Security

Danger Room in Afghanistan: the Anti-Violence Secret Sauce

BAMIYAN, Afghanistan – Last week saw two big events in Bamiyan Province: A local jirga (assembly) with community leaders, and the launch of a road construction project that will eventually link this remote and impoverished province to the capital. Both events provided a chance for the Afghan government and the U.S.-led military coalition to showcase […]

23jul2009-133BAMIYAN, Afghanistan – Last week saw two big events in Bamiyan Province: A local jirga (assembly) with community leaders, and the launch of a road construction project that will eventually link this remote and impoverished province to the capital.

Both events provided a chance for the Afghan government and the U.S.-led military coalition to showcase Bamiyan as an oasis of peace and progress amidst the country’s raging internal war. For the road opening ceremony, which also marked the completion of a district road in the northeastern part of the province, top officers helicoptered in for a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Habiba Surabi, the governor of Bamiyan Province (and the first woman to be appointed provincial governor in Afghanistan). Even the BBC’s Lyse Doucet was on hand to record the scene.

So what’s the secret sauce that makes Bamiyan hang together? In terms of development, the province is at the bottom end of the scale, and Bamiyan’s inhabitants have often been neglected by the central government. But by and large, the people haven’t picked up AK-47s to settle their grievances. How come? Geography, religion, and ethnicity all play big roles.

That’s not to suggest things couldn’t go the other way. I recently spent a few days at a remote patrol base in northern Kahmard District, which has been the scene of a recent uptick in violence. The coalition runs a small rewards program for residents who turn over their weapons, but most of the amnestied weapons I saw were useless or antique: a rusty bolt-action .30-06 loaded with dud cartridges, an old .303 Lee-Enfield with a cracked stock. “They give us the stuff that’s broken or that doesn’t work,” said New Zealand Warrant Officer Class One Ian Lawrence, a liaison officer at the patrol base. “We don’t get the stuff that they actually use.”

Coalition troops also find weapons caches filled with land mines, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and rockets left over from the jihad against the Soviets and the civil war.

Still, the places that have seen the most fighting are towns like Do Abe, a hub for criminal gangs that run extortion rings linked to the local coal mining industry. While insurgents with links to the Taliban do cross over into Bamiyan from Wardak and Baghlan provinces, this is not fertile soil for an ideologically motivated insurgency.

Geography also helps. Bamiyan shares no border with Pakistan, and the province is home to a long-oppressed (and mostly Shia) ethnic group, the Hazaras, who have welcomed the protective presence of a foreign military. The coalition, however, will have to deliver on promises of development – and deliver them well -- if it does not want to outstay its welcome.

Group Commander Greg Elliot, the commander of the New Zealand-led Bamiyan Provincial Reconstruction Team, was frank about the sense of expectation here. “One criticism of the coalition has been that we’ve been too slow to deliver major development,” he said. “We’ve actually done a lot, but the completion of the road will be a visible deliverable.”

Laying down asphalt, however, is not enough. Engineers working on the U.S.-funded road schemes acknowledge that the central government has no plan to maintain the new roads, and local communities don’t have bulldozers, graders or other heavy equipment. For the whole thing to work, Afghanistan needs a functioning, effective state that can collect revenue, allocate resources and sustain development. That’s a much taller order than pouring millions of U.S. and international funds into roads and construction.

[PHOTO: 1st Lieutenant Lory Stevens, Task Force Warrior Public Affairs]

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