De Mistura, Veteran UN Diplomat, Inherits Serious Challenges in Afghanistan

By Irwin Arieff

In London, Staffan de Mistura (far left), the new special representative of the secretary-general for Afghanistan; Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan; and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. UN Photo

Feb. 3 -- The United Nations mission in Afghanistan is changing leadership at a time of soaring insecurity and growing international pressure on the country to prove it can assume responsibility for its own problems eventually.

Veteran UN diplomat Staffan de Mistura, a dual citizen of Italy and Sweden, is to replace the Norwegian Kai Eide, another senior UN statesman, on March 1 as head of the Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, known as Unama.

Eide has been Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special representative for Afghanistan and the chief of Unama since March 2008. He is leaving the post after a bitter dispute with his former deputy, Peter Galbraith, over alleged massive corruption in Afghanistan’s presidential election, which took place Aug. 20, 2009.

Galbraith, an American, was fired by Ban, at Eide’s behest, after Galbraith accused Eide of playing down corruption in the presidential election to shield Karzai from allegations of widespread fraud. Eide denied the charges but later announced that he would not seek renewal of his UN contract when it expired at the end of February.

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Electoral officials in October threw out more than 1.2 million ballots, enough to force Karzai into a runoff. But second-place winner Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of the race before a second round of voting could be held, handing Karzai a new term.

The uproar over the 2009 presidential election means that de Mistura faces an early test in monitoring reparations for Parliamentary elections, initially scheduled for May but postponed until September. Last year’s contested presidential results raised the threat of “serious instability and violence” at the time, Eide told the Security Council in January.

Must Work With International Troops

But the UN mission’s greatest challenge will be to work with international military forces – NATO and the US -- to reverse worsening chaos in many parts of the country, international diplomats say.

“What we need is a strategy that is politically and not militarily driven,” Eide said in January. “For years, there has been a consensus -- at least in rhetoric -- that this conflict ultimately cannot be solved by military means. But most of our focus has been on the number and activities of military forces.”

But as it seeks peace and stability, the mission finds itself a target, as evidenced by a deadly assault on the Bakhtar UN guesthouse in Kabul last October, leaving eight people dead and UN officials quaking.
With Taliban assaults growing stronger and bolder, the US and allied military powers have announced plans to dispatch an additional 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, including 30,000 US soldiers. At the same time, these powers have made it clear that they want to make security -- as well as development -- an Afghan responsibility as quickly as possible.

President Karzai recently acknowledged growing international resistance to long-term military help. “During the next two to three years, we intend to focus on gradually assuming the responsibility of security in greater parts of our country,” he told an international conference in London last week.

The Afghan government’s difficulties in providing services to its people and ending rampant corruption have intensified international impatience with Karzai. A top goal of the London conference, organized by Gordon Brown, Britain’s prime minister, was to serve notice to Kabul that outside donors were growing restive, diplomats said.

“Our reshaped relationship must be built on a gradual but steady transfer of responsibilities and authority from international stakeholders to Afghan institutions,” the UN secretary-general told the London conference.

Also confronting de Mistura will be the question of what role, if any, the UN should play in Afghan efforts to integrate repentant Taliban fighters in civil society.

Karzai recently began laying the groundwork for possible Taliban peace talks. At his request, the Security Council in January lent him a hand by removing the names of five former Taliban officials from its official list of individuals linked to terrorism. The move essentially enabled Afghan officials to deal with the five men without violating Security Council antiterrorist sanctions.

Washington Support

De Mistura, whose UN career has spanned 38 years, won strong backing for his new job from the US government, including an endorsement from Richard Holbrooke, President Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke told reporters that Washington, which has often worked closely with de Mistura in the past, liked him because of his previous performance as the secretary-general’s special representative for Iraq, where he helped organize elections and run reconstruction and humanitarian aid programs.

“While in Baghdad, he was able to successfully, but in a very quiet way, bring the various factions to the table, and the Americans believe that is the way forward,” said an international diplomat who said he could speak frankly only if not identified by name.

As the secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan, de Mistura will be variously in charge of numerous UN agencies active in the country, totaling about 9,000 staff members. Their activities include fostering peace, security and good governance, election assistance, economic and agricultural development and administering antipoverty, health and sanitation, humanitarian relief and reconstruction aid programs.

Unama alone has a budget of $168 million a year and a staff of about 1,500 -- 80 percent of them Afghan nationals. The UN Development Program spent another $515 million in 2009 on projects in many parts of the country, representing one of the biggest investments in the world for the agency. Apart from 17 military observers and 3 police officers attached to Unama, none of the international troops in Afghanistan are under UN command.

Irwin Arieff covered the UN for Reuters from 2000 to 2007.