Discord among the HUNSC concerning Afghanistan

The Historical Security Council tackles the humanitarian and extremist issues that Afghanistan is currently facing. Wanting to fulfill its sole purpose of maintaining international peace and security, the council faces an extremely complex and fragile situation in Afghanistan. 

During the council's second session of the day, it is working on different approaches in order to find a solution to improve Afghanistan's current situation. However, the different nations have widely splitting opinions about what matter has to be prioritized. While the US stresses the importance of a nation wide education reform in order to deradicalise the population, many other council members prioritize life saving measures of the Afghan population. 

In addition, the concern rose about the ability of the Afghan government to stem a reformed educational system as its stability is being questioned. Many council members shared the opinion that it would be senseless to talk about education when the Afghan population is facing acute problems such as acute hunger as well as lack of water and electricity. That is why security issues need to be discussed first. To quote East Germany: “What are you going to feed the Afghan people? Books?”.

Afghanistan’s government itself stresses that first lives have to be saved in order to improve them. However, the council has to find solutions in order to control the extremist situation the country is facing. That is why one agenda point of this conference is the topic of establishing long lasting peace in Afghanistan. The HUNSC’s proposal includes achieving a ceasefire between the Afghan government and the opposing extremist groups such as the Mujahideen. Once that is implemented they will be given time to accept this peace proposal. Since there are 50 seats in the Afghan government that are reserved for an additional governing force, the goal is to give opposition groups the opportunity to be part of the government. In that way they will have a voice in the government but not govern alone. The council is optimistic that its proposal might bring peace one step closer to Afghanistan.