October 21, 2005

This Week in Afghanistan Watch:

• Afghanistan Watch Exclusive: Robert Finn, former Ambassador to Afghanistan, On What's Next for Afghanistan
  
• U.S. Army Begins Investigation into Burning of Taliban Corpses
  
• More Pro-Government Clerics Assassinated
  
• U.S. and Afghanistan Aid Earthquake Victims in Pakistan
  
• Four Candidates Disqualified; Fifty Elections Officials Fired for Fraud

"There is no greater affront to the ideals of Islam then killing a respected scholar in a place of worship."

—Hamid Karzai, after a bomb killed Mullah Mohammad Khan on Friday

"The threat of terrorism is still coming from Afghanistan, but there is almost no need for active combat operations. As the threat fades, it would be right to restore the previous state of affairs."

—Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov

"You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be."

—Sgt. Jim Baker, in a taunt to the Taliban, as reported on an Australian broadcast

Exclusive: Robert Finn on Afghanistan's Next Phase

Robert P. Finn addressing a crowd of 250 high-ranking Afghan government officials, foreign diplomats and aid workers at a ceremony July 3, 2002 in Kabul, marking the U.S. Independence Day. Courtesy: State Department

Robert Finn was the first U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan in two decades, and served from March 2002 until November 2003. Prior to coming to Kabul, Ambassador Finn had a distinguished Foreign Service career, serving in Azerbaijan, Croatia and Pakistan and as U.S. ambassador to Tajikistan (1998-2001). Ambassador Finn has a Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University, where he currently teaches.

The relationship between the Afghan government and the international community has entered a new phase with the completion of parliamentary elections and the completion of the program outlined by the Bonn process. In a sense, the deadlines imposed by the Bonn process were the easier part of Afghanistan's recovery and the much harder process of national reconciliation and renaissance must now begin. The Afghan government now has formal structures in place, but must act to implement the constitution and prove itself capable of governing. This will not be easy.

The relationship between the Karzai government and the international community must change, as must the relationship between Karzai and the various elements that previously composed Afghanistan's government. As Karzai asserts himself with relation to both, tensions may well appear. There have already been some hints of this in Karzai's calls for a cessation of heavy bombing by the Coalition and for the assent of the Afghan government before house to house searches take place. The practical adherence to these policy changes would bring both strategic and operational difficulties. The international community has not met the goals presented to it by the Afghan government, in 2004 pledging only $8.3 billion over three years in response to the Afghan request for $27.4 billion in seven years. It remains to be seen how much of that pledge is actually delivered. Karzai has also called for greater control on the part of the government of Afghanistan over the use and spending of assistance funds. There have been widespread complaints from Afghans about the high overhead charges for international assistance, the question of decision-making authority for programs, and the issue of capacity-building for Afghans by the international community.

The loose collegial management style which Karzai effectively used to paper over many serious problems and disagreements will not necessarily work as well now. . .

Similarly, Karzai faces problems in ruling within his own house. While some of the major warlords, such as Ismail Khan and Gen. Dostum, have been removed from their local official positions that does not mean that they have been removed from the exercise of power altogether. The loose collegial management style which Karzai effectively used to paper over many serious problems and disagreements during the implementation of the Bonn process will not necessarily work as well now, as the Afghan government becomes more and more responsible for direct governance. In any number of public opinion surveys, the people of Afghanistan have indicated that security and the warlords are the number one problem, with the ongoing Taliban resistance somewhere farther down the list.

In addition, the presidential and parliamentary elections have accentuated traditional divisions within Afghanistan and precipitated the resignations from the Karzai cabinet of such primary Tajik figures as Marshall Fahim and former Education Minister Qanooni, as well as the Hazara leader Mohaqiq. While Karzai has brought in other leaders from these ethnic groups to maintain a nationally inclusive visage to his government, the divisions brought about by their departure from the government become increasingly important as the transition to an elected government takes place. The newly elected parliament will contain many individuals, including fundamentalists and acknowledged warlords, who have as their goal the aggrandizement of their own personal, ethnic, and sectarian power, individuals who are likely to give Karzai a difficult time as he attempts to assert his constitutional powers.

The complaints about the pace of reconstruction have been loud and constant. While it is clearly more difficult to reconstruct an Afghanistan, already one of the poorest countries in the world before its more than twenty years of war, than it is to rebuild Bosnia, reconstruction could have moved faster in a number of areas. It took months before the United States government, for example, heeded President Karzai's calls for reconstruction of the road network that had distinguished Afghanistan in the 1960s. Then it took months more before Japan could galvanize its governmental structures to join the partnership. In the end, the Kabul to Kandahar road was finished ahead of schedule, but subsequent follow-up on other parts of the road have been hampered by security problems, equipment failures and bureaucratic complications.

The lead nation system for improving different structures of the government has functioned imperfectly at best. One reason has been the lack of an overhead supervisory structure. In the judicial sector, slow progress was abetted by the failure to replace the existing Taliban-appointed judiciary. Karzai was able to bypass some of the judicial tangles this elicited in the early years, but the new constitution, with its lack of clarity on the question of Islamic law and secular values, will cause definite problems down the road. Ambitious programs for educational reconstruction faced a daunting (though heartening) number of students who came to class nationwide. Construction of school buildings has not been matched with the availability of teachers or texts. The inability of the international community to coordinate and rationalize assistance except on an ad hoc and usually temporary basis is a problem is not unique to Afghanistan. But it has clearly added to the difficulties of the largest refugee return in history to one of the poorest nations on earth.

In addition to building an infrastructure of roads and telephones, Afghanistan must find the energy it needs to build its future. Electrical supplies are minimal nationwide and the gas and oil deposits which brought Afghanistan $200 million a year in Soviet times still have not been more than minimally activated. Afghanistan's neighbors are scrambling to sign up the energy supplies of Central Asia and Iran, and a gas pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and India is still very much on the table, although there are supply problems. Afghanistan will lose out and vitiate what progress it is making if it cannot guarantee energy supplies for current and future activity in a world where the finite nature of supply is becoming increasingly obvious.

The regional situation has altered in a way that will also affect Afghanistan. Pakistani and Indian cooperation may well result in a gas pipeline to Turkmenistan, and this may bring Afghanistan both gas of its own and transit fees. The economy will benefit from a joint Iranian-Indian road, which will eventually connect to the Afghanistan ring road and other road links to the border in all directions. Northern neighbors, however, have not moved forward after initial declarations of interest in economic cooperation in 2004, and growing concerns among Central Asian nations about the U.S. program for democratization makes them cooler toward Afghanistan, where they forecast a permanent U.S. military presence. There is also the subtext here of past assistance given by Afghanistan's northern neighbors to both Afghan Uzbeks and Afghan Tajiks in the Northern Alliance. Karzai will have to watch out for is this possibility, particularly if the presence of ex-Taliban or like-minded people in the Afghan Parliament allows those in the north to exacerbate the issue.

The new national army and the new national police are achieving respectable numbers, and the army in particular has been able to operate with Coalition forces. There remains, however, the question of where the ultimate loyalties of those forces will lie, especially in a future when they are not coupled with Coalition forces. The early battalions were formed in cooperation with a Ministry of Defense dominated by Tajiks, but difficult negotiations by Coalition military staff brought about a more balanced superstructure. Minister of Defense Wardak is capable and well-intentioned, but electoral results, which show most Pushtuns voting for Karzai and most Tajik and Hazaras voting for their own ethnic leaders, underscore a threat to national institutions. The failure to do so will not result in any kind of partition of Afghanistan, but could lead to a reversion to regional/ethnic conflicts. These conflicts brought about the current situation and led to the takeover by the Taliban in the first place. The change in leadership and responsibilities of international soldiers in Afghanistan, the role of the PRTs, and the role of NATO leadership are all vectors that must be calibrated carefully in the next few months and years.

The main problems of Afghanistan are simple and clear: security, drugs, money, and reconstruction (which is often first-time construction.) Each of these problems is interconnected. If Karzai cannot control drugs, he cannot control security. If he does not have money and security, reconstruction will falter. If he does not get the money from the international community, he cannot control security or fund reconstruction, a problem complicated by the tendency of the international community's attention to wane or be captivated by new emergencies. The fact that Afghanistan is the world's largest drug-supplier-mostly to donor countries-does not help matters. The linkage to Iraq has helped to keep Afghanistan in people's minds and brought it more assistance than it might otherwise have had. The converse, however, is not true: the money that went to Iraq would not necessarily have been allocated to Afghanistan if the Iraq war had not occurred.

Afghanistan is still a case in point where the united world community took a stand and removed a government that supported terrorism. The Taliban-era government was amazingly dysfunctional and inherited and augmented the legacy of two decades of war. There is reason to be dissatisfied with the progress that has been made so far and there is the obligation to be concerned about the future. There is also much that has been done and reason to believe that Afghanistan can eventually become a self-sufficient, secure nation. About two-thirds of Afghans support the government and think the country is going in the right direction. The world should continue to support them.

This Week in Afghanistan

Army Examining an Account of Abuse of 2 Dead Taliban
WASHINGTON, October 19 (NYT) by Eric Schmitt—The Pentagon announced Wednesday night that the Army had started a criminal investigation into allegations that American soldiers in Afghanistan had burned the bodies of two dead Taliban fighters and then used the charred and smoking corpses in a propaganda campaign against the insurgents.

The events were shown on an Australian television program, broadcast there on Wednesday night, depicting what is described as an American psychological operations team broadcasting taunts over a loudspeaker toward a village thought to be harboring Taliban fighters and sympathizers, according to a transcript of the program. It was posted on the Web site of the Special Broadcasting Service. An American soldier, an Afghan soldier, and two Taliban had just been killed in fighting there, the transcript of the program said.

According to the program's translation of the taunts, which were delivered in the local language by American forces on the scene, a soldier identified as Sgt. Jim Baker, said: "You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve the bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be." . . . The reference to the bodies "facing west" appeared to be a deliberate mocking of the Islamic requirement to face Mecca during prayers. The Muslim faith prohibits cremation and holds respect of the body of the dead as a central tenet.

The American soldiers told a freelance photojournalist who recorded the incident that they burned the bodies for hygienic reasons, he said in an interview in the studios of the SBS program Dateline. But human rights organizations said Wednesday that burning bodies was an act of desecration in the Islamic faith and a violation of the Geneva Conventions. . . . In the past, allegations of disrespect for Islam by American forces have sparked heated and even violent reactions in the Muslim world. . . .

In the program, Sergeant Baker's taunt is heard first. Then a second soldier, who was not identified, chimes in singling out several mullahs by name: "Your time in Afghanistan is short. You attack and run away like women. You call yourself Talibs but you are a disgrace to the Muslim religion and you bring shame upon your family. Come and fight like men instead of the cowardly dogs you are." In the interview with the producers, Mr. Dupont explained that the American soldiers had been trying to bait the Taliban fighters to shoot at them. "They want the Taliban to fight them because they can't find them otherwise."

Three More Pro-Government Clerics Killed (Helmand, Khost, Kunar)
After a brief respite, insurgents have continued to assassinate pro-government clerics (four clerics were killed in June and July.) Last week's attack near Khost—in which insurgents bombed a mosque as Mullah Mohammad Khan prepared for evening prayers, killing him and injuring 16 others-echoed the June 1 suicide bombing of a Kandahar mosque which killed 20 and injured 40. Last week, suspected Taliban gunmen also killed Mohammad Gul in Helmand and Nur Ahmad Jan in Kunar.

The insurgency continues to escalate. On October 17—a week after a large and coordinated ambush against a police convoy of 150 men killed 18 officers, including Amanullah Khan, a senior province official-another attack on a police station left four dead. On Friday, the Taliban destroyed eight fuel tankers at a U.S. base in southern Kandahar.

KABUL, October 17 (UPI)—Suspected Taliban gunmen killed a Muslim cleric in Afghanistan, the second slaying of a religious figure in the last few days. Mohammad Gul was killed after leaving a mosque in the capital of the southern province of Helmand during the weekend, Afghan officials said on Monday. Gul was considered a pro-government cleric and was roundly denounced by the Taliban.

His killing followed the Friday death of Mullah Ahmad Khan, another pro-government cleric, in the eastern province of Khost. Khan was killed in a bombing attack on a mosque that Khost officials also blamed on the Taliban.

U.S. and Afghanistan Aid Earthquake Victims in Pakistan
KABUL, October 17 (IRIN)—The UN and Afghan relief agencies are dispatching aid for survivors of the earthquake that hit northern Pakistan and India on 8 October. . . . The Afghan government and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) agreed to send 65 trucks from WFP's Afghanistan operation to assist in the transport of life-saving relief supplies to quake-hit areas in Pakistan, WFP said. . . .

The UN said more four million people had been affected by the quake and one million were in dire need of relief, while more than 2.5 million survivors needed to be re-housed. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said about 200,000 winterised tents were urgently needed.

On Sunday, a joint convoy of more than 60 trucks from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and WFP, carrying 1,500 tents, 20,000 blankets, 50,000 plastic sheets and 10,000 jerry cans, was set to leave Kabul for northern Pakistan, according to Nader Farhad from UNHCR Kabul. . . . Meanwhile, the Afghanistan government has provided four helicopters, along with 34 medical personnel and 4 metric tons of medicine. "Our medical personnel established a 50-bed mobile hospital, which has treated more than 800 wounded and conducted 70 major surgeries" Dr. Ahmad Sha Shakuhmand from the health ministry said.

Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said there are now 3.3 million homeless and the quake has cost Pakistan $5 billion in infrastructure losses. Deaths are estimated at 40,000 and rising.

"With two Chinooks we brought back 60 [people], just a drop in the bucket of what's really out there," says Chief Warrant Officer Mark Jones. Col. Donald McGraw said 21 helicopters had been found, and will be operating in Pakistan by October 22.

Laura Winter of the Christian Science Monitor reports that a turnover from the Army to the Navy is in process: "Eventually the U.S. Army will go back to Afghanistan," says spokesman Colonel James Yonts. "They've got to get back to that mission." Colonel Yonts said that a handover of the relief command from Lieutenant General Karl Eikenberry, head of U.S. operations in Afghanistan, to a Navy admiral was initially planned for Wednesday, but was pushed back. . . . "We took what we could out of Afghanistan, but there are some bad guys there who are taking advantage of this," says Colonel McGraw. "But we are willing to take some risk in Afghanistan to start up relief operations here."

Contribute here to the relief efforts:
United Nations World Food Program
Mercy Corps
CARE
American Red Cross
Doctors Without Borders
International Medical Corps
Islamic Relief USA
Oxfam

Russia Expects U.S. to Pull Out Bases after Afghanistan Stabilizes
October 17 (Xinhua)—Russia sees no need for U.S. military bases in central Asia when the threat of terrorism in Afghanistan wanes, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Sunday.

"The threat of terrorism is still coming from Afghanistan, but there is almost no need for active combat operations. As the threat fades, it would be right to restore the previous state of affairs," Lavrov said on a television show on current events.

With the reduction of the terrorist threat in Afghanistan, there will be no need for the bases in central Asia, which Russia regards as "the implementation of existing understandings on removing the threat of terrorism," the top Russian diplomat said.

Lavrov spoke of withdrawal of U.S. bases a day after he got assurances from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who paid a surprise visit to Moscow over the weekend to meet Russian leaders primarily on Iran, that Washington had no plans to set up new military bases in central Asia after Uzbekistan ordered a shutdown of the U.S. base in the country by the end of the year.

Lavrov underlined Russian bases in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as part of a collective security treaty of former Soviet countries. "With the common agreement of treaty countries, these bases are a component of the rapid reaction force that is being formed to curb attempts to undermine stability in the region by terrorists, drug traffickers, organized criminals and so on," he said.

American, Brit and Indian Accused of Arms Smuggling
KABUL, October 15 (BBC) by Bilal Sarwary—British and U.S. citizens are among eight people arrested on suspicion of arms smuggling in the Afghan capital, Kabul, Afghan police have said. . . . Those arrested had forged documents saying they were personnel of the International Security Assistance Force of peacekeepers, the sources said. . . . The police sources would not give a full breakdown of those arrested but said they included one Indian national and British, U.S. and Afghan citizens. . . . It is believed the first time Westerners have been held for alleged arms smuggling in Afghanistan.

Election Officials in Afghanistan Fire 50 Staff for Fraud
October 16 2005 (VOA News)—Election officials in Afghanistan say they have dismissed some 50 employees for suspected fraud in last month's legislative elections . . . more than 650 ballot boxes-or about three percent of votes-have been taken out of the counting process because of suspicions they were stuffed. . . . But Mr. Atwood ruled out a recount, saying the fraud was not widespread and does not affect the integrity of the election. Accusations of irregularities in the count of the September 18 vote sparked demonstrations across the country.

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Afghanistan Watch is prepared by Carl Robichaud, a program officer at The Century Foundation.

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