Southwest Asia

From 2004-2007, in post-conflict Congo, 45,000 people a month died of hunger and disease, despite an infusion of peacekeeping forces and billions of dollars in international aid. In 2007, the cost of war was easy to tally, but preventing future conflicts seemed as difficult as ever.

At the EastWest Institute, there was a growing sense that true international conflict prevention was prevented by a lack of political will. In 2007, under the direction of Ambassador Ortwin Hennig, EWI established the International Task Force on Preventive Diplomacy, which in turn created something completely new: a network of lawmakers working across borders to make conflict prevention “real.”

On October 8, 2008, the task force launched the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention and Human Security. German MP Angelika Beer and Zimbabwe MP Kabwe Zitto were elected as the first co-chairs of the network, which initially included 50 parliamentarians from 25 countries. From the beginning, the Network worked to connect and empower parliamentarians to advocate in their own governments—and for each other.

“We will support our colleagues in countries across the world in their efforts to bring peace and stability to their region,” Beer and Zitto told the media.

In the years that followed, the Network worked to bring conflict prevention onto legislative floors, convening debates on conflict prevention at the German Bundestag and in the U.K. House of Lords, and played a vital role in the U.K. Parliament’s decision to annualize the conflict prevention debate. Keeping its promise to work across borders, the Network directed its efforts in 2010 to a group of lawmakers in in special need of support: Afghan women parliamentarians.

To help give women a voice in Afghanistan’s peace and security processes, the Network and EWI convened Afghan women parliamentarians and their peers from Pakistan, neighboring countries and the West in the European Parliament. At the conference, the highlight for many attendees was the rare chance of hearing Afghan lawmakers describe their experiences in person.

“The first time I met an Afghan female MP was in Brussels,” says Donia Aziz, a member of the Pakistani Parliament. “I didn't meet them in Islamabad because our female colleagues are never part of visiting delegations. That is something that the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention can do, provide the platform for us to get together, to share experience and work together.”

In 2011, the Parliamentarians will help facilitate a dialogue between Afghan and Pakistani lawmakers. This process will not only help women from both countries learn from each other, it will help build bilateral trust in this volatile region—one parliamentarian at time.

Afghan Narcotrafficking: A Joint Threat Assessment is a product of the Russian and American experts who participated in a working group convened by EWI. Leaders in this field from both countries, including representatives of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Russian Federal Drug Control Service, provided briefings and other assistance to the group.

According to EWI Senior Associate Jacqueline McLaren Miller, the project’s main coordinator, “This report demonstrates that cooperation between Russia and the United States is still possible when both countries are willing to focus on a common challenge.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov echoed the same sentiments at the February 2, 2013 Munich Security Conference when he stated the need for “closer cooperation with the U.S. on Afghanistan.” There are about 30,000 heroin-related deaths in Russia every year, and most of the heroin comes from Afghanistan.

Cooperation between the two countries is necessary to stem predicted growth of opium production in a post-2014 Afghanistan. The report includes a clear warning: “As NATO and U.S. troops prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan, which is still struggling with a highly volatile security situation, weak governance, and major social and economic problems, the size of the opium economy and opiate trafficking are likely to increase and pose an even greater challenge to regional and international security.”

This paper will be followed shortly by a Joint Policy Assessment report, which will offer specific policy suggestions for both Russia and the United States to curtail the flow of opiates from Afghanistan.

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Under the auspices of EWI’s Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention and its work on women, peace and security, the delegation, two-thirds of them women, took part in high-level meetings in Brussels’ most prominent institutions. The Afghan delegation’s goal was to promote their role in international political bodies and to engage in discussions on peace and security with regard to the future of Afghanistan.

The release of this report coincides with the 5^th Anniversary of the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention, which mobilizes members in parliaments across the globe to find pioneering ways to prevent and end conflicts. For more information on the Parliamentarians Network for Conflict Prevention, please visit: www.parliamentariansforconflictprevention.net

Other reports in this series:

> Women, Peace and Security, 2012

> Forging New Ties, 2011

> A New Voice for Afghan Women, 2011

In India and Pakistan’s Energy Security: Can Afghanistan Play a Critical Role?, EWI Fellow Danila Bochkarev argues that the power shortages can be addressed by building new energy corridors or a “New Silk Road,” which would transform Afghanistan into a regional trade and transit hub. 

The report illustrates how this infrastructure would strengthen economic, political and social ties between Central Asia and South Asia and contribute to a more stable Afghanistan, allowing for improved economic growth.

"There is no shortage of energy resources in the Southwest Asia-Central Asia region and natural gas is abundantly available in this part of the world,” Bochkarev said. “Major centers of energy consumption in India and Pakistan are in proximity to the major producers of gas and hydroelectricity.”

The report describes two planned energy infrastructure projects that would run through Afghanistan—the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline (TAPI) and the Central Asia South Asia Regional Electricity Trade Project (CASA 1000)—to access Turkmen gas and Central Asian electricity. “Afghanistan’s role as a transit country for gas from Central Asia can hardly be overestimated,” Bochkarev added.

A major challenge to these projects is, of course, the unstable security situation in Afghanistan and lack of genuine multilateral energy cooperation. Nonetheless, Bochkarev argues that the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) could serve as an appropriate institutional umbrella for participating countries, providing for regional rules and regulations. ECT investment protection mechanisms, his report adds, would help to re-establish international investors’ confidence in the region’s economic and regulatory policies.

The release of this report coincides with the convening of the EastWest Institute’s 9th Annual Worldwide Security Conference in Brussels on November 12-13 at the World Customs Organization. The focus of WSC 9 will be “Reshaping Economic Security in Southwest Asia and the Middle East.”

For more information on the 9th Annual Worldwide Security Conference and to register, please visit: http://www.ewi.info/events/9th-annual-worldwide-security-conference.

On April 14-16, 2012, the EastWest Institute, in partnership with the Women’s Parliamentary Caucus (WPC) of the National Assembly of Pakistan, arranged for the first official delegation of Pakistani women parliamentarians to visit Afghanistan. This ground-breaking visit is described in the publication Women, Peace and Security, released today in anticipation of the institute's annual awards dinner honoring two of the parliamentarians who took part in this dialogue. On September 27th, EWI will present its distinguished leadership award to Dr. Fehmida Mirza, the first woman speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan, and Ms. Shinkai Karokhail, a renowned women’s rights activist and member of the Afghan Parliament.

Over the course of their visit, the parliamentarians discussed issues related to reconciliation with the Taliban and regional economic cooperation with Hamid Karzai, President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan; Masoom Stanikzai, Advisor to the President on Internal Security and Head of the Secretariat for Afghanistan's High Peace Council; Zalmai Rassoul, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Afghanistan; Haji Abdul Rauf Ibrahimi, the Speaker of the Lower House; and members of the Wolesi Jirga Commission on Women’s Affairs, Civil Society and Human Rights.

In the meeting with President Karzai, the Afghan leader declared: “This initiative is of immense importance to both countries and a great sign of a better future.” He called for more contacts between women parliamentarians in both countries, saying that such visits are “instrumental in strengthening of trust-building between the two nations.”

Click here to read more coverage of the Kabul visit.

Southwest Asia's future depends on increased cooperation among countries in the region to confront diverse military and human security problems, and the Euro-Atlantic community can play a supporting role, according to an EastWest Institute discussion paper.

This region has few effective regional security organizations and none that attempt to bridge the main divides, the paper finds. It calls on the states of the region to commit on their own terms to the long-term goal of bridging serious geopolitical fault lines.

This goal, according to the report, holds out the promise of embedding the most serious and intractable conflicts in a wider regional vision to create new incentives and mechanisms for reducing tensions. The experience of Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe shows that bridging fault lines is not only possible but essential in times of high tension, military confrontation and military build-up.

"Russia, Turkey, the United States and the EU need to have a clearer, common plan for long term security in and around Iran, the Persian Gulf, Pakistan, and Afghanistan," said EWI Professorial Fellow Greg Austin. "This paper offers one element of that missing 'shared vision.'"

The paper provisionally defines the region as including: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Israel, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and adjacent maritime areas. Though a final grouping could be different, this region stretches across cultural and political divides and lies at the center of global energy supplies, existing military conflicts, and other ongoing tensions.

One way to understand the importance of a regional grouping, the paper argues, is to look to Southeast Asia as a possible model. In the mid-20th century, Southeast Asia was the highly militarized site of several international and domestic conflicts. By 2000, regional organizations such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had helped promote economic growth, international cooperation and increased stability. The region has been fundamentally transformed.

The paper emphasizes that Southwest Asian states must take the lead in a solidified regional framework, but the Euro-Atlantic community can play a significant role by encouraging the development of new organizations through funding and facilitating track-2 dialogues and developing various region-focused programs.

You can also read Greg Austin's column on this work for New Europe. Follow this link and turn to page 5.