Analysis
Written by: Khalil Rahnavard
Introduction:
Some events and major decisions in the history of Afghanistan have led to significant transformations, changes, mistakes, defeats, or victories. One of these is the Bonn Conference, which was held on December 5, 2001, twenty-four years ago, under the auspices of the United Nations in the German city of Bonn. This conference was initially analyzed as a failure due to its shortcomings and flaws, but twenty years later, this failure was proven by the collapse of the republican regime at the hands of those (the Afghan people) who had been overlooked as the original owners and main stakeholders of Afghan territory.
During the first rule of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, this government controlled 95% of Afghanistan’s territory, which posed a serious challenge to the opponents of the Afghan nation. For this reason, the Bonn process was also created to overthrow this government. However, the Afghan nation was also neglected in the process. Instead of the true representatives of the nation, several enemy groups of this nation were given positions to create a corrupt regime composed of a few limited groups.
A few members of the alliance of warlords led by Burhanuddin Rabbani, who claimed to be the so-called government and had established the entire governance and ministries in a few containers in Takhar province, warlords who had fled the country as a result of the Islamic Emirate’s fight against evil and corruption, as well as a number of individuals calling themselves supporters of Zahir Shah, attended the Bonn conference, none of whom could represent all of Afghanistan.
Following the failed Bonn Conference, an interim administration led by Hamid Karzai was established in Afghanistan, which lasted until 2002. Subsequently, a transitional government led by Hamid Karzai was formed after convening a show grand assembly, which lasted until 2004. During both periods, the foreign, defense, and interior ministries, as well as the National Security Directorate, were held by the warlords’ coalition. The Hezb-e Wahdat party, led by Mohaqeq, also held significant power. The remaining ministries and departments were divided among the warlords and ruled over millions of people.
Weaknesses of the Bonn Process:
The Bonn process was met with skepticism from the beginning, with only groups supported by international powers participating in the process. The fundamental components of Afghan society, such as representatives of most of the country’s ethnic groups, political currents, scholars, leading scientific figures, and the Afghan nation in general, were completely excluded from the process. This limited participation weakened the popular support for the newly formed interim administration.
The Bonn process was largely shaped by the strategic objectives of international occupying forces rather than being based on the historical needs, political circumstances, and social realities of Afghans. This heavy shadow of foreign influence is a challenging point for the legitimacy of the entire Bonn process and can be considered the biggest reason for its rejection.
In Bonn, some groups were deliberately given more power than necessary, while many other social groups were marginalized. For example, the coalition of warlords, which received the majority of the power; this unequal distribution of power became a major factor in the continuation of political competition, distrust, and even internal conflicts among politicians in recent years.
The process of Bonn was created to establish the privileges of individuals and groups rather than to build long-term state institutions, which is why subsequent governments faced individualism, corruption, and administrative weakness. Since the foundation of the Republic was incorrectly laid here at the Bonn conference, it continued in this manner until 2021, and the republican regime never freed itself from individual-centeredness and the distribution of seats among parties.
Although the Bonn Conference ostensibly provided an urgent political framework for ending the war in 2001, the weak institutions it created paved the way for many of the instability problems Afghanistan would face in the next two decades. These and other points of weakness in the Bonn were what created strong historical arguments against this conference, and criticism of its outcomes continues to this day.
Allowing Foreign Interference:
The Bonn Conference was a way to legitimize foreign intervention, and the United States and NATO also took advantage of this opportunity to decide to send the “International Security Assistance Force” (ISAF) to Afghanistan under the cover of the United Nations, in order to resolve the Afghan issue thru foreign intervention and pressure.
The faces of the Afghan nation, who were participants in the Bonn Conference, never rejected foreign intervention in the country’s internal affairs. Instead, from the beginning, they believed that only foreigners could solve Afghanistan’s problems; a belief that has always proven wrong, as Afghanistan’s internal issues were not/are not solvable by foreigners.
Missed Opportunities:
1: After 2001, significant opportunities were provided to the Afghan government as a result of the Bonn Conference, but they were not managed effectively. Instead of building infrastructure in Afghanistan, aid and resources were spent serving individuals from the fallen republic’s personality-driven regime. Many of them were victims of corruption, and a portion was wasted due to the lack of a strategic plan.
2: Although rebuilding and activating the security sector after the Bonn Conference was a priority, security agencies and key institutions came under the influence of a warlord’s organization, did not create balanced and professional structures within them, and instead turned them into centers of patronage, corruption, and inefficiency.
3: The power-sharing structure in Bonn was prioritized, but preventing corruption, transparency, and accountability were not given priority, which led to corruption becoming systemic and the opportunity to build a transparent government and effective administration being lost.
4: Managing regional economic interests was an opportunity, as the fallen republic had increased enemies in the region due to Western alliances and had not established a strong diplomatic framework from the outset, leading to conflicts with regional countries and increasingly undermining Afghanistan’s strategic and transit position. This resulted in the loss of regional economic benefits and the continuous waste of opportunities.
The Effects of Bonn Failure:
During the Bonn process, the Afghan nation was excluded from the negotiation process. Instead, the participants of the meeting, who were members of the coalition of strongmen, took their place under the name of representatives of Afghanistan. They gave foreigners the authority to make any kind of decisions, which they also created based on the urgent interests and pressures of international superpowers, rather than considering the political structures and internal needs. This decision undermined the process’s objectives and led to a twenty-year war due to the decline in public legitimacy with the joint-stock company (Republic).
The Bonn process in Afghanistan created a state that was entirely dependent on international aid, taking into account the whims of several warlords and the interests of foreigners. The national interests and legitimacy of the process were overlooked, resulting in a completely dependent state tied to these aids. Governments that rely on foreign aid are not sustainable.
In Bonn, national identity and principles were not the basis of the political structure but rather the representation of tribes and parties. Then, tribes and parties became political poles, so much so that the best way to enter the government was to form a party, group, or organization or to represent a tribe. As a result, the number of parties exceeded dozens, and councils and groups were formed in the name of tribes to become part of the government and gain power. Consequently, all decisions of the regime were subject to tribal and party interests, and the nation was left behind.
The Bonn process in Afghanistan became a process for the coalition of warlords and a few other limited groups to gain power. They did not build the government according to the standards they claimed to uphold, but rather decisions were made by the leaders of a few groups. Alongside this, they prioritized external pseudo-legitimacy over internal legitimacy. This created a gap between the government and the nation. The nation lost trust in it, and eventually, the republican regime also lost internal legitimacy.
After the implementation of the Bonn process, the political culture of Afghans changed; after the implementation of this process, politicians looked at every issue thru the eyes of foreigners, prioritized the decisions of foreign patrons over solving problems themselves domestically, and sought political solutions thru pressure, deals, and individual-centered politics instead of thru law. This not only rendered the collapsed republic irrelevant on the political stage but also led to the loss of the culture of independent political dialog.
Despite all the above effects, which turned the Bonn process into a field of foreign competition for Afghanistan, joint-stock company (Republic) lost public support due to incorrect decisions and choices over the past twenty years. Corruption became institutionalized in government institutions, the security sector was paralyzed, foreigners were forced to withdraw under the Doha agreement, and finally, the direct impact of all the raw decisions and mistakes of Bonn was that the Republic collapsed in 2021, which was the natural consequence of the flawed foundations of Bonn.
Does Afghanistan Need Bonn Now?
Over the past two years, opponents of the Afghan government have campaigned to raise discussions on a number of topics under the title “Afghanistan After the Taliban” in the media and in their virtual meetings, in order to reach an agreement on political and security policies that would allow them to step into power as a good alternative if the current Afghan government is removed from Afghanistan. This could also be considered an attempt to create another form of Bonn.
This series of discussions initially brought up the Resistance Front, and despite the deep disagreements between the group’s leader, Ahmad Massoud, and the Freedom Front’s leader, Yasin Zia, they were persuaded to participate in the Vienna process to give it legitimacy. This meeting, like other stereotypical meetings, failed, with disputes erupting between the two participating groups over flags and other minor issues instead of fundamental discussions. They expected all opponents to become part of this process, but everything turned out contrary to their expectations.
Many of the initial meetings of the Afghan government’s opposition groups have led to increased disagreements and conflicts instead of unity. A clear example of this was the fifth Vienna meeting, where there were so many differences and rivalries between the two opposition groups. From this, imagine how many contentious issues, rifts, rivalries, and other points of disagreement there would be among the leaders and members of groups like Rahmatullah Nabil, Amrullah Saleh, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammad Mohaqiq, Younus Qanooni, Atta Mohammad Noor, Sayyaf, Rabbani, and other smaller groups, preventing them from ever uniting with each other and repeating the Bonn process!
The United Nations has held several meetings in Doha over the past four years to bring the new Afghan government and the opposition to the negotiating table, but those meetings were also not in favor of the opposition. Some of the opposition groups also believe in intra-Afghan negotiations, but such negotiations would be a compromise with them instead of the nation and would make them part of the government. In the meantime, the efforts of some other opposition groups that have a different vision for Afghanistan have also failed.
Afghanistan is not in the same position it was in 2001. The vacuum in government and the rule of law have been filled. Peace and security exist. Afghans have endured four bitter decades to have an independent Afghanistan, so Afghanistan does not need Bonn now, nor should efforts be made to repeat that bitter experience.
The Outcome of First Round of Bonn and the Current Situation:
Now, 24 years have passed since the Bonn process, and all the realities, observations, and past events related to this process have become part of history. The final outcome of that process is what we and all of you are currently witnessing: the internal aspects of Afghanistan are in two incomparable positions. First, there is an Islamic, united, central, and organized government with which major powers in the region and the world are currently interacting. Second, there are scattered, illegitimate, unprogrammed, untrustworthy, and conflict-ridden opponents, each of whom has almost separate grand imaginary claims and has attracted a handful of people to their groups with imaginary promises.
The current Afghan government has a single ideological goal: the sovereignty of Allah’s system over the land of Allah. To achieve this goal, it is committed to the survival of the Islamic Emirate, politics and administrative order according to Sharia law, a central system, and a single leader (Amir). These components have formed the basis of the government’s overall obedience and created unity.
The leadership gathered within the Afghan government consists of the scholars who were the leaders during the first rule of the Islamic Emirate, and its members are the distinguished managers of the fight against foreign invasion. The decision-makers of this government have experience from twenty years of war and politics, have done remarkable work in controlling security, have provided a fair system for collecting taxes based on services, are responsive to internal and external opposition and aggression, lead all affairs of the system from a single source, and have strong and swift military, security, and intelligence structures. Such centralization of order is rare in the history of Afghanistan.
The ousted regime that was formed as a result of the first Bonn process fell, but this time the new Afghan government was a good alternative; there are numerous reasons for the uniqueness of this government; in addition to the above reasons, one reason is the disunity of the government’s opponents and the participants in the Bonn meeting.
The opponents of the Afghan government, who have formed fictitious groups under various names outside the country, have not yet been recognized as legitimate by any of them and cannot present themselves as a “national alternative” because they have no clear program, no unified leadership, and no discernible public support.
So far, the opposition has not moved beyond ethnic structures, old organizational names, and outdated narratives. They still lack the individuals, resources, support, and a strong narrative for armed and political resistance, so how can they be compared to a well-organized and dominant government!? This research and the significant difference between the two sides lead us to the conclusion that all the achievements the international community brought together former warlords for at the end of the Bonn Conference have been reduced to dust; everything the international community wanted has been destroyed by placing it on the weak foundation of the Bonn Conference, and now Afghanistan has entered the path of independence, economic development, a season of good political relations, comprehensive security, and self-sufficiency.
Three Lessons from Bonn:
The failed Bonn process holds three lessons: first, the main party (the Afghan nation) must always be present in major political changes and decisions and be given a place in negotiations and decisions so that such major processes are not imposed on the Afghan nation again; in 2001, the main party in the Bonn process, who were the real representatives of the Afghan nation, were not present, but rather war profiteers, a coalition of warlords, and several small parties of dealmakers entered this process.
The second lesson is that internal problems should always be resolved thru understanding and logical discussions within, not thru external pressure and force; Bonn was a product of external agendas, and Afghans have never accepted foreign agendas, foreign presence, foreign mercenaries, or serving foreigners on this pure land.
The third lesson from this is that Bonn created a person-centered government for the fictional representatives of several ethnic groups and organizations, which led to the regime’s downfall because individuals were prioritized within the system, not institutions. Systems and governments that are institution-centered, not person-centered, always endure.
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