Tobias Ellwood MP: Is Afghanistan on course to implode?

Tobias Ellwood, MP for Bournemouth East and a formerly of the Royal Green Jackets, offers a critical assessment of progress in Afghanistan.

Six years after the US-led invasion, Afghanistan has reached a tipping point. Optimism is being replaced with frustration and dissatisfaction with the lack of progress on key fronts, the Afghan Government is seen as inept and corrupt, NATO forces are unable to reduce the Taliban threat and poor co-ordination between international development organisations is hampering the progress of long term reconstruction and development.

Although there are many individual success stories, life for the average Afghan seems no more prosperous, no more optimistic in outlook and no less dangerous than five years ago. Unless the West urgently reviews and modifies its entire strategy there is every chance that the fragile truce which holds the five ethnic groups together will break down and the country will once again spiral into civil war.

The genesis of Afghanistan’s proposed new order can be traced back to the Bonn Agreement. Six years after its signing it is clear that the centralised model of Government that was created represses any tribal, ethnic, or cultural differences, rather than celebrating them. The reluctance to relinquish power from Kabul to the regions and the sheer scale of corruption in Government at all levels is fuelling growing resentment by former warlords who bought into the original peace plan. The pace of change is too slow for the local Afghan who is increasingly distanced from the Kabul-based class of (mostly Pashtun) political elite. Unemployment is rife, refugee camps and ghettos are starting to appear around the major cities and warlords, who united with Karsai in 2001, are getting impatient. There are signs that a number are starting to raise funds, collect arms and train militias in preparation for the worst.   

Attempting to improve security in Afghanistan has exposed fundamental weaknesses in NATO’s first venture into operations outside Europe. ISAF forces have divided into those whose governments are willing to fight and those that are not. For example, 3,100 German forces are not allowed to patrol at night and 1200 Turkish forces are not even allowed leave their barracks. This has placed an unfair burden on countries such as the US, Britain, the Netherlands and Canada who have consequently borne the brunt of the casualties. After suffering heavy casualties the Netherlands and Canada are now reviewing their entire military commitment to Afghanistan.

Establishing Afghan security forces has been painfully slow. The Afghan Army has yet to reach half its target size of 70,000. Units are now starting to take on more responsibilities, though 40% of a typical battalion is AWOL at any one time. The same cannot be said of the police. Poor salaries and loyalties to former warlords mean that unofficial checkpoints are increasingly commonplace, allowing patrols to supplement their incomes for rights of passage. Police corruption at all levels is rife which prevents even a basic level of law and order from being maintained. Kidnapping of rich Afghans in exchange for large sums of money is not uncommon. Even if improvements were made the legal infrastructure to support the police is in its infancy and in many rural areas the old girga system of reprisals against wrong-doers remains in place.

Pivotal to Afghanistan’s future is agriculture. Prior to the Russian invasion in 1979, it was one of the greenest countries in the region and a world leader in exporting a range of produce. Thanks to the Soviet destruction of the irrigation system, 92% of Afghanistan’s natural water now flows out of the country un-harnessed.

Improving irrigation must be prioritised if Afghanistan’s status as a leading agricultural producer is to be revived. Every province can point to half a dozen small scale dam constructions ($5m-$50m) which would open up potential farm land for produce other than poppies (which are mainly grown because the crop needs little water and there is a market, albeit illegal, to sell to). Linked to irrigation improvements must also be advances in a market infrastructure to ensure there is demand for goods. Until reliable transport links via road and railway connect Afghanistan to the Trans-Siberian network as well as to ports in the Indian Ocean the country will never be able to transport the scale of goods required to sustain a viable economy.

The principal arterial land route into the country is in the east. Every second vehicle travelling on the Islamabad road to Kabul is an 18-wheeled truck crawling its way through the Khyber Pass. The British built a railway in Pakistan (then India) towards the border. This now needs to be extended to the capital, Kabul, if trade links to international markets are to be fully explored.

Long term projects such as these could take as much as a decade to complete but six years from the end of the conflict, they are not even on the drawing board. Misdirection of international funds, lack of co-ordination of development and re-construction, the absence of a single leader to unite the works and the separate agendas of the ISAF, UN, EU, UsAid and Dfid (not to mention the myriad of NGOs) mean that few initiatives last longer than six months. This allows the project leader, whose tour of duty is also six months, to leave declaring his particular project a success. A $800,000 ‘park for women’ built in Lash Ka Ga is just one such example. Hardly a priority in the current climate, but ideal for the British support unit to hail as a ‘successful project’.

Time is running out. News that Paddy Ashdown, who successfully co-ordinated a similar challenge in Bosnia, has been asked to take up the role of senior representative for the UN, NATO and EU, comes late in the day but should be welcomed. His refusal to accept this critical post in July this year was due to a lack of support from the entire international community who must now bury their differences (and separate agendas) and unite around a new mission. This mission should include a long term economic plan for the country and a revision of the centralist model of government so as to recognise the ethnic and cultural differences that have prevented the country from truly uniting for centuries - and which could easily do so again. Achieving this mission may include talking to the Taliban.

Comments

[Malcolm Dunn]

If we carry on as we are will lose. It's time to withdraw our troops from Iraq where they are achieving nothing and use them in Afghanistan.We also need to encourage other countries as Tobias Ellwood notes to bear some responsibility for Afghanistan.If they continue to refuse we may have to admit defeat.

[Tony Makara]

A very interesting insight into a situation that very few of us know much about, beyond the basics. I feel that in fratricidal situations like Afghanistan and Iraq, the best long-term solution is to break the country up along ethnic lines. This would mean a painful re-allocation of peoples but would be of benefit in the long run. It seems that only a force like the Taliban can command the respect, generated by fear, to get peoples to live together. The British role in Afghanistan seems to have been lost to our domestic media, is it counter-terror, is it nation-building, is it merely as a stop-gap? Our armed forces are certainly paying a high price for a foreign policy that appears to be lost on definition and going nowhere.

[Man in a Shed]

Why are we kept in the dark so much about what is going on ?

[Tony Makara]

Man in a Shed, we are almost certainly receiving selected news from Afghanistan. The Labour government clearly learnt from the bad press it got over Ken Bigley that it had to do more to manage news on its war fronts and thats why in comparison to the killing of Ken Bigley, the murder of Margaret Hassain received scant coverage. We are clearly not receiving the full picture from Afghanistan or Iraq either. We won't get it from the Labour government.

[Jonathan]

The West should buy the poppy crop.
Make them love us not hate us.

[Ian Parker]

I must say, I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I think it is legitimate to ask; why is Afghanistan our problem (the more so since it’s clear we are wholly ill-equipped to solve it)? Then we have the position of the poppy trade. Here, we learn that, apparently under British auspices, production has reached a record high.

If severe damage to the drugs trade is an objective, that can be achieved very easily. It seems to me that the British stance of bribing local Afghanis is curiously, well, British and not a solution. I think I would prefer to go back to the first point. If there’s a war on drugs, let’s fight it. At least that is one war which can be won.

The international community could find a solution to Afghanistan. Now, that may not be to the benefit of most Afghanis but for the greater good of the international community. I suppose that prospect isn’t very palatable, however.

[Susan Wade Weeks]

Is there a reason the international community cannot buy the poppy crop for morphine production, so important in palliative cancer care?

[Chad Noble]

" I think it is legitimate to ask; why is Afghanistan our problem"

I wonder how a training ground for international terrorists could ever *not* be our problem.

[Ian Parker]

Chad, I understand your sentiment but, why stop there (with Afghanistan)?

Surely, instead, we have to show some realism. Britain is wholly unable to change events in Afghanistan on a permanent basis. So, what’s the point in risking the lives of our service personnel?

The supposed rationale of turning Afghanistan into a civilised country is absurd. Instead, let’s identify the real issues. If that entails a ‘war on drug production’, then deal with it – actually quite easy to accomplish. As it is, our armed forces are being humiliated, reduced to little more than trying to buy off the Taliban for a temporary truce in order to pretend that our intervention is working.

[John]

Ian wrote:

If that entails a ‘war on drug production’, then deal with it – actually quite easy to accomplish.

Do tell Ian - how should we go about accomplishing it?

[Ian Parker]

Well, John, how about wiping out the poppy fields and war lords profiting from them. If we're incapable of doing that then I would ask again, what are our servicemen doing in Afghanistan? (Incidentally, I'm not claiming that the drug supply issue has anything to do with our presence there.)

Well, John, how about wiping out the poppy fields and war lords profiting from them
If people want to use opiates then who cares, it costs a fortune trying to protect people from themselves - destroying poppy fields and drug consignments backfires because by raising prices on the market druggees just are more likely to mug little old ladies and break into people's property.

Why not legalise and tax in the same way as alcohol and tobacco is, and then Afghanistan can regenerate itself selling the products to licensed dealers and the focus can switch to tackling smuggling. The police then can refocus more resources onto anti-terrorism and anti-property crimes and dealing with anti-social behaviour, in addition HMRC will raise a lot more revenue improving the scope for Income Tax cuts and more money on Defence spending and National Security generally.

The junkies will probably go to the Devil anyway, if they can't get their fix they'll sniff glue, or aerosols, or exhaust pipes or whatever.

So far as the security in Afghanistan goes, it might be better to pay Pakistan to carry out anti-Al Qaeda and anti-taliban activities in Afghanistan. Ideally though Afghanistan should be partitioned with the south and tribal areas near the North West Frontier going into Pakistan who have far better resources for dealing with Al Qaeda than the rest of Afghanistan. Most of the trouble is in the South and in the tribal areas.

Iraq has a bright future ahead of it, it has some of the largest oil reserves in the world. Ideally a seperate Kurdish state should be created and the rest of Iraq and Syria merge, this is unlikely for political rather than cultural reasons though. Many former insurgents have joined with coalition (including Iraqi Security Forces) to fight Al Qaeda who have no more support in Iraq than the old Ba'athist regime did and who hold overwhelmingly negative attitudes, whatever they think of the 2003 war most Iraqi's are determined that Al Qaeda should not run the country.

[John]

Ian,

how do you propose going about wiping out the poppy fields? Serious question - what practical method would you use which would not contravene prohibitions on the use of chemical defoliants? Let me advise you that burning the poppy fields is a non starter - the crops are incredibly resistant to fire and besides, troops carrying out this task might find themselves somewhat impaired.

Now, assuming we could find a practical method - what do we popose to do about the ordinary farmer, whose only cash crop we have just destroyed? Its all very well to pontificate that they should have chosen another crop, but often their choice is poppy or a bullet from the local war-lord.

As for the war-lords - just who do you think comprise much of the government and security infrastructure of Afghanistan? Is your plan to fight a war of destruction against all of them, whilst crossing your fingers and hoping they are not pushed into the arms of a Taliban whose ranks will be quickly inflated by the now unemployed farmers?

If we're incapable of doing that then I would ask again, what are our servicemen doing in Afghanistan

I submit to you that we are indeed incapable of doing that, given the level of resources we are prepared to commit to Afghanistan. But I would also submit the 'war against drugs' is as unwinnable as the 'war against terror'.

As I understand matters, we are in Afghanistan to assist the democratically elected government of that country to impose security and stability, in order to deny safe haven to groups intent on establishing training camps and bases from which they can conduct operations against targets in our country.

Whether this is a sensible and achievable strategy is another question entirely. But attempts to eliminate the poppy crop without first establishing the rule of law, rebuilding irrigation and infrastructure and offering alternate cash crops is certainly a fast way to undermine our own efforts.

[Ian Parker]

John, my comments are along the lines of what is the real objective. I actually don’t believe that the aim is to disrupt the supply of drugs, far from it. I also don’t feel there’s any credibility to the notion that, somehow, we can go into countries like Afghanistan, show them that we’re nice people, invest in a massive infrastructure after which everybody miraculously loves us as they realise the error of their ways and we all live in peace thereafter. That is the cloud cuckoo land that some people seem to be living in. The notion that we are waging a winnable fight against terrorism in places like Afghanistan is also absurd.

As a stand alone, Afghanistan is an irrelevance. It becomes relevant, as a theatre for operations, as politicians pretend that it is somehow strategically important as the global source of terrorism and various countries remain prepared to fund and arm the criminal gangs who hold sway. Of course, the West is far from blameless in that regard. As it stands, it does little for the self-esteem of our forces to be placed in a situation in which they effectively have to bribe local criminals to secure a short-term truce in order to save face. This, from what I read, seems to be the real strategy, rather like our operations in Iraq. In essence, we achieve nothing of lasting value but draw a veil over the reality of the situation.

Back to the poppies. Let’s assume that there really were a war against drug supply and a desire to eliminate the poppy fields (I say again, I don’t believe that is the case). Under those circumstances, however, I don’t believe that any country prepared to use depleted uranium or phosphorus on the battlefield would back away from using whichever chemical agents were necessary to achieve that objective.

Please let us stop from pretending that we can make friends out of our enemies by showing them the ‘western values’ which they so despise. If they really are enemies, then treat them as such. Even better, let’s refrain from this posturing all together, Britain has neither the moral standing nor the military capability to dictate to any part of the world, even one as backward as Afghanistan.

[Susan Wade Weeks]

It is crazy to even think of destroying the poppy crop. At one stroke it would reduce the farmers to poverty, making them desperate and fuel the supply of recruits to the insurgents. (understandably) We grow poppies in this country for the pharmaceutical industry. Let us buy all the poppy crop from Afghanistan, to use it for legitimate medecines which are in short supply.(Growing numbers of people with terminal cancer need vast quantities of morphine.) That way the supply of illegal drugs dries up and the Afghan farmers have a reliable market. And to anyone who suggests we can't afford to, I would answer - we can't afford not to.