British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Monday called for ”a more coherent effort” to achieve a political solution in Afghanistan by splitting the Taliban and offering alternative livelihoods to many of the insurgents.
Speaking at Nato’s headquarters in Brussels, the foreign secretary said the time had come for the Afghan government to shoulder more responsibility in ending the insurgency by providing the political will to reintegrate insurgent fighters, curb corruption and co-operate with neighbouring countries.
Officials said the speech was aimed at the British public, who were looking for an explanation of strategy after British forces suffered their highest monthly casualties since 2001, and at the Afghan government as it seeks re-election next month.
Miliband described the Afghan insurgents as a loose coalition of Taliban, Pashtun tribal groups and warlords that was under intense pressure as new offensives were mounted against them on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border.
”From this position, we need to help the Afghan government exploit the opportunity, with a more coherent effort to fragment the various elements of the insurgency, and turn those who can be reconciled to live within the Afghan Constitution,” he said.
The Afghan government has negotiated the defection of some senior officials and in 2005 set up the National Independent Peace and Reconciliation Commission, which was supposed to reintegrate former insurgents into Afghan society. But critics have said that the effort has been hugely underfunded. The commission’s office in Kandahar is reported to have a monthly budget of only $600.
A British official said on Monday that the Afghan reconciliation process needed to be ”supercharged and made a priority.
”One of the fundamental problems is that those who have tried to leave in the past have not had their security guaranteed and they have been killed,” said Malcolm Chalmers, an Afghanistan expert at the Royal United Services Institute.
Christopher Langton, at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said there was tension between the Afghan approach, which was to seek to reintegrate insurgents individually, and Western troop contributors like Britain, who would rather deal with whole groups.
News emerged on Monday of a ceasefire between the Afghan authorities and local Taliban groups in Badghis province, near the northern border with Turkmenistan. The government in Kabul said it was prepared to strike more local truces ahead of presidential elections on 20 August.
Western observers said such ceasefires can be tactically useful for both sides, but are unlikely to lead to enduring peace if they are not underpinned by a reconciliation process that offers protection and long-term alternative livelihoods to insurgent foot soldiers.
Miliband said: ”The basis for both reintegration and reconciliation is a starker choice: bigger incentives to switch sides and stay out of trouble, alongside tougher action against those who refuse.”
He added: ”The Afghan government needs effective grassroots initiatives to offer an alternative to fight or flight for the foot soldiers of the insurgency. Essentially this means a clear route for former insurgents to return to their villages and go back to farming the land, or a role within the legitimate Afghan security forces.”
Miliband said that for the strategy to work, the new Afghan government would have to shoulder more of the burden in terms of providing government services and development in the villages.
”The biggest shift must now be towards the Afghan state taking more responsibility. Because it is only if the political will is there that a meaningful package of incentives and sanctions can be developed,” he said.
Hamid Karzai is widely tipped to be re-elected in August, but will come under far more intense pressure from Britain and other Nato countries with troops in Afghanistan to ensure his government is more efficient and less corrupt.
The key, Miliband said, would be the choice of the 34 provincial governors and the 364 district governors, who would have to provide ”local governance that is credible, competent and clean, properly resourced and supported from Kabul, and works with the grain of tribal structures and history”. – guardian.co.uk