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Afghan Promises Held Ransom by Violence - NGOs - Global policy Forum Afghan Promises Held Ransom by Violence
By Genevieve Butler
AlerNet
December 12, 2003Failure to resolve Afghanistan’s security crisis could doom reconstruction efforts and send a clear message that the international community cannot be trusted to deliver on its promises, NGOs warned. Paul O’Brien, CARE International advocacy coordinator in Kabul, said a small window of opportunity remained for Afghanistan to stem spiralling violence and forge ahead with reconstruction after two decades of war, as shown by progress in a limited number of safe areas. “However, if more attention isn’t given now to security and reconstruction, that window of opportunity will close, and that is a failure to everything that was promised in the wake of September 11,” he told AlertNet. That was a message echoed by Barbara Stapleton, advocacy coordinator for the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR). Both were in Brussels for a briefing hosted by NGOs Voice and Care International. Security in Afghanistan has deteriorated drastically over the past 12 months, with attacks on aid workers increasing from an average of one a month to one a day. An agreement to map out Afghanistan’s future was reached in Bonn in December 2001, shortly after the United States toppled the ruling Taliban for harboring the al Qaeda network held responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. The Loya Jirga, or grand assembly, was set to begin meeting on December 12 in Kabul to agree on a new constitution to guide the country to its first elections next year. The United Nations recently warned that extremist attacks, fighting among warlords and the opium trade could undermine the entire Afghanistan peace process ahead of next year’s elections. “Afghans were promised security and adequate reconstruction to start rebuilding their own lives,” O’Brian said. “The commitments on both those fronts have been inadequate to date and they need to be addressed with urgency, “Afghanistan was supposed to be the template for effective multilateral intervention after September 11, and it had a great start. Unlike Iraq, there was a massive international consensus that we needed to work together to keep the promises to ordinary Afghans. “If they fail in those promises, it not only sends a message to Afghans, but it sends a message to states all over the world that the promises of the international community are not to be trusted.”
DEATH TOLL RISING
A French United Nations worker killed in Ghazni, south of Kabul, in November was the 14th aid worker to have been murdered by resurgent forces in recent months in a campaign to sabotage Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed transitional government. Most international NGOs scaled back operations in southern Afghanistan after the killing of an Ecuadorian Red Cross worker in March. ACBAR, which represents 90 national and international NGOs in Afghanistan, said NGO activities in the south had shrunk to an area surrounding the city of Kandahar. Afghan agencies remaining in the south and southeast of the country are seen as particularly vulnerable. Stapleton said that while she had seen little evidence that NGOs were pulling out of Afghanistan altogether, agencies were re-deploying in safer provinces and thus operating in a shrinking area. Of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces, 16 are high-risk areas, three are medium-risk and five have seen serious factional fighting. Only eight provinces are considered relatively secure. “As long as insecurity grows and NGOs are specifically targeted, then it becomes increasingly likely that we will not be able to reach growing numbers of Afghans,” O’Brien said. “When that happens they will lose the optimism that gives them resilience, and they will become more sympathetic to hostile extremist elements that want to destabilise the government. “It is much easier for militant extremists to prey on resentful communities who feel they have been forgotten, than when people see visible evidence of the government’s and the international community’s support to them.”
’NOT A BASKET CASE’
A survey of 1,479 Afghans conducted by a consortium of 12 international and national NGOs found that people living in secure regions were optimistic about the future. The report, “Speaking Out: Afghan Opinions on Rights and Responsibilities,” concluded that Afghans in safe areas had a sense of ownership over the political process, believed that economic resources were reaching them and that security would improve. “Afghanistan is not a basket case,” O’Brien said. “All is not lost, the resources going into Afghanistan are not simply disappearing down the tube to no avail. In areas where we have been able to do reconstruction work the government and the assistance community are seeing a real and meaningful difference. “The big problem is that the areas where they are having this kind of experience are diminishing in size and number, as more and more of the country becomes off limits to government and aid workers in terms of being able to bring reconstruction and resources.” O’Brien called on the international community to do more to increase the number of safe areas in Afghanistan. “There is no functioning international security structure in most of the country,” he said. Under NATO command, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) of 4,700 troops is largely confined to Kabul. In October, the U.N. Security Council authorised the expansion of ISAF beyond Kabul. A separate U.S.-led force, Operation Enduring Freedom, has 11,600 combat troops across Afghanistan seeking out suspected extremists. Last year, the United States set up Provisional Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) to provide security to humanitarian aid workers and carry out minor development projects.
INDEPENDENCE ERODED
But NGOs are concerned the PRTs have blurred the lines between military and civilian reconstruction efforts. “When those two are interwoven, the danger is that communities begin to believe that NGOs are here as part of a larger military enterprise to win the war on terror,” O’Brien said. “Ordinary Afghans are quite sophisticated and their loyalty cannot be bought through ill-conceived reconstruction projects that don’t have sufficient geographic reach or sustainable depth to garner long term benefits,” he said. CARE and ACBAR want to see the PRTs re-formulated as Provincial Security Support teams, focused on providing security. “The actual force is a party at war in the country and this makes the situation highly complex and obviously has an impact on our security,” ACBAR’s Stapleton said. “National NGO partners to international NGO’s have pointed out that in a highly unpredictable political future the presence of PRTs could endanger their security. Everybody is being watched and they don’t have passports to leave the country if the Bonn process collapses.” Stapleton said the merging of civil and military affairs as well as the dominance of private contractors in development was eroding the independence and impartiality of NGOs. She said people in the south and southeast of Afghanistan perceived that NGOs had taken sides in the political process and were working in partnership with the government. “It is the most highly politicised arena and no doubt a new benchmark in the politicisation of aid has been set in Afghanistan, and we will have to await the outcome,” Stapleton said. “The politicisation of aid is connected to the fact that the Bonn process is a political project that is being funded by donors and aid is a key tool.”
FRAGILE TRANSITION
Stapleton said that while it was recognised that Afghans must be responsible for security in the long-term, ACBAR was concerned that the short-term transitional period had become increasingly fragile. She said time was needed to develop the necessary national authorities including a judicial system, a representative army and a police force operating under a legitimate government. Stapleton noted a significant attrition rate to the new Afghan National Army, and it was difficult to boost police numbers due to high risks and low pay ($30 a month, compared with $150 for laboring work). “The development of security for Afghans by Afghans is going to require years to come into existence,” she said. During the critical interim period the international community needed to fulfill its promises to bring peace and security and reconstruction Afghanistan. “In the south and the southeast things are literally hanging by a thread now with clear signs of increasing political disengagement on the part of ordinary people from the Bonn process,” she said. “There are signs that the Afghan people no longer have confidence and hope in either the Bonn process or in the interim Afghan authorities. “What needs to happen right now is a joined up approach in which effective steps are taken to grip the situation in terms of halting the continuing slide into insecurity, at the same time as a concerted push forward in institution building.”
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