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Afghan Self-Reliance or a Patient on Life-Support?

Brussels Conference on Afghanistan
22 September 2016 – Toon Dirkx MA, PhD Researcher/Junior Lecturer, Centre for Conflict Studies, Utrecht University
 
Is the international community still aiming for the impossible in Afghanistan? International donors will gather to discuss their political and financial support for the war-torn Central Asian country during the upcoming Afghanistan conference that is organized by the EU in Brussels on 4 and 5 October. According to the EU ‘strong Afghan leadership' will have to be combined with ‘continued international solidarity and support' to move towards the objective of ‘Afghan self-reliance.'  As laudable and noble as these intentions may seem, in practice these aims and objectives are unrealistic, overly ambitious, and largely neglect that the international community, including the EU, is part of the conflict.
 
After fifteen years of external intervention in Afghan affairs, the post-2014 drawdown of foreign troops has brought Afghanistan at cross-roads in which the political, security and economic future is increasingly uncertain, with large consequences for the civilian population. The withdrawals of international soldiers and NATO's Resolute Support mission have generally coincided with escalating violence, a growing insurgency, predatory militia behaviour, increased migration flows, and a deterioration of Kabul's reach in outlying districts. The temporary takeover of Kunduz City by the Taliban last year, ongoing clashes in Helmand and Uruzgan provinces, and increasingly deadly attacks in the Afghan capital illustrate these ominous dynamics. Never since 2001 has the Taliban controlled as much territory as it does today, while at the same time the UN reported that the first half of 2016 showed a record high level of civilian casualties.    
 
These developments can be traced back to a variety of fundamental contradictions in the international community's state building project in Afghanistan since 2001, of which the attempt to build peace while waging war is arguably the most important. Former warlords and militia commanders who fought the Taliban in the 1990s have been repeatedly empowered by the US in pursuit of short-term military gains in its Global War on Terror against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. This has had far-reaching consequences for Afghanistan's state building project. Billions of foreign currencies were poured into the country, and ended up with warlords who were brought into government positions from where they could continue their fiefdoms with impunity. As a result, a façade Afghan state bureaucracy emerged that is almost completely dependent on foreign aid, highly corrupt, and widely perceived to be illegitimate. What can be observed at present is therefore instead of ‘Afghan self-reliance' a patient on life support.
 
The question for the EU and the wider international community will be what to do with their infusion of foreign aid.
 The crux for the EU is that its civilian capabilities in the fields of conflict prevention and peacebuilding in Afghanistan are largely dependent upon the security situation, and therefore on the military strategies of the US and NATO. The continuation of the Resolute Support Mission that was announced during th
e NATO summit in Warsaw on 8 and 9 July has been welcomed by the EU, and fits its overall aim of strengthening its cooperation with the transatlantic alliance. Unfortunately, however, this strategy will most likely result in some sort of half-hearted compromise where NATO's ‘train, advice, and assist' mission will do just enough to not let the Taliban takeover Kabul, but far from sufficient to turn the tide, in which ultimately, Afghan civilians pay the highest price. 
 
In this highly insecure context donors such as the EU will be confronted with a wide range of varying degrees of bad options. Pulling out funds runs the risks of losing influence over what a decade ago was labelled as a ‘breeding ground for international terrorism', and eventually could mean an implosion of the Afghan state. On the other hand, a continuation of support for Afghan state institutions equates supporting a largely corrupt, incapable, and unsustainable system of governance. These dilemmas are compounded by the fact that development assistance is increasingly difficult to monitor due to the deteriorated security situation, and is unfortunately also vulnerable to the same corruption, patronage, and nepotism. The grim direction in which the war in Afghanistan is now heading seems therefore for international donors mostly about making sure that the Afghan state does not collapse completely, with no clear vision on a way out.
 
Perhaps a small positive note of the past two years has been the realization that peace in Afghanistan could potentially be negotiated politically rather than merely forced militarily. The quadrilateral talks between Afghanistan, Pakistan, the US and China has been the most prominent example of this, but has yielded no results so far. The EU has welcomed the talks, but has not been invited to join the conversation, which shows its relatively little weight in the Afghan conflict. The challenge in the upcoming years will be to negotiate conditions between the Quadrilateral Coordination Group to talk to the Taliban, which will be extremely difficult given the diverging individual interests of the four countries. Furthermore, even if agreement would be reached between them, it is questionable whether the Taliban are willing to negotiate at a time when they are winning rather than losing.
 
Sadly, peace is still a long way gone in Afghanistan. Instead of repeating the same old depoliticized technical language of assistance, the EU and other donors should confront the deeply political questions at stake during the upcoming Afghanistan conference in Brussels. That involves critically assessing one's own position in the conflict and facing the mistakes of the past, but it is moreover, the only option if the EU and the wider international community are serious about working on Afghan self-reliance and an Afghan-owned peace process.
 

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