Chapter One: Warlordism

Abstract

By the middle of 2007, Afghans had become increasingly disillusioned with a state-building process that had failed to deliver the peace dividend that they were promised. For many Afghans, the most noticeable change in their lives since the fall of the Taliban has been an acute deterioration in security conditions. Whether it is predatory warlords, the Taliban-led insurgency, the burgeoning narcotics trade or general criminality, the threats to the security and stability of Afghanistan are manifold. The response to those threats, both in terms of the international military intervention and the donor-supported process to rebuild the security architecture of the Afghan state, known as security-sector reform (SSR), has been largely insufficient to address the task at hand. NATO has struggled to find the troops and equipment it requires to complete its Afghan mission and the SSR process, from its outset, has been severely under-resourced and poorly directed. Compounding these problems, rampant corruption and factionalism in the Afghan government, particularly in the security institutions, have served as major impediments to reform and a driver of insecurity. This paper charts the evolution of the security environment in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, assessing both the causes of insecurity and the responses to them. Through this analysis, it offers some suggestions on how to tackle Afghanistan's growing security crisis.

Notes

1. Antonio Giustozzi, ‘Good State’ vs. ‘Bad Warlords’? A Critique of State-Building Strategies in Afghanistan, Working Paper 51 (London: LSE Crisis States Programme, 2004).

2. Sarah Lister and Andrew Wilder, ‘Strengthening Sub-National Administration in Afghanistan: Technical Reform or State-Building’, Public Administration and Development, no. 25, 2005, p. 41; Thomas Barfield, Neamat Nojumi and J. Alexander Thier, The Clash of Two Goods: State and Non-State Dispute Resolution in Afghanistan (Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2006), p. 13. A shura can be described as a village council, while a jirga is a traditional assembly.

3. The Bonn Agreement – officially the ‘Agreement on Provisional Arrangements in Afghanistan Pending the Re-Establishment of Permanent Government Institutions’ – was negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations. In it, the main representative factions and ethnic groups opposing the Taliban agreed on a framework within which the newly created Afghan Interim Authority (AIA) would rebuild state institutions.

4. Barnett R. Rubin, ‘Peace-building and State-building in Afghanistan: Constructing Sovereignty for Whose Security?’, Third World Quarterly, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 175–85. Of the first group of 32 provincial governors appointed in 2002, 20 were militia commanders, warlords or strongmen. See Giustozzi, ‘Good State’ vs. ‘Bad Warlords’?.

5. Ibid., p. 10.

6. Lister and Wilder, ‘Strengthening Sub-National Administration in Afghanistan’.

7. Abdul Waheed Wafa, ‘32 Killed in Factional Fighting in Western Afghanistan’, New York Times, 23 October 2006.

8. Interview with Western diplomat, Kabul, 19 June 2006.

9. Rachel Morajee, ‘Karzai Faces Uphill Battle To Tame Afghan Parliament’, Agence France-Presse, 14 September 2005; International Crisis Group (ICG), Afghanistan's New Legislature: Making Democracy Work, Asia Report 116 (Brussels: ICG, 2006), p. 4.

10. IRIN, ‘Rights Body Warns of Warlords Success in Elections’, 18 October 2005.

11. ICG, Afghanistan's New Legislature, p. 4.

12. It is important to approach public-opinion surveys undertaken in Afghanistan with a degree of caution, as the challenges of polling – insecurity, difficult topography and linguistic, ethnic and sectarian diversity – can make their results unreliable. For instance, some have argued that the HRRAC survey was skewed towards urban and educated Afghans and was not based on a representative sampling of the population as a whole. Comparable criticisms have been levelled at all the polls undertaken in Afghanistan since 2001.

13. IRIN, ‘Rights Body Warns of Warlords Success in Elections’.

14. Interview with United Nations Assistance Mission for Afghanistan (UNAMA) official, Kabul, 12 November 2005.

15. Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, Action Plan for Peace, Justice and Reconciliation in Afghanistan (Kabul: GIRA, 2005); AIHRC website, http://www.aihrc.org.af/tj_actionplan_19_dec_05.htm; Andrew North, ‘Afghans Adopt Justice Action Plan’, BBC News, 12 December 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4522624.stm.