Barriers on recovery’s road

A New interim administration is to come into being in Kabul on December 22, but Hamid Karzai, a sort of prime minister of this interim arrangement, was unable to keep his appointments in Kabul earlier this week because he was busy sorting out Kandahar.

It is remarkable how nimble and free of bureaucratic hassles, India’s early participation in the revival of Afghanistan has been. It was imaginative of the government to have appointed Satinder Lambah as special envoy to Afghanistan. He has worked in Kabul and has been high commissioner to Islamabad, as well as ambassador to Moscow and Berlin during periods when Afghanistan was either in focus or on simmer.

On Wednesday, Karzai could not keep his rendezvous with Kabul when Lambah arrived with a plane load of doctors and medicines and, of course, the latest hits from Bollywood. Lambah’s plane landed at the Bagram airbase, north of Kabul, protected by British troops at present.

The important question, of course, is that even as a new administration gears up to take charge, there is no clarity yet as to who will provide security to the administration. Will it be a Northern Alliance security forces, UN peacekeepers, or a UN-mandated force?

It will come across as an odd, skewed sort of arrangement if an Afghan administration takes oath in Kabul, even as the US Central Command directs the battle in Kandahar and Tora Bora. Would it not have been neater if the American forces and Northern Alliance troops had cleaned up the pockets of resistance that remain before the swearing in at Kabul? Who knows, that may be the way things turn out even now.

Since the Bonn agreement describes the new dispensation as an interim administration for six months only, there has not been too much criticism of the fact that all Afghan groups have not been adequately represented. The same level of temporary acceptance will follow if the Northern Alliance were to provide security to the interim administration.

But, in that event, the participation of world statesmen at the opening will not be possible because they require rather more security than the Northern Alliance can possibly provide. Moreover, it will be that much more difficult to demote or sideline these Afghan troops, who fought a war after all, after the six month period is over or even during it.

The UN is not in a position to provide peacekeeping forces. The word at the UN was that it would be a UN-mandated force and possibly have a small presence of soldiers from Muslim countries like Turkey and Jordan. What is under active consideration of the UN Security Council is described as a National Security Assistance Force. The British have agreed to lead such a Force and the Americans have agreed to provide technical assistance.

It is, however, yet to be sorted out as to what will be the precise relationship of this Force with the US Central Command supervising the war in Afghanistan. Will this Force provide security to Kabul only? Or will it to be the interim security Force in and around all the major cities and supply routes for humanitarian aid?

Eventually, the process towards elections may bear some resemblance to what I call the Kosovo model. Let us briefly clarify the procedures agreed upon at Bonn. The 30-member interim administration is under the overarching umbrella of an interim Authority. Under this Authority will also be a Special Independent Commission for the convening, within six months, of the emergency Loya Jirga (an assembly of tribal elders), and the setting up of a Supreme Court.

The Loya Jirga will decide on a Transitional Authority, including a broad based, transitional government with a lifespan of two years. Within two years of the convening of the emergency Loya Jirga, elections will have to be held. Within 18 months of the Transitional Authority, a Constitutional Loya Jirga will be held to evolve a new constitution to replace the 1964 constitution, under which Afghanistan will be governed in the interim.

I mention the Kosovo model for the following reasons: after 72 days of the bombardment of former Yugoslavia, a Kosovo force was created under the rubric of NATO. Americans, British, Germans, Italians and a host of others, along with heavy armour, are protecting various sectors of Kosovo. As far as Afghanistan is concerned, this part of the road map has been delineated in Bonn and Afghans have been given a heavy responsibilities. The National Security Assistance Force will do for Afghanistan what NATO did in Kosovo.

But when? After December 22? The UN secretary could take recourse to the Standby High Readiness Brigade, a European rapid deployment force, which was rushed to secure the peace between Erithrea and Ethiopia. But the ball is in the court of either the Security Council or the P5, which is outside the UN’s ambit. The UN will simply endorse what it decides.

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