What’s next for Afghanistan?

BY DAVID PUGLIESE

Chaos and civil war. The spectre of both hang over Afghanistan as international troops leave and Afghans take full control of their country and their future for the first time in more than a decade.

In a few weeks, the last of Canada’s soldiers will come home. The rest of the foreign soldiers are expected out by the end of the year.

The pullout is behind the sense of foreboding among some Afghans and those in the international community about the country’s prospects, though skepticism about Afghanistan’s ability to make it on its own began to gnaw long ago.

A 2012 NATO report noted the Taliban were increasingly confident they could seize power once foreign troops left. The year before, Denmark’s Defence Intelligence Service warned the country could slip into anarchy, with the Taliban firmly in control of some provinces in the south. Last year, U.S. intelligence agencies reported that the gains made by coalition forces will significantly erode in the coming years — and that’s even if a smaller force of international troops stays in the country and billions of dollars continue to be pumped into the impoverished nation.

“I think people are genuinely worried,” says Ziggy Garewal, Afghan director of the French charity group, ACTED. “Because of course we got used to a status quo the last 10 years. International troops have managed overall to prevent any real skirmish for power.” There are concerns the country’s former warlords will carve up Afghanistan into fiefdoms, as they did before the Taliban took over. Some strongmen are already talking about recruiting and rearming and large caches of weapons are said to be hidden northern Afghanistan where resistance to the Taliban was strongest. Already some Afghans are aligning with militias or other armed groups, Garewal said.

Afghanistan’s ethnic minorities are worried about a proposed peace deal with their longtime enemy, the Taliban. Amrullah Saleh, Afghanistan’s former top spymaster, has warned that any such deal could lead to the eventual partition of Afghanistan along ethnic lines. What is viewed as the key to holding this potential powder keg together is a continued flow of billions of dollars from the international community to pay for Afghan security forces and the Afghan government. Even then, the likelihood is that Afghanistan will continue for years in a perpetual state of conflict between warring factions. “I think there will be a lot of uncertainly, there will certainly be a lot of skirmishes but I don’t think Afghanistan will explode into an all out civil war,” said Garewal. “I’m not saying it won’t happen. But it will be slow.” Nurjehan Mawani, the diplomatic representative of the Aga Khan Development Network in Afghanistan, is cautiously optimistic a civil war won’t erupt.

“I don’t think we’re looking at this type of scenario,” said Mawani, a former senior Canadian federal bureaucrat. “People see how much they have to lose.” She said while there is much concern about what will happen after the pullout, if stability continues then there are companies and individuals who want to invest in Afghanistan. “There’s a lot of wait and see,” Mawani said.

As the withdrawal deadline approaches, prosperous Afghans are sending their money to banks in other countries, says James Dobbins, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan. He told Congress in December there is a growing exodus; those Afghans who can leave the country are doing so.

For those who can’t afford to go, here’s a look at what the future could hold.

What are the chances of outside help?

There are about 36,500 U.S. troops in Afghanistan as well as another 19,000 soldiers from various countries. Canada has fewer than 100 soldiers left and they are to leave Kabul in mid-March. Most foreign military personnel are to be out by the end of the year. The international community wants to carry out a follow-on mission, called Resolute Support, which would provide training and assistance to the Afghan military. The number of soldiers for Resolute Support has not been announced, but U.S. commanders are said to want an international force of between 8,000 and 12,000 soldiers, two-thirds American. The U.S. contingent would also include about 2,000 special forces soldiers to hunt down insurgent leaders and conduct other counter-terrorism missions.

The British military, which wants to contribute to Resolute Support, is looking at keeping up to 200 of its soldiers in the volatile Helmand province in the south. Germany is talking about committing about 800 soldiers, likely for service in the north. But the continued presence of international troops hinges on what is called the Bilateral Security Agreement, which Afghan President Hamid Karzai has so far refused to sign, even though a national assembly of Afghan elders asked him to ink the agreement last year. He refuses to do so until the U.S. agrees to end what he says are attacks on civilians and their homes. (He is referring to ongoing U.S. special forces raids to kill or capture insurgent leaders, a number of which have resulted in civilian deaths.)

If the agreement is not signed, the U.S. and NATO might consider the “zero option.” Under it, no international troops would remain in Afghanistan. If that takes place there are concerns the Afghan military will not be able to continue effectively on its own and the insurgency will make further gains in the country.

Can democracy take hold?

Helping Afghanistan become a free and democratic country was one of the reasons Canadian troops were sent to the nation. Since the appointment of Karzai as interim president in 2002, Afghanistan has had two elections, in 2004 and 2009. Karzai won both, but the results were controversial and the polls were plagued with allegations of fraud and other irregularities. In particular, there was low voter turnout and reports of ballot stuffing in the last election. Another election will be held in April, although Karzai can’t run because he has already served two terms. Many Afghans question whether the country has a true democratic system, given that a large number of members of Parliament and cabinet ministers are former warlords or war criminals. MP Ramazan Bashardost points out that the warlords have the money to win support and the weapons to coerce it. Instead of bringing war criminals to justice, Karzai brought them into government, he says. “We don’t have true democracy in Afghanistan,” added Ubaid, a spokesman for the small left wing National Solidarity Party, who like many Afghans uses only one name. “Just by having a vote, doesn’t mean you can bring democracy to a country.” Former warlord Abdul Rab Rasoul Sayyaf is among those running for president in the April election. Sayyaf invited Osama bin Laden to move to Afghanistan and the U.S. government commission investigating the 9/11 attacks called him the “mentor” of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the main planner behind the strikes on New York and Washington. Sayyaf says he now embraces democracy and women’s rights. Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wesa says the West is making the same mistake the Russians did in the late 1970s and 1980s. The Russians, he said, tried to impose communism on a tribal society and failed. The West is trying to do the same thing with democracy. He questions whether democracy will work in Afghanistan, but says if it does, it will take another two or three elections to establish it. Will Afghanistan turn into a narco-state? When Prime Minister Stephen Harper travelled to Kandahar in March 2006 he said the reason Canadian troops were in Afghanistan was to make sure the country had a stable future. “An unstable Afghanistan represents easy pickings for drug lords who would use the country as a safe haven for the production of heroin, which wreaks its own destruction on the streets of our country,” Harper warned. The U.S. government has spent about $7 billion to try to eradicate poppy cultivation and opium production, but despite those efforts some security analysts warn that Afghanistan is on its way to becoming a narco-state. In 2013, the country harvested its largest crop of opium poppies, which will produce an estimated $3 billion worth of heroin when processed. John Sopko, the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, last month presented American senators with details about illegal drug production. His figures were similar to those from other U.S. government agencies; an estimated 290,000 hectares of land were used in Afghanistan in 2013 to cultivate poppies, compared to 8,000 hectares in 2001 when international forces arrived to overthrow the Taliban. The country now produces around 90 per cent of the world’s heroin. “The situation in Afghanistan is dire with little prospect for improvement in 2014 or beyond,” Sopko told a Senate committee. “Afghan farmers are growing more opium poppies today than at any time in their modern history.” In addition, the Taliban makes an estimated $100 million to $150 million a year by demanding a cut from poppy farmers and drug dealers. Sopko also noted that some of that money goes to corrupt government officials. During the mission, the Canadian government supported poppy eradication efforts but military commanders were not keen to see their soldiers directly involved. They were concerned that using Canadian soldiers to destroy crops would turn Afghans — many of whom earn their living from poppy cultivation — against Canada’s development efforts in Kandahar and push farmers into the ranks of the Taliban. Canada instead focused on efforts to find alternative crops for the farmers to grow but that met with limited success. Is al-Qaida still a threat? U.S. and coalition soldiers, along with their Afghan allies, pushed al-Qaida operatives out of Afghanistan in late 2001 and early 2002. Terrorist training bases were overrun by coalition troops and some leaders were captured, although most fled to Pakistan. The continued presence of international troops has prevented the terrorist group from re-establishing training camps in Afghanistan. The U.S. has also continued its pressure on the group’s leadership with drone attacks and commando raids like the one that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. In the aftermath of that killing, then U.S. defence secretary Leon Panetta boasted the U.S. was “within reach of strategically defeating” al-Qaida. Two years later, U.S. President Barack Obama noted that the core group that formed al-Qaida was on the verge of being defeated. “Operatives spend more time thinking about their own safety than plotting against us,” he said. In addition, a Pentagon report in November 2013 estimated that there were only a few dozen al-Qaida members left near the Afghan-Pakistan border. But in the U.S. capital today, intelligence specialists talk about the terror network “metastasizing.” It has grown in other parts of the world, with affiliates active on battlefields in the Middle East, such as in Iraq. And while al-Qaida no longer uses Afghanistan as a training base, it and affiliated groups have moved to Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Syria and Mali. During testimony to a Senate committee earlier this month, national intelligence director James Clapper told lawmakers al-Qaida’s ability to attack the U.S. has degraded and its standing in the global Islamic extremist community has suffered. But he added: “It probably hopes for a resurgence following the drawdown of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2014.” Will there be a peace deal with the Taliban? In 2006, Peter MacKay, then the minister of foreign affairs, called Jack Layton “Taliban Jack” after the NDP leader suggested peace negotiations with the Taliban were needed to end the war. MacKay’s personal attack on Layton was successful from the Conservative government’s point of view as the derogatory label stuck with him until his death. But critics have pointed out that it was more of a reflection of MacKay’s lack of understanding of Afghanistan, as negotiations had been going on for years with lower level Taliban commanders and individual groups had laid down their arms. In addition, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. government have supported negotiations with the group’s leadership for a larger peace settlement. Last summer, U.S. media reported the American government was involved in talks with the Taliban in Doha. Earlier this month, Karzai’s office confirmed Afghan officials have had secret discussions with the group, though the Taliban denied any discussions were underway. Since MacKay’s “Taliban Jack” comment, the Canadian government has indicated it would support reconciliation provided insurgents put down their weapons first. It is unclear whether the Taliban is serious about a peace agreement or are stringing the Karzai government along. The group has said it would not lay down its arms until all foreign soldiers leave Afghanistan. If no peace deal is reached, will the Taliban keep fighting? Yes. NATO military officers in Kabul say that Afghan security forces successfully countered efforts last summer by the Taliban to wrest control of more territory and that the insurgency is tired and desperate. But they have claimed that many times before. In 2004, U.S. Gen. James Jones, NATO’s top military commander at the time, said the insurgents “were running out of energy” and their numbers had dwindled to below 1,000. In 2006, then-chief of the defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier said the Taliban were on their “back foot” and Canadian military efforts in Kandahar were preventing them from expanding elsewhere in the country. In 2007 the United Nations put the core size of the Taliban at around 3,000 but also noted they had access to 7,000 more fighters on an occasional basis. In early 2008 the insurgents expanded operations and started to re-establish themselves in provinces in the northern part of the country. That same year, NATO intelligence estimated there were between 5,000 and 20,000 Taliban fighters. In November 2013, a UN report stated that as many as 12,000 Taliban were killed, captured or wounded in Afghanistan in that year alone. But no matter how many of its ranks have been killed or wounded over the last 12 years, the Taliban continues to fight on, using tactics ranging from suicide bombings to assassinations of government officials. What does Afghanistan’s economic future look like? The injection of billions of foreign dollars has made some Afghans better off. A middle class has developed and new businesses have opened, mainly in the cities. One of the most prosperous is Afghanistan’s mobile phone industry. There are about 20 million mobile phone subscriptions in a nation of 30 million people. The sector has become one of the largest non-governmental employers and a key driver of the economy. Still, with limited sources of revenue, Afghanistan will be in trouble when most international troops leave and international aid is reduced later this year. The war helped create an artificial economy that cannot be sustained over the long term. Last March, James Clapper, America’s director of national intelligence, outlined for a U.S. Senate committee the challenge: “Afghanistan’s economy, which has been expanding at a steady rate, is likely to slow after 2014,” he said. “Kabul has little hope of offsetting the coming drop in Western aid and military spending, which have fuelled growth in the construction and services sectors. Its licit agricultural sector and small businesses have also benefited from development projects and assistance from non-governmental organizations, but the country faces high rates of poverty, unemployment, food insecurity, and poppy cultivation.” What will happen to women’s rights? The overthrow of the Taliban changed the lives of many Afghan women. Today women are members of parliament, bureaucrats, police officers, judges, teachers, doctors, lawyers and journalists. “There has been a significant change (in the) number of women active” in society, said Nurjehan Mawani, the diplomatic representative of the Aga Khan Development Network in Afghanistan. “This is particularly true of women in urban areas.” But Afghanistan remains a conservative, patriarchal Islamic society. Millions of women, following the wishes of their families, still wear the burka. And even with the Taliban no longer in power, women struggle to assert their rights. Strong conservative Islamic politicians are in parliament and religious leaders are generally opposed to a greater role for women, Samina Ahmed, the South Asia project director for the International Crisis Group, has noted. Samira Amiri, an Afghan woman who works for the French charity ACTED, said the lives of women have improved in cities like Kabul but in the rural areas not much has changed. “The families are very poor so they need women (to work), but the men have very tight minds,” and do not allow that, she said. Violence against women is on the rise, with the number of incidents increasing by 25 per cent in 2013 from the previous year, according to Afghanistan’s Human Rights Commission. In July 2012, the Reuters news agency obtained a video of a 22-year-old woman being publicly executed after she was accused of adultery. The incident took place in a village just an hour’s drive from Kabul. The community leaders as well as the woman’s family supported the execution and the video of her being shot in the head hearkened back to similar public executions staged by the Taliban. Insurgents have also specifically targeted female leaders. In July 2013, Lt. Islam Bibi, the top female police officer in Helmand province, was assassinated. Hanifa Safi, the regional head of women’s affairs for the eastern part of the country, was killed in July 2012 when a bomb planted in her car exploded. The commitment of the Afghan government to women’s rights has also been suspect. In February 2012 the government decreed that female journalists reading the news on TV must wear head scarves and avoid heavy makeup. A month later the Karzai government backed a “voluntary” code of conduct for women, recommending they not travel without a male guardian and refrain from mingling with strange men. The code also allows husbands to beat their wives under certain situations. Norway announced in October that it would reduce its aid to Afghanistan, slightly, because of what it said was a failure by the government to deal with corruption and protect women’s rights. Human Rights Watch has urged that international funding be tied to the government’s commitments to human rights and the treatment of women. But there is concern that as the foreign troops leave and less aid money is provided, the international community will have less sway over the Afghan government. As a result, gains made by Afghan women could be rolled back. There is also worry that any peace deal with the Taliban that allows them to have a say in the political process would mark a significant setback for women. Will international aid continue? In 2012 the international community promised Afghanistan as much as $16 billion in development aid in the years following the pullout. Some Afghans, however, have raised concerns about that: mainly will the international community follow through on their promises and how much of the funds will actually reach the people? Afghans have warned that large amounts of aid money have been, and will continue to be, siphoned off by corrupt officials. Others point out that the real beneficiaries of development aid are the international consultants and contractors who provide expertise or services.

“The money came to Afghanistan but the major portion went back to where it was coming from,” Kandahar’s Governor Tooryalai Wesa said about previous aid commitments. The impact of that financial drain was outlined in a March 2008 report from the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief, an alliance of 94 international aid agencies that looked at $15 billion in aid that various nations have delivered to Afghanistan since 2001.

Of that, around 40 per cent — about $6 billion — went back to donor nations in the form of corporate profits and consultant salaries, the report’s authors discovered. “A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, living, security, transport and accommodation costs for expatriates working for consulting firms or contractors,” they noted. A full-time expatriate consultant was paid about $250,000 a year, about 200 times the average salary of an Afghan government worker, the authors estimated.

Others, such as Afghan parliamentarian Ramazan Bashardost, have raised concerns that aid money isn’t getting where it needs to go.

In 2010 the U.S. government sounded the alarm about the billions of dollars smuggled out of the country, the result of money stolen from aid projects or the proceeds of Afghanistan’s illegal drug trade. U.S. Treasury officials reported that well-connected Afghan businessmen and politicians were carrying out the cash in suitcases and heading to offshore banks. The figure taken out of the country in 2011, mainly through the Kabul airport, was estimated to be $4.5 billion. That year the U.S. government provided the Afghans with two cash-counting machines to be used at the airport to monitor money leaving the country. U.S. officials later found the machines covered in dust in a closet. In fact, Afghan VIPs carrying suitcases of cash were not only able to continue bypassing searches by customs officials they were given their own private lounge at the Kabul airport so they weren’t disturbed.

The Afghan government, however, has said it hopes to crack down on corruption in the future.