There are few certainties for Afghanistan as the NATO troop withdrawal moves into high gear, but one thing is sure: Continental Europeans have a dimmer prognosis for what can be accomplished than do their US and British counterparts.
As they assess Afghanistan, the Europeans see an economic depression looming as Western aid and military spending evaporate; corruption, already endemic, is escalating dangerously as Afghan power brokers milk the war economy for every last penny before it dries up; security remains elusive — not just because of the Taliban, but because ethnically based militias are reactivating across large parts of the country.
The Americans and British, however, emphasize potential: The Afghan security forces are improving; Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pledged not to run again, making it possible that there will be a credible election; and the Taliban appear open to peace talks, just not right now.
These disparate outlooks, laid out in interviews with foreign officials in Kabul over the past two weeks, are more than a matter of semantics. They are fundamental differences in the allies’ conclusions about how much has been achieved and how much more should be spent on Afghanistan.
That question will be front and center at the NATO summit meeting in Chicago that started yesterday and is focused on getting commitments from NATO member countries and others to finance the Afghan security forces for 10 years after the NATO mission ends in 2014.
“We have a lot of European countries that are in economic crisis, that are facing elections and whose citizens are fatigued with the war after 11 years. So for us coming up with substantial money for the Afghan National Security Forces, it is not so clear a priority for us,” one European diplomat said.
Like others interviewed for this article, the diplomat spoke about the aid discussions on the condition of anonymity.
Everyone believes that at the end of the day — in fact by the end of the conference — the aid pledges will be there to fill out a goal of US$4.1 billion a year, over the next 10 years, to help Afghanistan maintain its security forces. The Americans plan to provide roughly two-thirds of that.
Still, for many European countries, the money is being given reluctantly, most of all because they would prefer to spend on health clinics and schools rather than armies.
Even as they are agreeing at the Chicago conference to commit the money for security help, they worry that doing so will make their parliaments reluctant to give more at a Tokyo conference in July that will focus on future Afghanistan reconstruction projects. Also, in more candid moments, some wish aloud that the money could stay available for countries with more chance for success than Afghanistan.
“What dominates the agenda of Karzai and the US is security — the military strategy, the night raids, detention and the rest,” another European diplomat said. “So no matter how much we are going to push the Afghans to address issues of governance and corruption, it’s not going to happen. But these are things we care about and the capitals care about.”
The EU’s foreign affairs council released a resolution on Monday last week, in advance of the Chicago meeting, emphasizing that the Afghan government needed to make a “genuine effort” on governance and reducing corruption.
Though the Americans and British insist that they do not want to end up slighting development spending, their clear priority in Chicago is to ensure there is enough money for the security forces to avoid a repeat of what happened in 1991 when the Soviet Union withdrew financial support for the military under then-Afghan president Mohammed Najibullah, the Communist ruler they had left in Kabul after they withdrew in 1989. When the money stopped, his government collapsed in a matter of months.
“Everybody has economic problems, but this is serious business,” a senior US official said. “Security forces cannot be under-resourced without grave danger to the state.”
Yet for all the Americans wanted from a broad Western coalition, they did themselves no favors in the run-up to the Chicago meeting by sending around a list in January with the amount they expected every country to give: Canada was assessed for US$125 million; Finland for US$20 million; France, US$200 million; Sweden, US$40 million — among others. Only Greece, whose government is in default, was given an exemption.
The list made other countries feel they were trapped in a carpet bazaar in which the store owner sets the price above what he knows he will get. (The list was even called “Target Asks.”)
“It was a bit blunt as an approach, and we thought, ‘Right, why weren’t we involved in the exercise to come up with the numbers?”’ one European diplomat said.
Another country’s diplomat looked at the list and wondered why his country was asked to pay more than another country of similar size.
“We were told, ‘You punch above your weight,’ and we said, ‘Yes, but we don’t want to pay more than our share,”’ the diplomat said.
So far the result is that countries are offering about 60 percent of the amount the Americans asked them for. Britain has already announced it will spend US$110 million — barely more than half the US$200 million it was asked for.
France was asked for US$200 million, but with the election two weeks ago of a staunchly anti-war Socialist president, Francois Hollande, no one is expecting they will give that much. Several diplomats said they doubted that Hollande would come to the Chicago meeting empty-handed.
A senior US official said that the Americans recognized the European reluctance, but that as a practical matter what was most important was that the US remain out front in helping Afghanistan — in part because of a sense of responsibility that the past 11 years of war cannot be allowed come to nothing, but also because it encourages other countries to contribute.
“What it really takes is us,” the official said, referring to the US. “That’s why the strategic partnership agreement before Chicago was so important.”
The Afghan-US strategic partnership agreement, signed on May 1 by US President Barack Obama and Karzai in Kabul, committed the US to support Afghanistan for the next 10 years in economic development, rule of law and security, among other things.
The European reluctance to spend on security is not born of a lack of interest in Afghanistan. Many European countries have had development and humanitarian efforts here going back more than 25 years, and in that light, they should have been an easy sell as the Americans rounded up dollars. However, after years of development programs that have fallen far short of the West’s hopes, they are wary of the prospect of pumping more money into defending an Afghan state that many Europeans have dwindling faith in.
They are put off by a troubling record of corruption and human rights abuses, and daunted by the prospect of a collapse into civil war after NATO pulls out. They say the Americans base their projections on best-case plans.
“The major goal now is to avoid a cross-country conflict that moves into a regional conflict,” a European diplomat said.
“We have low expectations for 2014,” he added.
Another European diplomat, who has spent years in the country, described how Afghanistan has fallen out of his country’s consciousness.
“Our media is not even mentioning Afghanistan now,” the diplomat said. “We are Europeans at the end of the day; we have to care about North Africa — it is closer; we can explain why it matters. We have to care about Belarus, it is nearly a neighbor. But Afghanistan is very far away.”
Additional reporting by Graham Bowley
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