In the UK Parliament

There was an Afghan forum last Thursday in the House of Commons organised by Khalid Nadeem of the SOUTH ASIA & MIDDLE EAST FORUM. Hamad Ghailani, head of the Hadra sufi sect, was a speaker. His comments were fairly tame and largely supportive of Karzai. He claimed that the West had been wrong to make 2014 a date for troop withdrawal and that the National Dialogue (in which the major players are the Taliban and the Northern Alliance) was of some importance.
Tobias Elwood MP spoke rather better, talking of the importance of infrastructure. For instance the tarmac road to Lashkagar has made people in that region more prosperous to such a degree that the locals report I.E.D.s more readily. He views Herat and Kandahar as economic hubs. He says that economic development might make the difference - if Afghanistan had more credible politics. But to this day Afghanistan has no proper political parties and way too much power for the President. Tobias favours the Single Transferable Vote system rather than the current first past the post system for Afghanistan. But he laments the state of the Afghan armed forces with an army that is largely Tajik and Uzbek and a police force that is largely Pushtu.
We were reminded that the West currently has 130,000 troops in Afghanistan and intends to leave 20,000 behind after 2014.
Sabrina, an Afghan MP, reminded us of the importance of UN resolution 1325 (see below).
We were reminded that the USA does not want to stay in Afghanistan. Another questioner emphasised the importance of dealing with the warlords if you want to control drugs because they are the ones forcing the farmers to produce them,
The NCF suggested that the proxy war between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan had to end - and that meant resolving the Kashmir issue.

ON UNSCR 1325: PeaceWomen.org writes: The first resolution on women, peace and security, Security Council Resolution 1325 (SCR1325), was unanimously adopted by United Nations Security Council on 31 October 2000. SCR1325 marked the first time the Security Council addressed the disproportionate and unique impact of armed conflict on women; recognized the under-valued and under-utilized contributions women make to conflict prevention, peacekeeping, conflict resolution and peace-building. It also stressed the importance of women’s equal and full participation as active agents in peace and security. SCR1325 is binding upon all UN Member States and the adoption of the Resolution marked an important international political recognition that women and gender are relevant to international peace and security.

Parwan raises questions over Afghan sovereignty

The disagreement over the role that the United States will play within Afghanistan after their scheduled withdrawal in 2014 has become more pronounced recently, with some observers suggesting that advisors with ‘anti-western’ agendas are becoming more influential within the Hamid Karzai’s close circle.  A New York Times article published yesterday describes how the Parwan detention facility has become the latest focal point in the escalating war of words between the Afghan government and the United States. The issue revolves around the ‘sudden’ demand for the full transfer of the prison from US control to Afghanistan. This is despite the Americans’ claims that a programme specialising in the training of Afghan prison officers is behind schedule and that there is definite timetable for the handing-over of the prison.

The escalating tension over the future of Parwan can be seen as a metaphor for the issue of sovereignty in a post-US Afghanistan. Obama’s administration has been accused of interfering with sovereignty before, most notably by Pakistan, and it is now the turn of the Afghan government to blame the United States of sidestepping the correct diplomatic channels and making unilateral decisions about the country’s future. Allegations of torture at the base are being used as the primary reason for requesting it to be transferred to Afghan control, but the whole case is also being used as a political exercise by Karzai to show the US that he and his government are willing to go public if they feel that private negotiations are leading nowhere.

With a timetable for withdrawal finalised, the question of what the USA’s involvement in Afghanistan will be after 2014 needs to be answered. The ‘strategic partnership document’ that will be published at some point this year will go some way in describing how the United States will maintain a presence in the country that it has been in seemingly forever. How this document will be received by Karzai’s government, however, remains to be seen, and it will be of utmost importance to the Afghan administration that national sovereignty is not threatened.