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Do's and Don'ts for the UN In Afghanistan - Empire? - Global Policy Forum Do's and Don'ts
India Times
for the UN In Afghanistan
October 24, 2001
Everyone talks about the United Nations playing a leading role in Afghanistan but few know what that will be.
Clear, however, is that the United States, which began a bombing campaign on October 7, has said it wants eventually to step out of the spotlight, militarily and politically, and give any nation-building activity and long-term rehabilitation international legitimacy through the United Nations.
Clear also is what the United Nations, or at least its senior officials, do not want to do: Send a large UN peacekeeping force to Afghanistan, which would take months to organize and has to include soldiers from all regions.
Nor does the United Nations believe it should operate a full-fledged administration in Kabul, the capital, as in Kosovo or in East Timor. A more feasible model, UN officials say, might be the one set up in Cambodia a decade ago: UN advisers placed in several key ministries but not running them.
"The United Nations has a lot of experience with having ill-conceived mandates shoved down its throats by member states and some feel that it is having that experience again but won't say so," said Barnett Rubin, a leading American scholar on Afghanistan at New York University, who advises some UN and US officials.
But any UN political and humanitarian operation, if Afghans and neighboring countries agree, would need security, at least in the capital, Kabul.
A suggested all-Muslim force, approved but not organized by the United Nations, has been rejected by UN officials and most diplomats as fraught with difficulties.
By process of elimination that would leave a European force with possible Canadian and US help, should the Afghans agree. Some UN officials say this is risky but may be the best alternative as the force would be well-equipped and stay no longer than necessary.
"The United States went ahead with this military action, without really talking to the United Nations. And midway through they realized had to have a game plan and the UN would have to play that role," said Rubin.
"But no security force can be created in three days or so, especially if there is a rush for Kabul," he said.
AFGHAN SECURITY
Lakhdar Brahimi, the former Algerian foreign minister and the UN special representative in charge of searching for a political solution, hopes Afghans could organize a security force to demilitarize Kabul, perhaps with some UN advisers.
"If you have a successful Afghan political process it will not be very difficult to develop an Afghan security process with support from outside," he said.
French ambassador Jean-David Levitte is in the forefront in advocating an all-Afghan force if one could be found.
"We have to work with the Afghan people to help them find the Afghan way to re-establish security in their country," he said in an interview.
"France considers that it would be dangerous to consider any major UN role in an interim administration or peacekeeping operation or even a Muslim force," Levitte said.
But the first priority is to form a broad-cased coalition, a process Brahimi is beginning in Pakistan and then Iran next week, two key neighbors who have received thousands of refugees and have their own ideas about a future Afghanistan.
Such a transitional government would need Pashtuns, the largest ethnic group, now represented by the Pakistani-organized Taliban who control most of the country.
But at this point Pashtun fighters opposed to the Taliban see no national or regional group they can follow -- or they visualize a transitional government in which their military opponents from the Northern Alliance are excluded.
Some leading commanders from the Alliance, run mainly by Tajiks and Uzbeks, say they do not want to take Kabul without a power-sharing arrangement. But others may try to do so anyway, such as those loyal to the former Afghan president, Burhanuddin Rabbani, Rubin said in an interview.
The most popular idea at the moment is getting a tribal council together under the symbolic leadership of Mohammad Zahir Shah, who reigned as king of Afghanistan for 40 years until he was deposed in 1973. The 87-year old king is a Pashtun by descent but speaks Farsi and writes in French.
But military events on the ground may move faster than the political process as the American bombing campaign moves closer to front lines of the Taliban, accused of harboring terrorist networks responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.
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