Link between military forces and NGOs 

There are two sides to the international military intervention in Afghanistan. Both of which are intricately connected to the security dilemma faced by NGOs and civilians alike. The first link is defined as the close interaction between military and civilian actors (donors, international organizations, non-governmental organization or NGOs) and the other link is the military relationship with the local population. These two relations overlap in Afghanistan as the nation-building process, coordinated by the Afghan government and donor countries, have assumed a hybrid approach which combines security, political and development measures and techniques.

Military intervention is not confined to the exercise of military muscles solely in Afghanistan; reconstruction and political recovery processes are also major contributors to the military mandate of the international community. These mandates are carried out primarily by the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF)-lead Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) working in 34 provinces at the moment. The ‘hearts and minds’ dictum has become the standard mantra (also known as Civil Affairs) of international forces, and the key imperative of this approach is to better relations and to boost the popularity of international forces.

After the ousting of the Taliban regime, a large number of NGOs which had initially operated from Peshawar began to establish operations in Afghanistan. These organizations acted independently and some carried out projects for ISAF and coalition forces. However, the PRT and the civilian-military framework was a new approach adopted in Afghanistan and thus a new experience for all the three actors (ISAF, PRTs and NGOs). Coalition forces and ISAF struggled to determine their role in Afghanistan, while the aid agencies were busy searching for their position in relation to the former two. The argument against the collaboration of these three actors was based on concerns of security (the blurring of lines and how this collaboration with the military may insecurity for NGOs) and humanitarian principles (NGO impartiality and neutrality when coordinating with military forces). Consequently, the association of NGOs with military forces inevitably increased the security threat for aid agencies. This was primarily due to the nature of the conflict, and not the actual conflict itself.

In southern Afghanistan, determinants such as the insurgency, warlordism, and acute levels of poverty made operating conditions increasingly insecure for NGOs.  Conversely, regarding the conflict in Afghanistan, it is the ideological belief of the insurgency, which sees foreigners and every agency associated to it as infidels which heightens the sense of insecurity for NGOs. A statement taken from a reported issued by the Taliban in response to a New York Times article which claimed that the Taliban were ready to negotiate with the US, says “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan believes that the presence of Americans in Afghanistan is the main factor of instability in Afghanistan and the whole region.”[2] This statement illustrates that inflexibility of insurgency to compromise on its ideologies and belief systems for the sake of peace and stability. It is this factor that makes it predominantly hard for NGOs’ to operate alongside the military in Afghanistan. When NGOs have been associated with military units in Afghanistan, the principles of impartiality and neutrality tend to get blurred, at which point not only does the insurgency but also the local population question the humanitarian impact of the NGOs. Thus, collaboration with the military is not the main factor concerning insecurity threats faced by NGO, however it does increase the risk as NGOs’ are grouped with the agendas of the military units they associate with.

Civilian Casualties

The parallel between rising civilian casualties and rising insurgency related-attacks is omnipresent in the Afghan conflict. As noted by Their and Ranjbar, from 2002 to 2006, fatalities increased by 400 percent paralleling insurgency attacks which jumped to 800 percent.[3] Moreover, compared to 2007, civilian casualties rocketed by 62 percent in 2008 and so far 2010 has witnessed the deadliest phase of the conflict since the military intervention in 2001. One of the primary causes of civilian casualties is air strikes that follow “troop-in-contact”[4] which is the spontaneous use of airstrikes accompanying small scale combats with militants. Thus, “during impromptu strikes, there is not sufficient time to complete a formal collateral damage assessment, resulting in property damage, injury, and the death of innocent Afghans.”[5]  

A breakdown of Afghan civilian, international civilian, and coalition fatalities for the month of July (2010) illustrates how deadly military combat has become for civilians in Afghanistan. From July 5 - 12, there has been 43 Afghan civilians, 11 international civilians and 15 coalition fatalities; from July 12 - 19, there has been 34 Afghan civilians, one international civilian and 22 coalition fatalities; from July 19 - 26, there has been 5 Afghan civilians, 0 international civilian and 14 coalition fatalities; and from July 26 - August 2, there has been 80 Afghan civilians, 0 international civilian and 11 coalition fatalities.[6] These figures represent the reason why there exists local resentment against the international communities’ efforts in Afghanistan and contradict the dictum of winning the ‘hearts and minds’ of the local populace which NATO claims to be following as means to address and reconcile the figures above. 

Solutions for addressing the concerns of reprioritization of security imperatives, are embedded in the nature of the Afghan conflict, rather than the conflict itself. Simply put, as the security threat for the international troops rises in Afghanistan, so will civilian causalities, and when this threat decreases, so will civilian causalities.  This is based on the fact that insurgencies in fragile post-conflict periods often try to challenge the state at the risk of causing instability. Hence, since insurgents are primarily weaker than the state or international forces; they utilize guerrilla tactics, subversion, and asymmetric violence. The Taliban are no exception to this, they utilize all means possible (suicide attacks, IEDs, rockets and direct combat tactics) to break down the will of international troops and the Afghan government. Furthermore, international troops are fighting against a group that is not visibly identifiable, they do not dress in specific combat uniform, contradictorily they wear local dresses and blend in with other  locals. As a result, a Taliban cannot be isolated in a crowd and this invariably makes it not only difficult but impossible for international troops to differentiate them, while in combat. This is a key factor sustaining the sense of insecurity felt by international troops which consequently puts them on high alert at all times. The nature of the Afghan conflict and the impracticality of specific military tactics make it unfeasible to reconcile the issues that arise from civilian casualities in Afghanistan.

Firstly, it must be said that none of these issues can be addressed without taking a different view of counter-insurgency as well as a more careful approach to the conflict itself. Before all else, the Afghan people should be at the core of this new view. The Afghan crisis is mainly a crisis of Afghan society; that is to say, a social crisis. To be sure, this crisis has been fuelled by some external actors, and many players in this game have very little interest in seeing the conflict resolved, either because they benefit from international aid or because they much prefer an Afghanistan weakened by war to a more stable and secure country. But the overall conclusion is still valid: at the end of the day, neither the NGOs nor the international forces now on the ground in Afghanistan will bring the political solution to a problem that only Afghans themselves are able to solve.

Second, an important point to be taken into account is the great diversity of the different aspects of this crisis, mainly because of its predominantly local dimensions. To a certain extent, there is not one Afghan conflict but rather several local micro-conflicts. And to each of these micro-conflicts there is a range of possible political solutions to be sounded out and negotiated at the local level, for the most part by working with local authorities and institutions. In each of these micro-conflicts, at times there is one specific reason why the insurgents fight and at others they fight for a combination of reasons, some more or less important to them. Whatever these reasons be, we must understand that the insurgents fighting against coalition forces in Afghanistan very often have little to do with the Taliban. Rather they fight because they fear modernity, because they are poor and they do not believe that wealth is being justly shared, because fighting is a tradition in a warring society, etc. And each of these reasons deserves both our attention and our respect. We shall not help the Afghans to solve the crisis they face without trying to understand why they fight.

Therefore, the primary aim of the international forces is to provide the conditions necessary to enable Afghans to find the political solution they need. And this can be attained only if, from a military point of view, we resort to the concept of limited war in each local conflict. The true aim of the international military forces is not to ‘target insurgents’, but instead to deny them the ability to achieve their own goals. The old masters of war can help us better to understand this approach, one that Sun Tse aptly summed up when he wrote: ‘To undertake one hundred battles and to win one hundred victories is a good thing, but it is not the best. To immobilize the enemy’s army without giving battle, this is excellent.’[1] To attain to such ‘excellence’ ought to be the objective of the Western military leader deployed in an operational sector of Afghanistan today. For he knows only too well that the spread of fighting, even if ‘successful’, would only serve to re-enforce the insurgents’ legitimacy and to pit the local population against him. The losses inflicted upon an enemy are not always the main factors of military success, and the remark of Sun Tse, ‘heaven will never approve the shedding of human blood’, echoes today’s humanitarian concerns. Certainly, any civilian casualty is not only a tragic event for the families and the communities involved; it is a very counter-productive event for our forces as well. A first principle of the action of the French forces has therefore been to avoid military fighting as much as possible. Also, when it is indeed necessary to fight, it is important to try to fight in deserted or unpopulated areas in order to limit the risk of civilian casualties. When the insurgents take the initiative of fighting in an urban area, it is not primarily a military problem. It is a political problem that has to be solved with the local elders. Of course, this is not always so simple, but this is the principle to be adopted.

The question of the status of NGOs is indeed a slippery one. Heretofore military strategies in Afghanistan have, to a large extent, adopted a point of view shared by many NGOs; to wit, that peace is the fruit of stability, economic prosperity, advanced education and good health-care. But while it is true that the overall military strategy should be coherent with the actions and with the stated goals of NGOs, the two ought not to be too tightly co-ordinated. This idea echoes the thoughts of Raymond Aron. At the state level, he sharply criticized the concept of a total strategy that integrated all the aspect of social life, because it brought about war in all the sectors of society and could therefore serve to broaden or to deepen a conflict more than to resolve it.[2] Again, it is nonsense to try to see the NGOs as impartial players in this conflict, and here Mariam Safi is perfectly right to point out that the very presence of the NGOs is a threat to the insurgents. In order for NGOs not to be counter-productive, their actions should be co-ordinated by the Afghan authorities. Our aim should not be to win hearts and minds, for these hearts and minds are not for sale, but to help the Afghans free their own hearts and minds from Taliban obscurantism, from poverty ad from internal divisions.

After the end of cold war and the defeat of world communism and the abolishment of the Warsaw military pact, the enemy propaganda took momentum – this means the idea was increasingly taking shape that West is now fighting the only enemy remained which is Islam. This became established by attacking Afghanistan’s Taliban regime by president Bush without a well prepared and established plan which had to take into consideration every aspect of the life of Afghans including their cultural, historical, religious, traditional aspects and characteristics.

In addition to that, very weak government and leadership in Afghanistan which was established after the Bonn conference increased the grounds of insecurity in this country.

NGOs, the international community and the UN did not have a clear military, political and economic strategy for Afghanistan so that this pursued path caused more anarchy and chaos. It was a mistake that the whole investment had been done on the political regime to be a copy of advanced democracy in a tribal semi-medieval society in the hands of warlords who had once looted their own people even in the capital Kabul. This resulted in more injustice and self immunity of Criminals of war and violators of Human rights (even in the late Parliament that adopted the law of immunity for saving War-Criminals from justice) that pushed the society in more insecure situation. The government bribery and corruption fueled insecurity and injustice all over the country.

In this part of the world, the living conditions and widespread poverty can also be the main cause of insecurity because, especially the unemployed young generation could easily be bought and used by the enemy of nationals and internationals who wanted to establish the Rule of Law in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, international community, in fact, had not recognized the cultural, traditional, historical, religious and tribal-like backward society of Afghanistan in order to establish related rules and a strategy and manners to be respected to attract the hearts and minds of the people of Afghanistan.

What we are reading about the Civilian Casualties in Afghanistan, are the direct and indirect results of none or wrong coordination between international and national forces here. In addition, differences of ethnicity and using them to weaken one another, using foreign forces for that purposes, created such a dilemma in Afghanistan which obliged and gave grounds for recruiting more fighters from among them  to fight against the government and international forces (to keep alive insurgency in this part of Asia).

I would like to add to the last paragraph of this essay that: the regional and some international actors’ role in increasing tensions and keeping the existing situation and continuing war in this region, in order to have the opportunity for strengthening and achieving their own national and strategic interests that can only be secured in such a situation, has played a very negative role on security in Afghanistan. Pakistan, Iran India, Moscow, and China can be named.

In the minds of most Afghans, only a strong 180 degree change is needed in Afghanistan to transfer the state of affairs in the hands of professionals for the bitterness and improvement.

In Africa, there has been a number of power-sharing arrangements which have been negotiated with the support of regional institutions and the international community. The most notable ones in recent times include the political arrangements in Kenya and Sudan.

In the case of Sudan and the Darfur crisis, the Khartoum government, after a number of failed negotiations and agreements in the past, signed a peace agreement with the Darfur rebel group, Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) in February 2010.[1] This initiative was hailed by the international community as a major step towards a lasting peace in the Darfur region. But what the peace initiative essentially offers in the peace process is a ceasefire deal among the key belligerents and the release from prison of some JEM fighters sentenced to death by the Sudanese government following an attack on Khartoum in 2008. The deal also offers government positions to the rebel group in both the central and regional states. 

While it is worth supporting the peace initiative for some of the progress chalked in the interim period regarding the de-escalation of the violence and the reduction in the casualty levels in the recent past, there are some key issues that need to be raised. One of such issues is that the peace accord agreed upon by the two parties did not include key parties such as the Liberation  Movement for Justice (LMJ) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) who also have a stake in the peace process. The SLM and the other parties who were alienated from the agreement, are concerned that Khartoum has not disarmed militias sympathetic to the government who continue to attack civilians. Again, what the agreement has succeeded in achieving is to offer positions in government to the top hierarchy of the JEM members while the foot-soldiers within the rank and file are relegated to the background. This way, a system of ‘hierarchical’ justice is seen to be created for the political elites while the downtrodden combatants suffer alienation from the political system. Interventions such as disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) as well as security sector reform (SSR) packages for ex-combatants have often been problematic in terms of representation, participation and ownership.

The post-electoral dispute in Kenya in December 2007 presented another test case where the ethical dilemma between peace and justice became more apparent. The peace negotiations which were facilitated by the international community, especially the former Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), Kofi Annan and the African Union (AU), led to a power-sharing agreement brokered between the incumbent President, Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga. Since the peace agreement was brokered, the country has returned to its peaceful state. But beyond the political settlement, key issues such as land distribution and ownership, including ethnic polarization, still remain unresolved.

While the peace agreement was explicit about how political appointments should be shared among the political elites, it was vague on how the path to justice should be pursued in order to address the atrocities in the post-election violence. More so, given that the violence appeared to be systematically orchestrated,[2] the peace agreement, in spite of providing the political leverage for peace to return in Kenya, did not go far enough to ensure that justice also takes its due course.   

Pursuit of Justice?

It is believed that Africans are inherently inclined towards restorative justice as opposed to retributive justice. Therefore, the pursuit of criminal justice and criminal accountability in post-conflict situations is an issue that will continue to pose challenges in African societies. But as African governments continue to sign up to universal norms and practices that uphold accountability and rule of law, they should expect that tensions will often arise when putting into effect these universal norms that have cultural underpinnings.

In the first place, the application of restorative justice at the expense of retributive justice in African societies is a major source of ethical clash with western values which are often implicit in most universal norms and practices. In the African context, most countries and societies would prefer restorative processes such as truth and reconciliation and by-partisan dialogue and mediation efforts that focus on humanitarian values in the context of compassion, forgiveness and reconciliation. This is in sharp contrast with international practices of retributive justice which are seen in mechanisms such as the International Criminal Court (ICC), the criminal tribunals and the special courts which are all backed by the UN.[3]

The African Union (AU) has exhibited some concrete tendencies in the recent past that presupposes that as a collective body, even though it is not against retributive processes to post-conflict reconstruction, it prefers restorative means for the purposes of peace and unity for its member states. This was evident in the AUs resolution in July 2009 to the UN Security Council calling on the international community to suspend the intended prosecution of the Sudanese President, Omer Al-Bashir on alleged war crime charges in the Darfur crisis. 

In the Kenyan political process, one of the key issues which was followed through during negotiations leading up to the peace agreement, was the message of compromise and reconciliation. This key message cut across all the reflections that were shared by the key actors in the negotiation process. In the view of Kofi Annan: “Compromise was necessary for the survival of this country [Kenya].” The former UN Secretary-General further argued that:

The job of national reconciliation and national reconstruction is not for the leaders alone. It must be carried out in every neighbourhood, village, [and] helmets of the nation.[4] 

President Kibaki, on his part, observed that:

This process [negotiation] has reminded us that as a nation there are more issues that unite than divide us… we must do all in our power to safeguard the peace that is the foundation of our national unity…. Kenya has a room for all of us.[5]

Mr Odinga agreed that:

With the signing of this [peace] agreement, we have opened a new chapter in our country’s history-from the era or phase of confrontation to the beginning of co-operation.[6]

Clearly, the focus in the peacebuilding process for all the parties involved is peace, reconciliation and cooperation rather than justice. It also comes down to the matter of safeguarding the survival of the country which, in the short run, cannot be achieved by the pursuit of restorative justice as Kofi Annan observed.

The case for retributive justice and criminal accountability is, however, not over in the peacebuilding process in Kenya. The fact is that the process of retributive justice is currently impeded by political expediency. For instance, following the signing of the peace agreement which ended the political crisis in 2007, the political authorities in Kenya made a strong commitment to the international community to prosecute those suspected to have committed some of the atrocities during the violence. However, the desire to establish the special tribunal - as was initially agreed with the international community - to commence prosecutions in Kenya has not materialized till date, primarily because the country’s legislative body has failed to demonstrate sufficient support for the commitment to be enforced.[7] This has precipitated the perception that those responsible for the post-election violence will not be punished. But the failure to act in favour of justice can further promote impunity which is a recipe for more conflicts in the future.  The effort by the ICC to step into the cases has been lauded by the international community. But it is important to recognise that the ICC will only target a selected few senior officials. Thus, the level of cooperation from the political authorities in Kenya will determine how far criminal justice will be pursued in the Kenyan.

Conclusion

In both Sudan and Kenyan, it appears that the pursuit of peace often compromises justice. But before such a conclusion can be made, one must know where the collective interest of the political elite lies. If the interest is to restore peace in the country, then the issue of justice will be compromised. But one must also be prepared to suffer the full consequences of future insecurity and conflict if such restorative approaches to justice do not ensure peace in the long run.

As the piece reminds us and ongoing debates in Kenya and Sudan amply illustrate, seeking to promote peace and justice in conflict-affected countries is always difficult. In both the Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended the North-South conflict in Sudan and the Darfur Peace Agreement, as well as current negotiations for Darfur, justice may have loomed large as an issue, but has not tended to feature in the final text of peace agreements.  The same is true of the pact which ended the post-election violence in Kenya, although that agreement also provided for the Waki Commission, which ultimately resulted in the presentation of evidence to the International Criminal Court (ICC).  Often, then, as the piece notes, it would appear that justice is sacrificed for the sake of peace. 

However, where justice remains an element of peacemaking and peacebuilding, another question arises: should justice be restorative or retributive? As Aning and Lartey note, political elites often argue that conflict resolution and restorative justice are more appropriate to Africa than retributive justice. 

I would not challenge the virtues of restorative justice processes. However, one may wish to reflect on just who, in many situations, is arguing that retributive justice is not an approach to justice taken in Africa, and that international criminal accountability, particularly as institutionalized through the ICC, is not purely a Western imposition. Happily, however, the authors do not take this assertion at face value, but rather recognize that indeed decisions which are made about peace and justice are driven by the preferences of political elites. While the argument for restorative over retributive justice is sometimes strongly made by both civil society actors and scholars sensitive to the nuances of the peace-justice debate, too often it is made by the very political elites who fear that they might be tried before the ICC. 

At a conference I attended last week hosted by the school of law at the University of the Witwatersrand, one participant likened this situation to a fox guarding the henhouse. Thus, the assertion that justice always impedes peace or that it is not an African value, merits scrutiny. It may otherwise be quite convenient for political leaders in Africa who may be implicated in serious international crimes to argue that African traditions favor restorative rather than retributive justice. This assertion simplifies, obviously, many distinct practices of conflict resolution, justice, and reconciliation across the continent, and fails to take account of what many in affected communities, and individual victims, often say they might prefer.

And it is well worth reminding ourselves, and particularly self-serving perpetrators of abuses and political violence, that a significant number of countries in Africa –30 out of a total of 111 states parties—are parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. This is a record that rivals that of Europe and Latin America, and which is more notable given the number of countries on the continent affected by serious violent conflict. African nations engaged actively in the negotiations over the Rome Statute for the ICC in 1998, and formed a unified bloc supporting the extension of the court’s active jurisdiction over the crime of aggression at the recent review conference for the Rome Statute in Kampala. Simply characterizing retributive justice generally, or the ICC specifically, as alien Western impositions, then, is not entirely convincing. 

This is not to say that restorative approaches which exist in traditional or customary law and processes are not important; rather it is to suggest that they may be able to work in tandem with retributive processes rather than being treated as inevitably inconsistent. The idea that different levels of and approaches to justice could coexist has been essential to the three-pronged approach proposed by the prosecutor of the ICC for Kenya, and one embraced, at least officially, by the Kenyan government. The panel of eminent Africans commissioned by the AU to propose solutions to the crisis over accountability for abuses in Darfur precipitated by the indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir suggested accountability mechanisms based in Africa alongside traditional and restorative approaches, but did not reject criminal accountability as an element of a larger hybrid strategy. And perhaps here Africa has much to teach the West about post-atrocity peace and justice — that perhaps the solution lies in a plurality of mechanisms. While these have yet to be tested in either Sudan or Kenya, and may never be if elites oppose them, the innovations are certainly worth recognizing.