Afghanistan: Winning Peace after the War

(I wrote this soon after the US Invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. How prophetic?)

The “first phase” of the war against terrorism in Afghanistan has, for most part, been won. Terrorist training camps have been dismantled and the authoritarian fundamentalist regime has been replaced by an interim government that is more acceptable to a majority of the people of Afghanistan. Yet, important questions lie ahead. Winning the fight against the Taliban and Al Qaida forces may be the easy part. Winning the peace thereafter may prove a more daunting task. Bringing peace to a war-torn county like Afghanistan will require more than military or political victories. Among other things, it will require putting in place basic democratic structures and institutions for the protection of human rights. Ultimately, the key to guaranteeing peace and stability in Afghanistan will be creating the conditions that will allow for the emergence of a free civil society sector that can act as a check on state authority and provide an alternative voice to militant Islamic fundamentalism. Given Afghanistan’s recent history, this is a task in which the international community has obvious stakes. While there is a consensus on the need for peace and security in Afghanistan, what has not been so clear is the place of human rights in the quest for peace and security. Will concern for human rights take a back seat in the efforts to achieve security and political stability? This is a crucial question. The past two decades of civil war in Afghanistan was characterized by widespread human rights violations by all sides in the conflict, including the Northern Alliance, which has now gained some political ascendancy in the country. The main victims of human rights abuses have been ordinary citizens of Afghanistan – women, children, the infirm and the elderly. While the repression of women under the Taliban has become well known, human rights groups have, for many years also reported crimes of sexual assault, abduction and ethnically motivated killings perpetrated by warlords and armed factions. Some of these groups remain active in the country, posing a continuing threat to the rights and freedoms of many citizens. For these vulnerable members of the society, political changes will not mean much if the human rights abuses they have endured for several years continue.
The hope has been that the U.S.-led intervention and the establishment of an interim government in Afghanistan will put human rights prominently on the agenda of the reconstruction and peace building efforts in the country. However, the indications so far have not been very promising. There is a real danger now that the international community is pursuing a political solution that, while serving immediate security needs, bargains away accountability for past human rights abuses and blushes over present human rights violations. Discussions about how to promote human rights and bring those responsible for past human rights abuses to justice have been largely absent from the reconstruction efforts. There is neither talk of retributive justice for human rights abuses nor even of restorative justice in the mould of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The over riding emphasis has been on peace and security. However, the lesson of history is that peace and security often do not stand on their own. Sustainable peace and security can only be built on a matrix of fundamental values -- human rights, accountability and social justice. The current efforts at reconstruction and nation building in Afghanistan must be informed by a clear commitment to the promotion of these values. To do otherwise would be to make the same tragic mistakes of the past.