KABUL - UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan Nicholas Haysom on Tuesday night said he told the U.N Security Council earlier in the day that Afghanistan was faced with five particular challenges that it had to overcome to simply survive 2016.
Addressing a press conference after his security council briefing, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) chief said Afghanistan was facing a particularly tough time.
He said the first issue government had to deal with was serious economic challenges. This involved "a very low growth off a low base, high unemployment, and with the social consequences that come from that unemployment."
Secondly, the government was facing tough security challenges.
"Even as we speak, the insurgency is really active in all parts of the country -- in Helmand in the south to Baghlan in the north. And although there are hopeful signs that the Afghan National Security Forces are going through a period of adaptation and lesson-learning, no one, either from the member states or from the UN, really assesses the challenges as anything other than daunting," he said.
In addition to that, the Afghan government "faces a difficult situation politically, a fractious and fragmented political elite in Kabul, which it needs to manage, particularly in the interest of developing a greater level of political coherence among the political class and the political elite in Kabul, especially if it's going to generate a sense of confidence in the future and build the morale of the people and the security forces," he added.
Haysom went on to say the government must secure, at important conferences this year, medium-term commitment from the international community to support Afghanistan.
"Medium-term commitment is important because it gives people confidence that the international community is not abandoning them, but it also gives a level of predictability and certainty in regard to facing down its economic and political challenges."
The fifth hurdle, he said, was "the capacity to develop a peace process that will have some traction. At the moment, we've seen some encouraging developments -- in particular, the four meetings of what is known as the Quadrilateral Coordination Group, which is US, Pakistan, Afghanistan and China."
"There has been real progress in that group, but we need to bear in mind that the group is a group that is supposed to midwife a peace process. It is not a peace process itself. And in regard to that peace process, we note that at least it appears that the rump of the Taliban has not agreed to participate as yet. And it's critical that they do participate for there to be a sustainable peace," he said.
"And so what I suggested to the Security Council is that those five challenges are the critical tests for survival. Survival is not a low bar, because it means it must overcome each one of those five hurdles. It can't afford to fail on any one, and particularly if it wants to deal with the potential refugee crisis, the flow of immigrants out of Afghanistan."
He said the issue of human rights concerns were also raised. "Notably, attention was drawn to the fact that the impact of the conflict -- the tragic impact of the conflict -- is on the ever-growing number of civilian casualties, which now tops 11,000, reflecting an intensification of the conflict. I like to point out that 11,000 civilian casualties doesn't capture the full tragedy and the drama. One has to bear in mind the survivors, the communities, the colleagues, the family members who have lost loved ones, and parents who have lost children and children who have lost parents, and families that have lost breadwinners."
"So we drew attention to the civilian casualties," he added.
Haysom went on to say: "I would draw attention to our continuing close monitoring of violence against women in Afghanistan, noting that there has been a rise of what are called parallel justice punishments meted out to women, in particular, for what are called moral crimes. And we will continue to monitor and speak out against those."
In the question and answer session with journalists, Haysom was asked what he meant by the issue of the survival of the National Unity Government and if the challenges aren't met, would the government in turn collapse.
Haysom said: "I think what we see is that all five of those areas are quite closely related. The peace will affect -- if there is peace -- the levels of security, will boost investment and investor confidence, will provide a real relief to the people, which will stabilize the country politically and simultaneously in regard to the economy."
He went on to say that "if any one of them -- if the government fails in any one of those -- it will have dramatic consequences on the other four factors, the other four hurdles I mentioned. If, for example, Afghanistan fails to persuade the international community to invest in the medium- to long-term in Afghanistan, it will promote political instability, promote greater loss of faith and political confidence in the country, which will have its impact on the economy. In 2014 -- as recently as 2014 -- the government was unable to pay its civil servants twice."
He said UNAMA is however taking note that survival doesn't mean treading water or standing still. "It means actively engaging to make sure that you do have an economic plan, that you are promoting political stability, that you are holding the ground on the battlefield. What would happen if there was a serious failure in any one those? I think it would have severe political and other consequences throughout the country. I'm not saying that would mean that the country would collapse, but it would certainly deepen the crisis in which Afghanistan finds itself."
Questioned on whether he had any concerns about Pakistan's long-standing relationship with the Taliban and how it might affect it being an honest broker, Haysom said: "I think the effectiveness of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group is precisely because Pakistan has had some influence over the Taliban. The question is whether we have confidence that the Pakistanis will use that influence to help support a peace process."
He said the initial indications are that Pakistan has "done not just a lifting but some heavy lifting to try and get a peace process off the ground, and I think they would see themselves as now publicly accountable for the success of that strategy, and have taken that responsibility seriously."
In answer to a question on actually getting the Taliban to the talks tables, given their constant rejections of the process, Haysom said he felt the first step was to encourage Pakistan to exercise as much leverage as it can. "But I think we also need to engage the Taliban. On the one hand, there would certainly be advocates who might want to argue that time is on the side of Taliban, that they should be in no rush to enter into peace talks, that the developments might favor them."
He went on to say: "But I've argued, including with the Taliban, that there is another logic, which is that if they wish to be part of the future government or to govern, they will need international assistance and international legitimacy. And what we've seen is the only way you can obtain that legitimacy is through bona fide participation in a peace process, such as FRELIMO in Mozambique or the FARC now in Colombia."
He said: "It is the only way they can be an acceptable member of the international community. And they have stated that it is their aim to coexist with nations, to essentially be a neutral player in world political events, which is another way of appealing for legitimacy as a potentially responsible government. If they want to demonstrate that, the best way of doing it would be to participate in a peace process."
In conclusion, he said: "Before I ascribe motives and intentions to the Taliban, we should just recognize that there are a number of groups, and really it's a question of trying to work out what views are held by what group. In my own view, there is a group in the Taliban that recognizes that there has to be a political agreement at the end of the day, and I think we have to find a way of persuading the Taliban that this is the only way forward." (Tolonews)