Читать книгу The State-Building Dilemma in Afghanistan - Haqmal Daudzai - Страница 11

State-building is amongst the most blurred and multifaced term in academic literature, as well as in its policy approach. It encompasses a wide range of interdisciplinary meanings, applications and outcomes, including building peace, security, legitimacy, institutions, democracy, good governance and economic development in the following literature: (Huntington, 1968 &1991), (Martinussen, 1997), (Battera, 2003), (Caplan, 2004), (Fukuyama, 2004), (Fukuyama, 2004 & 2005), (Brinkerhoff, 2005), (Bogdandy et al., 2005), [30] (Scott, 2007), (Grindle, 2007), (Wesley, 2008), (Grävingholt et al., 2009), (Chandler, 2010), (Wollf, 2011), (Walle & Scott, 2011), (Marquette & Beswick, 2011) (Maley, 2013), (Podder, 2014), (Gisselquist, 2014) & (Grotenhuis, 2016). Different perceptions among scholars of state-building and its relevant concepts are elaborated under another title in chapter two.

With respect to state-building in Afghanistan, numerous literature, (Rubin, 2002; 2004; 2006; 2013 & 2016), (Maley, 2004; 2013 & 2018), (Nixon, 2008), (Lister, 2007), (Brahimi, 2007), (Schetter & Mielke, 2008), (Berman, 2010), (Edwards, 2010), (Ganapathiraju & Miske, 2012), (Podder, 2014), (Greven, 2014), (Monten, 2014), (Keane, 2016) and (Edward, 2017), have made significant contributions from various perspectives including that of security, peace-making, nation and state-formation, reconstruction, and donor engagements etc.

Several academic works have studied Afghanistan, from third-party state-building –also known as the international or humanitarian intervention–perspective, among them are (Rubin, 2006), (Schetter & Mielke, 2008), (Ayub & Kouvo, 2008), (Münch, 2013), (Edward, 2017). For Heinze and others, the rationale for international intervention is the act of interference by a state, an organization of states (e.g., in the case Afghanistan, the U.S. and NATO), or an international organization (United Nations) in another state, with or without using force, aiming at ending ‘violent’ oppression and atrocities or other human rights violations committed by a ruling government regime on its people. (Heinze, 2009 ) & (Trim & Simms, 2011). However, as Fatima Ayub and Sari Kouvo (2008) also note, the US-led international intervention in Afghanistan was primarily driven by ‘self-security…with no clear strategies for long-term stabilization, state-building, or development’ (2008, p. 641). The Taliban Emirate’s refusal to surrender Usama bin Laden –leader of the Al-Qaida organization and the suspect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks– led to the U.S.-led NATO military invasion in Afghanistan. The U.N. sponsored the Bonn haste process, aiming at the stabilization, and a political settlement in Afghanistan following the US-military invasion in late 2001. Thus, it is also at this juncture that the academic literature critically reviews the Bonn arrangements and its following state-building process.

For instance, in his paper, Peace Building and State-Building in Afghanistan: Constructing Sovereignty for Whose Security? Barnett Rubin (2006) analyses post-Taliban state-building intervention based on the ‘combined mobilization’ of three key statehood elements of ‘coercion, capital [31] and legitimacy’ (pp. 176-178). According to Rubin (2006), historically, foreign aid (state capital) was the key to the mobilization of the Afghan rulers for building political coercion (military) and legitimacy to form states. However, the end of the Cold War in the early 90s and the global war on terror in 2001 changed the terms of conditions for state-building in general, and for Afghanistan in particular (p. 178).

Rubin (2006) notes that the dominating role of the U.S. obstructed the U.N. coordinating position in all the state-building operations in Afghanistan. Empowering warlords through military and financial assistance, excluding the Taliban –as one of the main parties to the conflict– from the Bonn talks, and the failure to coordinate foreign aid are listed by Rubin (2006, pp. 180-183), Maley (2013) and Ahmad Rashid (2008/2009/2010) as the significant factors blocking the way towards Afghan state sustainability. Although Rubin observes that the UN involvement, the international consensus on the intervention, and the application of liberal democracy were some of the relatively positive outcomes of the Bonn process, and conducive to local legitimacy (2006, pp. 183-184). Nevertheless, I argue that some major flaws in the Bonn process (listed by Rubin and others above) resulted in the rebirth of insurgency, political deadlocks, corruption, and the lack of rule of law in the following years. This not only gradually reduced the state legitimacy locally but also weakened the consensus supporting the US-led intervention in Afghanistan regionally and internationally.

While the international intervention is highlighted as counterproductive for local governance in the first place by Chandler (2010), the lack of contextual knowledge and ‘what constitutes’ local ‘legitimacy’ is noted as the ‘major problem’ of the ‘imposed state-building projects’ by Edwards (2010, p. 16). According to Edwards (2010), the US-led international state-building strategies stem from the Western statehood modality that is incompatible to a ‘hybrid political order’ and ‘fragile’ social context like Afghanistan (p. 16).

Nevertheless, citing Ullmann-Margalit (1977), Maley (2013) believes that, “On occasion, it may be a good idea to attempt a break from ‘traditional’ ways of doing things that privilege the power of some aspirants over others by entrenching norms of partiality” (pp. 256-257). Maley (2013) continues that besides ‘local history’ and ‘culture’, the Afghan state-building enterprise is ‘subject’ to ‘internationally accepted’ ‘norms’ including ‘human rights and the laws of armed conflict,’ as well as ‘democratic governance’ (p. 257).

[32] A separates chapter in this dissertation critically analyzes the Bonn [33] process and its outcomes in the following years.

The present research is mainly concerned with state-building in Afghanistan from the perspective of state-institutional design (presidential vs. parliamentary) at the national level and the role of the 2005 elected provincial councils at the sub-national administrative structure for a possible decentralization. Therefore, I briefly reviewed some of the relevant literature.

Scholars in Afghanistan agree that Afghan political elites are ethnically divided on state-institutional design, in which the Pashtuns opt for presidential centralization, whereas the non-Pashtuns (mainly Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbeks) for a sort of parliamentary decentralization, and among them some even wish for federalism (Malikyar & Rubin, 2002), (Goodson, 2003), (Rubin, 2004) & (Rubin & Gagnon, 2016). This discourse is equally divided between academic scholars as well.

The pragmatic rationale for adopting a robust presidential centralization in 2004, aiming at demobilizing various warlord groups and maintaining Afghan national integration, has been acknowledged by several scholars including (Smith, 2001), (Goodson, 2003), (Rubin, 2004), (Berman, 2010), (Nuruzzaman, 2010) and (Smith, 2018), and strongly supported by some others (Zakhilwal, 2001, ph. 16), (Berman, 2010, pp. 7-9) & (Khalilzad, 2016, p. 195).

Following the field research in 2002, Malikyar and Rubin (2002) proposed the Afghan constitution drafting commission for “a state structure (for Afghanistan) that is unitary enough to unite the country and decentralized enough to permit real participation to a population” (p. 46). In another place, Rubin and others concretely promote a presidential system with the devolution of power to sub-national government structures (Rubin, 2013), (Ghai, 2003), (Selassie, 2003), (Ganapathiraju & Miske, 2012).

Nonetheless, taking the ethnolinguistic fragmented nature of the Afghan context into consideration, some academic discourse heavily weighs on parliamentary federalism among them (Shahrani, 2001/ 2014), (Cameron, 2001), (Tremblay, 2002), (Goodson, 2003) (Carroll & Anderson, 2009) & (Torabi, 2012). Whereas others propose some sort of semi-Presidentialism with a decentralized administrative structure (Maley, 2003/2013) & (Ahmadi et al., p. 82). In one place, Maley (2013) notes that the application of a strong Presidential system is ‘the most serious single weakness’ in the 2004 Afghan constitution, which led to ‘manipulative neopatrimonialism’ of executive power and ‘burgeoning corruption’ in the following years (2013, pp. 259-266).

In August 2016, the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies (AISS) published its field research results in a paper ‘Afghanistan’s Constitution and the Society in Transition’ in which besides other significant constitutional controversial issues, it attempts to reveal Afghans’ preferences for state institutional design at a national and local level. The study is conducted through surveying 800 people and interviewing around 34 elites in 10 Afghan provinces including Bamyan, Badakhshan, Balkh, Ghazni, Ghor, Kandahar, Kabul, Kunduz, Nangarhar, and Herat (Ahmadi et al., pp. 12-13). The quantitative polls of the AISS report that the majority (49%) of the respondents agree with the current presidential system, whereas 29% favor parliamentary and 22% a semi-presidential system (p. 59). Whereas the qualitative interview results show that half (17 out of 34) of the experts are for a parliamentary system (Ahmadi et al., 2016, p. 75).⁶ Similarly, according to this study, 39.8% of the respondents opted for the present heavy centralization, whereas 40.9% preferred decentralization in which “provinces should be given the decision-making power and local officials should be elected by the people” (p. 67). The remaining 19.4% demanded federalism with a division of power between the center and periphery (Ahmadi et al., 2016, p. 67). Nevertheless, ‘one-third’ of the respondents perceive the ‘nonimplementation of the constitution’ as the main issue rather the present state-institutional design (Ahmadi et al., 2016, p. 44 & 52).

Although the AISS study is the first field research that assesses the Afghan perception on the implementation of the Afghan constitution post-2004; it has serious technical, methodical, and ethical shortcomings. While the authors ignore the ethnopolitical divide (Pashtun vs the non-Pashtun) over the matter, they intentionally attempt to project the results of the study in favor of the parliamentary (30%) system by merely ignoring that 49% of the polls are in favor of a presidential system. Likewise, from among the qualitative interviews, only 17 (out of 34) experts (almost all of whom are non-Pashtuns) are quoted for the parliamentary system while the remaining (17 experts) are overlooked.

[34] Furthermore, the lack of awareness among the ordinary Afghans regarding the political system and the sub-national administrative structure, which may impede the accuracy of a quantitative survey, is one of the critical issues disregarded in this study.

The selection of provinces is also not ethnically proportional. While the Pashtun makes the majority (40-50%) of the ethnic group

(Schetter, 2009, p. 24)⁷, only 2 (Kandahar and Nangarhar) out of 10 selected provinces are chosen for the survey. Similarly, the study is conducted only in Dari language and mainly quotes prominent opposition of the present government and remains critical of the Pashtun dominance. For instance, it quotes Ahmad Wali Massoud –head of the Massoud Foundation, and Hafiz Mansoor– both prominent members of the Northern Alliances who are very famous for their anti-Pashtun stance. Likewise, Sima Samar and Habiba Sarabi – ethnic Hazara; and finally, Mohammad Shahir Rafeeq Shaheer and Fauzia Koofi, are among the outspoken Tajik parliamentarians against Pashtun domination in the present government. The non-Pashtun political elites understand that a centralized presidential system would favor Pashtun dominance. Therefore, they are more inclined to opt for an alternative model.

It is also worth mentioning that AISS invited chief executive Abdullah as the honorary guest at the inauguration ceremony of this study’s result. This was Abdullah, who brought up the constitutional amendments and changing the presidential system to semi-Presidentialism in his NUG political deal in 2014. In his speech, Abdullah appreciated the initiative of the AISS and claimed that his demand for a change in the political system is backed by academic research (Office of the Chief Executive , 2016). It is also worth mentioning that all three authors of this study belong to the non-Pashtun (Tajik and Hazara) ethnic group. The AISS’s biased approach brings the results and credibility of its study in question. Hence, I have learned significant lessons from the above-listed short-comings for the present study.

Another major subject covered by the present study is the Afghan elected provincial councils (PCs) and their role in an alternative decentralized state structure. Unfortunately, except for Sarah Lister and Hamish Nixon’s two research papers (Lister & Nixon, 2006 pp.6-9 & Nixon, 2008 pp.19-23) which partly introduced the 2005 elected PCs, there is hardly any analytical [35] study in the literature. In their research paper, ‘Center-periphery Relations in the Afghan State: Current Practices, Future Prospects’, Malikyar & Rubin (2002) propose the power over sub-national ‘allocations’ to the provincial and district councils (2002, pp. 45-46). However, the proposal came before the creation of Afghan PCs in 2002. Thereby, the present study attempts to fill this knowledge gap with the results of the field research.

The Afghan informal governance structures (Jirag/Shura), the warlords’ power, and the patronage-based system are among the highlighting themes in several of the sub-national governance literature including (Malikyar & Rubin, 2002), (Lister S. , 2007), (Lamb & Shawn, 2012), (Münch, 2013), (Schetter, 2014) and (Malejacaq, 2016) to mention but a few. Few relevant points discussed by Sarah Lister (2007) and Conrad Schtetter (2014) are reviewed here. Lister analyses the Afghan local government institutions from the Chesterman’s (2004) theory of a state in which ‘political power’ has been ‘manifested and exercised’ ‘in a progressively depersonalized, formalized and rationalized’ manner (2007, p. 3). Lister believes that following the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001, the co-option of local warlords into the state structures resulted in parallel power institutions to the Afghan state (p. 16). Lister suggests that:

Disarmament, the reform of the police, and the judicial sector, and close attention to the quality of senior appointments are all measures that would have contributed to shifting ‘the rules of the game’ in Afghanistan from informal patronage-based systems, and towards a more depersonalized, formalized, and rationalized exercise of power through the state. (p. 16)

While Lister disparages the U.S. and its Afghan partners for not applying the liberal state-building strategies, surprisingly enough, Schetter (2014) criticizes them for the opposite. According to Schetter (2014):

The approach taken by the interventionists also revealed the strong limitations of the political vocabulary and imagination. Political dynamics that could not be squeezed into these bequeathed categories or did not follow the ‘rational logic’ of the modern nation state were often labelled as illegitimate (e.g., warlords, informal institutions) or even chaotic and anarchic. (p. 9)

Schetter notes that the lack of in-depth knowledge of the ‘local realities’ and non-contextualization of the modern state-building strategies led to counterproductive outcomes in Afghanistan. Pointing to what was earlier emphasized by Lister (2007), Schetter believes that the international [36] community aimed at changing the local ‘rules of the game’ in Afghanistan, not knowing that “its own actions became determined by the local ‘rules of the game’” (p. 10). The remilitarization of the local warlords –in the form of para-military forces– and the creation of several parallel development councils are underlined as the severe drawbacks by Schetter (2014). Taking into consideration the significantly different analyses of Lister and Schetter on the sub-national political dynamics, the present study further updates on the similar issues in general and the PCs, in particular, in a separate chapter.