Thank you very much.
First of all, I'd just like to thank you for allowing me to speak in front of you today and say what an honour it is.
As many keen observers of Afghanistan have recognized in recent months, the Afghan state-building process is facing a tipping point. Most Afghans have yet to receive the peace dividend promised them by Afghan and international leaders following the collapse of the Taliban regime. Talk of a Marshall Plan for the country was heard by ordinary Afghans, buoying hope for a break with the violence and endemic poverty that characterized life in the country over the past two decades. However, by 2007 the most noticeable change in the lives of most Afghans has been a rise in insecurity and the growth of a public administration increasingly seen as predatory, obtrusive, and corrupt. This has fed a growing sense of pessimism and disillusionment that has emboldened spoiler groups such as the Taliban.
Today, many Afghans, from Kabul to Kunduz to Kandahar, assume that the Taliban will return to power, not because of a renewed belief in the Taliban fundamentalist ideology, but due to a feeling that momentum is on their side, that international actors are losing interest, and that the Karzai regime is weak and faltering. Afghans are pragmatists. After 23 years of civil war, they have learned to pick the winning side. As the Taliban becomes bolder, more and more Afghans will gravitate towards it as a coping mechanism. We are already seeing this in the south, where some Afghans have begun to speak nostalgically of the relative peace and security of the Taliban period.
Of course, the reason for the Taliban's initial popularity, when it came to power in 1996, was its provision of security and its disarmament of the same warlords who reconstituted their fiefdoms on the heels of Operation Enduring Freedom and who are entrenched in the government today.
As the media coverage of Afghanistan clearly illustrates, the security situation now defies classification as a “post-conflict environment”. Contrary to the situation in previous years, the violence is no longer contained within the Pashtun belt, the Taliban heartland. In a disturbing trend in 2006, heretofore stable areas of the country, such as Wardak province in central Afghanistan, experienced a sharp rise in insecurity. Wardak province was one of the most stable areas of the country in 2003 and 2004. By 2006, however, the United Nations was forced to halt all travel on major roads due to threats of armed attacks.
One need only compare statistics for 2005 and 2006 regarding the insurgency to grasp the extent of the problem. By September 2006, an average of 600 insurgent and/or terrorist incidents were occurring on a monthly basis, up from an average of 130 per month in 2005. There were 139 suicide bombings in the country in 2006, a significant increase from the 27 that occurred the previous year. Finally, the insurgency resulted in more than 3,700 fatalities in 2006, a figure more than four times greater than that of 2005.
Poor governance, particularly at the subnational level, an area which received very little attention by donors up to 2006, has been a major driver of insecurity. The police, who represent the main interface between state and society, exemplify the failure of the contemporary Afghan state. There is no more corrupt and dysfunctional institution in Afghanistan than the Afghan National Police. Since 2002, the police have been a source of insecurity for communities across the country, rather than a solution to it. A significant proportion of Afghans view the police with fear and resentment. When they interact with the police, it is often to pay bribes or illegal taxes. The police are increasingly the perpetrators of crimes ranging from kidnapping for ransom to bank robberies. In November 2004, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission claimed that 15% of all human rights violations reported were perpetrated by the police. The most common offences reported were torture, theft, and the failure to prosecute murder cases.
Corruption is rampant throughout the police, with up to 80% of the force involved in the drug trade. A majority are loyal to local commanders rather than to the Ministry of the Interior. In a telling expression of the depth of corruption and factionalism in the police, one senior Afghan police official told me in June 2006 that he trusted only 27 of the approximately 1,500 police stationed in all of Helmand province.
The Kabul riots provided the clearest signal yet of the failure of the internationally supported police reform process. Not only did the police fail to quell the mob, which ransacked the capital—causing in the process at least 17 deaths, over 190 injuries, and millions of dollars in damages—but they joined them. The few officers who did confront the rioters were shown to be grossly unprepared, lacking basic crowd control training and equipment.
This brings me to what will be the main focus of my talk, the security sector reform process, or SSR, which is the effort to reconstruct the security architecture of the state. Not only is SSR a cornerstone of the state-building process, but it also provides the exit strategy for the international community. Only when the Afghan state has a monopoly over the use of force across the whole national territory will the conditions be present for international forces to withdraw.
Although significant strides have been made to advance the process over the past five years, including the training of over 30,000 Afghan National Army soldiers and the disarmament and demobilization of 60,000 militiamen, severe problems remain, and I will touch on three of them.
The first problem is what I refer to as the slide toward expediency in the implementation of reforms.
SSR is not merely a process to train and equip the security forces; it is also intended to instil modern democratic principles such as respect for human rights, to ensure that the security institutions are accountable to democratic civilian authority, and to institute the rule of law. However, in Afghanistan the process has been almost entirely dedicated to enhancing the operational effectiveness of the security forces. Efforts to rebuild the judicial system and reform the ministries intended to manage and provide oversight of the security forces, the ministries of defence and interior, have been treated as an afterthought. We are already witnessing the damaging implications of this approach, with deep-seated corruption in the ministry of interior infecting every corner of the police service.
The second overarching dilemma is what I refer to as the political will problem.
The Afghan government has not always demonstrated the necessary will to undertake the difficult reforms necessary to advance the state-building process. This is most clear in relation to corruption and the drug trade. It is widely known which government officials—some up to the level of minister—have links to the drug trade, yet they remain in office. This is also true in reference to the issue of illegal armed groups. The international community has funded the most expensive disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration process in history, but numerous prominent members of the government have retained their private militias. According to some estimates, up to 60% of the members of Parliament have links to illegal armed groups, despite a provision of the electoral law that should have barred their candidacy for having these links.
What message does this send to the Afghan people about the counter-narcotics and demilitarization campaigns? Afghans will not take these processes seriously, or place their faith in the government more generally, unless the same rules apply to all. Perhaps the key to advancing the counter-narcotics and demilitarization processes and expanding the state's legitimacy in the eyes of the people is to go after the big fish, the high-profile targets. The problem is that such an approach conflicts with President Karzai's leadership style, which can be described as accommodationist.
Instead of confronting deep-seated problems within his own government, President Karzai has sought to place most of the blame for the country's security crisis on the doorstep of Pakistan. Pakistan certainly does represent one of the paramount threats to Afghanistan's security. The Talibanization of the federally administered tribal areas, which provide a base for insurgents to attack governments and international targets in Afghanistan, coupled with the Musharraf regime's duplicitous position on the Taliban, condemning them publicly while providing them with clandestine support, has been a major driver of the insurgency.
It is clear that greater pressure must be brought to bear on the Pakistani government to bring an end to its double game in Afghanistan. However, perhaps it's also time for the international community to demand more of President Karzai's government. The bogeyman cannot be used to distract attention from the failures of the Karzai administration and Afghanistan's homegrown security problems.
Aid and assistance to the Afghan government has largely been provided unconditionally. Perhaps it is time to condition aid in a manner that will promote difficult reforms. One thing that is clear is that dedicating vast resources to assist them where the commitment of the political leadership to the fundamental principles of the process is tenuous is not only wasteful but could exacerbate corruption and instability.
The final problem, which I will discuss today, can be described as the justice gap. The rule of law is absent in much of Afghanistan today due in large part to the decrepit state of the judicial system. It is a truism in the field of post-conflict reconstruction that regardless of how well-trained the police are, without a functioning judicial system they will not be able to perform their duties.
Lord Paddy Ashdown, who served as the high representative for Bosnia from 2002 to 2006, has stated that one of the primary lessons he learned from his time in Bosnia was that justice should come first. Without a functioning justice system, you cannot have security, combat corruption, or establish an efficient regulatory system for the national economy.
Afghanistan's state builders seemingly failed to heed this lesson. By 2005, and this situation continues today, less than 3% of the funds allocated to the SSR process were channelled to the justice institutions. It is of little surprise then today that more than 90% of legal matters in the country are taken to the informal or customary legal system rather than to state courts.
To the average Afghan, the courts are expensive, corrupt, and out of touch with local realities. The courts are barely able to function in some parts of the country as the system lacks basic infrastructure, equipment, and trained jurists. I've come across abundant anecdotal evidence of criminals being apprehended by the police only to be released shortly thereafter because there was no court to try them or jail to keep them.
In my remarks today I have tried to show that a foundation has been built for a democratic state in Afghanistan, but it is fragile and teetering. Afghans are becoming increasingly disaffected with a government that is incapable of delivering basic public goods, that is dominated by warlords and drug traffickers, and that is endemically corrupt. The 2006 Kabul riots not only showed the depth of frustration of many Afghans with the slow pace of change, but demonstrated how easily the entire state-building process could implode.
Combatting growing insecurity in the year ahead will be one of the main challenges for the Afghan government and international community and will require renewed attention to the security sector reform process. The recent U.S. commitment of $8.6 billion for SSR will provide a vital boost to the process, but the problem with the Afghan security sector is not just one of insufficient resources. A change in strategy is needed that will balance the short- and long-term goals of the process. Efforts to enhance the operational effectiveness of the security forces must be accompanied by steps to strengthen the government's ability to control and manage them and create a legal and judicial framework within which they can work.
At present, the system, in many respects, is merely making corrupt and factional security forces more efficient and effective. The process must seek to change the culture of this sector, which is a long-term process.
The uncomfortable reality for most donors is that intensive engagement will be required in Afghanistan for another five to ten years to consolidate the gains that have been made and to prevent the state from once again slipping into failure.
This does not mean that international military forces will be fighting an insurgency of the intensity seen today for another decade; rather, with the necessary investments in development, governance, and SSR, the security element of the state-building project could be gradually scaled down and phased out in favour of its development and diplomatic dimensions.