jeudi , 25 avril 2024

Home Actualité internationale CM – Afghanistan after the American Withdrawal: Part 3 – Where External Actors Influence

CM – Afghanistan after the American Withdrawal: Part 3 – Where External Actors Influence

In the third of a three-part series, Vanda Felbab-Brown examines where external actors can influence Afghanistan's path in the next three to five years after the US military withdrawal.

CAMEROON MAGAZINE - GM17/06/20217 Mins read66 Views

Guidance to the Brookings community and the public on our response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) »

Research reported here was funded in part by the Minerva Research Initiative (OUSD (R&E)) and Army Research Office / Army Research Laboratory to George Mason University on Grant # W911-NF-17-1-0569. All errors and opinions are not those of the Department of Defense and are solely attributable to the authors.

The withdrawal of the US military from Afghanistan is intended to usher in a new political and social dispensation in the country. At the beginning of this three-part blog series, I detailed four possible scenarios for the future of Afghanistan and analyzed internal factors that influence their likelihood. In this last article I analyze where external actors have influence.

There is no outside solution to Afghanistan’s violence and the rise of the Taliban. The international engagement is likely to have a marginal influence on developments in Afghanistan. Different countries have a certain ability to shape the Afghan government, the Taliban and the rulers of the country. Their actions, however, will intensify rather than dampen the violence, even though all regional actors oppose civil war, an Islamic emirate, or an all-Taliban government.

The United States has the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces because of its funding (ANDSF) had the greatest influence on the Afghan government. A cut in these funds would lead to a rapid collapse of the ANDSF and a rapid expansion of Taliban’s power. Washington is also helping to fund the civil administration in Afghanistan, on which any future government will depend.

However, this leverage did not allow the US, despite the efforts of the Biden administration in the spring of 2021, to negotiate between Kabul and the To facilitate the Taliban to orchestrate a transitional unity government. The Taliban are not interested in early elections – President Ashraf Ghani wanted to consider the maximum possible. Instead, it tries to bypass the Afghan government and make it irrelevant and to negotiate a new power-sharing with Afghan power brokers.

The Afghan government has also shown no serious interest in negotiations with the Taliban in the last 15 months. Any deal that the Taliban would have been willing to make would have required major concessions from Kabul. Instead, the Afghan government tried to involve the US in the fighting in Afghanistan until an agreement was reached that preserved its power and the existing political dispensation – i.e. H. until the Taliban were defeated, however many years.

Nor has the US influence over the past two decades had an impact on governance in Afghanistan towards more inclusiveness and accountability and less corruption and predatory governance The United States and other international actors can seek to influence the Afghan government’s stance on negotiations by offering or denying visas and asylum to key members of the government, and possibly threatening to confiscate their illegally acquired financial assets overseas. The latter, of course, requires portfolios of criminal matters against members of the government.

The same instruments – visa and asylum grant or denial, threats to seize illegal funds abroad, and legal charges that give them access to their assets abroad and Refuse to join the international financial system – also apply to Afghan power brokers when they decide whether to step down from the government, stick with it, or set up militias to fight the Taliban.

Currently, the United States and its partners should care – urging to keep the Afghan political scene around the government as united as possible and to create deterrent incentives for separate housing agreements with the Taliban. International actors should support and facilitate negotiations between Afghan rulers and the Afghan government, such as the recent efforts to establish a National Unity Council. The more united the Afghan political actors are towards the Taliban, the lower the political concessions to the Taliban. But even now that the country is on the brink, the talks in the Council of National Unity – like many previous iterations – remain entangled in narrow political calculations. And since the Taliban are gaining significant military momentum, international influence against Afghan rulers is weaker.

International actors can also support Afghan power brokers or independent militias. Russia and Iran have taken this route, with Russia supporting the establishment of militias in the north for several years and Iran sponsoring and training Afghan Shiite fighters named Fatemiyoun. With various levels of training and organization of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, some fatemiyoun who fought in Syria have returned to Afghanistan. More could return and start fighting the Taliban.

At the same time, both Russia and Iran have made separate agreements with the Taliban, providing them with weapons and intelligence. Iran is also home to Taliban leaders and their families.

The United States has established counterterrorism militias in Afghanistan, many of which have committed grave human rights violations and forced the local population into the hands of the Taliban. In the context of an ongoing civil war or if the Taliban violates its anti-terrorism obligations to Washington by allowing terrorist attacks against US assets or allies, the US could instruct these militias to fight the Taliban.

China has no militias Deputies established in Afghanistan despite eager attempts to cultivate local Afghan government officials along the Afghan border with China and Pakistan. Instead, it has also made its peace with the Taliban, relying on Taliban’s assurances to safeguard Chinese economic interests and prevent Uighur fighters in Afghanistan from helping oppressed Muslim brothers in Xinjiang. Beijing could also try to revive a military base in Badakhshan Province – not to fight the Taliban, but to prevent militancy from leaking into China.

The most strategic international intervention would be to shape Taliban rule. Besides the fight against terrorism, the first element would be to get the Taliban not to exclude ethnic minorities from the new regime. The international community should also try to reduce the extent of the loss of human rights, especially women’s rights.

The design tools include refusing or issuing visas, lifting or imposing international financial and other sanctions, and release captured Taliban fighter and the delivery or refusal of international aid to a future government, including the Taliban.

Aid is a particularly useful instrument because the Taliban do not want to ruin Afghanistan economically as they did in the 1990s when they deliberately destroyed the remains of the war-torn economy and administration in order to « clean up » Afghanistan.

Another The key tool is to educate the Taliban about the requirements and modalities of modern governance, including the requirements for donor aid in terms of social inclusion, women’s rights and financial accountability. The Taliban leaders are going on a world tour to show the group what kind of country they could be if donor aid is maintained and clearly communicated which limits cannot be crossed – such as the complete denial of women’s access to Education, health and jobs like in the 1990s or the brutalization of the Shiites – could have pronounced effects.

While the international community can ask the Taliban to reduce violence, such a goal for at least a year is highly unlikely . Pakistan will not be able to influence the Taliban either, even if it tries to. The Taliban know well that their military advancement increases their internal bargaining power. Even Pakistan’s fears that the US military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan could lead the United States to no longer focus on Pakistan while cultivating India as a partner against China does not give Islamabad a magic wand to stop the Taliban’s military advance .

Paradoxically, the entry of the Taliban into formal government in Afghanistan can of course reduce Pakistan’s influence on the group, especially when influential international actors have working relationships with the Taliban. If the Taliban manage to move their political leaders and their families from Pakistan to Afghanistan, Pakistan’s influence will decline even before a formal rise in power. The balance of power between Pakistan and the Taliban will also be affected by the internal realignment of power within the Taliban between the Quetta and Peshawar Shuras, the Haqqanis, military chief Mullah Mohammad Yaqoob, senior leaders such as Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and the Taliban field Commanders.

In addition to shaping the Taliban and the Afghan rulers and the government, the international community should continue to support Afghan civil society financially (and issue asylum visas to those at risk). It should insist that civil society actors are involved in negotiations on new regulations in the country. It is important to try to extend any agreement between the Taliban and power brokers to include some voices from civil society and women.

Although international actors have influence, none of their instruments can preserve the current constitutional order and legal system of Afghanistan. While the incentives through money, international recognition, sanctions and occasional military strikes can induce the Taliban to meet their counter-terrorism obligations and make their governance less autocratic and marginal, they will not transform the Taliban into promoting democracy in support of women’s rights Rule that a Taliban-led government will promote will still be authoritarian rule – perhaps an Iranian order from a supreme religious council with deeply imperfect but competitive elections from an underlying executive and technocratic administration.

If important Members of the international community, including the US Congress or the European Union, cannot bear to provide financial aid to a Taliban-led future Afghan government if they destroy any emerging authoritarian stability fooling.

Twenty years after the Taliban’s disempowerment intervention, the best we can do is to limit the extent of the loss of rights that Afghans are currently enjoying – while being careful to avoid the civil war of the Land not to aggravate and prolong.