Mark Sedra is an academic policy analyst from Waterloo, Canada. He is a research scholar in the Department of Political Science at the University of Waterloo and a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).
President Obama’s “war of necessity” is rapidly turning into a quagmire. Can it be saved?
Afghanistan’s trajectory after the parliamentary elections.
The Taliban are acutely aware that sustained donor interest and military support will not last forever; donor fatigue, shifting budgetary priorities, and waning donor attention are inevitable.
With a constitution ratified and the country’s first elections in decades scheduled for June-July 2004–although the continued deterioration of security conditions have placed this target in doubt–the Bonn political process has entered its final phase.
A number of factors and conditions have led to Afghanistan’s security dilemma.
Though force may be the only language that Afghanistan’s spoiler groups understand, they can only survive as long as they have a fountain of discontent to draw support from. Remove this support base, and these groups will succumb to pressure and fade away
With Baghdad having fallen and the territorial consolidation of Iraq near at hand, discussion of the postwar period has intensified dramatically.
The success of peace-building activities in Afghanistan is dependent on the existence of a robust and durable commitment by the international community.
The internationally supported reconstruction and nation-building effort in Afghanistan can boast many successes in the period since the Taliban’s collapse in November 2001.
Afghanistan and Iraq, wracked by decades of conflict and deprivation, require intensive, long-term, and durable commitments of international support.
A shift in the nation-building strategy adopted by the international community in Afghanistan is needed.
The fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in November 2001 presented the international community with an unprecedented opportunity to restore peace and security to a perennial trouble spot.