A stand-off between the president and parliament mocks the challenges Afghanistan faces
FOREIGN backers have a maddening habit of declaring any forthcoming 12 months to be the “crucial year” for Afghanistan. Liam Fox, the British defence minister, was no exception when he used a New Year’s visit to bill 2011 as decisive for international efforts in the country. But like so many before him, Mr Fox may be disappointed. Even as the West’s soldiers make progress, its diplomats bang their heads against the lamentable administration of Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.
After years of losing ground to insurgents, General David Petraeus, the NATO commander in the country, says that the coalition has at last “got the ‘inputs’ right in Afghanistan for the first time”. As he wrote to his troops this week, “hard-won progress” has taken place in the southern provinces of Kandahar and Helmand, swamped with American marines after years of being in the charge of overstretched Canadian and British forces. Analysts say the campaign has disrupted Taliban supply lines in Helmand and cleared most “safe havens” there. Mr Fox, in another staple of foreign dignitaries, visited the bazaar of Lashkar Gah, Helmand’s capital, and declared it safe and “thriving”.
General Petraeus also hails the “enormous losses” inflicted on mid-level commanders of the Taliban and its associates in the Haqqani network. The losses help fuel “reports of unprecedented discord among the members of the Quetta Shura”, the Taliban’s leadership. For 2011, the general flags up a continued push against the Taliban, particularly in the south; the strengthening of governing institutions; and the transfer of security in some provinces to Afghan forces—with the Afghan National Army taking the lot by 2014.
The coalition’s sense that the counter-insurgency campaign might just be doing good is bolstered by NATO’s little-known programme of “atmospherics” reporting, in which ordinary Afghans eavesdrop on their countrymen’s conversations in the bazaars and report back to their handlers. In recent months this monitoring has shown a growing confidence that the Taliban is much diminished. Southern Afghans tell The Economistsimilar stories of Taliban commanders having fled, leaving ineffective or unwilling locals to carry on the fight.
Yet such gains have a cost. Vastly increased night raids by special forces directed against mid-level commanders create seething resentment in local communities. In a striking departure from most people’s understanding of counterinsurgency doctrine, scores of compounds in rural Afghanistan have been flattened by air strikes because the coalition believed they had been rigged with explosives—“building-borne IEDs”, in the NATO jargon. Precious fruit orchards, of exactly the sort that for years have been hailed as an alternative to growing opium poppies, have also been razed to deny insurgents cover.
This makes some independent observers sceptical of reported progress. The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, which monitors security risks on behalf of aid organisations, says NATO claims are mere “strategic communication” cynically designed to bolster Western public opinion. It reported that in 2010 insurgents increased attacks by nearly two-thirds, and that the NATO operations in Helmand and Kandahar served mainly to fan the insurgency into other areas.
Even if military gains are not as illusory as critics say, they do little to help Afghans in two matters: tackling corruption and building a functioning government. One “input” here has been a civilian “surge”, led by Karl Eikenberry, the American ambassador, to match the better-known military one. A whispering campaign among some military men has begun against Mr Eikenberry, whom they charge with overseeing wasteful projects that merely enrich foreign contractors.
But the other input—the Afghan government—is almost completely beyond the reach of men like General Petraeus and Mr Fox. In recent weeks Mr Karzai has created unwanted turmoil, for the second year running. When he refused to accept the results of elections to the parliament that were not to his liking, he brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.
First, Mr Karzai set up his own special court to investigate electoral fraud in the September elections, an initiative which the country’s two election commissions declared illegitimate. Then he attempted to delay the opening of parliament by a further month to allow the court’s investigations to continue. He backed down only after pressure from elected MPs and foreign governments—though not without first declaring how he resented the interference of such “foreign hands”. After a tense stand-off, Mr Karzai formally opened the parliament on January 26th—four months after the elections.
Mr Karzai’s new concern for electoral malpractice had little to do with any desire to root out electoral fraud, however widespread. It comes, after all, from a man who received at least 1m rigged votes in 2009. His sympathisers say the president’s chief concern was that, thanks to malpractice and a lack of security, too few members of the country’s volatile Pushtun community managed to get elected.
Critics take a harsher view, saying Mr Karzai is worried about a more hostile parliament dominated by an enlarged block of opposition MPs. Either way, the legitimacy of the parliament has taken a knock, and the dispute with new MPs will drag on. As part of the deal to open parliament, the special court remains. It is likely to try to remove sitting parliamentarians. Meanwhile relations between Mr Karzai and his international backers have dipped to yet another new low. It is a bad start to yet another “crucial year”.
The prevailing cant is 'What we need to start doing in Afghanistan is......' Two major flaws in this opening. Who are 'we' and the occupation is in its TENTH year!
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