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Afghanistan: a Year After

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Afghanistan: a Year After INFORMATION, ANALYSIS AND ADVICE FOR THE PARLIAMENT INFORMATION AND RESEARCH SERVICES Current Issues Brief No. 7 2002–03 Afghanistan: a Year After DEPARTMENT OF THE PARLIAMENTARY LIBRARY ISSN 1440-2009 Copyright Commonwealth of Australia 2002 Except to the extent of the uses permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written consent of the Department of the Parliamentary Library, other than by Senators and Members of the Australian Parliament in the course of their official duties. This paper has been prepared for general distribution to Senators and Members of the Australian Parliament. While great care is taken to ensure that the paper is accurate and balanced, the paper is written using information publicly available at the time of production. The views expressed are those of the author and should not be attributed to the Information and Research Services (IRS). Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion. Readers are reminded that the paper is not an official parliamentary or Australian government document. IRS staff are available to discuss the paper's contents with Senators and Members and their staff but not with members of the public. Published by the Department of the Parliamentary Library, 2002 I NFORMATION AND R ESEARCH S ERVICES Current Issues Brief No. 7 2002–03 Afghanistan: a Year After Dr Ravi Tomar Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Group 10 December 2002 Acknowledgments The author would like to thank Associate Professor William Maley (The University of New South Wales), Dr June Verrier, Dr Frank Frost, Mr Alex Tewes for their comments on the draft of the brief. Thanks also to Mr Andrew Chin for setting up the links to various organisations that provide updates on Afghanistan. Enquiries Information and Research Services publications are available on the ParlInfo database. On the Internet the Department of the Parliamentary Library can be found at: http://www.aph.gov.au/library/ IRS Publications Office Telephone: (02) 6277 2778 Contents Introduction .....................................................1 Background .....................................................1 The Rebuilding Process.............................................2 The Ongoing Problems .............................................4 The Warlords..................................................4 Aid: Rehabilitation and Reconstruction ................................5 Australia's Role in Afghanistan........................................8 What Next?.....................................................8 Endnotes ......................................................10 Appendix A: Fact Sheet, 'Afghanistan Then and Now' .......................13 Appendix B: Aid to Afghanistan......................................15 Further Information and Updates on Afghanistan...........................17 64 66 68 70 72 74 Dushanbe C AFGHANISTAN UZBEKISTAN H I 38 N TAJIKISTAN A TURKMENISTAN Feyzabad- - - JOWZJAN Mazar-e- - - - KONDOZ Taloqan- - Sheberghan Sharif - - - BADAKHSHAN BALKH Kondoz TAKHAR 36 - - 36 Meymaneh Sar-e Pol Samangan Baghlan - - - SAMANGAN FARYAB - BAGHLAN Jammu SAR-E POL - - - Mahmud-e- NURESTAN - - - N BADGHIS Raqi stan - - - -ure Charikar N KONAR A Qal'eh-ye Now - - N N PARVAN KAPISA A - - R - M - Asadabad A Mehtarlam - - -- H I I Bamian - G - Chaghcharan - - AFGHANISTAN and Herat M Meydan Kabul A - - L A Shahr KABUL - - - F Jalalabad 34 B VARDAK - GHOWR - 34 O NANGARHAR HERAT LOWGAR Pol-e Islamabad- - - C 'Alam - I Gardiz Ghazni- Kashmir L - - - - PAKTIA KHOWST B ORUZGAN GHAZNI Khowst U P Sharan - E FARAH Tarin- Kowt - - R - PAKTIKA Farah - ZABOL 32 C 32 I PAKISTAN Qalat- M - - Lashkar Gah Kandahar INDIA A L S - I KANDAHAR Zaranj HELMAND - - National capital NIMRUZ Provincial capital National boundary 30 Provincial boundary 30 The boundaries and names shown and the designations used on this map do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations. 0 50 100 150 200 250 km Dotted line represents approximately the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir agreed upon by India and Pakistan. The final status of Jammu and Kashmir has not yet been 0 50 100 150 mi agreed upon by the parties. 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 Map No. 3958.1 UNITED NATIONS Department of Public Information November 2002 Cartographic Section Afghanistan: a Year After Introduction What has changed in Afghanistan? All our hopes are crushed. We are completely disappointed. Look: all the same warlords are in power as before. Source: Herat resident, 11 September, 2002, quoted in All Our Hopes are crushed; Violence and Repression in Western Afghanistan, Human Rights Watch, November 2002. On 13 November 2001 United Front (UF) troops entered Kabul after Taliban forces had fled the city. The speed of the collapse of the Taliban regime surprised many observers given the fact that the first US air strikes against targets in Afghanistan were launched in the first week of October and elements of US Special Forces as well as the CIA began operations in collaboration with the United Front and other anti-Taliban forces soon after. This brief does not aim to provide a detailed account of military operations by US and allied forces which still continue, albeit at a much reduced scale. Nor does it attempt to make a judgement on the war on terror. What it does provide is an assessment of the situation in Afghanistan a year after the event; the attempts by the various factions to unite and, with the help of the international community, form an interim administration in a country which has witnessed nothing but war and suppression for more than two decades. The international community has also rallied in its attempts to rebuild the country, realising belatedly the enormity of the problems facing the country—ranging from one of the major refugee crises in recent times to the challenges of building a basic infrastructure where none exists or is in ruins. Background Following the terrorist attacks in the United States in September 2001 which were linked to al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden, President Bush asked the Taliban regime in Afghanistan to hand over bin Laden. He had earlier been held responsible for masterminding the terrorist attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998 as well as the attack on USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000. Reacting to the Taliban's unwillingness to do so President Bush made it clear that he would make no distinction between the perpetrators of terrorism and those who harboured them. By the end of September the US had decided on military action and to support the United Front (UF)1 which had been fighting a prolonged but unsuccessful war to overthrow the Taliban regime. The CIA, backed up by small detachments of US Special Forces, soon 1 made contact with the UF and provided it with financial support to re-equip its forces. A combination of three factors: intense aerial bombing by the US air force, CIA funded bribing of frontline Taliban commanders to ensure their defection and attacks by the UF forces ensured the withdrawal of Taliban forces On 13 November, the UF entered the capital, Kabul.2 By then the UF forces had also taken the key centres of Mazar-e-Sharif, Taloqan, Bamiyan as well as the north-western city of Herat. By the end of the month, UF troops had captured all the major cities in the country including Kunduz and Kandahar and elements of the Taliban had begun to surrender or had fled to remote areas. In other words, the Taliban had lost control of the country. This process was accelerated by the fact that several thousand Pashtun soldier in southern Afghanistan had come over to the winning side to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Apart from the US, several Western countries including Australia, Canada, France, UK, Denmark, Norway and Germany played a significant role in the defeat of the Taliban.3 Mopping up operations still continue but the focus has shifted to the Afghan–Pakistan border where the Taliban have shifted, taking advantage of the porous border to conduct harassment operations. The Rebuilding Process On 3 October 2001, the UN Secretary-General appointed Lakhdar Brahimi as his Special Representative for Afghanistan with a mandate for ensuring the success of humanitarian and political endeavours of the United Nations in Afghanistan. After an intense round of negotiations, firstly with Afghanistan's neighbours, the US and Russia and, secondly, with a number of key Afghan groups, a UN-sponsored conference was convened in Bonn. On 5 December 2001, representatives of the four key anti-Taliban Afghan groups signed an accord on the composition of a 30 member interim council which would govern Afghanistan from 22 December for six months after which the former King Zahir Shah would convene an emergency Afghan Grand Assembly or Loya Jirga which would appoint a Transitional Authority. It also provided for the convening of a Constitutional Loya Jirga within eighteen months of the establishment of the Transitional Authority in order to adopt a new constitution for Afghanistan. A Constitutional Commission (with the help of the United Nations) would be established within two months of the commencement of the Transitional Authority and free and fair elections would be held within two years from the date of the convening
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