1. Afghanistan: Testing Time for Governance
APRATIM MUKARJI
Ever since December 2001, when the interim administration led by Hamid Karzai was set up
under the Bonn Agreement, the job of governing the post-Taleban Afghanistan has surely been
one of the toughest tasks in the 21st
century. Had the Taleban been completely annihilated at
the time, many of the problems would not have surfaced. But, the readily available hospitable
terrain of Pakistan ensured that the Taleban (themselves a creation of that country) would be
able to regroup and attack the liberated Afghanistan once again. And within a mere two years
after being driven out of the country, this became a reality despite the massive presence of
highly-resourced international troops, billions of dollars worth of military equipment, and
billions more being regularly pumped into the enormous task of rebuilding the shattered
country.
Fourteen years since the defeat of the Taleban and ten months since the departure of the
U.S. and NATO-led International Security Assistance Force ( ISAF)---only about 13,000 foreign
troops remain in the country and presently scheduled to leave by December 2016--- the
government in Afghanistan is still primarily engaged in fighting the insurgents. The latter, just
emerging out of a fierce power struggle following the much delayed public acknowledgement
of the 2-year-old demise of its chief Mullah Omar, is proving to be particularly belligerent
during the spring offensive this year and before the onset of the cruel Afghan winter.
The post-Taleban Afghanistan’s second directly elected President Ashraf Ghani had just
marked the completion of his first year in office--- which was fated by its very raison d’etre to
be as eventful as imaginable--- when the Taleban scored a major and highly embarrassing
victory against the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). On September 28,2015, they laid
seize to the prosperous and third largest city, Kunduz--- also the first provincial capital to fall
since 2001--- and seemingly completed their control in the next two days. All news reports and
commentaries predicted a prolonged dig-in by the insurgents since, as details soon emerged,
the spectacular performance by the Taleban had been preceded by a sustained campaign

2. launched in April (see The Hard Game of Bargaining in Afghanistan ,Geopolitics,Vol.VI,Issue
2,July 2015).
In early 2015, the insurgents had first secured the outlying districts and planted
landmines extensively covering them with the intention of blocking and delaying the
deployment of government troops if and when they would come.It was on April 24 that the
Taleban first encroached upon the outskirts of Kunduz and took control of Gortepa, a large area
comprising about fifty villages extending on one end from one or two kilometres away from the
city centre to fifteen km. to the north-west on the other end. This area eventually proved to be
the launching pad for one of the prongs of the massive attack on the Kundux city on September
28. This area connects with two districts which the Taleban had brought under their control
since the July-end. The government forces, responding to the April offensive, did not clear
Gortepa or its surrounding areas at the time and only set up a base on the road to Gortepa in
order to stop the insurgents from overrunning the Kunduz city. Ultimately, however, the
Taleban succeeded in taking control of the city at the September-end.
The Taleban also launched a media blitzkrieg to indicate that they were confident about
achieving their goal of taking over the Kunduz city. Throughout September 28 and 29 the
residents were warned not to venture out of their homes and the fighters were instructed over
the social media to pay attention to the hospitals and not to maltreat captured government
troops (not surprisingly, this dictum was observed more in breach than in compliance). Besides,
right from September 20, the social media were used to proclaim an upcoming “surprise Eid
gift”, which turned out to be the capture of the city. On the top of it, the meticulous
preparedness of the Taleban in the Kunduz operation also got some kind of governmental
acknowledgement when the acting Defence Minister Masum Stanekzai described at a press
conference on September 29 how the militants had sneaked into the city disguised as civilians
and began to settle down there during the Eid holidays of September 24-26.
However, within three days of the stunning Taleban victory, government troops retook
the city centre following a fierce street-to-street fight on October 1.Weeding out the remnants
of the insurgents hiding in residential quarters continued after government properties were

3. quickly cleared of them. While the relatively quick retaking of the city appeared to be
impressive, the Taleban claimed that it was part of their tactic to vacate the city to allow enemy
troops to enter so that they could be encircled for further action.
The battle for Kunduz represents several major developments in the Afghanistan war.
Analysts perceive this as the beginning of urban warfare by the Taleban, restricted for so many
years to remote mountainous regions where targets could be picked up with much less risk.
This trend had also necessitated the ISAF to respond in kind and in the early years of
resumption of insurgent attacks they concentrated on securing remote and less populated
areas. The Taleban used to mount mainly guerrilla and suicidal attacks in cities and used to melt
away after delivering shock assaults. The Kunduz battle, therefore, indicates that the insurgents
now being led by Mullah Omar’s controversial successor Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour
feel that they are on surer grounds than before, particularly since government troops would be
fighting them mainly on their own strength and without substantive foreign assistance.
It is instructive to note that months before the Kunduz attack, the Taleban had
distributed a video to indicate that they were about to launch a new tactic of fighting, urban
warfare. The video featured scenes of attacks in the Kabul, Gardez and Khost cities and
provided details of weapons and tools supposedly effective in such fighting. (Afghanistan
Analysts Network, The Fall of Kunduz: What does it tell us about the strength of the post-Omar
Taleban?, September 30,2015)
Bereft of the charisma surrounding his predecessor Mullah Omar, Mullah Mansour
appears to be following a strategy to establish an unassailable authority over the Taleban. In his
first public statement in July this year, he reaffirmed to his commanders that the jihad would
continue while almost casually mentioning the continuation or revival of a political process and
debunking any talk of reviving negotiations with the enemy. However, his brief reference---
“Regarding negotiations, we will be, according to the circumstances, following a policy which is
in line with the principles of Sharia, aspirations of jihad and national interests”---has been seen
as a cautious approach while giving out nothing. It would not be wrong to treat this statement
as more of a diplomatic gesture than the usual tough uttering of the head of a fearsome

4. insurgent group. Besides, the several major assaults mounted this year and the performance in
Kunduz may lead to a toughening of posture by the Taleban. “The Taleban and their chief would
now adopt a more robust stance in the negotiations---if they are resumed any time soon for a
settlement to the conflict. For the moment, however, the chances of the talks resuming and a
consensus on the roadmap to a resolution of the conflict are remote,” writes former Afghan
ambassador to Pakistan and ex-Interior Secretary Rustam Shah Mohmand. (Stemming the
ripples from Kunduz, The Hindu,October 8,2015)
It is felt that as 2015 approaches its end and the next year is scheduled to witness further
reduction in the already shrivelled presence of foreign military and as the campaign so far has
proved to be worthwhile, the Taleban are not under any pressure to resume peace negotiations
with the government but at the same time it feels that it is wise to leave a space for talks if and
when a move in that direction would be found expeditious to make.
That the ANSF continue to badly need foreign assistance was also established during the
Kunduz battle. American planes and ground troops were deployed to help government soldiers
when the insurgents proved to be too strong to fight. But, since only a handful of American
troops are now left in the country, the insurgents appear to consider this a major source of
weakness for the government and are likely to further probe and exploit it. Weather permitting,
therefore, the Taleban are expected to mount further similarly spectacular attacks on urban
and rural areas, at least until the severe Afghan winter sets in.
In the wake of the punishing assault on the Kunduz city (the city centre of which was
liberated by government forces within a week) heavy fighting continued to rage around, forcing
the attention of both the government and the international community to certain vital
elements of the unfolding situation.
The most obvious of these elements is that the ANSF cannot fight the resurgent Taleban
on their own and urgently require continuing foreign assistance. Already, calls have been made
in responsible political and government circles in Washington that American troops and military
assistance should be expanded in Afghanistan (a decision that President Barak Obama would
very much like to leave for his successor to take). Kabul, on its own, is desperately looking for

5. similar assistance from neighbouring countries. President Ashraf Ghani has spoken on several
occasions during the current year about the urgent need of forging a regional cooperation and
coordination mechanism to help his country to continue the reconstruction and development
programmes.
India was approached quite a few times during Hamid Karzai’s presidency. However,
New Delhi continues to be cautious about any military involvement in the country and refrains
from getting into an unchartered territory, apart from supplying a few helicopters. The supply
of the helicopters has so far evoked mild skepticism from Kabul with Afghans wondering if this
displays a surprising mismatch between India’s capabilities and Afghanistan’s requirements.
Diplomatically too, New Delhi-Kabul relations are passing through uneasy times. This was amply
reflected when towards the end of August the Narendra Modi government literally cold-
shouldered the Ashraf Ghani government’s invitation to revive the moribund Strategic
Partnership Agreement, signed way back in 2011. This was followed by the downgrading of the
Indian participation in the Regional Economic Cooperation Conference on Afghanistan held in
early September. All the other regional governments were represented at the senior ministerial
level while India was represented by an official. The Indian peevishness was apparently caused
by the clearly ill-advised Afghan tilt towards Pakistan after Ghani became President. It is quite
another matter that despite being a major participant in Afghanistan’s reconstruction and
development programmes (with a $ 2.3 billion-strong commitment), New Delhi has chosen to
be a bystander in military and strategic aspects.
However, the Taleban assault in the Kunduz province and on the city and their ability to
wage a prolonged battle in urban built-up areas in September-October laid bare the major
chinks in the security environment of Afghanistan. The First Vice President Abdul Rashid
Dostum, the Uzbek warlord and commander of a powerful militia, sought military assistance
from Russia in October after his forays into several Central Asian republics to gather military
support proved to be unproductive. This display of the reluctance of the Central Asian Republics
(CARs) to get militarily involved in their southern neighbour’s war came about despite the fact
that the Kunduz city lies sixty miles south of the Oxus river (the bridge over which marks the

6. Afghanistan-Tajikistan border).The takeover of Kunduz by the Taleban---however temporary---
literally meant prospective danger for the CARs. It should be noted that the Taleban, in their
earlier avatar attempted several times to make forays into Tajikistan but they were repulsed
every time by the Northern Alliance led by the legendary Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud.
Another major element in the current thinking in Afghanistan, especially among the
people, which came to be highlighted during the battle for Kunduz is that foreign military
assistance on a substantial scale has become imperative in the aftermath of the impressive
Taleban show of strength. Several eyewitness accounts made available during the fight in
Kunduz show that civilians were fully expecting government forces to beat the insurgents back
in a convincing manner within a short span of time but, to their disappointment, this did not
happen, and instead the Taleban were able to dig in and fight back for a relatively prolonged
period. The people’s faith in the capabilities of the ANSF had initially led them to stay back in
the city even when life was at peril and they began to flee only when they realized that Taleban
were proving to be stronger than government forces and that further stay had become plainly
impossible.
The episode over the bombing of the Medecins Sans Frontie`rers (MSF) hospital in the
Kunduz city on October 2 by American warplanes during the battle also exposed the myriad
inadequacies in the offensive against the insurgents. Interestingly, the whole world including
the United Nations condemned the bombing which had continued despite the MSF’s real-time
and repeated (four times within one hour) telephone calls to both Kabul and Washington to
stop it. Eventually, after scores of patients (some while being operated) and doctors, nurses and
paramedical staff had been killed and the only medical centre in the region had been reduced
to ruins that the U.S. President Barak Obama belatedly apologized for the “mistake” and
ordered a “transparent” inquiry (the MSF on their part has insisted on an independent probe).
However, President Ghani clearly stopped short of an outright condemnation of the U.S.
bombing. While expressing his “deep sorrow”, he advised that Afghan and foreign forces “must
put in serious efforts not to target public places in military operations.” The Afghan army,
however, continued to claim that at least 12 insurgents were using the hospital as a safe haven

7. and were shooting at the U.S. planes and government troops from there. It must be recorded
that the MSF denied at the highest level this very charge but the Afghan army and the U.S.
force did not obviously lend any credence to the denial. In the event, of the 22 persons killed at
the hospital 12 were doctors and nurses, and days after the hospital authorities continued to
report that a fairly large number of their medical and paramedical staff were missing.
Why did President Ghani decide not to condemn outright the U.S. bombing of the MSF
hospital? The self-evident explanation is that he just could not afford to do so knowing only too
well that it was the Americans he would have to turn to for help every time there was an
emergency situation. His predecessor Hamid Karzai also used to find himself in similar
situations throughout his presidency. While, unlike his successor, he was prolific in his often
blunt condemnations of the innumerable blunders the Americans in particular and the NATO
otherwise used to make while fighting the Taleban, it was eventually the international military
which came to the rescue of the country.
The Americans have long been hated in Afghanistan but it may astonish some to recall
that in the immediate aftermath of the December 2001 defeat of the Taleban, they were the
most popular nation in the country followed by the Indians. While India remains a genuinely
popular country with the Afghans, the Americans are not, thanks to the huge mistakes
committed repeatedly over the years.
Part of the U.S.’s problems with perceptions abroad stems from its doubtful records of
training and leading foreign military. “With alarming frequency in recent years,” says a news
report in the New York Times, “thousands of U.S.-trained security forces in West Asia, North
Africa and South Asia have collapsed, calling into question the effectiveness of the tens of
billions spent by the United States on foreign military programmes as well as a central tenet of
the Obama administration’s approach to combating insurgencies.” ( United States’ billions fail
to sustain forces, Oct. 05,2015)
Following the devastating bombardment of the MSF hospital in the Kunduz city, all the
other humanitarian organizations working there including the United Nations-affiliated bodies

8. and international and national private organizations left the city in quick succession. This
situation left a large number of the wounded and sick persons suddenly devoid of medical care.
But this was only one side of the situation not just in the city but in its surrounding
areas as well. Since September 24, when the Taleban had already surrounded the city, the
supply of all essential commodities including medicine and food articles, had stopped and
residents were facing an imminent famine-like situation. All Kunduz-based media outlets
including a fair number of newspapers, tv and radio stations had stopped functioning and their
professionals had fled the city. By all accounts, the third largest city and a prosperous and
thriving one at that,lay devastated in a matter of days.
However, the fall of the Kunduz province (even though temporary but of high
symbolical and political significance), among all the 34 provinces, deserves more than passing
attention because President Ghani’s strategy was to make this province one of the most secure
provinces in the country, and the spectacular performance of the Taleban showed that the
government had failed badly in its self-declared mission. Today, the province also faithfully
reflects all the wrong things that have been happening in Afghanistan.
As in Kunduz so in almost all the other provinces the very fundamental job of setting
up local governments has been proving to be an almost intractable one. The Kunduz governor
Mohammad Omar Safi is a Pashtun while the police chief is a Tajik and the two are reported to
be busy fighting each other. On the positive side, Safi is a professional security expert having
been educated in the University of Leicester and having worked in the United Nations
Department of Safety and Security and should, therefore, be considered an appropriate choice
for the office. But he also owns a Kabul-based security agency and inducted some of his
employees into the gubernatorial entourage. The deputy governor is a mujahed , and no love
is lost between the two. Since President Ghani’s order was to turn the province into one of the
country’s most secure regions in a three-week deadline, all other important issues like
healthcare, education, agriculture and reconstruction requiring urgent attention were simply

9. ignored. The provincial government raised these issues with the President but Kabul’s attention
remained restricted to the security question.
What transpired in reality was a complete negation of what President Ghani sought
to achieve. A study of the situation in Kunduz in June 2015 quotes the provincial council chief
Yusuf Ayubi saying that the three-week deadline was “a failed assessment” and that while the
Taleban controlled 40 per cent of the province in December 2014, they were controlling 65 per
cent of its territory six months later. The study concludes that “based on interviews with people
in Kunduz and Kabul, it is fair to say that poor governance---ill-timing, poor choice of leaders,
lack of coordination and communication, and infighting---has contributed , at least to some
extent, to the current state of insecurity and (lack of) welfare of the people.” (Bethany Matta,
The Failed Pilot Test: Kunduz’ local governance crisis, Afghanistan Analysts Network, June 5,
2015)
Where do all these leave the governance of Afghanistan? Is the security environment
so incapacitated that the government does not function any more? Far from such an alarmist
picture, Afghanistan continues to make its painful progress in fits and starts. A number of truly
impressive gains have been made in fields such as civil society; women’s rights, education and
careers; and media freedoms. However, the obstacles to progress are truly formidable and start
at the very core of governance---the government in Kabul and in the provinces. The difficult
situation has been compounded by traditional prejudices and rivalries still dictating terms to
the nascent modern democratic party system and state institutions presently evolving in the
post-Taleban Afghanistan.
The overall picture of governance that Afghanistan offers today is dismal, to say the
least. The government continues (as did its predecessor) to be rife with corruption; its tasks
rendered many times more difficult by ethnic and political tensions which originate from the
historical past. What the modern times have brought about are introductions to state-building
institutions, wherewithal of training the people in running those institutions, in particular in
establishing and manning educational, health care and trade and industrial institutions. The
task of reconstructing and developing Afghanistan in effect implies building up the country from

10. the very scratch, so devastating have been the consequences of passing through a 22-year-long
period of intensive warfare, first against the Soviet occupation (which triggered the largest
exodus of political refugees to neighbouring countries in the 20th
century), then among the
mujahideen groups, and lastly against the occupying Taleban.
The extent of the incomplete transition to modernity is well reflected in the fact
that despite the experience of holding three presidential elections in the post-Taleban period,
the instances of fraud and corruption in the electoral system abound and betray Afghanistan’s
inability to break out of ethnic, political and historical factionalism and prejudices even if they
hold the country back from progressing.
An additional feature in the present government is the power-sharing formula
which was patched up after many months of frustrating bargaining. However, the power-
sharing arrangement made between President Ashraf Ghani and the Chief Executive Officer
(CEO) Dr. Abdullah Abdullah--- which was at best a last desperate means of starting the
government to work--- has in reality led to a kind of paralysis in the central government. While
examples abound, we will examine the following: As President Ghani completed his first year in
office in September this year, about 25 per cent of the highest government functionaries such
as provincial governors, 9 out of the 34, were yet to be chosen and appointed. One study found
that the central government was apparently unable to complete the process of appointing
governors “more than one at a time” instead of choosing and appointing all the remaining
governors at one go, which should be the usual norm especially when such a long period of
time had already passed since the government was formed in Kabul.
It was also found that the unity government---as the power-sharing government is
called---and particularly the President’s faction, is attempting to “juvenate” sub-national
governance (defined by the Sub-national Governance Policy of 2010). The term “juvenate” is
explained by the fact that some of the newly appointed governors are “modern skilled
persons”, educated, mostly youngish and having worked with international non-governmental
organizations and also owing allegiance to political parties or factions, and lacking “fighting
experiences” which is widely considered as the most important qualification for the job.

11. Besides, the ethnic, historical and political realities demand that a person is considered
qualified when he belongs to the same ethnic group that dominates a particular province. It
would be simply impractical to appoint a Tajik as the governor of a province dominated by
Pashtuns or a Pashtun as the governor of Tajik-dominated province. The crucial appointments
are also being held up by an obvious lack of trust and coordination between the President’s and
the CEO’s sides. Both are complaining about each other’s obstructionist approach resulting in
delaying decisions.
Yet another factor contributing to the slow build-up of provincial governance is the fact
that the majority of these governors have come into office coinciding with a resurgent Taleban
offensive, giving them virtually no time to settle themselves down in their new jobs, find their
way in governance, build up their own teams of officers and counter the offensive and run the
provinces as well. Their difficulties are compounded by the fact that their roles are not defined
well and their administrative powers are very few (for example, they can neither hire nor fire
their staff and cannot sign contracts on their own; everything is centralized and has to be
referred to and sanctioned by the respective ministries in the central government.
Another example of the obstructions put before governance is that it took nearly eight
months---from September 2014 to May 2015---to draw the agreed list of provinces to be
divided between the President and the CEO indicating their respective spheres of influence in
choosing the governor for a particular province. (Afghanistan Analysts Network, Young
Technocrats Taking Over: Who are the new Afghan governors and what can they achieve? ,
September 18, 2015)
All these problems besetting governance in Afghanistan are basically caused by the
ongoing fight for predominance between the traditional fountainheads of power, such as
ethnic, religious and clan affiliations, and the new manifestations of power, such as, official
positions sanctified by the Constitution. For example, governmental authority is constrained
not only by the power-sharing arrangement but also by the exertion of influence by the
traditional informal power-sharing structure consisting of regional and ethnic leaders. Faction
leaders often maintain militias or groups of armed fighters who regularly exercise arbitrary

12. administration of justice and commit human rights abuses bypassing the constitutional justice
and punishment system. (Kenneth Katzman, Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government
Performance, Congressional Research Service, January 12, 2015) As is well-known, after being
appointed to the posts of governor, police chief and provincial council head and other jobs, the
top echelons of provincial administration have first devoted their time and energy to establish
their control over local militias before attending to matters of governance. In fact, if insurgency
has come back to Afghanistan with a bang, equally true is the hold that armed private armies
have managed to enjoy over security matters despite the building-up of the vast ANSF. First
Vice-President Dostum, for example, continues to flaunt his famed and feared militia despite
being an important government functionary for many years. He is certainly not the only such
high government functionary belonging to this category.
However, as is often the experience in seeking to establish democracy in a country with
no or little relevant experience, there are frequent clashes of interest between the executive
and constitutional institutions such as the judiciary and in particular the Afghanistan
Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC). Invariably, it is the executive which wins in
such confrontations and each such win literally pushes the country one step backward from
achieving good governance. As it is,the IHRC is widely perceived as not being independent at all
of the government despite its nomenclature; the United Nations Human Rights Commission has
called for the removal of some of its members appointed by the Karzai government for their
dubious records but they continue in their roles under the Ghani dispensation.
However, in a powerful signal of how the Afghan society is changing for the better, the
failure of the AIHRC to play its rightful role has been compensated to some extent by the
painstaking work of independent human rights watch bodies formed and run by plucky
Afghans themselves. At the same time, progress in protecting human rights in a country which
is fighting the centuries-old cumulative burden of feudalism, extreme poverty, a severe lack of
modern education, and general backwardness is being further thwarted by a very strong and
well-organized religious orthodoxy. The National Ulema Council is ever alert to promote and
practise orthodox Islam though the Constitution does not leave any room for bringing in the

13. Sharia. Sections of the National Ulema Council, however, try to promote the case for the
introduction of the Sharia from time to time. Religious fervour thus remains a very potent break
on achieving good governance in the country.
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The author is a former Senior Fellow, Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.
In a sense, Afghanistan has been lucky in getting President Ghani at the helm of affairs
because his professional expertise lies in the field of advising and guiding the build-up of state
institutions. He should, therefore, succeed in the most crucial job