Hidden Narratives in Afghanistan

Critics of the US/NATO mission in Afghanistan point to unintended consequences of military actions.  Their objections have merit if substantiating evidence exists.

One commonly heard allegation is that many attacks on US forces are the result of ordinary Afghans' frustrations with humiliating raids and cultural offenses.  Afghan President Hamid Karzai has made much of these claims and insisted that the US-Afghan security pact include severe restrictions on such raids.  The fact that the US agreed to this restriction shows that its basis has merit.  International news media reports of US troops raiding hospitals do not help America's image.  The rationale for Afghan forces' attacks on their international allies is difficult to pin down.  Analysis reveals a mix of cultural misunderstandings that escalate into perceived offenses, triggering many attacks.  If the most likely attackers are ethnic Pashtuns recruited into Afghan forces from border regions with Pakistan, US forces should focus fratricide prevention efforts on that specific population.

Drone strikes have been a continual point of contention between the US and its Af-Pak partners.  A drone is only as accurate as the intelligence feeding its controller.  Local sources who report faulty information on an HVT's whereabouts may be using US firepower to settle personal scores.  The pending force drawdown will severely limit the number of reliable sources US forces can successfully cultivate.

Human Rights Watch noted in 2001 that combatants employed landmines in Afghanistan long before US forces arrived.  Much of rural Afghanistan still contains mines that kill and main civilians.  The international community does its part to remove landmine hazards through the Halo Trust's de-mining efforts and other organizations.  The US should include funding for de-mining programs as part of its continued US support to Afghan rural development.

The predominant media narrative for the US intervention in Afghanistan is one of misunderstanding, miscalculation, and missed opportunities.  The US's enduring presence in Afghanistan must begin to tell a new narrative in 2014.  The story should lead with something other than interjections into tribal conflict.  

Daniel Green, "Reconstructing Afghanistan" At The MMC

Daniel Green, Soref Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, spoke recently at the Marines Memorial Club on "Reconstructing Afghanistan."  This was another lecture co-sponsored by the World Affairs Council, where I used to hold a membership until I got too busy with all of my Web blogging action.  I attended and took good notes.  My observations are in italics.

Mr. Green talked about his experiences on a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan, the stomping grounds for Hamid Karzai's early supporters.  His brief description of the topography tells us how hard it is to build infrastructure in parts of A-stan.  The population lives along green belts near rivers in a mostly desert province.  Check out pics online of terraced farms in parts of A-stan.  Then try to imagine the futility of building millions of dollars worth of roads and sewer systems to service an agricultural village whose annual economic productivity can probably be measured in the low five figures. 

Mr. Green mentioned that Karzai's status as head of the Popalzai tribe gave him credibility as a Durrani leader, but didn't go further into A-stan's history.  Here's the significance.  The Durrani Empire was probably Afghanistan's golden age, when it was expansive enough to hold both Persia and India at bay.  A legitimate Durrani lineage helps explain Karzai's staying power.  It also explains Mr. Green's comment that the Oruzgan governor was not necessarily into good governance but remained a Karzai ally.  Their politics aren't like ours, folks, and their standards for good governance are not what we would demand in the Anglo-West. 

Oruzgan province was mostly safe when Mr. Green's PRT arrived in 2005 but only seven months later the Taliban had stepped up activities with more sophisticated attacks.  More foreign fighters showed up to join the party.  The PRT had to shut down its good governance projects due to the violence.  The U.S. didn't understand the importance of village-level engagement and spent little developmental aid on small villages due to its orientation on conventional nation-state governance.  Maybe we should check out the book and movie versions of The Ugly American before we do any more nation-building in countries that don't function as nations. 

One thing Mr. Green wanted to emphasize is that the U.S. drawdown through 2014 is not at all synonymous with a complete departure.  The U.S. is staying in Afghanistan, in some form, for a very long time.  The Afghans interpret White House pronouncements as a departure, so being the survivors they are they will hedge their strategic bets.  Keep that in mind the next time you hear Hamid Karzai making friendly moves toward Iran or India.  He's being more pro-Afghanistan than anti-American and his moves play well with his home audience.  Remember also that the Taliban are primarily a Pashtun movement, and his own Pashtun lineage matters.  Karzai's public comments that may rile the U.S. will give him crucial credibility at the negotiating table if he is to ever successfully disarm the Taliban and re-orient them toward nonviolence.  We miss the nuances of this in the Western media.

America's bad strategic habits in foreign intervention are all to familiar to Mr. Green.  He noted how we tend to underestimate problems and later throw money and technology at them because that's what we understand.  He likes the AfPak Hands program and thinks it needs special management; it can be an antidote to the short-term thinking paradigm the U.S. uses to solve long-term problems.  I for one would love to become an AfPak Hand.  There's no way we can understand that region without a cadre of people dedicated to its permanent study.

The mention of village stability operations caught my attention in the lecture.  This is an effort by NATO/ISAF conventional forces to position themselves inside villages and build tribal-based defense forces around them.  This immediately reminded me of Army Special Forces Major Jim Gant's concept of Tribal Engagement Teams.  If you've never heard of it, read about it in the milblogosphere.  I had the chance to ask Mr. Green afterwards if village stability ops were based on Maj. Gant's ideas; he said the approach was heavily informed by Maj. Gant's work and is spreading rapidly.  Wow, we actually learned something and applied it.  America is number one!

Mr. Green obliquely mentioned that U.S. policy on Pakistan needs review because we are partially subsidizing covert wars against ourselves by supporting Pakistan.  The unspoken limitation of any substantive policy review is the dependence of U.S. forces on a ground line of communications (i.e., a logistics corridor) from the port of Karachi.  Any force footprint larger than roughly a division will need resupply from some direction other than the northern rail corridor, which is inefficient because changes in rail gauges through the 'Stans slow down railcar movement.  Reviewing our support for Pakistan means reducing our force structure so Pakistani logistics doesn't hold us hostage.  This is part of the rationale behind announcements of drawdowns until 2014.  I hear your frustration, Mr. Green. 

He framed a choice comment about fighting with allies very diplomatically.  NATO countries seem to prefer the political benefit of participation in ISAF over actual fighting.  Many NATO forces have immature COIN approaches, learned little from Iraq, and restrict their fighting with too many caveats.  Winston Churchill had a choice quote about fighting with allies, but he assumed allies would actually do some real fighting.  There's a running joke that ISAF stands for "I Saw America Fight."

Here's an observation on the interagency effort that's worth repeating.  Mr. Green was disappointed that USAID had devolved from a competent organization in the 1960s to having too few field agents, little COIN understanding, and a limited focus on contract monitoring.  This dovetailed into his comment about NGOs lacking accountability, staying in the capital too much, and undermining Afghan sovereignty.  This is the logical result of outsourcing government functions.  Governance is the core of an aid effort, and legitimacy comes from government-to-government contact.  Perhaps the U.S. Army should detail some civil affairs troops to USAID, because synching the CMOC doesn't seem to be working if our institutions are that weak.

BTW, there may be a better way to do opium mitigation.  Mr. Green said Marine forces are working this in Helmand province.  The U.S. should give those opium farmers some biodiesel reactors so they can turn poppies into fuel.  Granted, that's only a concept.  It won't be viable unless farmers could sell their biodiesel for more than what they'd make for a comparable opium crop. 

A couple more observations are worth repeating.  Al Qaeda sticks out like a sore thumb in A-stan and may fill the vacuum if the U.S. leaves completely.  The Arab Spring encourages reform without reliance upon Al Qaeda's extremism.  I wonder if Mr. Green knows of the Muslim Brotherhood's extensive network in the Middle East; there may not be much reform with them in charge after elections are held.  Embedding U.S. personnel 24/7 with Afghan forces is effective.  Local police are less educated and professional than the Afghan army.  Having an enduring U.S. ground presence is essential to avoid throwing away what we've gained from our dislodgement of the Taliban and Al Qaeda; ground forces develop intelligence on local personalities and safe havens that enable strike packages against high value targets.  That last comment brings out what a military force does in COIN and also reveals the military's limits.  It takes a lot of nation-building effort to get sufficient intel for even a limited strike on one bad guy's hideout.  The nation-building renders his hideout untenable by making local villages secure and prosperous.  That is why the U.S. will be in Afghanistan, in some fashion, for a long time.  Oh, yeah, there's a lot of very valuable minerals there too. 

Analysis of Peter Tomsen, "Rethinking American Policy In Afghanistan"

I recently had the privilege of hearing a lecture at the World Affairs Council of Northern California from Peter Tomsen, a former U.S. diplomat and expert on Afghanistan.  His lecture covered a wide swath of Afghan history and linked the U.S. counterinsurgency effort to the historical experiences of other empires that entered Afghanistan.  He did of course plug his book The Wars Of Afghanistan, but his lecture was far more than a summary of the book's chapters.

Mr. Tomsen argued that the U.S.'s entry into Afghanistan, like that of empires before, ignored the history of Afghanistan as a primarily tribal nation with a weak central government astride the "high ground" of Central Asia.  High ground is usually more valuable in a tactical sense than a strategic one, but the rationale for a foreign presence in Afghanistan is more nuanced.  The country was a waystation on the Silk Road trade routes between China and the West, and the Khyber Pass has long been the gateway for imperial invasions (first Indian, then British) into Central Asia. 

Afghanistan's only real period of regional hegemony, the Durrani Empire, existed in the interregnum between the decline of India's Mogul empire and the rise of Britain and Russia.  I found it interesting that Mr. Tomsen didn't mention that Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's President since the American invasion, is from a tribe that traces its lineage to the Durrani ruling family.  That is doubtless one of the sources for his legitimacy.   

At any rate, Mr. Tomsen dropped some interesting tidbits:
- U.S. outsourcing its Afghan policy to Pakistan after the Soviet withdrawal was a big mistake. 
- All three major Taliban fronts in Afghanistan - the Quetta Shura, the Haqqani network, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's faction - are run by the Pakistani ISI. 
- Over 80% of the suicide bombers in Afghanistan are Pakistani!
- Iran meddles in Afghanistan; it seeks a broader regional role to counter potential encirclement by Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.
- China likes using Pakistan as a hedge against India and would not necessarily endorse any U.S. containment of Pakistani Islamic militancy, even if that risked stirring up Islamic separatists in its own "East Turkestan."

His take on Pakistan's perception of Afghanistan as a source of strategic depth in a potential fight against India is an invaluable insight for Americans trying to understand the "Af-Pak" equation.  Pakistan viewed India's diplomatic opening to Afghanistan with suspicion; this in turn stoked further Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan to thwart encirclement by India.  I have a pet thesis that compares Pakistan to Prussia in light of a major strategic similarity:  Both countries' militarized elites exported instability into their respective "greater abroads" to compensate for their lack of internal unity. 

My interpretation of Mr. Tomsen's arguments includes the following:
- The American emphasis on building strong national Afghan institutions like a central government and modern army has upset the historical equilibrium between Kabul and the countryside.
- Leaning hard on Pakistan to clean up its act and pursue terrorists is impossible as long as the primary line of communication (LOC) for NATO/ISAF's force runs through Karachi.  The so-called "northern corridor" through the 'stans is insufficient for handling military logistics due to the different rail gauges in use.  NATO and the U.S. thus have little alternative but to rely upon ground logistics delivered from the port of Karachi through Pakistan by road, with all the pilferage and bribery that entails. 
- Iran's dispatch of warships through the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean was more than a strategic breakout directed against Israel.  It could also have sent a message to Central Asian rivals. 
- Pakistan will keep playing the U.S. for a fool as long as it has China as a back-up hegemon.  The only thing that would radically change this equation in the U.S.'s favor would be a clear strategic tilt toward India.  A shift on that scale would really spook Beijing but would only be viable after a large U.S. drawdown eliminates the need for a LOC through Pakistan. 

Mr. Tomsen eventually argued for taking a long-term view in American foreign policy toward the region.  I'll offer my own proposed policy approach.  A stable Afghanistan would be open for business in both continental trade and local resource exploration.  It remains to be seen whether the U.S. estimates of trillion-dollar metal deposits are recoverable, as the aerial electromagnetic surveys used to derive those estimates are not nearly as accurate as multiple drill core samples from likely veins.  Stepping back from involvement in Kabul-centric nation-building will help restore Afghanistan's traditional equilibrium and give us more flexibility in dealing with the country's regional power-brokers (read "warlords" if you will, but that's how business gets done with the leading tribes).  If the U.S. wants to forestall Chinese dominance of Afghan mineral resources, we must make deals now with tribal and regional leaders who will be around regardless of who governs in Kabul.