By M. Ashraf Haidari, Political Counselor, Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, DC
As delegations from more than 80 states and international organizations prepare to participate in the March 31st Hague conference on Afghanistan, it is important to discuss some of the misperceptions that have gained currency in certain capitals of our nation-partners. A reality check against each misperception propagated by international media is necessary to help us and our allies build upon our shared achievements thus far and to work together towards overcoming the challenges confronting us today. Failure to do so is certain to strengthen our common enemy—the Taliban and Al Qaeda—in further destabilizing Afghanistan and the whole region.
First is the perception that corruption is the mother of all of Afghanistan’s problems. The fact is that corruption is not a cause but a symptom of weak governance due to severe underinvestment both in capacity and resources in Afghanistan’s key state institutions over the past eight years. Because the judiciary and the police constitute the first point of contact between public and government, people tend to judge the government’s legitimacy and performance based on their daily experience with those institutions.
When the international community reengaged in Afghanistan in 2001, the country was completely stateless and our partners had to begin building the state institutions from the ground up under harsh circumstances. Hence, the strength or weakness of governance in Afghanistan today is clearly a function of how much effective coordinated aid has gone into building a functional state in the country. For example, it is apparent from the level of resources committed so far to reforming and building the Afghan judiciary and police that corruption prevails in these two key state institutions today. It is obvious that better paid, better trained, and better equipped officials in any government in any part of the world would have less incentive to be corrupt—and Afghanistan is no different from others.
Nonetheless, the Afghan government has frequently taken serious action against corrupt officials and introduced drastic measures to curb corruption in the whole government. Several inept ministers and over a dozen corrupt administrators, governors, police chiefs, and diplomats have been fired. The Afghan government recently appointed a new Minister of Interior to accelerate the reform and building of the police, while establishing the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption to fight systemic corruption in the government.
Second, generalizing Afghanistan as a narco-state is misleading and diverting our attention from how to fight narcotics as a transnational security threat rather than as an Afghan problem alone. The fact is that since 2001 Afghanistan’s share of licit economy has outstripped that of its illicit which is now less than a third of our annual GDP. But we know from international experience that global demand for narcotics finds supply in environments where state institutions are weak, where general instability is high, and where poverty is rife. Although Afghanistan is in such dire situation today, the number of drug-free provinces in the country has increased from 6 in 2006 to 18 in 2008—meaning that no opium is grown in more than half of the country’s 34 provinces. This progress has been made in provinces where the government has been in firm control, delivering alternative assistance to farmers and prosecuting drug traffickers.
To be effective, counter-narcotics efforts must target all players in the long chain of the opium trade, including traffickers, distributors, and dealers, who pull in about 80 percent of the export value of Afghan narcotics. We need proactive international cooperation to implement the United Nations Security Council resolution 1818 of July 2008 to curb the flow of precursor chemicals into Afghanistan and export of narcotic products out of our country onto the end markets through neighboring states. At the same time, farmers must be given the opportunity and necessary resources to grow alternative crops, and to make these crops more lucrative to farmers, investments in infrastructure are needed. In addition to supplies of water, seed and fertilizer, farmers must have access to reliable farm-to-market roads or to cold-storage facilities to preserve products for later export.
Finally, frequent reference to Afghanistan as a “graveyard of empires,” where democratic nation-building is impossible to achieve is absolutely wrong. A month-long stay among the Afghan people will reveal to any serious observer of Afghanistan the fact that the hardships and suffering the Afghan people have endured over the past 30 years have changed their worldview. The youth that constitute more than 60 percent of the Afghan population look to the future in today’s globalization context.
Afghans demand security, justice, and pluralism, which they know can only be restored by long-term international engagement in our country. We understand that premature international disengagement from Afghanistan in early 1990s made the country a no-man’s land where transnational extremists, terrorists, and criminals freely roamed and used the stateless country to endanger international peace and security. The tragedy of 9/11 is a sad reminder.
Hence, comparisons such as pre-modern wars or the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to the 2001 international reengagement in the country to free Afghans of the tyranny of the Taliban is neither accurate nor helpful. The fact is that Afghans view American and NATO forces as their liberators, while they perceived the Soviet forces as invaders and occupiers with a godless ideology. Historical comparisons no longer hold true in many cases, and Afghanistan is not an exception. We should rather focus on delivering on the basic expectations of the Afghan people: security, rule of law, and jobs that have given them hope after 2001.
M. Ashraf Haidari is the Political Counselor of the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington, DC. He can be reached at: haidari@embassyofafghanistan.org.
