IMPLICATIONS: The question now is how the expanded ISAF mandate will be used and whether there is still time to revert recent developments in Afghanistan. First of all, the PRTs, which are NATO-lead but separate from ISAF, have a very limited mandate. NGOs that are active in the area have been very critical against these limits. They note that the PRTs are not allowed to interfere with inter-militia fighting, and may not directly intervene in human rights violations. Nor do they have a mandate to stop the regional drug trade. Also, the areas where the PRTs are deployed, and where the ANBP is to begin, are relatively stable and friendly areas, where the security issue is not half as serious as it is in the south. So why deploy security forces to areas where security is less an issue? What makes one skeptic is also the fact that even though the Afghan Ministry of Defense in theory has reformed, in practice the majority of the top 20 officials remain Panjsheris. The Uzbeks, for example, have only two representatives, which makes the Uzbek-dominated Jonbesh-e-Melli militia strongly hesitant in submitting their weapons to what is being perceived as a rival faction, despite the fact that the JM leader, General Dostum, is in fact deputy minister of defense. Some reports also claim that cheap weapons are bought in Pakistan to be handed in to the verification teams, while more modern arms ones are kept. The DDR is not primarily about collecting a certain number of weapons, rather about dissolving the militias’ military structures in favor of rebuilding the Afghan National Army and provide alternatives to warlordism. However, the rebuilding pace is very slow. A new Afghan battalion recently came of the track, for the first time with all Afghan officers conducting a 12-week basic training course. However, the army has only 6,000 soldiers of a planned 70,000. The dropout rate is still an alarmingly high 15 percent, down from about 40 percent in the early days. Parallel to the DDR, President Karzai has also approved a law forbidding political parties from having their private militia, but since some observers claim that there may be up to 800,000 armed fighters in the country, this new law may be hard to enforce. There are also reports of a definite split between Karzai and Minister of Defense Fahim Khan, which deepened while Karzai was abroad recently. Fahim is himself a warlord and leader of the Panjsheri grouping Shura-e-Nazar. Fahim has his own political agenda, which most likely does not include handing over the control of his weapons to someone else. ISAF could play an important role here since ISAF is also involved in training the ANA and some of the ISAF-contributing countries are also equipping the ANA. If ISAF could send a strong signal that it is ready to step up training and funding for an ethnically balanced ANA, and is prepared to fill the security vacuum in the whole country during and after the DDR process, then some of the combatants could follow the call to hand in their arms. Since DDR is also about providing jobs to former combatants, ISAF could increase and expand the number of ongoing labor-intensive reconstruction projects. This could also have an impact on the drug trade since those former combatants, who are not already involved with the narcotics mafia, and won’t join the army, can easily be recruited into the drug trade. Providing jobs and filling the security vacuum is essential for the DDR, and ISAF already has experience in that.
CONCLUSIONS: For the DDR process is to succeed, it is essential for ISAF to step in as an active participant in the demilitarization process, rather than merely as a distant observer. ISAF is also dependent on it, since it can not operate fully in an environment flooded with an estimated 10 million weapons. For the processes of demobilization and building of a national army is to be successful, continued attention is needed to the ethnic balance in the Ministry of Defense. If the Panjsheris are able to cling to power undisturbed, then there will be no demobilization, no efficient Afghan National Army and no security for the Afghan people. In this case, ISAF and the international community will have failed. AUTHOR’S BIO: Shahin Eghraghi served in the Swedish detachment to ISAF in Kabul until Summer 2003. He is currently a Research Assistant with the Program for Contemporary Silk Road Studies at Uppsala University, where his main duties are research into drug trafficking and security issues in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan.