2007 – a year of records

2007 was a year of records in Afghanistan – most of it violent: the highest US military toll, most suicide bombings and record production of opium. More than 6,500 people, including 110 US troops and almost 4500 militants, were killed last year. Poppy production soared to 93 percent of the world’s supply. The Taliban also seems to be growing more sophisticated in its attacks and targets.

Record level of violence in Afghanistan, by Jason Straziuso (The Associated Press) 1 Jan. 2007:  Taliban fighters avoided head-on battles with US, NATO and Afghan army forces in 2007, resorting instead to ambushes and suicide bombings. But militants did attack the weakest of Afghan forces to devastating effect.

More than 925 Afghan policemen died in Taliban ambushes in 2007, including 16 police killed Saturday in Helmand province during an assault on a checkpoint.

"The Taliban attack who they perceive to be the most vulnerable, and in this case it's the police," said Lt. Col. Dave Johnson, a spokesman for the US troops who train Afghan police and soldiers. "They don't travel in large formations like the army does. That puts them in an area of vulnerability."

Taliban suicide attackers set off a record number of attacks this year — more than 140 — and in many ways they became more sophisticated.

In February a suicide bomber killed 23 people outside the main US base at Bagram during a visit by US Vice President Dick Cheney. A suicide bomber in June killed 35 people on a police bus. And in November a suicide bombing that killed six lawmakers also left a total of 77 people dead after security guards opened fire on a crowd of onlookers. Sixty-one school children were killed.

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.

Center on Public Integrity updates its contractor database

The Center for Public Integrity has just updated its Windfalls of War report, an investigation of US contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. The original report, published in 2003, won the George Polk Award for journalism. It took six months to complete and involved a research team of 20 (along with  73 Freedom of Information Requests!)

The updated report, which lists the top 100 contractors, has some striking findings:

• "U.S. government contracts for work in Iraq and Afghanistan have grown more than 50 percent annually, from $11 billion in 2004 to almost $17 billion in 2005 and more than $25 billion in 2006."
• "Iraq remains the clear priority of the U.S. government, the Center's research shows, with more than seven times as many contracting dollars designated for spending there as for Afghanistan."
• "Of the $13 billion awarded through cost-plus contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2004 to 2006, 30 percent was awarded through simple cost-plus, fixed-fee arrangements that offer no incentives for performance or cost savings."

The Center for Public Integrity website includes a search engine that crawls hundreds of budget documents, including reports, audits, testimony, project site inspections and correspondence. Unfortunately, it is prohibitively difficult to disaggregate spending in Afghanistan from that in Iraq in the current format (this is, in part, a function of the way many of these expenses are deliberately melded in budget documents.) I have contacted the folks at CPI, and will see if we can compile a list of the top contractors (and contracts) in Afghanistan.

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
  

By the Numbers

Number of different (and often conflicting) land registries in Helmand:            17

Arrests by the British-supported Criminal Justice Task Force since May 2005: 830

Percent that resulted in a conviction:                                                           42%

Estimated years of opium exports that traffickers have stored in reserve:       4

                                                                                    Source: The Guardian

MORE BY THE NUMBERS BELOW
 

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

Doing Business in Afghanistan: the latest World Bank report

 

Today the World Bank released its annual "Doing Business" report, which compares the world's countries on a variety of variables related to the ease of operating a business.  You can download the complete report here or the portion on Afghanistan here.

To summarize the findings:

• Afghanistan is among the easiest places to open a business and has favorable tax conditions, but is otherwise mired in difficulties related to registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, enforcing contracts and import/export.
• While it is easy to register a business, start up costs (75% of income per capita) can be significantly lowered and many industry-specific barriers should be dispensed with.
• Registering property is a major problem, requiring an average of 252 days and 10% of the property value. The complexity of the process discourages formal registration. Moreover, because of 25 years of chaos, most land has no clear title. The result is that businesses can get less credit and are wary of investing. Reforming this system is possible, as Thailand has proven, and must be a priority for Afghanistan and the donor community.
• There are no credit registries to provide lenders with information on borrowers, and no working land registry to allow land as collateral. As a result, the formal lending system is hamstrung. A simple credit registry could be established for under $2 million. The government could also pass a collateral law for movable property, which makes up 70% of most small business assets. These steps would go a long way.
• Cross-border trade is costly and excruciatingly slow. Legally importing a container requires 88 days,  11 documents, and $2,100--the highest fees in the region. Cutting this red tape would discourage smuggling, reduce corruption, and raise revenues.

For more on this, read the complete report...

Asia Foundation 2006 Survey Available

Today the Asia Foundation released their 2006 survey, the largest and most-comprehensive poll in Afghanistan's history. Check out the .pdf here.

We will dig into the data in coming posts, but here are some preliminary findings to note:

• Afghans are still optimistic, with 44 % saying the country is headed in the right direction vs. 21 who believe it's headed in the wrong direction. These numbers, however, are much lower than the Foundation's 2004 survey, which found 64% positive about the country's direction.
• In a development that may come as a surprise to security-conscious Western observers, "lack of security was not the most decisive factor for shaping the opinion of those who felt the country was not moving in the right direction. Rather, the bad economy, lack of reconstruction, poor government performance, and unemployment were cited as the reasons for their pessimism." This is a reminder that security concerns are region-specific, and in many places security is seen as a reason the country is moving in the right direction.
• An remarkably strong majority said they trusted the Afghan National Army (87%) and the Afghan National Police (86%)--which made them the most trusted institutions, outpolling predictable scapegoats such as militias, parties, and the justice system, but also NGOs (57%)

Charting Afghanistan (CS Monitor visual guide)

By the numbers: Casualties, Sept 2006

Here are the latest casualty figures I could find (Sept 7, 2006):

• Violence related deaths in past four months:   1600        Source: AP
• Coalition deaths since 2001:                            466         Source: CNN
• Non-US coaltion deaths:                                  137
• US wounded in action since 2001:                    893         Source: CNN

• Deaths by coalition member:    (cont...)