Peacebuilding: Lessons for Afghanistan? - CMI

modify both the internal Afghan dynamic and the consequences of competition among
regional states.
The need for international pressure to sustain the transitional process provided for in
the Bonn Agreement is potentially in conflict with another key objective: to make
peace-building a primarily Afghan process rather than alienating it from the polity it is
designed to serve by giving it a heavy foreign imprint.
A range of substantive issues has further been identified as critical to the peacebuilding
process:
Civil society
As noted above, a legacy of the past two decades is that Afghan politics are currently
dominated by a handful of parties whose power is based primarily on military force,
developed in a war economy fuelled by external support. Yet despite the war and the
militarisation of ethnic divisions, social networks and basic norms have not broken
down fundamentally, and a civil society does exist (see chapter 3 below). Given the
limited representativeness of the so-called parties, and equally their moral
responsibility for the continued war, there is now an opportunity to bring forward the
tentative efforts started by UNSMA in the late 1990s to involve people with a
different background in the peace process. The Bonn Agreement has taken some
appropriate steps in this regard.
Security
With the long absence of an authoritative or functioning state, regional or locally
based military groups have entrenched their positions. Founded on a well-established
economy of war, these parties currently represent all military power in Afghanistan.
To forge a national army out of these disparate groupings, or to establish a degree of
central control over the security apparatus, is a formidable challenge.
The experience of the 1990s has taught the warlords and the parties that militarybased
control over territory is necessary to generate economic and political power
locally, which in turn may secure a position at the national level. Enlisting their
support during the vulnerable transition phase will largely depend on what benefits
the parties and their fighters see in the peace process. Apart from the ability of the
new state and its external supporters to distribute tangible benefits, there is also a
question of legitimacy. As noted above, the present Interim Authority in Kabul may
not have much legitimacy, but the next transitional authority - to be installed in mid-
2002 by a loya jirga - will have considerably more. That body may be able to
deliberate authoritatively on the formation of a national army and decide on sensitive
issues such as regional composition, control and salary structure, and compensation
for armed groups that will be disbanded.
Given the complexity and significance of these issues, it would be unwise for the
international community to get out ahead of the Afghan political process in reforming
the military structure. More appropriate at this point would be a commitment to
Pashtun tribes to continue the hunt for bin Laden in late December effectively strengthened regionally
based military groupings at the very moment when the first post-war national authority was being
installed in Kabul.
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