Success is not built on lies

Ron Neumann joined CSIS’s Gerry Hyman and Tony Cordesman this morning for a presentation of Gerry’s “Afghanistan after the Drawdown:  US Civilian Engagement in Afghanistan Post-2014.”

Gerry’s focus is on defining limited, feasible objectives and deploying the resources needed to achieve them after the US draws down its forces by the end of the year.  As things stand today, both we and the Afghans have too many objectives that are too ambitious.  We need to rethink and make difficult choices.  He proposes we focus on three critical areas:  security, governance and economic growth, in that order of priority.  Civilians should focus on governance and economic growth.

He lays out three scenarios:  optimistic, muddling through and pessimistic.  In all three, he throws health, education, infrastructure, civil society and women’s empowerment overboard.  He anticipates funding will decline in all the scenarios, but what can be achieved is obviously less difficult in the optimistic scenario and more difficult in the pessimistic scenario.  Muddling through is the best a reasonable observer would hope for.

But it won’t be easy.  The report says:

It is hard to see any scenario in which the A[fghan] N[ational] S[ecurity] F[orces] will maintain their ground let alone defeat the insurgency.

The war will continue in Afghanistan, even if the US is no longer a daily participant.  Prospects for a negotiated solution with the Taliban are minimal.  US forces at the level anticipated (below 9000) will be able to do little.  The security environment for civilians working on governance and the economy will be perilous.

Governance in Afghanistan “remains troubled.”  The government

is weak, ineffective, and accountable (if at all) mostly through payments and concessions to the demands of rapacious power-holders.  Corruption is rampant.  Public positions are…bought and sold….Performance is modest.  Public suspicion and animosity is high.

The centralized state that Karzai and the internationals have sought to impose lacks legitimacy with the people.  It does not reflect the complexity of social and political reality in Afghanistan.  The country needs more local governance, including through traditional communal mechanisms.  The presidential election, currently between its first and second rounds, represents the best near-term hope for improving the situation.

The Afghan economy, as Tony illustrated in his commentary, is currently dependent on the foreign military presence, aid, drugs and–this one surprised me–abundant rain.  Recent good growing seasons, he said, account for a good deal of the economic growth that AID and the State Department try to take credit for.  The CSIS report suggests that minerals are a likely future source of economic growth, but mining will not provide the numbers of jobs required (500,000 new workers enter the labor force each year).  Carpets are not going to soak up the rest.

Cordesman added his usual dose of well-documented negativity.  We face three threats in Afghanistan as elsewhere:   the enemy, the host government and ourselves.  The US government has done no decent planning.  The surge did not work.  Things are getting worse.  The much-vaunted improvements in education and life expectancy have little statistical basis.  Budget execution has been miserable.  Revenues are dropping.  The funding gap is growing.  The commitments made at the 2012 Tokyo conference have amounted to zero.  There is a big increase in opium cultivation.  Success is never built on lies.

Poor Ron.  He was presumably there to counter-balance Tony (Marc Grossman couldn’t make it due to illness).  He tried, with the kind of good-humored anecdata diplomats employ well:  Afghans are optimistic, election security was good, twice as many people voted as last time around, Kandahar is improved.  No, the war is not ending, just the heavy American participation.  But what we do still matters.  It is time for us to be steady, not make big strategic choices.*  Governance and economic growth are difficult.  They have long lead times.  We should not be too pessimistic about the ANSF.  They can hold territory.

That’s when I got a phone call.  I didn’t stay for the Q and A.  Too much of a downer already.  I went off to enjoy Syrian Opposition Coalition President Jarba.  Not a proper antidote, obviously.

*Ron Neumann informs me that I missed some key points.  He does not want avoid strategy indefinitely but to build it in consultation with next Afghan government and president when we can make reasonable estimation of we can expect from him. We also need to know what our troop decision will be. At that point we will have most elements necessary for a strategy. I don’t think that can be well done only on a scenario basis that excludes key participants and decisions.