Afghanisation' has emerged as the buzz word from the London Conference on Afghanistan, held in January, one of only six international conferences held outside Afghanistan since 2001 to determine the country's future. Following the gathering, it is now being claimed that the Kabul government has laid out its priorities for the first time. Henceforth, goes the argument, governance in Afghanistan will be Afghan-led, security will be 'Afghanised' and Kabul will take the lead in the process of reconciliation and reintegration with the armed insurgency. But to long-term observers of Afghanistan, the 'new' emphasis sounded very much like the old scriptures. Is this sudden emphasis on 'Afghanisation' just a coded reference to an exit strategy?
In fact, it was London and the same Labour government that, in 2006, hosted a conference that initiated the policy document called the Afghanistan National Development Strategy (ANDS). While far from perfect, that blueprint was and remains the seminal document identifying Afghanistan's needs. It was finalised, adopted and endorsed by the international community in 2008 in Paris, along with pledges to route more funds through the Afghan government, allow Kabul to determine priority areas and plans for spending, and build and strengthen institutions that would allow Afghans to govern themselves. In other words, 'Afghanisation'.
The supposedly new aspects at the 2010 London Conference were thus not the Afghanisation plans. Rather, the fresh issues revolved around a timeline for beginning the handover of responsibility for security to Afghan forces, allowing for the withdrawal of international troops. A 'peace and reconciliation' programme that would create the conditions allowing for this withdrawal was also an important consideration – sounding suspiciously like an exit strategy, rather than the professed long-term commitment. Western countries have tried to minimise the impact of their intention to withdraw troops by saying they would first build up the Afghanistan's police and army forces. It is clear, however, that the troop-contributing countries are loath to wait until these two bodies are fully up and running. A week before he hosted the London Conference, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband appeared before the US Senate to emphasise that "however much national security forces are built up, they will not have a monopoly of force in a country like Afghanistan … local community-based initiatives are inevitable." He concluded that the international community would need to consider supporting the latter initiatives in some circumstances.
This 'new' peace and reconciliation/reintegration strategy smacks of the same expediency – a chance to allow the international community to depart gracefully. In these instances, 'reintegration' refers to plans to buy off Taliban foot-soldiers who, it is felt, are in the insurgency mainly for economic reasons; while 'reconciliation' is seen as a settlement with the leadership of the Taliban based on a series of political concessions, which have not been defined to date. There is certainly little new in the reintegration proposal, as a national commission has been attempting to do just that since 2005, with limited success. Similarly, political reconciliation with the Taliban leadership remain nebulous, with the militants clearly maintaining that the Afghan state, in its current form – designed as a democratic Islamic republic with a modern Constitution and equal rights for all citizens – is unacceptable.