PDF (310 kB, 7 pages)PRB 07-26E
Jean-Rodrigue Paré
Political and Social Affairs Division
15 November 2007
PDF (310 kB, 7 pages)
The case of Afghanistan constitutes a critical test of the United Nations’ capacity for meaningful intervention in situations of widespread conflict. In a sense, the UN’s credibility is tied to Afghanistan’s future.
This paper summarizes UN intervention in Afghanistan from the beginning of the Soviet withdrawal in 1988. It covers three phases: the UN presence from 1988 until the end of 2001, when the Taliban were overthrown; the establishment of the Bonn Agreement, the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, and the Afghanistan Compact; and UN activities since 2002. It looks at the political, humanitarian and development facets of the UN’s work, and touches briefly on the creation of the International Security Assistance Force.
From 1988 until the fall of the Taliban in 2001, UN intervention in Afghanistan, like the conflict that motivated it, consisted of an endless succession of dashed hopes. The UN’s actions were entirely dependent on the willingness of the belligerents to opt for a political settlement and on the degree of support among other member states for a lasting peace process, and all attempts to facilitate the country’s recovery ended in failure.
Although the UN had been providing development assistance to Afghanistan for several decades, its involvement expanded after Kabul was captured by Soviet troops on 25 December 1979. Starting in the early 1980s, the UN set up humanitarian assistance programs in the zones controlled by the Kabul government and offered support to refugees, working in collaboration with the Red Cross/Red Crescent.
During 1988 and 1989, after almost a decade of conflict in which neither side prevailed, the USSR gradually withdrew its troops in response to the Agreements on the Settlement of the Situation Relating to Afghanistan (Geneva Agreements)(1) signed on 14 April 1988. The Agreements spelled out the terms of reference for the United Nations Good Offices Mission in Afghanistan and Pakistan (UNGOMAP), which started operations on 1 May 1988 with a mandate to investigate and report possible violations of any of the provisions of the Agreements. UNGOMAP officially concluded on 15 March 1990, but the Representative of the Secretary-General remained in place as Coordinator of the Office of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Pakistan (OSGAP) to coordinate political activities.
While the political activities of UNGOMAP and OSGAP were being initiated, humanitarian relief and development assistance initiatives were being introduced by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian and Economic Assistance Programs for Afghanistan (UNOCA). As its head, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan launched a large-scale reconstruction program, Operation Salam, using a special fund that derived mainly from a $600 million contribution by the USSR.
The withdrawal of the Soviet forces was completed as planned in February 1989. Contrary to optimistic expectations, the situation deteriorated rapidly from both a political and a humanitarian standpoint. The country was plunged into civil war, the number of refugees soared at a time when the Geneva Agreements should have been enabling their return home, and Afghanistan fell into institutional chaos.
For a short time at the end of 1993, the situation again seemed favourable to peace, and the UN instituted the United Nations Special Mission in Afghanistan (UNSMA).(2) Starting in 1994, many objectives were defined within the UNSMA framework that would be carried over into the Bonn Agreement of 2001-2002: the summoning of a Loya Jirga (grand council), the creation of a security force in Kabul, the formation of a national army and the installation of a transitional government composed of representatives of belligerent and neutral parties as well as key “independent personalities.”(3)
Hope dwindled rapidly as the Taliban took control of the country, capturing Kandahar in the autumn of 1994 and ultimately Kabul on 27 September 1996.
Between 1997 and 2001, fighting continued without interruption between the Taliban and the coalition of opposition forces.(4) UNSMA took on the responsibility of investigating allegations of human rights abuses. The work of UNOCA (renamed UNOCHA in 1993) was now limited to its humanitarian aspect, while the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) tried in vain to launch programs. Sometimes the UN had to suspend its activities in view of threats to the safety of personnel. Serious concerns were raised about the treatment of women by both sides and the use by the Taliban of child soldiers, aged 13 or 14, often from Pakistan. Appeals to member states for funding for humanitarian operations generally fell on deaf ears, and UNOCHA was frequently in a state of financial crisis.
During this period, the UN repeatedly pointed out the difficulty of resolving the conflict as long as foreign powers continued to provide military equipment to the belligerents. At the end of 1997, the Secretary-General said bluntly, “They all enthusiastically proclaim their support to the United Nations peacemaking efforts but at the same time continue to fan the conflict by pouring in arms, money and other supplies to their preferred Afghan factions. … [T]hey must be held responsible for exacerbating the bloody conflict in Afghanistan.”(5)
On 11 September 2001, everything changed for Afghanistan. After the military operation (without UN authorization) drove the Taliban from Kabul in November 2001, the Secretary-General did not try to hide his satisfaction: “[T]he dramatic changes brought about by the terrorist attacks of 11 September have made [the objectives of the United Nations] easier to achieve.”(6) The talks that had begun years earlier resumed in Bonn on 27 November at an accelerated pace, and an agreement was produced by 5 December.(7)
The Bonn Agreement provided for the formation of an interim administration that would be required to convene a Loya Jirga within six months. The Loya Jirga would be responsible for choosing a transitional authority that would be in charge until a fully representative government could be elected in free and fair elections held no later than two years after the establishment of the transitional authority. No later than 18 months after its establishment, the transitional authority would be required to submit a draft constitution to a constitutional Loya Jirga for ratification. An International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was mandated to ensure security in Kabul. Hamid Karzai was named Chair of the Interim Administration on 22 December 2001 and was elected President of the new Islamic Republic of Afghanistan on 9 October 2004.
Starting in 2002, all components of UN activity in Afghanistan were grouped under a single United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). (8) Composed initially of about a hundred people, and lacking military personnel, the new Mission was meant to support Afghan capacity-building, to limit the use of international personnel as much as possible, and to leave only a “light footprint” once its mandate had been carried out.
In 2004, the Afghan government estimated its international assistance needs for the period from March 2000 to March 2011 at US$27.5 billion.(9) It set out its development benchmarks within the framework of the UN-sponsored Millennium Development Goals program.(10) The benchmarks and the budget required to achieve them were presented to the international community at the London Conference in January 2006, which produced the Afghanistan Compact.(11) The international community made a commitment to contribute US$10.5 billion between 2006 and 31 December 2010. The action plan by which Afghanistan would attempt to achieve the results projected in the Compact was set out in detail in the Interim National Development Strategy.(12)
The new priorities for the “political affairs” pillar of the UN’s intervention were the disbandment of illegal armed groups, future electoral processes, human rights, and the administration of justice.(13) The “relief, recovery and reconstruction” pillar placed particular emphasis on promoting capacity-building in the ministries responsible for ensuring the effective operation of Afghan institutions. The other priorities were governance, economic and social development, counter-narcotics activities and gender equality.(14)
In the autumn of 2002, the Secretary-General needed to address the international community’s growing impatience with deteriorating security, sluggish reconstruction and the central government’s difficulty in imposing its authority throughout the country.(15) The community’s fears were gradually confirmed and, unfortunately, obscured some real progress that was being made through development programs. Starting in 2005, the security situation deteriorated badly. The Secretary-General’s report of September 2006 said that a third of the country was “racked by violent insurgency.”(16)
As noted earlier, the Bonn process in late 2001 called for the establishment of an interim administration, the convening of a Loya Jirga, the appointment of a transitional authority, the ratification of a new constitution, and the holding of free and representative elections. The Loya Jirga, comprising a thousand representatives from 37 regions of the country, met from 11 to 19 June 2002 under the protection of the ISAF. A constitution was adopted almost unanimously in January 2004 by a 500-member constitutional Loya Jirga. The presidential election was held a few months later than planned, in October 2004, and President Karzai was elected with 55.4% of the votes. Logistical and security problems delayed legislative elections to 18 September 2005. The UN prepared the voters’ list and candidates’ registration – a laborious undertaking given the number of candidates and the choice of an electoral system that was not fully representative.(17) The vote count prompted protests, but not of a kind that affected the results.(18) The fact that elections were held at all constitutes a spectacular success. Alarm was expressed, however, in response to the fact that members of the Taliban and people accused of crimes against humanity were among those elected to the Legislative Assembly. Many instances of corruption, links with illegal armed groups and intimidation have undermined the Assembly’s credibility. Over the course of 2007, the UN has become increasingly critical of the Karzai government.(19)
The main problem remains the government’s inability to extend its authority to the provincial and local levels, which has had the effect of limiting development to Kabul and a handful of urban areas. On a more positive note, however, the organization of higher levels of the public service now permits budget planning objectives to be met independently.(20)
The UN’s institution-building activities have been organized along seven major lines:
Since the fall of the Taliban in the autumn of 2001, there has been considerable development in Kabul and a few other cities, but “[d]espite these achievements, the economic and developmental challenges facing Afghanistan remain daunting.”(35) Between 2002 and 2005, the international community contributed US$8.4 billion toward these efforts.
The UN has played a key role in bringing emergency aid to the people who suffered the most during years of drought and warfare, although security problems make distribution very difficult. The establishment of a central administration has enabled the UN to withdraw gradually from this sector of activity, but “[t]he capacity of Afghan institutions … remains highly dependent on external actors.”(36)
Twenty percent of children die before the age of five, life expectancy is 44.5 years, and a quarter of the population has no access to potable water.(37) One of the most successful programs has been the poliomyelitis vaccination campaign, carried out through UNICEF, which has reached over three million Afghan children. By 2007, polio had been virtually eradicated from Afghanistan. Access to health care has been greatly improved, and infant mortality can be expected to drop markedly.(38)
With regard to education, some seven million children have been attending school in 2007, one third of them girls. UNICEF has played a direct role in this success, which is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the insurgents have been targeting schoolgirls.
Two programs launched in the mid-1990s also bore fruit after the fall of the Taliban: between 2002 and 2005, some 3.5 million refugees returned to Afghanistan, three-quarters of them from Pakistan and most of the others from Iran. A landmine-clearing program has made it possible for farming to resume on thousands of square kilometres of land.
A number of other programs of varying size have been launched under the coordination of one of the many UN institutions present in Afghanistan: the UNDP and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) are coordinating a program designed to create 15,000 jobs, mainly in the construction sector, and the WHO has launched programs to distribute vitamin supplements and medicines and to provide mental health and family medicine services and anti-tuberculosis interventions. Other projects focus on urban development (UN‑Habitat), natural resources (through the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization), and culture and the media (UNESCO).
Before the fall of the Taliban, UN intervention had resulted in the realization that success was impossible in the absence of any real desire on the part of either the belligerents or the international community to reach a political settlement. At the end of 2001, the military intervention by the US-led coalition routed out the Taliban and made possible the formulation of an ambitious reconstruction plan. The plan’s implementation was greatly facilitated by the lessons that the UN had learned from its many previous failures. But the enthusiasm that reigned when the Bonn Agreement was signed and UNAMA was set up seems to have dissipated, to be replaced by scepticism not only about the ability of the international community to act effectively in rebuilding Afghanistan but also about the relevance of this role.
It appears to be more and more difficult for the ISAF to maintain a climate of security. The limits of UNAMA’s ability to support the Afghan government in rebuilding institutions and infrastructures against a backdrop of acceptable governance seem to have been reached, and UNAMA is powerless to coordinate a consistent joint campaign against drug trafficking. On the other hand, since the signing of the Bonn Agreement in November 2001, the population as a whole has enjoyed a clearly superior quality of life, and the number of civilian deaths attributable to conflict has plummeted.(39)
The conclusion to be drawn about UN intervention in Afghanistan depends entirely on the point of comparison used: at one extreme, the improbable dream of a model state, capable of melding Islamic traditions, modernity and Western ideals, and, at the other, the nightmare scenario of a derelict state dragging its people into an endless spiral of fratricidal wars. Afghanistan today seems to be suspended between these two extremes, caught in an undertow of insurrection, drugs and corruption while it strives to grasp an elusive peace.