As the Obama administration and the rest of the international community grapple with the challenge of stabilizing Afghanistan, analogies have proliferated as fast as insurgents. Policymakers should learn from experiences in Iraq, one hears -- or Vietnam, or Malaya, and so on. Ironically, the best analogy may lie right next door in Tajikistan.
Soon after gaining its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Tajikistan collapsed into a devastating civil war. Government forces, Islamists, and local warlords battled one another across its wildly remote and mountainous territory in a prolonged conflict that killed thousands of people, displaced half a million residents, and stranded 80 percent of the population in grinding poverty. Many of the combatants sustained their efforts by taking part in a multibillion-dollar drug trade, while extremists based in lawless frontier provinces launched terror attacks on neighboring states.
Today, Tajikistan is still corrupt and authoritarian, but it is also tolerably stable --stable enough for the international community to forget about it, which is a striking mark of success. The turnaround was due largely to an intelligently conceived and successfully implemented intervention by a small UN mission and a core of unlikely bedfellows that included Iran and Russia. Rather than forcing free and fair elections, throwing out warlords, and flooding the country with foreign peacekeepers, the intervening parties opted for a more limited and realistic set of goals. They brokered deals across political factions, tolerated warlords where necessary, and kept the number of outside peacekeeping troops to a minimum. The result has been the emergence of a relatively stable balance of power inside the country, the dissuasion of former combatants from renewed hostilities, and the opportunity for state building to develop organically. The Tajik case suggests that in trying to rebuild a failed state, less may be more.
Tajikistan's civil war ended in June 1997, when the various government and opposition factions signed a peace accord. The accord recognized the government's leader, Emomali Rakhmonov, as interim president but mandated elections and key concessions to opposition groups. Thirty percent of political appointments were reserved for the United Tajik Opposition, a loose grouping of opposition figures, Islamists, and local strongmen united only by the fact that each had independently fought against Rakhmonov and his factions. The accord required combatants to demobilize and disarm in exchange for amnesty and salaried positions in the Interior, Defense, and Emergency Situations ministries and the Tajik Border Forces.
The accord was the result of a three-year effort by the United Nations Mission of Observers in Tajikistan (UNMOT) and nearby states such as Iran, Russia, and Uzbekistan. These outside players hosted eight rounds of peace talks, restored multiple failed cease-fires, mediated on behalf of various factions, drafted vital sections of the peace agreement, and formed a Contact Group to monitor and troubleshoot implementation. The United States and European Union remained outside the group but occasionally offered input and assistance.
The members of the Contact Group had different interests, yet, at least with respect to Tajikistan, they also had one thing in common: a desire to prevent a resumption of civil war without spending much money. UNMOT's first operating budget was a paltry $1.9 million. International aid to Tajikistan actually declined the year after the accord. Iran was willing to sponsor cultural and economic exchange but was too strapped to give major grants. The peacekeeping force Russia offered was small. The Contact Group, in short, could afford to give Tajikistan only a basic makeover, and so it set its sights low, not wanting to let the ideal be the enemy of the acceptable. It concentrated on striking a balance across the country's varied political factions and dissuading them from restarting the war.
One thing that went by the wayside was democratic purity. By conventional standards, Tajikistan's first postwar presidential elections, on November 6, 1999, were a disaster. Rakhmonov blocked opposition hopefuls from gathering enough petitions to run. To create the appearance of competition, Tajikistan's Supreme Court ruled that Davlat Usmon, a popular opposition Islamist, must stand for election. On election day, pro-Rakhmonov officials pretended to count ballots, police escorted voters into booths, and ghost polling stations with no registered voters reported landslide results. Rakhmonov won handily.
The peace accord was on the verge of being derailed. Disaffected members of the opposition and warlords in the provinces threatened to take up arms, while the United States and Europe blasted the flawed elections and demanded the government enact democratic reforms. At this point, however, the story took an interesting turn. Rather than focus on procedural fairness, the Contact Group scrambled to ease tensions across the factions and help the opposition. The group brokered dozens of negotiations and cajoled the government to sign a protocol benefiting future opposition candidates. UNMOT refrained from publicly condemning Rakhmonov in exchange for assurances that he would quickly appoint opposition figures to key national and provincial posts. These behind-the-scenes measures saved the peace accord and compelled a government that had stolen elections to be more inclusive.
With its new policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration has taken ownership of an orphaned conflict. But can it achieve victory, and how?
With the Taliban resurgent, reconstruction faltering, and opium poppy cultivation at an all-time high, Afghanistan is at risk of collapsing into chaos. If Washington wants to save the international effort there, it must increase its commitment to the area and rethink its strategy -- especially its approach to Pakistan, which continues to give sanctuary to insurgents on its tribal frontier.
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