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Supporting Entrepreneurship in Afghanistan Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan has experienced extraordinary economic growth, with GDP rising by over 20 percent each of the past three years. This growth has been fueled principally by an injection of capital from two sources: the international presence and the poppy trade. Neither of these sources are sustainable.
Afghanistan faces another problem as well: it lacks the legal and financial institutions to sustain its growth potential. Rebuilding these institutions is a thorny problem, since reform opposed by many stakeholders, from warlords to judges steeped in Taliban-era law. In the meantime, however, strategies exist to spur commerce and growth even in a post-conflict country with poor law enforcement, banking and legal institutions. That's precisely the topic of a World Bank online discussion that has clear implications for Afghanistan. The discussion, which became the most popular the site had ever hosted, started with the observation, by moderators Ian Bannon and Tim Harford, that: The inventiveness of entrepreneurs in some failed states borders on the legendary. Entrepreneurs in Somalia, for example, have turned to these innovative tactics to operate in an institutional vacuum: "importing institutions," such as banking systems from nearby countries; using traditional dispute resolution mechanisms; and simplifying transactions to a point where other tactics are not needed. But there are limits to what the private sector can achieve without the support of a capable state. Click here to read the start of the World Bank online discussion, or read the documents below (PDF format) for more in-depth look at the issue:
News Update Containment
of heavy weapons stalled in Panjshir Disarmament has progressed according to plan in every region, with the exception of the Pansjir Valley, where an estimated 110 heavy weapons remain in the hands of former combatants (See Disarmament: Not just how much, but what and from whom, AW, Sept 28..) Afghan
judge arrested for Kabul bombing According to reports, security forces discovered explosives during a raid on Naqibullah's house, and the Judge has acknowledged that the suspected organizers of the attack stayed there. NGOs
victims of growing criminality Desert
drug route stymies Afghan police Interview
with chief adviser on refugees An
Afghan Quandary for the U.S. With the January planting season approaching, the State Department
is asking Congress to earmark nearly $780 million in aid to Afghanistan,
the world's largest opium producer, for a counter-narcotics effort
that would include $152 million for aerial eradication." More... 
Top Stories New
Initiative to Disarm Irregular Militiamen Change
in Tactics: US to take fewer Afghan prisoners US
earmarks $152 million for aerial eradication AUDIO:
Interview with David Barno (NPR Audio) Other News this Week A Dark Anniversary
in Afghanistan (01/02, 23:44) "Twenty-five years ago this
month, the Red Army invaded Afghanistan, opening a Pandora's box
whose effluvia include Osama bin Laden and leader of the Taliban
Mullah Omar…" Karzai's Cabinet Announced December 22, 2004 The Cabinet Choice The biggest decision of Hamid Karzai’s presidency looms ahead: who to pick for his cabinet. The embassy of Afghanistan in Canada has compiled recent coverage related to the big questions yet to be answered: Will Karzai offer Cabinet positions to warlords? Will the President appoint his rival Mohammad Yunos Qanuni to the post of Defense Minister, as Radio Afghanistan has suggested? Will Afghans with dual citizenship, such as current Finance Minsiter Ashraf Ghani and Interior Minister Ali Ahmed Jalali, be permitted to serve in the new cabinet? To find out the latest as to who has the inside track, click here. Afghanistan 'Footprint' Helps Shape U.N. Reform The much-anticipated release of the High Level Panel report on Threats, Challenges, and Change provides one of the best opportunities in decades to strengthen and reform the United Nations. Century Foundation Scholar Jeffrey Laurenti takes a look at how Afghanistan helped shape our understanding of what can work-and what won't:
It was the shock of the American invasion of Iraq that pushed United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan into creating a high-level panel to address the deepening crisis of collective security, but the specter of Afghanistan looms large over the panel's report. It was in Afghanistan in the 1980s that the U.N. began a quiet transformation from Cold War Greek chorus, left to rally world opinion from the sidelines, to an intermediary that actively negotiates, even between superpowers. It was on Afghanistan that the United States decided that benign neglect of a continuing civil war would lead to a politically more satisfying final solution than a U.N.-brokered all-party peace settlement. It was from Afghanistan that a terrorist enterprise hid behind the drape of a parasitized state's "sovereignty" to launch escalating attacks on "infidel" powers that culminated in the World Trade Center's destruction, and the events it set in motion. And it is in Afghanistan that outside powers experimented with divvying up post-conflict reconstruction efforts (and security) among individual countries, while entrusting to the United Nations the tasks of political reconstruction and the repatriation of 4.5 million Afghan refugees.
The high-level panel, chaired by former Thai prime minister Anand Panyarachun, was composed of former or current heads of government, regional organizations, or U.N. agencies; top-ranking ex-diplomats from major states; and former commanders of multilateral military forces, including U.S. retired general and presidential advisor Brent Scowcroft. The panel hewed closely to Annan's mandate to eschew case studies or country-specific recommendations, and its report mentions Afghanistan only thrice in 130 pages. But clearly a number of its 101 recommendations are informed by the Afghan experience. In an implied mea culpa for the policy choice of the U.S. administration that Scowcroft once served, the panel observed, "If the Security Council had been seriously committed to consolidating peace in Afghanistan in the early 1990s, more lives could have been saved, the Taliban might never have come to power and Al Qaida could have been deprived of its most important sanctuary." Thanks to international mediation and peacekeeping, the panel reports, more civil wars have ended in negotiated settlements in the past 15 years than in the previous two centuries; and international peacekeeping reduces the likelihood of conflict relapses by 70 percent. Afghanistan in 1989 was, tragically, the "control group" that was given a placebo while other countries in conflict got settlements and peacekeepers. Among the recommendations that bear the footprint of the Afghan experience are those calling for:
Afghanistan's representatives to the U.N. will likely not play much in the coming debate over strengthening the world's collective security machinery. But Afghans have nevertheless played a significant role in shaping the understanding in major states and regional groupings of what can work—and what won't. Century Foundation Scholar Jeffrey Laurenti, a senior advisor
to the United Nations Foundation, was executive director of policy
studies at the United Nations Association of the United States until
2003, and currently serves on the Association's Board of Directors.
He is the author of numerous monographs on subjects ranging from
international peace and security, terrorism, U.N. reform, to international
narcotics policy, and has authored articles for numerous major newspapers
and international policy journals. December 15, 2004 Afghanistan Watch picks top stories for the week: Reports
of mysterious spraying of Afghanistan poppy crops Japanese
Envoy Calls for More Donor Input with Japanese envoy Sadako Ogata Open
letter from Human Rights Watch: Keep Warlords out of Cabinet Up
To 5,000 British Troops Sought for Afghanistan Drugs Crackdown
More breaking news: December 8, 2004 On Tuesday, Hamid Karzai was inaugurated as President of Afghanistan. In the next two weeks he is expected to make one of the biggest decisions of his tenure: picking a cabinet. Though Article 71 of Afghanistan's new constitution declares that cabinet members "are appointed by the President and shall be introduced for approval to the National Assembly," the absence of a Parliament gives Karzai a free hand to select whomever he wishes. Yet this may be a mixed blessing, as he will bear full responsibility for the new government. His victory, split along ethnic lines, presents an unenviable challenge: he must foster ethnic unity while striving to fulfill his promise of keeping warlords out of the new government. For more on this, see Inside Karzai's Shrinking Tent. Pentagon Pledges Support, Contemplates Cuts At the inauguration, the U.S. pledged continued support for Afghanistan, but troop requirements will make it difficult to retain the current force level (18,000) for long. "There are still groups, extremists, that would like to take this country back," said Secretary Rumsfeld, appearing beside Karzai on Tuesday, "But it's not going to happen." The expectation, however, is that troop levels will drop within six to nine months, especially if Parliamentary elections go smoothly and some sort of armistice is reached with Taliban insurgents. Earlier, Lieutenant General David Barno suggested that U.S. forces, which "are sized against the security threat", could be reduced if there is "significant reconciliation with large numbers of Taliban." But even if things don't go so smoothly, Army recruitment and retention levels mean that there will soon be pressure to 'bring the boys home'—or send them to Iraq. For more details on the pressures facing the US army, see U.S. Army needs a long-term commitment to Afghanistan and Legions Stretched Thin, both by Jeremy Barnicle. Toward a "Plan Afghanistan": Counternarcotics Plan Emerges At a recent press conference, Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles provided some details on the new $780 million U.S.-led counternarcotics initiative, which patterns itself on the Plan Colombia effort initiated five years ago under Clinton. Colombia reduced its cultivation by 21 percent in 2002 and 15 percent in 2003. According to the briefing, the Afghanistan plan was the result of five months of behind-the-scenes work and reflected a "consensus of a lot of both our own agencies and the Afghan government and the British and other allies." It focuses on Afghan ownership of the process, and describes a 'five pillar strategy' to simultaneously raise the costs of cultivation and trafficking while improving alternatives. The Five Pillar Strategy 1. Effective public information 2. Tough law enforcement 3. Enhanced alternative livelihoods 4. Aggressive interdiction 5. Expanded eradication Secretary Charles suggested that a system of "auto-eradication," which has seen success in Peru, would be used: "you go into a small village, you have a contract with that village…to eliminate a crop in a given area.…You go in and verify it. And if it is true that they've done that, then they get a combination of sort of a Chinese menu, if you will, of infrastructure capabilities…It's the way that it always should have been, and I think now is."Another model, based on the "centrally-driven eradication efforts in Wardak and Gardez" would involve teams of Afghan eradicators on the ground, with international support in terms of targeting, transportation, and search and rescue in case something were to go wrong. These teams, coordinated by a contractor and consisting of up to 150 men, would receive assistance to arrive quickly and discreetly and get out safely. The blueprint for the "Plan Afghanistan," which focuses
on Afghan ownership and an integrated program of incentives and
penalties, looks sound on paper. Yet our war on drugs in Latin America
has produced mixed results—U.S. drugs czar John Walters admitted
recently that the billions invested over many years had not reduced
availability of cocaine. Even if we accept the premise that Plan
Colombia has yielded progress (and many critics
do not) it has cost $7.5
billion dollars and taken five years to get those results. The
$780 million Afghan initiative is a promising start, but there is
a long road ahead. December 1, 2004 Therefore it is natural, given the high-volume chatter this week about the wisdom of proceeding with Iraq's scheduled January election, to consider whether Afghanistan's parliamentary election, slated for April, should take place as planned. On one level, prospects look quite promising for the parliamentary poll. The October presidential ballot saw extraordinary voter turn-out, a relatively peaceful election day, and a decisive winner—all pleasant surprises for international observers. If elections went smoothly once, one might wonder, why can't they just do it again? In its new report, "Afghanistan: From Presidential to Parliamentary Elections," the International Crisis Group contends that the parliamentary election could be far more complicated and gives some stern but sensible recommendations to all involved in the planning and execution of the poll. The report charges that an election delay could "seriously tarnish" new president Hamid Karzai's legitimacy—which makes meeting the current schedule all the more urgent. Here are a few actions ICG recommends: • The boundaries of legislative units—at the national, provincial, and district levels—need to be reviewed as soon as possible, based on a new population survey to be conducted by the Central Statistics Office. Karzai needs to issue decrees defining the powers and duties of the provincial and district councils, which will also be elected in April. • Voters need to be educated on the vastly more complicated set of choices they have in this election (which involves multiple political parties and independent candidates running to be representatives for the national assembly, provincial councils, district councils) than they did in the previous one, in which they simply chose one candidate for president. • The Joint Election Management Body (JEMB) needs to re-double voter registration efforts in areas that experienced low turn-out in the presidential election. • The United Nations must make election preparation a top priority, as it was for the presidential ballot. Specifically, it needs to lend its full support to the census, voter registration, and public information efforts. • The international community—in the form of the major donor countries has to insist that the election takes place on schedule, and should provide the necessary technical and financial support the Afghans need make it happen. • ISAF and NATO need to line up troops commitments as soon
as possible to ensure that the security footprint is broadened for
this election. Provided that these and other conditions are met, the parliamentary election could be an important force in consolidating the hopeful Afghan democracy. For the full ICG report, click here. December 1, 2004 Building bureaucracies is not sexy. It lacks the bricks-and-mortar utility of highway and bridge construction or the testosterone-tinged appeal of putting uniformed soldiers and cops on the street. But creating a bureaucratic infrastructure is one of the most urgent and critical steps Afghanistan can take toward preventing the recurrence of civil strife. At least that's the premise of the Afghan Stabilisation Programme (ASP), a multi-donor $312 million dollar investment to rebuild the country's bureaucratic infrastructure, which kicks off this week. The money—a sizable chunk considering Afghan aid budgets—will mostly be spent on rehabilitating district offices, which provide the only direct interaction with government for most Afghans. As the deputy Interior Minister noted this week, "only a proper local administration can bring stability and build people's trust in the government." Right now trust is low. According to the best available public opinion data, collected in April by The Asia Society, Afghans were generally satisfied with their current government but felt "extremely disconnected from their leaders": Almost six citizens in ten (58%) did not feel the government cares about what people like them think and another 30% did not know. A mere 11% said the government does care about what they think—an extremely low percentage. Those regions reporting the greatest political alienation are the Northeast (where 71% say government doesn't care), Northwest (74%) and Central East/Kabul (76%). (From page 65 of the Full Report)What accounts for this level of alienation? District offices are staffed by local power holders (or their agents) who have little capacity or interest in providing services such as education or clean water. Often, local 'officials' receive people in their own houses and their power is based upon personal stature rather than their function as a government representative. Their relationship with the national government is weak, and at times antagonistic. And with more than half of Afghanistan's GDP generated by drugs and smuggling, these functionaries often derive their income from illicit means and their power from armed loyalists. The government of Afghanistan faces the unenviable task of replacing this system of personal patronage with a bureaucratic system based on what Max Weber termed the 'rational-legal' claim to authority, in which merit is rewarded, practices are routinized, and leaders scrutinized and held accountable. The ASP plays a key role, as it will provide training for civil servants and construct standard public facilities for government departments, post offices, and banks. The fund would also provide a communications infrastructure, as well as vehicles for administrators and housing for senior civil servants stationed in the hinterland. The ASP relies on the premise that infrastructure and inducements will make it possible for districts to attract qualified administrators, and to supplant district bosses—who typically lack competency, loyalty, or both—with more effective and responsive leaders. This is a tall order. Administrative facilities, if they exist at all, are decrepit, and communications remain unreliable. Afghanistan cannot take for granted any of the technologies or institutions—from telephone service to a functioning post office to working courts—that make government work elsewhere. Only six of Afghanistan's 364 districts have received services as part of the pilot phase; the program is expected to expand to 150 districts by the end of next year and to all districts within three years. Will all this make a difference? Afghanistan will never reach the level of centralization of Western
states, and that's a good thing-a federalist model promoting greater
regional autonomy is probably a better fit. Therefore, the key to
a strong, stable national government in Afghanistan is a far-reaching,
competent, and fair network of local government officials. On that
effort, the Afghan Stabilisation Programme is a good start, but
there is much to be achieved. November 22, 2004 Afghanistan's Latest Drug Report: The Hidden Story Last week, the UN Office of Drugs and Crime released its highly anticipated 2004 Afghanistan Opium Survey, which assesses the state of the opium industry and its effects on the population. The prognosis is probably worse than you think… Media attention has focused on the increase in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, which is certainly dramatic: a 65% increase in the land devoted to poppies since last year. But this increase was widely anticipated, and was partially offset by decreased yields per hectare of land under cultivation. A more troubling trend is the extraordinary increases in profits to opium traffickers—combined with a decrease in revenues to poppy farmers.
Since the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan's drug production has increased tenfold, returning to and then even surpassing Mujahadeen-era levels. The opium trade continues to fund a cohort of dangerous characters, both within Afghanistan and in the criminal syndicates of Europe and Asia. Yet there has been at least one bright side to the drug trade: it injected much-needed capital into one of the world's poorest country's and helped feed impoverished farmers who had been buried in rural debt following a three-year drought. Despite the problems it fueled, opium was a major factor in the remarkable increase in Afghan living standards over the past three years. (see Afghanistan Watch's Interview with Pierre Chouvy and "Opium in Afghanistan: people and poppies, the good evil" (PDF)). If these year's figures are correct, this one short-term human development upside to the drug trade is in decline. Last year, for every dollar in drug revenues entering Afghanistan, farmers received forty cents and traffickers sixty. This year, however, traffickers pocketed eighty cents and farmers twenty. The gross income a farmer earned off a hectare of poppy decreased almost by two-thirds, from $12,700 to $4,600, and since the vast majority of poppy farmers have less than half a hectare under cultivation, this resulted in a drop in per capita income among families that cultivated poppy from $600 to $260—or less than 75 cents per day. To put this in context, the drug trade equaled 60% of Afghanistan's GDP, and eighty percent of these illegal revenues went to traffickers, as well as to the corrupt officials and warlords that support them. Why did farmers lose? The second factor in decreased revenues is that farmers received much less money (-67%) for each kilogram of opium they sold. This drop in prices was caused in part by an increase in the supply of opium, which was produced by more families (+35%) and in greater quantities (+17%) than in 2003. But this alone cannot explain the depth of the price plunge; we must also factor in price fixing by traffickers and the speculative nature of the market for opium. First, in many parts of the country, traffickers can increasingly manipulate market prices by negotiating with regional power brokers to become the only purchaser for a region; this practice has become more widespread as the drug trade becomes more vertically integrated. Second, the UNODC report and other expert analysis has pointed to the highly speculative nature of the opium market, and suggested that the price plunge was the result of the bubble bursting on Afghanistan's domestic opium market. How are Traffickers Getting Ahead?
This highlights a paradox that has confounded drug control efforts the world over: the more successful you are at interdicting drug trafficking, the more supply drops, prices rise, and incentives to trafficking grow. Researchers who have studied the path of drugs to markets note that along a drug route, profit margins are proportional to the level of risk involved. The tighter a border, the greater the incentives to run it; the more drug labs are destroyed, the greater the incentives to build drug labs. It is frequently suggested that the only just or feasible approach to Afghanistan's drug problem is to go after the traffickers and drug labs while not targeting farmers. But the UNODC's analysis suggests that this strategy of targeting traffickers and heroin facilities—Afghan authorities claim to have destroyed more than 150 labs in the past year—may have had the perverse effect of driving up the international price of heroin and enriching traffickers at the expense of farmers (even as the net outflow of drugs declines.) In fact, with Afghanistan gaining a near-monopoly on world opiate production (87%), a glut in opium sap combined with a shortage of processed opium and heroin is an ideal condition for traffickers to maximize profits. This dynamic serves to strengthen the armed factions that are engaged, actively or indirectly, in the drug trade. This is not to suggest that 'going after the bad guys' shouldn't be part of the solution to the drug problem, but that targeting traffickers and refineries and border crossings will have multiple consequences which need to be addressed as part of a comprehensive plan. The developments detailed in the UNODC report—as well as past experiences in Colombia, Thailand, and Burma—suggest that any plan must have enough flexibility to adapt to inevitable surprises, whether they be thrown by mother nature or speculative commodity markets. An Emerging Plan While a massive increase in anti-drug efforts is promising, the
central question is whether Congress chooses to appropriate new
money for these efforts, or instead divert funds from existing Afghanistan
programs. At $780 million, the proposed counternarcotics program
would equal almost three-quarters of the total reconstruction aid
that the US gave to Afghanistan this year (though it is dwarfed
by military expenditures, which total $769 million each month.)
Any diversion of development aid would prove counterproductive,
since in dealing with drug economies, security, development, infrastructure,
and legal reform are all interconnected. A plan must be comprehensive
in implementation as well as name if it is to succeed. What Does a Second Bush Term Mean for Afghanistan? Let's table the chaotic situation in Iraq for a moment and consider what Bush's re-election means for Afghanistan. Security. The Bush administration's priority for the U.S. military in Afghanistan has always been hunting down Al Qaeda and the Taliban insurgents. While the U.S. did temporarily deploy several hundred troops to help NATO provide security for the October presidential election, and it does deploy a tiny percentage of its force to Provincial Reconstruction Teams, the U.S. Army does not participate in the NATO-led ISAF peacekeeping force, which remains woefully undermanned. With pressure to bring troops home and to slow down the Army's operational tempo, Bush will reduce, not expand, the number of US soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan, even as security conditions threaten to deteriorate. This desire to reduce the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan when our allies are digging in for a longer haul threatens the country's prospects for peace and prosperity. Reconstruction. Neither the U.S. nor most of its allies has fulfilled its pledges of reconstruction aid. Of the almost $12 billion the US spent in Afghanistan in the 2003 supplemental appropriation, more than $11 billion is authorized for military activities; what's left over goes to reconstruction and development. Given Bush's track record on meeting his pledges to the Afghans, it is not likely that spending will increase, despite Karzai's pleas for a greater American investment. Dealing with opium. The U.S. acknowledges that opium production endangers democratic progress and stability in Afghanistan, but has thus far tried to avoid entanglements in fighting the drug trade. This week, however, the Washington Post reported that the administration will ask Congress for permission to re-purpose $700 million to help with poppy eradication in Afghanistan. While this move falls short of engaging U.S. soldiers to destroy poppy fields and only appears to allocate $100 million for the critical crop replacement component to help Afghan farmers, this request is at least philosophically a step in the right direction. (For new developments in the drug trade, including an analysis of the UN's annual opium report—released yesterday—see Afghanistan's Latest Drug Report: The Hidden Story.) U.S. engagement will remain high. The Bush campaign has presented Afghanistan as the most successful episode in the longer narrative of the president's global war on terror—and they won't want to see the project fail and spoil his legacy. The Administration has a loyal friend in Hamid Karzai and a strong envoy in Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad, which means it will continue to care. Khalilzad is important to all this: he has Bush's ear and can ensure that the president stays engaged on the non-military aspects of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan. However, the U.S. must proceed with caution here. There were persistent concerns during the Afghan presidential campaign that Khalilzad was too heavy a presence in local politics. Karzai's rivals cried foul when the then-interim president was shuttled around in American military helicopters and made announcements of major U.S. aid projects on the eve of the election. While Afghans appear to accept Karzai as a legitimate head of state, the Americans must be mindful to keep their distance or they risk fanning criticism that Karzai is their puppet. Along these lines, the urgency the Bush administration has put
on Afghan democratization means that they will push hard for parliamentary
elections to happen as scheduled this spring. Again, they need to
approach that with caution: parliamentary elections are fundamentally
more complicated than those for the presidency, and the administration
needs to be willing to accept a delay if it becomes necessary. Inside Karzai's Shrinking Tent After three weeks of vote counting and investigations into fraud, Karzai's victory is official. Emboldened by his decisive margin—Karzai received 55 percent of the vote, his nearest competitor 16 percent—the President wasted little time in setting forth an ambitious agenda that he will be hard pressed to fulfill. In his first public statement since his victory in the Afghan elections, Karzai yesterday declared that his government will put an end to private militias and drug running. "The Afghan people have voted for a government based on laws, based on institutions, and that is what we are going to provide for them." Karzai insisted that officials involved in the drug trade or human rights abuses would not be invited into the government, and that he was under no obligation to offer top cabinet posts to his chief political rivals. The vote may give Karzai the legal mandate to form his cabinet as he sees fit, but it is unlikely he will have the legitimacy to take the bold step of excluding unsavory figures with strong political support, warn some analysts. Vikram Parekh of the International Crisis Group noted that "on the balance it looks like, in rural areas, the bulk of the people voted for individuals who he would like to exclude from his next cabinet." In heavy Hazara and Uzbek regions, for example, voters chose regional leaders over Karzai by a 4 to 1 margin or more, and Karzai's dominant position is largely a result of his sweep of the Pashtun vote (he received 90 percent or more of the vote in many of these provinces, which constitute 40 percent of the country's population.) The electoral map provides a revealing look at the ethnic divide; you can also review vote tallies in specific provinces here. Karzai may seek to avoid a political showdown by claiming only to enforce technical requirements within the Afghan constitution that require each Afghan minister to have a university degree, a provision that would disqualify Yunoos Qanooni, Mohammad Mohaqeq, and Mohammad Qasim Fahim, among others. Further evidence that the tent may be shrinking surfaced last week when a list of potential cabinet members was leaked by a member of Karzai's team and printed in a Kabul newspaper. The list, overwhelmingly Pashtun, suggests that the President may reject a coalition cabinet. But some say this represents a wish list and is not a likely slate. But, according to a one senior Afghan government official, who spoke to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on condition of anonymity, Karzai may revise his ambitious plan and opt instead for a diverse cabinet not far different from the status quo. With no parliament in place until April, cabinet inclusion is the only way to give a governing stake to different factions. Karzai must select a cabinet before the end of November, and his choices will tell us a lot about how aggressively he plans to pursue his reform agenda. Will he include political figures or technocrats? Will he seek ethnic inclusion or surround himself only with loyal allies? There are dangers to being bold, but the risks of being overcautious may be just as great. After all, the next five months before Parliamentary elections constitute a brief window when Karzai is unfettered by procedural opposition, and reform may be much harder after April. An Afghanistan Watch Interview with Dr. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy In Afghanistan, illegal opium is, along with foreign aid, the country's primary source of national income. Opium fuels turf wars between regional strongmen, finances their personal armies, and empowers them to defy the central government. The opium trade is considered by many observers inside and outside Afghanistan as the greatest threat to the country's peace, prosperity and political development. But is this conventional wisdom correct? And how is the international community doing when it comes to reining in opium production in Afghanistan? In this edition of Afghanistan Watch, we interview Dr. Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, one of the world's leading experts on international drug trafficking. Dr. Chouvy is a Research Fellow at the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS); his website geopium.org is a must-read for those interested in the causes and consequences of opium production in fragile states. He is an author of numerous books and articles on the subject, and is a frequent contributor to Jane's Intelligence Review. Afghanistan Watch: How would you evaluate the international
community's counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan so far? To overcome both opium production and terrorism in Afghanistan, the government and the international community should focus less on waging wars on drugs and terrorism and more on implementing a broad program of alternative and integrated development in the whole country. Within this, a multi-level strategy involving effective sanctions on criminal activities is critical. This program should be implemented in gradual phases so as to secure political and territorial stability. As I have written, long-lasting peace, combined with political and economic development, must be achieved if Afghanistan is successfully rid itself of the drug economy/war economy nexus. Afghanistan Watch: The Pentagon has made statements that it
plans to embark, in the near future, on a 'master plan' to deal
with the drug problem in Afghanistan. What advice would you give
to Pentagon planners as they set out to devise a counternarcotics
strategy? Afghanistan Watch: Some have argued that now that the presidential
election has come and gone, Afghanistan and the international community
should focus on dealing with the drug trade. Is now the time to
address Afghanistan's drug problem? Afghanistan Watch: We've all read the figures about the magnitude
of the drug trade in Afghanistan: 30-50 percent of GDP, tenfold
increase in cultivation since the Taliban era, etc. You have written
that Afghanistan's expanding opium economy has many implications,
not all of them negative. Could you elaborate? Opium is frequently denounced as the greatest threat to Afghanistan's
stability, peace and forthcoming democracy. But the opium economy
is not just a source of instability. As noted in a
recent report to USAID by Frank Kennefick and Larry Morgan,
opium in Afghanistan can be seen as a "good evil": while
the opium trade plays a significant role in perpetuating instability,
it is also vital for Afghanistan's broader economy, generating an
estimated income for farmers and traffickers equal to half of the
country's legitimate gross domestic product (GDP). On one hand,
opium trafficking has given warlords the means to perpetuate conflict.
On the other hand, the opium economy has made survival possible
for many farmers and helped stabilise a country coming out of over
two decades of war and facing a derelict economy. In Afghanistan, as in Burma (Myanmar), the world's second largest
opium producer, drug production is closely linked to territorial
control and political legitimacy. Opium has long been at stake in
Afghanistan's conflicts, since potential opium profits increase
the value of a given territory. One can say that opium economy fuels
territorial instability, but this link is mainly because of the
overarching war context (or post-war context). Let us not forget
that opium production has also promoted stability by providing the
country with a much-needed income. Let us remember that some former US allies in the war against the Soviet Union were clearly engaged in the illegal drug economy. While some of these have since become 'terrorists,' even more recent allies in the 'war on terror' have been said to use opium and heroin for funding. In post-Taliban Afghanistan, opiates continue to be produced both in areas traditionally controlled by the United Front, such as Badakhshan, and in areas held by various local commanders allied with the U.S. in the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Even more official allies of the US 'war on terror' seem to be engaged in, or benefiting from, the drug economy. Indeed, as was testified under oath on March 20, 2003 by Wendy Chamberlain, former US ambassador to Pakistan, before the Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific of the Committee on International Relations, ISI involvement in opium trafficking across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has been "substantial" during the last six years. (For more detail, see Narco-Terrorism in Afghanistan, Terrorism Monitor, March 2004). Insofar as the Taliban-era opium ban is concerned, one can say that it was detrimental and counter-productive. In the context of the Afghan economy, where many farmers depend on the opium economy and sell their harvest in advance, the ban simply put many of them deep in debt. Ironically enough, the magnitude of the recent increase can be partly attributed to the economic consequences of the ban itself, which was economically and politically unsustainable. Without proper alternative development, a ban is clearly not the right approach. Crop substitution is preferable to eradication as the poorest are always the first victims of eradication. As I wrote in a February article in Jane's Intelligence Review, this is not only the case in Afghanistan but also in Burma where an ongoing ban is threatening the survival of many tribal communities. If opium production must be dealt with through a security approach—as is frequently and erroneously the case—it should be mostly about food security. Opium production is the outcome of deep rural poverty occurring mostly in war-torn regions. Afghanistan Watch: Are there other readings you would recommend
for those interested in the problem? October 21, 2004 Despite manpower challenge, U.S.
Army needs a long-term commitment to Afghanistan Because of its global obligations, the U.S. Army faces an impending manpower crisis. As the Pentagon considers possible solutions, it should start by taking any significant reductions in the Afghanistan deployment off the table. Without a sustained international military presence (with a major contribution from the United States), recent progress towards democracy and reconstruction is endangered. A new report from the Century Foundation on the manpower crisis in the U.S. Army notes that the American military has been dealing with the most demanding set of deployments since the Vietnam era. The pace and duration of units' in-theater deployments have gone precipitously upwards, and the Pentagon has relied heavily on "stop-loss" orders that require soldiers to stay in the service after their enlistment has expired. Members of the Reserves and the National Guard have been deployed in unprecedented numbers. As a result, the military, especially the Army, has seen a drop in morale, new recruits, and re-enlistments among current soldiers. Most military analysts agree that a crisis is on the horizon for manpower in the U.S. military. In order to address this problem, the U.S. either must expand its force, convince allies to make greater contributions to global military operations, or reduce its existing commitments. Of these possible solutions, the third has the strongest implications for Afghanistan, where a temporarily expanded American force contributed to largely peaceful presidential election two weeks ago. Despite the challenges facing the U.S. military, the next administration must make a commitment to provide the Afghans with the security they need to let democracy take root. NATO is a valuable partner in providing security in Afghanistan, but its members have demonstrated that they lack the means or the political will (or both) to get the job done without a major American contribution. Earlier this week in Ottawa, Major General Andrew Leslie, a Canadian who was second in command of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) for Afghanistan, told the Washington Post, "the West and NATO are looking at a 10- to 20-year commitment in Afghanistan." Leslie has also said ISAF needs an additional 5,000 troops to provide adequate security. Several time zones away, Lt. General David Barno, commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, told a Pentagon press conference he projected U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan-currently about 18,000-would stay constant until there was evidence of "Taliban reconciliation"—some sustained indication that the Taliban threat had diminished—which he thought would be demonstrated over the next 6-9 months. Even if the Taliban threat subsides, the Afghans will need a sizable U.S. military footprint until local forces are more robust. Illegal opium production is booming, with profits financing private regional militias. U.N.-sponsored disarmament of those private armies is having little effect, and the indigenous Afghan security forces are small and growing slowly. Whatever power Hamid Karzai's government exerts beyond Kabul is derived from the implicit, and sometimes explicit, threat of U.S. military intervention. There is little evidence to suggest that the Afghan National Army or police will be able to impose the rule of law, as defined by the elected central government, on warlords and narco-traffickers in the provinces any time soon. To make Afghanistan a success, the central government needs supplementary muscle—that will come in part from the U.S. Army. The question of the U.S. military's capacity for a sustained deployment in Afghanistan needs to be how, not if. As Gen. Leslie pointed out in his talk, the situation is worse
in Afghanistan than it was in Bosnia (in terms of destruction, lack
of local security capacity, heavily armed factions) and that operation
has gone on for almost a decade The U.S. military—looming manpower
crisis notwithstanding—needs to make a comparable commitment
to Kabul. October 14, 2004 After the Afghan Elections Last week's presidential election in Afghanistan went well under difficult circumstances, but democracy will not grow there unless the international community steps up its commitment immediately. From the start, United States has aimed low and achieved even less in Afghanistan. The Administration's budget request for Afghan reconstruction fell from $2.2 billion for FY04 to $1.2 billion in FY05. In last year's supplemental appropriations bill for Afghanistan and Iraq, Congress devoted $11 billion to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan and less than $1 billion to reconstruction. The next presidential administration needs to step up and devote the money and troops Afghanistan needs for democracy to take root. Building democracies, especially in war-torn countries, is a tough business. Efforts to encourage healthy democracy in post-war countries plagued by lingering animosities, battered infrastructure, meddling neighbors, and weak legacies of participatory government have vexed even the most committed Wilsonians (or these days, neo-cons) in places like Bosnia, Cambodia, Haiti, Liberia, and now Afghanistan and Iraq. In the course of democratization experiments, there is a common complaint in the international democracy-building industry (yes, such a thing exists): that the primary beneficiary of its efforts—the body politic in these countries—fails to cooperate. The desired democratic outcomes don't always materialize because people are too poor to worry about politics, too scared to engage in the political process, or too loyal to their religion or ethnic group to change the political dynamic that led to war in the first place. Frustrated democracy-builders throw their hands up in the air, say something about leading a horse to water, and head to the next hot-spot. Saturday's presidential election in Afghanistan demonstrated that the Afghan people are neither too apathetic, nor too scared, nor too parochial to build a democracy. The election was by no means perfect—a U.N. panel is investigating complaints of multiple voting and ballot box tampering—but it was a major step forward for Afghanistan. In spite of highly credible threats of violence from Taliban insurgents and a thinly-spread security force, millions of Afghans turned out to vote, often standing in line for hours for the chance to cast a ballot in their first-ever direct presidential election. Despite the presence of candidates from all major ethnic groups and regions on the presidential ballot, exit polls indicate that a solid percentage of voters of all backgrounds supported Karzai, a Pashtun. Conversely, thousands of Pashtuns voted for candidates other than Karzai. There was little disruption, little violence, and little sustained complaining about the process. In short, with this election the Afghans have held up their side of the democracy-building bargain with the international community. Now it's time for the international community to fulfill its part of the deal. To be fair, foreign diplomats, peacekeeping troops, and NGOs made an invaluable contribution to making the election a relative success. The U.N. worked with Afghans to manage the entire process. Western diplomats helped defuse the threatened boycott of the election results by the also-rans. NATO and U.S. troops provided at least some security in dangerous places. NGOs trained election observers, conducted polls, and built the capacity of citizen groups to get their voices heard in the campaign. But on the whole, the international community is still not holding up its side of the bargain with the Afghan people. The international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan is still pitifully inadequate. The counter-narcotics funding and training so badly needed to control booming poppy cultivation and trade are falling far short of the need. International efforts to disarm private militias are behind schedule and having very limited success. Reconstruction pledges from donor countries—which amount to only a fraction of what the Afghan government has requested—are far from being met. Afghans have started to show that they're committed to peace, stability,
and democracy. The election demonstrated that they have the courage
and the will to make this a success. If democracy fails to take
root in Afghanistan after this promising start, the international
community—led by the United States—will not be able to
blame the locals. October 14, 2004 Candidates Back Off Election Boycott,
Vote Count Begins In a meeting with U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad on Tuesday, Presidential candidate Younis Qanooni, the chief rival of incumbent Hamid Karzai, joined several other candidates in agreeing to accept a three-member U.N. panel's verdict on whether Saturday's elections were free and fair. Qanooni had been among 15 candidates boycotting the election due to perceived fraud. With the top three challengers dropping their boycott, the path is now clear for the vote count to begin. One candidate, who requested anonymity, was quoted by Reuters as saying "Qanooni and Mohaqiq have shown willingness to drop the boycott demand after meetings with Khalilzad...Khalilzad urged them to do so in return for accommodating them somehow in the future government." While vote irregularities existed it appears not to have affected the outcome—exit polls suggest President Hamid Zarzai won decisively, and that any fraud would be peripheral to the outcome. In a statement by the Chairman in Office, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) suggested it was "very impressed by the remarkable numbers of Afghans that have braved threats against their lives and bad weather to come out all over the country to freely cast their ballots in Afghanistan's first-ever presidential elections." "I am not prone to call a black cat white," said the European Union's special envoy to Afghanistan, Francesc Vendrell. "We literally went trying to search for evidence of intimidation and violence. We found very little indeed. . .I'm not saying that we found everything—most likely not. But what I think is the case is that most people were able to cast their votes freely, and therefore to choose the person that they want to be their president for the coming five years." Instances of Fraud Reported Other reports have expressed greater skepticism. According to the Asia Times, other reports have noted that the government may have "exaggerated the number of registered voters—perhaps by 5 million." If these reports prove true, the "next president of Afghanistan is, therefore, likely to be elected by less than one-fourth to one-fifth of the population." But early returns give more reason for optimism, with 3.3 million votes flowing in with less than half the polling stations reporting. In addition to the concerns over indelible ink, other documented complaints include ballot box fraud—according to one report, two boxes were reportedly missing hundreds of ballots in a Hazara district of Kabul, which might have affected the vote totals for the Hazara candidate Mohaqiq; according to another report, the manager of a polling station made off with two ballot boxes and returned them on election morning stuffed with ballots. In another incident in Spinbaldak, poll officers were reportedly ordered by their supervisor to complete 700 ballots in favor of Mr. Karzai. Next Steps It will take two weeks for the official vote count to be tallied, and for the UN panel to complete its inquiry into whether elections were fair. In Washington and elsewhere, however, spirits were high. U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice predicted that "this election is going to be judged legitimate," adding, "I'm just certain of it." The next step in building Afghan democracy is parliamentary elections, scheduled for this spring, which the New York Times notes "will be crucial because without a democratic mechanism for brokering differences among the country's multiple ethnic, language and religious groupings, there can be no functioning national government. For these smaller-scale, more localized contests, higher voting standards and improved security are essential." Regardless of the challenges ahead, the sentiments of the day were
best captured by 93-year-old Abdul Hakim, who came to a polling
center in north Kabul an hour before it opened to cast his ballot.
Hakim noted, "I have lived nearly a century but I have never
voted for my leader." That all changed on Saturday. October 13, 2004 Afghanistan Elects a President The dust is still settling after Afghanistan's first-ever direct presidential election on Saturday, but even significant technical difficulties in the voting did little to cloud what many see as the election's inevitable outcome: that Hamid Karzai will be elected president. In order to prevent people from casting more than one ballot, the Joint Electoral Management Board (JEMB), the U.N.-Afghan body running the election, gave poll workers indelible ink to mark the fingers of those who had voted. As it turned out, some of the election workers used the wrong ink. Afghan and Western journalists confirmed that the ink easily washed off with soap and water and multiple news organizations reported that many Afghans voted more than once. Karzai's opponents immediately cried foul and pledged to boycott the election results. But visits from Western diplomats-most prominently U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, and near-universal enthusiasm among Afghans for the election process seem to have convinced the also-rans that the boycott was not likely to change the results or improve their own political prospects. On Monday, Tajik leader Yunus Qanooni, who exit polls indicate came in a distant second to Karzai, dropped his opposition to the election. If the election's outcome isn't much of a surprise, the relative
smoothness of its execution certainly is. The ink issue notwithstanding,
things could have been much worse. Taliban insurgents were threatening
attacks to disrupt the polls, which could have resulted in the loss
of life. More damaging in the long-term, the threats of violence
could have seriously suppressed voter turnout, robbing Afghans of
the chance to vote and undermining the legitimacy of Karzai's mandate
to rule. In short, the election appears to have been neither perfect nor fatally flawed. Karzai, according to exit polls, has won the necessary majority of votes in the first round. He is positioned to enter office with a reasonable degree of democratic legitimacy and now he faces the hard part: governing. October 5, 2004 Campaigning Ends—Does Anyone
Notice? Tuesday marked the close of the Afghan presidential campaign, which was lackluster even by the standards of an emerging democracy. Security concerns prevented candidates from campaigning outside of their home regions. This, combined with short timelines (4 months from registration to election) and media limitations (opposition candidates received only twenty minutes of airtime), made it nearly impossible for candidates to get their message out. President Karzai, relying on what appears to be an overwhelming incumbency advantage, left Kabul only twice to promote his candidacy, with one of those rallies cancelled due to a rocket attack on his helicopter. Absentee Candidate? Meanwhile, the Associated Press reports that Karzai's visit to Germany this week "raised eyebrows as thousands of Afghan and international workers struggled to prepare for the Saturday vote amid threats by the Taliban and al-Qaida that they will try to block it. The president's opponents have charged his frequent trips out of the country—and virtual shunning of the campaign trail—show he is fearful of his own nation and is out of step with ordinary people." Karzai was among those absent from a presidential political debate yesterday, for which only two of eighteen candidates showed up. Afghanistan did figure prominently in at least one presidential debate—that between President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry. Afghanistan was mentioned 14 times during the 90 minute debate. Will the election teams be ready? This week, the Joint Electoral Management Board reports that 120,000 Afghan citizens have been recruited and trained to staff the country's 4,893 Polling Centers and 21,924 Polling Stations. There will be 280 independent international observers to monitor these stations, along with 4,000 local independent observers from Afghan NGOs. Will this level of oversight be sufficient to overcome efforts at fraud and intimidation? Over-registration in certain regions and the electoral climate suggests that some degree of fraud is inevitable; the question remains whether it is widespread enough to interfere with the legitimacy of the elections. October 5, 2004 On The Eve Of The Election, Are The U.S.
And Karzai Too Close For Afghans' Comfort? According to Afghanistan's election commission, Interim President Hamid Karzai's running mates are Ahmed Zia Massoud, brother of the legendary Tajik commander Ahmed Shah Massoud, and Karim Khalili, an ethnic Hazara leader. But the casual Afghan observer could be forgiven for thinking another man, Zalmay Khalilzad, was joining Karzai on the ticket. Last week, Khalilzad and Karzai cut the ribbon on a $9 million dormitory for female university students in West Kabul. Later, the duo stood together and expressed optimism for Afghanistan's future as they opened the country's National Museum. They are said to dine together several times a week. At every turn, Khalilzad sings the president's praises and pledges his support for the regime. Alas, Khalilzad is not a candidate. He's not even an Afghan citizen. But he does have a big stake in the outcome of Saturday's poll: he is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan. As in any political campaign, these joint appearances are not accidental. Khalilzad was helping demonstrate to voters that Karzai is a leader who can bring home the bacon. Douglas Birch, covering the campaign for the Baltimore Sun, reported: "The message seemed clear. Karzai is a friend of the United States, and the United States is generous with its friends." Rumors of Khalilzad's cajoling rival candidates on Karzai's behalf have become so prevalent that the ambassador recently had to tell the Associated Press "Never have I said to someone that you should withdraw [from the campaign] in favor of President Karzai." There is little doubt that Karzai will win the election, if not in the first round most certainly in the run-off. But how will Afghan voters interpret Karzai's close public relationship with the U.S.? One possibility is that U.S. support strengthens Karzai's appeal to Afghans. Afghans recognize their dependence on the West for security and reconstruction and will support Karzai to keep the international donors happy. Foreign favoritism in their first-ever direct election of a president isn't exactly welcome among Afghans, but it's a necessary evil on the road to stability, prosperity, and robust democracy. A darker possibility is that Karzai is seen as a foreign puppet, like so many Afghan leaders in the past. His campaign rivals—and Taliban propagandists—have marked Karzai as weak, ineffective, out-of-touch with Afghans, and, most disparagingly, beholden to foreigners. One of Karzai's opponents complained to the New York Times a few weeks ago, "Mr. Karzai can go with American helicopters and American bodyguards to 10 provinces in one day. What can we do?" The result: Karzai could win big with the help of his foreign sponsors but lack the legitimacy with common Afghans to assert more control over his lawless country. Reality probably falls somewhere between these two scenarios. As the Times article concluded, if Afghans see the election "as American-directed political theater designed to impress American voters instead of Afghan ones, a landslide could undermine Mr. Karzai's legitimacy rather than enhance it." Both Karzai and the U.S. need to be mindful that their relationship could be too close for the comfort of many Afghans. September 28, 2004 Europeans Still Falling Short on Afghan
Security The September 22 New York Times quoted French defense minister Michèle Alliot-Marie telling a group of French and German soldiers, as they headed out on patrol in Kabul, "Your presence is proof that Europe exists and is capable of bringing its weight to bear on the great crises shaking our planet." Mon dieu. Even allowing for some rally-the-troops hyperbole, Alliot-Marie's call to action is harder to swallow than spoiled foie gras. France currently contributes 565 soldiers of its 280,000-strong military to the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the peacekeeping operation in Afghanistan . Germany has deployed 1909 of its 375,000 troops to ISAF. The 6,500 troops that comprise ISAF primarily cover the Kabul area, which comprises about one-half of one percent of the country, and about ten percent of the Afghan population. The international commitment-both from the U.S. and Europe-to providing security for the nascent Afghan democracy has been pitifully inadequate from the start. To put things in context, consider this set of ratios from Afghanistan Watch's data sheet:
• International peacekeepers per 1,000 people in Kosovo: 20 • International peacekeepers per 1,000 people in Afghanistan: 0.3 The Europeans acknowledge that this is a problem. Recognizing the need for a bigger international security footprint about a year ago, the U.N. Security Council and NATO, which now oversees ISAF, authorized an expansion of the peacekeeping force beyond Kabul. Just a few months ago at a summit in Istanbul, NATO heads-of-state affirmed their pledge to send more troops. But with Afghanistan's first-ever direct presidential election just weeks away, the alliance is falling short of its commitment. "Member states are reluctant to send troops into the increasingly unstable countryside," the Times reports, and just 1,500 new troops have actually been deployed or marked for deployment. Former ISAF deputy commander Gen. Andrew Leslie, a Canadian, has estimated that ISAF needs another 5,000 soldiers to really secure the elections. The estimates for providing real security in the provinces range much higher. To be fair, European forces have played a critical role in the ISAF; in fact, ISAF would not exist without them. But Ms. Alliot-Marie's grandiloquent declaration reflects the chasm between what European militaries ought to be doing in Afghanistan and what Europe actually is doing in Afghanistan. If the Europeans really want to "bring their weight to bear" in Afghanistan, they should keep their promise and find a way to deploy an adequate peacekeeping presence. September 28, 2004 Disarmament: Not just how much,
but what and from whom As Afghanistan moves towards elections in two weeks, the U.N. has released numbers suggesting progress in a critical area—the disarmament of Afghanistan's militias of their heavy weapons. On September 26, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) announced that U.N. disarmament programs had now secured almost half of all heavy weapons in Afghanistan, showing rapid if belated progress. As the disarmament program enters its most crucial stage in the coming weeks, however, two big questions remain: what weapons are being turned in, and by whom? On Septemb | ||||||||||||
