UN recruits sanctions team for Afghanistan
ISN, Mon 6 Aug 2001

United Nations officials this week began recruiting independent experts who will oversee a new sanctions enforcement regime against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban. The plan will rely on tough border policing by Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors. But efforts to get these states to cooperate pose a serious challenge to UN experts. Afghanistan's borders have been notoriously difficult for its neighbors to police, with drugs and arms regularly crossing in each direction. But a new UN Security Council resolution approved this week calls on Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors to assert greater control over areas bordering Taliban-ruled regions, which comprise more than 90 per cent of the country. The Security Council has authorized what it calls a "sanctions enforcement support team" to provide training in customs, border security, and counterterrorism. The plan aims to enforce a UN arms embargo against the Taliban, which is accused of harboring alleged terrorist Osama bin Laden and supporting terrorist training camps. But it would depend on unprecedented cooperation by Afghanistan's Central Asian neighbors, some of whom support opposing sides in the Afghan civil war. Pakistan, the Taliban's biggest supporter, has pledged to cooperate although it has repeatedly objected to the Security Council's one-sided arms embargo. A group of experts who recommended setting up the sanctions enforcement team noted in a report to the council in May that the neighboring Central Asian states do not cooperate well on border controls. It said this was due to political disagreements - between Pakistan and Iran in particular - as well as lack of coordination between their security organs. Analysts have pointed to Afghanistan's porous border with Tajikistan, where major drug trafficking occurs, as a major obstacle. "There's a very substantial Russian army presence on the border and yet they themselves do not claim that they can control that border, with tens of thousands of troops. So it's open to doubt how much any UN group of experts could actually influence a change in that," one observer said. David Malone, from the International Peace Academy. said sanctions are rarely able to completely seal borders. He believes weapons will continue to flow into Afghanistan, where an estimated 10 million small arms are in circulation. "I just think (the sanctions policy) is the wrong instrument for the problems in Afghanistan, and I think it's much too much linked to Osama bin Laden and the American-Russian obsession with terrorism." (RFE/RL)