Work is under way at the United Nations to consider how to rebuild a post-Taleban Afghanistan, but pivotal figures said it might be premature to predict what that nation would look like, or how to pursue it.
“It is too early for people to be presenting plans, though we did discuss various aspects of the evolving situation that would have to be addressed,” says Richard Haass, director of policy planning at the US Department of State, the new point man on Afghanistan. Haass made his remarks after meeting with United Nations officials and foreign diplomats last week.
His UN counterpart, Lakhdar Brahimi, was in Washington to meet with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and members of the National Security Council.
There is widespread agreement that international support will be necessary to help build a stable government in Afghanistan after the Taleban is driven from power. Increasingly, governments have turned to a reluctant United Nations to play the leading role.The United States, European Union and Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation group, whose foreign ministers met in Shanghai last week, have all endorsed a strong UN presence in Afghanistan once the current hostilities come to an end.
But the organization — frustrated by nation-building debacles in Somalia and Bosnia and still struggling with Kosovo and East Timor — has been hoping to avoid too prominent a role in rehabilitating Afghanistan. Brahimi stresses that the United Nations could, at best, help give the Afghans what they want, rather than imposing international will. “Afghanistan is a difficult country, and a very proud people, and they don’t like to be ordered around by foreigners,” Brahimi tells reporters.
Brahimi, the United Nations’ special envoy on Afghanistan, is a seasoned diplomat known for taking on the hard cases. The former Algerian foreign minister has tried to bring stability to the troubled Central Asian country, but stepped down in exasperation after the Taleban refused to meet UN political staff.
Diplomats and political experts say enormous obstacles prevent much serious planning. To begin with, the US-led alliance has been engaged militarily in Afghanistan for over two weeks in its quest to smoke out Islamic extremist and suspected terrorist Osama Bin Laden, and destroy the regime that harbors him.
Thus far, the bombing campaign has destroyed infrastructure that wasn’t of much value to begin with, unsettling populations already plagued by hunger, drought and poverty. Tens of thousands of refugees have migrated to Afghanistan’s borders with Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, potentially destabilizing the region.
The United Nations and other international aid agencies are trying to drive, drop and deliver more than 1,000 tons of humanitarian assistance every day before the harsh winter arrives next month.
However, the agencies are unable to get the assistance into the country via traditional overland transportation routes.
Several governments have suggested the creation of some type of peacekeeping force in Afghanistan after the military campaign has ended, but Brahimi — who just implemented a major reorganization of the UN’s peacekeeping activities — all but rejected this idea. “It’s a difficult situation, and one cannot just get people together and send them hastily,” Brahimi says.
Ravan Farhadi, a representative of the Northern Alliance government that still holds Afghanistan’s UN seat, also rejects the notion of sending UN peacekeepers to his homeland, saying that the Northern Alliance — or United Front, as he prefers to call it — will be solely responsible for maintaining the peace. “First, we defeat the Taleban,” Farhadi says. “Then we demilitarize and establish a police force.”
Politically, however, the parties with a vested interest in peace in Afghanistan — the United States, the UN and the United Front — have little to agree on.
US Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Brahimi have indicated that moderate members of the Taleban could have a place in a ruling coalition. But Farhadi says the United Front will not work with the Taleban.
Last week, Farhadi tried unsuccessfully to meet with Haass. However, he did put his concerns into a letter, which he hand delivered to a member the US delegation to the UN.
