Kabul/Brussels, 29 January 2007: While the growing insurgency is attracting increasing attention, long-term efforts to build the solid governmental institutions a stable Afghanistan requires are faltering.

Afghanistan’s Endangered Compact,* the latest briefing from the International Crisis Group, examines the slow progress one year after the Afghan government and the international community committed to a “shared vision of the future” for a “stable and prosperous Afghanistan”. At the London Conference of 31 January-1 February 2006, Kabul and over 60 nations and international institutions agreed on “three critical and interdependent areas or pillars of activity” over five years: security; governance, rule of law and human rights; and social and economic development.

“In the face of rising violence, the government and its international backers risk favouring short-sighted, quick fixes that work around the new democratic institutions”, says Joanna Nathan, Crisis Group Senior Analyst. “This weakens the very institutions the country needs for its eventual stability”.

Following conclusion of the Bonn process, which created the country’s elected bodies, the Compact was meant to create a framework for all stakeholders involved in Afghanistan’s reconstruction. But the assumption of relative stability upon which the Compact was premised has been undercut by an insurgency sustained by cross-border sanctuaries and support. And state-building was warped from the start because of a refusal to exclude undesirable elements from positions of power in the new institutions.

To serve its own interests and those of the Afghan people better, the international community must now demand serious steps of the Karzai government to end the flourishing culture of impunity which is the enemy of genuine reform. There must also be greater attention paid to building institutions at provincial and district level if real change is to be seen in the population’s lives. Bringing the largely ignored legislative branch into the heart of the governance process will also ensure greater buy-in.

The Compact’s overseer, the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board, consisting of Afghan ministers and major international players, should help drive momentum and ensure coordination through more regular meetings of its heavy-hitters and by establishing an independent secretariat with a liaison to draw the National Assembly into the process.

“State-building and counter-insurgency efforts must be seen as complementary”, says Samina Ahmed, Crisis Group’s South Asia Project Director. “Afghanistan’s security issues must be faced, but policies must also be framed that keep long-term institution-building in mind, because that is the only path to lasting stability”.