Need for enhancing peace process in Afghanistan stressed
By Our Special Correspondent
ISLAMABAD, Sept 30: The International Crisis Group has urged the United States, Russia, Pakistan, India and Iran to bolster reconciliation processes at both the national and local levels in Afghanistan.
The ICG, in its report entitled ‘Peace-building in Afghanistan’ that was released on Tuesday, recommended that these countries should discontinue supporting factions that actively undermined the peace process.
The report also recommended that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai should remove governors and other senior government officials, pursuing factional rather than interests of the central government.
The report observes that providing security in Afghanistan requires a greater effort to deal with local disputes. These disputes frequently flare into violence, and local commanders often exploit such clashes to consolidate their positions, further weakening the authority of the Afghan Transitional Administration in Kabul.
The report finds these disputes to be derived typically from one of the three causes: land and water claims, ethnic division or family strife, frequently over women. The report finds that the significance of such local skirmishes is too often underestimated.
“Although these disputes attract less attention than the resurgent Taliban threat, they are as important because they produce an invariant of insecurity that destroys all quality of life for ordinary civilians and allows extremism and criminality to thrive”, the report quoted Robert Temper, Director of ICG’s Asia Programme, as saying.
The ICG believes that different legal systems - customary law, Sharia (religious law), and state law - operate simultaneously in Afghanistan. Official structures such as police forces and the judiciary are highly politicised, corrupt and not trusted by most Afghans.
Traditional structures such as council of elders do function in some areas; however, they often reflect a very narrow, traditional view of authority, which many young people and returning refugees are reluctant to submit to, adding that other councils have been essentially creations of aid groups and the UN, used to channel money to communities. They may have legitimacy and be relatively representative, but their authority is not always accepted.
In this environment, says the report, it is difficult to establish methods for the containment and resolution of local disputes.
It suggests that reconciliation initiatives need active promotion at three inter-dependent levels. There must be sustained international engagement, the Afghan central government needs to pursue security sector reform and the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration of fighters, which can improve the overall security situation, restore the rule of law, and build confidence in processes of political and social reconciliation.
This, in turn, should create conditions in which local means for solving problems could be effective. “Afghanistan is far from stable,” Templer is quoted as saying, adding: “Widespread conflict could return.”
Many can be contained, but only with more attention, more of an international security presence throughout the country, and more flexible aid schemes that deliver not just material benefits but also political progress,” he added.
