December 2 , 2005

This Week in Afghanistan Watch:

• U.N. Roundtable Emphasizes Fragility of Afghanistan’s Progress
• United Nations Releases 2005 Opium Survey
• U.S. Commits to $5 Billion over 5 Years for Afghanistan
• Foreign Support Seen Behind Attacks That Mimic Those in Iraq
• Uzbekistan to NATO: No More Help on Afghanistan
• Foreign Policy in Focus: Toward a New Compact for Afghanistan
• New Crisis Group Report: Europe’s Role in Afghanistan

“We have to have a very long term perspective on the opium economy. It’s fundamentally a problem of security, governance and development, not a problem of criminal activity that needs to be eradicated and replaced with welfare-like programs. It will involve immense investments that will take years to mature.”

—Dr. Barnett Rubin, speaking at a TCF sponsored UN roundtable

"Compared to Iraq, where the suicide bomber is such a cheap commodity they could throw them at almost any target, that's not where we are here."

—U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann

"I don't think any of us [at Bonn] would have expected that this kind of security environment is something we would be faced with four years down the road."

—UN spokesman Adrian Edwards

United Nations Releases 2005 Opium Survey (PDF)

This week the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime has released its annual Opium Survey. Here’s the skinny:

Measured Progress:

• Overall cultivation dropped by 21 percent, meaning one field out of five planted with opium last year was planted with a legal crop in this year.
• 50,000 heads of households decided not to plant their fields with poppy this year.
• Most of this decrease, however, can be attributed to the remarkable eradication efforts in a single region: Nangahar (the province that includes Jalalabad). Success in Nangahar resulted from cooperation of local leaders and promises of development assistance—on which the international community failed to adequately deliver.
• Moreover, better weather led to high yields, and net opium production decreased only 2.5 percent.
  

New Problems:

• The report indicates, for the first time, the level of cannabis (marijuana) production: 30,000 hectares or one-third of the world's supply—placing it second only to Morocco.
• The UN, for the first time, published findings on the number of opium users in Afghanistan: a staggering 1 million people (3.8 percent of the population).
• The drug trade is now dispersed among ethnic groups; what was once a 90 percent Pashtun trade is now shared by Tajiks (25 percent), Uzbeks, and Hazaras.
• Traffic increased through Iran (from 40 percent to 61 percent) while decreasing through Pakistan and Central Asian countries.
• Even as net cultivation decreased, some regions (such as western Farah and northern Balkh provinces) saw more than a three-fold increase.

Troubled Prognosis:

• The drug economy remains 52 percent of the country's GDP and the country’s top export.
• There is a high likelihood of regression to greater cultivation next year.

Photo courtesy of UNODC.

Afghanistan Watch will be delving deeper into the report in future weeks. The full report and summary are available here:

• Opium survey 2005 (PDF, 6.9 MB)
• Executive Summary (PDF, 1.8 MB)
• Findings (PDF, 3.1 MB)
• Methodology (PDF, 2.2 MB)

U.S. Commits to $5 Billion over 5 Years for Afghanistan
KABUL, Dec 1 (AFP)—The US government signed an agreement here committing itself to grants over five years for development in war-ravaged Afghanistan that could amount to about five billion dollars . . . Afghan Finance Minister Anwar-ul Haq Ahadi, who also signed the document, said the grants were likely to top five billion dollars over five years.

"Approximately for the overall five years the budget is being estimated at 5.5 billion dollars and one billion dollars will be spent next year," Ahadi told reporters. It included nearly 500 million dollars for this year, he said.

The United States was Afghanistan 's "biggest supporter", committing 3.1 billion dollars to the country by the end of last year of which 1.7 billion had been spent, he said.

Foreign Support Seen Behind Attacks That Mimic Those in Iraq
KABUL, Nov 28 (Washington Post) By Griff Witte—An onslaught of grisly and sophisticated attacks since parliamentary elections in September has left Afghan and international officials concerned that Taliban guerrillas are obtaining support from abroad to carry out strikes that increasingly mimic insurgent tactics in Iraq.

The recent attacks—including at least nine suicide bombings—have shown unusual levels of coordination, technological knowledge and blood lust, according to officials. Although military forces and facilities have been the most common targets, religious leaders, judges, police officers and foreign reconstruction workers have also fallen prey to the violence. . .

The attacks have been particularly noteworthy for their use of suicide bombers. Some have struck in waves, with one explosive-laden car following the next in an effort to maximize casualties. That sort of attack has been a hallmark of al Qaeda and a regular occurrence in Iraq. But in Afghanistan, suicide attacks of any kind have been relatively rare, despite a quarter-century of warfare.

Attackers have also shown a growing appetite for strikes in cities, particularly Kabul, setting residents' nerves on edge and leading them to take new security precautions at work, home and social events . . . Afghan officials said the recent attacks demonstrate that the Taliban fighters are continuing to receive considerable outside assistance, such as advanced explosives and computerized timing devices that are being used to build more devastating bombs . . .

Afghan Ex-premier's Rebels Reject Reconciliation
PESHAWAR, Dec 1 (Reuters)—An Afghan rebel group allied with the Taliban has rejected a government offer of reconciliation, saying there could be no peace while foreign forces remained in the country. The group, led by former prime minister Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, said an offer of reconciliation by President Hamid Karzai was an attempt to trick the Afghan people . . .

Uzbekistan to NATO: No More Help on Afghanistan
One week after America’s last planes departed bases in Uzbekistan , NATO has been asked to leave as well. The new logistical demands will certainly be harder to shoulder for the Europeans than they were for the United States—especially as NATO’s role expands.

BRUSSELS, Nov 23 (AP) By Paul Ames—Uzbekistan has told NATO allies they can no longer use its territory or airspace to support peacekeeping missions in neighboring Afghanistan , alliance officials said Wednesday . . .

"There will be no diminishment of our ability to support our operation in Afghanistan," NATO spokesman James Appathurai said . . . The European Union banned 12 Uzbek officials last week from entering the 25-nation bloc for their involvement in quelling the May 13 uprising. Last month, the bloc imposed an arms embargo on Uzbekistan and suspended a cooperation pact.

Germany was likely to be most affected by the decision announced Wednesday because it uses a base at Termez, in southern Uzbekistan, to provide backup for its 2,250 troops in Afghanistan—one of the largest contingents in the NATO force. German helicopters from the Termez base also have been used to fly aid to victims of the Pakistan earthquake.

Officials said one alternative could be switching the support base to Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan. Germany is supposed to take over the NATO headquarters there from Britain next year under plans to expand and reorganize the peacekeeping force.

Rebuilding the Afghan State: The European Union’s Role
Nov 30 (International Crisis Group)—This Crisis Group report argues that despite the fact that Europe has pledged one-third of the money at the 2002 and 2004 donor conferences and contributes over two thirds of the peacekeeping troops, “EU influence is less than it should be” in Afghanistan.

The EU “needs more internal coordination if it is to gain greater leverage and hold the Afghan government to higher standards of governance and democratic development.” Specifically, the EU and the EC should:

• Communicate better through weekly meetings between EC head of delegation and EUSR and by establishing a common Electronic Bulletin Board for EU institutions and delegations in Afghanistan. Europe must “achieve substantially higher visibility for, and domestic and international recognition of, the EU’s role in Afghanistan”—or to put it simply, do better PR.
• Keep funding stable for five years, “focusing on reconstruction and reducing the proportion available for recurring expenses.” The EU should fund at least two more election cycles and commit to long-term funding for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC).
• Re-examine the EU Special Representative’s role.
• Develop common benchmarks “ and monitoring mechanisms, starting with the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund (ARTF) and the National Solidarity Program (NSP).”
• Prioritize political party development and a women’s caucus, and continue to mainstream gender issues while setting aside 5 percent of development funding specifically for women’s projects.
• Insist that the Afghanistan Transitional Justice Plan be built into post-Bonn compacts.
• Hold a high-level workshop after release of the Afghanistan National Development Strategy and annual high-level meetings to evaluate progress on post-Bonn compacts.
• Consider using European Security and Defence Policy civilian missions in the field of security sector reform across European PRTs.

Revisioning the International Compact for Afghanistan
Nov 2 (Foreign Policy in Focus) By Mark Sedra & Peter Middlebrook—Sedra and Middlebrook offer a concise yet fairly comprehensive overview of the challenges facing Afghanistan as it enters the post-Bonn compact, and make suggestions for a new course.

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

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