Afghans talk, Taliban shoot

Asia Times June 3, 2010
By Aunohita Mojumdar

KABUL - The three-day peace jirga (council) that began on Wednesday is being projected by the international community - at least officially - as a critical moment in Afghanistan's history. The Taliban, it seems, also gave the event priority, launching a three-man suicide squad armed with rockets at the opening ceremony.
Two blasts and sporadic gunfire were heard in the air-conditioned tent as Karzai delivered his opening address, while a third took place just 200 meters from the venue. "Sit down, nothing will happen," said the Aghan president. "I have become used to this. Even my three-year-old son is used to it."
The attackers, armed with rifles and rocket launchers, had explosives strapped to their bodies under the women's burqas they had worn to slip past security staff. Two were reportedly killed and no delegates were hurt, according to local officials.
After calming delegates, Karzai said it was the Taliban's insurgency that was keeping the international occupiers they resent in the country.
"You should provide the opportunity for the foreign forces to leave," Karzai told the conference, according to the Associated Press. "Make peace with me and there will be no need for foreigners here. As long as you are not talking to us, not making peace with us, we will not let the foreigners leave."

Senior officials of Western donor countries have expressed hope that the jirga, the first concrete step in the process of "reconciliation" with armed opposition groups, including the Taliban, would provide the political impetus to bring the protracted conflict to an end. But these pronouncements smack of desperation, as the international community scrambles for the next big solution that will turn the situation around.

The three-day consultative mechanism may produce very little resolution to the insurgency. With between 1,400 to 1,600 participants expected to attend, criticism of inclusions and exclusions of participants and dissension within the government itself, an unclear agenda and threats of boycott, the peace jirga may be little more than a political endorsement mandating President Hamid Karzai to move forward toward the goal.

Najib Amin, a deputy on the meeting's organizing committee, said the jirga will aim to ''identify mechanisms based on which we can negotiate, identify categories of opposition with whom we can negotiate, mechanism on how to approach them, identify people who are not negotiable and what the government should do with them".

Any declaration would also likely to be shorn of real details in order to accommodate disparate views. Whatever process is set in motion this week, it is also likely that several major sections of the insurgency will remain outside the ambit of any reconciliation since they are ideologically opposed to the values represented by the incumbent government.

However, the real goal thrown up by the "reconciliation" plan is one that appears to have taken place already - rapprochement of the international community and the Karzai government.

Tired of the long military engagement, both have latched onto "reconciliation and reintegration" as the next big plan, and appear willing to subsume their differences to find a way out of the morass.

The panacea, however, is yet another refrain of the old song that a military solution alone cannot work. That song has been sung to different beats for several years now, though earlier versions included development, governance, rule of law and accountability as necessary measures to complement military achievements.

Now, apparently, those goals are being sidelined as the international community chooses to further curtail its ambitions regarding Afghanistan, reconciling itself with existing realities even when they subvert the goals of nation-building.

The goals, now pared down, are to ensure that Afghanistan does not pose a threat to Western nations, either as a staging post of international terrorist strikes or as a sanctuary for anti-Western groups to take hold.

While these aims have always been core to the Western intervention for a number of years, there was an understanding that in pursuit of those aims Afghanistan could and would be rebuilt with a new state structure, since this represented the best bet of making sure Afghanistan became a stable state, and not one vulnerable to being subverted by terrorist groups.

The safety of Afghans and internal cohesion within Afghanistan were therefore seen as being coterminous with the goal of security for the West. However, somewhere along the way the goals have diverged as the costs of the intervention have steadily risen in Western capitals.

These costs have not been inconsiderable. Ever growing casualties among Western forces, billions of dollars diverted to Afghanistan (which seem more questionable at a time of Western recession and job losses) and political prices, ranging from ministers losing their jobs in Germany, to the fall of a government in the Netherlands over the issue of Afghanistan. In the midst of this chaos, reconciliation has emerged as a way to match Western goals with existing realities in the Asian nation.

The reconciliation plan has halted, for the moment, the spectacular unraveling of relations between Karzai and the Western compact. Whatever misgivings Western nations had earlier regarding the viability of Karzai as a trusted partner - and a spate of stories in the Western media testify to this - these have now been shed in the mutual warm embrace of the reconciliation strategy. In a matter of weeks Karzai has gone from being a weak, indecisive, incapable leader burdened by an unscrupulous family to the man who will bring together the disparate interests of Afghans with exemplary leadership.

Along the way the international community appears to have swallowed several of its goals and professed commitments. Whatever the jirga may or may not discuss - it is already clear what will not be included in the discussions.

Jirga czar Farooq Wardak told a gathering of civil society representatives that "justice" and "human rights" were not on the agenda and would not be discussed. Despite the shock of the participants, Wardak was at least being honest. The issues had been sidelined long back.

Earlier this year it became clear that the government had passed an amnesty law that protected all those engaged in hostilities in the past and the present from prosecution. The law makes no distinction about the kind of crimes, whether war crimes, crimes against humanity or rape. It also makes no mention of a cut-off date.

The law was passed with scarcely a murmur from the international community even as it violates Afghanistan's commitments to international treaties, according to the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, and treads on the millions of Afghan citizens who have been victims of brutality and war crimes while also strengthening the culture of impunity.

The same international community had kicked up a fuss when the law was first introduced in 2007, but in the changed climate, the law was accepted since it had been projected as a necessary first step in the process of reconciliation.

Representatives of the millions of Afghanistan's victims have come together with the commission to present a united demand for the implementation of the transitional justice plan, under which the perpetrators of crimes - including those in the government and in powerful positions - would be held accountable.

In its eagerness not to antagonize the government and Karzai further at this juncture, the international community has failed to endorse the plan and also subverted its own proclaimed goals of strengthening Afghan institutions. The same international community, following the controversial 2009 presidential polls, had predicated its support to future elections on the government carrying out necessary electoral reforms.

However, not only were reforms not carried out, but the president introduced a new electoral law that further erodes the independence of the electoral mechanisms. While the international community had sought an independent appointment mechanism for the Independent Election Commission to prevent electoral malpractices, in actuality Karzai's new law also subverted the independence of yet another body, the Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC), which was the only institution that stood up against the electoral fraud in 2009.

Focusing purely on the international members of the ECC, the international community led by the United Nations, put all its weight behind securing the UN's right to nominate two members to the commission. This right, won through hard negotiations, was presented as an achievement but no mention was made of the fact that the new law also took away the right of independent Afghan institutions, namely the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and the Supreme Court, to appoint members to this body.

Moreover, it institutionalized the right of Karzai, as president, to appoint members to this body, thus compromising an independent appointment mechanism. Despite the clear challenge to the process of institutional building to which the donor nations committed themselves, they accepted this erosion of independence and the forthcoming parliamentary election has received the requisite funding from the international community.

While building of institutions, rule of law, governance and support for human rights are processes which require time, resources and energy, the international community's accommodation of political expediency is not limited to this. Senior officials of the donor nations and international organizations are now saying publicly and repeatedly that they cannot afford to challenge the existing power structures in Afghanistan but must work with them.

Tackling the power structures would necessitate that the international community remain in Afghanistan for the next 20 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization senior civilian representative Mark Sedwill stated last month, while expressing hope that individuals with power and influence would support the endeavors of the government and the international community.

This hope, however, overlooks the fact that the international community, through its practice of delivering aid without adequate checks and balances, has enriched a small section of people by allowing them to acquire power disproportionate to their role, authority and legitimacy within Afghan institutions and within the community.

Sufficient levels of well-documented data have established clearly that commanders, leaders of armed militia and power-brokers have been empowered through contracts worth billions of dollars given by the international community in exchange for security, land, services and goods provided to the international community.

Moreover, the bulk of aid distributed for development and humanitarian purposes has also been channeled without sufficient oversight allowing some of its distribution to be mediated by power-brokers.

In doing so, the international community has created a clear conflict of interest. Many officials and politicians in roles of authority have profited directly from the ongoing conflict and have a direct stake in its continuation, an interest that conflicts with their expressed commitment to building a secure and stable Afghanistan.

This contradiction has been encouraged and even utilized by donor nations who, in their own domestic arena, take a dim view of a conflict of interests and have legal redress.

However, rather than tackling the contradictions, donor nations are now reconciling themselves to the existence of structural and institutional imbalances of power that they have either introduced, allowed or ignored. If that represents a contradiction between their professed word and deed, the reconciliation strategy is certainly a good way of subsuming all inconsistencies.

Aunohita Mojumdar is an Indian freelance journalist based in Kabul. She has reported on the South Asian region for the past 19 years.

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