American Support Needed for U.N. in Afghanistan
The war against terror is a group effort

By Ian Williams

December 18, 2001

NEW YORK – With the United Nations’ mandating of a British- led multinational force to broker the Bonn agreement in Afghanistan, the Bush administration is now happy to let others pluck what may be the bitter fruits of its military victory. Indeed, since September 11, the United Nations has gained a rare prominence in Washington's calculations.

It did once before, a decade ago, when Iraq invaded Kuwait. But that was more like a one-night stand than a long-term relationship. This time, there must be a more durable courtship, perhaps based on more modest and realistic expectations on both sides.

The Bush administration's willingness to work with the international organization is not based on selflessness, rather a pragmatic appreciation for the U.N.’s usefulness as an institution for framing the multilateral responses necessary after September 11.

After initial comments from some of the die-hard unilateralists like Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Bush administration was careful to return to the Security Council for a resolution to provide legal cover for its attack on the Taliban. The administration also welcomed and supported the appointment of Lakhdar Brahimi as the U.N.’s Special Representative for Afghanistan. To show it was serious, the administration even promised to make a payment on its back dues of $583 million.

But with the unexpectedly swift collapse and defeat of the Taliban regime, that pragmatic multilateralism, championed above all by Secretary of State Colin Powell, now seems threatened by the newly emboldened unilateralists who are now talking and behaving as if a coalition were no longer necessary.

Whether it’s withdrawing from major arms control agreements, talk of attacking Iraq, or the return to uncritical support of Israel’s Ariel Sharon, Washington's reversion to blinkered unilateralism is losing an historic opportunity for a long-term campaign against the sort of terrorism represented by September 11. Nowhere is that more apparent than in efforts to build a new Afghanistan, which for now is a very low priority for the administration in comparison with conducting the war a wider “war on terrorism”.

The Bonn agreement is fragile, and will need a lot of care and maintenance from its engineer, Lakhdar Brahimi. Too often, as in Bosnia, Rwanda and Somalia, the United Nations has been set up for failure by its most powerful members and then blamed for failing to deal with impossible situations with inadequate resources. These mistakes should not be repeated. The United Nations will need American support and funding to deal with the humanitarian and security crises that will continue to exist in Afghanistan after the United States winds downs its military operations.

Brahimi and the U.N. Secretariat have consistently downplayed any U.N. role in Afghanistan’s future. His November report to the Security Council on Afghanistan originally envisaged a U.N.-franchised force to move into the main cities once the Taliban was toppled. American and British diplomats then began working hard on what were called "Green Helmets"--a U.N. multinational force drawn primarily from secular Muslim states, which would fill the gap until a functioning Afghan authority could provide competent indigenous security forces.

But the military defeat of the Taliban allowed the United Nations to show its diplomatic strengths in Bonn. In this world of diplomatic uncertainty, Brahimi could draw power both from not being the representative of a conquering force, namely the United States, while at the same time in some sense a surrogate for it. Afghan leaders knew that he coordinated his moves with Washington, so they could not treat him or the United Nations too contemptuously.

But now that the deal is done, there is a danger that the U.N.’s caution and the unilateralists’ arrogance may combine to ruin prospects for Afghanistan's future. If the United States wants to maintain the global support that the horrors of September 11 engendered, then it has an interest in helping the reconstruction of Afghanistan succeed.

Any UN-sponsored multinational force for this gargantuan task will need the unequivocal and public support of the United States. Washington may not need to play the largest role in post-war peacekeeping activities, but it must offer credible guarantees of assistance if any of the Afghan parties move militarily against any U.N. peacekeeping presence or to disrupt the Bonn agreement brokered by Brahimi.

If the unilateralists in the administration stand in the way, an understandably reluctant United Nations will hesitate to undertake the necessary steps to secure the fragile peace in Afghanistan, thus undermining the chances for political stability and economic recovery in that battered land. Fighting terror must remain a group effort, anchored in a long-term and clear-eyed relationship between the United States and the United Nations.


Ian Williams, an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, is also the author of "The UN for Beginners."

Copyright 2001, Global Beat Syndicate, 418 Lafayette Street, Suite 554, New York, NY 10003 http://www.nyu.edu/globalbeat/syndicate.