Post-Cold War State Disintegration: The Failure of International Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan
1993; Columbia University; Volume: 46; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0022-197X
Autores Tópico(s)International Relations and Foreign Policy
ResumoOn the evening of 18 March 1992, President Najibullah of Afghanistan interrupted normal radio and television broadcasts with a dramatic speech. I agree, he announced, once an understanding is reached through the United Nations process for the establishment of an interim government in Kabul, all powers and executive authority will be transferred to the interim government as of the first day of the transition period.(2) By announcing his intention to step aside, the former secret police chief - who had headed. the Soviet-backed Afghan regime since 1986 - seemed to clear the way for the implementation of a laboriously prepared international peace plan for resolving one of the last Cold War-era conflicts. Less than a month later, however, President Najibullah was in hiding, under the unacknowledged protection of the U.N. office in Kabul. His Watan (Homeland) Party had split, with different factions allying with their former mujahidin Islamic resistance fighter) opponents along ethnic lines; one coalition of government rebels and mujahidin had prevented him from leaving the country. The leading resistance commander and spokesman for the alliance that overthrew Najibullah, Ahmad Shah Massoud, told the United Nations that the mujahidin would form an interim government, which assumed authority on 29 April 1992 and established the Islamic State of Afghanistan. Before that government arrived in Kabul, however, fighting had erupted in the streets of the capital as guerrillas belonging to rival parties, factions and ethnic groups battled for control of the city. By August 1992, according to the United Nations, food supplies in Kabul were scarce, shops were closed and over 500,000 people had fled the city in all directions.(3) By November, some observers estimated that fighting in the city had killed at least 4,000.(4) In the Afghan hinterland, tribal and ethnic coalitions took control of the major regional garrisons, with mujahidin and former government commanders forming autonomous power centers, paying little allegiance to the new interim government. Afghanistan had rarely appeared on the world's television screens, but the disaster did not result from simple neglect. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union intervened militarily to prop up its Afghan government clients, whose efforts to impose a Marxist-Leninist political system on the country were failing. This intervention, coupled with the military response from Pakistan, the United States, Saudi Arabia and China fueled a war that killed over a million of the country's estimated 15.5 million people - and drove over 5 million into exile. U.N.-mediated talks, begun in 1981, slowly elaborated the framework for a Soviet withdrawal. After Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's decision to seek a global rapprochement with the United States and its allies, this mechanism led to the April 1988 signing of the Geneva Accords, which provided for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan by the middle of February 1989. The accords established monitoring and implementation roles for the United Nations, and involved it in the provision of humanitarian assistance for refugee repatriation and national reconstruction. Subsequently, U.N. Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar became deeply involved in efforts to find a negotiated solution to the domestic conflict, through the establishment of an internationally supported interim government that would hold elections - as the international community was also trying to do in Nicaragua, Angola, Namibia and Cambodia. In some of these other countries, the U.N. Security Council provided armed forces or administrative assistance to oversee the disarmament of hostile forces, the administration of the transition and the conduct of elections. In Afghanistan, however, rather than invoke the powers of the Security Council, the U.N. General Assembly merely passed a resolution asking the Secretary-General to use his good offices to promote a negotiated solution. …
Referência(s)