2 Afghanistan conferences: No solutions

Opinion: London and Prague meetings on Afghanistan do not produce new answers.

Jean MacKenzieJanuary 29, 2010 11:15Updated May 30, 2010 12:20

Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown, right, and Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai at "Afghanistan: The London Conference" in central London January 28, 2010. Brown pledged to get the international community pledged to try to turn the tide in Afghanistan by the middle of 2011. (Matt Dunham/Reuters)

KABUL, Afghanistan — The much-vaunted London Conference on Afghanistan ended less with a bang than a whimper, albeit a very diplomatically worded one.

The hype had been prodigious: The conference was supposed to chart a new course for Afghanistan’s relations with the international community, set up a framework for peace negotiations with the Taliban and reaffirm the world’s commitment to stay the course.

In Kabul, all waited, some with hope and some with dismay, for a major breakthrough on talks with the Taliban. It has been a centerpiece of President Hamid Karzai’s domestic policy since he began his second term in November.

“The Afghan government has taken serious steps to ensure that dialogue with the Taliban will be discussed at the (London) conference,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Zahir Faqiri, in an interview last week. “The Afghan government is ready to overcome any obstacles to bring peace to the country.”

But negotiations were never mentioned in the 34-point communiqué that ended the London meeting. Instead, a much more general “reintegration” program was outlined to bring less committed fighters back into society. This is hardly a new move: It is just a better-funded version of a program that has been in place since 2005 to provide incentives for lower-tier insurgents to lay down their arms, say long-time Afghanistan observers.

The major emphasis in London seemed to be on beefing up Afghanistan’s own security forces, allowing them to take over the fight so that international forces can begin to withdraw. The United States, which will increase its military presence in Afghanistan this year, has plans to start to draw down its forces in 2011. Canada has already announced its intention to leave at the end of next year; the Dutch have also said that they want their troops home by the end of 2010.

With one Western country after another promising an imminent reduction of their forces in Afghanistan, responsibility will soon have to be handed over to the Afghans.

In London, plans were drawn up to increase Afghan National Security Forces to over 300,000 by October 2011. Less clear is how the effort will be funded. Afghanistan cannot afford to keep that many men under arms.

“This is not realistic,” said a staff member from the Norwegian Ministry of Defense. “The Afghan budget cannot sustain it.”

The Afghan government wants more international assistance to be funneled through government structures — a difficult prospect given Afghanistan’s status as one of the most corrupt countries on the planet.