The struggle for control of Afghanistan is rapidly coming to a close. Over the previous 10 days, key cities in North Afghanistan have fallen to the Northern Alliance: Mazar-i-Sharif, Jalalabad and the capital Kabul. Only pockets of Taliban resistance remain, centered in the cities of Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south. After Kabul's fall, former Afghan president and Alliance political leader Burhanuddin Rabbani returned to the ravaged capital Saturday, despite pressure from the Bush administration not to. Rabbani fled after the Taliban's rise to power five years ago.
The Taliban's precipitous collapse and Rabbani's return raise the salient issue of a post-Taliban Afghanistan. Rabbani claims to "welcome the formation of a broad-based government as soon as possible" - a necessity considering the Alliance is dominated by ethnic Tajiks. As an ethnic hodgepodge, Afghanistan's political and social viability depends on an ethnic balance. Complicating matters are the Pashtuns, who live in the south and as the main supporters of the Taliban dominate the plurality.
While the Alliance will confer with other opposition groups in Europe about creating a government, their commitment to a peaceful transition is doubtful. The brutality of their rule in the 1990s contributed to the Taliban's rise to power. Images of Alliance soldiers brutally attacking surrendering enemy troops have already surfaced in the media. There are reports of hundreds being slaughtered in Mazar-i-Sharif, one of the first cities to fall. The Alliance, after benefiting from American air strikes and supplies, wants the United States and the international community to stay away from Afghanistan, saying peacekeepers should be based "on realities on the ground." It's not that difficult to interpret that as "Leave us alone."
By all logic, the United States and its allies cannot abandon their commitment to the Central Asian nation pounded by heavy ordinance over the past six weeks. While the Alliance might be able to temporarily fill the vacuum of physical authority left by the Taliban's absence, the long-term prospects for stability are not good. Afghanistan is a land-locked, poor country with little natural resources to be exploited by an agrarian, undereducated population. The past two decades of devastation make the chances of the Afghan people acting as an effective check against whatever ruling coalition takes power slim at best.
The international community, spearheaded by the United Nations, needs to insert itself into the situation. Any broad-based coalition in a politically immature country wracked by constant warring will be unstable while its people learn to live in their new reality. A U.N. presence can act two-fold as a multi-national peacekeeping force and a humanitarian aid delivery system.
The blue-helmeted soldiers of the United Nations would act as a physical buffer within Afghan cities and various political factions. Their presence would ensure safety for the Afghan people as the country's social institutions are rebuilt. Perhaps most importantly, U.N. monitors can ensure elections free of tampering and fraud. Monitors backed by military representatives from all corners of the globe are difficult to dismiss.
The peacekeeping force can also accomplish the necessary task of protecting U.N. humanitarian workers as they distribute food, medicine and other provisions to the population. A stable Afghanistan depends on a healthy, educated population. Democracy is a seed that only can take root in arable ground. A starving, ill, uneducated population has no stake in any semblance of civil government; it is an overwhelming struggle just for them to survive.
A population nourished by world food donations, cured by Western doctors, educated in U.N.-built schools and given a stake in the future of their country will become an excellent cure not only against chaos in their country, but against the rogue elements sheltered by the Taliban and enemies of the United States.
It might be expensive, but in the end, keeping peace costs less than losing a war.
