The Afghan people will continue to need the help of the international state community

 

An interview with André Brie

 

 

Original on: www.nordkurier.de/afghanistan

 

Kabul/Wooster Teerofen. The Afghan people will also in the future require the help of the international state community. When the federal parliament in the fall deliberates on an extension of the three mandates, the deputies should at this point above all negotiate on another mandate – away from partly martial military force and towards the construction of a peaceful civil society. This comes from André Brie, with whom Hans-Joachim Guth talked in his home of Wooster-Teerofen in the Mecklenburg nature park Nossentin/Schwinz heath.

 

As deputy of the European Parliament, you have already several times been in Afghanistan – the first time immediately after the invasion of the American troops five years ago. How do you evaluate the development since your first visit?

 

It is a fascinating, an exciting country, even if socially, politically and culturally it is completely destroyed. The well-educated middle class, the villa and artisan quarters, the lakes in which children are bathing – all that today no longer exists in Kabul. All of this is the expression of the destruction of a whole society that has more than 30 years of war on its back – the British colonial power ran its rampage here, the Soviet Union left untold of suffering at the Hindu Kush, the bloody civil war as well as the Taliban tore wounds that did not heal yet. Afghanistan is a country that is ethnically, culturally and politically torn. Great hopes were linked with the invasion by the US military. These were not fulfilled. In the meantime, tribe chieftains tell me that they are comparing the American soldiers with the Soviet occupants. And they have – this is known after all by known – committed any conceivable crimes of war.

 

Do you not after all see a positive development?

 

It could not come worse than the Taliban rule. In that respect, progress can already be registered – mainly in the first years after the invasion that by the way, I rejected back then. In the meantime, I am much more sceptical, also because of the terrible mistakes of American conduct of the war with the many civilian deaths. My scepticism is also nourished by the fact that the warlords of the Northern alliance were never disempowered but integrated into the government. All of that has made the hope in the population and increased the popularity of the Taliban in the South and South East. The UN estimates that 58 of the 373 districts in the meantime are hostile and that half of them are endangered. In the last two, three years, the development has again run a determinedly negative course.

 

Can you mention the most important causes for that?

 

The key problem is founded in the fact that Afghanistan has developed an opium economy that – given the lack of alternatives – amounts to more than half of the Gross Social Product. 92 percent of the world-wide opium and heroin supply at this point comes from Afghanistan – compared to the Taliban time, cultivation increased by more than hundred fold. That way the rule of warlords, human and weapons’ trade are connected. And drug consumption in the meantime is also spreading in the Afghan population itself. A problem to which the international community of states has absolutely no answer. The country - if it is nonetheless to serve as a positive example for the action of this community – needs a completely new policy.

 

How might that look like?

 

The warlords would finally have to be disarmed. Their action is destructive for the whole country. Second, we should have relied from the beginning much more strongly on Afghan forces themselves. The army now built up is weak, corrupt, demoralised and characterised by great fluctuation. The same holds for the police. It is undermined and in no way beholden to state of law principles. The third – and that is probably the most decisive: the population finally needs economic alternatives. Even the support begun after 2001 has led to the destruction of home agriculture. We supplied wheat at prices at which the Afghans themselves could not produce. Actually, Afghan agriculture would need to be closed off for years from the world market so that it may develop and survive. And fourthly, finally, we need to devote more to the now internationally hardly noticed forces that want to take their fate into their own hands – there are signs of a party landscape, there is a still very small, but all the more active middle class, there are first examples of an independent journalism, of women’s emancipation. These are our real partners that should receive any kind of support.

 

There are diverse time scenarios for the withdrawal of the international troops from Afghanistan. Would you venture a prognosis?

 

I am incapable to deliver one. But there needs to be a completely different mandate. The attempt to want to solve everything militarily has failed. We need the build-up of really independent reliable Afghan structures in all domains. What is necessary is an economic and civilian build-up that under no circumstances needs to be mixed up with the military mission.

 

But leading militaries still would like to also get the coordination of civilian reconstruction into their hands?

 

I think that’s bad, and I know that most non-governmental organisations also do not want to tread that path. Because that way, they might be torn into the military area and that way would become vulnerable themselves. They also do not want to get the reputation to be supporting in any way the doing, mainly of the Americans, who almost seem to accept civilian deaths approvingly. On the contrary, the so-called hunt for terrorists “Operation Enduring Freedom” with its many deaths in the civilian population should come to an end better today than tomorrow.