Afghanistan Watch: World Policy Journal piece

Below is an excerpt from a piece I wrote for this month's World Policy Journal. In it I argue that a too-narrow focus on counterinsurgency operations has undermined the mission in Afghanistan. The challenge today is recalibrating our approach to combine the right combination of military and non-military tools. You can download the full article here.

Buying Time in Afghanistan By Carl Robichaud, World Policy Journal, Fall 2007: Afghanistan is increasingly seen as Iraq in slow motion. It is not. The headlines of car bombs and casualty tolls echo each other, but mask deep differences in each society and in the dynamics of each insurgency. As Iraq has descended into civil war, Afghanistan’s center has held. The government remains weak, but power holders and the public show no appetite for a return to internecine fighting. The insurgency remains solvent because of safe havens across the border in Pakistan, but has been unable to expand upon its toehold in Afghanistan or offer a compelling alternative to the status quo. MORE

Afghanistan can still be salvaged, but continued donor commitment is not sufficient without a reformed strategic approach. Doctors sometimes refer to the period immediately after a multi-system failure as the “golden hour” during which intervention is especially consequential. Unfortunately, the United States and its allies missed this window in Afghanistan by pursuing a flawed approach with far too few resources.

This has all been well documented. What is less understood is the degree to which these mistakes are related to a central pattern: a narrow focus on counterinsurgency when a comprehensive approach to statebuilding was needed. This remains the dominant pattern of engagement today.

Virtually every major decision taken during the early years of the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan—from the choice to extensively co-opt warlords into counterinsurgency and government roles, to the criteria and methods by which development assistance was deployed, to the mode of engagement with Pakistan—was driven by the exigencies of a narrowly conceived counterinsurgency. While dozens of countries contributed to political, economic, and humanitarian goals—efforts touted by diplomats and heralded by the press—these efforts, even taken cumulatively, were but a meager fraction of what the U.S.-led military operation (known as Operation Enduring Freedom or OEF) was expending. From 2001 to 2005, according to the Congressional Research Service, the United States spent 11 times as much on military operations as it did on reconstruction, humanitarian aid, economic assistance, and training for the Afghan security forces combined.

The result has been a mission driven overwhelmingly by military considerations and solutions. The shape of the military deployment provided the contours of the intervention. The United States, wary of replicating the Soviet debacle and skeptical of working through the United Nations, sought an approach that minimized entanglements. But the choice to forgo a comprehensive security presence for a focused counterterrorism campaign became the central constraint for operating in post-Taliban Afghanistan, circumscribing not only American actions but those of the Afghan government and international non-governmental organizations.

* To read the rest of this article, download the pdf here.

This essay was published in the Fall issue of the World Policy Journal. Carl Robichaud directs Century’s Afghanistan Watch program.

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