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Thoughts on peace, from a messy dorm room
By Ernie Regehr
The room was a typical dorm. It had all the scattered clothes, books, footballs, electronic music players, and messiness you would expect to find in a room where 24 young men live. They had come from many parts of Afghanistan, from a range of ethnic communities, to study English and prepare for university. And while they were unfailingly polite to me, a foreign visitor, when it came time to talk about life in contemporary Afghanistan they were anything but shy.
They spoke movingly of the growing poverty in their home communities. One said bluntly, "Poverty is the main cause of the insurgency." Another said, "It was not like this under the Taliban." When our conversation turned to issues like corruption and opium poppies the tone turned to outrage: "Why does the international community come here to support criminals?" The rhetorical question was, "If 40 of the world's rich and powerful countries have come to tiny Afghanistan to make a difference, why can't we see any change?" For many of them, the lessons of experience provided a bitter and cynical answer: If the rich and powerful cannot change Afghanistan, they obviously don't want to.
Key concerns
The conversation that evening foreshadowed many of the issues that would come up in my 10 days of discussions with Afghan academics, students, civil society organizations, former Mujahidin, community elders, politicians, government officials, international NGOs, UN officials, and diplomats. Four impressions stand out from these memorable days:
- Local concerns about international forces have more to do with their conduct than their presence. The students angrily described what they said was the callous disrespect of international forces for their religion and culture. The attitudes of these outspoken students were reflected in my conversations with many others, from village elders to senior government officials to NGO representatives.
Some of these concerns have probably taken on mythic proportions. I heard several variations of a story of American soldiers giving children a football with a Quran verse printed on it, so that each time the kids would kick the football they would be kicking and insulting their own religion. Stories like this, apocryphal or not, travel fast. This story illustrates a real perception in Afghanistan—that the opportunity for international forces to be a constructive presence is being squandered by either deliberate or indifferent acts of disrespect.
But it's important to note: I didn't hear that international forces should leave but that they should mend their ways and show the appropriate respect to people and communities in Afghanistan.
- Intense intercommunal conflict reflects deep institutional challenges in Afghan society. Afghanistan is profoundly complex, multiethnic, and multilingual. Pashtuns are the historically dominant group of tribes. This reality has many non-Pashtuns worried that calls for "negotiations with the Taliban" are simply code for efforts to restore Pashtun ascendancy. In turn, Pashtuns often express a belief that they are subject to discrimination under the new regime. Afghan academics acknowledge that current conflicts reflect the absence of any credible national institutions that enjoy the confidence of all groups. There is no clear sense that power is shared. They state that the development of inclusive institutions is critical for conflict resolution in Afghanistan.
- International forces cannot deliver the security needed to facilitate development at the local level. NGOs and many individual Afghans, spoke of this reality: International forces have neither the numbers nor the local acceptance and trust to act as community police forces. Indeed, the presence of ISAF troops in a community, many said, can lead to declines in community security—because international forces attract insurgent attacks.
NGOs told me that conditions are more conducive to community development when communities make their own security arrangements with relevant local authorities. Local people can negotiate basic levels of accommodation conducive to the kind of stable village life that is critical for development. One UNDP representative insisted that small community projects in Kandahar work best when they are outside the orbit of international forces. Particularly disheartening, she said, were military operations to clear out the Taliban that then were not followed with an effective long-term presence of Afghan security forces.
- International forces do prevent a more widespread civil war. I was told that I was meeting a Taliban cleric. While he was incensed by the conduct of American forces, he still strongly rejected Mullah Omar's demand that all foreign forces leave Afghanistan. Withdrawal, he said, would send Afghanistan into a new level of war that would not be easy to end. He said the old Taliban-Northern Alliance conflict would immediately escalate into generalized fighting, and he feared that the Taliban and other anti-government forces would not prevail in such a civil war.
With the continuation of many conflicts and weak governance, the danger of escalation into widespread armed conflict remains. And many argued that, the best short-term hedge against a wider civil war is the presence of international security forces.
Almost everyone, including some Taliban sympathizers, wanted the international forces to stay. Some, however, said the American forces should go and be replaced by troops from Muslim countries. So it's plausible to argue that the presence of foreign forces creates the space to generate political reconciliation and to build trustworthy national institutions that are essential to Afghan security. Therefore, it's not surprising that many expressed frustration at the lack of significant progress on the political and governance fronts.
Space for reconciliation
This brief set of conversations with Afghans point to some implications:
International forces cannot reliably maintain security at the village level to support the reconstruction and development desperately needed.
Those same forces are nevertheless instrumental in preventing all-out civil war.
While public confidence in the international military presence is severely strained, the UN and ISAF still do create space for constructive political accommodation, development toward good governance, and social reconciliation.
The testimony of many made it clear that the longstanding reconciliation and political deficits in Afghanistan were not solved by the defeat of the Taliban and the development of a new government. "At the time of the Bonn peace meetings in 2001-2002," said one Afghan academic, "there was no reconciliation—there was revenge." Reconciliation is urgent.
Today there are several basic types of reconciliation efforts currently underway. They include national government programs that focus on engaging moderate Taliban to persuade them to renounce violence and join the government. The international community manages programs that focus on the disbandment of illegal armed groups. The bi-national peace jirga between Afghanistan and Pakistan is seeking ways for the two governments to cooperate in bringing some law and order into the Pashtun belt that spans their common border. Beyond that, various informal or freelance efforts also promote reconciliation in local situations. Clearly, these efforts are very far from being adequate, but there are real opportunities to do more. Afghan observers point with increasing urgency to the need to take advantage of the political space that is still available to vigorously pursue new levels of political reconciliation.
In fact, people I met from across the spectrum in Afghanistan and the international community there insist that a new emphasis on reconciliation and negotiation is required. At the moment the international community supports political/reconciliation efforts only if they are led by the Government of Afghanistan. The UN insists that reconciliation efforts be initiated and owned by the national government. The Government of Canada similarly insists "that reconciliation only involve those individuals and organizations that . . . accept the legitimacy of the Afghan Government and the Afghan constitution."
Unfortunately, substantial elements of Afghan society believe that both the present government and the constitution are the product of processes that were not fully inclusive and are not, therefore, deserving of respect. There is a need to engage all peoples in Afghanistan in developing a more inclusive political order.
Establishing trust between communities and building confidence in public institutions is linked to a wide range of governance, security sector reform, anti-corruption, representational, and reconciliation imperatives. Current Afghan institutions, while effective to varying degrees, do not enjoy the levels of trust and confidence needed for regions and communities to participate in political and reconciliation processes.
A broad range of Afghan voices expresses an urgent need for dialogue, trust building, and other efforts toward political accommodation. Civil society organizations and educational institutions, they say, have important roles to play in promoting people-to-people reconciliation and programs that build a culture of peace. The needs are of such a scale that they cannot be met without direct public support. Thus, the international community should promote and fund reconciliation efforts and especially encourage the government of Afghanistan and opposition groups to embrace such opportunities.
The passion of the students in that messy dorm room points to something: leaders and the international community need to reach beyond the current deadlocks and find new ways to improve the lives of these boy's families and communities. They have expectations that are basically in line with the rights and hopes of young people anywhere. They want a government that is honest and inclusive. They want the international community and international forces in their homeland to respect their religion and culture. They want their families to have access to food and the basic necessities of life. They want a decent life, much like young men living in less-than-neat dorms in any other part of the world.
© 2008 Committee for Contact with the Government. All rights reserved.
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