Global Policy Forum

By Simon Chesterman *

Afghanistan II

Now that the Loya Jirga has ended, Afghanistan has a government that is somewhat more representative than the one put in place by American bombs and UN diplomacy in December. The grand council is properly regarded as a success, but the most dangerous period for a return to conflict is about to begin.

Afghanistan represents a radically different model for UN peace operations than that of Kosovo or East Timor. On paper it resembles earlier assistance missions that provide development support to post-conflict societies.

In practice, however, the UN mission in Afghanistan remains intimately involved with the Kabul government and with the peace process that put it in place. This creates a divide between formal authority and practical influence, increasing the risk that the political consensus established in the Bonn Agreement and recently affirmed at the Loya Jirga in Kabul will spin out of control.

The accepted wisdom in the United Nations is that a successful peace operation should ideally consist of three sequential stages. First, the political basis for peace must be determined. Then a suitable mandate for a UN mission should be formulated. Finally, that mission should be given all the resources necessary to complete the mandate.

In reality this usually happens in the reverse order: Countries determine what resources they are prepared to commit to a problem and a mandate is cobbled together around those resources - often in the hope that a political solution will be forthcoming at some later date. Yet conflict-prone, complex and impoverished countries like Afghanistan need greater international assistance and more effective authority for a sustainable peace.

On any such measure, the UN mission in Afghanistan is doomed to failure. The Bonn Agreement put in place a process but the political basis for peace is still uncertain. The limited resources at the disposal of the United Nations strained its mandate and restricted its field presence largely to Kabul.

By concentrating those limited resources in the capital, the United Nations made a bet that Hamid Karzai could hold the country together - even though his administration was less of a centralized government than it was a gathering of factions, dominated by those favored by the United States in its battle with Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

This approach has now become central to the high-risk strategy of the United Nations. It requires two conceptual leaps from the normal mold of peace operations. The first is that the Bonn Agreement should be seen not as a final status agreement but as a framework for further negotiations, mediated through the institutions that it provides for over next two years.

This assumes the success of the second conceptual leap, which is that the United Nations can make up for its small mandate and limited resources by exercising greater than normal political influence. Such an approach places extraordinary importance on the personalities involved.

It is generally recognized that the head of the UN mission, Lakhdar Brahimi, was instrumental in the success of the Bonn negotiations. But his continuing involvement and his personal relationship with Karzai and senior cabinet ministers is essential to the process remaining on track.

So far, so good. Indeed, the greatest measure of the success of the UN mission to date is that no major group opted out of the Loya Jirga process. There were cases of intimidation and pressure on the part of local commanders to have themselves or their men "elected," but this was sanguinely interpreted as a compliment to the process.

Few people delude themselves into thinking that the Loya Jirga was a meaningful popular consultation. The aim was to encourage those who wield power in Afghanistan to exercise it through politics rather than through the barrel of a gun. Mao Zedong's aphorism is appropriate here because the most dangerous period for the United Nations comes now that the Loya Jirga has taken place.

If politics are not seen to deliver at least some of the benefits that were promised, Afghan commanders may revert to more traditional methods of promoting their interests.

Expansion of the international security contingent is unlikely, and the coalition forces are being scaled down. Without a stick and with only a few carrots, the United Nations and its partners must now help the new regime engage in constructive discussion about power-sharing arrangements so that Afghans can provide for their own security.

*The writer directs the Project on Transitional Administrations at the International Peace Academy in New York. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

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