Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Friday, March 29th, 2024

To Restore Political Stability

International community has been and is doing their best to restore security and stability in Afghanistan. Over the last two years, they provided more troops to be deployed in insecure and troubled areas of the country. Military commanders of NATO and ISAF have been leaving no stone unturned to reduce civilian casualties, which have said to be one of the reasons for decline in public support for the presence of international troops operating in the country.

In the meanwhile, international donors, though based on wrong calculations, have been funding the projects implemented in insecure areas to win the hearts and minds of those local people living under the influence of Taliban or other insurgent groups.

This strategy has been implemented even at the cost of ignoring the provinces that have remained calm and peaceful. Recently, international allies of Afghanistan have focused on building, strengthening and equipping Afghan national security forces so as to enable them to begin to take over security responsibility from international forces.

The main motive behind this is to pave the way for drawdown and gradual withdrawal of international troops from Afghanistan. Recently, the Ministry of Defense said that Afghan National Army has got enough equipments and weaponries to counter the internal threats but to protect the country against external threats the army needs to receive more. In the meanwhile, it has said that if the process of training Afghan National Security Forces continues, they will be able to fully assume the security responsibility.

Seven areas have already been handed over to Afghan forces and second phase is to be implemented soon. NATO member states have already begun to draw down their troops with the assumption that the situation in Afghanistan will not deteriorate with their military withdrawal.

In a recent move, France is withdrawing about 200 of its troops from the country. There are signs of improvements but in order to stabilize Afghanistan there is a need for political reconfigurations as well. There is already a political instability in the country and this is because the current political power structure is not working and needs a review or overhaul.

Political instability is lack of legitimacy of rulers and institutions. Due to the electoral flaws in 2010 and 2011 and the interferences, legitimacy of both the presidency and parliament remains open to question. In order to restore political instability in the future, there has to be a review of the structures that were rashly put in place after the fall of Taliban regime.