The Afghan dilemma

In less than a year, US combat troops will draw down their engagement in Afghanistan for good. By then, Western military forces will have been in the country for more than a dozen years. With mixed results. As a documentary by the BBC revealed last night, law enforcement is riddled with corruption and police commanders of the Western trained Afghan forces stand accused of serious human rights violations. While the picture varies considerably across the country, the despair about the humanitarian dilemma was clearly written into the expression of the US commander who talked about the ongoing corruption and criminal behaviour amongst his Afghan colleagues.

So, the question is: what should the West do? Is it really time to leave, or may a premature withdrawal risk creating more suffering in a corner of the world that surely had more than its share of human misery?

Tony Blair often said that policies should be guided by principles, so let us try to find out if principles can assist us to identify a solution for the Afghan issue.

There are essentially two broad guiding principles that divide the field of argument about the Western engagement in Afghanistan. Interestingly, they cut across the ideological divide between left and right.

First, there are those who argue that humanitarian interventionism remains the overriding tenet which should define foreign policy of the US and the Western allies in Afghanistan. Any hasty withdrawal jeopardises the gains in security for the local population, and the limited progress there may have been. Humanitarian interventionism is paradoxically sustained not only by principles of international justice and a globalised vision of human rights, trumping as it were the rights of national governments, but also finds some support from neo-conservatives who argue to fight terrorism at the source and thereby protect national interests. George W. Bush's policy in Afghanistan and Iraq therefore paradoxically coincided with some of the more left-leaning rhetoric about humanitarian interventionism (and tainted its application in the view of some).

The other side of the argument is populated by those who take a realist position coupled with more libertarian instincts. Troop withdrawal from Afghanistan appears justified in their eyes because the world resembles a continuous fight of all against all, which Western governments are incapable of doing much about. The best we can hope for is an increase in security for Western populations and laying the foundations for the Afghan people to solve their own problems with reason and mutual respect.

It seems to be that neither of these principles offer much guidance in the case of Afghanistan. While the humanitarian instinct recognises the need to protect civilians from their own national government, advocates of this position do not tell us much about why Western soldiers should lay down their lives in far flung countries in order to prevent humanitarian disasters. Whilst it appeals to a deep seated moral desire to prevent atrocities or systematically perpetrated injustices, humanitarians seem to fail to factor in the loss of the lives of soldiers or the civilian costs of military engagement of Western countries. Military engagements to stop humanitarian disasters are portrayed as added sum games in which everybody wins.

Libertarian (or laissez faire) isolationism on the other hand fails to tells us much about the global costs of not intervening. The focus of utilitarian calculation is narrower here, concentrating on the gain for Western populations only. Global implications of humanitarian disasters are outside the scope of this argument.

If neither of these, admittedly rather crude, arguments assists us any further, perhaps we should look more deeply at what both principles lack. Both care very little about the perspective of the Afghan population itself. In essence, both arguments are myopic by focusing on Western benefits, be it a gain in moral standing or in narrow, nationally defined utility.

What remains excluded from the picture is the decision making capacity and will of those we are supposedly helping (or failing to help). The biggest barrier to factoring in the will of the Afghan people is of course the lack of a functioning democracy. Yet, is this a reason to dismiss it? If we do, we may end up in a deeply patronising position, where either our help or our refrain from assistance neglects the importance of the views of those we want to engage. Clearly, even amongst Afghans there will always be a multitude of views about when the West should militarily disengage. Yet, adopting a solely Western perspective leaves us open to the charge of pursuing self-interested policies.

The Welsh Labour Government and corruption - no hear, no see, no speak

The Race Relations Charity AWEMA has been in the centre of the storm for weeks now. The accusations against its Chairman Naz Malik, its director (the Chairman’s daughter) and the board range from mis-use of public funds to complete lack of proper auditory oversight. The charity received more than £8 mio in the last years and has been the conduit for the Welsh Government through which funding to voluntary organisations is being channelled (the BBC broke the story a couple of months ago, you can read a summary HERE). 

The chairman of AWEMA, Naz Malik, admitted that he used public funds to pay off his personal credit cards, and its appears as if the board was not consulted when he granted himself and his daughter phenomenal pay rises which put them into the top 4% of earners in the UK. His daughter’s salary allegedly rose from about £20k to more than £50,000 in less than 4 years. The BBC reported that the board of the charity which is charged with approving the salaries of the staff, never even had a chance to vote on this. 

You would think the extraordinary story of mis-management of tax payer’s money would end there. But it is only starting. It always takes two to tango where public funds are concerned. The two in question here are AWEMA and the Welsh Government. And that is where the story becomes bizarre. 

The irregularities at AWEMA were by no means unknown to Carwyn Jones and the Labour Government in Cardiff. On the contrary, several alarm bells had been rung. In 2004, a report was commissioned by the Welsh Government (then called the Welsh Assembly Government) which clearly stated that AWEMA should not receive any public funds until proper auditory supervision has been established. Welsh First Minister was asked about this report recently in the chamber and he replied that he would not know whether this report was actually in the public domain, implying presumably that if it was not, it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Assembly members then found the report duly filed in the Assembly library. 

No wonder Carwyn Jones wanted to wish the report away. The fact is that the problems with AWEMA were for all ministers to see in 2004 already, that was even before AWEMA received most of the £8 mio funding. Ministers were in a position to know very well what was going on at AWEMA if they only wanted! The question is now whether the Welsh Government will once again try to brush away any suggestions that it acted improperly or whether it has the courage to ask an independent commission to investigate who knew what and when. 

Oh, and in case you wondered why Carwyn Jones so desperately wants this affair to go away, here is a clue: the chairman at the centre of the row, Naz Malik, was until a few weeks ago a member of the Labour Party and a close friend of the First Minister. You can see them together on the campaign trail in 2011 HERE. Coincidence? 

The Police are still in the dock!

South Wales Police still has a case to answer. And it is a horrific one at that. In 1988 a local Prostitute Lynette White was murdered in Cardiff. The police arrested three innocent men who were subsequently convicted of her murder with the help of false evidence and wrong testimonies by witnesses. The three men always maintained their innocence and were freed on appeal two years later. 

DNA evidence led the police to the real murderer about 20 years later. The police who originally investigated the crime in 1988 recently found themselves in the dock for a shocking miscarriage of justice that they had probably contributed to by failing to meet professional standards and procedures, by allegedly falsifying testimonies and evidence. 

The Crown Prosecution Service however had to drop the case last year against these police officers because crucial evidence against them had ‘disappeared’. The CPS admitted that the evidence had been destroyed. The judge had no choice but to instruct the jury to acquit the police officers. 

Now, only two months later, during an investigation of the Independent Police Commission, those same documents, thought to have been shredded, have re-surfaced mysteriously. Since all police officers have been acquitted, it will be difficult to bring the same case against them again. In other words, they are off the hook. 

The Observer wrote in its editorial on Sunday that South Wales police has a record of ‘shockingly high numbers of miscarriages of justice on its patch’, including high profile wrongful convictions over the last 20 years. 

Over the years, South Wales police have often failed to serve its communities well. Many commentators believe the force had a striking number of corrupt and incompetent officers in its ranks which led to failed prosecutions or wrongful convictions of innocent people. This has to change. The disappearance of the evidence which led to the collapse of the trial against the police officers investigating the Lynette White case needs explaining. How could the files ‘temporarily’ disappear? Why did the CPS think the evidence was shredded? What does South Wales Police and the CPS know about the ‘temporary disappearance’ of vital evidence in this case which helped the police officers to walk away from court? 

Only an independent inquiry can get to the bottom of this. The Welsh Government should demand one. It wants to have authority over the Welsh Police Forces soon. They can prove that they are worthy of having this additional power by demanding an independent inquiry from Central Government. Clearing up the rotten practices which seemed to exist at the South Wales Police for decades now is the first step towards restoring faith in Welsh Police. Nothing less will do.