INTRODUCTION: THE AFGHANISTAN COMPACT
Before the terrorist attacks of September
11, 2001, and all that followed, Afghans and the handful of internationals
working on Afghanistan could hardly have imagined being fortunate enough
to confront today's problems. The Bonn Agreement of December 2001 providing
for the "reestablishment of permanent government institutions"
in Afghanistan was fully completed with the adoption of a constitution
in January 2004, the election of President Hamid Karzai in October 2004,
and the formation of the National Assembly in December 2005.
From January 31 to February 1, 2006, President Karzai, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair presided over a conference in London of about sixty states and international organizations that issued the Afghanistan Compact, setting forth both the international community's commitment to Afghanistan and Afghanistan's commitment to state-building and reform over the next five years. The compact supports the Afghan National Development Strategy (ANDS), an interim version of which (I-ANDS) the Afghan government presented at the conference.(1) The compact provides a strategy for building an effective, accountable state in Afghanistan, with targets for improvements in security, governance, and development, including measures for reducing the narcotics economy and promoting regional cooperation.(2) The compact also prescribes ways for the Afghan government and donors to make aid more effective and establishes a mechanism to monitor adherence to the timelines and benchmarks. The compact places responsibility for meeting these goals on the government of Afghanistan, which can easily be held accountable, and the "international community," which cannot be. The United States, United Kingdom, and other donors strongly opposed language in the compact that would have held those present at the London conference (listed in a compact annex), rather than an abstract entity, responsible for implementation.
During his visit to Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan from March 1 to March 5, 2006, President George W. Bush praised Afghan successes, telling President Karzai, "You are inspiring others, and the inspiration will cause others to demand their freedom."He did so the day after the administration's own intelligence chiefs reported that the antigovernment insurgency in Afghanistan is growing and presents a greater threat "than at any point since late 2001."(3) Some Afghan officials say the world thus far has put Afghanistan on life support, rather than investing in a cure. The following conditions make it clear that Afghanistan has the potential to be a disasterous situation if intelligent, measured steps are not taken:
- An ever-more deadly insurgency with sanctuaries in neighboring Pakistan, where leaders of al-Qaeda and the Taliban have found refuge;
- A corrupt and ineffective administration without resources and a potentially dysfunctional parliament;
- Levels of poverty, hunger, ill health, illiteracy, and gender inequality that put Afghanistan near the bottom of every global ranking;
- Levels of aid that have only recently expanded above a fraction of that accorded to other post-conflict countries;
- An economy and administration heavily influenced by drug traffickers;
- Massive arms stocks despite the demobilization of many militias;
- A potential denial of the Islamic legitimacy of the Afghan government by a clergy that feels marginalized;
- Ethnic tensions exacerbated by competition for resources and power;
- Interference by neighboring states, all of which oppose a long-term U.S. presence in the region;
- Well-trained and well-equipped security forces that the government may not be able to pay when aid declines in a few years;
- Constitutional requirements to hold more national elections (at least six per decade) than the government may be able to afford or conduct;
- An exchange rate inflated by aid and drug money that subsidizes cheap imports and hinders economic growth; and
- Future generations of unemployed, frustrated graduates and dropouts from the rapidly expanding school system.
The compact addresses these challenges insofar as is possible in an international declaration. This Council Special Report's principal recommendation is that all stakeholders should fully fund and implement the Afghanistan Compact and the I-ANDS. It also makes some additional recommendations, organized according to the three pillars of the compact and I-ANDS: security; governance, rule of law, and human rights; and economic and social development. As in those documents, counternarcotics and regional cooperation are treated as crosscutting issues.
Recommendations elaborate on the following themes:
Afghanistan has received inadequate resources in terms of both troops and funds; this is not the time to draw down the military presence or to reduce aid.
Afghanistan can be stable and secure only if it is well integrated into its region, both economically and politically. Achieving this goal will require sustained efforts to deescalate and eventually resolve the country's long-standing conflicts with Pakistan ver relations with India, the border, ethnic issues, and transit trade, and to insulate Afghanistan from conflict relating to Iran.
None of the problems of this destitute, devastated country can be addressed effectively without sustained, equitable economic growth. In addition to security, this requires extensive investments in infrastructure, governance, and the justice system.
Economic growth also requires a policy of eliminating narcotics that does not impoverish people. There should be no short-term conditionality of aid on eliminating narcotics. Elimination of narcotics will take well over a decade, and crop eradication is a counterproductive way to start such a program. Foreign donors should support the Afghan government's long-term plan and not impose their own programs.
A stable and secure Afghanistan requires a legitimate and capable state. To ensure that international aid fulfills this objective, the United States and other major aid donors that have not done so already, notably Germany and Japan, should provide multiyear aid commitments and channel increasing amounts of aid through the government budget by mechanisms such as the Afghanistan Reconstruction TrustFund, the Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan, and the Counter-Narcotics Trust Fund for Afghanistan.
Endnotes:
(1) The Afghanistan Compact and the I-ANDS are available at www.ands.gov.af.
(2) For this conceptual framework for peace building, see Barnett R. Rubin, "Constructing Sovereignty for Security," Survival, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter 2005), pp. 93-106.
(3) Walter Pincus, "Growing Threat Seen In Afghan Insurgency: Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Cites Surging Violence in Homeland," Washington Post, March 1, 2006.
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