The international community gathered in Bonn, Germany, on Monday to discuss how it will help Afghanistan steer a stable course post-2014 when security will transfer to domestic control and presidential elections will be held.
The goal set for the meeting, attended by 90 delegations and 1,000 participants, was to “give concrete shape to the international community’s long-term joint engagement and to advance the further political process in the country.”
Few concrete conclusions were reached, however, but given how complicated the situation is in the region, commentators question how much could be hoped for.
The conference conclusion document calls the years 2015–2024 the Transformation Decade for Afghanistan.
The document states that much progress has been made in several areas for the common Afghan, but the time is now for the country to step out of dependence and take its destiny into its own hands, utilizing its potential and human and natural resources. What will be crucial for positive economic and social development in the country will be to have security, a functioning government, rule of law, and less corruption.
The document carefully spells out what’s at stake, apart from the prosperity and well being of the Afghans, “Our shared goal remains … an Afghanistan in which international terrorism does not again find sanctuary.”
That the Transformation Decade begins in 2015 is hardly a coincidence with 2014 being the year that Afghans are scheduled to take “full security responsibility” for their country.
It is also the year of the next presidential elections in Afghanistan. While it is not explicitly stated in any conference document, most of the international community also wants to see a political transition happen with that election.
Brookings Institute fellow, Vanda Felbab-Brown, thinks neither of these two goals will be easily achieved.
“There have been strong signals, both from NATO and the coalition that [current president,] Hamid Karzai must leave in 2014. Many Afghans are also bitterly disappointed with his government. In fact, much of the international aid is explicitly predicated on Karzai leaving. The problem is that it is uncertain what kind of power transition this will produce,” she said.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s message to Karzai at the conference, that Washington wants to see improved governance, was positive, assessed Felbab-Brown, even if it probably was not what he wanted to hear.
Karzai, elected in 2004, held on to power in the tumultuous 2009 elections, despite that even then, the West would have liked him to have stepped down. His government has been accused of corruption, and the 2009 elections were marked by violence, low voter turnout, and allegations of fraud.
The best thing the international community can do now and up until 2014 is to keep sending out a “strong but quiet message that he has to go,” but also give him a chance to redeem himself and secure a place in Afghan history as a great man, says Felbab-Brown.
In a best case scenario, says the analyst, Karzai steps down voluntarily, there is constitutional reform before the elections that gives more power to Parliament, and the elections are clean, giving more legitimacy to the process.
But 2014 is more likely to be messy regardless of how things progress, according to Felbab-Brown. The political consensus in Afghanistan right now is extremely fractured, with ethnic tensions at a peak since 2000, meaning lots of infighting and collapsed coalitions. While many demand that Karzai step down, power brokers in his own narrow network, which is now the center of political and economic power, will do everything to either see him stay or ensure that power stays in their hands.
Add to this a difficult security situation around the election, since international troops are withdrawing and the Taliban insurgency shows few signs of abating, and you have “a huge political earthquake in the making,” says Felbab-Brown.
Her impression of the conference in Bonn was that it continued on the path of the last conference in Istanbul, which ended up with little progress and watered-down statements.
For this conference, the United States would have liked to see a longtime strategic commitment and a framework for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan post-2014. However, none of this transpired, primarily because of the stalled peace process following the assassination of Afghan High Peace Council Chairman Burhanuddin Rabbani in September.
Another problem is that neighboring Pakistan’s relations to both the United States and Afghanistan has deteriorated in recent months. Ashley J. Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace wrote in an article before the conference that “[A]lthough NATO’s efforts to train Afghan national forces have made remarkable progress in recent years,” the country will remain dependent on outside help against insurgents and terrorists after 2014.
Many of these insurgents and terrorists operate out of Pakistan and are used “as tools in [Pakistan’s] efforts to subordinate Afghanistan.” Pakistan refused to join Monday’s conference.
The Karzai government, on the other hand, “would really have liked it to have a pledging conference,” Felbab-Brown said. They have asked for 10 billion dollars in support over the next decade and were looking for concrete commitments, but this did not happen either.
Considering the conditions, the best the Bonn conference could have hoped for was to assure the Afghans “that the whole scheme is not going to come apart at the seems in 2014,” says Felbab-Brown. But she is not sure that even this was accomplished.
Nevertheless, she says the international community must not be deterred and become passive, and should instead continue to push for concrete resolutions.
“Achieving consensus will be difficult, but to wait and see until 2014 would be the worst policy,” she said.
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