By Steve Hynd
The Guardian's foreign affairs editor, Peter Beaumont, has seen his share of conflicts in Africa, the Balkans and the Middle East, including Iraq. Today, he writes of his misgivings about the counter-insurgency "clear, hold and build" plan which everyone from Petraeus and McChrystal on down are pinning their Afghan hopes on.
Clear:
The problem, however, with the notion of "clearing" is that it assumes that the Taliban are somehow "other" to the rest of the population, not least in the Pashtun south. But the reality, whether we like it or not, is that the social and cultural values represented by the Taliban have large areas of cross-over with substantial sections of the rest of Afghanistan. That logically means that what is being earmarked for excision represents often commonly shared values � a policy that risks inflaming the conflict rather than "pacifying" it.
...it ignores the social organisation, cohesion and strong kinship relationships in Afghanistan, as well as the reciprocal obligations between members of a tribally based society in the midst of conflict. Equally problematic are the assumptions that the policy of clearing is based on. For over the last few years, US and UK estimates have proved to be consistently wrong about the numbers, concentrations in locations and levels of local support for Taliban fighters � and why people are supporting them. There has been a failure to grasp even why individuals are fighting.
Hold:
After each campaign senior officials announce a victory in the face of a Taliban withdrawal to regroup elsewhere. And inevitably, the Taliban returns more determined, more knowledgeable about their enemy and with ever more effective weapons.
And given the increasingly wide distribution of the violence, the policy of holding requires ever greater troop levels, suggesting to the population an occupation ever more determined. And in doing so, it poses the risk of an ever more intensified resistance. Leading to the constantly unanswered questions � how long should that holding last and what conditions would allow for withdrawal?
Build:
If it is possible to imagine at least what "clear" and "hold" look like, the final part of the formula still remains almost impossible to visualise. While politicians and military alike talk about strengthening institutional capacity towards the purpose of building a strong, democratic state, it is hard to see what that state would look like, and how it should function. Eight years of largely wasted effort in Afghanistan have barely made an impact on its multiple conflicts and challenges � for which the coming elections will once again be presented as a fig leaf.
And what has that effort produced? A rump of a centralised state whose writ runs little further than Kabul, but has been unable to devolve power or resources � a critical requirement � to the provinces. It has permitted the emergence of a government based not on popular legitimacy but influence trading between the same people who once tore Afghanistan apart and have continued, on Karzai's watch, to run their own individual fiefdoms.
Lacking a realistic picture of what Afghanistan should look like, and how its political settlement might work, trying to build is as pointless as trying to clear and hold.
These are compelling arguments, which COIN advocates are busily ignoring. They are the bedrock of the case for withdrawal, for ending the occupation, and for a policy of "over the horizon" containment and reconstruction aid as set out by Rory Stewart, a British ex-soldier and diplomat who is Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights and Director of the Carr Center on Human Rights Policy at Harvard.
The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current level of 90,000 to far fewer � perhaps 20,000. In that case, two distinct objectives would remain for the international community: development and counter-terrorism. Neither would amount to the building of an Afghan state. If the West believed it essential to exclude al-Qaida from Afghanistan, then they could do it with special forces. (They have done it successfully since 2001 and could continue indefinitely, though the result has only been to move bin Laden across the border.) At the same time the West should provide generous development assistance � not only to keep consent for the counter-terrorism operations, but as an end in itself.
A reduction in troop numbers and a turn away from state-building should not mean total withdrawal: good projects could continue to be undertaken in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural development and in other areas favoured by development agencies. We should not control and cannot predict the future of Afghanistan. It may in the future become more violent, or find a decentralised equilibrium or a new national unity, but if its communities continue to want to work with us, we can, over 30 years, encourage the more positive trends in Afghan society and help to contain the more negative.
The problems in Afghanistan are greater than the just the Taliban. What needs to be addressed is what enables them in the first place. With rural poverty largely unchanged over the last decade, with official corruption endemic and nepotism controlling all positions at all levels of government and the almost unfettered production of opium that provides them income, no amount of military might is likely to shift them in the near future.
ReplyDeleteThe people find solutions to official corruption through the harsh realities of the Taliban in the more remote areas. They are provided a small income, $100 sufficient as a part time Taliban that will last them a month or two to plant a roadside bomb and then they can go back to being a farmer.
All the while, the international military are seen to be supporting the government and in turn, supporting the corruption that goes with it.
Instead of placing so much attention on the problem, they need to address the cause if long term solutions are to ever evolve.
Most aid programs in the country are a failure. Development results are measured by numerical deliverables, how many schools, how many miles of road or canals, not by the impact that the aid produces. Rural unemployment has largely not changed in a decade, infant mortality is ranked in the worst in the world, woman's health is ranked the same, national GDP is ranked almost last in the world even with billions flowing in each year, the balance of trade is 340 million going out, 4.8 billion coming in, the present government revenue is sufficient to support less than 25% of the government service.
Afghanistan needs a major revisit. I don't see the present government providing any solutions and simply propping it up I see even less so.
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteYou're on the spot in Kabul still? I'd agree with your summary as far as it goes, but also add that the Taliban often adda degree of governance that the Kabul elite cannot. Their courts are less bribeable and faster to deliver verdicts, Afghan on Afghan violence outwith that caused by the Taliban themselves is less, they do actually provide jobs some level of job creation etc. They're very harsh masters but for many better than no government at all.
Rory Stewart suggests that the West isn't really interested in solutions in any case.
The Afghan army cannot, like Pakistan�s, reject America�s attempt to define national security priorities; Afghan diplomats cannot mock our pronouncements. Karzai is widely criticised, but more than seven years after the invasion there is still no plausible alternative candidate; there aren�t even recognisable political parties.
...Afghanistan is starting from a very low base: 30 years of investment might allow its army, police, civil service and economy to approach the levels of Pakistan. But Osama bin Laden is still in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. He chooses to be there precisely because Pakistan can be more assertive in its state sovereignty than Afghanistan and restricts US operations. From a narrow (and harsh) US national security perspective, a poor failed state could be easier to handle than a more developed one: Yemen is less threatening than Iran, Somalia than Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan than Pakistan.
Regards, Steve