Militarisation of the EU presence in Afghanistan?
On 27 March the Intergroup for Peace Initiatives, an unofficial cross-party group of MEPs for which QCEA provides the secretariat, held a successful event on the question of the militarisation of the EU’s presence in Afghanistan. Speaking were Dr. Matin Baraki, expert on Afghanistan and professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, Phillips-University, Marburg, Germany, and Tim Eestermans, of the Asia Task Force at the Council of the European Union. Both Intergroup presidents, Caroline Lucas and Tobias Pflüger, were in attendance, as well as several other MEPs and members of civil society.
The Intergroup chose to hold the event at this time because of the NATO spring offensive in Afghanistan - part of the perceived shift from a stabilisation force to a fighting force - and the
possible implications this could have for EU/NATO relations. It was a lively debate made particularly interesting by the different perspectives of the speakers.
Dr. Baraki had returned from Afghanistan (where he has family and visits at least once a year), just days before the debate, while Mr. Eestermans was representing the official EU position on Afghanistan. Dr. Baraki spoke movingly about his experience of the current situation in Afghanistan, where there is much mistrust of the international presence and very little successful reconstruction. He cited corruption at all levels of government, officials beholden to the growing drug mafia, the total destruction of arable land and cessation of production as the key impediments to Afghan recovery post-Taliban.
Mr. Eestermans outlined the EU’s shift in approach towards Afghanistan, which includes working more closely with NATO, a goal laid out in the EU’s Programme for the Prevention of Violent Conflicts. Mid-June the EU will deploy a task-force (to be know as EUPOL) to Afghanistan that will consist of over 160 police trainers and law experts, as part of a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) mission to assist in the coordination of police and rule of law interventions which are currently being undertaken by EU Member States on a bilateral basis. The mission will be stationed in Afghanistan for three years to ‘monitor, mentor, advise and train’ Afghan officials, with the goal of addressing police reform from local through central levels.
Mr. Eestermans agreed with Dr. Baraki that there is no military solution for Afghanistan. He described instead the ESDP mission as providing the necessary security for development to take place, ignoring the fact that the 160 EU officers will require NATO protection. This underlines the essentially military thinking of the ESDP policy. Afghanistan needs a broader and more differentiated approach.
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