Qala district shot into the limelight following an ‘agreement’ for a ceasefire. The deal, ostensibly between the government authorities and the local tribal elders, resulted in NATO withdrawing its forces from the area in exchange for a guarantee of peace and no Taliban activities in a demarcated area. The agreement, sold as a new way of engaging the tribal community fell through soon however with the area becoming a safe haven for the Taliban. It was only pitched battles at the end of the year that resulted in the government forces supported by NATO’s British troops taking back control.
The need for engaging communities however was given some precedence this year in different forms. A peace jirga between tribal elders from the border regions of Pakistan and Afghanistan along with government officials and parliamentarians resulted in the first Pak-Afghan peace jirga taking discussions on violence and peace beyond the government to government talks. There were other attempts to engage the communities at the local and provincial level by international organisations as well as NGOs.
The concept of bringing the moderate Taliban back into the fold also gained momentum with renewed calls for holding negotiations. While no details of specific talks were made public, there was continuing anecdotal evidence of overtures between parts of the Taliban and anti government leaderships and the authorities at various levels.
Negotiations with the Taliban led to successful outcomes on atleast two occasions The ICRC mediated between the Taliban and Korean authorities for the release of the Korean hostages and the UN agencies successfully negotiated days of tranquillity that allowed them to carry out much needed vaccinations campaigns in difficult areas of the South after the Taliban assured them of safe passage.
While events on the ground did not provide a cheerful outlook in 2007, one of the most significant shifts was in the overall perception, especially of the international community, that efforts for aid, development and reconstruction needed to be oriented much more towards the Afghan community.
2008 will tell whether this realisation actually results in concrete results and greater cohesiveness of effort that will bring about substantial changes in the lives of Afghans. ‘Afghanisation’ of the process of helping Afghans in the seventh year of rebuilding their country will be a remarkable step forward.