00_prelim 9/16/08 15:13 Page i Afghanistan: Transition under Threat 00_prelim 9/16/08 15:13 Page ii Studies in International Governance is a research and policy analysis se- ries from the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Titles in the series provide timely consid- eration of emerging trends and current challenges in the broad field of in- ternational governance. Representing diverse perspectives on important global issues, the series will be of interest to students and academics while serving also as a reference tool for policy-makers and experts engaged in policy discussion. To reach the greatest possible audience and ultimately shape the policy dialogue, each volume will be made available both in print through WLU Press and, twelve months after publication, accessible for free online through the IGLOO Network under the Creative Commons License. 00_prelim 9/16/08 15:13 Page iii Afghanistan Transition under Threat Geoffrey Hayes and Mark Sedra editors 00_prelim 10/2/08 10:55 Page iv Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Govern- ment of Canada through its Book Publishing Industry Development Program for its publishing activities. Wilfrid Laurier University Press acknowledges the financial support of the Centre for International Governance Innovation. The Centre for In- ternational Governance Innovation gratefully acknowledges support for its work program from the Government of Canada and the Government of Ontario. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Afghanistan : transition under threat / Geoffrey Hayes and Mark Sedra, editors. (Studies in international governance series) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-55458–011-8 1. Afghanistan—History—2001– . 2. Afghanistan—Politics and government—2001– . 3. Afghanistan—Economic conditions—21st century. 4. Afghanistan—History, Military—21st century. 5. Canada—Military policy. I. Hayes, Geoffrey, 1961– II. Sedra, Mark III. Centre for International Governance Innovation. IV. Series. DS371.4A45 2008 958.104'6 C2007–906851–0 Co-published with the Centre for International Governance Innovation. © 2008 The Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) and Wilfrid Laurier University Press Cover photograph © Department of National Defence, IS2004-2069a.jpg, 2004. Photo by Sgt. Frank Hudec, Canadian Forces Combat Camera. Cover design by Brian Grebow/BG Communications. Text design by Pam Woodland. 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For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777. 00_prelim 9/16/08 15:13 Page v CONTENTS Foreword Christopher Alexander vii Acknowledgements xi Introduction Mark Sedra and Geoffrey Hayes xiii Abbreviations xxxi SECTION I • The Political Transition 1 Looking Back at the Bonn Process William Maley 3 2 Afghanistan: The Challenge of State Building Ali A. Jalali 25 3 Poppy, Politics, and State Building Jonathan Goodhand 51 SECTION II • The Economic Transition 4 Responding to Afghanistan’s Development Challenge: An Assessment of Experience and Priorities for the Future William A. Byrd 89 5 Laying Economic Foundations for a New Afghanistan Seema Patel 149 SECTION III • The Security Transition 6 The Neo-Taliban Insurgency: From Village Islam to International Jihad Antonio Giustozzi 169 7 Security Sector Reform and State Building in Afghanistan Mark Sedra 193 8 Insecurity along the Durand Line Husain Haqqani 219 SECTION IV • The Canadian Case 9 Peace Building and Development in the Fragile State of Afghanistan: A Practitioner’s Perspective Nipa Banerjee 241 10 Establishing Security in Afghanistan: Strategic and Operational Perspectives M.D. Capstick 263 11 Canada in Afghanistan: Assessing the Numbers Geoffrey Hayes 281 Contributors 299 Index 303 v 00_prelim 9/16/08 15:13 Page vi 00_prelim 9/16/08 15:13 Page vii FOREWORD Afghanistan—Failing or Flourishing? After a number of years of relegation to secondary strategic importance, Afghanistan is today back at the centre of global policy debates. At inter- national conferences in Rome (July 2007), Tokyo (February 2008), Bucharest (April 2008), and Paris (June 2008), global leaders have committed them- selves to addressing the difficult challenges that now loom before the Afghan people—a live insurgency, weak services and infrastructure, food insecu- rity, aid dependency, a consolidating narco-ascendancy, and poverty. This rededication is welcome inside Afghanistan. In some quarters, it is considered overdue. But it holds the promise that for at least the next sev- eral years major donors and troop contributors will seek to resolve secu- rity and development challenges from the perspective of Kabul and Kunar, Sar-i-Pul and Farah, rather than view these issues through some of the more unhelpful lenses applied in the past. The backdrop to this renewed attention is a sharp debate over whether efforts to bring stability and development to Afghanistan are gaining ground or are on the verge of “strategic failure.” The latter view has particular cur- rency with many outside Afghanistan, who see its conflict as “inevitable,” “atavistic,” even “perpetual.” These observers argue that failure to produce an adequate “peace dividend” in the first years after the 2001 Bonn Agree- ment—combined with the taking root of impunity on a grand scale—is now dooming Afghanistan to another round of civil conflict. Their arguments draw richly on the mythology thrown up by the formative British and So- viet experiences in Afghanistan in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This volume gives the case for both sides of this dispute. It is lucid on areas of under-investment. It enumerates areas of relative success. It ques- tions the sequencing and coherence of international support and govern- ment decision making. It underlines the pivotal nature of decisions to ac- commodate, even appease, warlords, as well as the tragic future legacy of the Taliban’s “strategic withdrawal” to safer ground in late 2001. The strate- gic challenges confronting us are clear. The shape of the transition to date— vii 00_prelim 9/16/08 15:13 Page viii viii • Foreword its hard trend lines at the local level—are outlined but not treated in depth. For many outside Afghanistan, even those in the region, the “ground real- ities” in its thirty-four provinces and nearly four hundred official and de facto districts remain opaque—an impenetrable mystery, but the news is assumed to be generally bad. These are important issues. Whether judgments are made from the eye of the terrorist storm in Kandahar or around a kitchen table in Lübeck, Germany, the global view of whether the UN, NATO, and scores of donors are succeeding or faltering in Afghanistan will be replete with consequence for Afghans, who have experienced the cold shoulder of neglect several times in their lifetimes. Afghans, of all people, know the cost of evaporat- ing international will. Arguably the worst period of their epic thirty-year con- flict came in 1992. A regime had fallen, and opportunity beckoned perhaps even more earnestly than in 2001. But the world was preoccupied with matters elsewhere. In the streets of Kabul, it is difficult not to be inspired by the determi- nation of ordinary Afghans to seize today’s opportunity. They are skepti- cal, even dismissive, of their government—yet demand its services with fer- vour. They criticize the international community’s performance but not its presence. They ask when, not whether, a regional approach will be taken to the security challenge facing Afghanistan—one studded by terrorist groups whose operatives pounce on Afghan life from camps and indoctri- nation centres beyond the reach of Afghan national security forces. It is easy to dismiss the successive bargains between Afghans and the world over the past seven years for their obvious limitations. The Bonn Agreement was not a peace deal. The Afghanistan Compact was not a blue- print for nation-building. The Afghanistan National Development Strat- egy (ANDS) is not a plan for rebuilding the country. But each one has delivered results. In the Istalif valley near Kabul, houses and orchards that were black with Taliban vengeance in 2001 are now green with new irrigation canals, bright with bulbs lit by micro-hydro. In the northwest, carpet weavers long exiled to Iran and Pakistan are returning to the trade in their tens of thousands. In Zabul province, farmers check the price of potatoes in Kabul and Kandahar over cell phones—now serving over 4.5 million Afghans. In Balkh province, the army and national civil order police are setting standards of discipline and patriotic service. In Garda Serai in Paktia province, the interprovincial highway being rebuilt through the home turf of Jalaluddin Haqqani is the centerpiece, tribal elders say, of “more reconstruction than under any previous king.” In the rich fields around Lashkar Gah, the high price of grain has pushed even