Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Thursday, March 28th, 2024

Towards a New Paradigm – Reforming the State in Afghanistan

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Towards a New Paradigm – Reforming the State in Afghanistan

More than a decade after the emergence of the new political dispensation in Afghanistan, it is becoming increasingly evident that the a) political, b) administrative, c) fiscal (financial) structures of national (central in Kabul) and sub-national (provincial and districts) government in present-day Afghanistan are falling short of fulfilling the needs of the country. These structures and paradigms, unchanged for decades, are proving to be archaic and ill-suited for the needs of Afghanistan of today and a diverse country and nation.

With the deadline of 2014 fast approaching, it is increasingly important to undertake and conduct quality and professional research and studies into how to meaningfully reform the status-quo in Afghanistan. The year 2014 will see two major developments: 1) withdrawal of the majority (but not all) of the foreign troops from the country, 2) presidential elections and a new president for Afghanistan.

Within this window of opportunity available to Afghanistan between now and 2014, a national, informed debate and discourse on this very important issue and related matters should be initiated and brought to a logical conclusion. This national debate should involve the government of Afghanistan, the academia, the civil society and the political class, grassroots organizations, the people at large and the international community.

The debate and its conclusions as well as the professional research and studies conducted by indigenous Afghan think tanks and research centers should inform and throw light on a future roadmap that the present and future governments in Afghanistan can take with regards to addressing the country's decades-old governance crisis.

Beyond 2014 and over a time horizon of a decade or less, it is up to these Afghan and foreign think tanks and study and research centers to gradually provide guidelines and input on how to bring about a national and sub-national governance structure that would suit the unique qualities of Afghanistan and that can provide stability and peace.

In these series of articles, I will make an attempt to provide a brief overview of the situation and offer some very broad suggestions as to the contours of an ideal governance set-up in the country. I hope that this will serve to trigger further debate and discussion on these vital issues.

Anyhow, these series will qualify to be only a brief introduction to this vast and complex issue. The rest is up to specialized think tanks and research centers to conduct research and to explore the issues further in order to help the policy-makers and stakeholders form a vision of how to go about this major national concern.

Afghanistan's public administration system has historically provided the country with a strong and coherent yet deficient framework for running the affairs of the nation. At least one advantage of Afghanistan's public administration system has been that it has withstood the test of time and has proved resilient in passing through some of the darkest ages in the recent history of Afghanistan.

In the 1990s and when the political system saw a wholesale destruction, despite all the simplistic assertions that the "state collapsed", the country's public administration system emerged intact out of the fog of decades of war and conflict.

In other words, the same national and sub-national structures that prevailed before the conflicts began in the 1970s, was left intact by all the subsequent regimes whether it was the communists, the Taliban or the present political leadership.

This is unlike other similar, post-conflict countries such as East Timor or Kosovo where, in the post-conflict era, the new political forces sought to completely change and replace the original structures of governance that existed in the pre-conflict era.

In Afghanistan, these structures have been resilient and this is inherently a major strength of the public administration system of Afghanistan. This positive feature can be used to the advantage of reformists and, if handled well, can be a significant source of stability in a country where instability and chaos have long been the norm.

This vast apparatus or Afghanistan's public administration system extends from Kabul as the national capital to provinces and districts, forming a large network of public agencies and organizations that are firmly controlled and steered from Kabul in the areas of policy, administration, finance and budget.

All through the ages since 1919 when Afghanistan gained total independence, this uniformed-across-the-board and centralized structure on top of which has been an authoritarian king or a chief executive, has co-existed with a society that, quite to the contrary, has been fragmented, ethnically and culturally diverse and deeply traditional. The interface and the inter-relationships between these two have been the source of many conflicts and disadvantages as well as advantages for the country.

Since the era of Abdur Rahman Khan in late 19th century when the groundwork of the Afghan state was laid, this state and its structures have undergone a process of evolution to date. The result of this long process of evolution is that the state in Afghanistan is strictly unitary and centralized and all administrative and political authority is heavily concentrated in Kabul.

Even after ten years of the emergence of the new political dispensation in the country and the unprecedented opportunities to meaningfully reform the system, this highly centralized and static set-up is proving ill-suited for the requirements of today's Afghanistan.

The powers, duties and responsibilities of the provincial and district-level administrations are largely dictated and, if decided, withdrawn by the central government. These regional and local administrations, although being official units of the government, enjoy almost no autonomy, authority and leeway in formulating and executing of policy decisions. Their authority and autonomy is extremely limited to some flexibility in implementing the centrally-sanctioned and dictated policies and programs.
Administrative and Fiscal structures

There are many countries in the world today that, being similar to Afghanistan, have unitary government set-ups but still are somewhat decentralized in fiscal (financial) and administrative matters. In other words, regional and local administrations are granted some extent of autonomy by the central government in the areas of administration, budget and finance.

These regional administrations are allowed to formulate their own policy frameworks, draft their own budgets, implement them and devise and build their own human resources and personnel policies. All these take place with the approval of the central government.

The highly centralized nature of political power structures and public administration system in Afghanistan has been a major advantage as well as a significant source of troubles and conflicts in the recent history of Afghanistan. This tradition of centralization had enabled successive Afghan governments to protect and preserve the country's territorial integrity and guard against the manipulative machinations of neighbors and other world powers such as the British and the Russians.

In the years immediately after the ouster of the Taliban, restoration of the highly centralized authority of the Kabul government was a necessity dictated by the post-conflict circumstances of that time. Governance in the center and across the country was non-existent; the authority and writ of the central government in Kabul was limited to the national capital.

The country was fragmented into zones and regions where warlords and local commanders exercised control and ran their own administrations. In those years and under those circumstances, restoring the authority and control of the central government in Kabul was an absolute necessity, and it was possible only through strong political, administrative and fiscal (financial) re-centralization and having a chief executive in Kabul that could extend the central authority throughout Afghanistan with an iron hand.

This re-centralization was also necessary to enable the new government to restore order, take stock of the situation and rebuild and revitalize, with the help of the international community, the governance institutions that had lost their vitality through years of civil war and the subsequent Taliban rule.

The Winner Takes All – the Loser is Condemned
This long tradition of centralization and its accompanying troubles have contributed a great deal to reducing the national politics to a brutal crusade to capture Kabul and get hold of the ultimate prize that is the seat of the president.

Throughout Afghanistan's modern history, whether during the Communists, the Mujahideen, the Taliban or other militant groups such as the Hizb-e Islami and the Haqqanis, the political game has been about all-out efforts to capture the center and sit at the top of the pyramid of power in Afghanistan. The winner-takes-all and loser-is-condemned have been the unwritten rules of this brutal game.

This strong and unjustified centralism is proving to be a contributing force to the current state of instability, the ongoing insurgency by Taliban and other insurgent groups and a governance system that, despite its limited achievements, continues to be crippled by corruption, nepotism, cronyism, incompetence and outright bias and discrimination. The central government in Kabul is perceived to be unsympathetic and even hostile to various communities and provincial and local administrations.

An agenda for reform
As discussed, the yearning for reform is apparent at all levels of the current administration. The question is, in order to effectively address these glaring deficiencies, whether the presidential form of government should be replaced with a parliamentary one; whether the unitary state should be transformed into a federal structure with a number of states and a central, national government, and governed by proper and well-defined center-state relations.

Or whether we can seek answers to these governance ills of Afghanistan within the present set-up and through reforming the present structures so that the huge imbalance between the center and regional and local administrations as discussed are rectified and corrected.

It is important to be realistic, pragmatic and mindful of the realities of today's Afghanistan. Undertaking a wholesale change to the system in the form of changing the presidential arrangement to a parliamentary one or introducing a federal structure in place of the current unitary set-up are not feasible and possible over the short to medium term.

President Karzai has made no secret of his fierce opposition to the idea of further decentralization and devolution of power let alone making changes to the current presidential and unitary set-up. On the other hand, what is actually practicable and feasible to be accomplished from now until 2014 is reforming the present structures within the current unitary set-up with a view to genuinely devolve power, provide greater autonomy, self-rule, self-determination, and greater local participation to provincial and local administrations.

At present, the entire range of major policy and strategic decisions and choices with regard to administration and budget and finance of provincial and local administrations are strictly vested with Kabul. The political appointments as provincial governors and district governors (Wuluswals) are made by the president on the recommendation of the Interior Ministry and in view of the political patronage that the Arg (Presidential Palace) extends to political backers and allies.

Giving greater autonomy to provinces and regional administrations should involve three distinct areas: a) political b) administrative c) fiscal (financial). In political decisions, the government at the center can reserve the right to appoint governors as the political representative of the center in a province.

On the other hand, the provincial councils and district councils, already enshrined in the Constituion, should be revitalized and revived and their authorities in a number of areas upheld and respected. The current Constitution of Afghanistan has established provincial and district councils.

In reality, the district councils are non-existent and the provincial councils have no real say in determining the development strategies and drafting of budget proposals while the Constitution adopted in 2004 expressly allows these councils to take active part in these provincial matters.

The provincial councils should be further empowered to act as mini-assemblies in their respective provinces. Currently and as enshrined in the Constitution, a provincial council is allowed to take part in formulating the province's development strategies in coordination with the line agencies of the central government in the province while in reality, neither the provincial governor nor the line agencies in the province pay any heed to what the council has to say.

Through a change in the applicable laws, the decisions and recommendations of the provincial and district councils should be made legally-binding and compulsorily incorporated into the budget proposals sent by the province's mostoufiat (provincial department of the Ministry of Finance) and the provincial line agencies to central agencies in Kabul.

Any plan of reforms should involve raising the provincial and district councils to a level where they can actively and in a legally-binding manner take part in running the affairs of their own province. There should be legal assurances and safeguards to preserve the Constitutional mandate of these councils.

Furthermore, a provincial council should be allowed to elect an executive board whose chairman can work alongside the governor. The provincial council and the executive board of a province, as mini-assemblies of their respective province, should be given Constitutional guarantees to be able to devise their own development strategies and draft their own quarterly and annual budgets.

More than a decade after the emergence of the new political dispensation in Afghanistan, it is becoming increasingly apparent not only for the present government in Afghanistan but also for the international community including the U.S., the European Union and Japan that the current institutional and power structures of Afghanistan are inadequate, deficient and one source of continued instability and conflict.

As discussed in the previous articles of these series, the current top-down approach in building the power and institutional arrangements are proving unable to respond adequately to the growing needs of Afghanistan.

The whole situation should be placed within the larger perspective of the country's population explosion and the fact that in a matter of three decades, the country's population will double to touch 60 million. In the previous article, I argued that the unitary form of the state in Afghanistan does not mean that the stakeholders cannot make any positive changes to the present power and institutional arrangements.

In fact, the current Constitution adopted in 2004, provides for a strong framework for de-concentration and de-centralization of power, authority and responsibility within the present unitary set-up. The Constitution makes a direct reference to the imperative of de-concentration of power in the article 2 of chapter 8: "The government, while preserving the principle of centralism, shall – in accordance with the law – delegate certain authorities to local administration units for the purpose of expediting and promoting economic, social, and cultural affairs, and increasing the participation of people in the development of the nation."

As discussed in the previous articles of these series, the provincial and district councils, explicitly allowed for in the 2004 Constitution, can be the proper vehicles for greater participation of local people in governance, greater self-rule and augmenting the local administrations with more input and participation from local and provincial people as well as a passage towards greater de-centralization of power in future possibly within a federal set-up. As discussed, provincial councils should be turned into mini-assemblies.

These assemblies, in line with Executive Boards which should be elected from among the provincial council members, should enjoy Constitutional guarantees and be given the authority to decide on the province's development strategies in tandem with national development documents such as Afghanistan's National Development Strategy. The provincial councils and the provincial Executive Boards should also have powers to decide on the quarterly and annual budget of the province and have significant authority in implementing and execution of their sanctioned budget.

The centrally-appointed provincial governor should be made to work alongside these regional authorities and institutions. The provincial governor should work alongside the chairman of the provincial Executive Board and the provincial council.

The chairman of the provincial Executive Board will be the province's de jure chief executive alongside the centrally-appointed provincial governor. Such a peculiar form of unitary government is actually being practiced in a number of countries such as Poland.

Poland, being a European country of a rich historical heritage, has a long history of national cohesion and unity. In the 17th and 18th centuries when Europe was divided into many empires, Poland, as a nation, was always a target for its more powerful neighbors such as the Prussian Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire.

These empires, throughout these centuries had been conspiring against Poland trying to divide and "partition" Poland as part of the imperial rivalries of that era. Such a history has made the Poles into a cohesive and largely homogeneous nation. More than 94% of Poland's population is comprised of ethnic Poles.

While Poland, unlike Afghanistan, is ethnically almost uniform and has a robust national cohesion, the Polish people have preferred a peculiar form of unitary government that allows each constituent province to be largely self-ruled and self-governed with a substantial participation of local and provincial people in local governance and thus lending a great deal of political and social stability to present-day Poland. In contrast, Afghanistan, while being a land of diverse people, ethnicities and linguistic backgrounds, is stuck with a strictly unitary government that denies these diversities and forbids the idea of de-concentration and de-centralization of power and authority on the pretext of preventing "national discord".

In order to provide for Constitutional guarantees so that the provincial councils can act as mini-assemblies in a province and the Executive Boards can be created as executive organs of a province, the need for Constitutional amendments arises.

The Constitution of the country should be modified and amended accordingly so that provincial Executive Boards can be established to work alongside centrally-appointed governors as joint executive authorities of a province.

In other countries such as Poland and India, there are clear and segregated lists of issues that fall under the jurisdiction of the central government, the states and those that are common between the center and the states/provinces.

In India, for example, the concurrent list, details all the issues that fall under the joint jurisdiction of the center and the states. Likewise, the states list details all those issues that fall under the exclusive preserve of individual states. In Afghanistan and through Constitutional amendments, such clear lists of issues should be built into the Constitution.

Replacing the present unitary form with a Federal structure is an idea that many within Afghanistan uphold as being the panacea to all the governance ills of Afghanistan. Whether a federal set-up is suitable for the country and whether it can address the problems of Afghanistan is a question that needs much professional research to be answered.

Moreover, such a radical transformation of Afghanistan from a unitary to federal cannot take place over the short-term and under the administration of the current president, Hamid Karzai. Instead, reforming the current strictly unitary arrangements on the lines discussed in these series of articles is a much more realistic, feasible, pragmatic and practicable proposition, especially under the present circumstances.

If the need be and if the right groundwork are laid and a national consensus formed over the idea of a federal government, then the way to go would be through such reforms as discussed in this article. A hasty, overnight transformation into a federal set-up can be easily destabilizing for Afghanistan and can prove disastrous. Let the provinces and regions of Afghanistan first learn about and practice self-rule through such reforms.

The obstacles and challenges ahead of such reforms
Deeply corrupt and entrenched vested interests in the present-day government that do not believe in de-centralized governance and see their interests in maintaining the status quo are by far the largest obstacles in the way of introducing such wide-ranging reforms.

These interests are mostly remnants from the monarchy and the Communist era and were educated in the former Soviet Union beyond the Iron Curtain of the time. A strong belief in centralization, centralism and authoritarianism is made into their very genes.

They are the fiercest opponents to any reforms that are aimed at de-centralization of power and granting greater autonomy to provinces. They are likely to oppose any reforms that would take the power away from their hands and put it into the hands of local and regional representatives. In the end, one thing is for sure: either the government of Afghanistan in partnership with the international community will take effective steps to meaningfully reform the country's governance structures or Afghanistan will continue to be mired in conflict and will end up as a failed state beyond repair.

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