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A (very) long war in Afghanistan

Fred and Kim Kagan offer today in the Washington Post a vigorous defense of the Obama Administration’s strategy in Afghanistan. They argue that there have been significant military gains, that progress can continue even without full Pakistani cooperation against Al Qaeda and Taliban safe havens in Quetta and Waziristan, and that we have to worry not only about military success but also about “stability and legitimacy of the political order” at the local level when transitioning security responsibilities to the Afghans.  They rightly see efforts to strengthen local and central governance not as “mission creep” but as necessary components of the overall counter-insurgency strategy. They also argue that we need an Afghanistan that will continue to host American forces on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, presumably for as long as there is a threat from Pakistan-based enemies.

Let’s be clear:  this is a formula for an even longer war than currently planned, one that the President is not fully committed to, as the Kagans implicitly recognize.  We are very far from Afghanistan acquiring the kind of local and central governance required–we have barely begun, even after nine long years of war, to think about strengthening provincial governance, and the national government can at best be described as spotty.  It will be more than several years before many Afghan provincial governments, and important Kabul ministries, will be able to prioritize and execute projects that benefit citizens in ways that make them think twice before helping a cousin who happens to be in league with the Taliban or a local drug/war lord.

The problem as I see it is that we have deployed nowhere near the civilian capabilities required to help the Afghans establish even half decent governance in areas the Taliban contest.  The problem is not money.  Andrew Exum has made it eminently clear that there is too much money flowing, often into the wrong pockets, at the moment. The problem is the one the UN has been studying lately: we don’t have enough civilians with the talents, training and protection required to enable them to help build institutions.

Afghanistan is a particularly difficult state-building environment, because of widespread illiteracy and poverty, the unsafe and insecure environment, miserable infrastructure and deeply entrenched poppy economy.

Ahmed Rashid usefully reminds us

…the key question for General Petraeus is not how many Taliban he kills, but whether the bare bones of an Afghan state—army, police, bureaucracy—which have been neglected so badly in the past nine years, can be set up by 2014. Moreover, can Afghan leaders, including the President, win the trust of a people who have put up with insecurity, gross corruption, and poor governance for many years?

Moreover, keeping U.S. troops along the Durand line indefinitely could make the task even more difficult, as it provides a rallying point for those Afghans who resent the American presence (not to mention that it might be as readily outflanked in Yemen and Somalia as the Maginot line was in Belgium).  Only if we are willing to face up to the substantial human resources required to meet the state-building challenge should we try.  The alternative, a deal with the Taliban, starts looking good if you think we don’t have what it takes.

PS:  To their credit, and the Washington Post’s, the Kagans are described in today’s paper as “independent military analysts who have conducted research for commanders in Afghanistan.” Precisely what this means is unclear, but it is certainly better than the past practice of not mentioning when op/ed writers have worked for the military, as many have done.  It is hard to find a Washington thinktanker who hasn’t accepted at least a trip to Iraq or Afghanistan funded by the Defense Department (present company excepted–but caveat emptor–I’ve been at least 10 times to Baghdad and once to Kabul on tickets provided by the United States Institute of Peace, sometimes bought with money provided by the State Department).

No real Afpak strategy review

Okay, now I get it.  There is nothing more than the five-page “overview” being released from the Administration’s Afpak strategy review.

This is disreputable, even if it tells us more than any 100-page tome about how badly things are going.  Yes, there is a fairly recent progress report to the Congress (bless them for requiring it!), and the intel materials have leaked all over the New York Times.  But to give the public nothing on the legitimacy of the Karzai government?  Nothing on negotiations with the Taliban?  Precious little on Pakistan’s support, or lack of support, for going after Al Qaeda and the Taliban?  Nothing on progress in particular communities in promoting local governance and economic development?

Silence tells us most of what we need to know.  But what should be said about those who commented yesterday on the five pages as if it was the whole thing?  Maybe nothing, as that too speaks for itself.

Afghanistan: love it and leave it

National Security Network Executive Director Heather Hurlburt and General Paul Eaton in Politico today offer a very sensible eight points of broad agreement among recent reports on Afghanistan. As I was about to have a look through them to determine where they agreed and disagreed, I find this timely and useful.

Meanwhile, the New York Times is busy leading the effort to make news of supposed differences between the intelligence community and the military on how successful the Afghanistan “surge” is. This is silly, as the author of the article acknowledges in the fine print:  the cut-off date for the intel assessment is earlier than for the military assessment, and in any event intel analysts are paid to anticipate problems while military people are paid to solve them.

Eaton and Hurlburt (caveat emptor:  she is married to my first cousin once removed) are playing the better game, even if they fail to deal with my favorite question:  is Karzai worth it?  Their eight points add up to this:  however successful the military “surge,” we need to negotiate a way out (with all deliberate speed, as the Supreme Court would say) with support from the neighbors, having done what we can to improve local governance, revive the economy and train the Afghan security forces, thus leaving behind a regime that will not harbor transnational terrorists.

They talk about “political progress,” but it is unclear what they mean by it.  Maybe this is code for President Karzai cleaning up his, and his government’s act, or maybe it is progress in the reconciliation department, which is the label generally given to efforts to bring the Taliban in from the cold.  Or maybe it also covers efforts to get Pakistan to take stronger action against the Taliban.  Hurlburt and Eaton accept the judgment of several of the reports that failure to make progress should lead to quicker withdrawal and conversion to a counter-terrorist (i.e. kill the terrorists from afar) rather than a counter-insurgency (i.e. protect and serve the population up close) effort.

At this point, I don’t see any chance that the Administration will change its timeline, which will begin turnover of security responsibilities to the Afghans next July and aim to complete the process by the end of 2014.  The NATO decision boxed us in to that schedule, which is what the Administration presumably wanted.  It seems to have had the great virtue of removing Afghanistan from the domestic political debate, which is no place for rational discourse and decisionmaking these days.

What we could use now–tomorrow’s publication of the Administration “review” would be a good moment to start–is an honest assessment of where we stand on the main factors to which Hurlburt and Eaton point:  negotiations with the Taliban, cooperation by Afghanistan’s neighbors, strengthening of local governance and the economy, buildup of the Afghan security forces.  A bit on why Karzai merits $120 billion per year and the lives of American soldiers and civilians would be useful too.