Regional efforts needed to ensure peace in Afghanistan

Even though the US war was launched over 17 years ago, the situation in Afghanistan remains unstable due to occupation and increasing insecurity, and rise in deadly attacks by the extremist and militant groups.

Reports of air strikes, kidnappings, ambushes, killings, rocket attacks and bomb explosions in Afghanistan have been coming almost daily. “Regional efforts needed to ensure peace in Afghanistan” is the title of an article published by Fars news agency in this regard.

The year 2018 witnessed an 11-percent increase in civilian deaths as compared to that in 2017. While the negotiations between the US and Taliban are continuing, the conflict has actually escalated with recurrent deadly attacks killing hundreds of civilians and security personnel. Which is to say regional cooperation is needed and not US peace process.

So ensuring sustainable security and peace in Afghanistan is a great challenge facing the regional community which needs to shed its ambivalence and evolve a concerted strategy to curb terrorism and extremism in and around Afghanistan by stopping their sources of funds, arms, logistics and training and ideological motivation.

The future of Afghanistan with guarantees of peace, security and well-being of its people hinges upon the withdrawal of US troops and the success of reconciliation between rival ethnic/regional Afghan political groups and commanders, and emergence of a balanced and broad-based stable government representing diverse ethnic, regional and minority interests.  It also hinges upon the setting up and effective functioning of law enforcement agencies, strengthening the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces, the speedy implementation of reconstruction of social, economic and education infrastructure, and elimination of drugs and arms trafficking from Afghanistan.
In its initial year of establishment, the SCO members met in Shanghai in June 2001 and signed Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism and Extremism on June 15, 2001. 

This was followed up by the conclusion of the Agreement on Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS) in 2002. RATS was established to collect, collate and exchange information about terrorist movements, draft counter-terrorism policies and laws and also to maintain relations with the concerned institutions of the member states dealing with extremism, terrorism and separatism. 

RATS can be turned into an effective institutional mechanism to deepen cooperation between the SCO member countries in dealing with the three evils of terrorism, separatism and extremism, besides drug trafficking, organized crime, cyber crime, etc. Each of these has great relevance for Afghanistan.

Recognizing the near-and long-term importance of stability in Afghanistan to the SCO region, the organization created a SCO-Afghanistan Contact Group (SACG). Formal cooperation between Afghanistan and the SCO began in 2005 with the establishment of SACG aimed at fighting terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking. The SCO organized a special conference on Afghanistan in March 2009 in Moscow. 
Recognizing the challenges in Afghanistan and the region, the conference underscored the importance of sustained international efforts to achieve a stable, peaceful, prosperous and democratic Afghanistan.
A joint statement issued by the SCO member states and Afghanistan during this conference called for the "adoption of a comprehensive convention on international terrorism as well as the elaboration of regional counter-terrorism legal instruments."

Any attempts at peace and reconciliation should not be rushed and should preserve the Constitution process and other gains of the last 18 years. It should also ensure independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Afghanistan. 

Such process should be based on principles of shunning foreign occupation, violence and severing ties with international terror networks; accepting the Afghan Constitution; and honoring the rights of weaker sections of Afghan society, ethnic-religious minorities, women and children.

In the current environment we have a situation where while a dialogue process between the US and Taliban is underway, they both have also launched fresh offensives. The role of the SCO assumes importance in this context and it needs to reflect how it can provide support to an Afghan-led and Afghan-owned peace and reconciliation.
The SCO member countries, and SCO observer member Iran remain concerned over the cross-border movement of extremists, armed militants, refugees, drugs, arms and organized crime from Afghanistan into their countries.

Several countries including Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan which have physical borders with Afghanistan are also worried about the spillover of the conflict, terrorism and extremism from Afghanistan to their own territories.  

It would, therefore, be necessary to let the Kabul Process for Peace and Security in Afghanistan work out the negotiations and dialogue between various stake holders within Afghanistan without any external pressure or inducement.

While the peace process should be aimed at engaging and bringing together all the Afghan groups, it should isolate the extremist and terrorist networks which are bent upon recreating the Caliphate/Emirate in Afghanistan, which would be catastrophic for the SCO region, given the past experience of instability and conflict in various Central Asian countries.
As such, SCO and RATS have a distinctive role to play by working out definite agreements/arrangements between the member states including Afghanistan to negotiate bilateral extradition agreements , take regular stock of the radical extremists and terrorists operating in the region, and exchange such information, identify the sources of terror-financing and take necessary steps to block  these channels, and to engage and seek cooperation of the Islamic clergy/Ulema for rejecting foreign occupation and the hate ideology of the terrorists and extremists in the name of jihad, Wahhabism and Salafism.
The endless wars that the War Party has waged since 2001 have nearly bankrupted America and rendered impossible the other vitally needed infrastructure and research projects, including international aid and peace-keeping missions. For all the money the US has wasted on these endless wars, it could have built a new home for every family in Afghanistan. It could have built schools and hospitals and roads. In short, it could have initiated a program of investments in peace.

Instead, the War Party has rained ruin on vast stretches of the world, killing and impoverishing tens of millions of innocent people. In terms of financial cost, the numbers are staggering. Afghanistan alone has cost a trillion dollars. Just think what the US government might have accomplished at home if that money had been spent on education, job training, medical research, infrastructure improvements, water purification and sanitation.
However, just like his predecessor, US President Donald Trump is also using smoke and mirrors in Afghanistan. While sending more troops to the war-torn country, his administration is seeking to convince the world that there will be an eventual drawdown of US and NATO forces. A closer look at US imperialism’s strategic goals of a “pivot to Asia” reveals that the endless war’s goals include obtaining an economic foothold in Central Asia, where Afghanistan borders Iran, Pakistan, China, and the rich oil and gas resources of the former Soviet republics in Central Asia.

This geopolitical strategy is consistent with the so-called New Silk Road Policy announced by the Obama administration with the object of gaining economic hegemony over Russia, China and Iran. The US occupation of Afghanistan has always been a profit-driven war of economic conquest and plunder. This was never about fighting terrorists.

As such, US foreign policy is still aimed at regime change in this region to bring in governments subservient to US interests. By passing the “Authorization for Use of Military Force” resolution soon after the Sept. 11 events, Congress allowed the president to bypass congressional authorization for declaring war. This facilitated US interventions throughout the region against any government it deemed an obstacle to imperialist interests.
This has cost the people in the US trillions of dollars of this unjust and criminal occupation of Afghanistan. Now the Trump administration officials and Pentagon accountants say Afghanistan still needs US support at the same level and would need it for years. They have even increased ground troops and drone attacks in Afghanistan – despite talks with Taliban.

The enormous waste of human lives, especially among Afghan civilians, is the price paid for continuing this illegal war. Overall, the number of civilian deaths and casualties has reached a staggering and numbing amount: from 2001, the beginning of the US invasion, to the present, the number of civilians killed has been on the rise. Overall, according to the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, the wars of aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed approximately 210,000 civilians, while other sources estimate this number as being much higher, especially with regard to the casualties in Iraq.

Despite the continuation of a US presence, Washington has been losing out in Afghanistan. Units from both the Afghan army and police forces are defecting to the insurgents and some have been turning their weapons on their officers and on the so-called US instructors.
In the middle of all this, Trump thinks he will win despite evidence to the contrary based on the bitter experience of the last 18 years of war. Trump says the US should forget about “nation building”. Instead, he says, they should follow what he calls “principled realism”: stay on the attack, don’t reveal how many troops we are adding, and go harder after our ally, Pakistan, who harbors criminals and terrorists”.
Trump says the US must stay in Afghanistan to avoid creating a “vacuum of power” that will be filled by terrorists. And he says the US must continue the mission to honor those who have already died. Continuing this ill-fated mission just increases the death and does nothing to build peace.

It is past time for the Empire of Chaos to get out of Afghanistan and past time to put up with more prevarication and fake news from the Trump administration on this endless war.

EA/ME