Lakhdar Brahimi Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Page 3 of 6
Let's talk a little about your experiences in Afghanistan and later we'll talk about Iraq. You were involved in negotiations in Afghanistan prior to 9/11.
Yes, very much so.
And then after 9/11 and after the conflict. What had changed? Had a lot changed that you saw on the ground?
Very much so. You mentioned a while ago the importance of the outside players. In Afghanistan, the first time around, from 1997 to 1999 when I gave up, that is where I had seen these foreign players do their worst. There is an expression now that is commonly used about these so-called internal conflicts which are not really internal, because they have connections to the outside world. They're called "transnational" conflicts. But what you see is that unless these players from outside who have influence work with you, your chances of success are very, very limited.
You're talking about the neighboring states.
Yes, but not necessarily only neighboring, because the notion of neighbors can be extended a little bit, but definitely. Afghanistan is a land-locked country. A fly cannot go in unless it stops somewhere; therefore weapons, fuel, food, money will not go to Afghanistan unless the neighbors of Afghanistan are working, are cooperating, either being themselves the origin or the transit. During the Soviet occupation, Pakistan was the necessary indispensable transit place that the Americans and Saudis were using to channel money and weapons to the Mujahadeen who were fighting against the Soviet Union. When we moved from that to a civil war it was the same thing: Iran, and Pakistan in particular, were very, very much part of the problem.
I gave up in 1999, saying, "You, the international community; you, the Security Council, you send me out there to work on your behalf but you are not helping me. What can I do? Who am I to do anything, unless I do it on your behalf with your support? And I'm not getting that support. So, I cannot do anything anymore." I said, "Afghanistan is a small country, it's a very poor country, it's an isolated country, it's a faraway country, but if you think you're going to keep that conflict within the borders of Afghanistan, you are wrong. It will spill over on all of us one day."
And unfortunately you were ...
When that happened, then people understood. I went to see the prime minister of the United Kingdom in London, Prime Minister Tony Blair, and I told him, "Look, you abandoned Afghanistan in 1989 when the Russians left because you won your war and you didn't care what happened to the Afghan people. And I gave up in 1999 because I got no support from you. Are you sure I'm going to get the necessary support now?" In fairness and respect for him, he went out and said, "We abandoned Afghanistan once. We are not going to abandon [it] the second time."
The United States was also guilty of this sin, we should say.
I may say so, more than anybody else.
That's right. So, 9/11 comes, proving your point, namely that you can't leave this place alone and leave it isolated because it will come back to bite you; and again, you were given the mantle. Talk a little about that, because at some level you must have [thought], "Well, here we go again. Do they really mean it this time, will they support me?"
No. Again, just as maybe an amusing detail, when I gave up in 1999, the Secretary General told me, when I informed the Security Council, he said my mission was going to be "frozen" until such a time as there is a real opportunity to do something. So, after the 9/11 [he said], "Your mission is unfrozen now." So, I resumed my work on the basis of that agreement when I left in 1999. But I knew that what had happened was an eye-opener not only to the United States but also to Pakistan, who realized that after what has happened on the 11th of September, it was simply impossible to continue to play those games in Afghanistan. To leave Afghanistan as a playground for terrorists and adventurers was simply not possible anymore.
And it was very clear in your mind, as we've discussed a little bit, who had to be invited to the table.
Sure. You see, there I also tell my colleagues that -- we speak about something called the international community. Who are they? The international community is an elastic notion that varies, depending on the problem you are talking about and where you are. The international community in Afghanistan is [where] Turkmenistan is much more important than France and Britain put together. So, the international community are all the countries that are important: the United States definitely everywhere; the European Union because it is very important, and also, they do show a great deal of international responsibility; and then the local players. [For example, Charles] Taylor in Liberia was a very important player in all the conflicts around Liberia because of his intervention everywhere. So, I knew very well who were the players that we needed to bring together.
This is, as a matter of accuracy, one of the first things that you have got to identify: who are the actors? There is a conflict in Afghanistan: right. It is the Afghans, but first of all, which Afghans? Then, who else is a player? You've got to identify those players.
And they then have to agree to be part of the process, both the states and the groups that they sponsor.
Yes. You see, you have got to win them to your side. You are not going to do it overnight. That's what we tried to do between '97 and '99. At one stage, we thought that we had everybody working with us. What really led me decide to go away was that we got all these people, all the neighbors, plus Russia and the United States, to a meeting in Tashkent in July '99. They signed a very solemn declaration in which they said, "We will not help any faction anymore and we will intervene with others not to help any faction." One month later, there was a Taliban offensive that was supported, financed, armed by some of those people who signed that declaration. So, I'm wasting everybody's time.
After 9/11 there was a very elongated process, both in Bonn and then, in a way, all over the world, to knock heads together, basically. So, in addition to doing this navigation, you then had to bring people together and you had to say "Time is running out, we've got to have a deal."
Yes. You see, there again, I don't want you or anybody looking at us to think that all this is beautifully mapped out. There is an element of luck, there is an element of trial and error, sometimes you fail, sometimes you succeed. It's not as beautifully simple as it may seem when we are talking about it. You need to cajole people, you need to push them, and then as you said, if it's necessary, to knock heads together. When we were in Bonn, I was sitting with the Afghans. There were quite a few people sitting outside, the representatives from the United States, Jim Dobbins and Zalmay Khalilzad, from France, from the United Kingdom, from Germany -- I think we had representatives from something like twenty-five countries. So, they were sitting outside and I would go to them and say, "I need you to talk to your friends. I need you to call Moscow, I need you to call Kabul, Karachi, Islamabad, Teheran." So, that was happening all the time, there were negotiations. We were mobilizing support wherever we could get it.
You helped to create a consensus through time, working the rooms, working the phones, and so on. In the end I gather that the solution that may have worked in Bosnia or Kosovo isn't necessarily the solution that will work in Afghanistan.
Yes. There again, that is a fundamental principle: no two situations are alike. That doesn't exist. When you go from one place to another, you go with experience, you don't go with prescriptions. You have experience, and that experience will be very useful, but it's not prescriptions that you take: "This worked in Kosovo, so let's try it in Afghanistan." No.
It's a process of thinking on your feet, drawing on experience. You're listening and moving forward in time.
Yes. You see, the word there is "creativity." Roger Fisher has written beautifully well on the subject of negotiations, but he's the first to agree that he's not going to give you a prescription to take to any conflict situation anywhere. He's teaching you techniques, he's giving you elements of psychology, he's telling you what makes people think, tick, what makes them angry, what makes them happy, but it's up to you then to see what the real situation is there, what the real challenges are, what the real stakes are. You are dealing with people who have taken the responsibility of killing their own because they think that they are right, they think that they are serving the interests of their people. They not going to give that up easily, just because you've shown up.
So, again, problems may be not ripe for a solution. Look at Ireland, how long it took, and I'm not sure whether there is a solution now or not. Look at Sri Lanka. What is missing there is not just a brilliant negotiator -- I think the objective conditions, as we used to say in the days when it was fashionable to speak about Marx and Engels, are not [present].
You were the head of the report, although I know you credit all the people who were involved in doing the Brahimi Report, but one of the constraints on you in negotiations must be the extent to which problems and obstacles arise that have to do with the limits of the UN mandate with the extent to which the UN is a body made up of individual nation states that have to agree to give the mandate and the resources to the Secretary General. Talk a little about that, because that is something that can tie your hands over and above the disaster that you're confronting on the ground.
Very much so. We can do it by illustration. When we went into Afghanistan, the agreement that we crafted, that the Afghans crafted in our presence in Bonn, said that we will have a military force, multinational force, in Kabul first. It was abundantly clear to the Security Council and everybody else that we were going to Kabul only because everybody was afraid that these Afghans don't like foreigners, they will not accept foreigners. So, we said, "Okay, let's go to Kabul. We think it will be all right. And let's see. If it is all right, then it is important to expand this force outside of Kabul."
In fact, the first week, in December when we arrived there, we saw very clearly that there will be no problem whatsoever. On the contrary. You see, the British -- if there is one foreign force that would have left mixed souvenirs in Afghanistan, it's the British. The British were welcome. So in January, the Secretary General and myself, and everybody else, started saying, "Okay. Let's expand the force outside of [Kabul]." We never got it. Never. We had 5000 people in Kabul. If we had had another 5000, then we would be far more advanced than we are now in the implementation of the peace process. But we've never been able to have it.
So I told the Council several times, very, very politely but I think very clearly, that it is terribly unfair to us, to come and tell me, "Afghanistan is too dangerous for my soldiers." It's all right for me to go there, it's all right for you to send me there, you the Security Council, and especially the permanent members to send me there. It's not dangerous for me but it is dangerous for your soldiers who are well equipped, well armed, well trained. It is terribly unfair, really unacceptable.
Next page: Failed States
© Copyright 2005, Regents of the University of California
See also: Interview with James Dobbins (2005): Nation Building