February 10, 2006

This week in Afghanistan Watch:

• Tom Perriello: Accommodating a culture of justice
• Twelve Afghans dead as hundreds protests cartoon
• Sunni-Shiite violence in Heart kills five
• Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy on licensing Afghanistan 's opium
• Mercy Corps: Promising livestock initiatives need support
• London Conference: Financial Commitments

“It’s an incredibly emotive issue. This is something that really upset Afghans. But it is also being used to agitate and motivate the crowds by those against the government and foreign forces.”

"Islam says it's all right to demonstrate but not to resort to violence. This must stop…We condemn the cartoons but this does not justify violence. These rioters are defaming the name of Islam."

For most Afghans, the small risk of disruptions from trials and vetting pales next to the large, growing risk of perpetrators using drug profits to coerce and corrupt formal and traditional authorities.”

Accommodating a Culture of Justice (Download in PDF format)
By Tom Perriello

Tom Perriello, a partner and fellow of Res Publica, supported the survey in Afghanistan as a consultant to the International Center for Transitional Justice. His previous transitional justice work includes projects in Sierra Leone, Sudan, Kosovo, Chile, Argentina, India, and the U.S. Contact him here.

Compassion for sharp-fanged wolves equals viciousness to defenseless sheep.
—Afghan Proverb

Afghanistan’s Transitional Justice Plan hinges on stronger international backing

National Conference on Truth Seeking and Reconciliation, Kabul, 2005.

Every war-torn country making the transition to peace faces the challenge of addressing past atrocities in order to build a more secure future, part of a process that has come to be known as transitional justice. In Afghanistan , this process is particularly complex, given the historical record, present political landscape, and paralleled percentage of war crimes victims.

Most Afghans agree that improving security is the country’s top priority. Opinions differ, however, on how to achieve that goal. The debate over addressing past crimes has become the latest battleground between two opposing strategies for securing Afghanistan: accommodation and accountability.

The accomodationists are concerned at a disruption of the status quo if war criminals from past regimes are held to account. Those in favor of accountability, on the other hand, strongly believe that a culture of impunity is the greatest threat to stability.

In two national surveys on the issue, a substantial majority of Afghans have spoken with surprising clarity. Their message: We want justice and we want it now.

At the National Conference on Truth Seeking and Reconciliation, held in Kabul in December, more than 200 Afghans from across the country clearly echoed that sentiment. The conference’s concluding statement held, “There is a need for reconciliation on multiple levels. However, reconciliation should not be at the expense of justice. . .The removal of human rights violators from government is regarded as a prerequisite to improving security conditions.”

Any country emerging from a period of conflict presents a unique set of circumstances. Therefore, there is no universal recipe for transitional justice, but rather a list of possible ingredients, such as truth commissions, reconciliation, war crimes tribunals, expulsion of war criminals from public office, and victim reparations.

Many countries have adopted some combination of these measures in response to violent histories. While strategies vary, two components of transitional justice remain constant. First, the past cannot be ignored. Forgiveness may be the way forward for some countries, but simply forgetting is an invitation to a repeat of history. Second, successful models must be culturally appropriate and attuned to the public interest.

Heeding this lesson, the Government of Afghanistan has invested heavily in public consultation. In March 2002, President Karzai mandated the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) to consult Afghans about how to address past crimes. The Commission conducted a massive survey of more than 4100 Afghans, and focus groups with about 1500 more.

Published in January 2005, AIHRC’s A Call for Justice report included the following findings: 68 per cent of Afghans say they or a member of their immediate family have been victims of war crimes. 94 per cent of Afghans support establishing justice for past crimes. 76 per cent of Afghans believe bringing war criminals to justice soon will increase stability. Only 8 per cent thought it would weaken stability. While there is strong support for truth seeking (95 per cent) and reconciliation (90 per cent), Afghans are three times more likely to place a greater priority on criminal justice.

In my personal experience working on justice and security issues in a number of post-conflict countries, I have never seen such overwhelming support for war crimes prosecutions and vetting of public officials based on past abuses. Afghans explained that justice is one of the highest values within Afghan culture and Islamic tradition.

Based on its findings, AIHRC presented the President with the “Peace, Reconciliation, and Justice Action Plan,” a comprehensive transitional justice package. The initiative provides a road map for addressing the atrocities of the past in a way that promotes security and the rule of law.

To investigate how best to implement the Action Plan, UNAMA, AIHRC, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Global Rights, and the International Centre for Transitional Justice joined forces to conduct a national consultation with opinion leaders from all 34 provinces. During November 2005, the team met with more than 2,000 clerics, imams, elders, women leaders, recently elected officials, academics, journalists, youth leaders, and former commanders, as well as, for lack of a better term, people on the street. We also met with senior government officials and diplomats.

The team’s findings strongly reinforced the Call for Justice survey and even suggested increased support for justice in the wake of widespread disappointment with the Parliamentary elections. A strong majority believe accountability for past crimes is essential to peace and to Islamic principles of justice. Most Afghans described the parliamentary elections—both the process and results—as a setback to security, justice, and governance. In fact, when asked who they would want to see face a war crimes tribunal, almost everyone named individuals who now sit in Parliament or senior government posts. People see corrupt elements as gaining power by force, fear, and fraud—primary evidence, in their view, of how accommodation is destabilizing the country.

Many government officials, along with a minority of mullahs and elders, express a different view. Although supportive of certain reconciliation processes, they tend to see accountability as a threat to the delicate balance of interests now in place. Most former commanders and “warlords” with whom we spoke strongly opposed “focusing on the past,” although surprisingly a number of them expressed support for accountability and vetting.

Just prior to the conference, the Government of Afghanistan took a definitive step toward meeting the people’s demand for justice. President Hamid Karzai and his Cabinet unanimously passed the Action Plan, after nearly a year of tireless effort by the AIHRC, UNAMA’s Human Rights unit, and a few key ministries and embassies. The five-part plan is short on details and firm commitments, but it includes the strongest statement yet against impunity: “[C]onsidering the clear Koranic verses and the international law, no amnesty should be provided for war crimes, crimes against humanity and other gross violations of human rights.”

Throughout the consultations and the conference, most people expressed concern that the government and international community are losing Afghanistan by continually strengthening the warlords at the expense of the people. When asked if the alleged war criminals would create instability if indicted, most Afghans described them as paper tigers whose power derived from international support and now drugs, but not from the people. The accomodationists, meanwhile, consider these individuals entirely capable of destabilizing the country.

Transitional justice carries high stakes for the country and many of its most powerful individuals. Thus far, the government and international officials have demanded consensus for any action on transitional justice. Soon, however, they will have to choose because two mutually exclusive positions. At every stage, one group will oppose any process that threatens the status quo, while the other will oppose any process that validates it.

The international community, to date, has oscillated. They strongly supported passage of the Action Plan, but for the past several years they have largely promoted an accomodationist strategy. Recent developments—an exploding drug trade, an increasingly sophisticated insurgency, and dissatisfaction with the process and results of parliamentary elections—have bolstered the case for accountability. While the Action Plan is a major step forward, it will only produce results if backed strenuously and consistently by the international community.

Should the government and the international community become more active in supporting a policy of aggressive accountability? The two national surveys indicate that Afghans hope the answer will be yes. But while some compare the risk of instability created by a war crimes tribunal versus a low-risk status quo, most Afghans see a different choice. For them, the small risk of disruptions from trials and vetting pales next to the large, growing risk of perpetrators using drug profits to coerce and corrupt formal and traditional authorities.

With its broad public support, an aggressive pro-justice policy could present the government and the international community with a chance to correct what many Afghans perceive as a costly strategy. Regardless, the seeming impossibility of consensus means that the government and international community may finally have to decide how seriously they believe that justice, in the end, promotes peace.

Originally printed in Afghan Update (PDF).

Twelve Afghans dead as hundreds protest cartoon
Feb 8 (BBC)—Police shot into a crowd of rioters in the town of Qalat as they tried to march on a nearby US military base. It brings to 12 the number of people killed in Afghan protests over the cartoons in recent days.

Afghanistan's top religious body is urging an end to the rioting, saying the cartoons do not justify violence. "We condemn violence anywhere. If a non-Muslim country has mistaken or insulted Islam we should talk to them peacefully," Ulema Council member Mawli Osmani Haqtalab told the BBC.

The latest deaths came as a French magazine became the latest publication to carry the controversial caricatures. The magazine, Charlie Hebdo, won the backing of a French court on Tuesday, after several Islamic organisations had complained that publication would amount to an insult to their religion. The magazine features all 12 cartoons of Muhammad that originally appeared in a Danish paper last year - including one that shows Muhammad with a bomb-shaped turban...

In other developments:

• Thousands demonstrate in Pakistan's Dara Adam Khel tribal region, bordering Afghanistan
• Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen tells the BBC Danes are upset and worried by the deepening crisis, but must stand together
• Several hundred people march in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, but are blocked by police
• About 300 Palestinian protesters attack an international observers' mission in the West Bank town of Hebron, throwing rocks and bottles and trying to torch one of its buildings
• The United Nations, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference and the European Union issue a joint statement calling for restraint from all sides

Afghanistan 's top council of Muslim clerics made its call for peace as violence raged in the southern town of Qalat . At least 400 people joined the latest protest, some of them burning vehicles and hurling stones at police who tried to block their way to a US military base, local police chief Abdul Bari said.

Police initially responded by firing into the air, but were forced to then fire into the crowd, Mr Bari said. As well as demonstrators injured by gunfire, a number of Afghan soldiers and police were hurt by flying stones.

The police chief of Zabul province, Nasim Mullah Khel, told the BBC the demonstration had turned violent at the instigation of foreign construction workers from Pakistan and that some of the demonstrators had weapons. However, one demonstrator told the BBC the group had been unarmed.

See BBC Video of the protests in Afghanistan and the Middle East

Sunni-Shiite violence kills 27 in Pakistan, 5 in Afghanistan
This development is particularly troubling, as Sunni-Shiite violence has been rare in post-Taliban Afghanistan.

Islamabad, Feb 10 (Guardian) by Declan Walsh—A major Muslim holy day in Pakistan and Afghanistan prompted sectarian chaos yesterday when a suicide bombing and several bloody riots left at least 32 people dead and scores injured.

An explosion tore through a throng of worshippers as they marched through Hangu, 125 miles west of Islamabad , during a procession to mark Ashura, a focal point of the Shia religious calendar. Police said a suicide bomber caused the blast…

Another five people died in the western Afghan city of Herat after a brawl erupted between Sunnis and Shias over the alleged desecration of a sacred flag. Fighting intensified after a grenade was thrown and a Shia mosque set on fire, drawing hundreds of people into the melee. At least 27 people were injured, a local doctor said.

Ashura marks the death of the prophet Muhammad's grandson Imam Hussain at Kerbala in Iraq in the seventh century…in recent years the holy day has become a flashpoint for tensions between extremists from the Sunni sect, who make up about 80% of Pakistan 's Muslim population, and the Shia minority…

The last major atrocity occurred last March, when 46 people died in the bombing of a Shia mosque in the south-western town of Fatehpur . Some Sunni groups have links to al-Qaida and have been implicated in assassination attempts against President Pervez Musharraf.

Licensing Afghanistan's opium: Solution or fallacy?
February 1, 2006 (Asia Times) by Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy—Chouvy takes a closer look at the Senlis Council proposal for licensing Afghan opium:

Described as "a truly winning solution" by many, the proposal of the Senlis Council, an "international drug-policy think-tank" based in Paris, consists of licensing Afghan opium for the production of legal medicines such as morphine and codeine as a way to respond to the urgent need to significantly reduce Afghanistan's illegal opium production and trade, but also as a way to overcome the "significant global shortage of opium-based medicines such as morphine and codeine", a problem "felt most acutely in the developing world".

This proposal, however, is based on false or inexact premises, on at least two levels: regarding the world market on the one hand, and national and local opium-farming communities on the other hand.

Chouvy argues that the supply of medical opiates is in fact above the global demand.

In fact, as stocks continue to be more than sufficient to cover global demand for one year, the International Narcotics Control Board even recommends reducing the production of opiate raw materials. Nevertheless, the INCB stresses that "the low consumption of opioid analgesics for the treatment of moderate to severe pain, especially in developing countries, continues to be a matter of great concern".

"In 2003, six countries together accounted for 79% of global consumption of morphine" while "developing countries, which represent about 80% of the world's population, accounted for only about 6%" of its global consumption. Thus, for the INCB, the urgency is more "to raise awareness of the necessity to assess the actual medical needs for opiates" in the world than to increase the production of legal medical morphine in countries such as Afghanistan. (emphasis added)

The data suggests that “the consumption of opiate-based painkillers is determined by factors more complex than only those of the market.”:

…simply raising levels of morphine production, whether by licensing opium production in Afghanistan or by increasing the yields of current producers, is unlikely to increase the medical consumption of morphine and codeine in the world. The recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) that morphine and codeine be used as analgesics are too often impeded by obstacles that are not, or not only, supply-related: concerns about drug addiction and drug diversion, restrictive national laws, insufficient import or manufacture, but also deficiencies in national health-care delivery systems, insufficient training, etc….

Thus, obviously, the world's medical consumption of opiates is far from being directly dependent on supply and demand, and price contingencies, as was actually hinted by the Senlis Council itself when it stressed that "in 2002, 77% of the world's morphine was consumed by seven rich countries: [the] US, the UK, Italy, Australia, France, Spain and Japan", but that, according to official figures, "even in these countries only 24% of moderate to severe pain-relief need was being met".

As far as Afghanistan and its opium farmers are concerned now, the licensing of the illicit opium supply is very unlikely to help develop them economically.

Chouvy notes that of the twelve countries licensed to produce opium-poppy for medical purposes, only India produces opium (the others grow opium poppies to harvest “poppy straw,” which is much harder to divert to illicit purposes.) The Indian example thus provides the best analog for what licensed opium production in Afghanistan might look like:

Cultivators are issued a license for growing poppies and the entire opium produced by all farmers is purchased by and only by the Central Bureau of Narcotics at a price fixed by the central government. The price paid to the farmers depends on the yields achieved, with farmers producing more opium getting paid a higher price per kilogram.

The price paid to Indian farmers in 2005 ranged from $17 to $50 per kilogram, with an average of $26/kg. This compares is significantly lower than the price received by Afghan farmers: the average farm gate price in Afghanistan four times as high ($102 per kilogram), though at times it has dropped as low as $23/kg, which would be lower than the prices paid to Indian farmers. The maximum licensed area per farmer in India is much smaller as well (0.10 hectare per farm), making it harder to make a living selling licensed opium.

Chouvy notes that the Indian system of prices and area limitations “is clearly not enough to keep some of them from diverting part of their harvest to the illegal market,” though figures as to the level of diversion are unavailable. The CBN recently had to drastically cut the hectares licensed (by about two thirds) and the number of farmers licensed (by one-fifth) in an effort to prevent leaks.

Licensed narcotics, Chouvy concludes, would not provide enough income to Afghan farmers, while failing to address the underlying problems:

Such prices, which are far from enriching Afghan opium farmers but simply allow them to cope with poverty…licit opium production in Afghanistan could not compete with illicit opium production, that most opium farmers would still have to give up opium production while the others would see their revenues plummet, and that, considering the limited writ and power of the Afghan authorities, diversion from the licit to the illicit market would be unavoidable and would reach much higher proportions than in India.

More important, licensing opium production in Afghanistan would not be better than eradication or alternative development at addressing the causes of the recourse to illegal opium production and would thus fail to fulfill the international community's objective: the suppression of illegal opium production. If crop substitution proved to be a failure in the past decades, why would the substitution of an illegal opium production for a legal opium production work better by reducing farmers' income and not addressing the structural factors causing illegal opium production?

Chouvy concludes that opium production is a consequence, rather than a cause, of Afghanistan’s woes, and must be treated as such:

It is crucial to understand that, contrary to what has often been denounced here and there, opium production is more a consequence of Afghanistan's lawlessness, instability and poverty than its cause. Opium production clearly proceeds from poverty and food insecurity, from Afghanistan to Myanmar and Laos, where it is a coping mechanism and livelihood strategy.

Mercy Corps: livestock sector offers opportunities
Feb 1 (Mercy Corps) by Roger O. Burks, Jr.—A promising opportunity:

A recent study conducted by the United Kingdom-based Macaulay Institute and Mercy Corps found that the prevailing prices for meat, wool and hide in urban markets is sufficient to justify a switch to livestock production as a feasible income source for Afghan farmers.

"High population growth and strong economic recovery since 2002 in Afghanistan is increasing the buying power of urban consumers. One consequence of these changes is a firm demand for meat, particularly in the cities and larger towns," the report reads. "However, as a result of the worst drought in living memory, livestock numbers have decreased dramatically in the last seven years and cheap imported frozen chicken now accounts for almost one-third of the meat sold. One of the challenges facing the national government, assisted by the international community, is to rebuild the Afghan livestock sub-sector to a point where it can once again supply much of the meat consumed in the country and give livestock owners a satisfactory return."

The transition to livestock production also creates other jobs in rural and urban areas. Butchers, tanners and wool-spinners are needed to finish raw materials into consumer goods. Wool can be made into clothes, rugs or other household items, resulting in jobs for tailors and carpet-makers. Animal hide can be fashioned into belts, shoes and other goods, bringing a high resale value to skilled artisans.

The return to livestock-based agriculture works across all sectors of the Afghan economy; it satisfies a burgeoning market while providing income for farmers, skilled tradesmen and merchants. While not as profitable as poppy cultivation, it is a legal, long-term income solution that encourages farming families to move from the destructive opium trade.

London Calling: A Summary of Financial Commitments

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Afghanistan Watch is prepared by Carl Robichaud, a program officer at The Century Foundation.

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