From dust to steel? State building in Afghanistan

Claire C.

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From dust to steel? State building in Afghanistan

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Lecture
Résumé
Sommaire
Extraits

Résumé du document

One month after the attacks of September 11, 2001, in October 2001, the United States decided to invade Afghanistan in order to capture AlQaeda mastermind Ossama Ben Laden and to withdraw the Taliban regime. The "operation enduring freedom" was led by the US, with a majority of forces provided by the Afghan Northern Alliance and supported by NATO members United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, France, New Zealand, Italy and Germany. This operation went particularly quick: on November 12, Taliban forces fled from Kabul and the Northern Alliance entered the city on the 13th. Then, ousting the Taliban was finally easy. The hardest occurred to be providing a satisfying reconstruction of the state, with the built of efficient institutions in a democratic frame. Taking into account the troubled Afghan political past, this task would be a lot tougher. Indeed, when the delegates of the coalition met Afghan representatives in Bonn in December 2001 to decide a political process to restore stability and governance to the country, they understood the complexity of the situation. Afghanistan is religiously homogeneous with 80% of Sunni Muslims and 20% of Shia'as. Conversely, the country is ethnically divided. Seven different ethnic groups have been counted, event though there is very little reliable statistics to show the composition of the population.

Sommaire

Introduction.
Building efficient institutions in an ethnically divided country.
1. Draw up a new constitution.
2. The form of the state: The debate over federalism.
3. The choice of government.
Elections process: Did Afghanistan overpass the ethnic vote?
1. The constitutional formalities.
2. Holding the elections as soon as possible.
3. The outcome of the presidential elections.
Building civil society in divided society.
1. The problem of legality.
2. Enabling and obstructing factors for the strengthening of civil society.
Reconstruction and security: Re-establishing order despite insurgency and warlordism.
1. The remaining fighting in the south and the presence of foreign forces on the territory.
2. Opposing warlordism and disarming private militias.
3. Building an efficient Afghan National Army.
Conclusion.

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Extraits

[...] This Loya Jirga was designed to be as representative as possible, given the lack of reliable data concerning the composition of the Afghan population. The 502 members of the assembly were designated within the existing 32 province and 370 administrative districts, with at least one representative per district. The designation process was organised in two levels. First, in every district, adults from both sexes gathered to choose between 20 and 60 grand electors. Then, those electors met and designated among themselves the members of the Jirga. [...]

[...] Thousands of armed commanders have already been disarmed through the Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) program backed by the UN. However, reintegration of all the disarmed fighters and commanders will be a complicated task because the absorption capacity of the Afghan economy is low and retraining people who have spent their lives fighting is not easy. The disarmament process is also largely slowed down by the political integration of the warlords and the US remaining activity. Most of the governors of the 34 Afghan provinces are former warlords who commanded the militias. [...]

[...] The goal is to see how an ethnically divided country such as Afghanistan has experienced these first poles. Then, we will try to examine the difficulties of building a civil society, with political parties and efficient counter power in Afghanistan. We will see where it has to be found: on a national or more local scale. Finally, the last part concerns the problem of security in Afghanistan and its effects on the reconstruction process. As this security problem is partly linked to the ethnic multiplicity of the country, we will try to draw some possible solution to this issue. [...]

[...] Democracy can not be consolidated before winning peace, and that might also become the main political problem for the international community in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq. In a special pre-election report by Mark Sedra, it says: Any balloting that fails to meet international standards and merely entrenches existing power structures rather than facilitating a new generation of civilian leaders will undermine Afghan faith in the system.”[9] In such settings, elections serve to widen, not to bridge societal divisions and are therefore not useful for the pace of development to a mature democracy. [...]

[...] The presidential elections on the 9th of October 2004 were the first free elections in the history of Afghanistan. As already mentioned, due to the Bonn agreement, a 30-member interim administration was formed to govern until a traditional Afghan assembly the Loya Jirga had chosen its own government and agreed on a new constitution. After the approval of a new constitution, national elections could be held on the 18th of September 2005. There was widespread recognition, that the parliament elections are more difficult to organise than the presidential ones, and the provincial and district elections are still to be held (according to International Electoral Commission these would take place in 2006). [...]

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