Caspian Report - Issue: 07 - Spring 2014

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US President Barack Obama holds a bilateral meeting with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai. AHMET YUKLEYEN 14 they can move forward - but that has not yet happened. Although many policymakers and analysts focus on who will be the next president, the more important question in relation to sustainable peace and political consensus is whether Afghanistan’s Pashtun, Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara, and other major constituencies will support the election’s outcome. The biggest opposition to any political consensus is the Taliban, who are mostly Pashtuns. The Taliban leader Mullah Omar disparaged the upcoming elections as a “waste of time”, highlighting allegations of fraud and corruption in previous elections as part of a campaign to discourage election participation. 24 State institutions beyond the security sector must be viable. These include the public-finance system; health services and education; infrastructure for transportation, communications, irrigation, and energy. State institutions should be able to manage sources of revenue, including municipalities. A reform agenda needs to address corruption and ensure services work not only in the major cities but also in the towns and villages. The rural areas are most open to corruption and risk falling into the hands of local power brokers. If sub-state actors (especially power brokers from northern and western Afghanistan) lose faith in the central government, they are likely to accelerate their efforts to rearm. These fissures will undermine the cohesiveness of the ANF and other security agencies. If the central government cannot control the distant regions of Afghanistan, then India, Russia, and Iran will likely increase support for anti-Taliban forces in the north and west, while Pakistan would support the Taliban and other Pashtun groups in the south and east. 25 24. United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (2013) Afghanistan: Mid-Year Report 2013. Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. P. 1. http://unama.unmissions.org. Retrieved on Feb 10, 2014. 25. Graeme Smith, Seth G. Jones, Nader Nadery, Clare Lockhart, Director, and Daniel S. Markey (2013) “Prospects for Afghanistan in 2014” Dec. 18. http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/prospectsafghanistan-2014/p32094. Retrieved on Feb. 18, 2014.
The reliance of the US forces on manipulative powerbrokers and controversial paramilitary forces, such as the Afghan Local Police, has been extremely problematic for stability and counterterrorism objectives in the long term. It was often the powerbrokers’ politicaltribal-criminal patronage networks that shaped the stabilization and statebuilding effort in Afghanistan. “Many Afghan people themselves refer to the post-2002 political dispensation and the rise of non-Taliban protagonists as mafia rule.” 26 Mafia rule can gain a great deal of legitimacy and political capital among the population, especially if it outperforms the state in providing security, services, and socio-economic benefits. But mafias can be highly abusive, capricious, and ultimately deficient in providing security or economic benefits to the population, which is the situation that emerged in post-Taliban Afghanistan. “Since many of the mafia-like powerbrokers have been linked to the Afghan government and even frequently held positions in the government, many Afghans have come to see the state itself as a mafia-like structure.” 27 Karzai’s presidency has largely lost legitimacy due to corruption. If the political actors of Afghanistan fail to use the elections this year as an opportunity to build political consensus and legitimacy through trustworthy state institutions, no military power can stabilize the country. This could lead all players to default to a civil war in which they all lose out. Economy A stable economy is a vital in providing security and dependable political institutions. If soldiers in ANF are not paid, they will seek out other options. If state officials are not paid well, they begin to engage in corruption and bribery. Moreover, without stability and well-functioning bureaucracy, investments cannot grow. The Afghan economy has been trapped in this vicious circle for decades, and consequently is reliant on two main sources of income: foreign aid and opium. If security is not provided once US troops leave, aid workers and investment dollars will leave as well. The hard-won gains from twelve years of fighting and $17 billion in economic assistance 28 could be lost if the country slides into another violent civil war, reverts to Taliban rule, and if al-Qaeda reclaims its former safe haven. The sooner Afghanistan moves toward revenue self-sufficiency, the sooner it can act to prevent international aid dependency. This requires focusing on certain sectors for growth such as agriculture, extractives, and light industry and linking them to markets inside and outside the country. It also requires fighting corruption and reducing revenue losses to middlemen. 29 15 CASPIAN REPORT, sprIng 2014 26. Vanda Felbab-Brown (2013) “Afghanistan After ISAF” Harvard International Review Vol. 35, No. 2.http://hir.harvard.edu/not-a-drop-to-spare/afghanistan-after-isafpage=0,2. Retrieved on Feb. 2, 2014. 27. Ibid. p. 3. 28. U.S. Agency for International Development http://www.usaid.gov/afghanistan/about-us. Retrieved on Feb. 12, 2014. 29. Graeme Smith, Seth G. Jones, Nader Nadery, Clare Lockhart, Director, and Daniel S. Markey (2013) “Prospects for Afghanistan in 2014” Dec. 18. http://www.cfr.org/afghanistan/prospectsafghanistan-2014/p32094. Retrieved on Feb. 18, 2014.
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Radu Dudau 92 Romania’s Energy St
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Why World Oil Prices Should Be High
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Luay Al-Khatteeb 108 for $1 of reve
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FatIh Ozbay 116 Discussions about V
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FatIh Ozbay 122 Montreux is quite s
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MUbarIz Hasanov 124 Some Remarks on
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Turkey will be USD 37 billion highe
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Caspian Report - Issue: 07 - Spring 2014

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