The Search for Security in Post-Taliban Afghanistan

Cyrus Hodes, Mark Sedra

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415438834
• eBook ISBN: 9781134975242
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia militar y marítima

By the middle of 2007, Afghans had become increasingly disillusioned with a state-building process that had failed to deliver the peace dividend that they were promised. For many Afghans, the most noticeable change in their lives since the fall of the Taliban has been an acute deterioration in security conditions. Whether it is predatory warlords, the Taliban-led insurgency, the burgeoning narcotics trade or general criminality, the threats to the security and stability of Afghanistan are manifold. The response to those threats, both in terms of the international military intervention and the donor-supported process to rebuild the security architecture of the Afghan state, known as security-sector reform (SSR), has been largely insufficient to address the task at hand. NATO has struggled to find the troops and equipment it requires to complete its Afghan mission and the SSR process, from its outset, has been severely under-resourced and poorly directed. Compounding these problems, rampant corruption and factionalism in the Afghan government, particularly in the security institutions, have served as major impediments to reform and a driver of insecurity.

This paper charts the evolution of the security environment in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, assessing both the causes of insecurity and the responses to them. Through this analysis, it offers some suggestions on how to tackle Afghanistan's growing security crisis.

Part 1: Threats to Security and Stability in Afghanistan

Chapter One
Warlordism

Warlordism presents one of the most pronounced and confounding challenges to the Afghan state-building process. The mere act of defining a warlord is contentious and complicated. Identifying warlords is a highly subjective process: one person's warlord is another's legitimate political leader. Nonetheless, some common characteristics can be identified. Antonio Giustozzi defines warlords as 'military leaders who emerge to play a de facto political role, despite their lack of full legitimacy'.¹ Warlords often collect taxes and customs duties; they maintain their own private armies and exploit the criminal economy. Their power is rooted in the military assets at their disposal, the clientelistic networks they run and, to a lesser extent, outside support.

Afghanistan's contemporary class of warlords are a product of the civil war (1979-2001) and the breakdown of central authority it caused. This period saw a major shift in village political and social hierarchies. Young military commanders usurped traditional governance structures and sources of authority, whether tribal or religious leadership or customary bodies like the village shura or jirga.² In the absence of a functioning state, these actors controlled the distribution of resources at the local level, and provided rudimentary public services. While ethnic, tribal or sectarian solidarity conferred a degree of legitimacy on some of these actors, the dominant characteristic of Afghanistan's warlords is their predatory behaviour towards local communities. The high degree of acceptance and even popularity that the Taliban enjoyed during their rise to power in the mid 1990s stemmed from their success in marginalising these figures - a lesson that the post-Taliban political order did not adequately heed.

Rather than sidelining the warlords and restoring the power and authority of the state, the Bonn Agreement of 2001 sought to accommodate them instead.³ Barnett Rubin has characterised the political transition launched at Bonn as a form of 'warlord democratisation', in which the dominant strategy has been to co-opt rather than exclude armed commanders.⁴ The Bonn Agreement missed an unprecedented opportunity to emasculate Afghanistan's warlords. In late 2001 and early 2002, these figures had yet to re-establish their fiefdoms or consolidate their positions. The proxy relationships that they maintained with external states were largely frozen as patrons assessed how the US would act. Yet far from marginalising or even containing these commanders, the international community enabled them to extend their authority into the heart of the state, giving them a virtual veto over elements of the state-building process.

The government's policy of bringing warlords into the government has weakened the state's capacity for reform and service delivery as modernisers and reformers have been shunted aside in favour of unqualified commanders and their cliques. It has also undermined the legitimacy of the post-war political dispensation. As Giustozzi states, President Hamid Karzai 'could lose in legitimacy what he gains in political power' from his alliances with the old warlord elite.⁵ Much of the population identifies these figures with the destruction of the state, rather than with its renewal. Their presence in the government might buy short-term stability in some areas, but it has exacerbated a deeply rooted suspicion of the state that could hinder the extension of its sovereignty over the long term. Moreover, warlords have utilised their positions to colonise parts of the public administration and security forces, particularly sub-national governance bodies and the police.⁶ Equally, Karzai could also lose in political power what he gains in legitimacy from his close relations with international partners, as they are also unpopular with portions of the population. Such are the difficult choices he faces.

The international community has been complicit in Karzai's accommodationist approach to the warlords. The United States in particular has favoured the formation of alliances with regional commanders to maintain security and stability until the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) are trained and equipped. It has also established proxy relationships with commanders in eastern and southern Afghanistan to support Coalition military operations.

One of the most obvious effects of the reconstitution of warlord power has been the emergence of competition over territory and resources, competition which has often degenerated into violence. The most notable clashes occurred in 2002 and 2003 in northern Afghanistan between the forces of two prominent allies of the government: Rashid Dostum, the leader of the Uzbek-dominated group Junbish-e Milli-ye Islami, and Atta Mohammad, a prominent figure in the largely Tajik Jamaat-e-Islami. Although the conflict has been contained thanks to the intervention of the central government and the international community, tensions persist, and while the insurgency has clearly come to overshadow the threat posed to security by warlord violence, periodic clashes among government-allied commanders remain a problem. For instance, in October 2006, fighting between rival commanders of two Pashtun clans in the western province of Herat killed 32 people and left numerous others injured.⁷

In 2004, prominent international donors such as Japan, Britain and the European Commission began to exert greater pressure on the government to deal with recalcitrant commanders. Defence Minister Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim, one of the most powerful commanders in the country and the head of one of the most corrupt ministries in the government, was an obvious target. Fahim was removed from office in the run-up to the presidential elections in October 2004. After the announcement of the decision, ISAF forces in Kabul were placed on alert in anticipation of a coup attempt. It never materialised, convincing many that the scope for government action to confront the warlords was far greater than had been assumed. Another powerful figure, Ismail Khan, the self-proclaimed Emir of Herat, was removed in September 2004 following a wave of fighting around Herat. Khan subsequently accepted the post of minister of energy and water in the government in Kabul, drawing him away from his provincial power base. While proponents of a tougher stance towards armed commanders were emboldened by these developments, Karzai was reluctant to abandon his accommodationist approach, which suited his leadership style. In 2006, following a series of riots in Kabul, Karzai reappointed Fahim to a government position as his security adviser. There has been speculation that the riots were partly orchestrated by supporters of Fahim's Tajik-dominated political faction, Shura-i Nezar, who were angered by the declining influence of Tajiks in the government. Karzai is alleged to have told Western diplomats that removing Fahim was the worst mistake he had made as president, and he blamed the international community for the misjudgement.⁸

A striking example of the deleterious effects of this accommodationist strategy on the state-building process concerns the parliamentary elections in September 2005. Afghanistan's electoral law (Art. 15, No. 3) 'prohibits anyone who commands or belongs to an unofficial military force or armed group from becoming a candidate'. A rigorous vetting process was established to review candidates, and a list of 1,024 individuals with potential links to armed groups was compiled by the Demobilisation and Reintegration Commission, which maintains a countrywide database of illegal armed groups. This list was passed to the independent Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC). However, only 34 candidates were excluded from the ballot due to links to armed groups.⁹ The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), an independent body established by the Bonn Agreement and later mandated by the constitution to monitor the observation of human rights and promote their protection, claimed that over 80% of the winning candidates in the provinces and 60% of successful candidates in Kabul had links to armed groups.¹⁰

Turnout in the parliamentary elections was sharply down on the presidential polls, from 8.1 million to 6.4m. Some observers attribute this fall to public disillusionment over the inclusion in the electoral process of warlords and other figures with questionable pasts.¹¹ A public-opinion survey¹² conducted in the run-up to the legislative elections by the Kabulbased Human Rights Research and Advocacy Consortium (HRRAC), a group of 15 Afghan and international non-governmental organisations working in the country, found that Afghans were deeply concerned that local commanders, warlords and war criminals would enter parliament.¹³ Nonetheless, Karzai favoured allowing a wide range of candidates to stand, including individuals accused of human-rights abuses, on the basis that this would advance national reconciliation. This approach, which was tacitly endorsed by the international community, also stemmed from concerns that, if armed actors were barred from the elections, they would oppose the central government, breaking up the fragile network of disparate groups that Karzai had meticulously constructed. As one UN diplomat stated, the international community was reluctant to authorise disqualifications that would 'undermine the entire process'.¹⁴

The failure to adequately vet candidates has damaged the parliament at a crucial stage in its development. Allowing warlords to stand in the elections provided another avenue for them to extend their reach into the state and protect their interests. Parliament's standing committees, which provide oversight of the executive, have been dominated by former jihadi commanders, while better-qualified individuals have been excluded. Meanwhile, on 1 February 2007, a motion was passed granting immunity to all Afghans who had fought in the country's civil war, including senior Taliban officials. This was a transparent attempt to shield senior commanders from prosecution for their part in wartime atrocities. It also contradicted the government's Action Plan for Peace, Reconciliation and justice in Afghanistan, which called for the investigation of past crimes and ruled out any prospect of immunity.¹⁵ Opinion surveys since 2002 have consistently shown that the majority of Afghans want commanders held to account for their crimes during the civil war.

The government's strategy of engaging warlords in the political process in order to transform them into politicians or businessmen has largely failed; although many high-profile commanders have begun wearing business suits and speaking the jargon of democrats, they have merely used their positions to expand their power. While some commanders are more legitimate than others, and deserve to be engaged in the political process, the state must take a resolute stand against predatory figures if it is to extend its writ across the country, counter corruption and establish a monopoly on the use of force. An important opportunity to achieve these goals was missed in the immediate post-Taliban period. However, events since have shown that robust government action, backed by international support, could rectify this mistake.

Chapter Two
Spoiler Groups and the Anti-government Insurgency

While the civil war in Afghanistan was fuelled by power-hungry warlords and competing radicalised Islamic groups, the Taliban, with their harsh interpretation of Islam and with the help of foreign funds, managed to impose order and remain at the helm of the state for five years. Once they were ousted, their increased resolve to keep fighting for power, together with their alliances with other radical groups, Afghans and internationalists, has surprised — and keeps surprising — the international community involved in peacekeeping and counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan.

The political, geostrategic, religious and tribal affiliations of the Taliban movement

Taliban is the plural form of taleb, which means 'seeker' (of knowledge) in Arabic and Urdu. It is also used to refer to a student of Islam. The generic name Taliban stems from the Quranic schools, or madrassas, located in Pakistan, mainly in the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan, but also in Karachi and Lahore, where poor Afghan refugee children and orphans found a social structure to receive them.¹ An estimated 20,000 madrassas train students in Pakistan today, up from a couple of hundred at independence in 1947. As an essentially Pashtun movement, the Taliban have been rightly accused of 'ethnic parochialism'.²

Between 1994 and 1996, the Taliban took over Afghanistan with a speed that surprised many observers. They started with the support of truckdrivers fed up with being constantly taxed and looted on trips between Afghanistan and Pakistan. They then received financial support from Saudi Arabi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Glossary
• Introduction
• Part 1: Threats to Security and Stability in Afghanistan
• Part 2: Combating the Threats to Afghanistan's Security
• Conclusion
• Notes