Following the London Conference on Afghanistan, I have interviewed Dr. Bente Scheller, the Director of the Heinrich Boell Foundation’s Kabul office. The German Boell Foundation is independent, but philosophically close to the Green Party, whose voters are more supportive of the Bundeswehr’s Afghanistan mission than those of the other parties.
While 50% of the Green voters support the troops’ continued presence, only 46% of the voters of the conservative CDU/CSU agree, according to a poll from September 2009; in German.
Three in four Germans doubt the international community will succeed in Afghanistan. Two thirds disagree with the government’s plan to send 850 additional troops to the Hindu Kush to support Obama’s surge. (Poll from January 29, 2010 ZDF, in German)
Security and stability are clearly important aspects of the international community’s mission in Afghanistan, but, as Dr. Bente Scheller points out, it is only part of the equation. There is a lot of room to improve the functioning of the state, its administration and legal system. Furthermore, unemployment must be tackled and income generating projects must be promoted. Strategies need to be developed towards improving these important civil areas.
Dr. Scheller also added to the debate currently running on atlantic-community.org, commenting on engaging the local population with small-scale community projects, the need to better understand the power structure and the role of warlords, and understanding corruption within a certain cultural context.
Joerg Wolf is founder and editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Review (http://atlanticreview.org), a blog on transatlantic relations sponsored by the German Fulbright Alumni Association.
He currently works as editor-in-chief of the Open Think Tank atlantic-community.org in Berlin.
Joerg studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and worked as a research associate for the International Risk Policy project at the Free University’s Center for Transatlantic Foreign and Security Policy. He has been a Fulbright scholar at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Washington DC and has worked for the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Cairo and in Berlin.