Afghanistan: New envoy, old
challenges By Sharif Ghalib
United Nations Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon has nominated Norwegian diplomat Kai Eide
to be the next UN envoy in Afghanistan. The
nomination, already welcomed by the government of
Afghanistan and approved by the UN Security
Council this week, will practically bring to a
close the dragging quest for the UN secretary
general's special representative to the country to
succeed the ex-UN envoy, Tom Koenigs of Germany.
Correspondingly, the nomination will make
the bitter row between the Afghan government and
its major allies over the ill-fated appointment of
Paddy Ashdown, a Briton, and former UN high
representative and European Union envoy to Bosnia,
which brought the sides to the verge of a war of
words a theme of the past.
Without a
doubt, the appointment of Eide comes at a delicate
time. He is to embark on a
task unlikely to be easy, with the deteriorating
security situation and violence high. More than
six years after US-led Afghan resistance forces
deposed the Taliban, North Atlantic Treaty
Organization and Afghan forces are still battling
an unrelenting Taliban insurgency.
According to news media accounts quoting a
United Nations report released on Monday in New
York, a tenth of Afghanistan is off limits to aid
workers because attacks by Taliban insurgents make
it too dangerous, hindering the delivery of
humanitarian assistance to vulnerable Afghans.
Violence last year was at the highest
since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001.
There were 160 suicide attacks and 68 thwarted
attempts in 2007, compared with 123 suicide
attacks and 17 failed attempts in 2006.
Afghanistan had more than 8,000 conflict-related
deaths last year, including 1,500 civilian deaths,
the UN report was quoted as saying.
Frustration over the lack of security is
mounting so much so that a growing number of
ordinary Afghans question whether the
multinational coalition forces are in their
country to bring peace or whether these forces are
capable of doing the job in the first place.
As a result, the declining pattern of
security has taken a heavy toll on the confidence
of the people over the ability of the Afghan
government and the international community to
carry out reconstruction objectives at the desired
pace, aimed at tangibly improving their lives.
To date, however, to the dismay of the
Afghan government and of the nation at large,
arguments stressing the need for the international
community to set the pace and ratchet up the
building, training and equipping of the indigenous
security institutions of the nascent Afghan
National Army (ANA) and Afghan National Police
(ANP) have gone unheeded and to no avail.
Much as with security, the slow pace of
development and sluggish reconstruction efforts
continue to leave ordinary Afghans increasingly
infuriated. Lacking adequate access to health and
education facilities, social services and
employment opportunities, a great many wonder how
negligibly their lives have been changed with the
billions of dollars that have been funneled to the
country.
In this context, media and
government reports on the on-going widespread
calamitous fatalities and the loss of lives across
Afghanistan this winter due to preventable
conditions provide a clear testimonial to the
extent of vulnerability among the country's larger
populations.
Characterized as correlated
and intertwined, security and development remain
of paramount importance to the overall situation,
whereupon a great many often tend to contemplate
each as balancing the other, thus requiring a
close and effective coordination between the two
by the newly headed United Nations Mission
Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).
The alarming proportion of poppy
cultivation and heroin production is yet another
indicator of the international community's
profoundly flawed counter-narcotics strategy in
Afghanistan. Failure to adopt a comprehensive and
integrated approach to combating narcotics has led
to record increases in illicit drug production,
which demands earnest attention by the new envoy.
According to the International Narcotics
Control Board agency, last year Afghanistan
produced an "exceptional quantity" of opium, at
8,200 tonnes, 34% more than in 2006. The country
now accounts for 93% of all opiates on the global
market, the UN agency said in its annual report
made public last Wednesday in Vienna.
Addressing the precarious situation, inter
alia, requires fresh resolve and renewed
leadership by UNAMA. The very fact that Eide is
slated to be assuming a "strong mandate" to
"accelerate and strengthen the coordination of the
support of over 40 countries contributing military
forces or military support to Afghanistan, and
over 60 countries, nation states and institutions
contributing development assistance and
reconstruction assistance to Afghanistan", will
inevitably prove to be of fundamental importance
to his success in confronting the formidable
challenges and the implementation of the stated
objectives.
However, it is equally
important that Eide should be able to ensure
bringing a distinct perspective to the conduct of
the work of the UN office with regard to the
government of Afghanistan and the greater
ethno-political dynamics of the country.
Oddly, UNAMA, on more than one occasion,
has been on the record as taking position and/or
putting out intrusive statements over purely
internal government issues, such as appointments
of certain state officials, and at times even
judging the country's parliamentary decisions,
irrelevant to its jurisdiction and the framework
of its responsibilities, and detrimental to the
efficacy of its role, image and integrity in a
post-conflict nation still susceptible to
upheavals.
By the same token, revelations
about UN-ranking delegates' clandestine activities
in southern Afghanistan in making contact with the
Taliban last December, found by the Afghan
government to be unsanctioned and inconsistent
with the nature of their jobs, and the ensuing
controversy surrounding their expulsion, are
instances which run utterly counter to
impartiality as an underlying principal enshrined
in the charter of the United Nations as an
international organization.
The United
Nations must strictly adhere to its commitments
and obligations to the inviolability of the
sovereignty of the elected government of
Afghanistan and the sanctity of its constitutional
duties before the Afghan nation in dealing with
state affairs.
Looking forward to the next
historical watershed events of presidential and
parliamentary elections in their country, the
people of Afghanistan cannot be indebted enough to
the United Nations for the pivotal role it has
played all along. And much the same, they continue
to trust and pin hope in UNAMA's invaluable
mission dedicated to their collective well-being
and strengthening the nation's grasp on its
newfound democracy.
Sharif
Ghalib served at the UN for 10 years and
was the first Afghan diplomat to negotiate the
establishment of full bilateral diplomatic and
consular relations between Afghanistan and Canada
at resident-embassy level. He opened the Embassy
of Afghanistan in Ottawa in late 2002 and served
as the country's Charge d'Affaires and Minister
Counselor until 2005.
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