Page 3 of 5 SPEAKING
FREELY All along the watch
tower By Peter J Middlebrook
and Sharon M Miller
recognized by the
communities affected by the current crisis remains
a fundamental obstacle to further progress.
While it is clear that the Durand Line
Agreement did not have a 100-year sunset clause
built in, as many Afghan scholars have claimed,
and because the agreement remains a central piece
of legal jurisprudence in this case, it must
constitute the foundation
for
any future negotiation.
Furthermore, as
80-90% of the actual Durand Line essentially
follows clearly demarcated watershed and mountain
boundaries, the key issues is not demarcation
itself; it is lack of formal recognition in the
eyes of communities that live there that also
restricts the provision of government services and
security arrangements. Furthermore, in the absence
of a clearly demarcated border that is accepted
locally, it is impossible for the international
community to apportion responsibility for lack of
effective state control over insurgency,
terrorist, narcotics and smuggling; a situation
which must surely be unacceptable.
Unfortunately, as Pashtun nationalists in
Afghanistan still claim ownership of Pashtun
territories deep inside Pakistan, and because
Pakistan continues to use Afghanistan as part of
its foreign policy toward India as well as to
reassert its global strategic centrality toward
the US, the current situation seems as
irresolvable as ever.
Vulnerability to
India and to Afghan claims that seek its
dismemberment causes Pakistan to play off
relationships between Afghanistan, India, the US
and China. As a result of this inherent
vulnerability, at any given moment there is little
stomach within Pakistan for resolving border
management problems as this alone would remove a
key contestation that Pakistan needs to preserve
to strengthen its foreign policy.
It is
for this reason that the supposed breakthrough of
the current Tripartite Commission with regard to
border management and patrol responsibilities is
unlikely to do little more than buy a little extra
time. The "three-way deal" (Afghanistan, Pakistan
and NATO) will attempt to establish border
controls along the Durand Line [11] to control
illicit and illegal activities although in the
absence of a formal peace agreement between the
various parties the current process, whilst
important, will likely become one of many soon
forgotten exercises.
Furthermore, any
state-to-state agreement aimed at strengthening
border management arrangements that is not
supported locally would do little to address the
roots of the current problem; civil war. In
addition, to assist in creating bridges between
communities straddled across the border, an
American-backed plan calls for "Reconstruction
Opportunity Zones" to allow goods manufactured in
the border areas with input from communities on
both sides to be exempt from American import
tariffs. While a good idea in principle, whether
such zones will ever rival the value of the opium,
arms and smuggling economies appears unlikely,
certainly given the wholesale absence of an
enabling environment along the border area.
Current stabilization initiatives Given that the currently Durand Line between
Pakistan and Afghanistan is not recognized by the
majority of Pashtuns, the Baloch and communities
of the North West Frontier Province and the
Federally Administered Tribal Areas, [12]
achieving ISAF/NATO objectives must involve
political and security initiatives to be supported
in Pakistan too.
History highlights the
limitations that superpowers face in dealing with
an evasive door-to-door insurgency fought over
rough and unforgiving terrain; particularly where
boundaries are porous, poorly demarcated and
bitterly contested. Moreover, history also shows
that the presence of an invisible, well-organized,
highly mobile and experienced insurgent army can
erode the heart and mind of even the largest
superpower - as the Viet Cong and mujahideen
demonstrated in the late 1960s and 1970s,
respectively.
According to NATO's
Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, "This is
one of the most challenging tasks NATO has ever
taken on, but it is also a critical contribution
to international security." The alliance's aim is
to help establish the conditions in which
Afghanistan can enjoy - after decades of conflict,
destruction and poverty - a representative
government and self-sustaining peace and security.
As such, NATO's engagement in Afghanistan
includes (i) leadership of the UN-mandated ISAF,
[13] an international force of some 31,000 troops
that assists the Afghan authorities in extending
and exercising its authority and influence across
the country, creating the conditions for
stabilization and reconstruction (ii) a senior
civilian representative, responsible for advancing
the political-military aspects of the alliance's
commitment to the country, who works closely with
ISAF, coordinates with the Afghan government and
other international organizations, and maintains
contacts with neighboring countries and (iii) a
substantial program of cooperation with
Afghanistan, concentrating on defense reform,
defense institution-building and the military
aspects of security sector reform.
Furthermore, ISAF's primary role [14] is
to support the government of Afghanistan in
providing and maintaining a secure environment
(through provincial reconstruction teams - PRTs )
[15] in order to facilitate the rebuilding of
Afghanistan and in ensuring a safe and secure
environment that will be conducive to establishing
democratic structures, to facilitate the
reconstruction of the country and to assist in
expanding the influence of the central government.
It is also stated that ISAF will not depart until
this mission is accomplished.
In
establishing a legitimate and accountable
post-conflict state, international "peacekeeping"
forces seek to strengthen
civil-military-operations; to extend the "hearts
and minds" campaign whilst simultaneously
collecting intelligence information about
"insurgents" whose hearts and minds have yet to be
won over. Since September 11, 2001, civil-military
operations have arguably, as a consequence of the
threat assessment expounded by the US, taken on
greater significance than at any point in recent
history.
The anti-terrorist agenda is in
essence no longer a state-to-state agenda
(although it may have many of these
characteristics), but rather a state-to-person
agenda, where no door remains beyond the purview
of the global order. Whilst certainly not a
panacea, civil military operations can serve to
increase the penetration of "forward foreign
policy" on the ground; often delivering gains at
the grassroots level that could not have been
forged through the barrel of a gun alone.
Many of the lessons emerging from
Afghanistan, in particular those from the PRTs,
have of course wider application for foreign
