Not dead, just dormant...

Thanks for bearing with us...

It's been a while since I posted here, and over a month since Bipasha Ray (who did a truly stellar job of holding down the fort in my absence) stopped posting. (Bipasha has since started an exciting new job at the Open Society Institute.) Since leaving Century I have been traveling, dealing with a family crisis, and working on other projects, and have had too little time to do devote to this project.

This week I started work as a Program Officer at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, where I will be making grants on nuclear security issues (my other area of professional interest.)  Afghanistan, with its struggles and triumphs, remains an issue I care about passionately, and I will be looking for new means and venues to continue the work we started here. Keep checking in and I will keep you posted!

In the meantime, I am eager to hear your thoughts. I still maintain that there is a need for thoughtful analysis on Afghanistan that goes beyond the headlines and that features new (as well as familiar) voices from a variety of perspectives. We cannot afford to let Afghanistan slip out of the spotlight -- the stakes are too great.

Please contact me at robichaud@tcf.org if you would like to discuss the future of Afghanistan Watch, or just want to check in.  Thanks again for your patient readership and for all your thoughtful feedback over the past three years.

Eradicating opium through development

More disconcerting news coming out of an international Afghanistan donors conference in Tokyo this week. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime issued its annual winter survey of poppy planting patterns and predicted a poppy harvest close to last year’s record.

Afghanistan could fail as a state

A new independent study by retired Marine Corps Gen. James Jones and former U.N. Ambassador Thomas Pickering has a dire warning for Afghanistan, according to The Associated Press which obtained an advance copy.

Study: Afghanistan could fail as a state, Anne Flaherty (The Associated Press), 29 January 2008. Afghanistan risks sliding into a failed state and becoming the "forgotten war" because of deteriorating international support and a growing violent insurgency, according to an independent study.
(snip)
"Afghanistan stands at a crossroads," concludes the study, an advance copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press. "The progress achieved after six years of international engagement is under serious threat from resurgent violence, weakening international resolve, mounting regional challenges and a growing lack of confidence on the part of the Afghan people about the future direction of their country."

A major issue has been trying to win the war with "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid," the study adds.

Among the group's nearly three dozen recommendations: increase NATO force levels and military equipment sent to Afghanistan, decouple U.S. management of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, establish a special envoy to coordinate all U.S. policy on Afghanistan, and champion a unified strategy among partner nations to stabilize the country in five years.

You can read the study here.

Also read the Atlantic Council report released the same day, Saving Afghanistan: An Appeal and Plan for Urgent Action. It states bluntly that "NATO is not winning in Afghanistan" and urges quick changes in course, including a coherent security and reconstruction assessment, appointment of a UN high commissioner, and the creation of a comprehensive regional strategy including all neighboring actors like Pakistan and Iran.

A third interesting report comes from Oxfam which recommends changing the "centralized, top-heavy and insufficient" aid-distribution process to a more indigenous approach that emphasizes "more even distribution of aid, greater alignment with national and local priorities and increased use of Afghan resources" and focuses more on rural development and agricultural aid.

Elections in Afghanistan could be problematic

As talk swirls over whether Zalmay Khalilzad will run for Afghan president and Karzai attempts to project his authority to prepare for what could be a possible re-election bid, a U.S. Army report finds cause for worry about national elections in Afghanistan. Michael J. Metrinko, of the Army’s Peacekeeping and Stability Operations Institute, looks at problems with future Afghan elections in the face of deteriorating security.

Never mind, Ashdown

Lord Paddy Ashdown has withdrawn his name from consideration as the UN envoy to Afghanistan, after President Hamid Karzai and other officials expressed opposition last week, concerned about the extent of his power. 

Briton Opposed by Afghans Won’t Take U.N. Post, by Carlotta Gall (The New York Times) 28 Jan. 2008: The Afghan foreign minister, Rangeen Dadfar Spanta, said Mr. Ashdown had been rejected because of negative press and public reaction to his appointment, but diplomats said it had more to do with Mr. Karzai’s desire, one year before Afghan elections, to improve his image by standing up to Western powers. In addition to opposing Mr. Ashdown’s appointment, Mr. Karzai has also opposed a plan to widen the position’s authority.

The Afghan UN Ambassadar Zahir Tanin told the BBC that the preferred candidate is NATO’s deputy commander in Europe, Gen. John McColl.

James Bone of the London Times sees it as “part of an old-fashioned power-struggle that would be instantly recognisable to any village khan - or UN bureaucrat.” NATO wants better “coordination” in the face of soaring opium production and insurgency, but the Afghan government wants to retain control. Karzai may also have been worried about Ashdown’s far-reaching powers in Bosnia – where he could fire officials and overturn laws -- trickling into his position in Afghanistan.

Rifts within the Taliban

Syed Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times reports some striking news in the development of the Taliban insurgency, which could point to increasing internal rifts. He cites anonymous Taliban sources who claim that Taliban chief Mullah Omar has fired Baitullah Mehsud, the alleged mastermind of the Bhutto assassination who had been in charge of stepping up attacks against the Pakistani state.

Now, apparently, Omar is trying to return the focus of the insurgency back to Afghanistan, to fight NATO forces and the nascent Afghan state. The divide apparently came over a difference in opinion about who to focus attacks on. “Mehsud was expected to provide valuable support to the Taliban in Afghanistan, but instead he directed all his fighters against Pakistani security forces,” writes Shahzad.

This shift in Taliban strategy was evident, Shahzad says, with the recent attack in Pakistan’s Balochistan province that destroyed oil tankers headed to NATO’s Kandahar airfield.

Independent panel calls for troops, equipment to keep Canadian troops in Afghanistan

A Canadian independent blue-ribbon panel sets two conditions if Canadian combat troops are to stay in Afghanistan past February 2009. First, other ISAF countries have to send 1,000 combat troops to Kandahar province to reinforce ISAF’s “clear, hold and develop” strategy and train local armed forces.  This apparently is a response to Canadian resentment of many NATO countries sending troops to Afghanistan under caveats that protect them from combat.

Holbrooke on Bush's "ineffective" counter-narcotics plan

Former UN Ambassador Richard Holbrooke tackles the thorny issue of the Bush administration’s counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan -– calling the billion-dollar-per-year plan the “single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy.” According to him, in addition to wasting money, the policy only strengthens the Taliban and al-Qaeda. As most of the poppy crops destroyed are in the insecure south, it pushes penniless farmers with no other options into the arms and influences of the Taliban. Meanwhile, little effort is made to tackle the drug lords and corrupt government officials who enable the trafficking trade.

Holbrooke recommends first boosting security, providing free agricultural support to farmers and building access roads to markets to ensure successful alternate livelihoods, before launching on a complete poppy eradication plan in insecure areas.

Torture of Canadian-transferred detainees continues

The Globe and Mail reports that Afghan detainees turned over by Canadian forces are still being tortured in Afghan prisons, according to governmental documents just released by the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

The Globe and Mail has established that the report of the case is recent, written after a Nov. 5, 2007, inspection of the National Directorate of Security prison in Kandahar. That was six months after a supposedly improved transfer agreement was put in place to monitor detainee treatment. The agreement was designed to address problems raised by critics about the ill treatment of prisoners taken by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan and handed over to Afghan authorities with insufficient follow-up.

See the released documents here.

New Report on the ‘Forgotten War’

The European Council on Foreign Relations has a new report out calling for U.S. and European governments to “overhaul their strategies and strike a 'grand bargain' to stabilise the country.” Significantly, it urges enticing moderates into the fold of governance and legitimacy through money and other incentives.

There will be no stability in Afghanistan unless “moderate” insurgents embrace constitutionalism and enter democratic politics. Since the Bonn Agreement in the wake of the September 11th attacks, the coalition has supported the United Islamic Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan, better known as the Northern Alliance, which brought together the main Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara groupings. For obvious reasons it had no significant links to the Pashtuns who make up 42% of Afghanistan’s population.22 After 2001, despite Karzai’s Pashtun background, Pashtun tribal leaders were largely excluded from government and have been ever since. Many have thus aligned themselves with the resurgent Taliban. The coalition and the Afghan government must work to convince them that they can pursue their interests democratically.

There have already been signs that this is at least possible. Though President Karzai’s overtures to reclusive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar were rebuffed, the Taliban, while insisting on a number of conditions, have been receptive to the idea of negotiations as proposed within Karzai's "Peace Jirga". The British Prime Minister Gordon Brown recently gave his backing to these negotiations, again with conditions attached, but the US administration remains sceptical.

Political agreements - like the failed Musa Qala deal in 2006 overseen by the then ISAF commander, General David Richards – should aim to isolate the “hard-core”, many of whom are foreigners, from more moderate, indigenous groups. Such political agreements would also help avoid the violent tactics that may have won NATO military victories last year but cost vital public support because of high civilian casualties.

An effective policy in the short term would be to identify insurgent leaders willing to cut a deal. The coalition could then operate a system of “divide and rule”, whereby intransigent insurgents would see their erstwhile comrades rewarded with a package of financial and other incentives which add up to a better deal than that offered by the Taliban. (emphasis added by editor).

The report urges European governments to send more troops to Afghanistan, eliminate or reduce the national caveats on their troops, and reverse their “underperformance” by increasing reconstruction aid. On the flip side, the report pushes the U.S. to shift its combat strategy to a more political one and abandon its counter-narcotics plans of aerial spraying or buying up opium crops. It recommends the U.S. shift the onus of the problem onto traffickers and concentrate on arresting and prosecuting drug lords and their governmental supporters.