After 13 long and painful years, the flag is finally being lowered on the Nato-led combat mission to Afghanistan. And beginning on New Year’s Day, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) will be shifting its focus to training and advising Afghan security forces on building a safer and more secure society for all. Yes, the combat is over, but there are still huge challenges with the Taliban active, planting bombs and remaining a threat to national security.
For the government of President Ashraf Gani, the handover of full security operations to Afghan control represents a significant moment in reclaiming his nation’s sovereign powers, but it also constitutes the biggest challenge in ensuring that his security services maintain effective control and contain the threat from the Taliban. Indeed, how his government deals with the Taliban will determine whether he is ultimately successful and ultimate success will likely mean sitting down and talking to the Taliban to get their ‘buy in’.
Gani faces a huge task: His nation has known nothing but upheaval and fighting for the past four decades — against the Soviets, the Taliban and with the campaign by the Nato-led forces in search of Al Qaida and the Taliban after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Gani’s security forces and government officials will need to overcome corruption, poverty, radicalisation, illiteracy and the money brought by the need to grow illegal drugs in regions where there is little economic alternative. And Gani himself needs to assert his authority over his administration, government and officials even though his election itself was bitterly disputed.
There is also the reality that his security forces have been errant in failing to change their long-standing culture of corruption, where policing and justice were distributed on the basis of one’s ability to pay. It is this laissez-faire attitude that made the security forces open to infiltration by Taliban sympathisers, resulting in the deaths of police and civilians alike. For now, let us greet the end of Nato combat operations as a positive step. Now it is up to all Afghans to prove that faith is not misplaced.
