The United Nations Security Council held a foreign ministerial level open "debate" on Afghanistan on Tuesday. The problem is that none of the Security Council permanent members' foreign ministers bothered to show up. Not even the foreign minister of Afghanistan itself made the trip to New York to speak to the Council.
What was billed as a "debate" turned out to be little more than a series of over 35 speeches praising Afghanistan for the progress it has made in taking ownership of its own security, as it assumes full responsibility in most areas by 2014, and stressing the importance of the UN Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), which the Council voted unanimously to renew for another year.
In its resolution extending the UNAMA mandate, the Security Council said it “stresses the critical importance of a continued presence of UNAMA and other United Nations agencies, funds and programmes in the provinces, consistent with the transition process, in support of and in cooperation with the Afghan Government.”
Before the Council vote to extend the UNAMA mandate, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon kicked things off with his status report and outline of the UN's future role in Afghanistan. He told the Council that Afghanistan’s political climate will be dominated by the 2014 elections to take place there. He noted his concern about the 20 per cent increase in civilian casualties among women and girls in 2012, as tallied in a UN report last month, while expressing some optimism that some elements of the Taliban might be willing to engage in reconciliation efforts. He welcomed the joint United States-Afghan declaration adopted in January supporting greater coherence of reconciliation efforts but warned that "Reconciliation efforts will not be quick or easy.”
The Secretary General emphasized in his remarks that the UN must continue strong support to the Afghan government up to and beyond the 2014 deadline for the government’s assumption of responsibility from the departing NATO forces. “We should continue providing good offices, including support for elections. We should maintain our work for reconciliation and regional cooperation. We must stand firm for human rights. And we must advance development,” he said.
Taking the floor next, the UN ambassador from Afghanistan stressed the importance of Afghanistan's national sovereignty and ownership of its own security. He said: “For the Afghan people, national sovereignty means taking full responsibility for their destiny.” In addition, he said, the assumption of full security responsibility by Afghan forces was more tangible than ever. By the end of the “fourth tranche” of the transition, 87 per cent of Afghans would be living in areas where Afghan forces were in charge of security, he claimed.
“All eyes are also keenly focused on the election,” he continued, and his government was committed to fair, democratic and transparent polls. Moreover, peace talks and reconciliation with the armed opposition were essential for a successful election. For its part, he said, the Afghan government was doing its utmost to ensure the success of the reconciliation process. “As we work to move the peace process forward, the role of the Security Council will remain imperative,” he said, welcoming the adoption of resolution 2082 (2012), which refined the Taliban sanctions regime to make it more flexible. He noted that a successful transition would require partnership with the United Nations.
Unfortunately, this hope and the Afghans' perception of the UN do not quite match. According to the UN's envoy to Afghanistan Jan Kubis who was quoted by Inner City Press, the UN is seen as close to the NATO forces, and the Afghans “blame us for certain deficiencies and problems.”
Maybe the Afghan foreign minister stayed away from these proceedings because he didn't want to have to deal with the fallout from recent provocative statements by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other members of his government against the United States and NATO. Indeed, the Afghan UN ambassador went out of his way to say that there would be a positive role for NATO to play after 2104, such as continued training, and he pointed to the strategic partnership agreement between Afghanistan and the United States signed last May. A good cop-bad cop strategy, perhaps.
Karzai's most recent bad cop tirade, made just as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel prepared to meet in Kabul for talks about Afghan security, was to accuse the United States of collaborating with the Taliban. He also set a deadline - reportedly not yet met - for U.S. special forces to leave Wardak province to stop their alleged torture and killings. So much for any gratitude for the sacrifices in blood and treasure by the United States in helping the Afghans rid themselves of the scourge of al Qaeda and to build a more secure, stable and inclusive society.
US. Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice did not allude to the Karzai accusations in her remarks to the Security Council following the vote to extend the UNAMA mandate. Instead, she said that the United States welcomed phased progress in the takeover of security duties by Afghan forces and pointed to Karzai's recent visit to Washington to discuss with President Obama security and economic development matters, as well as continued engagement between the two countries. Ambassador Rice said that over 34,000 U.S. military troops would come home from Afghanistan in February 2014 and that the United States looked forward to the "final tranche" of the security transition process that would see the Afghan forces "lead for security across their entire country."
"Afghanistan’s progress is due primarily to the grit, determination, and hard work of the Afghan people. It is they who have come this far," she told the Security Council in her upbeat statement. She neglected to mention the deaths of over 2000 Americans in Afghanistan since the start of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, including a growing number at the hands of the very same Afghan police and security forces that we have trained.
Like many of the other speakers, Ambassador Rice praised advances in human rights for women in Afghanistan, but said that there was still more work to be done in this area. Also she expressed the common theme of support for the elections planned for next year, so long as credible mechanisms are set up to ensure transparency and the opportunity for broad participation.
Finally Ambassador Rice heaped praise on the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan for playing "an indispensible role in the country’s progress" and said that it "needs to remain a committed partner." In fact, she said that the United States opposed any further budget cuts for the UN mission. “We believe these cuts have now gone as far as they can and UNAMA’s budget must be stabilized,” she said, stressing that the mission’s mandate remained a priority and must be "resourced" as such. Of course, U.S. taxpayers will continue to pick up about a quarter of the cost of supporting the UN mission.
Absent from Ambassador Rice's remarks was even a glancing acknowledgment of the dire picture for the future painted by last month's report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). To date since fiscal year 2002, U.S. costs reported for U.S. military, diplomatic, reconstruction and relief operations in Afghanistan have been over $500 billion, according to the GAO, which concluded that Afghanistan is likely to collapse without many more billions of dollars of U.S. financial support. Moreover, we can expect much of it to be wasted or stolen, as has already occurred with tens of billions of development dollars that were supposed to stimulate the Afghan economy and create effective government institutions.
In short, the gap between the stark facts on the ground in Afghanistan and the rosy picture of the future put forth by Ambassador Rice and the other speakers at the UN Security Council open "debate" was startling to say the least.
