Afghanistan

Description

Many have questioned the wisdom of the international intervention in Afghanistan in light of the escalation of violence and instability in the country in the past few years. Particularly uncertain are Canadians, who have been inundated with media coverage of an increasingly dirty war in southern Afghanistan, one in which Canadians are at the frontline and suffering heavy casualties. However, the conflict is only one aspect of Afghanistan’s complicated, and incomplete, political, economic, and security transition.

In Afghanistan: Transition under Threat, leading Afghanistan scholars and practitioners paint a full picture of the situation in Afghanistan and the impact of international and particularly Canadian assistance. They review the achievements of the reconstruction process and outline future challenges, focusing on key issues like the narcotics trade, the Pakistan—Afghanistan bilateral relationship, the Taliban-led insurgency, and continuing endemic poverty. This collection provides new insight into the nature and state of Afghanistan’s post-conflict transition and illustrates the consequences of failure.

Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation

Sujets

• Political science

Informations

• Publié par: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Date de parution: 04 août 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781554586981
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Afghanistan: Transition under Threat
Studies in International Governance is a research and policy analysis series from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Titles in the series provide timely consideration of emerging trends and current challenges in the broad field of international governance. Representing diverse perspectives on important global issues, the series will be of interest to students and academics while serving also as a reference tool for policy-makers and experts engaged in policy discussion. To reach the greatest possible audience and ultimately shape the policy dialogue, each volume will be made available both in print through WLU Press and, twelve months after publication, accessible for free online through the IGLOO Network under the Creative Commons License.
Afghanistan
Transition under Threat
Geoffrey Hayes and Mark Sedra editors
Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through its Book Publishing Industry Development Program for its publishing activities. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Centre for International Governance Innovation. The Centre for International Governance Innovation gratefully acknowledges support for its work program from the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Afghanistan : transition under threat / Geoffrey Hayes and Mark Sedra, editors.
(Studies in international governance series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55458-011-8
1. Afghanistan-History-2001-. 2. Afghanistan-Politics and government-2001-. 3. Afghanistan-Economic conditions-21st century. 4. Afghanistan-History, Military-21st century. 5. Canada-Military policy. I. Hayes, Geoffrey, 1961- II. Sedra, Mark III. Centre for International Governance Innovation. IV. Series.
DS371.4A45 2008 958.104 6 C2007-906851-0
Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation.
2008 The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and Wilfrid Laurier University Press
Cover photograph: Sgt. Frank Hudec, Canadian Forces Combat Camera. Reproduced with permission from Public Works and Government Services Canada. Cover design by Brian Grebow/BG Communications. Text design by Pam Woodland.
Every reasonable effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher s attention will be corrected in future printings.

This book is printed on Ancient Forest Friendly paper (100% post-consumer recycled).
Printed in Canada
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
CONTENTS
Foreword Christopher Alexander
Acknowledgements
Introduction Mark Sedra and Geoffrey Hayes
Abbreviations
SECTION I The Political Transition
1 Looking Back at the Bonn Process William Maley
2 Afghanistan: The Challenge of State Building Ali A. Jalali
3 Poppy, Politics, and State Building Jonathan Goodhand
SECTION II The Economic Transition
4 Responding to Afghanistan s Development Challenge: An Assessment of Experience and Priorities for the Future William A. Byrd
5 Laying Economic Foundations for a New Afghanistan Seema Patel
SECTION III The Security Transition
6 The Neo-Taliban Insurgency: From Village Islam to International Jihad Antonio Giustozzi
7 Security Sector Reform and State Building in Afghanistan Mark Sedra
8 Insecurity along the Durand Line Husain Haqqani
SECTION IV The Canadian Case
9 Peace Building and Development in the Fragile State of Afghanistan: A Practitioner s Perspective Nipa Banerjee
10 Establishing Security in Afghanistan: Strategic and Operational Perspectives M.D. Capstick
11 Canada in Afghanistan: Assessing the Numbers Geoffrey Hayes
Contributors
Index
FOREWORD
Afghanistan-Failing or Flourishing?
After a number of years of relegation to secondary strategic importance, Afghanistan is today back at the centre of global policy debates. At international conferences in Rome (July 2007), Tokyo (February 2008), Bucharest (April 2008), and Paris (June 2008), global leaders have committed themselves to addressing the difficult challenges that now loom before the Afghan people-a live insurgency, weak services and infrastructure, food insecurity, aid dependency, a consolidating narco-ascendancy, and poverty.
This rededication is welcome inside Afghanistan. In some quarters, it is considered overdue. But it holds the promise that for at least the next several years major donors and troop contributors will seek to resolve security and development challenges from the perspective of Kabul and Kunar, Sar-i-Pul and Farah, rather than view these issues through some of the more unhelpful lenses applied in the past.
The backdrop to this renewed attention is a sharp debate over whether efforts to bring stability and development to Afghanistan are gaining ground or are on the verge of strategic failure. The latter view has particular currency with many outside Afghanistan, who see its conflict as inevitable, atavistic, even perpetual. These observers argue that failure to produce an adequate peace dividend in the first years after the 2001 Bonn Agreement-combined with the taking root of impunity on a grand scale-is now dooming Afghanistan to another round of civil conflict. Their arguments draw richly on the mythology thrown up by the formative British and Soviet experiences in Afghanistan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
This volume gives the case for both sides of this dispute. It is lucid on areas of under-investment. It enumerates areas of relative success. It questions the sequencing and coherence of international support and government decision making. It underlines the pivotal nature of decisions to accommodate, even appease, warlords, as well as the tragic future legacy of the Taliban s strategic withdrawal to safer ground in late 2001. The strategic challenges confronting us are clear. The shape of the transition to date-its hard trend lines at the local level-are outlined but not treated in depth. For many outside Afghanistan, even those in the region, the ground realities in its thirty-four provinces and nearly four hundred official and de facto districts remain opaque-an impenetrable mystery, but the news is assumed to be generally bad.
These are important issues. Whether judgments are made from the eye of the terrorist storm in Kandahar or around a kitchen table in L beck, Germany, the global view of whether the UN, NATO, and scores of donors are succeeding or faltering in Afghanistan will be replete with consequence for Afghans, who have experienced the cold shoulder of neglect several times in their lifetimes. Afghans, of all people, know the cost of evaporating international will. Arguably the worst period of their epic thirty-year conflict came in 1992. A regime had fallen, and opportunity beckoned perhaps even more earnestly than in 2001. But the world was preoccupied with matters elsewhere.
In the streets of Kabul, it is difficult not to be inspired by the determination of ordinary Afghans to seize today s opportunity. They are skeptical, even dismissive, of their government-yet demand its services with fervour. They criticize the international community s performance but not its presence. They ask when, not whether, a regional approach will be taken to the security challenge facing Afghanistan-one studded by terrorist groups whose operatives pounce on Afghan life from camps and indoctrination centres beyond the reach of Afghan national security forces.
It is easy to dismiss the successive bargains between Afghans and the world over the past seven years for their obvious limitations. The Bonn Agreement was not a peace deal. The Afghanistan Compact was not a blueprint for nation-building. The Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS) is not a plan for rebuilding the country.
But each one has delivered results. In the Istalif valley near Kabul, houses and orchards that were black with Taliban vengeance in 2001 are now green with new irrigation canals, bright with bulbs lit by micro-hydro. In the northwest, carpet weavers long exiled to Iran and Pakistan are returning to the trade in their tens of thousands. In Zabul province, farmers check the price of potatoes in Kabul and Kandahar over cell phones-now serving over4.5 million Afghans. In Balkh province, the army and national civil order police are setting standards of discipline and patriotic service. In Garda Serai in Paktia province, the interprovincial highway being rebuilt through the home turf of Jalaluddin Haqqani is the centerpiece, tribal elders say, of more reconstruction than under any previous king. In the rich fields around Lashkar Gah, the high price of grain has pushed even poppy big-wigs to plant wheat in quantity.
Afghanistan is recovering, but under a hail of continuing attacks that are far from being of its own making. It is a dynamic society-eager for change, preferably reform, and for the skills that bring employment. With sustained effort, institutions can take root that will withstand even stiffer challenges than today s pelting terrorist harassment and odd suicidal enormity. With visionary initiatives by an international community tha