International Reports (IR): It was dramatic scenes that went around the world in the summer of 2021, when international troops hastily withdrew from Afghanistan and the Taliban regained power in the country after around 20 years. German politicians spoke of a “disaster”, a “debacle”, a “tragedy”. At the time, you were head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s Afghanistan office in Kabul. How do you recall those days?
Ellinor Zeino: It was an incredibly intense time. At some point, you realised the clock was ticking and that it was only a matter of weeks and days. When the US said they were moving their embassy to the airport, we knew it was only a matter of hours. I had left Afghanistan the week before and was in Tashkent. My biggest concern was the safety of our employees, who were still in Kabul. My fear was not so much that the Taliban would attack us, as they no longer had a reason to do so, but that the situation would escalate overall, that Kabul would be besieged and we would experience civil war-like conditions. Practically all the armed parties to the conflict were in Kabul – so one spark could lead to an escalation.
IR: And what happened next?
Zeino: In retrospect, the day the Taliban seized power seems surreal to me. It was a Sunday, which is the first day of the week in Afghanistan. So we had our team meeting and I was connected digitally. In the middle of the meeting, we received the news that the Taliban were moving into the city. Within a few hours they had taken the city without encountering any resistance, but panic and traffic chaos broke out. We decided that it would be safer for our team to stay in the office for the time being.
There was only one goal for us: keep our employees safe. However, it soon became clear that none of our employees would get out via the local forces procedure, that is: the German government’s aircraft. So we worked on a land evacuation. The Taliban already controlled all border crossings and roadblocks across the country. We therefore had to obtain the consent of the Taliban as well as authorisation from Pakistan. Another source of worry was our route through Nangarhar province, a stronghold of the regional branch of the so-called Islamic State. The social-democratic Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung also had local staff in Kabul and faced a similar situation. We therefore decided on a joint land evacuation. On 31 August our Afghan employees were at the border with Pakistan. We then picked them up there together with our colleagues from the Ebert-Stiftung. The last aircraft of the US troops left Afghanistan on 1 September. We had practically made it out before the big wave of refugees.
IR: The Afghanistan mission, which ended so hastily, has been the subject of a parliamentary Study Commission since summer 2022. As an Afghanistan expert, you are a member of this Commission. What exactly is your mandate?
Zeino: Firstly, it is important to understand that there is also a purely parliamentary committee of inquiry. This is not the same thing. The latter only looks at the last two years of the Afghanistan mission and the evacuation, whereas we look at the entire 20 years. We analyse the military and civilian aspects of the mission. In other words, we look at the actions and cooperation of all German ministries that played a role in Afghanistan - the Ministry of Defence, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Federal Foreign Office and the Ministry of the Interior. Our mission is to draw lessons for future foreign and crisis missions. In this sense, we are not just an “Afghanistan Commission”, but above all a Commission for crisis missions abroad.
IR: Who else is on the Commission?
Zeino: We are 22 members: 11 members of the Bundestag and 11 experts nominated by the parliamentary groups. The latter are experts from a wide range of backgrounds, including former generals of the Bundeswehr, academics, regional experts and former civilian emergency task forces. These different horizons of experience are important because a mission like the one in Afghanistan is so complex that no single person can cover all areas. In the Commission, we work on the basis of consensus. We try to agree on common positions. This is usually successful – if not, members or groups can also cast dissenting votes. The work is very focussed and fact-oriented. Interaction was very collegial, especially when it came to the Afghanistan reappraisal. In the second phase, we are now developing policy recommendations for Germany’s future international crisis missions.
IR: The exact translation of the Commission’s name would be: “Lessons from Afghanistan for Germany’s Future Networked Commitment”. What do we actually mean when we talk about “networked commitment” or a “networked approach”?
Zeino: Our basic understanding is that crises must be understood holistically. The central idea is: development is only viable if security and stability are guaranteed. And security and stability are only sustainable if there is a certain level of economic and social development. Crises are complex, and overcoming them requires comprehensive approaches that combine civilian and military elements. This is why various players and ministries are involved, which have to act in a “networked” manner. Our task in the Study Commission is to assess how our networked external action – that means: stabilisation, counter-terrorism, diplomacy, economic and development cooperation, and humanitarian aid – must function more effectively and interlock in future.
IR: Representatives of various political colours sit on the Commission. Those from the right-wing AfD, for example, have criticised that the Commission’s mandate is already misguided in the sense that it only addresses the “how” of future German foreign missions, but not the “whether”. What would you respond to this objection?
Zeino: First of all: that is of course a legitimate question. However, I do not have the impression that there is a member of the Commission who categorically says that foreign or crisis missions should never take place again. I think everyone realises that Germany cannot fully withdraw in the face of manifold crises.
But it is also clear: with the return of war to Europe and the Zeitenwende, there is much greater focus again on national and collective defence. This has consequences for the discussion on the organisation of possible crisis missions. We will not witness another comprehensive state-building and stabilisation mission like the one in Afghanistan in the foreseeable future. There is no demand for this, neither in Germany, nor internationally.
However, we should not fool ourselves. Crises don’t just go away. Developments in supposedly distant regions can also affect our security and prosperity. Regions of the world that we have never considered can suddenly become relevant to our security. Yet, the trend in current crisis missions is likely to be towards smaller stabilisation operations, comparable to the current mission in the Gulf of Aden to protect international shipping from attacks by the Islamist Houthi militia, for instance. Such missions have a clearly defined goal. In contrast, the extensive and highly ambitious multi-target missions, such as in Afghanistan, have largely failed in the past.
IR: The Study Commission has already dealt intensively with the Afghanistan mission. What are the key findings so far? What were the main problems with the mission?
Zeino: One major structural problem was certainly the lack of local ownership. Local ownership is the foundation for a successful foreign mission. Otherwise we will see, as happened in Afghanistan, that we are building up an aid economy and a dependent state that will collapse the day the international support ends. Afghanistan was almost entirely dependent on foreign support. The Afghan security forces, that is: the military and police, were almost 100 per cent externally financed and also dependent on US military capabilities. It is therefore not surprising that they were overrun within a few weeks and surrendered virtually without resistance when support was withdrawn.
Against this backdrop, another important question is absorption capacity, in other words: how sensibly can foreign funds actually be utilised locally. More money is not tantamount to more impact. On the contrary: at a certain point, more money can even have counter-productive effects. In Afghanistan, it was not only an unhealthy donor-recipient relationship that developed, but corruption also dramatically increased. Favouritism and misappropriation of public funds took place in all state institutions. Under the last Afghan government, there was also large-scale capital flight. We had failed to put a stop to this and demand accountability from the Afghan government, which in turn became a problem for that government’s credibility. The government and the general population became increasingly estranged from one another. In the end, the system collapsed within a few weeks.
In addition, the mission had many other structural weaknesses: from a lack of clarity of objectives, poor expectation management and struggles among German ministries, to inadequate international coordination and a collective diffusion of responsibility among the numerous donors and allies.
IR: What were the problems at operational level?
Zeino: One weakness in foreign missions is the short posting times of task forces, for example in the Bundeswehr, but also in other areas. A short posting time simply means that you will never get to grips with the reality on the ground. What is more, separate living environments and veritable information bubbles formed, in which the different actors constantly referred to and reaffirmed each other. I call this “information incest”. The result is inadequate assessments of the situation that do not do justice to the complexity of reality.
However, it must be added that there were also accurate situation reports and information passed on by our task forces. In some cases, these were glossed over for political reasons. In the last two years of the negotiation process, the stability of the government and the resilience of the Afghan security forces were overemphasised, for example for reasons of supposed solidarity with the Afghan government. Shortly before the seizure of power by the Taliban, the urgency of the situation was played down in external communications in order to prevent panic. The communication of situation reports was highly politicised and sensitive on all sides.
IR: Are there also things that you would say went well?
Zeino: Projects that worked well were those with local roots, projects in which foreign organisations took a backseat as much as possible and did not interfere with foreign values. This leads us to the oft-cited catchphrase “value-oriented foreign policy”. Values are indeed good and important for the foundation of foreign and development policy. The crux of the matter is how you do it and how you understand your role. Do we want to lecture other societies and export our own ideas? Or, can a mutual, respectful exchange arise? There is also a risk that the more we focus on certain target groups such as women and minorities and publicise this, the more we endanger them. The explicit promotion of these groups can then be seen locally as an expression of a “foreign agenda”.
That means it is all about the how – projects must offer the local population tangible added value and be tailored towards local needs. They should be culturally sensitive, taking the specific context into account. And they should place local ownership at the centre. Projects designed in this way were successful; a few still exist today under the Taliban. One example is development projects that have involved local tribal representatives on the ground, for example in the area of resource management and dealing with climate change in agriculture.
IR: If we go back in time to 2001, just before the start of the Afghanistan mission: knowing what we know today – what would we do differently?
Zeino: That is of course speculative. It is clear that the mission was associated with expectations that were far too high, goals that were far too ambitious and promises that were far too grand. In hindsight, it would probably have been better to concentrate on the fight against Al-Qaeda as opposed to pursuing such an ambitious state-building project without a defined end state. And there was also a relatively broad consensus on one point in the public hearings of the Study Commission: it was a cardinal error not to involve the Taliban in a negotiation or peace process from the outset after the fall of their regime in 2001. They were thought to be defeated and politically irrelevant. When the Taliban were able to regroup as an insurgent movement as early as 2003, we underestimated their power base and their support among the population.
IR: After all you have learnt from your work in the Commission and your time in Afghanistan, where do you think Germany’s greatest weaknesses lie when it comes to issues such as crisis response or strategic foresight?
Zeino: For too long, we have been hiding behind the United States or have outsourced our security to the US. Germany felt quite comfortable in the role of civilian power. We were reluctant to take responsibility for the more robust tasks.
This has also led to a glaring lack of strategic thinking and a strategic culture in our country. Geopolitical study programmes represent a niche in the German academic landscape. Small countries such as Norway and Sweden have leading think-tanks in this area, while Germany lags far behind. With the Zeitenwende, this has at least improved such that defence policy issues are being discussed more prominently in the media than before. Nevertheless, I am under the impression that the pressure to act has not yet reached everyone. It still needs to sink in that we must now make structural changes to become crisis-proof. This is certainly due to political and ideological characteristics that people do not leave behind so easily and which are expressed in a reflex-like scepticism towards assuming military responsibility. Even the expression “fit for war”, used by the German Defence Minister, is controversial for many. And, of course, it is also simply the case that changes take time because democratic processes take time.
IR: Other countries, including democracies, are doing better in this respect…
Zeino: Yes, many countries take a much more pragmatic approach to foreign and security policy. The US is certainly far ahead. For example, it has established a low-level political dialogue with the Taliban on the subject of combating terrorism and drugs. Even if they are not happy with the current situation, the neighbouring countries are in contact with the new regime in order to clarify issues relating to border security, trade and the movement of goods, or water and resource management. Germany, on the other hand, is even refusing political talks and contacts at the working level. Interest-led politics – not to be confused with power politics – has become increasingly marginalised in our country. We now have a very moralistic view of politics. We have to find the right balance again. Sometimes we don’t think in terms of results. So to say: that is the result we strive for and we will find a way to achieve it. I would like to see a realistic view of foreign policy. It will probably take an even greater crisis for this change to come about.
IR: All this sounds rather sceptical and not very encouraging. Is there anything you would say: that is a real strength for Germany in terms of foreign and development policy?
Zeino: We were a highly esteemed international partner for a long time. We do not have the same colonial past as other states, and we have not been accused of having hidden agendas. But for many years, I have seen this positive image crumble – even before the current war in Gaza. We have long encountered increasing resistance in development cooperation. Countries in which we operate are increasingly unwilling to let the West tell them how they should live and how they should develop. They don’t want that kind of interference. And unlike in the past, they now have a much wider choice of partners, whether in the security sector or in development cooperation – China, of course, but also countries such as India, Qatar or Turkey. The “donor markets” are much more diverse today. This makes a more pragmatic approach all the more necessary.
IR: You said earlier that Germany lacks a strategic culture and struggles to think in terms of results. What is more, many things take a very long time. One institutional change that is repeatedly proposed to make German foreign policy more stringent and quicker to act is the establishment of a so-called National Security Council. This was also discussed in the Study Commission. What do you think of such a council? And what would be its exact function?
Zeino: The idea behind it is right. We need a body with a sufficient mandate to coordinate cooperation between the various ministries in light of an overarching strategy, to develop situation analyses and scenarios and draw up decision papers. It would make sense to establish such a body, in which, as in the Study Commission, independent experts should also be represented, in the Chancellery. It is important that a National Security Council can act independently of day-to-day politics. The members of the Council must be able to make their assessments without political pressure. Situation analyses and crisis scenarios need to be free from political ideology and world view. Many countries have a security council. With its many ministries and decentralised government, our country currently lacks a place where information flow together. A National Security Council could be such a place, but it won’t solve all the problems.
IR: Speaking of information and situation assessment: what role can political foundations play in this context?
Zeino: I think the political foundations have a kind of seismograph function, which is becoming increasingly important for recognising change, and not just in crisis-stricken countries. We have the advantage of a global presence, while also being able to maintain contacts in the respective societies in a way our diplomatic missions can’t. Thanks to our local staff, we are deeply rooted in everyday local life and reach people in places where diplomats can no longer go. In times of political crisis or difficult local contexts, political foundations can perhaps still build a bridge, maintain contacts and, above all, reflect local perspectives and concerns back to Berlin. This is an essential function that is also recognised by the Study Commission.
The interview was conducted by Sören Soika and Fabian Wagener.
– translated from German –
Dr Ellinor Zeino is Head of the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung’s office in Turkey. From September 2018 to August 2021, she was Head of the foundation’s office in Afghanistan. Since September 2022, she has been a member of the German Bundestag’s Study Commission Lessons from Afghanistan for Germany’s Future Networked Commitment.
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