History of Afghanistan since 2001

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The history of Afghanistan (since 2001) was determined by the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States. Afghanistan became the scene and militarily involved in the ten-year war in Afghanistan .

To the prehistory

In 1989 a civil war had started in Afghanistan . In 1994 fighters first intervened in the civil war, who in October 1997 proclaimed the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" (IEA). The militias of the Northern Alliance , founded in September 1996 as a defense alliance for former civil war parties, were in a militarily hopeless situation in 2001. The US-led military operation Enduring Freedom supported the Northern Alliance in 2001 against international fighters al-Qaeda and against other Islamist groups, mainly through air strikes against Taliban positions .

Subsequently, over a million Afghan refugees from neighboring Iran and Pakistan returned to Afghanistan and state institutions and the economy began to be built. The defeated fled to neighboring Pakistan, where the Taliban founded the Quetta Shura . Together with other groups, they resumed the fight against the Afghan people, the Afghan institutions and foreign military and civil supporters of Afghanistan from 2003, with the aim of re-establishing the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”.

politics

In December 2001, leaders of the Northern Alliance and Afghan groups in exile met at the Petersberg Conference in Bonn, where they agreed on the so-called "Petersberg Agreement", a step-by-step plan for the democratization of the country and the formation of the "Afghan Interim Authority", consisting of a Interim administration, the Supreme Court and an independent commission to convene an extraordinary Loja Jirga . Hamid Karzai became chairman of the interim administration, Abdullah Abdullah became foreign minister, Mohammed Fahim became defense minister and Junus Ghanuni, head of the delegation, became interior minister . In addition to these representatives of the Northern Alliance, representatives of the Rome group around ex-King Mohammed Sahir Shah were able to fill positions.

In June 2002 the interim administration called a nationwide extraordinary Loja Jirga with around 1500 delegates, which took place in a large tent on the campus of the Kabul Polytechnic. The delegates were either chosen by elections in the various parts of the country or sent by political, cultural or religious groups. In particular, it was criticized that former warlords were invited. The result of the Loja Jirga was that the “Afghan Transitional Authority” replaced the “Afghan Interim Authority” with Karzai as interim president. The first attack on Karzai took place in Kandahar on September 5, 2002; the shooter was dressed in an Afghan army uniform.

On October 5, 2002, a nine-person constituent commission was formed. On May 7, 2003, Karzai appointed a 35-person Constitution Commission to work on the constitution and to consult with the public on several occasions. At the end of 2003, a constitutional Loya Jirga was convened under the direction of Karzai. It consisted of 502 delegates, including 114 women. One of their tasks was to advise on the new constitution for Afghanistan. On January 4, 2004, the Loja Jirga passed the new constitution.

On October 9, 2004, a presidential election took place in which Karzai was elected president. In September 2005 the House of Commons was elected. On December 19, the Lower House and the Upper House ( Meschrano Jirga ) were constituted.

In August 2009, Karzai ran again for president in the 2009 presidential election . A weighty candidate was Abdullah Abdullah , who, after a complaints commission declared hundreds of thousands of votes invalid, forced Karzai into a runoff election . Six days before the scheduled run-off election, Abdullah Abdullah announced his boycott of the vote and Karzai was named president.

At the Jirga in Kabul in 2010 , a peace and reintegration program (APRP) was adopted which guaranteed insurgent fighters under certain conditions impunity. In October 2010, with international support, Karzai established a peace council that referred to the decisions of the jirga. In September 2011, Burhānuddin Rabbāni , most recently chairman of the High Peace Council in Afghanistan, and others were killed by a suicide bomber. Rabbani should negotiate with “moderate” Taliban. It is unclear who sent the assassin.

safety

The Afghan security forces

After the warlord Mohammed Fahim brought thousands of fighters to Kabul in December 2001 , he was appointed Defense Minister of Afghanistan by Hamid Karzai's provisional government in 2002. Several thousand of his fighters and some of his officers joined the newly formed Afghan National Army (ANA).

At the Afghanistan conference in Tokyo on 21./22. January 2002 the coordination of the development of Afghan institutions assigned to individual lead nations. The United States was given responsibility for building the Afghan National Army; Germany responsible for building up the Afghan National Police . In addition, a program for the demobilization, disarmament and reintegration ("Disband, Disarm, Reintegrate" = GDR) of former militias was launched, for which Japan, in cooperation with UNAMA , was given responsibility. From October 2003 to July 7, 2005, 63,000 fighters went through the program, with 35,000 light weapons and 9,000 heavy weapons collected.

Afghan Security Forces Size, Source: Brookings Institution
army 6,000 24,000 26,000 36,000 50,000 68,000 100,000 150,000 180,000
police 0 33,000 40,000 49,700 75,000 80,000 95,000 117,000 144,000
year 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Oct 2008 Dec 2009 Dec 2010 Dec 2011

On December 2, 2002, Hamid Karzai, then president of the Afghan provisional government, announced that he would set up an army of 70,000 men. The USA insisted from the beginning that the two main ethnic groups, the Pashtuns and the Tajiks , should be represented on a similar scale in the officer ranks as well as in the army and police forces. Although the Pashtuns make up 44 percent and the Tajiks 25 percent of the Afghan population, at the beginning of 2011 both ethnic groups made up around 40 percent each in both institutions. At the ANA, the proportion of soldiers is just under 30 percent, while the proportion of officers is 41 percent.

The first two directors of the Afghan domestic intelligence service had been active in the intelligence service of the Northern Alliance , while director Rahmatullah Nabil, appointed in July 2010, was previously head of security at the presidential palace and worked for the UN during the rule of the Taliban.

From August 2010, the Afghan Local Police , subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior, was set up so that individual village communities can defend themselves against insurgents .

Counterinsurgency

Taliban areas from 2003 to 2006

Between 2003 and 2005, the Taliban expanded from their retreats in Pakistan into Pashtun- populated parts of Afghanistan, gaining control over large parts of some provinces. During this time, the training of ANA recruits, which the United States was responsible for, made little headway, as their attention had been seized by the occupation of Iraq . The first corps of the ANA, the 201st Corps, was established in 2003 near the capital Kabul. On September 19, 2004, the first regional headquarters in Kandahar for the 205th Corps stationed there was inaugurated.

In December 2004, the Pashtun Abdul Rahim Wardak was appointed Minister of Defense, replacing the Tajik Mohammed Fahim.

"The Army is conducting counter-insurgency operations with Coalition forces, stability operations, delivering support to elections and humanitarian support to the people."

"The army, together with coalition forces, is fighting armed insurrections, carrying out stabilization operations, providing assistance with elections and providing humanitarian support to the population."

- Abdul Rahim Wardak : Speech to the British think tank IISS on April 5, 2005

Army and police training is largely the responsibility of the United States and NATO. The United States calls its coaching teams Embedded Training Teams (ETT) and Police Mentoring Teams (PMT). NATO officially calls its teams Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams (OMLT) and Police Operational Mentor and Liaison Teams (POMLT).

Units of the ANA are always involved in the larger NATO / ISAF operations against the insurgents. Since 2011, operations have been prepared, carried out and followed up together with the ANA. As the ANA grew in size and with better training, better pay and better armament of soldiers, so did its importance for counterinsurgency. A rating system was developed to express the level of training of the Afghan army and police. A report published in March 2011 stated:

“75 percent of ANP units in key terrain districts were rated as either“ Effective with Advisors ”or“ Effective with Assistance, ”although none were yet rated as independent. In the ANA, 74 percent of battalion-sized units were now rated as “Effective with Advisors” or “Effective with Assistance,” (...) In early 2010, the ANSF comprised just 30 percent of committed forces in Operation Moshtarak in Helmand Province; six months later, in Operation Hamkari in Kandahar Province, the ANSF comprised approximately 60 percent of overall forces. "

“75 percent of the ANP units in key districts were rated either as“ effective with advisor ”or“ effective with support ”, while no units were rated as independent. In the ANA , 74 percent of the units the size of a battalion were rated “effective with adviser” or “effective with support” (...) At the beginning of 2010, the ANSF (ANSF: Afghan National Security Forces) provided 30 during Operation Mushtarak in Helmand Province Percent of troops; six months later, ANSF provided 60 percent of the troops in Operation Hamkari in Kandahar Province. "

- Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, April 2011

Fallen Afghan security forces

Fallen Afghan security forces, source: Brookings Institution
National army 209 226 282 519 325
National Police 803 880 646 961 830
year 2007 2008 * 2009 2010 2011 **
Note: 2008 * only until October. 2011 ** only until July.
Further information on the numbers is available in the source.

financing

The Afghan security forces are largely financed through funds. The United States raised approximately $ 10 billion in 2010 through the Afghanistan Security Forces Fund (ASFF). For further donors there is the NATO ANA Trust Fund and the Law and Order Trust Fund Afghanistan (LOTFA) The Afghan government invested 30 percent of the national budget in the financing of the security forces in 2010/11, which corresponds to an amount of 455 million US dollars.

The foreign security forces

The US-led Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) managed with relatively few soldiers; it was not until 2006 that the threshold of 20,000 US soldiers and in April 2009 the threshold of 40,000 US soldiers, under the mandate of OEF and ISAF , was exceeded.

Parallel to OEF was at the request of Afghanistan on 20 December 2001 at the United Nations Security Council adopted in Resolution 1386 (2001) a limited six-month mandate to set up an International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

"As the member of the Interim Administration responsible for foreign affairs, I should like to inform the Council that, taking into account all relevant considerations, an international security force could be deployed under Chapters VI or VII of the Charter."

"As the member of the transitional government responsible for foreign policy, I inform the Security Council, taking into account all relevant considerations, that an international security force can be set up in accordance with Chapter VI or VII of the UN Charter."

- Abdullah Abdullah, Foreign Minister of the Transitional Government of Afghanistan

Resolution 1386 stipulates that ISAF is drawn up under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter . This allows the use of armed force to fulfill the resolution.

On January 4, 2002, an agreement was reached between ISAF and the Afghan interim government on the specifics of the mission.

The number of foreign troops rose sharply from 2009, and in June 2011 over 130,000 soldiers (almost 100,000 US soldiers) were stationed in Afghanistan. In addition, there are thousands of civil advisers and mercenaries.

population

refugees

More than 1 million Afghan refugees returned from refugee camps in Afghanistan's neighboring states, mainly Pakistan and Iran, after the war, with food, fertilizer and seeds being distributed among other things. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) coordinated the efforts of other UN agencies (such as the UNHCR ) and national and international NGOs, and cooperated with the Afghan transitional government.

Civilians killed and injured

UNAMA reported that 1,523 civilians were killed in 2007. Defenders for the Afghan government were responsible for the 629 deaths. In 2008, 2,118 civilians were killed, with insurgents responsible for 1,160 deaths (55 percent) and defenders of the Afghan government responsible for 828 deaths (39 percent). It was not detectable in 130 deaths. Most of the fatalities caused by defenders of the Afghan government died in air strikes, 552 dead in 2008. Unconventional explosive and incendiary devices were the means for 725 deaths among the insurgents in 2007 and there were 271 targeted killings. In 2008, 1,297 people died in bomb attacks and 146 people in suicide attacks. 843 booby traps could be defused before the detonation. According to UNICEF, there were attacks on schools and other training facilities 236 times in 2007 and 293 times in 2008. In 2008, 38 aid workers, almost all of them by NGOs, were killed.

According to a UNAMA report, 2,777 people were killed in 2010, 15 percent more than in 2009. 2080 deaths (75 percent) were killed by insurgents, with booby traps for 1,141 deaths and targeted killings for 462 deaths. Half of all targeted killings occurred in southern Afghanistan. Afghan government defenders caused 440 deaths, or 16 percent, with air strikes accounting for 39 percent.

In 2014, 3,188 civilians died by the end of November (19% more than in the previous year) and 6,429 were injured. According to the UN mission "Unama", a total of 3699 civilians died in 2014 (+ 22% compared to 2013), and a further 6,849 people were wounded (+ 21% compared to 2013). The Taliban and various competing warlords are said to be responsible for 72% and the Afghan armed forces for 12%. In 2015 at least 3,545 civilians died and 7,457 were injured (62% Taliban, 36% Afghan army, police forces, etc., 2% NATO) (11% women, 26% children).

According to the United Nations, around 10,000 civilians were killed or injured during attacks or fighting in Afghanistan in 2017.

economy

On October 7, 2002, the issue of a new currency began, the new Afghani replaced the old Afghani at an exchange ratio of 1: 1000 and the Afghani of the Northern Alliance at an exchange ratio of 1: 2000.

In early September 2010 there was a bank run at Afghanistan's largest credit institution, Kabul Bank . In mid-September, the Afghan central bank took control of the bank and investigations were initiated against two bank directors and shareholders in the bank. In January 2011, it was found that Kabul Bank had suffered approximately $ 900 million in losses due to fraud and mismanagement. In April 2011, the head of the central bank, Abdel Kadir Fitrat, named the identified beneficiaries. In June, the head of the central bank fled to the United States because he feared for his life in Afghanistan. A spokesman for Afghan President Karzai condemned the move as “treason”.

Afghanistan's most important export product was opium , which brought in around three billion US dollars in 2005/2006, or a third of Afghanistan's gross national product. In the spring of 2010, a plant disease wiped out a third of opium production in the south of the country, and a similar disease had appeared in the north four years ago.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cabinet of the Interim Government 2002 (English)
  2. ↑ Foreign Office: Constitutional State Structure
  3. ↑ Japanese Foreign Ministry: Report from Afghanistan on Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration of Ex-combatants (DDR)
  4. ↑ a b c Brookings Institution: Ian S. Livingston, Michael O'Hanlon; Afghanistan Index of July 31, 2011 ( Memento of February 13, 2010 in the Internet Archive ), Tables 1.5, 1.12, 1.29
  5. ↑ UNRIC.org: Decree of the President of the Islamic Transitional State of Afghanistan on the Afghan National Army, issued on December 1, 2002 ( Memento November 11, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 20 kB)
  6. ^ Daily Times, Carlotta Gall: New Afghan intelligence chief aims to build trust, August 21, 2010 ( Memento of October 18, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ defense.gov: Afghan Army's Kandahar Regional Command Stands Up
  8. ^ IISS: Security Sector Reform and State Building in Afghanistan
  9. ↑ BBC News: Taking on the Taliban in Kandahar, August 11, 2010
  10. ↑ Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, page 3, April 2011 ( Memento from December 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 3.9 MB)
  11. ↑ NATO: ANA Trust Fund Fact Sheet - NATO, October 2009 (PDF; 26 kB)
  12. ↑ UNDP: Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan (LOTFA) - Factsheet, April 2011 ( Memento from January 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 830 kB)
  13. ↑ defense.gov: Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan, page 95 (PDF; 3.5 MB)
  14. ↑ Application by the Federal Government to the German Bundestag on the basis of the cabinet decision of December 21, 2001 (PDF; 17 kB)
  15. ↑ NATO: Resolution 1386 (2001) (PDF; 103 kB)
  16. ↑ UN: Resolution 1386 (2001) (German) (PDF; 33 kB)
  17. ↑ undemocracy.com: Security Council 2001 document (S-2001-1223) - Letter dated 19 December 2001 from the Permanent Representative of Afghanistan to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council ( Memento of November 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 92 kB)
  18. ↑ Web archive: Military Technical Agreement - Between the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Interim Administration of Afghanistan (PDF; 694 kB)
  19. ↑ UNAMA: Annual Report on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2008 ( Memento of August 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 636 kB)
  20. ↑ UNAMA: Annual Report 2010 on Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict ( Memento of September 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 538 kB)
  21. ↑ dpa / nd: UN: Number of civilian victims in Afghanistan at the highest level. Retrieved December 23, 2014 .
  22. ↑ Marco Maier: Afghanistan: In 2014 there were more civilian victims than ever before. Retrieved February 19, 2015 .
  23. ↑ Civilian Casualties Hit New High in 2015. United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), February 14, 2016, accessed on February 24, 2016 (English): " UNAMA documented 11,002 civilian casualties (3,545 deaths and 7,457 injured) in 2015, exceeding the previous record levels of civilian casualties that occurred in 2014. "
  24. ↑ Emran Feroz: Washing the West clean? Heise Medien GmbH & Co. KG, February 24, 2016, accessed on February 24, 2016 : “ Insurgent groups, above all the Afghan Taliban, are primarily responsible for the bloody everyday life. According to UNAMA, they account for sixty-two percent of all victims. The Afghan army, police forces, militias loyal to the government and actors who cannot be assigned to any of the warring parties are held responsible for the remaining victims. Only extremely minimal "collateral damage", namely two percent, is attributed to the NATO forces on the ground. [...] The victim rate has increased particularly in the case of women and children. Accordingly, eleven percent of the total victims in 2016 were women, an increase of four percent compared to 2014. Meanwhile, twenty-six percent of victims were children, an increase of fourteen percent. Ergo, on average, every fourth civilian victim in Afghanistan is a child. "
  25. ↑ Pakistan ensnares Afghanistan in the NZZ of September 17, 2018 on page 3
  26. ↑ BBC News: Kabul Bank taken over by Afghanistan central bank, September 14, 2010
  27. ^ New York Times: Losses at Afghan Bank Could Be $ 900 million, Jan. 30, 2011
  28. ^ The Kabul Bank Investigations; Central Bank Gives Names and Figures, May 2011 ( Memento of July 31, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  29. ^ FAZ: Head of the Afghan central bank fled , June 28, 2011
  30. ↑ UNODOC: Afghanistan's Drug Industry 2007 (PDF; 3.0 MB)
  31. ^ New York Times: Mysterious Blight Destroys Afghan Poppy Harvest , May 12, 2010