A disheartening account of Afghan Police

New York Times reporter C.J. Chivers has a disheartening account of the state of Afghan police. He finds overworked and grossly underpaid and under-equipped policemen on the verge of mutinying, in charge of enormous swaths of land.

In its simplest distillation, the strategy driving this American-led war is straightforward. Western troops are an interim force to provide security, spur development and mentor indigenous security forces until the Afghan leadership can govern alone.

But in the past two years, the insurgency has blossomed, making control of many provinces a contest. The Afghan Army, under American tutelage, has made considerable progress, American officers say.

The police lag far behind. Lightly equipped, marginally trained, undermined by corruption and poor discipline, they remain weak, though their expected role is daunting. They are not asked merely to police a country that lacks the rule of law. They are being used to fight a war.

Meanwhile, former Ambassador to Afghanistan Ronald E. Neumann is recommending a draft to build up the Afghan National Army.

Overcoming the Obstacles to Establishing a Democratic State in Afghanistan

Col. Dennis Young of the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College adds to the chorus of voices urging the Bush administration to divert troops, effort and financial aid to Afghanistan. He also suggests five adjustments to current ISAF and U.S. strategies:

A roundup from December

Here’s a short news roundup of significant developments in or concerning Afghanistan from December:

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
The House approved the 2008 defense authorization bill, which in addition to providing $189.4 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, creates an office for a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) and a bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting for more oversight of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The SIGAR is a much-needed agency to track down corruption and mismanagement in Afghanistan, much as its equivalent has done in Iraq. With this extra level of oversight and ensuring that reconstruction aid is invested properly, it will hopefully help get Afghan reconstruction back on track.

Brown's Plan for Afghanistan
UK prime minister Gordon Brown outlined his new plan for Afghanistan that included increasing aid by £450 million and tough benchmarks for Afghan security forces, encouraging Afghans to take responsibility for their own security.

Brown told MPs that aid would be given for "high impact" projects such as better roads, power supplies and clean water, as well as loans for small businesses and funding for civic groups and community development projects to improve local and national government.

You can read a transcript of Brown’s plan here. His emphasis on Afghans taking “ownership” and responsibility for their future and security is important.

In testimony before the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on National Security and Defence on Dec. 10, RAND analyst Seth Jones explained the fast growth of the Afghan insurgency, thusly:

“The answer is simple,” one senior Afghan government official told me in October 2007. “The people are losing faith in the government. Our security forces cannot protect local villages, and our institutions struggle to deliver basic services.”

He testified that people are turning to the Taliban, not because they believe in extremism but because they are losing patience with the government’s inefficacy and corruption.

Indeed, the primary challenge in Afghanistan is one of governance. Governance includes the set of institutions by which authority in a country is exercised.11 It involves the government’s ability at the national or sub-national level to establish law and order, effectively manage resources, and implement sound policies. An insurgency reflects a process of alternative state building, where insurgents compete to provide governance to the population. Insurgents take advantage of weak governance and assume state-like functions. They tax and set up administrative structures for the population they control.

A Key Test for the Afghan National Army
The Afghan National Army seems to have proven itself in a key test last month – retaking the small dusty, but strategic toehold town of Musa Qala from the Taliban. Its symbolism was tied mainly to the fact that it was the only significant town controlled by the Taliban. As Guardian reporter Jason Burke put it, “For both sides, the struggle for the small country town represents in microcosm the battle for the country as a whole.”

But the offensive also spotlights the fact that despite its success, the Afghan National Army remains severely under-equipped and under-helped.

While U.S. officials cite the achievements of the Afghan military, the force has historically suffered from high attrition rates. It has also lacked sufficient military aid and trainers, and has been hobbled by old weaponry, Afghan defense officials say.

Video: Interview with Gen. McNeill, Rashid, MacDonald

Yesterday, the NewsHour with Jim Leherer ran a good segment on Afghanistan featuring commentary by Gen. Dan McNeill, Ahmed Rashid, and Norine MacDonald (from Senlis Council). The transcript, along with streaming video, is available here.

Thinking like an insurgent: the Army's new academy

The Wall St Journal has a front page, 2,300 word piece this morning on the U.S. Army's "Afghanistan Counterinsurgency Academy", which was established this April to improve tactics. Last year the Army unveiled a new counterinsurgency doctrine, but its dissemination has been slow; when one of its authors, Lt. Col. John Nagl went to Afghanistan he saw "uneven understanding of counterinsurgency principles."

Capt. Dan Helmer, the 26-year old Rhode Scholar who set up the 'school' in six weeks notes that "We're trying to win an argument that supporting the government is worth risking your life for." That's a tough sell right now, and requires an approach which is 80% military and 20% political, according to Helmer. 

The Army says they've made great progress this year in giving troops Afghanistan-specific training before deployment, but current deployment patterns aren't providing enough time for learning. "There isn't enough time between being told that they're going and getting them through the training," says Lou Gelling, deputy commander of the Army's battle command training program. "That's the reality of it." Sounds like a lot of the training right now is supplemental, not comprehensive: five day courses for 60 soldiers at a time in a makeshift classroom.

As usual, one of the central problems ties back to Afghanistan's status as America's "second war":

The counterinsurgency training sometimes seems targeted more toward Iraq, according to Capt. Helmer and Col. Nagl. Of the 90 men under Col. Nagl's command, almost all are Iraq veterans and just one has served in Afghanistan. Even Capt. Helmer's orders to Afghanistan included the mistaken, but telling, instruction to take a course in Arabic -- a language spoken in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan.

The article is subscriber only content, but here are a few excerpts:

In Counterinsurgency Class, Soldiers Think Like Taliban, Wall Street Journal, By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS, Nov 30, KABUL:A natural-born insurgent, Sgt. First Class Jacob Stockdill was brimming with malicious suggestions when a group of American soldiers and Afghan security men sat down last month to plot their own defeat. MORE

Suicide bomb hits governor's compound in Nimruz; another averted in Kabul

Another fatal suicide attack in a province that rarely sees them (Nimruz).

Note also the clip on a Pakistani suicide bomber that stopped in Kabul as he attempted to board a bus filled with military trainers. Disaster was averted because of the quick thinking of a guard. MORE

Gordon Adams on the Pentagon-Pakistan "slush fund"

Gordon Adams has a great post on Democracy Arsenal which takes a closer look at Pentagon payments to Pakistan (which are only now coming under scrutiny in congress). Here's a clip (Note: there's more on DoD's usurpation of roles once performed by State in Adam's Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article...):

The Los Angeles Times of November 18, 2007 reports that the Pentagon is looking into Coalition Support payments to Pakistan (of which $5.3 b have been made to date), because documentation of the Pakistani spending supposedly being reimbursed is too thin...One unnamed official, who tracks these payments, told the LA Times: “"Backdoor subsidies is what it can look like to some more skeptical observers, because there hasn't been good oversight and the amounts involved have been so great.  There is suspicion that it's a slush fund."

No kidding! Count me a “skeptical observer.”  So now the Pentagon, which has no expertise at making foreign assistance payments directly to other governments or at tracking them after they are made, are going to play catch-up ball with this program. MORE

Sarah Chayes on Arghandab, the Taliban, and GoA meddling

Sarah Chayes has a piece today in the Washington Post in which she recalls, from her front row seat, the Taliban incursion into Arghandab in the wake of Mullah Naqib's heart attack.

Her verdict is deeply troubling: despite a successful coalition counterattack, the Taliban operation  "was a deft, successful psychological operations action":

It said that, despite the likelihood that they would attack after the death of Mullah Naqib, no obstacle was thrown up to oppose them, and they were able to walk into the district. The targeting of the mullah's house was a deliberate affront. It said: "You see, o men of no honor? You can't even protect his house. You are nothing now." The sum of these messages was aimed at the ordinary people who are the prize in any insurgency: Our encroachment is inevitable, the Taliban said. You should align yourselves with the inevitable.

Equally troubling is the Government of Afghanistan's response. Immediately after Mullah Naqib's death, President Karzai, along with his two brothers and the governor of Kandahar, "interfered in the recent selection of a new elder, sidelining a man who had been Mullah Naqib's deputy during the anti-Soviet jihad." "If anyone knew how to fight the Taliban in Arghandab, it was he," argues Chayes, "And yet the government's machinations were plainly aimed at shutting him out" in favor of a more pliable replacement, the untried son of Mullah Naqib. Their goal, she implies, is to ram through an alluring -- but dangerously flawed  -- reconciliation with the Taliban.

A Mullah Dies, and War Comes Knocking, By Sarah Chayes, Nov 18, KANDAHAR: Wednesday, Oct. 31: I woke to the sound of artillery thudding -- like the beat of a heavy heart. It was Afghan army batteries firing into Arghandab, at new Taliban positions there. Through several nights, I had been listening, my ears pricking like a dog's, to the faint popping of gunfire, the clattering of helicopters, the whine of personnel carriers speeding along the roads, falling asleep only when the morning call to prayer rang out in the pre-dawn chill.

I can't explain how this felt, the penetration of war to this crucial part of Kandahar, where I have lived for six years. Arghandab district, with its riot of tangled fruit trees, is the lung of Kandahar province; its meandering, stone-studded river is the artery of the whole region. Arghandab is shade and water, and mud-walled orchards, and mulberries and apricots, and pomegranates the size of grapefruits hanging from the willowy branches. MORE

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

Death toll up to 68, two arrested in attack

Sixty eight civilians have been buried, a hundred more are wounded, and countless questions remain. The provincial police chief Gen. Abdul Rahman Sayed Khail said two suspects had been arrested; these men apparently ordered women to leave the area shortly before the blast.

Alix Kroeger of the BBC gives voice to what many of us are wondering…

Another puzzling aspect of the Baghlan bombing is the sheer number of people killed, making it the deadliest such attack in Afghanistan's history. Put bluntly, most suicide bombings here kill only the bombers themselves.

There are still some people who believe, partly because of the devastating death toll, that it was not a suicide bomb at all. Forensic investigators are now at work in Baghlan, but it will be some time before their findings are released.

I have no special knowledge here, but count me among the skeptics. Have you ever seen this level of carnage from a single suicide bomber? Virtually all of the massive attacks in Iraq have been from vehicle bombs or pre-positioned explosives. That's not to say that the bombing was not from the Taliban, but there are some key details missing. MORE

Updates on fighting in Kandahar and Farah

Coalition forces continue to fight on two fronts this week against Taliban offensives in both Arghandab (Kandahar Province) and Gulistan (Farah Province).

Kandahar:  The Taliban have been driven from Arghandab for now, with the loss of fifty men (“They have received heavy casualties, faced humiliation, and they are gone,” assured Assadullah Khalid, governor of Kandahar Province.)

But will they be gone for long? The big question mark is the longer term implications of the loss of Mullah Naqib, the  Alokozai leader who died of a heart attack two weeks ago. Abdul Rahim Jan, a tribal elder from Panjwai, was quoted by the Globe and Mail saying “Mullah Naqib protected Kandahar...This is a big loss. It’s like a thousand people died.” In the same story, Sarah Chayes noted that “Arghandab was the finger in the dike. Now you have a wall of water bearing down on the city.”

Chayes argues, in a comment on Registan.net, that Mullah Naqib was "the recognized and universally respected 'elder' of one of the most important tribes in the Afghan south. His moral authority was accorded him by his tribesmen, based on his human and leadership qualities." She notes that "Over the next few weeks, Mullah Naqib’s tribe will put forth a new leader, and he is someone whom, along with government officials, it would make sense for international officials to have contact with, since he will be the democratically selected representative of a large and crucial segment of the population of this region." It is a promising sign that the local population rejected the Taliban when they sought to move into the power vacuum.

Farah: The other front making news this week is in westerly Farah province, where a Taliban force (estimated by one official at 700 men) raided a police outpost and held some terrain. Fighting has gone on for five days now.

In Farah, skirmishes have been commonplace since February between rebels and the British troops. The province is arid and sparsely populated with marginal strategic value outside of its proximity to Iran.  Are the recent attacks receiving attention because of their significance or their timing? In any case, the local authorities featured in this Reuters story were alarmed by the scale of Taliban attacks, and have called for coalition airstrikes.

"Gulistan district is still controlled by the Taliban," Ikramuddin Yawar, the police chief for western Afghanistan, told Reuters. "We want assistance from NATO to support us from the air."...in the west, the chief of a district near Gulistan and Bakwa warned his area would also fall to the rebels unless foreign air power was brought into play

Taliban occupy Arghandab district after Mullah Naqibullah's death

Today the Times reports that Taliban militants have occupied a strategic area north of Kandahar city for the first time since 2001. While we shouldn't make too much of the tactical implications of this advance (especially since a counterattack is already underway) there are other reasons to be concerned.

According to Sarah Chayes, who knows the region as well as anyone, the Taliban offensive has demonstrated that the fatal heart attack two weeks of Mullah Naqibullah --  an influential former mujahideen in Afghandab who had thrown his support behind the Karzai government -- has had major repercussions:

Over the last several years, Mullah Naqibullah survived multiple attempts by the Taliban to kill him, she said, and was “the bulwark” that blocked the hard-line Islamic group from entering Kandahar from the north. But in a sign of the weakness of President Hamid Karzai’s government in the area, joyous Taliban fighters seized control of Mullah Naqibullah’s home village in Arghandab within two weeks of his death.

In her book, The Punishment of Virtue, Sarah Chayes details  Mullah Naqib's on-again, off-again collaboration with the Taliban, and his rivalry with Gul Agha Shirzai. Naqib was a major player in the region, and his absence has already been felt.

WPR piece on private security contractors

Below is a piece I wrote, published today in the World Politics Review (an online foreign policy daily.)

Private Military Contractors in Afghanistan, Carl Robichaud | 30 Oct 2007

After the Sept. 16 Blackwater scandal, which drew unprecedented attention to the role played by private security contractors (PSCs) in Iraq, these firms have increasingly come under scrutiny in other theaters of war, such as Afghanistan. But while efforts in Afghanistan to rein in PSCs seem to parallel those in Iraq, they are driven by different dynamics -- and have very different implications. MORE 

NATO leases out? Helicopters to be rented...

In an unprecedented move, NATO this weekend approved money to lease cargo helicopters for the alliance's transport needs --  a move made necessary because members of the alliance again refused to provide airlift out of their own military assets.

The diplomats were careful not to assign blame, but Canada's Globe and Mail notes that  "Italy, Spain and France are among the Western European countries with large numbers of big, modern helicopters protected by sophisticated anti-missile defences and flown by highly trained crews." Canada, which has relied upon it allies' helicopters to support its operations in Kandahar, would stand the most to gain from a boost in transport capacity.

The airlift shortfall has long been an issue, and came to a head this summer when the US extended the tour of a helicopter unit in Kandahar until the end of the year. The helicopters -- which may be leased from Ukraine and Russia -- will mostly fill this gap and permit the coalition's other helicopters to transport troops and evacuate the wounded.

Some argue that having additional airlift will make coalition troops safer, since many of the casualties in Afghanistan have come from roadside bombs. However, using helicopters is often just as risky: since 2001, 18 helicopters have gone down in Afghanistan, resulting in 110 deaths. So it should come as no surprise that many NATO allies are reluctant to risk their airmen.

The alternatives, however, come at a high cost, both in Euros and credibility. According to the Globe and Mail:

The cost of chartering large helicopters is expected to be very high. At standard commercial rates, an Mi-17 - the civilian version of the widely used and rugged Russian workhorse capable of lifting four tonnes - could exceed $100,000 a week, yet fly far less than the punishing days endured by U.S., British and Dutch crews. Given the high costs of maintenance and the premium civilian pilots can be expected to demand for risking their lives, the cost could easily soar. A flock of 20 Mi-17s or a smaller number of the even larger Mi-26s, might cost more than $100-million a year, one industry source said.

Secretary Robert Gates resigned himself to the move, even if his frustration showed in responding to reporters that "it's not the best option. It may be the only option." (More excerpts from his transcript below...) MORE

Image: Troops board a CH-47 Chinook helicopter in Daychopan district on their way back to Kandahar Army Air Field on Sept. 4, 2003. U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Kyle Davis.

A softer, cuddlier Blackwater

On Monday, the Times reported that Blackwater changed its logo "from macho to corporate." A company spokesmen says the decision was taken long before the Sept 17 incident. Sure...

As the Times reports:

The rifle-scope crosshairs so obvious in the old Blackwater logo have been reduced to a set of horizontal elipses that bracket, but no longer enclose, the paw print, which has also changed to more closely resemble an actual bear-paw imprint. The original Blackwater logo had thick white serif lettering draped over the crosshairs on a menacing black field. The new logo separates the image and the letters, which now appear in buttoned-down sans-serif black and slightly italicized on a white field.

Wired's Danger Room is not impressed, but has taken on some of the hard work for Blackwater. Readers have created six options for Blackwater's new look. Go weigh in on your favorite...

 

A look inside the Asia Foundation survey

The Asia Foundation released it's third survey of the Afghan people today. Polling in Afghanistan should by no means be seen as dispositive, but this data can provide insights unavailable elsewhere (especially compared with prior baseline surveys by the Asia Foundation in 2004 and 2006). Here's a look inside...

Predictably, media reports framed the poll as a referendum on security (see AFP: “Security fears up sharply among Afghans: survey”) It’s true that pessimism about security rose among Afghans--with 32 percent citing security as their top concern (up from 22 percent last year.)

But the picture is more complicated, since security concerns vary significantly by region and two thirds of Afghans felt that security in their area was good. Moreover, among those who believe the country is headed in the right direction, good security is cited as the second most important reason (34%) after development.

So the Survey paints a nuanced picture and provides some fascinating data on everything from support for traditional institutions (such as Shuras and Jirga) to democracy and women’s rights. A few trends worth noting:

Right Direction / Wrong Direction:

• People are still optimistic, even if there was a slight decline in those who said the country was headed in the right direction (from 44 percent to 42 percent).
• Three-quarters of Afghans continue to assess government performance positively (i.e. either strongly (25%) or somewhat strongly (55%).)
• Afghans continue to espouse confidence in national security forces (both army and police) as well as in traditional institutions such as Shuras and Jirgas. However, “less than half of the respondents had confidence in the government's justice system, political parties and local militias.”
•  Corruption is an issue for many Afghans, but it is not clear that it has grown more acute. Some poll questions suggest an increase in perceptions of corruption while others suggest a decrease.
  

Security:

• Among people who felt the country was going in the wrong direction, security was cited as the top reason. This may seem unsurprising, until you realize that even in last year’s survey security was only rarely mentioned as a reason for a “wrong direction” response.
• On the other hand, among those who said the country was going in the right direction, good security was cited as the second biggest reason (34%).
• Perceptions of security varied greatly by region. Nationwide, “sixty-six percent of the respondents felt that security in their area was good or quite good, and 50 percent said they rarely or never feared for their own or their family's safety. Eighty-two percent said no one in their family had been a victim of any crime or violence during the last one year.” 

Reconstruction:

• Last year, respondents cited “rebuilding of the country” as only the fourth most important reason why the country was headed in the right direction; this year it became the most important reason for believing so (39%). It’s not clear whether people feel reconstruction is going better, or that the other trends they cited as reasons for optimism last year (security, peace, disarmament) are simply going worse. MORE
  

The story behind the "crackdown" on PSCs...

Cracking down on illicit private military contractors (aka private security contractors) in Afghanistan may well be in order, but is that what's really happening?

Barnett Rubin writes on Informed Comment that "Word on the street is that rather than a sincere "crackdown" on private security firms, the government's actions are more similar to its counter-narcotics actions: use of the government by one criminal group to suppress its competitors."

In response, a "well-informed friend in Kabul" argues that this was not a crackdown (the arrests comprised 100 employees in an industry of 10,000) and suggests instead that "some competitors closely linked to the President are trying to (a) extract bribes from the PSCs for not being shut down arbitrarily and (b) eliminate rivals."

This Kabul reader offers some more insights which suggest a) the indispensability of PSCs for certain roles and b) the difference between Afghan and foreign-led PSCs, and C) the political nature of this "crackdown":

The real challenge to the government is the fact that the Ministry of Interior does not have the capacity to replace the protection guaranteed by the private companies outside of Kabul. While there might be enough room in the police to replace some guards inside the capital, capacity and morale of the police are insufficient to take on the task of guarding let's say Kajaki dam in Helmand....
 
Pointing to international contractors and their problems is deflecting attention from the biggest problem - the Afghan PSCs. In foreign firms the foot soldiers might come from an illegal armed group, but the command and logistics elements are all foreign and will collapse in crisis or not lend them easily to factional agendas. The Afghan firms unify the foot soldiers with C2 [command and control] from one faction and are therefore much more dangerous - best example provided by Khawar of Jurat.
 
Nobody so far has questioned the PSCs owned by illustrious people such as [names of relatives of current or past ministers]. Nobody has looked into the firms operating under the control of local warlords [names of former top provincial officials] in the East and South either.

Two more Afghan security firms shut down

In an effort that parallels Iraq's attempt to reign in PMCs, Afghanistan has shut down two more private security firms (bringing the total to four in the past week).  So far all the closures have been Afghan firms (rather than international firms) but that could soon change. The police last week said they plan to shut down a dozen firms all told -- if PMCs tied to donor countries or powerful Afghans are among them, expect a scuffle.

The regulations on these firms is so lax that there is not even a publicly-available register for them (!) The MoI says 60 firms have registered with it, but the AP suspects there are perhaps two dozen others in operation. Without regulation, accountability and a mandate for when and how force can be used, how are these "firms" anything more than guys with guns?

Here's the original AP story:

Kabul shuts down two more security firms (AP) October 18, 2007, KABUL: Two more private Afghan security firms were closed down on Wednesday, police said, in a continuing crackdown on a lucrative but largely unregulated security industry. Authorities raided Falcon and Millet after both companies’ licenses to operate in Afghanistan expired, recovering more than 80 illegal weapons, police said in a statement.

Have PhD in Anthropology, will travel...

I was surprised to find this piece had climbed to the second most emailed article in the New York Times today, but perhaps I shouldn't have been. Interesting, well-reported, and counterintuitive.

• Video

It's odd to find that a field so synonymous with The Academy has become a coveted commodity (much to the chagrin of certain professors, cited in the article, who seem philosophically averse to using their discipline for anything pragmatic...)

Can you imagine all the Anthropology majors emailing their parents to say "I told you so?" And can you imagine what better shape we'd be today if we entered Afghanistan with a modicum of understanding of its cultural context? The Army seems to now appreciate the importance of these skills, but it's a steep learning curve. (One could also question whether the Army is the right institution to be delivering governance and services...)

Anthropologists help U.S. Army in Afghanistan and Iraq, By David Rohde, Oct 4 (NYT):  SHABAK VALLEY, Afghanistan: In this isolated Taliban stronghold in eastern Afghanistan, American paratroopers are fielding what they consider a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations here: a demure civilian anthropologist named Tracy.

Tracy, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons, is a member of the first-ever Human Terrain Team, an experimental Pentagon program that assigns anthropologists and other social scientists to American combat units in Afghanistan and Iraq, where they act as cultural advisers and suggest ways to win local support without using military force.

Colonel Martin Schweitzer, commander of the 82nd Airborne Division unit working with anthropologists here, said the unit's combat operations had been reduced by 60 percent since the anthropologists arrived this spring. He said the focus had shifted from combat to improving security, health care and education for the population.

"We're looking at this from a human perspective, from a social scientist's perspective," he said. "We're not focused on the enemy. We're focused on bringing governance down to the people."

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates authorized a $40 million expansion of the program, which will assign teams of anthropologists and social scientists to each of the 26 American combat brigades in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a result, military officials are scrambling to find more scholars willing to deploy to the front lines to interpret tribal structures and explain cultural differences. MORE

Part II of the Rubin/Marshall talk

A Taliban leader behind kidnapping reported killed

The AP reports that "Afghan security forces killed a Taliban commander they alleged Tuesday to be behind the July kidnappings of 23 South Korean church workers." The government raid is one of several military operations in Ghazni since the hostages were released (another was conducted by the coalition) and is part of a strategy to reassert authority there and to save face after the hostage crisis. The timing suggests the coalition knew where these guys were quartered and were just waiting for the conclusion of the hostage standoff before striking.

American military officials also reported that a dozen Taliban were killed in a separate five-hour battle in Sha Wali Kot district in Kandahar.

Firefight at a drug lab in Daychopan, Zabul

The AP provides today one of the first reports I've heard of fighting at a drug lab. The report says the guards were "suspected Taliban" but I wonder how accurate this is...Wish there were more detail on this raid.

In the southern Zabul province, Afghan and coalition troops clashed with insurgents in Daychopan district Sunday, killing four suspected Taliban and wounding four others, said Fazel Bari, the Daychopan district chief.

Also Sunday, Afghan and coalition troops destroyed a heroin laboratory after battling Taliban fighters guarding the facility, a separate coalition statement said. The lab in Helmand contained large amounts of opium-processing chemicals as well as weapons, insurgent propaganda and explosive materials, it said.

Map: BBC.

British commander opens fire on US Special Forces

For the first time, a British commander has openly (if anonymously) criticized the US military approach in Helmand, which he claims has led to most of the civilian deaths in the area and has jeopardized the British-led mission in the area. Official spokesmen from both the US and Britain rushed to dispute the claim.

The US retains a Special Forces presence in Helmand--they ostensibly advise the Afghan National Army and operate alongside the larger NATO deployment led by the British and numbering over 6,000 troops. The British commander, who apparently gave the interview a couple weeks ago, argues that "There aren’t large bodies of Taliban to fight anymore; we are dealing with small groups and we are trying to kick-start reconstruction and development,” and that therefore the Special Forces approach--with its reliance on airpower--is counterproductive in this context. Whether this claim is accurate, it is sure to add kindling to the smoldering debate over the US vs the European approach to counterinsurgency...Excerpts from the article follow...MORE

Bridging the expectations gap

In an op-ed this week, George Davendorf and Brian Grzelkowski -- part of a recent Mercy Corps delegation to Afghanistan -- argue that "the most serious threat to the fledgling Afghan state may be lurking in an unexpected place; not in the strife-ridden streets of Kandahar or the flourishing poppy fields of the countryside, but in the unfulfilled aspirations of average Afghan citizens."

To the Afghan government and donors, Davendorf and Grzelkowski make two specific recommendations that would make a big difference:

1. "Expedite the provision of reconstruction and development assistance at the local level by adopting both a top-down and bottom-up approach...(and) finding ways to inject additional resources at the provincial and district levels where they can quickly benefit average Afghans."
2. "Develop a credible, effective communications strategy to better guide and manage public expectations...to rebuild public confidence in the nation-building effort now underway."

Read the full op-ed below...

Possible hostage outcomes

The Associated Press ran a piece today about possible outcomes of the hostage standoff. Here are the options, along with the AP assessment:

• RELEASE TALIBAN PRISONERS

The Taliban has submitted an initial list of eight prisoners to the government, most of whom are related to the kidnappers and are not senior in the Taliban hierarchy. ...But the Afghan government appears unlikely to agree after it was heavily criticized earlier this year for releasing five Taliban in exchange for an Italian reporter...One high-ranking Afghan official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said the government "is not ready to make any deal with terrorist kidnappers, even if they kill all the hostages."

Photo: Shah Mansoor Dadullah was one of five prisoners released this year for the Italian journalist. He is currently a top Taliban commander in the south and may have had a hand in the Korean hostage crisis. (Source: Afgha)

"Cops or Robbers?" AREU's must-read report on police reform

Donors are finally realizing the importance of police reform. Unfortunately, some of the response has been to throw money at the problem--the latest infusion of funding, for example, focuses on training and equipment, as if the police problem were primarily a technocratic challenge rather than a political one.

Andrew Wilder, research director at Tuft's Feinstein Center, is the author the AREU's remarkable new report on the topic entitled "Cops or Robbers? The Struggle to Reform the Afghan National Police". He argues that there is still no consensus about the role of police, and too little appreciation that the Ministry of the Interior is part of the problem. The paper highlights five challenges. Donors will need to:

Four steps to reduce civilian casualties

Today Rick Inderfurth has a piece today arguing that civilian casualties are "rising to the top of the list" of woes in Afghanistan and setting out four steps to reduce them. Let's take a look:

First, the and NATO should publicly adopt the goal of "zero innocent civilian casualties," as recommended a year ago by retired General Barry McCaffrey...to accomplish this, military tactics must change to limit casualties even where this means, in McCaffrey's words, "Taliban units escape destruction by hiding among the people."

So this would essentially be an oath to 'first do no harm'...Such a declaration would be valuable, as long as it was actually observed.

Easier said than done--especially since the current command would tell you they are doing everything possible to avoid civilian deaths. It's clearly not working. McCaffrey, in a June memo (worth reading in its entirety), has some insights into how this approach might be operationalized:

Did someone pull Dadullah's leg?

If true, it's one of the stranger twists in the "war on terrorism"...

Newspaper: US Spy hid Dadullah's artificial leg during NATO attack Islamabad, May 17 (Deutsche Presse-Agentur): The Taliban have arrested an aide to Mullah Dadullah who allegedly not only provided information to US forces that led to the militant commander's death in Afghanistan but also hid his artificial leg as troops closed in, a Pakistani newspaper said Thursday.

'We have captured Din Mohammed, an American spy who played a key role in trapping Mullah Dadullah,' an unnamed Taliban commander told Pakistan's The News in a telephone interview...'When American and Afghan army forces attacked the house, Dadullah was searching for his leg while his men started fighting,' the Taliban commander told the newspaper...

In Kandahar, the fallout from Dadullah's death came in the form of two attacks, a coordinated roadside bombing and a suicide attack on Asadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar province. According to one report, Khalid was probably singled out because he  was seen as "gloating" over Dadullah's corpse (which had been exhibited to the media and buried without ceremony rather than being returned to his family.)

Khalid was not hurt, but three men were killed and seven injured; his response: "After Dadullah's death, the Taliban have become quite reactionary and desperately emotional."

Mullah Dadullah's death confirmed

The MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base reports this morning that "Forensic evidence has confirmed that Mullah Dadullah has been killed in a skirmish with Afghan troops fighting alongside British and American special forces. Authorities were hesitant to announce Dadullah’s death as it had been erroneously reported several times previously.... Unidentified sources in the Taliban report that Mullah Omar has already begun to search for a replacement."

Dadullah was the insurgency's top field commander and orchestrated a shift in Taliban tactics toward suicide attacks and beheadings. The Taliban has lost several senior commanders in the past six months, but it is not clear the toll it is taking on the organization's operations. According to Afghan intelligence, three of the Taliban leaders freed in March in a prisoner swap for Italian journalist Daniele Mastrogiacomo (Mullah Shah Mansoor, Dadullah’s brother, Mullah Hamdullah and Commander Ghafar) were also killed.

Big price tag, inconsistent results

The NY Times today has a good account of Afghanistan's inconsistent troop training. Some skepticism is in order: each of the past four years we've heard that the armed forces are getting better, receiving more equipment, more professional training, etc. Training security forces is the centerpiece of the Administrations Afghanistan request this year, and will cost $9.3 billion over the next two years, dwarfing the rest of the reconstruction budget. But are we really making progress? Is this spending better diversified?

The number of soldiers in the ANA has basically flat-lined even as the various insurgents appear more numerous and more capable. More troubling is the question of allegiances, which has always lay at the heart of this venture. The push for national unity, which had great momentum a couple years ago, is running out of steam, and this has profound implications. Case in point: Iraq-- billions spent on training has been at best ineffectual, and at worst counterproductive, as the country descends into factional fighting.

Afghanistan faces a similar risk. One Dutch officer interviewed notes that the Afghan soldiers "just have their own islands, and protect their families, and protect their villages, and that is it.”  Security forces without political accountability, to paraphrase Barney Rubin, are just men with guns.

The Times also highlights another structural problem, one which I had not encountered before:

"In a Western unit, several noncommissioned officers would be leading small teams within a unit of similar size. Afghan and American officers said the absence of this core of enlisted leadership had stemmed from high rates of illiteracy and the enduring influence of the Soviet Union’s training of its own Afghan proxies, which emphasized centralized leadership."

Am I being too pessimistic?

Some excerpts from the article follow...MORE

The Dutch model, revisited

Last weekend the Times published an insightful piece ("Dutch Soldiers Stress Restraint in Afghanistan")

on the Dutch approach to counterinsurgency in Uruzgan, best summed up by commander Col. Hans van Griensven: “We’re not here to fight the Taliban...We’re here to make the Taliban irrelevant.”

The Dutch focus on finding secure areas, keeping them secure, and allowing development to spread outward like an "oil spot". Critics argue that this approach is driven not by vision but by risk-aversion, and that it allows the Taliban to bide their time and develop strongholds.

Today the Times published a second piece, a blow by blow account of a Taliban ambush of a Dutch patrol. (Alert readers will note that today's article documents a fight that took place on April 4th--two days before the first article ran...)

The fact that it's hard to imagine a US commander saying "we're not here to fight the Taliban" illustrates that each of the coalition forces in the south (Netherlands, US, UK, and Canada) is employing distinct strategies based not only upon local conditions but also upon their particular approaches to military affairs, their philosophy of insurgency, and their tolerance for risk. We are often and wisely reminded that the insurgency is multifaceted, but the efforts to fight it may be even more diverse!

Each coalition and NATO command, each PRT -- not to mention different Afghan commands -- has a different set of goals and caveats, and different perceptions of success. Far from the Pentagon's early and heavy handed approach, military forces in Afghanistan find themselves in a laboratory of ideas, of innovation by local commanders responding to conditions around them.

This should be a good thing. The problem is that each nation and each command has incentives to proclaim that its approach is uniquely effective, and there is very little in the way of objective evaluation of results. Moreover, the "right" strategy can often only be ascertained months or years in retrospect, since today's success may become tomorrow's model of failure, or vice versa. MORE

The President’s Unbalanced Approach to Afghanistan

Yesterday’s presidential address at the American Enterprise Institute was advertised as a major speech on Afghanistan. It was the first time in years that the president made that country the focus of his comments, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the remarks were spliced into a speech on the global war on terror, in which the first five minutes were devoted to Iraq and Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Nevertheless, the president had quite a bit to say on Afghanistan, and some of it was new.

The speech may earn the president some credit for returning his attention to the central front in the war on terror. However, the plan he articulated suffers from the same problems that have plagued our five-year effort: too few resources, and too much spending on military solutions to complex problems. The centerpiece of his announcement is $11.8 billion in new assistance to Afghanistan over two years. But when we delve further into the budget and supplemental requests, we learn that $10.1 billion of this money is earmarked for “training and equipping Afghan security forces.” Of the remainder, $370 million will be allocated for “emergency assistance programs that will complement U.S. military objectives.” Rebuilding Afghanistan’s army and police force is critical, and rapid-response budgets for military commanders can prove useful, but these measures are no substitute for rebuilding

Afghanistan’s roads, reforming its judiciary, developing its non-opium economy, and strengthening local governance. These tasks are equally important if Afghanistan is going to thrive. Yesterday they were allocated a sizable portion of the president’s speech, but tomorrow Congress will learn that they have been allocated only a tiny sliver of the administration’s budget.

The second big announcement is that the president has extended the stay of 3,200 American troops for four months, a boost that will be sustained “for the foreseeable future.” This is a sensible increase that military commanders have requested for some time, even as they acknowledge that it is only part of the solution. Reinforcements at this juncture raise a troubling question: if

Afghanistan had received the forces and the development resources it needed from the start, and if attention had not been diverted to Iraq, might the president today be announcing that he was starting to bring troops home?

In his speech, the president laid out a sensible plan with five pillars: train and equip security forces, boost NATO’s presence, strengthen provincial governance, fight poppy cultivation, and combat corruption. These are each worthy priorities, but with 90 percent of the funding focused on the first pillar, the president’s plan can be expected to function as well as a one-legged stool. MORE

Insights from a military commander

Yesterday I saw a senior U.S military commander in Afghanistan speak in New York. The event was off the record, so I cannot tell you who he was or cite direct quotes. However, this individual was on his way to House and Senate committee hearings, so there should soon be on-the-record version of these insights soon...Here are some of the most noteworthy points of his presentation:

• On the narcotics problem, he argued that the issue is less about aggregate aid and more about coming making the fractured inter-agency process work. I was shocked to learn that the counternarcotics team has five people to manage a $1 billion project (by way of comparison, there are 450 army personnel for the program on training, which has approximately the same budget.) He also noted that...MORE

Cordesman Op-ed: More, and fast...

Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, known for his expertise on Iraq and military affairs, has just returned from Afghanistan.  In a significant NY Times op-ed this morning he writes that we have a brief window of opportunity to deliver more military and economic aid,and to do it in ways that "ensure it actually gets to Afghans, particularly in the areas where the threat is greatest," or we risk losing a second war.

Cordesman concludes that the U.S. needs at least two more infantry battalions (i.e. ~1,000-2,000 troops) and more special forces. These increases are "tiny by comparison with American forces in Iraq, but they can make all the difference." Moreover, "unless at least $1.1 billion comes immediately, aid will lag far behind need next year." He also argues that the U.S. "is carrying far too much of the burden, and NATO allies, particularly France, Germany, Italy and Spain, are falling short." The West's "political process in Kabul — rather than on the quality of governance and on services — has left many areas angry," and Congress boost funding to deliver results.  

One War We Can Still Win
Dec 13, By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN: No one can return from visiting the front in Afghanistan without realizing there is a very real risk that the United States and NATO will lose their war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the other Islamist movements fighting the Afghan government. Declassified intelligence made available during my recent trip there showed that major Al Qaeda, Taliban, Haqqani Network and Hezb-i-Islami sanctuaries exist in Pakistan, and that the areas they operate in within Afghanistan have increased fourfold over the last year. MORE

Coalition to press attack--and hope for snow