Afghanistan: Seeking Neutral Space

Yesterday, Laura Bush was in Afghanistan, hailing the progress made since 2001 in the reconstruction process. She spent nine hours total in country, flying from Kabul to Bamyan, where she stayed within the four walls of a New Zealand Provincial Reconstruction Team compound. From there, the media reported, she could see the empty spaces left by the destruction of the giant Buddhas in 2001, the world’s best-known reminder of the Taliban brutality.

Mrs. Bush could not see, however, that Afghanistan is still struggling, and its government is unable to meet the humanitarian needs of a large portion of its population. Despite the US-led efforts to convey the image of a successful nation-building exercise, almost seven years after the NATO intervention, Afghanistan remains fragmented and unstable. Its central government barely holds power over the capital, Kabul, let alone the rest of the country. In many areas of the south, the west, and the east --- and increasingly in the center and the north of the country --- the war continues, displacing thousands and causing hundreds of civilian casualties every month.

Millions of Afghan refugees have returned to this situation. Since 2002, the repatriation process has been ongoing, with five million Afghans leaving Pakistan and Iran to return to their devastated, often dangerous villages throughout the country. With Afghanistan “no longer at war,” neighboring countries of asylum increasingly desired to see the populations they hosted return home. As a result, many Afghans were deported from Iran and others were forced to leave the Pakistani camps they were born in. One woman in a refugee camp near Peshawar told me, “We might as well return now before the Pakistani government cuts our electricity and destroys our business.”

The UN is severely limited in what it can do to help Afghan returnees and internally displaced people. The UN mission to Afghanistan is first and foremost a political mission, designed to support the central government and the international community’s agenda. But in a context where the international community and the government it supports are parties to the conflict, where does impartial humanitarian work fit in? “It is very clear that I am here to win a war,” an aid worker told us in Kabul. “There is no space for humanitarianism in Afghanistan.”

It took the UN four years and considerable pressure from the media and civil society to finally declare a humanitarian crisis in Iraq. Millions of displaced people and tens of thousands of deaths later, the US government and its Iraqi counterpart were still talking about “development” and “reconstruction.” It is hard not to draw a parallel with Afghanistan, where for-profit development contractors and the Provincial Reconstruction Teams have billions of dollars at their disposal while humanitarian agencies are struggling to feed and house the neediest. It is also difficult not to compare the two conflicts when civilian casualties and displacement caused by NATO operations are systematically under-reported either for political reasons or for lack of access. Access can only be carved and negotiated if agencies engage in dialogue with all the parties to the conflict. In Afghanistan, like in Iraq, the UN as a whole has taken sides. And civilian victims pay for it.

It would of course be too easy to blame the UN for the role it plays in Afghanistan or in Iraq. The Security Council gave it a political mandate in both countries, and under the one UN framework, all agencies --- including the humanitarian ones --- operate under the same umbrella. One has to wonder, however, how the international community will recover from the loss of humanitarian values it has promoted by effectively making the UN a party to the conflict in Iraq and in Afghanistan. The damage is enormous and has even hurt independent, non-governmental agencies that are perceived as being more of the same by the local population. As for the United Nations, its reputation is shattered, some fear, for good.

Unfortunately for the UN and for Afghan civilians, Laura Bush did not take advantage of her visit to bring attention to the humanitarian challenges millions of returnees, displaced and ordinary civilians face. But perhaps next time, she will spend the night, visit a village or two, and decide to offer the American public a more balanced account of the reality in Afghanistan.

--Kristele Younes

Kristele Younes and Patrick Duplat are currently in Afghanistan assessing the needs of returning refugees and internally displaced people throughout the country.