'Soft' assistance for Afghanistan

The foreign minister-level international conference in Kabul on Thursday has placed the war-torn country in the spotlight again, especially as NATO has announced the withdrawal of troops by 2014 and the just-convened Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit has announced it will play a bigger role in maintaining stability in the region.

There is widespread concern about where Afghanistan is heading; and that concern is absolutely right.

For the past decade, although the international community has invested heavily in its reconstruction, security issues in Afghanistan have not improved much. There are frequent terrorist attacks, drug crimes, armed conflicts between ethic tribes and clans. All these problems tell us how far the country still has to go before it can be called secure.

When the NATO troops go home, all these problems will become the responsibility of the government in Afghanistan. But to be frank, no one has confidence in the government, whose corruption is openly talked about everywhere.

Besides, President Hamid Karzai's government, nicknamed "a local government in Kabul", has only limited power in regions outside the capital. Currently there are dozens of warlords crowded in the small Central Asian country, who keep tight control on both the political and economic power within their own domains. The main reason why their conflicts with each other, which happen very frequently, have not intensified is the existence of NATO troops; there is a strong possibility of a civil war when NATO troops withdraw.

Worse, the government in Afghanistan has done little, while the allied troops have done nothing, to combat the flourishing drug trade. Today Afghanistan is already producing over 90 percent of the world's illegal opium-derived drugs, a disaster for the country and the region.

Whether we are willing to admit it or not, the troops from the United States and its allies are the key factor that prevented the situation in Afghanistan from becoming even worse. With NATO troops gone, the Afghan government will have to face these challenges alone.

There will be nothing worse than a total and chaotic civil war, but that is a real possibility. The US troops will be unable to return to Afghanistan if a civil war breaks out, because they will not get authorization from the United Nations again. The only force that could save the Afghan people will be UN peacekeeping missions, but the decision to send peacekeepers will be hard to achieve due to the complicated politics.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has recently expressed its concern about Afghanistan, but it remains to be seen what role it can play in coping with the challenges. It can help in combating drug crimes, but can do little to fight against corruption, prevent civil war, or negotiate with or strike against the Taliban. Even combating drug crimes the SCO would have to cooperate with the US and the Afghanistan government.

Three of the SCO members are neighbors of Afghanistan, but all members can become victims if the situation in Afghanistan worsens. So the SCO has no other choice than to participate in Afghanistan's reconstruction. But its participation has limits: the SCO has defined itself as none-alliance, so it cannot become militarily engaged in Afghanistan; the SCO was also founded on the fundamental principle of non-intervention in the domestic politics of other countries, so even if Afghanistan joins the organization in the future, it could not get much support.

The SCO can better extend cooperation with Afghanistan to solve such problems as drug crimes, refugees, or terrorism, and more importantly, send more assistance in personnel training and education. In other words, the SCO can help more on "soft" issues.

As a new regional organization, the SCO has much to do in promoting itself. Currently its job is still to gain more experience through more cooperation with other countries and organizations, which will allow it to play a better role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan, whose future is intertwined with that of the region as a whole.

The author is director of Institute of Central Asian Studies, Lanzhou University.

(China Daily 06/14/2012 page9)