Afghanistan: Testing Time for Governance

APRATIM MUKARJI

Ever since December 2001, when the interim administration led by Hamid Karzai was set up

under the Bonn Agreement, the job of governing the post-Taleban Afghanistan has surely been

one of the toughest tasks in the 21st century. Had the Taleban been completely annihilated at

the time, many of the problems would not have surfaced. But, the readily available hospitable

terrain of Pakistan ensured that the Taleban (themselves a creation of that country) would be

able to regroup and attack the liberated Afghanistan once again. And within a mere two years

after being driven out of the country, this became a reality despite the massive presence of

highly-resourced international troops, billions of dollars worth of military equipment, and

billions more being regularly pumped into the enormous task of rebuilding the shattered

country.

Fourteen years since the defeat of the Taleban and ten months since the departure of the

U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF)---only about 13,000 foreign

troops remain in the country and presently scheduled to leave by December 2016--- the

government in Afghanistan is still primarily engaged in fighting the insurgents. The latter, just

emerging out of a fierce power struggle following the much delayed public acknowledgement

of the 2-year-old demise of its chief Mullah Omar, is proving to be particularly belligerent

during the spring offensive this year and before the onset of the cruel Afghan winter.

The post-Taleban Afghanistan’s second directly elected President Ashraf Ghani had just

marked the completion of his first year in office--- which was fated by its very raison d’etre to

be as eventful as imaginable--- when the Taleban scored a major and highly embarrassing

victory against the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). On September 28,2015, they laid

seize to the prosperous and third largest city, Kunduz--- also the first provincial capital to fall

since 2001--- and seemingly completed their control in the next two days. All news reports and

commentaries predicted a prolonged dig-in by the insurgents since, as details soon emerged,

the spectacular performance by the Taleban had been preceded by a sustained campaign

launched in April (see The Hard Game of Bargaining in Afghanistan ,Geopolitics,Vol.VI,Issue

2,July 2015).

In early 2015, the insurgents had first secured the outlying districts and planted

landmines extensively covering them with the intention of blocking and delaying the

deployment of government troops if and when they would come.It was on April 24 that the

Taleban first encroached upon the outskirts of Kunduz and took control of Gortepa, a large area

comprising about fifty villages extending on one end from one or two kilometres away from the

city centre to fifteen km. to the north-west on the other end. This area eventually proved to be

the launching pad for one of the prongs of the massive attack on the Kundux city on September

28. This area connects with two districts which the Taleban had brought under their control

since the July-end. The government forces, responding to the April offensive, did not clear

Gortepa or its surrounding areas at the time and only set up a base on the road to Gortepa in

order to stop the insurgents from overrunning the Kunduz city. Ultimately, however, the

Taleban succeeded in taking control of the city at the September-end.

The Taleban also launched a media blitzkrieg to indicate that they were confident about

achieving their goal of taking over the Kunduz city. Throughout September 28 and 29 the

residents were warned not to venture out of their homes and the fighters were instructed over

the social media to pay attention to the hospitals and not to maltreat captured government

troops (not surprisingly, this dictum was observed more in breach than in compliance). Besides,

right from September 20, the social media were used to proclaim an upcoming “surprise Eid

gift”, which turned out to be the capture of the city. On the top of it, the meticulous

preparedness of the Taleban in the Kunduz operation also got some kind of governmental

acknowledgement when the acting Defence Minister Masum Stanekzai described at a press

conference on September 29 how the militants had sneaked into the city disguised as civilians

and began to settle down there during the Eid holidays of September 24-26.

However, within three days of the stunning Taleban victory, government troops retook

the city centre following a fierce street-to-street fight on October 1.Weeding out the remnants

of the insurgents hiding in residential quarters continued after government properties were

quickly cleared of them. While the relatively quick retaking of the city appeared to be

impressive, the Taleban claimed that it was part of their tactic to vacate the city to allow enemy

troops to enter so that they could be encircled for further action.

The battle for Kunduz represents several major developments in the Afghanistan war.

Analysts perceive this as the beginning of urban warfare by the Taleban, restricted for so many

years to remote mountainous regions where targets could be picked up with much less risk.

This trend had also necessitated the ISAF to respond in kind and in the early years of

resumption of insurgent attacks they concentrated on securing remote and less populated

areas. The Taleban used to mount mainly guerrilla and suicidal attacks in cities and used to melt

away after delivering shock assaults. The Kunduz battle, therefore, indicates that the insurgents

now being led by Mullah Omar’s controversial successor Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour

feel that they are on surer grounds than before, particularly since government troops would be

fighting them mainly on their own strength and without substantive foreign assistance.

It is instructive to note that months before the Kunduz attack, the Taleban had

distributed a video to indicate that they were about to launch a new tactic of fighting, urban

warfare. The video featured scenes of attacks in the Kabul, Gardez and Khost cities and

provided details of weapons and tools supposedly effective in such fighting. (Afghanistan

Analysts Network, The Fall of Kunduz: What does it tell us about the strength of the post-Omar

Taleban?, September 30,2015)

Bereft of the charisma surrounding his predecessor Mullah Omar, Mullah Mansour

appears to be following a strategy to establish an unassailable authority over the Taleban. In his

first public statement in July this year, he reaffirmed to his commanders that the jihad would

continue while almost casually mentioning the continuation or revival of a political process and

debunking any talk of reviving negotiations with the enemy. However, his brief reference---

“Regarding negotiations, we will be, according to the circumstances, following a policy which is

in line with the principles of Sharia, aspirations of jihad and national interests”---has been seen

as a cautious approach while giving out nothing. It would not be wrong to treat this statement

as more of a diplomatic gesture than the usual tough uttering of the head of a fearsome

insurgent group. Besides, the several major assaults mounted this year and the performance in

Kunduz may lead to a toughening of posture by the Taleban. “The Taleban and their chief would

now adopt a more robust stance in the negotiations---if they are resumed any time soon for a

settlement to the conflict. For the moment, however, the chances of the talks resuming and a

consensus on the roadmap to a resolution of the conflict are remote,” writes former Afghan

ambassador to Pakistan and ex-Interior Secretary Rustam Shah Mohmand. (Stemming the

ripples from Kunduz, The Hindu,October 8,2015)

It is felt that as 2015 approaches its end and the next year is scheduled to witness further

reduction in the already shrivelled presence of foreign military and as the campaign so far has

proved to be worthwhile, the Taleban are not under any pressure to resume peace negotiations

with the government but at the same time it feels that it is wise to leave a space for talks if and

when a move in that direction would be found expeditious to make.

That the ANSF continue to badly need foreign assistance was also established during the

Kunduz battle. American planes and ground troops were deployed to help government soldiers

when the insurgents proved to be too strong to fight. But, since only a handful of American

troops are now left in the country, the insurgents appear to consider this a major source of

weakness for the government and are likely to further probe and exploit it. Weather permitting,

therefore, the Taleban are expected to mount further similarly spectacular attacks on urban

and rural areas, at least until the severe Afghan winter sets in.

In the wake of the punishing assault on the Kunduz city (the city centre of which was

liberated by government forces within a week) heavy fighting continued to rage around, forcing

the attention of both the government and the international community to certain vital

elements of the unfolding situation.

The most obvious of these elements is that the ANSF cannot fight the resurgent Taleban

on their own and urgently require continuing foreign assistance. Already, calls have been made

in responsible political and government circles in Washington that American troops and military

assistance should be expanded in Afghanistan (a decision that President Barak Obama would

very much like to leave for his successor to take). Kabul, on its own, is desperately looking for

similar assistance from neighbouring countries. President Ashraf Ghani has spoken on several

occasions during the current year about the urgent need of forging a regional cooperation and

coordination mechanism to help his country to continue the reconstruction and development

programmes.

India was approached quite a few times during Hamid Karzai’s presidency. However,

New Delhi continues to be cautious about any military involvement in the country and refrains

from getting into an unchartered territory, apart from supplying a few helicopters. The supply

of the helicopters has so far evoked mild skepticism from Kabul with Afghans wondering if this

displays a surprising mismatch between India’s capabilities and Afghanistan’s requirements.

Diplomatically too, New Delhi-Kabul relations are passing through uneasy times. This was amply

reflected when towards the end of August the Narendra Modi government literally cold-

shouldered the Ashraf Ghani government’s invitation to revive the moribund Strategic

Partnership Agreement, signed way back in 2011. This was followed by the downgrading of the

Indian participation in the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan held in

early September. All the other regional governments were represented at the senior ministerial

level while India was represented by an official. The Indian peevishness was apparently caused

by the clearly ill-advised Afghan tilt towards Pakistan after Ghani became President. It is quite

another matter that despite being a major participant in Afghanistan’s reconstruction and

development programmes (with a $ 2.3 billion-strong commitment), New Delhi has chosen to

be a bystander in military and strategic aspects.

However, the Taleban assault in the Kunduz province and on the city and their ability to

wage a prolonged battle in urban built-up areas in September-October laid bare the major

chinks in the security environment of Afghanistan. The First Vice President Abdul Rashid

Dostum, the Uzbek warlord and commander of a powerful militia, sought military assistance

from Russia in October after his forays into several Central Asian republics to gather military

support proved to be unproductive. This display of the reluctance of the Central Asian Republics

(CARs) to get militarily involved in their southern neighbour’s war came about despite the fact

that the Kunduz city lies sixty miles south of the Oxus river (the bridge over which marks the

Afghanistan-Tajikistan border).The takeover of Kunduz by the Taleban---however temporary---

literally meant prospective danger for the CARs. It should be noted that the Taleban, in their

earlier avatar attempted several times to make forays into Tajikistan but they were repulsed

every time by the Northern Alliance led by the legendary Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.

Another major element in the current thinking in Afghanistan, especially among the

people, which came to be highlighted during the battle for Kunduz is that foreign military

assistance on a substantial scale has become imperative in the aftermath of the impressive

Taleban show of strength. Several eyewitness accounts made available during the fight in

Kunduz show that civilians were fully expecting government forces to beat the insurgents back

in a convincing manner within a short span of time but, to their disappointment, this did not

happen, and instead the Taleban were able to dig in and fight back for a relatively prolonged

period. The people’s faith in the capabilities of the ANSF had initially led them to stay back in

the city even when life was at peril and they began to flee only when they realized that Taleban

were proving to be stronger than government forces and that further stay had become plainly

impossible.

The episode over the bombing of the Medecins Sans Frontie`rers (MSF) hospital in the

Kunduz city on October 2 by American warplanes during the battle also exposed the myriad

inadequacies in the offensive against the insurgents. Interestingly, the whole world including

the United Nations condemned the bombing which had continued despite the MSF’s real-time

and repeated (four times within one hour) telephone calls to both Kabul and Washington to

stop it. Eventually, after scores of patients (some while being operated) and doctors, nurses and

paramedical staff had been killed and the only medical centre in the region had been reduced

to ruins that the U.S. President Barak Obama belatedly apologized for the “mistake” and

ordered a “transparent” inquiry (the MSF on their part has insisted on an independent probe).

However, President Ghani clearly stopped short of an outright condemnation of the U.S.

bombing. While expressing his “deep sorrow”, he advised that Afghan and foreign forces “must

put in serious efforts not to target public places in military operations.” The Afghan army,

however, continued to claim that at least 12 insurgents were using the hospital as a safe haven

and were shooting at the U.S. planes and government troops from there. It must be recorded

that the MSF denied at the highest level this very charge but the Afghan army and the U.S.

force did not obviously lend any credence to the denial. In the event, of the 22 persons killed at

the hospital 12 were doctors and nurses, and days after the hospital authorities continued to

report that a fairly large number of their medical and paramedical staff were missing.

Why did President Ghani decide not to condemn outright the U.S. bombing of the MSF

hospital? The self-evident explanation is that he just could not afford to do so knowing only too

well that it was the Americans he would have to turn to for help every time there was an

emergency situation. His predecessor Hamid Karzai also used to find himself in similar

situations throughout his presidency. While, unlike his successor, he was prolific in his often

blunt condemnations of the innumerable blunders the Americans in particular and the NATO

otherwise used to make while fighting the Taleban, it was eventually the international military

which came to the rescue of the country.

The Americans have long been hated in Afghanistan but it may astonish some to recall

that in the immediate aftermath of the December 2001 defeat of the Taleban, they were the

most popular nation in the country followed by the Indians. While India remains a genuinely

popular country with the Afghans, the Americans are not, thanks to the huge mistakes

committed repeatedly over the years.

Part of the U.S.’s problems with perceptions abroad stems from its doubtful records of

training and leading foreign military. “With alarming frequency in recent years,” says a news

report in the New York Times, “thousands of U.S.-trained security forces in West Asia, North

Africa and South Asia have collapsed, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of

billions spent by the United States on foreign military programmes as well as a central tenet of

the Obama administration’s approach to combating insurgencies.” ( United States’ billions fail

to sustain forces, Oct. 05,2015)

Following the devastating bombardment of the MSF hospital in the Kunduz city, all the

other humanitarian organizations working there including the United Nations-affiliated bodies

and international and national private organizations left the city in quick succession. This

situation left a large number of the wounded and sick persons suddenly devoid of medical care.

But this was only one side of the situation not just in the city but in its surrounding

areas as well. Since September 24, when the Taleban had already surrounded the city, the

supply of all essential commodities including medicine and food articles, had stopped and

residents were facing an imminent famine-like situation. All Kunduz-based media outlets

including a fair number of newspapers, tv and radio stations had stopped functioning and their

professionals had fled the city. By all accounts, the third largest city and a prosperous and

thriving one at that,lay devastated in a matter of days.

However, the fall of the Kunduz province (even though temporary but of high

symbolical and political significance), among all the 34 provinces, deserves more than passing

attention because President Ghani’s strategy was to make this province one of the most secure

provinces in the country, and the spectacular performance of the Taleban showed that the

government had failed badly in its self-declared mission. Today, the province also faithfully

reflects all the wrong things that have been happening in Afghanistan.

As in Kunduz so in almost all the other provinces the very fundamental job of setting

up local governments has been proving to be an almost intractable one. The Kunduz governor

Mohammad Omar Safi is a Pashtun while the police chief is a Tajik and the two are reported to

be busy fighting each other. On the positive side, Safi is a professional security expert having

been educated in the University of Leicester and having worked in the United Nations

Department of Safety and Security and should, therefore, be considered an appropriate choice

for the office. But he also owns a Kabul-based security agency and inducted some of his

employees into the gubernatorial entourage. The deputy governor is a mujahed , and no love

is lost between the two. Since President Ghani’s order was to turn the province into one of the

country’s most secure regions in a three-week deadline, all other important issues like

healthcare, education, agriculture and reconstruction requiring urgent attention were simply

ignored. The provincial government raised these issues with the President but Kabul’s attention

remained restricted to the security question.

What transpired in reality was a complete negation of what President Ghani sought

to achieve. A study of the situation in Kunduz in June 2015 quotes the provincial council chief

Yusuf Ayubi saying that the three-week deadline was “a failed assessment” and that while the

Taleban controlled 40 per cent of the province in December 2014, they were controlling 65 per

cent of its territory six months later. The study concludes that “based on interviews with people

in Kunduz and Kabul, it is fair to say that poor governance---ill-timing, poor choice of leaders,

lack of coordination and communication, and infighting---has contributed , at least to some

extent, to the current state of insecurity and (lack of) welfare of the people.” (Bethany Matta,

The Failed Pilot Test: Kunduz’ local governance crisis, Afghanistan Analysts Network, June 5,

2015)

Where do all these leave the governance of Afghanistan? Is the security environment

so incapacitated that the government does not function any more? Far from such an alarmist

picture, Afghanistan continues to make its painful progress in fits and starts. A number of truly

impressive gains have been made in fields such as civil society; women’s rights, education and

careers; and media freedoms. However, the obstacles to progress are truly formidable and start

at the very core of governance---the government in Kabul and in the provinces. The difficult

situation has been compounded by traditional prejudices and rivalries still dictating terms to

the nascent modern democratic party system and state institutions presently evolving in the

post-Taleban Afghanistan.

The overall picture of governance that Afghanistan offers today is dismal, to say the

least. The government continues (as did its predecessor) to be rife with corruption; its tasks

rendered many times more difficult by ethnic and political tensions which originate from the

historical past. What the modern times have brought about are introductions to state-building

institutions, wherewithal of training the people in running those institutions, in particular in

establishing and manning educational, health care and trade and industrial institutions. The

task of reconstructing and developing Afghanistan in effect implies building up the country from

the very scratch, so devastating have been the consequences of passing through a 22-year-long

period of intensive warfare, first against the Soviet occupation (which triggered the largest

exodus of political refugees to neighbouring countries in the 20th century), then among the

mujahideen groups, and lastly against the occupying Taleban.

The extent of the incomplete transition to modernity is well reflected in the fact

that despite the experience of holding three presidential elections in the post-Taleban period,

the instances of fraud and corruption in the electoral system abound and betray Afghanistan’s

inability to break out of ethnic, political and historical factionalism and prejudices even if they

hold the country back from progressing.

An additional feature in the present government is the power-sharing formula

which was patched up after many months of frustrating bargaining. However, the power-

sharing arrangement made between President Ashraf Ghani and the Chief Executive Officer

(CEO) Dr. Abdullah Abdullah--- which was at best a last desperate means of starting the

government to work--- has in reality led to a kind of paralysis in the central government. While

examples abound, we will examine the following: As President Ghani completed his first year in

office in September this year, about 25 per cent of the highest government functionaries such

as provincial governors, 9 out of the 34, were yet to be chosen and appointed. One study found

that the central government was apparently unable to complete the process of appointing

governors “more than one at a time” instead of choosing and appointing all the remaining

governors at one go, which should be the usual norm especially when such a long period of

time had already passed since the government was formed in Kabul.

It was also found that the unity government---as the power-sharing government is

called---and particularly the President’s faction, is attempting to “juvenate” sub-national

governance (defined by the Sub-national Governance Policy of 2010). The term “juvenate” is

explained by the fact that some of the newly appointed governors are “modern skilled

persons”, educated, mostly youngish and having worked with international non-governmental

organizations and also owing allegiance to political parties or factions, and lacking “fighting

experiences” which is widely considered as the most important qualification for the job.

Besides, the ethnic, historical and political realities demand that a person is considered

qualified when he belongs to the same ethnic group that dominates a particular province. It

would be simply impractical to appoint a Tajik as the governor of a province dominated by

Pashtuns or a Pashtun as the governor of Tajik-dominated province. The crucial appointments

are also being held up by an obvious lack of trust and coordination between the President’s and

the CEO’s sides. Both are complaining about each other’s obstructionist approach resulting in

delaying decisions.

Yet another factor contributing to the slow build-up of provincial governance is the fact

that the majority of these governors have come into office coinciding with a resurgent Taleban

offensive, giving them virtually no time to settle themselves down in their new jobs, find their

way in governance, build up their own teams of officers and counter the offensive and run the

provinces as well. Their difficulties are compounded by the fact that their roles are not defined

well and their administrative powers are very few (for example, they can neither hire nor fire

their staff and cannot sign contracts on their own; everything is centralized and has to be

referred to and sanctioned by the respective ministries in the central government.

Another example of the obstructions put before governance is that it took nearly eight

months---from September 2014 to May 2015---to draw the agreed list of provinces to be

divided between the President and the CEO indicating their respective spheres of influence in

choosing the governor for a particular province. (Afghanistan Analysts Network, Young

Technocrats Taking Over: Who are the new Afghan governors and what can they achieve? ,

September 18, 2015)

All these problems besetting governance in Afghanistan are basically caused by the

ongoing fight for predominance between the traditional fountainheads of power, such as

ethnic, religious and clan affiliations, and the new manifestations of power, such as, official

positions sanctified by the Constitution. For example, governmental authority is constrained not

only by the power-sharing arrangement but also by the exertion of influence by the traditional

informal power-sharing structure consisting of regional and ethnic leaders. Faction leaders

often maintain militias or groups of armed fighters who regularly exercise arbitrary

administration of justice and commit human rights abuses bypassing the constitutional justice

and punishment system. (Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government

Performance, Congressional Research Service, January 12, 2015) As is well-known, after being

appointed to the posts of governor, police chief and provincial council head and other jobs, the

top echelons of provincial administration have first devoted their time and energy to establish

their control over local militias before attending to matters of governance. In fact, if insurgency

has come back to Afghanistan with a bang, equally true is the hold that armed private armies

have managed to enjoy over security matters despite the building-up of the vast ANSF. First

Vice-President Dostum, for example, continues to flaunt his famed and feared militia despite

being an important government functionary for many years. He is certainly not the only such

high government functionary belonging to this category.

However, as is often the experience in seeking to establish democracy in a country with

no or little relevant experience, there are frequent clashes of interest between the executive

and constitutional institutions such as the judiciary and in particular the Afghanistan

Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Invariably, it is the executive which wins in

such confrontations and each such win literally pushes the country one step backward from

achieving good governance. As it is,the IHRC is widely perceived as not being independent at all

of the government despite its nomenclature; the United Nations Human Rights Commission has

called for the removal of some of its members appointed by the Karzai government for their

dubious records but they continue in their roles under the Ghani dispensation.

However, in a powerful signal of how the Afghan society is changing for the better, the

failure of the AIHRC to play its rightful role has been compensated to some extent by the

painstaking work of independent human rights watch bodies formed and run by plucky

Afghans themselves. At the same time, progress in protecting human rights in a country which

is fighting the centuries-old cumulative burden of feudalism, extreme poverty, a severe lack of

modern education, and general backwardness is being further thwarted by a very strong and

well-organized religious orthodoxy. The National Ulema Council is ever alert to promote and

practise orthodox Islam though the Constitution does not leave any room for bringing in the

Sharia. Sections of the National Ulema Council, however, try to promote the case for the

introduction of the Sharia from time to time. Religious fervour thus remains a very potent break

on achieving good governance in the country.

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The author is a former Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.

In a sense, Afghanistan has been lucky in getting President Ghani at the helm of affairs

because his professional expertise lies in the field of advising and guiding the build-up of state

institutions. He should, therefore, succeed in the most crucial job