Old military hardware in a new bottle

Asia Times

By Aunohita Mojumdar

KABUL - Obama's call for a fresh approach to Afghanistan and his promise of allocating greater resources have all but obscured the fact that Washington remains focused on its strategic military interests and the exit strategy, goals not synonymous with the interests of Afghans or long-term stability in the region. The added danger this time round is that the use of soft power - diplomacy and aid initiatives that kept a counterbalance to the military perspective - may now be reduced to handmaidens in the aid of strategic military aims.

One does not have to go much further than last month's White Paper outlining the Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy to understand the Obama administration's main tactical aims in Afghanistan. The "core goal of the US", the paper states, "must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan




and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan". This core has been reiterated time and again at different levels by senior administration officials, but continues to be ignored by other members of the international community. Desperate for some signs of a positive change, other donor countries, the United Nations (UN) and even the Afghan government have cherry-picked the parts of the Obama strategy that suit their contentions.

While President Hamid Karzai dwelt on the US recognition that the theater of war would now extend to Pakistan, the UN's top man in Afghanistan, Kai Eide, focused on the "greater balance between the military and civilian sides". Indeed the White Paper has something for everyone. The hold-all strategy lays out a number of simultaneous aims that include bolstering governance, economic aid, building political institutions and establishing the rule of law. What analysts are ignoring, however, is that the Obama administration has already signaled its priorities within the wish list it has spelt out and these remain focused on short-term tactical military advantages.

A focus on the military strategy itself does not presage an undermining of other goals. The evidence for that lies in the details: the budgetary details, the tools of implementation, a high tolerance for operating procedures that result in violence against civilians, and a "hearts and minds" campaign that impacts on the ability of aid workers to deliver independent aid. The evidence also lies in hints about the apparent willingness to compromise on some aspects of fundamental democratic and human-rights principles.

Obama's core goals are a reiteration of the early goals of the Bush era before it got into the messy business of "nation-building". The means it uses to achieve these may also merely result in an expanded version of the George W Bush administration's toolbox.

Take the talk of a civilian surge. At best the number of civilians who are going to be sent by Washington will number in the hundreds, not the thousands that the "military surge" entails. Moreover, according to the office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan's Reconstruction in the US administration, the 215 civilian posts are related to the expansion of the civilian-military provincial reconstruction teams (PRT), ie the civilian and aid workers will be embedded within the military bases. The decision to expand the PRTs comes at a time when 11 reputable international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), with a track record of years of consistent work in Afghanistan, have called for a phasing out of the PRTs. The NGOs Oxfam, Care, Action Aid, Save the Children and others have joined hands to express concern that the continued delivery of humanitarian and development aid through the military component has not only been ineffective but is continuing to intensify the danger to the operations of civilian agencies working on the ground.

While the PRTs were set up as a means of reaching out to areas where the civilian agencies had not been able to reach, the intensifying conflict since 2005 has fundamentally altered that role. The heavy fighting has meant that soldiers engaged in fighting are also delivering aid, blurring the lines between the civilian and military and eroding the neutrality that aid workers depend on for effective and safe delivery of aid.

There appears to be a willful disregard of the need to maintain this distinction. Though the international military forces have signed onto the May 2008 Afghanistan National Civilian Military guidelines, they have not followed them. The UN, which is expected to play the role of coordinator, has also not fulfilled its mandate. "It is profoundly regrettable that for over a year the UN took few steps to fulfill this important responsibility" said a report on civilians caught in conflict released earlier this month by this group of NGOs. Some examples of the disregard are in the unwillingness of military forces to carry clear identification, the military's continued use of unmarked white vehicles that are universally used by humanitarian workers, and the location of military facilities and the passage of military convoys in urban areas.

Rather than emphasizing the need for the neutrality in aid delivery, many of the major donors have tended to pour their money into the PRTs. As fighting has intensified, donor money has also followed the troops, with some of the largest donors like the US, Britain and Canada routing substantive chunks of their money into the provinces where their troops are fighting. In the existing conditions the aid money has come to resemble pacification tactics: money that is expected to win the hearts and minds battle and mitigate the fallout of the intense fighting.

Humanitarian and aid agencies talk of the difficulty of getting donor money. "We are feeling the pull on our sleeve from the military tent and the political tent", said Dave Hampson of Save the Children UK, adding "we are not being funded on the basis of humanitarian need".

The $75.5 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq in the Supplemental Appropriations Request for 2009 has been widely reported. Less reported is the fine print: $38 billion will fund ongoing military operations, $11.6 billion is for equipment, $3.6 billion is for the Afghan security forces and $3.1 billion for counter-terrorism operations. Only $1.6 billion will go towards economic assistance for Afghanistan, a portion of it for supporting additional civilian personnel and diplomatic operations. Only $170 million is earmarked to support economic growth in Afghanistan, including agriculture sector development.

An example of the preference for routing funds through the military is evident in the figures for the US Commander's Emergency Response Program (CERP). In 2008, this was close to $0.5 billion, which exceeds the total amount the Afghan government spends on health and education. The supplementary budget provides for an additional $0.5 billion in additional funds to continue the CERP "which enables US military commanders to respond to urgent, humanitarian relief and reconstruction needs in their areas of responsibility".

With a former military commander, General Karl Eikenberry, nominated in March as the next US ambassador to Afghanistan, will the emphasis on using aid to buttress military strategy undergo any change?

The tolerance for civilian casualties is another example of how the long-term goal of stability and security of the civilian population is being compromised for short-term military goals. "Corollary damage" - that euphemistic term for civilian casualties from use of excessive use of force - has grown not diminished. In the year 2008, a year when the international military forces reportedly changed their operating methods to minimize civilian casualties, the number of deaths from air strikes by international military forces rose by 72% over the previous year, with a 40% increase in the use of aerial munitions.

According to the NGO report, almost 60% of the civilian deaths caused by international military forces were attributable to American-led forces serving in Operation Enduring Freedom.

The NGOs have also expressed concern about the possible adverse fallout of the presence of an increased number of international troops on the civilian population. They are calling for significant changes in the operating procedures of the international military forces.

US policy makers have made much of not creating a "Valhalla" in Afghanistan, speaking of shorter goal posts and lowered ambitions. There are fears here that these could represent a willingness to compromise on essential human and democratic rights in exchange for a measure of illusory "stability".

A resurgent conservatism has provided a useful tool for political mobilization amongst a section of powerful political powerbrokers. Debate within the international community has also shifted. It now speaks of the need for "Afghanisation" and to respect Afghanistan's culture. There has been increasing rhetoric around the fact that Afghanistan does not need to replicate the model of democracy. While such talk is always made with deference to the country's constitution, the recent controversy over the Shia bill - that would return Taliban-style restrictions on women - has shown that the constitution is only as good as its implementers and no bulwark to the erosion of basic rights.

Aspects of women's rights, democracy, media freedoms and cultural tolerance are increasingly being labeled as "foreign concepts" by a powerful section of Afghan leaders. The international community has largely left this unchallenged. Long before Afghanistan's citizens can lay claim to the basic rights of life and liberty, the debate now centers around the need to curtail these rights in accordance with Afghanistan's traditions.

President Bush was castigated for the US policy of supporting predatory warlords with untenable human-rights records. There are no signs that this policy will change. Individual commanders with poor track records continue to be propped up by the US administration on the grounds of being 'can do guys' that the Obama administration feels it can do business with. The world view and ideologies of some of these so-called leaders have little to differentiate them from that of many of the Taliban on several counts.

Little wonder then that negotiations with the Taliban are increasingly being touted as a way out of the current morass. If hard-won democratic freedoms and human rights are bartered in exchange, it will undoubtedly be dubbed "the Afghan way" of doing things. After all the US has long been quite comfortable with authoritarian undemocratic regimes, as long as they are seen to be on the American side.

Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian journalist who is currently based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for 16 years and has covered the Kashmir conflict and post-conflict situation in Punjab extensively.