Le Conseil International pour la Sécurité et le Développement, autrefois connu sous le nom de Conseil de Senlis, affirme dans sa dernière évaluation de la situation en Afghanistan, que les talibans sont présents de façon permanente sur 72% du territoire. Les insurgés sont également au portes de la capitale, et la sécurité n’est plus assurée sur trois des quatre axes routiers de Kaboul.

Conseil International pour la Sécurité et le Développement, décembre 2008

While the international community’s prospects in Afghanistan have never been bleaker, the Taliban has been experiencing a renaissance that has gained momentum since 2005. At the end of 2001, uprooted from its strongholds and with its critical mass shattered, it was viewed as a spent force. It was naively assumed by the US and its allies that the factors which propelled the Taliban to prominence in Afghanistan would become moribund in parallel to its expulsion from the country. The logic ran that as ordinary Afghans became aware of the superiority of a western democratic model, and the benefits of that system flowed down to every corner of the country, then the Taliban’s rule would be consigned to the margins of Afghan history.

However, as seven years of missed opportunity have rolled by, the Taliban has rooted itself across increasing swathes of Afghan territory. According to research undertaken by ICOS throughout 2008, the Taliban now has a permanent presence in 72% of the country. Moreover, it is now seen as the de facto governing power in a number of southern towns and villages. This figure is up from 54% in November 2007, as outlined in the ICOS report Stumbling into Chaos : Afghanistan on the Brink. The increase in their geographic spread illustrates that the Taliban’s political, military and economic strategies are now more successful than the West’s in Afghanistan. Confident in their expansion beyond the rural south, the Taliban are at the gates of the capital and infiltrating the city at will.

Situation en 2007

Of the four doors leading out of Kabul, three are now compromised by Taliban activity. The roads to the west, towards the Afghan National Ring Road through Wardak to Kandahar become unsafe for Afghan or international travel by the time travellers reach the entrance to Wardak province, which is about thirty minutes from the city limits. The road south to Logar is no longer safe for Afghan or international travel. The road east to Jalalabad is not safe for Afghan or international travel once travellers reach the Sarobi Junction which is about an hour outside of the city. Of the two roads leaving the city to the north only one - the road towards the Panjshir valley, Salang tunnel and Mazar - is considered safe for Afghan and international travel. The second road towards the north which leads to the Bagram Air Base is frequently used by foreign and military convoys and subject to insurgent attacks.

Situation en 2008

By blocking the doors to the city in this way, the Taliban insurgents are closing a noose around the city and establishing bases close to the city from which to launch attacks inside it. Using these bases, the Taliban and insurgent attacks in Kabul have increased dramatically - including kidnapping of Afghans and foreigners, various bomb attacks and assassinations. This dynamic has created a fertile environment for criminal activity, and the links between the Taliban and criminals are increasing and the lines between the various violent actors becoming blurred.

All of these Taliban successes are forcing the Afghan government and the West to the negotiating table

The Taliban are now dictating terms in Afghanistan, both politically and militarily. At the national level, talk of reconciliation and power sharing between undefined moderate elements of the movement and elected government officials is commonplace. At a local level, the Taliban are manoeuvring skilfully to fill the governance void, frequently offering a mellower version of localised leadership than characterised their last stint in power.

Simultaneously, he asymmetric threat posed by agile Taliban forces to NATO’s ill-equipped, lumbering military machine ensures that genuine security cannot be established in any of the 72% of Afghan territory where the Taliban have a permanent presence. Without appropriate resources at their disposal, NATO is not prepared for the challenge. Indeed, any real difference would require a significant troop increase numbering in the tens of thousands. It is their combination of recruitment bulk and propaganda know-how that enables the Taliban to outlast NATO-ISAF and US forces. Simplistic though it may be, their unity of purpose gives them a distinct edge over the cumbersome command structure of Western security and development efforts.

Over the past three years, ICOS’ research and analysis portfolio has catalogued a series of mistakes made by the international community in the quest to pacify an insurgency. There have been some signs of progress, such as opening the international debate on sending more troops, but also a stubborn adherence to failing policies such as military actions leading to civilian casualties, lack of effective aid and development, and support for aggressive poppy crop eradication programmes.

The inability of domestic and international actors to counter the entrenchment of the insurgency in Afghanistan is deeply troubling, and the failure of NATO’s political masters to address the realities of the security situation in Afghanistan has taken the country and the Karzai government to a precipice. It will take more than a military defeat of the Taliban to build trust, especially in the southern provinces. The insurgency continues to turn NATO’s weaknesses into its own strengths. Until external actors expand focus beyond the military dimensions, by targeting needs at a grassroots level and thus restoring its previous levels of support, there is a danger that Afghanistan will be lost for at least another generation.

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Taliban Tactics : The secret of their success

The Taliban’s success can largely be attributed to its use of a wide array of asymmetric measures aimed at negating NATO’s technical military superiority. Drawing on a sophisticated array of terror tactics and a complex intelligence network, the Taliban has managed to spread instability across large parts of Afghanistan through a sustained campaign of violence. With kidnappings and bombings increasingly commonplace even in Kabul itself, the war is now being fought not just in the country’s fringes, but at its heart. A series of recent attacks, such as the audacious Kandahar jailbreak in June 2008, have also boosted the organisation’s prestige and indicated their ability to evade detection by Afghan and Western intelligence networks.

Crucially, the Taliban appears to be also winning on another front - the battle for hearts and minds. By tapping into a variety of local grievances against NATO-ISAF and the Kabul government, from poppy eradication and bombing leading to civilian casualties, to high levels of unemployment and chronic underdevelopment despite billions of dollars of aid, the insurgency has succeeded in attracting sympathy beyond its traditional support base and gained a measure of political legitimacy among many Afghans.2 This was already apparent in 2007, when ICOS conducted an opinion survey to assess local perceptions of the Taliban and its propaganda campaign. Highlighting a growing lack of faith in NATO and the Afghan government, almost half of all respondents doubted their ability to achieve a decisive victory, and more than a quarter of those interviewed expressed their support for the Taliban.

International failures

Underlying this expansion of Taliban presence is the international community’s failure to deliver on the many promises of a better life made to the Afghan people in the wake of the invasion. Seven years on, much of the country still lacks basic amenities and the majority of the population struggle to secure necessities such as food and shelter, let alone a sustainable livelihood. Field research by ICOS has presented a picture of acute hardship and deep uncertainty, with the majority of respondents worried about feeding their families.

Economic outreach to Afghans at a grassroots level, through livelihood creation and microfinance schemes, remain central elements of a successful strategy. Yet developmental expenditure continues to be dwarfed by military spending, resulting in an ‘expectations gap’ that the insurgency has been able to exploit. The Taliban has managed to make a manifesto out of the shortcomings of the international community and the Afghan government. Even the failure to prevent the rise of terrorist violence in the country has paradoxically helped the Taliban present themselves in some areas as providers of law and order, despite their responsibility for the ongoing instability.

The international community’s failure to give sufficient focus to the needs and desires of the Afghan population and channel them into effective policy responses is a key aspect of the insurgency’s rising popularity.

This is particularly true of the current approach to tackling Afghanistan’s endemic opium production. A key element of present policy is eradication, which invariably drives farming communities away from the West and into the arms of the Taliban. ICOS suggests an alternative proposal called Poppy for Medicine, which would license some of Afghanistan’s cultivation of opium for conversion into morphine.

If implemented, this proposal would provide poppy growers with the chance to channel their harvest legally into the global morphine market. The current policy of forced poppy crop eradication, on the other hand, destroys their source of income without providing them with an alternative livelihood. In this context, the Taliban has managed to present itself as a protector of local livelihoods by allowing opium production to continue in the areas under its control.

The depressing conclusion is that, despite the vast injections of international capital flowing into the country, and a universal desire to ‘succeed’ in Afghanistan, the state is once again in serious danger of falling into the hands of the Taliban. Where implemented, international development and reconstruction efforts have been underfunded, failed to have a significant impact on local communities’ living conditions, or improve attitudes towards the Afghan Government and the international community. The current insurgency, divided into a large poverty-driven ‘grassroots’ component and a concentrated group of hardcore militant Islamists, is gaining momentum, further complicating the reconstruction and development process and effectively sabotaging NATO-ISAF’s stabilisation mission in the country.

Until the international community expands its focus beyond the traditional military dimensions, targeting needs at a grassroots level and thus restoring its previous levels of support, there is a danger that the Taliban will simply overrun Afghanistan under the noses of NATO.

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Sur le Web

L’OTAN critique vivement le rapport de l’ICOS

L’ambassadeur canadien en Afghanistan, le gouvernement et l’OTAN rejettent unanimement les conclusions du plus récent rapport du Conseil international sur le développement et la sécurité (ICOS). Le centre de recherche, autrefois connu sous le nom de Conseil de Senlis, estime que les talibans ont une « présence permanente » sur 72 % du territoire, comparativement à 54 % l’an dernier.