THE PRICE OF PEACE?

If there is one war torn land among too many that has long needed peace it is probably Afghanistan. While peace in Afghanistan has to be a good thing, that peace may come with a particularly high price for Afghan women. These are anxious times for Afghan women, as they are trapped between the grim consequences of war and the prospects of a potentially grim peace.

When the Taliban fell from power, many Afghans hoped for peace and a legitimate stable government. Women and girls who had suffered such brutality during the Taliban era, and in previous decades of conflict, hoped for improvements in their lives. World leaders promised a great deal of help and there were improvements which came quickly as girls began to return to schools in some numbers, women became more visible in public life and many returned to work.

Barely 13 years have passed since the attacks on New York and Washington DC and the US lead NATO coalition invasion of Afghanistan which overthrew the Taliban government. Victory, however that is defined in Afghanistan has proved particularly elusive. Since 2001 some 3,475 international troops have died in a campaign that but for the distraction of the invasion of Iraq, should have been over years ago. At present some 40,000 troops (mostly from the NATO-led coalition) remain in Afghanistan, this figure is down from a peak commitment of 150,000 back in 2011.

The NATO-led coalition plans to retain around 12,000 troops in the country after its combat mission officially comes to an end on December 31, 2014. Since 2001, 453 British troops have died during the campaign and 615 British personnel have been seriously, or very seriously, wounded. 7,422 British personnel have been treated in field hospitals during the campaign. 2,187 were classified as wounded in action and 5,235 were treated for disease and non-battle injuries.

The number of Afghan civilians killed or injured in the conflict in the first six months of 2014 rose by a quarter from 2013 levels to nearly 5,000 people. The UN says three quarters of the deaths and injuries were the result of insurgent attacks. It has been estimated (in 2013) that the UK will have spent at least £ 37 billion pounds on the campaign, expenditure will top out at £ 40 billon pounds by 2020.

There have been some real improvements, when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan; only 1.2 million students were enrolled in schools, with some 50,000 of those being girls. Thirteen years down the line, NATO noted that there were 8.2 million students and nearly 40 percent, or 3.2 million, were girls.

Afghanistan when compared with much of the autocratic neighbouring states of Eurasia (particularly in Central Asia) is a relatively flourishing if wobbly democracy. Several million Afghans actually voted to choose a successor to Hamid Karzai in the first round of this year’s presidential election campaign. While the final result took five months to resolve after a row about electoral fraud it was peacefully resolved.

Back in July 2013 the problem of all pervasive corruption which impacts on all aspects of normal life and the lack of transparency were recognized by the US Government. They remain the main challenges towards establishing a self-sustaining Afghanistan and a stable Afghan government.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has also reported that prosecutors and judges are among the government officials most likely to receive bribes. This is something that does not suggest that the Afghan end of the failing war on drugs is going to work anytime soon.

The US Senate (back in July 2013) recognized that despite tangible improvements since 2001 that Afghan women face entrenched discrimination and real limits to their freedom. Violence against women remains widespread and largely underreported. Recent ISAF efforts to get Afghan authorities to respond to complaints by women actually resulted in an increase in reporting of such violence.

Yet despite improvements Afghan women and girls have continued to pay a heavy price in the zones of conflict in Afghanistan: they have been killed and wounded by insurgents, hit by and airstrikes; been subject to local codes of honor, the victims of intrusive “night raids” by both the Taliban, Hezb-i-Islami and international soldiers. Women’s movement has been restricted by insecurity; and this has meant the loss of access to work for family breadwinners.

The Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami insurgents have regularly denied Afghan girls the right to education with attacks on schools and threats against teachers or students. In the more unstable areas, women have been denied the right to work and attacked or threatened for working outside their homes.

On the back of the positives peace should be welcomed, but if the Taliban and other insurgent commanders are brought into government as part of the peace process – it is Afghan women (and girls) who may pay the ultimate price. There are real concerns that violence and threats directed against women will only increase along with hostility to women’s rights and day-to-day harassment.

Those women, who speak up for their rights, including female members of Parliament, regularly come under threat. These threats may become greater particularly for those who voice their fears and concerns about the political reemergence of the Taliban, whose leaders are accustomed to threatening and killing those who criticize or oppose them.

The threats don’t just come from the Taliban. As international interest in Afghanistan begins to wane and the country fades from the headlines, the opponents of women’s rights have already begun to roll back the progress made since the end of Taliban rule (and this is before the Taliban have been brought in from the cold).

Back in May 2013 an Afghan parliamentary debate on the ground-breaking Law on the Elimination of Violence Against Women (EVAW Law), passed by presidential decree in 2009, was halted after barely 15 minutes of debate after numerous lawmakers argued for the law’s repeal and spoke out against the proposed legal protections for women and girls.

In the last few years a number of prominent women in Afghan public life have been murdered, including provincial councilor and peace activist Sitara Achakzai, a senior police commander Malalai Kakar, an outspoken journalist Zakia Zaki, and women’s affairs director Safia Amajan. Their killers have never been brought to justice. This effective impunity actually emboldens those responsible and has greatly added to the risks and fears faced by activist women.

There are genuine concerns that the reintegration and reconciliation negotiations could seriously affect women’s rights. The Afghan government (based on its recent track record) probably won’t actively protect women’s hard earned rights. The Karzai government has sacrificed rights to appease hard line religious factions for the sake of short-term political expediency. The soon to be ex-President signed the discriminatory Shia Personal Status Law (which denied numerous rights of Shia women, including child custody and freedom of movement), back in March 2009 and also provided presidential pardons for two convicted gang rapists.

The Afghan government has given little reassurance to women who are understandably concerned about the risks of reintegration and reconciliation. Back in April 2010, Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal, (the Minister of Economy) a prominent Hezb-i-Islami leader, allegedly informed a gathering of women leaders discussing reconciliation that women would have to sacrifice their interests for the sake of peace. 

Afghan government officials offer weak promises that only those who were not connected to al Qaeda, renounced violence, and agreed to abide by the Afghan constitution would be allowed to reintegrate or join the reconciliation process. Article 22 of the Afghan constitution publically enshrines the equality of men and women, the constitution is no guarantee as it is often routinely ignored and violated, and there are very limited legal avenues for redress for women – there will be even less once NATO departs and Afghanistan fades from the news.

THE ART OF FORGETTING ANNIVERSARIES

Remembering anniversaries is always difficult, some you may struggle to forget, others you may choose not to remember. Exactly twenty-five years ago today, on May 15, 1988, Soviet troops began a nine-month process of withdrawing from Afghanistan. Around 100,000 troops left the country by February 15, 1989, after nine years of war which saw the death of more than 14,000 Soviet soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Afghan combatants and civilians. 

The Soviet Army withdraws from Afghanistan - 25 years ago today.

It can be said that history by and large never repeats itself, the geography may remain constant, the same place names will keep cropping up and there may be similarities of circumstance and similarity of outcome – but that’s about it. By way of coincidence NATO, who it must be said have behaved with significantly more restraint and significantly less brutally than the forces of the old Soviet Union,  is also in the process of winding down it’s Afghan war and Afghan commitments, after nearly 13 years.

When the dust settles, at least the as far as the Western political leaders are concerned the Afghan problem will go away and drop out of the headlines. The spin will be spun and it will be laid on thick this spring and summer as success in Afghanistan will be brazenly redefined. The harsh reality is that military success, however dearly bought has not necessarily delivered political victory or political stability.

Cameron and Obama’s inherited war will end, hopefully, with a whimper rather than anything else, save for a faint whiff of imperial hubris. Military and political success have become intertwined in Afghanistan, now they will be separated. Our soldiers will finally come home, hopefully with the absolute minimum of casualties and what began in the autumn and winter of 2001 will come relatively peacefully to a conclusion.

The spin will endeavour to hide the failure to tackle the underlying poverty and the blatant institutional corruption in Afghanistan. At a very basic level this has meant that the country has been largely left un-taxable, which aside from not been able to pay for its own occupation, its government has been (and will be) left dangerously dependent on foreign aid.

The financial costs of ‘policing’ this largely inaccessible land alone have been on a different scale and have been pretty much born by the occupiers. The financial costs of keeping two US marine battalions in Helmand has resulted in financial costs per year greater than all the US military and development aid to Egypt per year, some $100 billion dollars).

Much of the foreign aid fails to get where it is supposed to go, getting skimmed off along the way. Now none of this should surprise anyone very much as when you factor in weak and corrupt local political leadership and our very poor choice of allies it was pretty predictable.

The Transparency International in 2013 Corruption Index (CPI) currently ranks Afghanistan (at 175) as one of the (joint) most corrupt country with North Korea and Somalia. President Hamid Karzai in the United State for the NATO Summit in Chicago (back in 2012) was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about this rampant corruption issue in Afghanistan. As usual, President Karzai’s answer was “it is the contractual mechanism that the US applies in Afghanistan” that encourages bribery, fraud, and corruption.

The Afghan President continues to always blame the west for the loss of billions of aid dollars and the rise of corruption in Afghanistan. The reality is less simple as on a daily basis, ordinary Afghans are less concerned about the kinds of bribery that is (and does) occur when the US and Western  development agencies hand out big development contracts. Ordinary Afghans are more infuriated by the kinds of bribes that they often have to give to get what they are legally entitled to via “harassment bribes.”

Basically harassment bribes are like when a retired Afghan has to pay some cash to the pension officer to receive his retirement check. Or, when a young man or woman freshly graduated from college has to get his or her paperwork done in order to become a teacher. To accomplish this the prospective teacher will be asked to pay a hefty bribe. Or your Tazkira or national ID card is held up until you pay some cash to the officer in charge. These are all simple illustration of harassment bribes.

Harassment bribery is widespread in Afghanistan, and it plays a large role in breeding inefficiency and has a profoundly destructive effect on civil society. While President Karzai consistently wags the finger at the West for widespread corruption in Afghanistan, yet his administration has failed to take responsibility for banishing bribery on the lower level. The West, perhaps hoping for a compliant Afghan government has looked the other way, which means that local low level corruption gets written off as a fact of life – despite that it is something that indirectly may feed support for the Taliban. 

To this sorry mess you have to add what has pretty much been a complete lack of understanding of the real challenges in Afghanistan and not to mention regularly changing objectives. So it should be no surprise that there has been a real lack of a coherent or consistent planning and realistic objectives, so it is no wonder that the medium term future of Afghanistan is as yet undetermined.

The final telling factor that makes the Afghan situation so tragic considering the lives lost and changed forever not to mention the treasure spent, is that of mission creep. This has taken place on a heroic scale, with the war on terror becoming the war on drugs and the possibly fatal consequences of diverting resources to Iraq before the job in Afghanistan was even defined, let alone half done.  

THE BIG BUG OUT?

Making plans to leave...

Some minds are understandably focused on the Afghan exit strategy and how to get out while keeping NATO casualties to a minimum. Now I don’t for a moment question the courage and endurance of our service personnel who have been sent by the politicians in Westminster to complete a near impossible task.

I remain however critical of what followed, when collective eyes were taken off the ball and Afghanistan was effectively placed on the back burner out of sight and out of mind for a dubiously motivated and justified invasion of Iraq. I also deeply question the wobbly logic that ran riot and the mission creep that developed in relation to Afghanistan during the latter years of the Blair and Brown governments, after attention shifted back from Iraq. 

The Con Dem government is largely blameless inheriting the ongoing car accident of Afghanistan from its predecessor formerly New Labour government, who should take the full measure of blame for the unfolding mess. However things are spun, the reality is that things are not going well, it has been revealed (in a UN report) that three times as much opium was produced in Helmand last year than was being produced when British troops first moved in 2006.

A report by the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) forecasts an increase in opium production this year and says this has been partly caused by the lack of agricultural assistance. The report blames the situation on insecurity. As the pullout progresses and international troops wind down their combat role, the increase in poppy cultivation is a significant failure for the international project, and particularly the UK's role in it.

Most of the worldwide production of illegal heroin, the drug refined from opium, comes from Afghanistan, and the then Prime Minister Tony Blair cited this as a reason for the war in 2001, calling the drugs trade a part of the Taliban regime that "we should seek to destroy". Back in 2001, the Brits (and the USA) made a deal with the surviving Taliban to reduce opium production by 94%.

Just before the invasion Taliban actually brought in a ban on poppy growing, declaring it to be anti-Islam, which lowered the overall production. After the invasion, rightly or wrongly as result of Blair’s decision the UK took a lead role in counter-narcotics from the beginning, and sent troops to Helmand in 2006 partly because this was the largest area of poppy cultivation.  The UK (back in 2002) became the lead nation for counter narcotic activities in Afghanistan. British cash for a voluntary eradication programme which was run in 2002 produced what has been described independently as “a total failure.”

Ironically Opium production has actually become more important to Afghanistan’s economy since US and NATO forces invaded back in October 2001. After an initial drop in opium production caused by NATO’s invasion, opium production resumed and now the country produces some 90 per cent of the world’s opium, the great bulk of which now ends up on the streets of Europe and Russia.

Now the UN report predicts that this year more than 75,000 hectares of land in Helmand is under cultivation for opium poppies, three times as much as in 2006 - and this is expected to increase. In Afghanistan any counter narcotics activities are merely an unavoidable occupational hazard because there is no viable alternative industry which can create the 50% of licit GDP that opium trading represents.

Opium, which is the basic raw material for heroin, and most of the illegal drugs that are on sale on the UK's streets come from Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s Government and business leaders operate in a wildly unregulated free market economy, where opium offers the safest and most profitable investment available to both peasant farmers and Narco-entrepreneurs.

The World Bank recognises that the narcotics trade accounts for 1/3 of all economic activity and acts as a major source of demand for services, goods and construction. The trade also provides income and livelihoods for a large number of people generates almost half a billion dollars a year for farmers.  Perversely the drugs trade goes on giving by providing several hundred million dollars in income for labourers and supports the country’s ramshackle rural economy.

The bank also acknowledges that the trade actually supports the Afghan balance of payments to the point that it produce a net surplus, not to mention supports the Afghan currency. Additionally as a result of imports from drug proceeds actually generates significant amounts of customs revenue (Source: The Fulcrum Strategy (Version 3) By David James, July 2006).

The problem is that the drug trade destabilises Afghanistan, and the chronic corruption and the effects of the ongoing insurgency combine to actively undermine the country’s tax base.  Security aside a stable tax base is one of the key requirements if the Afghan Government, post pull-out, is going to be able to sustain a potentially prolonged campaign against the Taliban.

Any Government that is pretty much dependent on foreign aid in lieu of a revenue stream is in trouble that might work out over the short-term but will not last over the longer term. What may in the end lead to the plug being pulled and foreign aid drying up is that much of the international aid to Afghanistan ends up being stolen before it ever gets to its intended recipients. 

The problem for the rest of us is that the opium based drug trade’s impact spreads far beyond the porous boundaries of Afghanistan. Back in March, Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, made a presentation to UN’s 56th session of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna, stating that, opium growth has increased by 18 per cent from 131,000 hectares to 154,000 and that “Afghan heroin has killed more than 1 million people worldwide since the ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ began and over a trillion dollars has been invested into transnational organized crime from drug sales”.

Transparency International in its 2012 Corruption Index (CPI) ranked Afghanistan as one of the (joint) most corrupt country with North Korea and Somalia. President Hamid Karzai in the United State for the NATO Summit in Chicago (in 2012) was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about this rampant corruption issue in Afghanistan. As usual, President Karzai’s answer was “it is the contractual mechanism that the US applies in Afghanistan” that encourages bribery, fraud, and corruption.

The Afghan President has consistently blamed the west for the loss of billions of aid dollars and the rise of corruption in Afghanistan. The harsh reality is less simple as on a daily basis, ordinary Afghans are less concerned about the kinds of bribery that occurs when the US and Western  development agencies hand out big development contracts. Ordinary Afghans are more infuriated by the kinds of bribes that they often have to give to get what they are legally entitled to via “harassment bribes.”

Basically harassment bribes are like when a retired Afghan has to pay some cash to the pension officer to receive his retirement check. Or, when a young man or woman freshly graduated from college has to get his or her paperwork done in order to become a teacher. To accomplish this any prospective teacher will be asked to fork out a hefty bribe. Or your Tazkira or national ID card is held up until you pay some cash to the officer in charge. These are all simple illustration of harassment bribes.

Saigon  (in 1975) or Kabul (in 2015)

Harassment bribery is widespread in Afghanistan, and it plays a large role in breeding inefficiency and has a profoundly destructive effect on civil society. While President Karzai consistently wags the finger at the West for widespread corruption in Afghanistan, yet his administration has failed to take responsibility for banishing bribery on the lower level. The West has for a quiet life has looked the other way as local low level corruption tends to be written off as a fact of life something that indirectly may feed support for the Taliban. 

Overwhelmed by both large and small scale corruption what can an effectively endemically corrupt Afghan government seriously do to discourage bribe givers and takers (at all levels of government) even if it wanted to? Endemic corruption aside the security situation is the key, with NATO leaving and the Taliban waiting in the wings even a diehard optimist would struggle not to think that things don’t look good.

Behind the NATO pullout lurks the unspoken question of how can a successful NATO withdrawal ensure that the corrupt Karzai Government retains its hold on power. And at least in the short term can they (the Afghan Government) keep the Taliban at arm’s length and can the whole sorry process be made to look good for domestic political consumption at home.  

DEVELOPMENT, INVESTMENT AND CORUPTION

As NATO’s commitment to Afghanistan winds down, the Westminster Government is aiming to fund a £10 million pound programme to help Afghanistan exploit its huge natural resources. This may sound too many people like a lot of money but considering that estimates of what lies underground in Afghanistan range from some $1 – 3 trillion dollars (US) worth of gold, gems, iron ore, and oil and gas. Now this has little to do with largess, no doubt hoping for a percentage, David Cameron’s three-year funding programme, to support the Afghan Ministry of Mines was launched at an event at Downing Street (March 6th).

UK Mining Aid in Afghanistan: Throwing Good Money After Bad?

The announcement came as Mr Cameron hosted dozens of UK investors and mining contractors at Downing Street.  He said the UK had already played "a huge and honourable role" in stabilising Afghanistan, but that the country needed "prosperity, growth, jobs, investment and wealth". British mining companies welcomed the announcement. Cameron’s decision could be described as courageous, especially with the claims that the award of mining contracts in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban were directly affected by corruption.

Transparency International in 2012 Corruption Index (CPI) currently ranks Afghanistan as one of the (joint) most corrupt country with North Korea and Somalia. President Hamid Karzai in the United State for the NATO Summit in Chicago (in 2012) was asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer about this rampant corruption issue in Afghanistan. As usual, President Karzai’s answer was “it is the contractual mechanism that the US applies in Afghanistan” that encourages bribery, fraud, and corruption.

The Afghan President has always blamed the west for the loss of billions of aid dollars and the rise of corruption in Afghanistan. The reality is less simple as on a daily basis, ordinary Afghans are less concerned about the kinds of bribery that is (and does) occur when the US and Western  development agencies hand out big development contracts. Ordinary Afghans are more infuriated by the kinds of bribes that they often have to give to get what they are legally entitled to via “harassment bribes.”

Basically harassment bribes are like when a retired Afghan has to pay some cash to the pension officer to receive his retirement check. Or, when a young man or woman freshly graduated from college has to get his or her paperwork done in order to become a teacher. To accomplish this the prospective teacher will be asked to pay a hefty bribe. Or your Tazkira or national ID card is held up until you pay some cash to the officer in charge. These are all simple illustration of harassment bribes.

Harassment bribery is widespread in Afghanistan, and it plays a large role in breeding inefficiency and has a profoundly destructive effect on civil society. While President Karzai consistently wags the finger at the West for widespread corruption in Afghanistan, yet his administration has failed to take responsibility for banishing bribery on the lower level. The West has for a quiet life has looked the other way as local low level corruption tends to be written off as a fact of life something that indirectly may feed support for the Taliban.

Now it may be a question of scale, the World Bank has regularly appealed for future Afghan mining concessions to be better regulated and more transparent, and the UK’s new financial support is aimed at improving that process. Cameron’s theory is that by improving Afghan technical competence, and ensuring a transparent process, should help to secure that along with the concerns that vast investments made by companies from China and India have reduced  opportunities for others i.e. The UK.

When it comes to mining contracts it certainly appears to be a matter of scale. The award of a 30-year contract to a Chinese consortium to exploit the Mes Aynak copper mine in Logar province is one of the deals that has come in for particular criticism. The exact details of 2007 deal with China Metallurgical Group Corporation have never been made public, something that continues to fuel rumours of bribery and kick-backs along with serious concerns about the potentially massive environmental and cultural impact of the mining project on local communities and local people.

Some years ago, the Taliban blew up Afghanistan's ancient Buddha's of Bamiyan, provoking a degree of international outrage amongst the concerned and amongst the chattering classes. At the time the Taliban's brutal treatment of women and religious minorities oddly enough provoked less public outrage - no doubt because pipeline route deals (to get the oil out of Central Asia) were in the offing. Now, the country's rich archaeological heritage is facing a new and different threat - that of mineral exploitation and development of resources.

The Peoples Republic of China (currently busy sourcing minerals and foodstuffs from around the world to feed its economy and its people) has its sights on another ancient Buddhist site in pursuit of copper. Mes Aynak ironically is an ex al-Qaeda training camp and home to a 1,400 years old Buddhist monastery. This site is relatively intact with walls, corridors, stupas brightly painted red Buddha's. The monks originally settled here because there was copper in the ground; part of a Buddhist kingdom and a Silk Road way-station, other things carried Buddhism from India to Tibet, and into China.

The China Metallurgical Group (MGC) has a 30-year lease to mine copper to develop a copper mine. The mine alone could give Afghanistan $1.2 billion (£755 million) per year in revenue along with much needed jobs. Chinese miners have set up camp and special armed security guards patrol miles of fencing around the site. Beneath the site lies the world's second-largest untapped copper reserve, and the Chinese have bought the mineral rights to the entire area.

The archaeological site was discovered during excavation of the site for MGC - archaeologists have three years to salvage the site, which could easily take 10 years to properly excavate. Afghan archaeologists are aware of what has been lost in thirty years of war, and have deep concerns that a lot of their cultural heritage has been destroyed, damaged and looted. Their concerns stretch well beyond Afghanistan as they perceive the artefact's as not just belong to their country, but as human treasure which belongs to all of us.

Overwhelmed by both large and small scale corruption what can an endemically corrupt Afghan government do to discourage bribe givers and takers (at all levels of government) even if it wanted to? Endemic corruption aside the security situation is the key, with NATO leaving and the Taliban waiting in the wings things don’t look good.

Yet if things stabilise then there may be new rush to exploit Afghan mining opportunities, but, at what cost to the Afghans themselves, who have seen what has happened in other post-conflict countries. Elsewhere in the world, in Africa and elsewhere, large deposits of mineral resources have often proved to be a curse, often enriching the few (and the mining companies) rather than benefiting local people who have often lost out.

AS ONE DOOR CLOSES...

Last week in his State of the Union speech U.S. President Barack Obama declared that by the end of 2014 "our war in Afghanistan will be over." Aside from finally bring the soldiers home the end of this phase of the war in Afghanistan could have some long term consequences, including a slow but steady decrease in Western security interests, an increase in drug traffic and terrorism in Central Asia.  Will the West wash its hands of any involvement in Central Asia, something that will please Russia, the Peoples Republic of China and the drug dealers and the terrorists alike?

At the moment at least, US (and Western) policy is based on an assumption that the 350,000-strong Afghan National Army (with US assistance and advisers), will be able to hold off or at least manage the Taliban. After 2014, unless there is a political deal, the Taliban will stay in the field with varying degrees of control in most of the Pashtun areas and perhaps beyond them. How far have we come since the heady days of 2001, when the suggestion that a battered Taliban would still be active in the field thirteen years after the invasion, would have been treated with disbelief.

As the Soviet Union faded into history in the 1990s, Taliban were in control of much of Afghanistan, their success (and the support of Pakistan) encouraged other extremists in Central Asia. The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) who had fought alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan was responsible for bomb attacks in Uzbekistan and kidnappings in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. After the invasion in 2001, splinter groups like the Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Uzbekistan and targeted the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Tashkent (in 2004).

At present both the IJU and IMU have sought safe refuge in those parts of Pakistan which could politely be described as being effectively ungoverned.  Once NATO leaves Afghanistan their fight may yet be carried back to Central Asia, no doubt fuelled with the support and encouragement of Pakistan’s military and intelligence community. Power, politics, water and Islamic inspired insurgency are just some of potential problems that may feed Central Asia’s future insecurities.

Power and water are connected by plans to construct dams in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which while boosting their economies also may threaten to reduce water for agriculture (cotton) in neighbouring Uzbekistan. There is already talk of ‘water wars’,  the flash point may be the lush (and relatively green) Ferghana Valley (which divided between Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) with its complex mix of ethnic groups, it’s badly drawn borders (which date back to Stalin’s time) and fresh oppression, and a recruiting ground for Islamic jihadists. Back in 2005, Uzbek security forces killed hundreds of protesters in Andijon (in Uzbekistan).

Ethnic tensions have been simmering for years, several hundred Uzbeks and a smaller number of Kyrgyz died in bloody ethnic clashes in Osh (in Kyrgyzstan) and in nearby areas. To make things worse a historical cesspool of corruption in Central Asia (dating back to Soviet times) has worked to undermine most people’s belief in effective or fair governance. Transparency International’s corruption perception index of 174 states, lists Kazakhstan at 133rd, Kyrgyzstan at 154th, Tajikistan at 157th, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are 170th. Afghanistan incidentally comes in at 174th; the UK comes in at 17th and Ireland at 25th.

Unfortunately for Central Asia, as the West’s interest in Afghanistan (and the rest of Central Asia) wanes as the Afghan war winds down, the region remains between ambitious reborn great powers in the shape of Russia and China. While some in the West may occasionally speak out against any moves by Russia to manipulate the CIS customs union to "re-Sovietize" Eurasia, soon there will be no Western boots (virtual or otherwise) on the ground let alone and desire to offer an alternative.

Kazakhstan, while resisting political union, is a member of the Russian dominated customs union. Neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan with one-third to one-half of their economies being dependent on migrant-labour based remittance payments from Russia may not have the luxury of playing for time. As NATO influence wanes and it pulls out of its bases in the region, Russia may increase the pressure by offering protection by expanding its military foothold in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan which already reluctantly host Russian military bases.

For Central Asia, any choices may be stark ones, Russia to the north, Islamic fundamentalism to the south or the People’s Republic of China to the East. Already the PRC looms large in Central Asian economies, with opportunities for trade and inward investment. Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan now ship energy long distances to the PRC, something that hope may help reduce the effectiveness of Russia’s effective control of export pipeline routes to the West.

The PRC already uses the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to boost its Central Asian interests, for now admittedly these are mainly economic and energy related. While the PRC does not at least publicly challenge Russia's geopolitical role, as China's economic and political influence increases the Central Asian states freedom of action may be further reduced.

As NATO troop reductions in Afghanistan proceed, so NATO's need for logistical support via the northern distribution network in Central Asia will further diminish. The Central Asian governments, who are increasingly concerned that a NATO pullback (let alone a pullout) will leave the region more exposed to subversion and increased Russian and Chinese influence. Ironically the Central Asian States want continued Western support to hold off the IMU and IJU, to counter narcotics smuggling, and to help them keep Russian and Chinese power at arm’s length.

The brief 12 year period when the West’s had relative freedom of action in Central Asia is closing. Back in 2001, Russia effectively gave the USA and its coalition partners the go ahead to use bases in the region to support operations in Afghanistan. Now a more confident Russia is actively working to remove any NATO presence and influence from the region and is opposed to any Western involvement in dealing with the ongoing narcotics and terrorism problems.

In many ways the West failed to either effectively or consistently deal with the emergence of the newly independent Central Asian states and more widely failed to deal effectively with the demise of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the independent successor states. Western aid was relatively scare, and not tied into a respect for human rights and civil liberties. The often authoritarian governments have quite happily used security tools against their domestic protesters, something that has quite often fed political unrest and fundamentalism.

As NATO prepares to leave Afghanistan (and the region) what legacy if any will it leave behind? There should be some areas for security cooperation, information exchange and border security with the Central Asian states. There should be a more robust sharing of intelligence about terrorism, narcotics, and criminal threats. This could add to the solid, low-key work by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union that has already been undertaken.

After 2014, it is quite possible that Central Asia will go back to being the focal point of yet another new Great Game, this time the battleground where outsiders seek to impose their influence may well only have two players, Russia and the PRC. Central Asian governments may well need assistance to securing themselves against external dangers, but the reality is that historic autocratic rule, weak governance and grim human rights records are as big a contributors to political instability as the threat of home grown or foreign Islamic insurgencies.

HONOUR SATISFIED?

Yesterday, Newport West Labour MP Paul Flynn was somewhat predictably suspended from the House of Commons after claiming that Defence Secretary Philip Hammond was lying to Parliament over the conflict in Afghanistan. He refused a request by the Speaker (John Bercow) to withdraw the accusation, was duly accused of "disorderly" behaviour, and was suspended from the chamber for the rest of Tuesday.

Equally predictably the Defence Secretary said that the comments were scandalous. Mr Flynn’s attack came during questions on NATO strategy in Afghanistan, as Mr Hammond denied suggestions that coalition military operation was being scaled down after a series of fatal (“Green on Blue”) attacks on international forces by Afghan troops they were training to take over security operations before the NATO withdrawal in 2014.

Predictable histrionics aside, Mr Flynn raises a valid point. You can put as much spin on it as you like, but it is difficult to put a positive spin on the fact that the US has suspended the training for new recruits to the Afghan local police while security checks are carried out on investigating any possible ties to the Taliban. This decision follows a number of incidents in which foreign troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers or policemen they have been training or working with.

As the 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of coalition forces in Afghanistan comes ever closer, the number of Taliban attacks looks to be increasing. The Labour MP for Newport West and a consistent opponent of the conflict, who was interviewed on BBC Radio Wales, noted that Dutch and Canadian troops had been withdrawn from combat and the UK should do the same.

The BBC liberates Kabul

It seems a very long time since the Taliban were routed from Kabul (and most of Afghanistan) following NATO's successful invasion of Afghanistan (back in 2001); the relative ease of victory turned out decidedly deceptive. If anyone had told us almost eleven years ago that some of our service personnel (including some of my relatives) would be effectively commuting back and for to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban insurgency many people may well have doubted their sanity.

The US and NATO seriously took their eyes of the ball by invading Iraq, Afghanistan was forgotten. Serious efforts to build up the Afghan army did not really start until 2009 by which time the security situation in Iraq was pretty grim. Prior to the renewed Taliban insurgency NATO's intended to create a small Afghan force to deal with internal disorder of a domestic variety rather than a full scale insurgency.

The new Afghan army should have provided the Afghan people with a visible sign of unity after several decades of brutal conflict and civil war. NATO’s training mission only began in earnest almost three years ago, at that point the Afghan army's desertion rate was around 85 percent. Things improved as from January to June (2011), NATO figures, showed that around 24,000 soldiers, some 14 percent of the 170,000-man force, deserted.

Once NATO departs, few impartial observers, doubt that after the Taliban and their militant allies will stream back into Afghanistan from their sanctuaries in neighbouring Pakistan no doubt refreshed, rearmed and refunded by the Pakistan military. By 2014 if Afghanistan's standing army is not unready and the Afghan government is not able to support it then some thirteen years of war, thousands of lives, and billions of dollars will have been squandered for nothing and the country will fall will some pretty grim consequences, even by Afghan standards, especially for Afghan women.

Another significant problem to be dealt with by 2014 is that the Afghan government, which is estimated to be probably the most corrupt government on earth. The levels of corruption show few signs of abating, with documented cases of Doctors working in government hospitals leaving wounded Afghan soldiers to expire in their hospital beds if bribes are not paid. For ordinary Afghans the medical infrastructure in the country could be best described as fragile.

Vast amounts of aid has been poured in Afghanistan in recent years, yet the Afghan government does not have a transparent, workable budget, at least not in the normal sense. For 2011 the Afghan budget was nominally $14.3 billion dollars over 90% of which comes from foreign aid, if past years are anything to go by much of it will be stolen way before it gets a chance of being spent on any intended purposes.

History repeated 1975? or 2015?

Once Afghanistan is out of sight and out of mind (just like Iraq) will the money keep flowing in? Or will the West make the same mistake is made in the late 1980s and drop any interest in the country? The last time that happened the Afghan people were abandoned following their defeat of the collapsing Soviet Union, they paid the butchers bill in spades.

After the civil war the Taliban swept into power...they appeared reasonable in comparison with the warlords (who are currently NATO’s gallant allies) and we should all be painfully aware of what followed.

HORSEGATE...

PM David Cameron (Left)                          Rebekah Brooks (Centre)                        Raisa (ex Police Horse) (Right)

In many ways it was a classic piece of distraction, a superb example of how the implications of a larger complicated offence can be hidden by a minor infraction. Previous life experience tells me that the general public can at times be pretty fickle especially when it comes to the Police,while they may not give two hoots (at times) about Police officers getting savagely assaulted by rioters, they will not under any circumstances tolerate cruelty to animals e.g Police Dogs or Police Horses. This in a roundabout way brings me to the strange tale of the Prime Minister, A former Police horse and Rebekah Brooks.

The distraction story started small with the news that Rebekah Brooks (former News International employee) had homed a retired Police Horse (named Raisa) this is actually something that happens quite a lot, as Police horses are exceptionally well trained and good mounts. have not doubt that Brooks jumped the waiting list though. This was followed by the news that said horse had been returned in poor condition (the unspoken implication here being that said horse had been ill-treated or thrashed on a regular basis).

This works out quite nicely, it blackens Rebekah Brooks (even more) in the eyes of the general public and distracts the collective eye away from the exposure of the Metropolitan Police Service's questionable relationship with News International. All well and good save for the fact that the distraction story now begins to run and run and now because of Cameron's ill-judged friendship with the Brooks it now begins to involve the Prime Minister prompting questions at the European summit, much to the PM's irritation.

However this pans out I suspect that this latest episode won't help any relationship between the Metropolitan Police and  Downing Street. I predict its now only a matter of time before the Met quietly admits that Rebekah Brooks periodically drowned puppies at the Police Dog Kennels in an increasingly desperate attempt to avoid the full glare of media coverage of the Leveson Inquiry.

PAYING THE PRICE FOR A FREE PRESS

Gadzhimurat Kamalov, the founder of a newspaper that has reported on corruption and police abuses in Russia's southern republic of Dagestan, was shot dead outside the offices of his newspaper Chernovik ("rough draft"), in Dagestan's capital Makhachkala, on Thursday. Kamalov founded the newspaper in 2003 and had edited it for several years and remained its publisher until his death.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has noted that Chernovik staff have been persecuted and harassed by the authorities. The CPJ called Kamalov's murder "a massive loss for independent journalism in the North Caucasus, Russia's most dangerous place for reporters". Violence (nominally political and wholly criminal) remains rife in Dagestan, where police have been battling Islamist insurgents since the 1990s.

The CPJ notes that Russia has one of the worst records in the world for attacks on journalists, with 18 unsolved press murders since the year 2000. Whether or not there is a list of journalists who happen to criticise the policies of the Russian Government (and some of the local corrupt elite's activities) is a mute point but there do seem to be an awful lot of coincidences.