I just saw some correspondence from UN office in Afghanistan, they are trying to encourage Afghan media to celebrate peace day. The UN’s motto is “what are you doing for peace” in a few posts I will try to see how much UN has done for peace in Afghanistan. I believe the UN has been the biggest threat to Afghan peace and it hasn’t done enough to ensure peace or even when it has intervened, UN middling has been total political and resulted in worsening the situation.
UN and Geneva peace Accord:
Still, as the Cold War drew to a close, Afghanistan seemed close to solving its internal strife. In accordance with the 1988 Geneva Accords, the Soviet Union withdrew all of its troops as of February 15 1989. Further, the United Nations appeared to have achieved the beginnings of a legitimate regime. But instead of experiencing a transition to a stable government and despite Najibullah.s resignation, Afghanistan plummeted into civil war. The Mujahideen had splintered, regional powers supported different actors and both Russia and the USA retreated from Afghanistan’s internal strife, both powers instead focusing on after effects of the Soviet Union’s disintegration as well as other more strategically relevant crises. So, Afghanistan degenerated into political anarchy and rampant violence, the United Nations would seem a likely actor to return order and stability. Indeed, it is written into the Charter of the United Nations for the member countries .to unite [their] strength to maintain international peace and security. Along a spectrum of possibilities, there are two general methods for the UN to address such crises: mediation and peace enforcement. But each possesses deficiencies, and the events in Afghanistan demonstrate these flaws. According to Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, Afghan finance minister, the four major influences on chances of success through mediation are the nature of dispute, the disputant’s characteristics, the attributes of mediator and the strategy of mediation. Ahady continues, arguing that since 1982, the UN had used this technique to address the conflict in Afghanistan, but when attempting to negotiate a transition regime, the UN faced insurmountable obstacles in each of these categories. First, regarding the nature of the dispute, there is generally a smaller probability of success when the mediation concerns a sovereignty transfer. This is due to the complications in convincing an armed group to relinquish its hold on power. After achieving the Soviet withdrawal, the United Nations had begun to work towards the creation of a legitimate government formed by a coalition of the rebel warlords, with the intention of replacing the Najibullah government. Beyond the inherent difficulties in convincing Najibullah to resign, the Mujahideen also refused to view the regime as legitimate. Thus, they denounced any negotiations or power sharing schemes that involved Najibullah remaining in power, arguing that the Soviet client regime was so obviously illegitimate that they would not even acknowledge it by engaging in dialogue. For the second aspect, the characteristics of the belligerents, Ahady argues that when power is not balanced, or even perceived not to be imbalanced, mediation will likely be resisted. This affected the Afghanistan situation because with the assistance provided by regional actors, and the USA prior to 1991, the Mujahideen had the upper hand in an unequal of distribution of power. Therefore, in addition to their argument that the illegitimate government deserved no recognition, the Mujahideen likewise had no motivating factor to consent to a UN arrangement. This, however, might have been overcome with foreign pressure, but since American intelligence predicted that Pakistan would continue to support the resistance and that any drop in support for the rebels would result in the triumph of the Soviet puppet regime, the USA decided against pressuring. The Najibullah regime eventually did collapse in 1991, and with the widespread availability of small arms, the state fragmented as power shifted to various Mujahideen warlords across the country. In fact, it is estimated that that by 1992, 2 million weapons were in circulation, acting as a kind of currency and working to sustain the stalemate between the rival factors. Despite this movement towards an actual balance of power, with the military support from international actors, each warlord believed he was stronger than the other rebels. As such, the downfall of the regime .frustrated a UN plan for a peaceful transfer of power from the communist regime to a transitional government, led to an intense power struggle among the Mujahideen groups who had taken over different parts of the country and seized or looted weapons and heavy equipment. The third aspect describes the strategy of the mediator and as Ahady maintains, it can take one of three forms, facilitation, formulation, and manipulation. Of the three, not only does manipulation have the best chance at success, but it is also necessary in instances of high tensions and conflict. For a facilitating strategy, the mediator would simply provide the forum for discussion. Formulation would then involve suggestions by the mediator for the consideration of the disputants. Manipulation though, would occur when the mediator compels the two sides to accept an agreement. The two former options are quite passive; they will function best in situations where all sides are eager to reach an agreement. The latter strategy is required when the disputants are verbally or physically hostile towards one another, and so with the extremely high levels of tensions in Afghanistan, the United Nations would have to use manipulation
as a strategy.
This in fact leads to the fourth aspect of mediation, the characteristics of the mediator because for a successful manipulation strategy, the mediator must possess enough leverage to change the cost-benefit calculation of the disputants. Afghanistan had achieved true anarchy with warring Mujahideen forces in control of billions of dollars worth of modern weapons and access to millions of dollars in cash from the drug trade. So for the United Nations mediation efforts to succeed, a strategy of manipulation would have to be backed by credible leverage. However, the UN was forced to confront more than just a country filled with military arms and warring clan factions. Following the disengagement of the superpowers, the other interested states entered the political vacuum left behind. These states possessed conflicting views and goals for Afghanistan, and because each actor had a different objective, it became increasingly difficult for them to work together. Moreover, these states no longer had pressure from the USA to cooperate in achieving a settlement, and consequently, "driven by competing interests in Afghanistan and the region, neighboring countries and other foreign states and non-state players supported rival factions in the Afghan civil war, further reducing the UN’s chances for a negotiated settlement. Had the USA instead chosen to put pressure on one or more of its allies, the UN might have possessed the leverage necessary to manipulate negotiations into a political settlement. But the Soviet withdrawal represented, according to Undersecretary of State Michael Armacost, restoration of the strategic balance of the region.. And while it has been argued that even as late as 1992, the USA could have successfully used its position to compel the Mujahideen and regional states to follow the United Nations, the American fundamental goal of defeating the Soviet Union had been achieved, and instead the USA probably wanted to avoid contrasts with Pakistan. Thus, because the USA did not use its position to influence the regional powers or warlords within Afghanistan, the United Nations had little leverage because it could not reward or punish for compliance or non-compliance. And as the military arms and finances continued to flow into the country arming the warring factions, it should not be surprising that anarchy developed. In fact, because of the above problems posed by mediation, Ahady contends that it is weak and ineffective, especially compared with direct intervention.
