By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 16 — Before the UN Security Council voted to extend the mandate of its Afghanistan mission for a year on March 16, Afghan Ambassador Zahir Tanin stopped and told the Press that it’s time for his government to be central to the coordination of aid in the country.
When Tanin spoke inside the Council before the 15-0 vote, he emphasized the penultimate paragraph of 17-page resolution, saying that
“we welcome the Security Council’s request ‘that the Secretary-General initiate a process to conduct within six months of the renewal of this mandate, a full examination of the role, structure and activities of all United Nations entities in Afghanistan, in full consultation and engagement with the Government of Afghanistan and key stakeholders, including the donor community, in light of the completion of transition and the beginning of the Transformation Decade and in accordance with the principles of Afghan national sovereignty, national leadership and national ownership.’”
Inevitably this recalled the UN system’s own role in corruption in the country, for example the UN Development Program-run “Law and Order Trust Fund for Afghanistan,” with its double payments to phantom police. There is still much to be reported on this, even as former UNAMA chief Jan Kubis takes up his new post atop the UN Mission in Iraq, UNAMI. Inner City Press was first to report this move, as credited in the media in Slovakia, here.
While Tanin didn’t get into it in his March 16 speech to the Security Council, UNAMA’s Nicholas Haysom told the Council that “I can also confirm that UNAMA continues a frank dialogue with the Taliban on humanitarian access and on human rights, notably on the protection of civilians.”
Haysom also told the Council on March 16 that “recent reports have indicated that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant has established a foothold in Afghanistan. It is UNAMA’s assessment that the group’s presence is of concern but that ISIL’s significance is not such much a function of its intrinsic capacities in the area but its potential to offer an alternative flagpole to which otherwise isolated insurgent splinter groups can rally.”
We’ll have more on this.