UK-Led Team in Mazar Says Security Top Priority

The head of the British-led reconstruction team of soldiers and civilians in northern Afghanistan has defended the project against criticism that not enough is being done to rebuild the region.

Colonel Dickie Davis, head of the Provincial Reconstruction Team, PRT, based in Mazar-e-Sharif, urged Afghans to be patient, and said that security had to be in place before reconstruction work could begin.

“We have three planning steps. Ensuring security is our priority, then we can cooperate with the ministries of the northern provinces so that eventually we can start reconstruction projects,” he told IWPR.

The United States-led coalition has established PRTs – combining civilian reconstruction workers with a small military contingent – in several key towns across Afghanistan. The aim is to create the atmosphere of security needed to begin rebuilding infrastructure in these towns and in the surrounding regions, and to achieve this in a relatively short space of time. PRTs have been already been established in Gardez in the south of the country, Bamian in the central region, Kunduz in the north-east, and Mazar-e-Sharif. More are planned in other areas.

The Mazar-e-Sharif team, which began work at the beginning of July, is the first one to be run by Britain, and with just 85 military personnel has a large patch to cover encompassing five provinces in the north and north-west of Afghanistan.

Four months on, and with little progress to show for its efforts, the project is facing mounting criticism from local people.

“You say the PRT has been here for four months? This is a new name for me among all the foreign agencies providing aid for Afghanistan,” said 28-year-old Mazar resident Faraidun.

Politics and law graduate Hussein Hashimi is also unhappy with the progress of the project. “This team is needed to prevent conflicts among the various military factions in the north, but it has done nothing in the reconstruction sphere,” he claimed.

The governor of the northern province of Balkh, Mohammad Eshaq Rahgozar said he had held talks with British officials some months ago, and understood that the PRT was both for security and rebuilding. But he said the project had yet to do anything substantial in terms of reconstruction.

Colonel Davis rejected the criticism, saying that after 23 years of conflict in Afghanistan, it was impossible to fulfill all of people’s aspirations at once.

“We ask the people to have patience,” he said, adding that the project was in its early stages – the PRT is expected to be reviewed in June 2005.

In the area of security, Colonel Davis said the PRT was supporting the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, UNAMA, and that it had helped broker a ceasefire between the two main warring factions in the north just two weeks previously.

As part of plans to reform the police and judicial system, the PRT is helping to establish a police academy in the north, which will retrain the local force from January onwards. It is also refurbishing a courthouse (see separate story).

In addition, the PRT is engaged in institution-building and helping provincial ministries to develop their ability to handle foreign investment. Colonel Davis said there was also some longer-term economic development, with the PRT supporting a US geological survey of oil, gas and mineral reserves in the north.

The PRT – whose own budget for reconstruction work is around 1.67 million US dollars – may be able to release much greater funds in future by facilitating projects for international aid agencies, the colonel said.

Aid agencies remain sceptical about the wisdom of the civilian-military PRT model, which they say blurs the line between humanitarian workers and the military – and therefore increases the risk to aid workers. Supporters of the scheme say the alternative - deploying large numbers of peacekeepers across Afghanistan – would take too much time, require a new United Nations mandate, and mean the international community would have to provide many more troops, all of which could make it unworkable.

Zekrullah, the director of the aid agency Partners for Afghanistan Rehabilitation, believes the scheme can work. “The PRT is disarming [people] and ensuring peace at the moment in northern Afghanistan, which is very important,” he said. “The team’s presence is badly needed in the north, provided it implements its reconstruction projects.”

Nahim Qadiri is a reporter for IWPR in Mazar-e-Sharif.