Peacebuilding: Lessons for Afghanistan? - CMI

international humanitarian law, as specified in the Bonn Agreement, is important for
affirming standards, but obviously insufficient.
The UN has previously made a significant effort to promote standards of governance
and human rights in Afghanistan. While discouraging, the record is not entirely bleak.
5.2. Strategic framework and principled common programming
Until the late 1990s, the UN or the international aid community did little to promote
standards of governance in Afghanistan. During the 1980s, the overriding goal of
Western states and aid agencies was to empower the mujahedin to fight the Soviets.
When the victorious mujahedin turn their weapons on each other, their remaining
external supporters sought to promote the power of their factions rather than modify
their principles of rule. UN aid agencies and other aid actors provided humanitarian
relief to the civilian population; qua emergency assistance it was not linked to
political or human rights conditionality.
Over time, however, the humanitarian aid community became increasingly concerned
that it was contributing to the war by providing relief and social services to the
people, thereby freeing up resources for the warlords to continue fighting. Direct
appropriations of supplies deepened the concern. A discussion on conditionality
gradually emerged in the aid community. Some argued for negative conditionality, i.e.
that only minimal life-saving assistance be provided unless the fighting stopped.
Others advocated making assistance a reward for good behaviour (such as a truce) or
linking it to participation in desired projects in the logic of positive conditionality. 55
The critical rethinking in the aid agencies eventually matured in the form of the
Strategic Framework. The initiative was approved at the highest agency level by a
decision in the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) in early 1997 to
integrate political strategy and humanitarian assistance in a coherent framework.
Relief and aid for recovery in the longer run would be linked to a joint effort to
promote peace. An inter-agency mission with NGO representation, and led by the UN
Department of Political Affairs, followed to mobilise support in the aid community
working out of Pakistan and in Afghanistan. A parallel initiative among the donors
had reached a similar conclusion at the Ashkabad meeting in January 1997. When the
Strategic Framework and Principled Common Programming were launched the
following year, the initiative consequently commanded broad agreement in the aid
community.
As a UN-centred initiative, the Strategic Framework rested on certain overarching
goals. The UN would promote peace and human rights in Afghanistan, and
simultaneously "increase the capacity of the Afghan people to determine their own
priorities." 56 To this end, the aid actors would subscribe to seven guiding principles
55 For reactions in the aid community, see Paula R. Newburg "Politics at the Heart. Organizing
International Assistance to Afghanistan." Carnegie Endowment for International peace. Washington
D.C. February 1999. Unpublished paper. Positive conditionality was tried in a small way in the early
1990s under the first UN coordinator for assistance (UNOCA), Sadruddin Aga Khan. Distribution of
wheat, for instance, was in some areas tied to a dialogue or truce among local rivals.
56
The UN would:
• promote political negotiations within Afghanistan and with neighbouring states aimed at ending
hostilities
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