Who Speaks for Afghanistan?

On Saturday I had the pleasure of hearing Michael Sheridan introduce four short documentaries from Afghanistan. The evening was entitled The Fruit of Our Labor– Afghan Perspectives in Film. Produced and designed by Afghan men and women, the films are rooted in current realities, exploring issues rarely seen in the west. The vignettes we saw showed the efforts of one woman to create a girls’ schools in her neighborhood, the dynamics of a community run bakery (think Afghan Co-Op), the disparity of two neighboring villages – one with a water source – the other without, and the devastating impact on one family of a husband who succumbed to drugs .

These films are the result of the wonderful idea called community supported film in Afghanistan. The project trains local men and women in Afghanistan in video-journalism and documentary filmmaking. In addition to helping support/train/equip a community of artists in Afghanistan, the films will be used to better influence local and international views on Afghan priorities for a more peaceful and equitable future.

You can find clips from the documentaries here.

Afghan Officials Claim NATO killed 62 civilians

On Sunday (20 February) Afghan President Hamid Karzai accused NATO of having killed more than 50 civilians in eastern Afghanistan's troubled Kunar province. A team was sent to investigate the alleged civilian deaths.

"After three days of investigation, we found out that 62 civilians, including women and children, were killed and 10 others injured in the NATO operation," the head of the probe team, Shahzada Massoud, who is a Karzai adviser, told reporters in Kunar.

Reuters carries a story about the real impact of a night-time raid that took place in August. It is the story of Abdullah. The killing of his father and brother, and his interrogation.

A few minutes and a few bullets were enough to turn Abdullah from an 11th grade student with dreams of becoming a translator to the despairing head of a family of more than a dozen.

A Big Picture Resource

Afghanistan Rights Monitor Annual Report on Civilian Casualties

Over nine years after the internationally-celebrated demise of the repressive Taliban regime in Afghanistan, civilian Afghans increasingly suffer from the armed violence and rights violations committed by various internal and external armed actors. More ordinary Afghans were killed and injured in 2010 than a year before. And while US officials dubbed Afghanistan as their longest foreign war, Afghans suffered it for 32 years relentlessly.

Almost everything related to the war surged in 2010: the combined numbers of Afghan and foreign forces surpassed 350,000; security incidents mounted to over 100 per week; more fighters from all warring side were killed; and the number of civilian people killed, wounded and displaced hit record levels.

Collecting information about every security incident and verifying the often conflicting reports about their impacts on civilian people were extremely difficult and risky. The war was as heatedly fought through propaganda and misinformation as it was in the battlefields thus making independent and impartial war reporting tricky and complex.

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In addition to civilian casualties, hundreds of thousands of people were affected in various ways by the intensified armed violence in Afghanistan in 2010. Tens of thousands of people were forced out of their homes or deprived of healthcare and education services and livelihood opportunities due to the continuation of war in their home areas.

In November 2010, ARM was the first organization to voice concerns about the destruction of hundreds of houses, pomegranate trees and orchards in several districts in Kandahar Province by US-led forces as part of their counterinsurgency operations. In January 2011, an Afghan Government delegation reported the damage costs at over US$100 million. In compensation, US/NATO forces have doled out less than $2 million.

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A second key issue highlighted in this report is the emergence of the irregular armed groups in parts of Afghanistan which are backed by the Afghan Government and its foreign allies. These groups have been deplored as criminal and predatory by many Afghans and have already been accused of severe human rights violations such as child recruitment and sexual abuse.

Peace Offerings: Theories of Conflict Resolution

This discussion paper by Matt Waldman and Thomas Ruttig takes a more theoretical approach to the current debate about reconciliation, often too narrowly described just as ‘talking to the Taliban’. It looks into various theories of conflict resolution and which insights they may offer for a peaceful solution of the Afghan conflict.

Peace Offerings: Theories of Conflict Resolution and Their Applicability to Afghanistan

Matt Waldman & Thomas Ruttig, Afghanistan Analyst Network, Jan. 2011

Despite the recent deployments of more troops and greater military resources to Afghanistan by the US-led Western coalition, there has been no abatement in the insurgency. It rather is increasing in lethality, territorial scope and mobilisation beyond their main base in the Pashtun ethnic group. As a result, doubts about the efficacy of conventional war-fighting, counter-insurgency and transition strategies grow and alternative means of mitigating the conflict come into sight.

The paper briefly discusses seven such theories and draws conclusions from them for peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan: ripeness theory, theories of mediation, theories of reconciliation, power-sharing theories, credible commitment theory, spoilers’ analysis and local peace-building. While such theories are not panacean, they can help to understand the conflict and point towards practical steps that can contribute to improve the prospects for peace. The authors point out, though, that as abstractions they must necessarily be adapted to circumstances.

U.S.- Taliban Talks

Steve Colls article in this week’s New Yorker reveals that direct US-Taliban talks have been taking place for some time.

On August 22, 1998, Mullah Omar, the emir of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, made a cold call to the State Department. The United States had just lobbed cruise missiles at Al Qaeda camps in his nation. Omar got a mid-level diplomat on the line and spoke calmly. He suggested that Congress force President Bill Clinton to resign. He said that American military strikes “would be counter-productive,” and would “spark more, not less, terrorist attacks,” according to a declassified record of the call. “Omar emphasized that this was his best advice,” the record adds.

More details on the impact of the article are found in this interview with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Coll is the author of the book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001.

The Runaway General

Read this article (PDF).

Michael Hastings, writing for Rolling Stone magazine, has set off a firestorm with this in-depth and surprisingly candid profile of General McChrystal, commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Put on-line this afternoon, the article has lived up to its pre-published hype.

The General has already been called to Washington and there is rampant speculation about whether or not he will be fired as a result of his comments critical of the President and his team.

Advisors to McChrystal speak freely – and profanely - in the article adding color with their disdain for the political process and the individuals in government who must sell this war to an increasingly skeptical and hostile US audience. It is very revealing.

The issued raised in the article are dramatic and comes down to this. Be careful what you ask for.

Only removing General McChrystal addresses the symptom and not the disease. What needs to happen is a serious examination of a foreign policy that gives the military a blank check. Unaccountable for aggressive tactics and civilian casualties, allowed to control development efforts through the Provisional Reconstruction Teams, and asked to help fight corruption.

If the new administration is serious about engaging the world with diplomacy it needs to reverse its budget priorities. Currently the military gets over $700 billion annually, the State Department – the agency that is supposed to engage with the world gets $50 billion. That must change.

In the coming week wikileaks is also scheduled to release documents and later video of a deadly US airstrike against civilians last year. It will certainly add to the debate.

World Refugee Day – Dangerous Trends

Yesterday was World Refugee Day. To put the crisis in context the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugee released their annual report Global Trends last week.

The humanitarian impact of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are clear. Afghan and Iraqi refugees account for almost half of all refugees worldwide under UNHCR’s responsibility. The three countries hosting the largest number of refugees in order are Pakistan, Iran and Syria. The first two are almost exclusively Afghans, the last Iraqis (see figure 2).

While the number of refugee figures remained similar to 2008, the number of Internally Displaced People (IDP’s) reached an unprecedented 15.6 million. The increase was largely from tragic conflicts in Congo, Pakistan and Somalia.

Some of the figures they provide.

There were 43.3 million forcibly displaced people worldwide at the end of 2009, the highest number since the mid-1990s. Of these, 15.2 million were refugees; 10.4 million who fell under UNHCR’s responsibility and 4.8 million Palestinian refugees under UNRWA’s mandate. The figure also includes 983,000 asylum seekers and 27.1 million internally

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Afghanistan has been the leading country of origin of refugees for the past three decades with up to 6.4 million of its citizens having sought international protection during peak years. As of the end of 2009, close to 2.9 million Afghan were still refugees. One out of four refugees in the world is from Afghanistan. Even though Afghan refugees could be found in 71 asylum countries worldwide in 2009, 96 per cent of them were located in Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran alone. Iraqis were the second largest group, with an estimated 1.8 million having sought refuge, mainly in neighboring countries. Afghan and Iraqi refugees account for almost half (45%) of all refugees under UNHCR’s responsibility worldwide.

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Pakistan was host to the largest number of refugees worldwide (1.7 million), followed by the Islamic Republic of Iran (1.1 million) and the Syrian Arab Republic (1.05 million; Government estimate). Pakistan also hosted the largest number of refugees in relation to its economic capacity with 745 refugees per 1 USD GDP (PPP) per capita, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (592) and Zimbabwe (245).

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Afghan and Iraqi refugees accounted for almost half of all refugees under UNHCR’s responsibility worldwide; one out of four refugees in the world was from Afghanistan (2.9 million). Afghans were located in 71 different asylum countries. Iraqis were the second largest refugee group, with 1.8 million having sought refuge primarily in neighboring countries.

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Some 251,500 refugees repatriated voluntarily during 2009, the lowest figure since 1990. In contrast, more than 2.2 million IDPs were able to return, the highest in at least a decade.

Additional Resource:

The Frame - World Refugee Day Photo Blog

Challenges of Reintegration

Matt Waldman has an in-depth study on the challenges facing reintegration. Noting that reintegration is one step in reducing violence but that it only "addresses the symptoms of the disease, not the disease itself."

While economic pressure is a factor – the infamous $10 Taliban - there are often more immediate and fundamental reasons that drive people to fight. These include resistance to foreign occupation, civilian casualties, government impunity, tribal conflict and exclusion. These fundamental issues or ‘root cause’ highlight the need for substantial political reconciliation.

At its core, reintegration must offer something of value to all Afghans.

“Some believe its principal, legitimate role is to reduce violence, enhance community cohesion, and support a credible process of reconciliation. For General McChrystal, however, it is ‘a normal component of counterinsurgency warfare’ in other words, its central utility is as an instrument to weaken and potentially divide the enemy. Indeed, the US Military’s joint doctrine on Counterinsurgency Operations states that ‘offering amnesty or a seemingly generous compromise can also cause divisions within an insurgency and present opportunities to split or weaken it.”

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Reintegration is more complex and difficult to accomplish than is commonly appreciated. There are significant obstacles, including lack of trust, insurgent cohesion, and revenge attacks on participants. There is also a dissonance between the economic incentives offered by reintegration and some of the powerful social, political, ideological, and personal factors that cause people to fight.

A well-executed reintegration scheme could have positive social, economic, and stabilisation benefits – and thus reduce the force of the insurgency – but if mishandled, it could do the reverse. Without intelligent design, effective delivery, and political resolve it has the potential to exacerbate local security conditions, undermine high-level talks, and even increase insurgent recruitment. It could also distract policy-makers from action to tackle the root causes of the conflict. Reintegration addresses the symptoms of the disease, and not the disease itself.