According to new reports, Paddy Ashdown, the former EU-UN High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, has been offered a newly created position in Kabul as a "super envoy" that would head Afghanistan efforts by NATO, the UN, and perhaps the EU as well.
According to a NATO diplomat quoted yesterday in the Financial Times, “Ashdown’s name seems to be the only one in play. I understand that Karzai is comfortable with that and it
seems as if the ball is now in Ashdown’s court.” Other names floated for the position have included Joschka Fischer and Hikmet Cetin, former foreign
ministers of Germany and Turkey.
Ashdown's name has been bandied about since June, but he was reluctant to consider the job unless he had the endorsement of the United States. Then recently the dual-hatted position was championed by Nicholas Burns, the number three man in the US State Dept. There remains disagreement over the nature of the role, according to Karzai spokesman Hamayun Hamidzada, who notes in The Scotsman that "Britain wants a Kabul-based envoy, who would co-ordinate people here, and also in the capitals. The US thinks you need a roving envoy going from capital to capital."
Will Ashdown accept? In June, he said there was the need for such a post: "My view, for what it is worth, is that there needs to be a single figure out there pulling all the strands together. At the moment there is little or no co-ordination and the country is starting to work against itself."
The change could greatly improve coordination and elevate the status of the UN in Afghanistan. It would require a tremendously skilled manager and coordinator to make it all work -- something Ashdown was able to do quite well in Bosnia. In a WSJ op-ed last month, Hans Binnendijk argued that "a new, high-profile European High Representative under U.N.
auspices should be appointed to pull together the diverse national
contributions in Afghanistan and to coordinate military and economic
approaches into a comprehensive and coherent whole. Paddy Ashdown
provides a good example with his work in Bosnia. Such a High
Representative could also help convince European publics to stick with
the Afghan effort." The challenge will be coordinating with the US and with the Afghan government, which as a sovereign state would never grant Ashdown the level of authority he had in Bosnia.
Photo: Paddy Ashdown (aka Jeremy John Durham Ashdown, Baron Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon...)