The UN in Afghanistan, Twenty Years Since the U.S. Invasion of Iraq, Black Sea Grain Initiative, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, the mandate for the UN mission in Afghanistan is up for renewal. It's the 20th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. And, the fate of the Black Sea Grain Initiative hangs in the balance. It's March 16th, 2023 in time for The World Next Week. I'm Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins.

MCMAHON:
Well Carla, let's start with Afghanistan. Now the UN has been involved in Afghanistan for decades, often as a lifeline and certainly that has been the case over the ebb and flow of the Taliban's sway in Afghanistan. The current mission, the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan got underway after the U.S. had ousted the Taliban at the end of 2001, so early 2002. It's providing political and humanitarian support for the Afghan government and people. That government is now Taliban led again. So what sort of help can the UN provide Afghanistan at this juncture?

ROBBINS:
So it's interesting, Bob, I don't know if it's compassion fatigue or bandwidth overload with Ukraine, but it's remarkable how much this country's attention has moved on from Afghanistan. And there's been a debate over the renewal of the UN mission in Afghanistan and it's a reminder of how much Afghans, especially women and girls, need international help and how no one seems to have figured out how to get the Taliban ratchet back their really repressive policies. And since the Americans left and the Taliban returned to power, girls have been barred from schools above the primary level. Women's rights to work and travel outside their home have been severely restricted. They've even been banned from using parks and gyms and bathhouses. And in late December, the Taliban barred women from working with national and international NGOs, although after more than a hundred NGOs immediately suspended their operations, they somewhat softened that restriction.

And this is in a country where 20 million people, nearly half of the population faces acute levels of hunger. So what is UNAMA, it sounds like... Actually, is it soybeans? Or the United Nations Assistant Mission in Afghanistan? It's been there since March of 2002. And as you said, it has both a humanitarian mission and it helps coordinate billions of dollars in foreign aid, much of which is then distributed by agencies and NGOs. And that's why it mattered so much that they cut back and a political mission to promote democracy, human rights and political and institutional reform.

There's not a lot of the latter going on these days as you can imagine. Although the head of the UN mission, Roza Otunbayeva, she's Kyrgyz, can get in the Taliban's face from time to time. Earlier this month on International Women's Day, she said that confining half of the country's population to their homes in one of the world's largest humanitarian economic crisis is a colossal act of national self-harm. And I think that's a pretty good description of what's going on there.

But with so many diplomatic missions gone, because as so many of the countries have pulled out of Kabul, UNAMA provides an important political reporting function as well. So that's why this really needs to be renewed, the mandate. So why is there even a debate about it? There are the predictable divisions in the Security Council. The Russians and Chinese want to let the Taliban off the hook for sanctions or at least limit the political role, the UN mission. They don't want anybody in the Taliban's face, which is a pretty extraordinary thing. And the U.S. and Europe want to hold the Taliban's feet to the fire, especially for their repression of women and girls.

But interestingly, there's also been disagreements among the U.S. and its allies and even within the U.S. government and inside the NGO community about how best to pressure the Taliban. There've also been disagreements among the U.S. and its allies and within the NGO community about how best to pressure the Taliban. We know that the Taliban are raking off a good chunk of the aid for their supporters. So is it best to cut back on the aid to Afghanistan until they reverse their most repressive policies? Or stick it out because too many Afghans are too close to the edge?

So the vote is slated for today, Thursday, as we are recording and as of this morning there were two resolutions up for consideration. One would extend the mandate pretty much as is for another year and the other would extend it for eight months and ask the secretary-general to provide an assessment of the mandate to the council by mid-November. Providing that assessment allows the secretary-general to come back and pretty much say, "We want them to continue to press the Taliban, we want them to continue to do humanitarian work." But it also opens the door for the Russians and the Chinese to say, "Let's cut back on the political mission as well." So we will see what the council can agree on.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, you've basically laid it out, Carla, it is an exasperating situation and frustrating and just ultimately sad because it does not matter enough now that they're not seen as harboring and abiding security threat that they will get the attention that's needed. Other than that, there will be a pretty serious debate within the Security Council about the political role as you said, and it's hard to imagine whichever one is voted on whatever time period is voted on for the mission having much effect.

The Taliban seemed to be impervious to most pressure of this sort while still relying on the UN presence as a guardrail for just the maintenance of the country's basics, not as a guardrail for political propriety or anything like that. It does seem like it's still important to have that voice in their ears, so to speak. And so it will be interesting to see to what extent the debate comes forth today and the coming days about whether or not there's an international voice that in any way presses the Taliban or whether it's just sort of a little bit of the washing of the hands while still providing some humanitarian relief.

I keep on going back to the period that preceded the 9/11 attacks where the Taliban was pretty much isolated across the board. You actually had unusual unanimity in the Security Council and in neighboring states there were like two or three countries that recognized Taliban leadership at that time. They had done all sorts of odious things then including bombing the Bamiyan Buddhas, which was this incredible destruction of a sort of global historic treasure, cultural and otherwise. And yet they were unmoved and continued to harbor Al-Qaeda until Al-Qaeda mounted the audacious attacks at 9/11 and then history changed.

So here we are again then this time the Taliban faces a little bit of a threat on their own in terms of there's an ISIS affiliate that's in the country, but otherwise, as you say, Carla, it's hard to see anything changing unless you were seeing things in between the lines as you looked at this issue, Carla.

ROBBINS:
Well, I don't see if anything the Taliban when they came back and certainly this deal that they cut with the Trump administration and the one that the Biden administration said that they had to live by, which is why they went out in such a chaotic way. The Taliban said, "We've changed, we got it. We've come back at least to the 20th century if not the 21st century." But then month by month they've been increasingly repressive and rolling back more and more rights for women and girls and just as bad as it was before.

That said, they are hugely dependent on international aid, billions and billions and billions of dollars to keep that place together. And it is interesting that when the NGOs suspended activity, for a brief period of time the Taliban backed off. They didn't back off nationally, there's been deals cut and cut, cut, but they backed off nationally on women participating in healthcare and they've backed off in province by province in a variety of places because they know how dependent they are, which raises this really basic question, "How much do you press them?" At the same time, sanctions always end up punishing the entire country and this is a country that is living not close to the edge. This is a country that's over the edge. So I don't know what pressure you can put on them, but they are certainly subject to some pressure.

MCMAHON:
Yeah. And as you mentioned it, the area in particular that's most dispiriting is the way they have wound back and tried to erase women and girls from sort of public life in the country. This is the area where there had been real strides over the twenty years of the U.S. occupation and attempt to nation build in the country in terms of education, in terms of women's representation in government and so forth. And it's just being rolled back. It seems to be also the area though, where there's the loudest constituent outside the country to pressure the Taliban as other countries have kind of washed their hands of Afghanistan as a nation building project.

ROBBINS:
So it's essentially the one other thing that's going on here. And I was talking in the very beginning about how Americans seem to have totally moved on from this. There have been hearings, the start of hearings on the Hill about basically who lost Afghanistan. And it was pretty serious testimony from two service members who were at Kabul airport as the chaotic withdrawal was going on. One who was severely wounded in the ISIS explosion and the other one who was a medic who was trying to save lives there. And in these hearings I think that we really do... We haven't had an accounting for these decisions. Certainly there will be an accounting and a discussion about how we failed American service members on that day, but not a discussion about how we failed Afghanistan. And I think we really do have to have that conversation as well.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, again, going back to the UN period, I recall the UN doing its own sort of wrenching review of how the UN behaved in peacekeeping and in places like Afghanistan. And that kind of scrutiny I think would be valuable for the U.S. I don't expect to see it anytime soon in this sort of political environment we're in right now.

ROBBINS:
Which then takes us to transition to another, shall we say, depressing conversation, Bob. So let's stay somewhat in the region. Next week marks the twentieth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, another war we don't hear a lot about and U.S. troops pulled out of Iraq in 2011, although they are now more than 2000 troops back in country on an advise and assist mission, mainly supporting the fight against ISIS. Two decades later, I mean, what are some of the lasting consequences of this war? And have we learned anything more from Iraq than we did from Afghanistan?

MCMAHON:
That is a really good question and a question that is I think particularly resonating now, not just because there's this anniversary, it's already been percolating politically in the country in recent years, but the anniversary allows us with a big round number to kind of come up with some assessments. And our CFR publication Foreign Affairs has had some interesting pieces in the last week or so, including from our colleague Max Boot, examining the merits or the wisdom of trying to seek regime change in the name of democracy building as well as security in the region, and the folly of that really. And Max kind of goes into detail where his thinking was in supporting the invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein.

And there's another piece about equating what's called Iraq syndrome with Vietnam syndrome, which is basically the U.S. kind of keeping a very wary eye on any kind of military intervention to try to change conditions facing local governments or outright regime change. Certainly that's been the case, but it's something that's interesting that's developing within the Republican Party in the U.S. and we've had recent statements from presumed contender for the Republican nod for the presidency, Ron DeSantis about Ukraine, about it not being the U.S.' fight and that it's a territory dispute between two countries and so forth.

And there are polls showing Republicans are very split and their majority of them seem to be not in favor of supporting Ukraine to the extent the U.S. is at this point, which is again, this sign of wariness of U.S. entanglements abroad. Certainly the Trump administration felt that way, although there were, I think, really strong polls of difference within the Trump administration about things like supporting Ukraine, but definitely not military intervention. And there is certainly a lingering aspect in both major U.S. parties about what happened in Iraq in particular as being something the U.S. should not be getting involved in anytime soon again.

We should also look at what happened in Iraq itself. By many estimates, several hundred thousand Iraqi civilians were killed in and after the invasion, there's one estimate of as many as 350,000 or so civilians killed, devastation in many parts of the country, millions and millions of people displaced. The country is a shaky democracy, if we can say that at this point that is susceptible to foreign influence, certainly Iran. Turkey has actually bases in some northern parts of Iran, the Kurdish area that it mounts attacks from occasionally to preserve its interest. And so it's a weak country, but it must be said it's a country at this juncture, at the twenty-year juncture that seems to be trying to pull itself together and move ahead in a shaky fashion.

So I think the lessons are going to continue to resonate really loudly. And finally, I would say in Congress you have this new momentum behind the ending of the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, which was the enabling act that allowed the invasion to take place, all of which is a really stunning turn of events because again, going back in time, Carla, there was a great deal of support for the invasion in Congress as a security move and then the name Iraqi Freedom in the sense that the invasion was going to bring freedom. I think that's been really tarnished since then.

ROBBINS:
So two things I want to talk a little bit about the repeal of the AUMF, the Authorization Use of Military Force. Congress, of course, always asserts that ultimately it has the power to declare war, and presidents always say ultimately they have the power to make war. So there you have it, Congress, pat them on the head and we'll do whatever we want to do. How much does it matter if they repeal that?

MCMAHON:
I think it's an important gesture because it's been used actually as a justification for other actions since Iraq in terms of attacks on positions in Yemen, for example, and in Somalia and use of drones. So it doesn't have to be a boots on the ground operation. It can be a U.S. drones operated from a facility in Florida that still amounts to a justified use of force on security grounds. So it does give Congress some more levers as you rightly point out. It's an area where sometimes Congress makes these gestures and noises and the executive branch holds many of the cards. But at the end of the day, there still is a role for Congress. And I think this is an interesting moment where you're going to see both parties kind of really weighing this.

ROBBINS:
It is particularly interesting because you were talking about all the different places where we have gone under the mantle of the Iraq War and the war on terror, or the GWOT. Secretary Austin made a surprise visit to Iraq tweeting as he landed, "I'm here to reaffirm the U.S.-Iraq strategic partnership..." I love the fact that people communicate by tweet, "... as we move toward a more secure, stable and sovereign Iraq." And then he gave a speech heralding the success of the global coalition to defeat Daesh, which is the pejorative, of course, for ISIS. That fight is another one we're not paying a lot of attention to. Where does that stand? And are those American troops in Iraq? They're supposedly... They're on advised and assist mission, but is that really what they're doing? Pushing that fight against, still against ISIS remnants in Iraq and in Syria?

MCMAHON:
By many of the reports I've seen largely, yes, that's what their focus is. I do think there's concern that could be conflated to opposing Iranian backed elements that that would seek to try to destabilize at least the U.S. operation there. And back to the Daesh or ISIS threat. It's something that I think should be continued to be taken seriously. Even as, you know, Iraq has control roughly of its territory within its borders. Certainly the territory that ISIS had held for a while back in the 2015 period, 2014, 2015, which was stunning and including real major warfare in Mosul, a large Iraqi city. It was really alarming and it was really concerning. And I think it took a strong U.S. response in tandem with various Iraqi forces, including Iraqi Kurds who were on the front lines and really held their own Syrian Kurds as well, which became a whole other set of complicating factors involving the U.S. and its relationship with Turkey.

The defeat of ISIS holds in Syria and Iraq. But I don't think it can be ruled out that there are elements that could try to come back and take advantage of weakness in both places because Syria is still trying to consolidate under the Assad regime. Iraq is trying to hold itself together with its combination of Kurdish, Sunni, Shia factions. And so I think we're going to see a U.S. contingent there for a while. Carla, let's continue this conversation about war, which I'm sure is stirring many listeners.

ROBBINS:
Last week was so much more fun when we were talking about the Academy Awards.

MCMAHON:
Yes, we should talk about Russia and Ukraine, though, it's never far from the front pages, and we certainly heard some more on that front this past week. But in particular, there's something coming up that we need to keep our eye on, which is the Black Sea Grain Initiative. It's set to expire this Saturday, and this was an agreement passed last July that allows commercial food and fertilizer to be exported from Ukraine as an exception to Russia's blockade. There has been debate about mini extensions and so forth. Are we seeing a chance that this does not get renewed or is there a major sort of tussle going on right now?

ROBBINS:
There's definitely a major tussle going on. Russia was saying that they're willing to renew the deal this time, but only for sixty days. This deal really made a significant difference to world food prices and a significant difference to a hungry world. Before the war, Ukraine was one of the world's largest grain exporters, and these exports were choked off by Russia's blockade of Ukraine's Black Sea ports. And since the agreement was reached last summer, over 24 million tons of cargo, most of it corn and wheat, have gotten through.

Now, the majority of the shipments have gone to China, to Spain, to Turkey, but about a quarter of them have gone to the developing countries and after reaching record levels after the Russian invasion, the global food price index has been dropping steadily since the deal was struck. That is until the new deadline began to approach and countries began to scramble and be very, very greedy ahead of the March 18th deadline, Saudi Arabia doubled the amount of wheat originally was planning on buying; Algeria and Tunisia also upped the amount. So why are the Russians doing this? They say they aren't getting the benefits they were promised that they were promised a lifting of the ban on their food and fertilizer exports.

MCMAHON:
Which are also considerable, we should know. I think Russian and Ukraine together a huge chunk of that supply.

ROBBINS:
There are exemptions to Western sanctions on Russian agricultural goods and fertilizer, but Russian companies say they're having problems getting financing, insurance and shipping due to so-called over compliance by Western companies that just don't want to work with them either because they don't want to deal with the Russians or because they're afraid they're going to get punished because they don't get how far the sanctions go. The UN secretary-general has pledged to work to address the problem. So we'll see if this goes through for sixty days, but they're going to have to scramble to try to figure this one out because it really makes a big difference to roll food prices.

MCMAHON:
So the UN has an important role, Carla, we had heard in the past that Turkey played a big role, I don't know if that was overblown or not, but do we see a role over brokers like Turkey to help keep this going?

ROBBINS:
Certainly the Turkey did play a big role in this, and Turkey likes to play a big role in these things. I don't know about this right now. Erdoğan has a lot on his hands with the earthquakes, got a coming election and he really wants to look like he's an international player and wants to stay in the good graces of the West. But we'll have to see what the scramble looks like.

So there's another date coming up that's significant. The Russian Federation formally annex Crimea on March 18th, and the Saturday marks nine years for that. And that's something that... We always talk about how the war started last February for the Ukrainians the war started back in 2014 when the Russians launched attacks. And this formal annexation of Crimea is a very big deal in the Ukrainian's mind, and it is the one place where the U.S. and Ukraine part on war aims, and it's something to really watch itself.

Zelensky always talks about he's not going to stop fighting until he gets back every inch of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. And while the Americans and the Europeans say, "Well, you are never going to recognize Crimea as part of Russia." They also say that Zelensky is really overreaching on this one. And it is in good part because the Russians have occupied Crimea since 2014 and the place is completely fortified with air defenses and thousands of dug-in troops. And that is a fight that they really don't want the Ukrainians to think that they can push through to.

Right now, the Europeans talk publicly, somewhat and privately a lot, about how Zelensky needs to start thinking about his diplomatic off-ramp. The Americans don't talk that way because they don't think Putin is ready in any way, shape, or form to negotiate. But once you start talking about Crimea, then the Americans start talking about off-ramps.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Carla. And we had an incident this past week that underscored the concern about escalation and potentially U.S. role in particular going too far to support Ukraine. And that involved the downing of a U.S. drone over the Black Sea. Now, U.S. drones have flown over what they say is international space on the Black Sea area. Russia sees a lot of that space as either its own or of keen interest to its security concerns. And the U.S. released video just this morning actually of a Russian fighter plane releasing gasoline on the drone and then running into it and downing it. They're trying to find the drone. It seems like it's nestled pretty far down in the Black Sea. I'm not sure if they're going to be able to retrieve it, the Russians that is. And it's caused a reiteration of the U.S. policy in the region, but also I think some attempt to kind of calm things down.

It is the worst altercation that many have seen in decades between U.S. and Russian military forces. So it raises a lot of concerns and also, it puts a spotlight on what the boundaries of U.S. engagement are in the region, Carla. So I think Crimea for the points you raised is going to be something the Ukrainians can continue to cite as something they want to reclaim. But I don't think you're going to see a lot of pushing from even the other countries that see its annexation as illegal.

ROBBINS:
So that video is really striking and it really is sort of top gun and it is a drone, it's unmanned, but you keep thinking to yourself...the possibility of an error with human beings up there and how challenging it is to deconflict at all times. And yes, I don't think the Russians want to be in a direct confrontation with us, and we certainly don't want to be in a direct confrontation with them, but mistakes can be made and that's why war is so scary. And if you watch that thing, it's really a reminder is not an argument for backing away, but it is a reminder of the dangers here.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, absolutely. And so the Black Sea is getting a great deal of attention for both humanitarian and security reasons, and I think it's something that's getting a great deal of round the clock attention in the Pentagon among other places.

ROBBINS:
So, Bob, it's time to pivot and discuss our audience figure of the week, which listeners can vote on every Tuesday and Wednesday at CFR_org's Instagram story. This week, Bob, our audience selected, "SVB, Sixteenth Largest U.S. Bank, Collapses." SVB, of course, is Silicon Valley Bank, but are we looking at a bigger problem that goes far beyond Silicon Valley? Credit Suisse lost roughly a quarter of its value this week, and the Swiss Central Bank had to give it a $54 billion lifeline. Are we looking at a larger financial crisis?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, so fifteen years after the last major financial crisis caused shutters really around the world, we're certainly looking at strenuous attempts to avoid anything close to that, which is why you had the Biden administration taking emergency measures to give banks like SVB and Signature Bank special access to additional funding, and also the Swiss government doing the same for Credit Suisse for completely different reasons. They were in a vulnerable space. But it's raised a lot of questions about when governments should step in and what banks should be allowed to fail, if any, even mid-size banks, what is the role of inflation fighting and the rising interest rates set by the Federal Reserve in any of this. And also, will the Federal Reserve now kind of reign in its attempts to continue to raise interest rates to fight inflation because of the concern about this creating shudders in the banking industry. And as we talk, there's more turmoil going on in markets as has been for the last several days.

So there's a great deal of concern. There's a great deal of sharp language being exchanged about the way in which the government gets involved, in the way in which banks might have misbehaved or the way in which regulations might have been loosened to allow banks to maybe not do due diligence, Carla. It's another shaky week in a set of jitters that I don't think anyone expected to see coming into March.

ROBBINS:
There's also been this back and forth as there always is on the Hill about who's responsible for it politically. And there was, after the last financial crisis, an attempt to put new restrictions on banks to have them be a bigger cushion, to have stress tests and all of that. In the alleged tweaking that took place in the Trump administration, were they not one of these banks that the regulators were paying as much attention to?

MCMAHON:
As our colleague Sebastian Mallaby points out in a Washington Post op-ed piece, Silicon Valley Bank was kind of right at the heart of the tech bubble of 2021. It was, as he says, "... bound to experience a boom-bust cycle" in terms of... And it had seen its deposit based double as the bubble expanded and as the interest rates started to spike, the banks bond portfolio had been losing value. And so there were a great deal of concerns that were mounting about the ability of the bank to maintain solid funding posture and so forth.

Basically, a bank that some could argue should have been allowed to fail, to learn some lessons about how it had racked up deposits instead was seen as too vulnerable and too prone to contagion for other parts of the banking sector to be allowed to fail. And so as Sebastian raises in his piece, it's a worrisome moment because it seems like the government is now going to be expected to step in and any sort of banking crisis of this sort, which is not supposed to be what's supposed to happen.

And it's going to raise a whole bunch of questions about what sort of regulations should be set in this sector. And these are questions that you're right, it's become a political issue. We've seen Elizabeth Warren weighing in about the loosening of regulations. We've seen other lawmakers weigh in about the tech sector being a little bit too freewheeling, but I don't know whether the public is going to be able to, at the end of the day, allow this type of thing to occur again. And so I don't know where it leads us, Carla, but it's a troubling set of circumstances and it's really concerning to those who are trying to get a sense of where rates are going, where markets are going, and how safe their funds are in banks, even small ones.

ROBBINS:
And I get to use one of my truly favorite phrases all the time now, moral hazard.

MCMAHON:
Absolutely. This got moral hazard printed all over it. 

Well, that's our look at another turbulent world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz visits Japan. President Biden visits Canada. And two big events are marked next week, Muslims worldwide observe Ramadan and many central Asian states and Iran mark Nowruz, the first day of spring.

I'd also like to note before we roll the credits on this episode, we want to announce our fellow CFR podcast, Why It Matters, has launched its seventh season. If you're just stepping into the world of international relations or know someone who is, this is the show for you. Why It Matters this season as some important questions about issues like, has the world become more dangerous for journalists? Is nuclear proliferation able to be managed? And what is happening in the Arctic? Alongside CFR guests and experts host Gabrielle Sierra breaks down the facts so that you can understand what's really happening abroad. Why It Matters is bringing the world home to you, and it's available on all podcast platforms.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And leave us a review while you're at it, we really do appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation are listed on the podcast page of The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts or our guests, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, with Director of Podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. And special thanks to Sinet Adous and Rebecca Rottenberg for their research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying so long.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and be careful out there.