CARE Welcomes UN Decision to Expand Afghan Peacekeeping, Calls on NATO to Take Required Action

Witnessing the deterioration of security in Afghanistan over the last year, CARE International has consistently urged the international community to expand the International Security Assistance Force ("ISAF") outside of Kabul. We welcome, therefore, NATO's recent agreement on the political basis for the expansion of ISAF. We also applaud the unanimous vote of United Nations Security Council on October 13, 2003 authorizing the expansion of ISAF beyond Kabul. The potential significance of these decisions for the future of Afghanistan is immense. Everything now depends on whether and how the actual expansion of an international peacekeeping force is carried out.

Germany, which has taken a very active and constructive role in the international debate on Afghanistan, has recently indicated its willingness to send a 450-strong Provincial Reconstruction Team ("PRT") to Kunduz under ISAF command. CARE calls on other NATO-member countries to follow Germany's lead in committing peacekeepers to Afghanistan. While more international peacekeeping troops are needed outside of Kabul, locations such as Kunduz remain comparatively safe. Moreover, PRTs have not proved themselves an adequate response to more threatening contexts where, for example, anti-government terrorism, narco-criminality and warlordism are prevalent. Rather than fulfilling traditional peacekeeping functions, PRTs continue to implement reconstruction projects in areas where professional assistance organizations are free to work.

CARE International therefore welcomes NATO's and the UN Security Council's acknowledgement of Afghanistan's growing security needs, and urges NATO members to consider the following:

1. NATO members should move urgently from politically acknowledging the need for ISAF expansion to the urgent deployment of a security assistance force of sufficient scale to make a meaningful contribution to improved security throughout Afghanistan. A handful of additional PRTs would not constitute an adequate response.
2. Per the Bonn Agreement (2001), the primary focus of an expanded ISAF force should be "the maintenance of security" and ensuring the withdrawal of all "military units" from the "urban centers or other areas" where ISAF is deployed. NATO members should urgently clarify that the mandate of any ISAF expanded force is primarily to promote security. In particular, NATO Members adopting the PRT model should refocus their mandate on security for Afghans rather than reconstruction. PRTs should be reconceived as "Provincial Security Teams."
3. ISAF forces should also be mandated to confront directly the growing power of regional militia leaders and drug lords, and should have the mobility to respond to serious security threats to Afghans not just in major urban centers and commercial thoroughfares, but also in the rural villages where reconstruction is most needed and where most Afghans live.
4. Finally, every effort should be made to ensure that an expanded ISAF presence is supportive of other vital security sector reform measures in Afghanistan, particularly the training of professional Afghan security forces and the disarmament and demobilization of militias and other armed groups.

In the past twelve months, growing insecurity has undermined reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. Violent attacks against the assistance community have gone from one a month to almost one a day. While Kabul, which is protected by ISAF, has remained relatively stable, armed attacks outside Kabul have escalated dramatically. From 2001 to 2002, Afghanistan's share of global opium production went from 12% to 76%. While regional militias around Afghanistan have become more powerful, the central government has had difficulty exercising its authority beyond the capital. With insecurity so prevalent, less than 1% of Afghanistan's reconstruction needs have actually been met. See CARE, Good Intentions Will Not Pave the Path To Peace, (September 15, 2003).

"NATO nations have agreed on a political basis for a possible expansion of the mission beyond Kabul". But they did not decide that they would expand. They agreed on the basis". (NATO Spokesperson quoted in IRIN, NATO takes step towards possible expansion outside Kabul, October 6, 2003).

UN Security Council Resolution 1510 (2003), adopted unanimously on October 13, 2003, "authorizes expansion of the mandate of the International Security Assistance Force to allow it, as resources permit, to support the Afghan Transitional Authority and its successors in the maintenance of security in areas of Afghanistan outside of Kabul and its environs"".

Of Afghanistan's 32 provinces, 16 have high-risk areas for the assistance community, three more have medium risk areas and five have seen serious factional fighting. Only eight provinces are relatively secure (including Kunduz). Of more than 100 attacks on NGOs and the UN this year, not one occurred in Kunduz.