The former deputy head of the EU mission to Kabul, Irishman Michael Semple, tells MARY FITZGERALDpledges must be backed with action
THIS WEEK’s reaffirming of international commitments to stabilising Afghanistan is a positive step forward, the Irish former deputy head of the EU mission to Kabul has said, but those pledges must be turned into action, including ensuring sufficient troop levels from Nato members.
“Clearly the challenge is translating the general political statements of support for the intervention into maintaining the basic minimal troop contributions,” says Michael Semple.
The Obama administration recently announced it would be committing an additional 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, including some 4,000 forces to help train the national army. The US has called on its Nato allies to step up their troop levels.
But Nato’s involvement can only achieve so much without serious efforts to strengthen Afghanistan’s own national security forces, says Mr Semple.
“Nato forces, although they are playing an important role now, constitute a temporary stop gap and the longer that stop gap goes on is a sign of failure rather than success,” he says.
“The real success . . . is when whatever fighting still has to be done will be done by the Afghan national forces, not by the foreigners, and the foreigners will fall back into a role of capacity-building for the army and police.”
Mr Semple, who lived in Afghanistan for more than a decade and is considered an expert on the region, gave a qualified welcome to the outcome of this week’s gathering of Afghanistan’s neighbouring states, Nato contributing nations and donors in the Hague.
“There seemed to be a general restatement of political commitment, a recognition that the job is important and it is long-term, but very credible people around the fringes were asking whether it is not just a sense of deja vu in that similar political commitments have been given in the past few years,” he says.
“The question is whether there is the willingness to do reality checks along the way to make the kind of course corrections which are required to translate political commitments into results.”
At the Hague, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton expressed support for the notion that Taliban fighters who are not ideologically driven should be offered “an honourable form of reconciliation and re-integration” if they are willing to abandon violence and reject al-Qaeda.
US vice-president Joe Biden recently said that he believed only 5 per cent of the Taliban were “incorrigible”.
Mr Semple has been making the case for reaching out to more moderate elements within the Taliban for some time.
He was expelled from Afghanistan in December 2007 after the Karzai government reacted with disapproval to his reconciliation attempts in the country’s volatile southern region.
“It is a positive move that there has now been a general endorsement,” Mr Semple says.
He stresses the importance of ensuring such reconciliation initiatives are well-planned and co-ordinated, so that “there is a realistic way out for these fighters, that they will be able to defend themselves, that they will have access to livelihoods and that they will be protected from political discrimination and persecution. It requires more effective and joined-up action by the Afghan government – with support from their allies – than we have yet seen,” he says.
“It is good that it is part of the strategy. Now translating it into action is going to be a challenge.
“This is something which will not be achieved just by offering a few jobs to unemployed youths who happened to pick up a Kalashnikov.
“This is something which will only emerge from a more serious political engagement.”