Let’s try a word-association game. What comes to mind when you think of the following: Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Mozambique, Uganda? For most people the answer is, civil war, ethnic cleansing, failed states, intractable woes. And that’s what they represented the last time you looked at them. But a funny thing happened over the last five years. As the U.N. Development chief, Mark Malloch Brown, puts it, “The spotlight went away, but these countries slowly began putting their houses in order.” Today they are all peaceful, reasonably stable societies with the first stirrings of genuine economic activity.
In some cases it’s better than that. Mozambique, for example, was growing at 9 percent in 1999 when a flood sank its economic growth (temporarily, one hopes). There’s been political progress across the board. Rwanda has a war-crimes tribunal. Kosovo is doing better than anyone could have expected. East Timor will have seceded nonviolently from Indonesia and set up a liberal democratic regime in a few years. None of these places is likely to become a Switzerland or Singapore any time soon. But they are far removed from the hell holes of war, genocide, drugs and terrorism that many once were.
Despite mountains of skepticism (and I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone) the reality has been that over the last five years the international community and the United Nations learned tough lessons from their initial failures in dealing with peacekeeping and nation-building. Today the major powers and the U.N. agencies are pulling together and working effectively. As a result, once hopeless situations are moving toward some semblance of normalcy. Is it so crazy to think that maybe Afghanistan can be next on this list?
Of course the situation in Afghanistan is gruesome. The country has been through invasion, occupation and civil war for two decades. Economic activity has come to a standstill, a condition worsened by periodic famine and drought. Millions of Afghans have fled their country. And yet this means that improving people’s lives will not be so difficult. Even modest achievements–rebuilding the roads, getting rural irrigation flowing, restoring electricity–could have dramatic effects.
And there are many hopeful signs. So far there have been very few reprisals by the victors–a marked shift in behavior. The neighboring powers–Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Russia–are not competing to destabilize the country, as they did in the past, but working to stabilize it. As Richard Haass, Washington’s top diplomat on Afghanistan, puts it: “The Great Game has given way to the greater good.” Perhaps most significant, the generation of Afghans who thrived on the feuds of the civil war are being replaced by a younger wave of leaders who want to build a modern country. Rapacious warlords like Rashid Dostum may represent the past, and moderate, modern men like the interim president, Hamid Karzai, the future.
But first you need peace. The chief lesson that the international community has learned over the last decade is that when a country is still plagued by problems of basic security–Somalia, Bosnia (for a while) and Congo–peacekeeping and reconstruction are impossible. The other important lesson is that the United Nations cannot provide this security. It must come from the major powers. (Bangladesh will not cut it.)
Thus the most urgent priority in Afghanistan is a strong, multinational force that will bring security and stability to Kabul. Britain has volunteered to be the lead country and, if not for America’s strange foot-dragging on this issue, the British would have already deployed their troops. (Turkey is another possibility.) Beyond Kabul, security must come from agreements between the Afghan warlords. It will be a test of their desire for peace and all aid should hinge on their maintaining peace and security in their regions.
There are good reasons for pessimism. Afghanistan is the most ambitious project that the international community will have ever undertaken. And as a senior American official said, “The one thing that seems to unite Afghans over long periods of time is they don’t much like foreigners.” But consider what the foreigners were up to in the past. The British and the Russians tried to colonize the place. The Arabs turned it into a base for international terrorism. What should the Afghans have done, rolled out a red carpet? Maybe now that the foreigners are coming for quite different reasons, the locals will be more welcoming.
