Afghanistan mission risks entering vicious circle
Afghanistan mission risks entering vicious circle
By Quentin Peel
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 10 2006 21:20 | Last updated: July 10 2006 21:20
The international mission to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan is in terrible danger of failing, just as the member states of Nato, including the UK, are redoubling their troops on the ground.
Both US forces, whose focus has always been on fighting an open war against the Taliban and remnants of al-Qaeda, and their Nato allies, who are gradually expanding from mere peacekeeping to assume a unified command over the whole country, are in danger of getting caught in a vicious circle where the focus on fighting insurgents only alienates the local population.
Two authoritative independent reports in the past fortnight have underlined the losing battle that the international community is fighting to bring any sense of normality back to the lives of Afghan citizens.
The latest, published on Tuesday by the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch, says escalating attacks both by the Taliban and other armed groups – some ostensibly allied to the Afghan government – have closed hundreds of schools, particularly in the south and south-east.
The attacks have targeted one of the few areas where hopes were highest for recovery, with millions of children, especially girls, said to have been brought back to school since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001.
“Afghanistan is on the cusp of failure,” says Saman Zia-Zarifi, research director of Human Rights Watch. “Failure would consign the people of that country to hell. It would create serious regional and international ramifications, in terms of the spread of extremism, terrorism and militancy.”
It would also mean an escalation in production of Afghanistan’s two principal exports – narcotics and refugees – and very possibly spell the end of the Nato alliance, whose reinvention as a peacekeeping and peace-making force far beyond its European limits would be fatally called into question.
The Human Rights Watch report follows closely on another by the Senlis Council, a security and drug policy think-tank, warning that the attempted obliteration of poppy crops, especially in southern Afghanistan, was driving the local population into the arms of the Taliban, leaving southern provinces in a “state of war”.
Speaking in Kabul on Monday, Tom Koenigs, the UN secretary-general’s special representative, said that “security in the south is much more fragile than we had analysed, even half a year ago”. International forces faced a revived Taliban, aided by international terrorist networks. “In the south we face the first phase of an insurgency ... fuelled by international terrorist networks, and ... not respecting any civilian lives.”
According to Human Rights Watch, the problem is not just the Taliban. Those involved in attacks on schools, teachers and students include other armed groups, representing Afghanistan’s powerful warlords, and simply criminals. Some are intent on undermining any education system that might make the population less dependent on their tribal laws and rulers; others on merely collecting protection money from the local population.
The sorry message is that both American and now British forces in the south have failed to provide the protection they promised for the most basic of human needs. Yet they are caught in a terrible bind, for those institutions seen to be too closely associated with foreign troops are often shunned by the local population for that reason.
“We are in a position where more troops are necessary, but the mission of those troops has to be explained much more clearly to the Afghans in Helmand [where the British are now based],” Mr Zia-Zarifi said. “The mission has to be: ‘we are here to protect the Afghan people’, not ‘we are here to kill the Taliban’.” One problem was a failure of different countries involved in the international aid effort to share information and best experience from their own national reconstruction efforts, he said.
Another was a lack of resources going to basic services such as health and education.
“We are hopeful the British will do a better job than the Americans,” he said, “because they have a better track record. US troops had a war-fighting mission. They did not want European peacekeepers there. They did not want to deal with the people of Afghanistan.”
By Quentin Peel
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2006
Published: July 10 2006 21:20 | Last updated: July 10 2006 21:20
The international mission to bring peace and stability to Afghanistan is in terrible danger of failing, just as the member states of Nato, including the UK, are redoubling their troops on the ground.
Both US forces, whose focus has always been on fighting an open war against the Taliban and remnants of al-Qaeda, and their Nato allies, who are gradually expanding from mere peacekeeping to assume a unified command over the whole country, are in danger of getting caught in a vicious circle where the focus on fighting insurgents only alienates the local population.
Two authoritative independent reports in the past fortnight have underlined the losing battle that the international community is fighting to bring any sense of normality back to the lives of Afghan citizens.
The latest, published on Tuesday by the New York-based organisation Human Rights Watch, says escalating attacks both by the Taliban and other armed groups – some ostensibly allied to the Afghan government – have closed hundreds of schools, particularly in the south and south-east.
The attacks have targeted one of the few areas where hopes were highest for recovery, with millions of children, especially girls, said to have been brought back to school since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001.
“Afghanistan is on the cusp of failure,” says Saman Zia-Zarifi, research director of Human Rights Watch. “Failure would consign the people of that country to hell. It would create serious regional and international ramifications, in terms of the spread of extremism, terrorism and militancy.”
It would also mean an escalation in production of Afghanistan’s two principal exports – narcotics and refugees – and very possibly spell the end of the Nato alliance, whose reinvention as a peacekeeping and peace-making force far beyond its European limits would be fatally called into question.
The Human Rights Watch report follows closely on another by the Senlis Council, a security and drug policy think-tank, warning that the attempted obliteration of poppy crops, especially in southern Afghanistan, was driving the local population into the arms of the Taliban, leaving southern provinces in a “state of war”.
Speaking in Kabul on Monday, Tom Koenigs, the UN secretary-general’s special representative, said that “security in the south is much more fragile than we had analysed, even half a year ago”. International forces faced a revived Taliban, aided by international terrorist networks. “In the south we face the first phase of an insurgency ... fuelled by international terrorist networks, and ... not respecting any civilian lives.”
According to Human Rights Watch, the problem is not just the Taliban. Those involved in attacks on schools, teachers and students include other armed groups, representing Afghanistan’s powerful warlords, and simply criminals. Some are intent on undermining any education system that might make the population less dependent on their tribal laws and rulers; others on merely collecting protection money from the local population.
The sorry message is that both American and now British forces in the south have failed to provide the protection they promised for the most basic of human needs. Yet they are caught in a terrible bind, for those institutions seen to be too closely associated with foreign troops are often shunned by the local population for that reason.
“We are in a position where more troops are necessary, but the mission of those troops has to be explained much more clearly to the Afghans in Helmand [where the British are now based],” Mr Zia-Zarifi said. “The mission has to be: ‘we are here to protect the Afghan people’, not ‘we are here to kill the Taliban’.” One problem was a failure of different countries involved in the international aid effort to share information and best experience from their own national reconstruction efforts, he said.
Another was a lack of resources going to basic services such as health and education.
“We are hopeful the British will do a better job than the Americans,” he said, “because they have a better track record. US troops had a war-fighting mission. They did not want European peacekeepers there. They did not want to deal with the people of Afghanistan.”
posted by Carlos T Mock @ 8:05 AM
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