To follow up on the last post, here is some further background on Lord Ashdown vis a vis Afghanistan.
Ashdown was quoted in the Telegraph (UK) in October 2007 as saying that NATO had already lost the war in Afghanistan, and that success there would be unlikely. These comments were made in advance of a NATO summit at which Britain and the United States pressed for more military commitment from the other member nations. Dire warnings of chaos engulfing the entire region may have been intended to scare up more troops.
Ashdown seems to have backed away from these views when he was considered for the post of UN “super envoy” early last year. This (unsuccessful) plan would have created a new position that combined the roles of NATO and UN representatives in single official. The envoy would have overseen the reconstruction efforts of the various international organizations involved in Afghanistan. However, the centralization of power was seen as a threat to the sovereignty of the Afghan government, and the idea was scrapped after it came under attack from President Karzai. In his role as the UN High Commissioner to Bosnia in 2001-2006, Ashdown had had sweeping powers, including the ability to overrule the government at times. The position in Afghanistan would have been more limited, but the precedent may have been alarming to Afghans.
Though the super-envoy idea was dropped, the problem of coordination still lingers today. With the announcement that few European countries will be committing substantial troops to the NATO mission, it looks more and more the same as the US operation. It will continue to be difficult to create an effective fighting force out of a patchwork of nations with various limitations on combat roles. The purely military side is hard enough, but the counter-insurgency has to be integrated into the work of the UN, the State Department, the NGOs – and the efforts of the Afghan ministries and local officials themselves. Who makes sure that donor countries live up to their promises, and that the resources are fairly distributed? Who makes sure that corruption and simple bureaucratic ineptitude won’t continue to destroy progress?
Its was a tempting idea to have an Afghan “tsar” to introduce transparency, efficiency and coherence into the process of reconstruction. But, as Ashdown said on withdrawing his bid for the envoy post, “This job can only be done successfully on the basis of a consensus within the international community and the clear support of the government of Afghanistan.” The trust in the international community and its legitimacy
is lacking precisely because of the failures the post was intended to correct.
