Finally and at last…we have been blessed with a rational and realistic view of the situation in Afghanistan, by a man most of you have never heard of.
Nevertheless he is the world’s foremost expert on the present situation and a man who without question has his finger on the pulse of history.
Wise leaders and wise military men take heed.
Francesc Vendrell, has just stepped down as European Union envoy in Afghanistan.
Vendrell has spent eight years in the country. His primary comcern at this moment is the growing number of unecessary civilian deaths. He says they have created "a great deal of antipathy," and helped widen the distance between the Afghan government and its citizens.
(The U.S. military is currently engaged in an inquiry into an incident in Shindand District in western Afghanistan in which, villagers assert, about 90 people were killed in a missile attack on Aug. 22. American officers have given a far lower toll, saying 7 civilians were killed.)
Vendrell warned that the situation was particularly dangerous among the Pashtun tribes that live mainly in southern Afghanistan. Let’s not forget that the present United States Ambassador to the U.N. is a Pashtun, as is the current Afghan President.
Vendrell noted that the insurgency led by the Taliban had spread not only to the east, but close to Kabul, and into pockets, which were hitherto relatively peaceful, in the north and west of the country.
He said that right now, only a minority of Pashtun actively support the Taliban. But he added that most Pashtun "are sitting on the fence to see who is going to be the winner."
*****He pointed out too that there is serious inflation and rapidly deteriorating security. He also pointed to the failure to engage either the Taliban or regional powers such as Pakistan, Iran and India in a search for solutions. Afghanistan could be facing "a very cold winter" that threatens to become "a very hot one for all of us."
Bluntly, Vendrell traced what he called a long series of foreign mistakes in Afghanistan, and recommended action to ensure that the local Afghan authorities and foreign agencies followed up any military successes against the Taliban with concrete assistance to local citizens, to convince them that Westerners and the Kabul government can deliver security and some minimal well-being.
Vendrell, a Spanish diplomat who played a leading role in the conference in Bonn that set up the post-Taliban government, said the "first great mistake" in 2001 was to hold that conference after the United States had triumphed over the Taliban government that sheltered the Qaeda terrorists blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks. By the time the Bonn talks took place, he said, Northern Alliance warlords and their allies controlled some two-thirds of Afghanistan, making their domination of the country a "fait accompli."
In addition, too much faith was placed in President Hamid Karzai and too little was done to ensure that his government had a monopoly of force, strong police and other institutions. The situation was in large part the reult of what Vendrell called "U.S. Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld’s abhorrence for nation building."
Vendrell’s note of alarm was echoed in off-the-record conversations at the conference, an annual review of global strategy by the nongovernmental International Institute for Strategic Studies.
It was a mistake by the United Nations to limit the mandate of foreign soldiers to Kabul, and for the world to get distracted by the war in Iraq, Vendrell said.
Alluding to Karzai without naming him, Vendrell added: "We thought we had found a miracle man; miracle men do not exist."
"Too much responsibility without sufficient authority, was invested in this person," he said.
Another person "we should not have taken at his word" was the former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf, Vendrell said, citing what he called Pakistan’s history of supporting extremists in Afghanistan and the failure of the Pakistani military and politicians to formulate clearly how they wished events to unfold in Afghanistan.
In a veiled reference to Canada, Vendrell said it was no time to abandon Afghanistan. He said that it is essential to develop clear policies and standards to govern the detention of hundreds of Afghans it holds without trial. Such detentions create a "bad precedent" for the future Afghan authorities, he said.
"This is not the time to leave. We are not destined to fail, but we are far from succeeding," he said. "We must continue to remember the sad experience of Sept. 11. We must remember too, that we walked away from Afghanistan after the Soviet withdrawal."
