Afghanistan & Statebuilding

The Role of International Actors in Conflict Transformation: What is the most appropriate role for international actors in conflict transformation? Afghanistan & Statebuilding.

International statebuilding in Afghanistan has taken a liberal peace paradigm, which has introduced a number of counterintuitive elements that have halted the progression of peace in Afghanistan. International actors have introduced institutions on a consociationalist model while utilising warlord power structures to attain security first in statebuilding; albeit by sacrificing long-term stability and entrenching factional divides. International actors have primarily undertaken a top-down interventionist approach to Afghan statebuilding, which has ruptured Afghan civil society while subverting already established cultural norms. This has resulted in a weak, corrupt and divided Afghan government, which is increasingly in international debt due to its security governance and ongoing violent conflict against the Taliban. Therefore this study shall assess how international actors have been counterintuitive to sustainable peace through statebuilding interventions, and recommend international actors should act in a facilitator role supporting endogenous activity through bottom-up peacebuilding to create a stable state and society within Afghanistan.

A conceptual distinction must be made between ‘peacebuilding’, which seeks to transform societal relationships to halt the progression of violence, and ‘statebuilding’ which seeks to develop effective governmental institutions, based on law and general consent (Haider & Strachan, 2014). However, peacebuilding has generally been implemented using a top-down method which is essentially indistinguishable from statebuilding in practice (Balthasar, 2017). The United Nations (UN, 2000), has defined peacebuilding as ‘strengthening national capacities at all levels for conflict management, and to lay the foundations for sustainable peace and development’. The execution of top-down peacebuilding has taken on a neo-liberal agenda, which has been about imposing a ‘market economy’ and a process of ‘democratisation’; which will be referred to as ‘liberal peacebuilding’ (Balthasar, 2017; Paris, 2010). The main components of liberal peacebuilding often differ, yet have consistently entailed ‘strong law and order governance, privatisation, democracy promotion, economic reform and the promotion of human rights’ (Lemay-Hébert, 2013, p.242). Liberal peacebuilding and statebuilding in Afghanistan, have converged in application, as through the development of strong central government and representative institutions, statebuilding has strived for the ‘democratisation’ and ‘free-market economy’ of the liberal peace model. Roland Paris (2010, pp.338-339), clarifies the foremost position of this neo-liberal ideology, in the international community's belief that a ‘democracy’ and ‘free-market economy’ are essential elements for a sustainable transition from war to peace. Thus international peacebuilding initiatives in Afghanistan, have been about creating a liberal peace through statebuilding initiatives, which has focused on social engineering in striving for the foundations of a stable society (Lemay-Hébert, 2013).

The Brahimi report 2000, on ‘integrated missions’ would advise in accordance to peacebuilding the ‘reassembling the foundations of peace… to achieve peaceful foundations which are more than just the absence of war’ (UN, 2000). The invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, provided the UN with a case to implement the recommendations of the Brahimi Report (Rubin, 2008). However, there is a problem with the application of international peacebuilding initiatives, which has constituted an obstacle for peace-building without statebuilding. This claim is supported further by the Brahimi reports recognition of the ‘rivalries, divisions and fragmentation of authority of the UN system and international community’ (Rubin, 2008, p.171). Notably this fragmentation is mirrored by the hybridity of positions that international actors have utilised in Afghanistan (Jarstad & Olsson, p.108). When applied institutionally this has resulted in a weak government with systemic corruption and an inability to maintain or even attain stability in certain parts of the country; with the Taliban now controlling around 50% of national territory (Mohan, 2018).  Therefore, while the two conceptual approaches to a stable state and society seemingly complement each other they have had a counterintuitive effect in practice.

The Bonn Agreement in 2001, initiated Afghanistan’s ‘post-conflict’ statebuilding process, however Afghanistan has been in perpetual violent conflict since the Soviet invasion of 1979 (ISSAT, 2015). Attempts to rebuild the Afghan state, with an ongoing conflict both violent and societal, has illustrated the deficiencies of international actors to create ‘positive peace’, without ‘tension, violence and injustice’ (Galtung, 1996, pp.2-3). The Bonn Agreement laid the foundations for United States (US) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) led statebuilding and therefore provided the framework for the 2004 constitution (Bhatia, 2005). It has created centralised government institutions and failed to account for Afghanistan’s heterogeneous society and traditionally networked governance based on kinship (Aitken, 2007). Subsequently, consociational power-sharing institutions were imposed entrenching ethnic elites in governance, resulting in an inherently unstable Afghan government (McCulloch, 2014). There is now ethnically balanced cabinets and the entrenchment of ethnic conflict within Afghanistan’s governmental institutions (McCulloch, 2014). Rupert Taylor (2009, cited in McCulloch, 2014, pp.505-506) characterises Afghanistan’s consociation as ‘being imposed through internationally driven intervention’. International statebuilding initiatives, have ‘increasingly ethnicised Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion’ (Simonsen, 2004, cited in Aitken, 2007, p.487). This can be attributed to international communities understanding of Afghanistan as an ‘ethnically divided tribal war-torn state’ (Rubin, 2008, p.171). Ethno-centric warlords have been perceived as the political elite, this misinterpretation of Afghan society has resulted in the ‘institutionalisation of ethnic divisions driven by policies pursued through international interventions and peace processes’ (Aitken, 2007). International actors failed to acknowledge  that Afghan society was based on networks of local solidarity, uninterested in ethno-territoriality, but in maintaining the central political balance, thus traditional civil society has been disrupted by the consociational institutions.  

Ethnicity has been viewed as fixed ignoring the traditional basic unit of identity, the ‘qawn’, defined as any ‘segment of society bound by solidarity, may be based on village, clan, family, and so on’ (Roy, 1995, cited in Aitken, 2007, p.250). International actors have entrenched societal conflict by understanding Afghan society as an ethnic conflict, and imposing consociational institutions which have entrenched that perspective; in addition to international interventions in Afghanistan maintaining the ‘warlord patronage politics’ (Mukhopadhyay, 2009). The support of ‘former’ warlords of the Northern Alliance (NA), has been vital to US and NATO’s war against the Taliban, resulting in many members of the NA taking cabinet positions. Warlords have been institutionalised into political society through the Bonn agreement, resulting in the increased salience of ethnicity and regional identity; which has increasingly taken an ethno-territorial demeanour belonging to Tadjik, Uzbek, Pashtun, Turkmen, Baluchi, Hazara, Aimak, Nurustani, Kygyz and Pamiri, among others (CIA, 2018; ISSAT, 2015). The dominant identities of Pashtun (38%) and Tadjik (25%), are reflected in cabinet positions; token positions have been given to Hazars (19%) and Uzbeks (12%) (ISSAT, 2015; McCullogh, 2014). Therefore, non-dominant minorities are marginalised politically and institutionally which has increased secessionist claims throughout Afghanistan (Sharma, 2017, p.19). Thus international actors have entrenched ethno-territorial and factional divides through the imposition of consociational power-sharing. These dynamics have been apparent in Afghanistan, with the conflictual relationship between President Karzai and warlord-turned-governor Atta Mohammed Noor (Jarstad & Olsson, 2012, p.110). Highlighting how international engagement with the warlord patronage system has transferred this system into local state power structures, which are subsequently often run by ‘former’ warlords; that are not always aligned with the central state and instead forward their own interests (Mukhopadhyay, 2014).

These warlord elites would form the modern civil society of Afghanistan, the loya jirga process, which was designed to marginalise the rule of warlords, has instead entrenched and legitimated their hold on power (Mukhopadhyay, 2014; Jarstad & Olsson, 2012; Bhatia, 2005). Consequently, illicit activities such as the international trafficking of drugs has been entrenched in the Afghan economy. Opium production in 2017, provided about 400,000 jobs in Afghanistan, more than the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) (Greenberg, 2017); furthermore ‘criminal activity accounted for 40% of the Afghan economy’ (Rubin, 2008, p.179). It’s apparent that a war economy has essentially been entrenched due to international engagement with regional warlords and the warlord patronage system; which has converged with the consociational model of governance. Additionally, international development networks which often utilise regional intermediaries and local proxies, endanger central government power consolidation by supporting regional power competitors (Bhatia, 2005). Notably, this has also hindered bottom-up peacebuilding as emerging social movements that would otherwise facilitate grassroots political reconciliation, have been co-opted by warlords (Bhatia, 2005, p.208). International actors have determined the legitimacy of local ownership by formal recognition, yet this has focused on power structures legitimised by the Bonn Agreement, which are mainly comprised of warlords belonging to the NA; which induce an ethno-territorial demeanour. 

Internationally led statebuilding is based on three dimensions: an economic dimension, a political dimension, and a security dimension (Rubin, 2008). However international actors have prioritised security, thus in establishing security as the priority and perceiving power structures through warlords, local ownership was awarded to warlord patronage politics (Mukhopadhyay, 2014). Prioritising security has resulted in inefficient governance and polarised society through ethnicised politics, economic development is also stagnant as ‘economic success is fundamentally dependent on order and stability’ (Bhatia, 2005, p.208). Institutionalising warlords into ‘post-conflict’ governance allowed for the achievement of short-term security goals yet lacked long-term stability plans, leading to the entrenchment of a war economy and ethnicised politics. Thus there are inherent limits to international policies which were based on the presumed dominant ‘local warlord culture’, instead of the qawm system. Indeed, Shahrbanou Tadjbakhsh (2011, cited in Lemay-Hébert, 2013, p.246) conveys has created a ‘problematic hierarchical, non-secular and inequitable governance’. While the traditional system of qawm, which has stood as the main legitimate source for the provision of local security, justice, rights and welfare, as well as identity has been snubbed; further supporting that statebuilding in Afghanistan has been a top-down rather than a bottom-up process.

Through a post-colonial critique, liberal peacebuilding initiatives have been to further neo-colonial interests. Statebuilding in Afghanistan has been forged by the ‘Global North’ which elevates anxieties for the formers future within global capitalist system (Rupesinghe, et al., 2016). This fast-track liberal democratisation was utilised as part of US and NATO led statebuilding operations. Thus US and NATO led statebuilding operations have furthered neo-colonial interests, by establishing Afghanistan as a ‘rentier-state’ which is still overly dependent on its sales to the ‘Global North’ (Suhrke, 2013). The rentier-state condition of which Afghanistan suffers results in ‘local ownership versus international control’, relating to hybrid ownership, and ‘building peace while waging war’ relating to security governance (Suhrke, 2013). Thus international interventionism has resulted in Afghanistan being ‘completely dependent on international support for development and stability’ (Jarstad & Olsson, 2012, p.117; Blunt & Khamoosh, 2016, p.84); consequently establishing its rentier condition. International actors from the ‘Global North’ have institutionalised ethnic divides which has contributed to Afghanistan’s underdevelopment, therefore contradicting the theory of the ‘security-development nexus’ that underdevelopment causes ethnic conflict; while reaffirming theory’s on dependency (Amer et al., 2013; Stern & Öjendal, 2010). In fact in Afghanistan the ‘Global North’ has institutionalised ethnic divides and impeded development despite profound investment which increases Afghan debt (IMF, 2017; Bhatia, 2005); thus begging the question what are the ‘true’ motives of statebuilding in Afghanistan?

International actors principally the UN, US and NATO, have supported local actors (warlords) that they perceived to be the legitimate owners of the new political order (warlord patronage system), to attain security first while statebuilding. Yet, also seek to transform the values, norms, and behaviour of those actors that are seen as ‘illiberal’ (Jarstad & Olsson, 2012). This has reinforced existing asymmetrical power distribution in ‘hybrid peace ownership’, for example international actors have the upper hand in determining who controls the resources and the agenda (Jarstad & Olsson, 2012). Hybrid peace ownership, comprises of both ‘liberal-international’ and ‘illiberal-local’ actors sharing ownership resulting in a ‘symbiotic and destructive relationship’ (Jarstad & Olsson, 2012, p.105). Astri Suhrke (2007, cited in Jarstad & Olsson, 2012, p.106) elaborates on the neo-colonial aspect of this arrangement in which “local ownership accentuates the external origin of the programmes, in which local ownership means ‘their’ ownership of ‘our’ ideas”. Additionally, international donor schemes and development actors also adopted a politically intrusive role, International Financial Institutions (IFIs) have included conditions shaping Afghanistan’s macroeconomic policy. Highlighting that ‘human security’ has been side-lined in the development of institutions such as a ‘central bank’ (IMF, 2015, p.30); the latter’s development a key institution of consociationalism (Lijphart, 1977). Thus, liberalisation policies and rapid debt repayment schemes have run counter to peacebuilding processes.

Oliver Richmond (2013) lists three main versions of post-conflict operations, these are ‘conservative’, ‘orthodox’ and ‘emancipatory’ versions of international engagement; a variety of international actors have adopted these differing approaches, which highlights the non-uniformity between international practices in Afghanistan. Richmond’s theory interlinks with Anna Jarstad and Louise Olsson’s (2012) international roles of ‘intervenor, mentor, or facilitator’. Conservative denotes top-down statebuilding premised on coercion, conditionality and 'dependency creation', peace as a by-product of diplomacy and use of force. In Afghanistan it's clear that international interventions have taken a 'conservative' position premised on coercive power, demonstrated by the role of ‘intervenor’, shown in the role the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had in establishing key government institutions and training the ANSF (Richmond, 2013; Jarstad & Olsson, 2012). Orthodox operations can be contrasted with a ‘mentor’ role which emphasises a strive towards local ownership, this often has a mix of top-down and bottom-up strategies, also relating to ‘hybrid peace ownership’, it still relies on conditionality (Richmond, 2013; Jarstad & Olsson, 2012). We can see international actors taking this role, post-2014 with the ISAF reorganising as the Resolute Support Mission (RSM) while reducing its coercive capacity and assuming a mentor relationship (NATO, 2017). However, given the circumstances of the Afghan situation it’s recommended that international actors assume a ‘facilitator’ role building local ownership by connecting local actors. Achieved by utilising the already established qawm system, facilitating the creation of emancipatory operations which prioritise grassroots strategies of peace, social justice and welfare relating to Galtung's ‘positive peace’ (Keränen, 2017). This bottom-up initiative will aim to subvert the salience of ethnicity and the warlord patronage system by utilising already traditional and cultural means of local ownership.

International actors should also facilitate religious actors as partners in an active peacebuilding role with the Afghan government. Peace councils known as Shuras or Jirgas can aid in peacebuilding transformation (Borchgrevink, 2017). The values and agendas of modern Afghan civil society and the traditional religious civil society in Afghanistan are often in conflict (Borchgrevink, 2017). However, considering the salience of religion in the conflict, religion being a primarily impetus for Taliban violence, the requirement of religious opinions would be of vital importance to peacebuilding. As 99.7% of the Afghan population is Muslim (CIA, 2018), religion can be seen as an integrating identity towards national cohesion rather than ethnicity. International actors should support the autonomous involvement of religious civil society in Afghan peacebuilding, reducing the salience of ethnicity and establishing greater national control and local ownership. International actors should support the mixture of traditional and religious civil society ownership (organised citizens) and communitarian ownership (broad networks of cooperation among the population), which will successfully enable the transfer of ownership to local actors (Jarstad & Olsson, 2012, p.109). International development agencies should encourage local government to take control of the development of these initiatives as to subvert the already established regional warlord patronage politics (Blunt & Khamoosh, 2016). International actors should follow these recommendations which aim to diminish the structural violence established through the Bonn agreement. Additionally, NGOs could introduce truly humanitarian non-military aid and peacebuilding initiatives through traditional and religious civil networks to an improved and less biased capacity (Waldman, 2008).

Additionally, it’s clear that post-conflict governance is anti-Taliban, yet the Taliban remain a dominant force contesting and controlling large areas of Afghanistan, thus negotiations with the Taliban are paramount to creating a lasting peace. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's recent peace offer to the Taliban should be supported by the US, NATO and other international actors (Mohan, 2018). Negotiations would be supported by the fact the Taliban is not on the US Foreign Terror List (Farivar, 2017). Ghani offers to recognise the Taliban as a 'legitimate political force, including a much needed review of the constitution, and a transition to a new order guaranteed by the international community' (Mohan, 2018). International actors should act as facilitators to this deal, however they should stress that the introduction of the Taliban into Afghan consociational institutions as they currently stand is unsustainable; risking further entrenchment of ethnic divides. Thus a different model of governance would be a necessity, ‘centripetalism’ is often compared as an alternative governance model to consociationalism, and it encourages moderate forms of political competition rather than polarising extremes (Reilly, 2001; Horowitz, 1993). The offer of a constitutional review is an opportunity to implement governance based on centripetalism, which also introduces electoral systems which provide parties with incentives to form coalitions across group lines; which nourishes moderation between groups and reduces their ethno-centric character (Horowitz, 2004). However, such an approach should be endogenously constructed with the aid of the aforementioned religious and traditional civil networks. Furthermore, whether such a moderate approach would be accepted for practical purposes by the current administration is unknown; which is why facilitation by international actors is a key aspect to its success.

In conclusion, it’s apparent that international actors have entrenched ethnic divisions through the consociational governance model; which has been further complicated by neo-liberal conditions on the statebuilding process. Additionally, security first statebuilding and post-conflict governance has not included the Taliban but instead its opposition, establishing NA members within government which has transferred a warlord patronage system into Afghanistan’s institutions; halted chances of negotiations and maintained the conflict. International actors must subvert this warlord patronage system that entrenches ethnic divides and systemic corruption, which creates a weak Afghan government and hinders any economic development. International actors can subvert this system by acting in an emancipatory peacebuilding capacity. In addition to facilitating the role of qawm and religious civil society in Afghan peacebuilding; ensuring it’s an endogenous process with the Afghan government’s cooperation. International actors should also facilitate and support negotiations between the Taliban and Afghan government. These processes in combination with a reformation of the constitution, formed on a centripetal model of governance, is likely to nurture moderation, increase national/local ownership and improve the chances of a progression to a stable state and peaceful society.

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