Conflict and Security Current Situation

Conflict and Security Current situation in Afghanistan from political, military, social and economic points-of-view Afghanistan is a country of many facets, of outmost importance for the Middle east and the for fight against terrorism around the globe. For the United States it represented a challenge for creating new democratic principles and values and the backbone for the fight against terrorism as a new security threat. Following the attacks of 9/11, Afghanistan became the primary goal of U.S.

administrations in an attempt to synchronize the democratic structures to those of the Western world. The late 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was for the international community the start of a new system of state and democracy building. However, almost 10 years later the forces of the coalition are facing deep rooted fundamentalist challenges. The experience of the Afghan war proves once again that democracy is a process that has to be built upon and from within and not to be imposed from outside.

The current situation in Afghanistan provides yet again perspectives on the lack of capacity of Middle Eastern countries to provide democracy in its purest sense and to adjust to democratic values and norms based on human rights and human dignity. The present paper assesses the impact the 2001 continuous war has had on the political, military, social and economic spectra of life in the country. Taking this into account the paper points out several direction of analysis.

In this sense the military perspective is analyzed with due regard to the influence the U.S. And the coalition forces has had on the training and development of Afghani security forces. Secondly, it is important to consider the political framework of the Afghani state representative for way in which the international forces have managed to influence positively or negatively the former Afghani political life. Thirdly, the economic life plays an important role in the development of the country and it tightly connected wit the societal system of Afghan life.

In this sense, the analysis points out the dependency link between the economic and the social systems, more precisely in order to asses the level of development and change of the Afghan society as a whole it is important to observe the economic evolution influenced the social evolution or not. At this moment it is considered that the social component is yet to undergo a development process despite constant attempts to intervene financially and not only in the country.

The current status of democracy and economy in Afghanistan is largely influenced by the level of instability the country is experiencing. As any system that starts from zero, this country needed and will always need internal and external stability in order to progress. Therefore, an analysis of the insurgency is necessary as to understand what are its causes and how could the Afghani government, together with its international partners deal with it. Classical theories of civil wars and insurgencies are hard to apply to Afghanistan.

As Seth Jones clearly points out, there are at least two conflicting theories: first, based on ethnic conflicts that surpass politics and time and a second one, based on the need of accumulation and power of certain individuals (Jones, 2008). In the case of Afghanistan, one of the main conditions for the Insurgency's development was a structural challenge of the country's political system: "weak governance is a common precondition of insurgencies.

The Afghan government was unable to provide basic services to the population; its security forces were too weak to establish law and order; and too few international forces were available to fill the gap." (Jones, 2008, p 8). Yet one important factor in the difficulty of Afghani politics, closely connected with social and cultural issues, goes deep down in the ancient conflicts between groups of different ethnicity in the large area that forms Afghanistan.

After the 2001 fall of the Taliban government, the new type of regime, a new democracy, had to tackle with a very serious problem. It had to unite under the same umbrella different and most of the times conflicting ethnic groups. As one of them would win something, the others perceived it as a loss for them, so any movement that would offer advantage to any side would result in conflict.

Therefore, political sustainability in a failed state like Afghanistan is very hard to obtain, even with the military and political help of large international actors and donors. Graduating from a "collapsed" to a "failed" state and to other categories, means for Afghanistan that it is going towards the better, but the pace is extremely slow. The current political situation in Afghanistan is a result of a profound lack of democratic culture, both for politicians and for the people.

The capturing of Kabul by the Northern Alliance in mid November 2001 eventually led to the organization of the Bonn Conference which represented the international setting for the establishment of a political road map which for "achieving peace and security, reestablishing key institutions, and reconstructing the country" (RAND Corporation, 2004). The system set in place envisaged the creation of a Temporary Authority, followed by a Transitory Authority and in the end by the establishment of a national and democratic government.

However, the transition was not a smooth one due to the lack of democratic practice that characterized the political scene. Thus, although the U.S. And its allies tried to approach the issue of democracy in a different way from previous nation building attempts (RAND Corporation, 2004), they failed to take into account the ethnic clashes that took control of the political debates in the society. Therefore, the differences between the Pashtuns, the Talibans, the Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazars all proved essential to the eventual formation of a national assembly.

Although elections did take place, they were unrepresentative for the democratic trend needed for Afghanistan. In trying to help improve the situation, the U.S. And the international community must clearly support a process of ethnic reconciliation, while ensuring that democracy is promoted inside the elective institutions.

This may prove to be essential for the future development of the civic spirit because it would offer the population a sense of participatory action that would eventually lead to a reconsideration of the government's role in supporting the transition to a democratic system and a more stable security environment.

Current developments in the country show that talks to end the war are extensive between the parties involved: members of President Hamid Karzai group and members of the Quetta shura, the main group that controls the Taliban military and political activities in Afghanistan. What the latest developments show is that a large part of the Taliban leadership is open to negotiations and face-to-face talks with the NATO-backed Karzai administration in an attempt to settle some sort of peace between the two.

Yet the major problem is that the main leader of the Taliban group, Mullah Omar is kept out of discussions due to his closeness to the Pakistan government. Although political contact exists between the Afghan government and the Taliban, what remains to be seen is whether these can actually have an effect on the short and medium term into the battlefield.

Because, as Dexter Filkens correctly puts it "as long as the Taliban believe they are winning, they do not seem likely to want to make a deal." (Filkens, 2010) Even if the individuals that participate in the Kabul-Taliban discussions were to represent an important factor in changing the Talibans military activities, there is no guarantee that these will stop. The group is not a democracy and still holds strong individualities in many parts of this country.

The overall assessment in what regards political and military situation in today's Afghanistan is that without a strong government and safeguarded democratic principles, the country is going to fail once more. And signals are not positive on this note. The November 2010 parliamentary elections did not produce that democratic wave of positive change that the world desired to see.

To stabilize such an unstable country like Afghanistan and to create a democratic system that would be based on transparent and clear mechanisms and institutions, the people should represent the core of this change. The results have taken Afghans "into a new period of uncertainty, deepened skepticism of the government and stirred Afghanistan's always volatile ethnic fault lines." (Rubin, 2010). These parliamentary elections have shed a dark light over the future of the country.

Although President Karzai is confident that the new Parliament will be effective when it will start working in January, the high number of fraud complaints and the ongoing Taliban fragmentation of the electoral process put a negative international mark on the results. The tectonic ethnic lines have been put into motion as the largest ethnic group of the country; the Pashtuns are under-represented in many provinces, with high suspicions of fraud. With a fragmented and untruthful new Parliament, the country seems to be heading a downfall.

As perception is hugely important in Afghanistan, his Parliament embodies the core of what democracy is and people are going to lose their trust in the democratic system that Hamid Karzai is trying to build. Political, financial and most of all ethnic interest are going to "to further muddle the results. Perhaps most dangerous is that the results did not yield a Parliament whose ethnic proportions match those of the country, and will therefore be perceived as unfair, whether the seats were won by fraud or not." (Rubin, 2010).

The other two perspectives to be taken into account in terms of the development of the Afghani society revolves around the social and the economic aspects of the country. As in every economy, there is a clear connection between the way in which the economy develops and the degree to which the society evolves. In terms of economic prospects, Afghanistan is at the moment still the largest producer of cocaine. "In 2002, Afghanistan returned to its position as the world's foremost producer of heroin.

The 2002 crop reached an estimated 3,400 mt., a 540% increase on the yield for 2001 and significantly higher than the 1,900-2,700 mt. earlier predicted for 2002." In this sense, despite efforts by the international community to reduce the Afghan production, the situation got worse by the year. More precisely, in 2005 "Afghan farmers had planted almost 60% more poppy than the year before, for a total of 165,000 hectares (637 square miles). The 2006 harvest would be the biggest narco-crop in history" (Schweich, 2008) Even more, according to UN statistics the situation in Afghanistan concerning drug trafficking is rather grim.

Despite the fact that the Interim Authority tried to impose certain restrictions on poppy cultivation, due to the lack of authority in the face of the drug lord, these measures remained unsuccessful. In turn, these continuous tensions between the authorities and the drug lords have as consequence the weakening of the position of the government in relation to such outlawed groups. In turn, they end up challenging the state authority creating chaos around the country.

The international community has struggled to pay additional attention to this type of issue because, seeing the main role Afghanistan plays in the drug trafficking circuit, the negative evolution of the situation in the country would clearly affect the ongoing fight against drugs going on in the U.S. And around the world. The drug problem which is visible at this point in Afghanistan encounters obstacles not only at the level of the common people but also at the administration levels.

Indeed, despite the fact that the Allied forces have trained the national army, the fact that there has not been a homogenous approach to this exercise, there are areas of the national police for instance which fail to accomplish the proper tasks assigned. In this sense, the media argues that the problem is not necessarily at the people who are planting and harvesting the poppy but rather at those who are not punishing this act (Schweich, 2008).

This represents a major alarm sign particularly because it is foreseen that a withdrawal of troops is imminent. According to the latest summit in Lisbon, the withdrawal of troops is foreseen for 2014. Under these circumstances it is difficult to consider whether a fully independent national army or police would be able to face such challenges in the future. The drug trade is extremely profitable and there is little hope that the drug lords which benefit from this money would stop doing so in the next years.

This aspect is important for the international community to support the initiatives of the Afghan government in professionally training the police force in dealing with the tactics of drug dealers and in discovering and destroying drug networks. At the same time however, the government in Afghanistan needs to benefit from the cooperation of its neighboring countries as well, especially taking into consideration the transnational nature of drug trafficking. Consequently, the U.S.

has the influential power and ability to rally support from countries such as Pakistan, in the name of the Afghan state. In terms of the relationship with Pakistan, the U.S. can broker to a certain extent a proper relation between the two neighbors, which would offer the possibility of improving external relations and a reconfiguration of ties with the Taliban side in Afghanistan, due to the past involvement of Pakistan with the Taliban regime. There are numerous possibilities for the increase in the Afghan economy.

Currently, the country enjoys a rich reserve of minerals and a potential for agriculture. However, at the moment, the country is facing one of the lowest rankings in the world, despite the influx of billions of dollars from donors alone since 2002. In its turn this highly reflects on the social situation and the way in which the society develops as a whole. From this point-of-view, there is a clear connection between the economic and the social.

However, at the same time, the fact that, regardless of any ranking from collapsed to failed, the main concern is that the society fails to trust the state. In this sense, "the social contract that binds inhabitants to an overarching polity is breached. Various sets of citizens cease trusting the state. Citizens then naturally turn more and more to the kinds of sectional and community loyalties that are their main recourse in times of insecurity, and their main default source of economic opportunity" (Rotberg, n.d.).

This determines a failed connection between the state and its citizens and therefore motivates underground economy and social life. The most recent Human Development Index report from the United Nations Development Program points out a very serious situation in Afghanistan from a social and economic point-of-view. In this sense, the statistics point out firstly, a Human Development Index of 0.349 in 2010 as opposed to 0.307 (UNDP, 2010). This is very low in comparison to South Asia which is above 0.5.

By reference to the rest of the world, the Afghan HDI is half the average. The index takes into account three components which point out the basic directions for analysis. These are: a long and healthy life, knowledge, and a decent standard of living. Another statistic refers to the.