UN USG and Emergency Relief Coordinator Valerie Amos in Afghan refugee camp May 2012. Photo by UNAMA.
There seems to be a big disconnect between military planners who are working on the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by 2014, and the UK and other NATO countries working on drawdown, who are talking optimistically about training the Afghan army and establishing security -- and then NGOs who are openly expecting the Taliban to take over as soon as the foreigners are gone, and some UN officials, who are saying the same thing, only privately.
I've been talking to some Afghan NGO leaders, Western NGOs, and UN people in recent months and they all are expecting that the Taliban will re-take Afghanistan and the capital of Kabul, although they all hope that somehow something can be done to prevent it.
But in the last week, there have been very public and very urgent reports that have come from UN Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos, who visited Afghanistan. According to a UN statement about her visit to a camp:
While this community does receive some support from government-run medical facilities and international NGOs such as Solidarités and Welthungerhilfe, this does little to address the underlying issue of displacement that forces families into such circumstances. “I was appalled by what I saw today and in particular the unacceptable conditions families are forced to endure in the heart of the capital city - women and children in particular,” said Ms. Amos.
Since 2002, 5.7 million Afghan refugees have returned with mixed reintegration results. A further 5 million documented and undocumented Afghans continue to reside in Iran and Pakistan. Almost 500,000 Afghans are internally displaced as a result of conflict and natural hazards, 185,000 of which were recorded in 2011 alone.
The French humanitarian group Solidarités International released a report that said at least 100 young Afghan children died in the camps. As The New York Times reported, this was a result of a vicious circle where the Afghan government is trying to shut down the camps and not have them become a magnet, and therefore not sending long-term aid, even as there is a shortfall in aid for permanent housing needs. This seems inexplicable. Said the Times:
Revelations about the deaths in the heart of Kabul, despite a 10-year, $60 billion humanitarian effort in Afghanistan, caused an outpouring of public reaction, both in Afghanistan and internationally.
I feel as if we have come full circle. Back in the summer of 2001, before 9/11, before Masoud's assassination, I listened as UN workers who had returned from Afghanistan spoke worriedly about children that had literally turned blue from cold and malnutrition. The Taliban was forbidding humanitarians to use satellite phones to connect with each other. Things couldn't be worse. They in fact got better after the US invasion and the pushback of the Taliban. The mass killing/starvation of 100,000 people that Oxfam estimated was going to happen due to this invasion never occured as they claimed. But if even "only 100 children die in a few months, that shouldn't be happening, not in the center of Kabul, which is supposed to be more secure, and not after 10 years and $60 million dollars! Says the Times:
The study came out on Wednesday, as the U.N.'s humanitarian chief and emergency relief coordinator Valerie Amos visited Kabul's camps, calling the conditions "deeply, deeply distressing" (AP). Amos also warned that the withdrawal of NATO troops over the next couple of years would result in a massive loss of jobs across the country, potentially drawing more unemployed Afghans to the capital city and worsening the severe poverty already felt there.
The ICRC has called off most of its programs and recalled all of its foreign staff to Islamabad following the killing of ICRC employee Khalil Dale, say wire reports.
Foreign Policy also reports in its AfPak news summary, "Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri called on Muslims to avenge the accidental burning of Qurans by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan." So it's not like Al Qaeda has been suppressed or reduced; the bin Ladn raid documents talk about plans for expansion, if anything and the claims of some analysts that Al Qaeda is less than it once was don't add up when you look at the still-daily reports of attacks and IEDs and suicide bombings.
The humanitarians are looking at the "human security" side of the equation, which is a term that means the analysis of the refugee, internally-displaced persons, food, water, etc. situation for civilians, as distinct from military successes.
You wish that human security would be more normally integrated with military security, but they usually are not. Occasionally, the UN Security Council will look at both kinds of issues with regard to a peace-keeping mission in particular, but in a limited way.
Meanwhile, Philip Gordon at the State Department, is sounding very upbeat about the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago:
I think first and foremost I would have to mention Afghanistan. This is where we have our troops and we have invested so much there. Chicago is a place for this alliance to come together and agree on some essential elements of Afghanistan moving forward.
One is recommitting to the timetable we all agreed at the Lisbon NATO Summit which is to continue keeping our combat troops in Afghanistan as necessary through the end of the year 2014 so that when we leave, and we are determined to leave this combat role, we will not be leaving risk and chaos and the humanitarian crisis in our wake, but rather a self-sustaining stable country. That’s in our interest. We all committed to do so in 2014, and we will look in Chicago to recommit to that timetable.
Now along the way we want to agree on a milestone sometime next year at which we will start to shift, and not just start because we’ve already begun this shift, but primarily shift the main focus of our effort from combat to advise and assist. We’ll do that in the course of 2013. There may be some combat role after that if we’re realistic, but the target is so that by the end of 2014 we can have our combat troops out of Afghanistan.
We want to agree together on what role NATO might play in Afghanistan after 2014, because once again, we don’t want to leave the Afghans to their own devices. That has been tried before and is not in our interest.
And we want to commit to a plan for funding Afghan National Security Forces after our combat forces are out. We know that stability and security in Afghanistan will depend on capable Afghan National Security Forces once NATO and ISAF are no longer present. That will require financial contributions. Fortunately for us, those contributions will be much less than we’ve been paying for our own military forces for almost a decade. So actually there will be a peace and transition dividend. But to be honest, all of us have to step up and make sure that adequate financing is in place -- including the Afghans, by the way. We’re asking them to do their part but they can’t do it all. And we, not just as an alliance, not just as ISAF, but the international community as a whole needs to step up and make sure we’re supporting Afghanistan after we leave.
I just read a good book by a foreign correspondent, Kim Barker, on life in Afghanistan, the Taliban Shuffle. It is funny and sad. One of the things she captures well is how nutty this "training" is, as she embeds with US troops going to train the Afghan police or army. The Afghan trainees are like the Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. They literally shoot themselves in the foot, they don't have adequate weapons, they don't know how to hold their guns, they shoot them off wildly, etc.
But I have to wonder about all this. Meanwhile, Barker goes out to the provinces, she also describes how Afghans are practically born with guns in their hands. The Taliban and their recruits sure learn how to fight very well; they are essentially winning this war! They don't seem to require "training" to do what they do -- lay mines, put IEDs along roadsides, snipe at people, commit suicide bombings.
So I have to wonder -- why is it so hard to train these *other* Afghans who are to fight the Taliban? Afghans who also, by the way, seem in increasing numbers to be "trained" well enough to commit these "green on blue" attacks, attacks which we're told the US doesn't even report every time? Is it really about training, or political will? Maybe they don't want to fight the Taliban?
There's another disconnect FP's AfPak mentions:
U.S. chairman of the House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (D-MI) said Friday upon his return from a visit to Afghanistan that he was struck by the difference between how the U.S. military views the war in Afghanistan and how the intelligence committee views it (Reuters). Both Rogers and Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) said on Sunday that they think the Taliban is stronger now that it was before President Barack Obama sent 33,000 "surge" troops to Afghanistan in 2010 (Post).
Don't tell Joshua Foust, who implies that people are exaggerating the strength of the Taliban -- first by saying that people exaggerate either its strength or failures to sound "balanced," then by turning in a twisted paragraph like this:
While AQAP in Yemen is gaining some territory (by essentially usurping the southern secessionist movement, which is itself an interesting political move), in Somalia the local al-Qaeda affiliate (which only became official two months ago) is actually losing territory. In Iraq, the al-Qaeda in Iraq group never held any to begin with. At this point, no one can say for certain whether the Sahel affiliates will be able to consolidate and control their very modest gains in Mali.
Territory? The day after Foust published this piece in The Atlantic (May 1st), Al Shabab committed a terrorist attack killing 7 people, including two MPs, BBC reported May 2. And so it goes.
You read something like Rogers' and Feinstein's report about a resurgent Taliban, and then you read this upbeat State Department report about a rule-of-law program in Afghanistan.
For example, here's a program that seems to show modest accomplishments, among others:
Gender Justice: INL supports the Legal Rights Office of the Ministry of Womens Affairs, and educational programs for Afghan female legal practitioners and women judges. To combat domestic violence, INL supports eight Afghan-run shelters, family guidance centers, public awareness campaigns, and Violence Against Women Units at prosecutors’ offices nationwide. INL’s shelter programs benefit well over 1,000 women and children per year, and are the single largest donor to women’s shelters in Afghanistan.
What will happen after the US troops leave? Will INL stay? How will they protect themselves from assassination, like the ICRC's man? Will they just send a money wire to the Ministry of Women's Affairs -- if it still exists -- and hope for the best?
