Human Security over Military Security in Afghanistan?

We are living in such a globalized world that even the most unrelated of issues impact each dramatically. Today I am talking about the war in Afghanistan, the food crisis, and the 2008 US presidential election.

According to a BBC News article, Children in the Bamiyan province are suffering from severe malnutrition and the resources to help them are few. The hospital in Bamiyan receives no money from the Afghan government and must rely on funding from the Aga Khan Foundation. But the money it does receive is not enough to deal with the pressing needs of the malnourished. While $100 million a day is being spent on the war, only $7 million is being spent on the Afghan people. “Across the country a food crisis is looming just as the insurgency is spreading,” says Damian Grammaticas, the BBC News correpsondent.

Both McCain and Obama have stressed their committment to the war in Afghanistan as a top foreign policy priority, claiming they know how to get better results for security. Grammaticas questions whether it is more military security that is needed, or is an approach to “human security” the one that will have the greatest ripple effect?

So what is this human security? As much as I hate to direct anybody to a Wikipedia page as a reference, the page gives a good breakdown of the basic ideas and has a lot of great references. When we talk about threats to human security, we’re talking about threats in seven major areas: economic security, food security, health security, environmental security, personal security, community security, and political security.

The Grammaticas article focuses particularly on food security, which is also closely linked to health and environmental security. Of the impact of drought in the region he says:

To reach one of the parts of Bamiyan worst affected by drought we drove for two and a half hours deep into the central highlands.

The parched Saighan valley should have a river flowing through it

The province is home to 380,000 people spread across 14,000 sq km of mountains, but it has just 3km of tarred road.

Ours was a bone-shaking drive over a high mountain pass. For some of the way a dry riverbed doubled as a rough track.

The Saighan valley should have a river flowing through it. It is barren and parched. The earth is rock-solid and dry. The hills all around are like a moonscape, eroded away so you can see the layers of rock in browns and oranges, and greys and pinks.

Syed Shah, who is 80, and his brother Abdul Mukim showed me their fields. The two men say they have never seen it so bad.

They have 30 members of their family to feed, and they have lost three-quarters of their wheat crop.

“We have seen a little foreign aid here, but nothing very much,” Abdul told me. “Now, because of the drought everyone is just thinking about how they can survive the winter.”

One hand pump to supply water is the only outside help their village has had out of all the billions of dollars spent on Afghanistan. And now the brothers told me the Taleban are back and active in the neighbouring district.

What is the answer to all this then? The response Grammaticas received from a former Afghan finance minister was investment and a more people-focused strategy on the part of the US:

The provincial government has no grain stockpiled for the winter months

“You need to win the people over if you want to break the back of an insurgency. That approach is yet to be embraced and practically applied in Afghanistan,” he said.

“So what would you say to the next US president?” I asked him.

“I would say Mr President if we win the people, we will win this conflict.

“If we focus on the wrong objective, body count, number of insurgents who are killed, bombardment, kinetic action, it is not going to be the answer,” he said.