The approaches to conflict resolution and the ramifications of the Afghan conflict on the wider, international setting are interesting for a number of reasons. For one, Afghanistan represented one of the bloodiest confrontations of the Cold War. It involved massive expenditures, economic, military, and political, on all sides, and potential escalation, threatening to destabilise Afghanistan’s neighbours and hardening lines of conflict and confrontation. On the other hand, it confronted the Soviet Union with the spectre of continuing a war which could not be won, and led to the search for alternative solutions to conflict transformation, solutions which would affect the resolution of conflicts in a number of settings, not just Afghanistan.

The change in strategy put forth by Gorbachev and the Soviet Union in bringing an end to the war and their occupation of Afghanistan heralded the promise of a new era of international cooperation. The Geneva Accords over Afghanistan were characteristic of a more drastic change taking place on the world stage. Their failure, and the failure of all subsequent attempts to mediate a settlement in Afghanistan, point both to the inadequacies of Great Power mediation and imposed conflict resolution and to the disturbing developments brought about since the end of the Cold War. In addition, and perhaps more importantly, they outline the road and the challenges which lie ahead.

Like all of the conflicts looked at above, the war in Afghanistan involved (and continues to involve) extensive interference and intervention by outside parties. It’s ‘resolution’ (though not ultimately successful), and the process which led to it in the form of the Geneva Accords, was heralded as a success for the U.N., and opened the way for the ‘resolution’ of a number of other regional conflicts--from Nicaragua, El Salvador, Cambodia, Angola, to the Iran-Iraq War in the Middle East. It represented a rise in the authority and prestige of the world’s only truly global body with extensive experience and background in a number of different conflict settings around the world, and opened the way for great power cooperation rather than confrontation. In a February 1988 speech, Gorbachev recognised Afghanistan as virtually the first regional conflict to inspire the U.S. and U.S.S.R. to approach a cooperative settlement.

The impact of the Soviet Union’s involvement in Afghanistan on internal politics within the Soviet Union, something commonly overlooked by many analysts, played a vital role in breaking the mould of Brezhnev’s Moscow and opening the way to the new challenges and new ideas embodied in Gorbachev’s policies of reform and reconstruction. Just as the work of peace researchers and peace activists from the ’50s to the ’80s--brought into mainstream political and strategic discourse through their confirmation in the UN Palme Commission’s embrace of Mutual and Common Security--, had been vital in providing the intellectual foundations and inspiration for Gorbachev’s later reforms, the war in Afghanistan, more than any other conflict, served to discredit the established norms and values of great power rivalry and real politik which so characterised the Cold War. Cooperation, dialogue, and trust-building were put forth as alternatives to zero-sum rivalries and win-lose scenarios, or the more common reality of lose-lose in which both parties suffer, even the one claiming to have won.

The devastation of the war on the social and physical infrastructure of Afghanistan, leading to more than 1.5 million deaths over the last twenty years, was the price paid for ending the Cold War and the promise of a new age of international cooperation. The subsequent defeat of that promise is perhaps the greatest betrayal of the people of Afghanistan, and can be seen in the legacy of Afghanistan’s on-going civil war (as well as the other approaches to conflict resolution discussed above).

The impact of Afghanistan on the Soviet Union was vital. One need not look far in history to see that nearly every major internal policy change in Russia has been preceded by a defeat in war. Failure in the Crimean War served as a catalyst for the reforms of the 1860s, including the abolition of serfdom, and it was defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and virtual defeat and catastrophe in the First World War which led to the revolutions of 1905 and 1917. Similarly in Afghanistan, extensive Russian losses, in terms of a significant loss of international goodwill (particularly from the ‘Islamic’ and ‘developing’ world), extensive military and aid expenditures--representing a tremendous drain on much needed resources for the conversion of military to civilian economy and production of consumer goods--, and the high cost of human lives and worsening morale in the army discredited hawks and military hard-liners, and opened the way for more creative and flexible thinking. The failure of the 40th army to secure a full military victory served to discredit high-ranking political and military personnel risen to prestige under Brezhnev, and opened the way for a new generation more sympathetic to the goals and ideals of the new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.

As early as Oct. 17, 1985, in a Politburo meeting in Moscow, Gorbachev made clear his intention to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan, and had this message conveyed to the leadership of the PDPA in Kabul. This was stated even more emphatically by Gorbachev on July 20, 1987, when he called a high-level Afghan delegation to meet him face to face, telling them: “You had better be ready in twelve months because we are going whether you’re ready or not. You must strengthen your political base.” Already on November 13, 1986, the Politburo of the Soviet Union had secretly decided to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 1988 and encourage the replacement of the “communist” PDPA with a broader coalition, a regime of national reconciliation. Continued dedication to a military solution by Washington/Reagan and failure to perceive the sincerity behind Gorbachev’s attempts to transcend the mutually defeating rivalry of the Cold War, impeded resolution.

While representative of the gradual embrace of a new era of cooperative politics and international conflict resolution, the Geneva Accords also suffered from a number of significant failings which prevented their eventual realisation. The mediations were essentially conducted by parties foreign to the traditional and cultural social structures in Afghanistan, ie. the PDPA and the government of Pakistan, supported respectively by the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.. Failure to include representatives of the mujahideen or the resistance parties, or traditional and local leaders, discredited the U.N. within Afghanistan and left out the major force of opposition to the government in Kabul. Failure to confront or to present alternatives to the growing war economy, the lack of adequate support and involvement from people inside Afghanistan, and the continued flow of arms from abroad, all served to destabilise and eventually destroy what had been gained through Geneva.

The U.N. mediators’ dual-track approach, with the first track aimed towards resolution of the international dimensions of the dispute-the presence of Soviet troops, external aid to anti-government forces, and the flight of Afghan refugees to neighbouring countries-while the second, discreet track discussed the future Afghan government, failed to make adequate provisions for continued intransigence by both outside and internal parties to the conflict. The support structure and implementation process was extremely week, not least because it was based upon traditional, state-driven mediation techniques in a context in which the entire language and discourse of the state had little meaning in the traditional “western” sense. It was a means for the disentanglement of the Soviet Union and the United States, allowing them to direct their attention elsewhere. What it failed to do, however, was to generate the foundations for a lasting and viable alternative to the war by addressing the internal effects of the war on Afghan society and social relations.

As a treaty to end the Cold War and lay the foundations for peaceful cooperation and coexistence between the two superpowers it was a success. As an imposed solution to end the war in Afghanistan, it was a failure. While it removed the “cancerous” growth of the Afghan conflict from the lime-light of international affairs, it failed to remove it from the social and physical reality of Afghanistan. The war still continues, unabated. The promise heralded by Gorbachev’s reforms of Perestroika and Glasnost have been turned into a mockery, replaced instead with the resounding noise of crashing bombs and the leveling of threats, the tools of conflict resolution so often embraced by the world’s one remaining super power as it attempts to discipline ‘recalcitrant children’ and heads of state. Instead of an age of peace and cooperation on an international level, the last ten years of the twentieth century have seen the explosive rise of intra-state conflicts, together with rising levels of poverty, both within states, and internationally. There is no better example of this than Afghanistan.