Tag: Afghanistan (page 1 of 5)

Big Goals and Small Adversaries: Why Grand Strategy Matters

The United States is closing in on the 18th anniversary of its first wartime death in Afghanistan, that of CIA operative Mike Spann, providing a melancholy opportunity to emphasize the role of grand strategy as a policymaking tool. To this end, I ask why the United States has done relatively poorly in so many of its so-called small wars, wars against much weaker adversaries. Its poor record is surprising because the United States has done so well in its major wars, including the world wars, the Korean War, and the Cold War.

Some of the United States’ smaller wars have gone as planned. The invasion of Grenada and replacement of its leftist government in 1983 was quick. The attack on Panama to replace President Noriega in 1989-1990 was also relatively short and low cost for the United States. Some small wars (small from the great power perspective, of course) have not turned out quite as planned, but have also not escalated significantly either vertically or horizontally, or in costs. These include the humanitarian military interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo.

Why should Iraq and Afghanistan still drag on, then, when the United States and its allies are fighting weak non-state actors whose ideologies hold little appeal? Why did the U.S. intervention against insurgents in Vietnam last 21 years? Why did its intervention against the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Movement, which started out stealing and buying its weapons from the Salvadoran military in the Salvadoran civil war, last 13 years?

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Killings in Kandahar: Implications

The news out of Kandahar is pretty awful: the top leadership of the province was killed in an apparent attempt to kill General Austin Miller, the commander of US and NATO forces in the country.  There is not many details, but the WashPost account is suggestive of some key dynamics and challenges.

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The Rise of the Trauma State: Afghanistan and America’s Unwinnable War

This is a guest post by Erik Goepner, a visiting research fellow at the Cato Institute. During his earlier military career, he commanded units in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is currently a doctoral candidate at George Mason University, and his main research interests include civil war, trauma, and terrorism.

Post-traumatic stress disorder afflicts 11 to 20 percent of U.S. military members after they serve in Afghanistan or Iraq. The military expends significant effort to provide them with needed care. Commanders move the psychologically injured out of the combat zone. Medical and mental health providers deliver needed aid. And, commanders may temporarily suspend individuals’ authority to bear firearms to minimize any threat they pose to themselves or others. For good reason: studies indicate that combat veteran status and PTSD associate with a two to three times increase in the risk of violence against others.

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Basic Rules of US Civil-Military Relations and Trump’s Afghanistan Policy

Trump’s speech has something for everyone … to criticize.  I will not focus here on how icky the first part on loyalty was.  Instead, I focus on the rules of US Civil-Military Relations:

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Compensation for Kunduz and the Commodification of Civilian Casualties

The controversy surrounding the coalition airstrike in Kunduz continues to rumble on this week after military investigators drove an armoured personnel carrier into a hospital’s front gate. A spokesperson for the Pentagon was quick to apologise for any damage caused, telling reporters (without a hint of irony) that the team were simply trying to gain access to the facility so that they could assess the structural integrity of the buildings hit earlier in the month. This latest incident will do little to ease tensions between the United States and Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which operates the hospital. Three separate investigations into the original attack are now underway but there is still a great deal of uncertainty about why the hospital was targeted. What we do know is that at least 22 people were killed when the AC-130 gunship opened fire on the building, including 12 medical staff and 10 patients.

The debate so far has largely focused on whether or not the attack was lawful, but what caught my attention was the response of the military officials and, in particular, their offer of compensation. After initially blaming ground troops for the mistake and then the Afghan Army, the Pentagon eventually admitted the decision was made further up the chain of command and President Obama has now offered a full-blown apology. What is more, it has since been confirmed that the United States will compensate the victims and help rebuild the hospital. As the Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook made clear, ‘the Department of Defense believes it is important to address the consequences of the tragic incident’. But the use of financial compensation to rectify these wrongs raises a number of important ethical questions: Do these payments actually make the perpetrator any more accountable for the harm they have caused? Is there a risk that they may end up normalising the horrors of war? And do they reflect a genuine concern for the pain and suffering experienced by those living on the frontline of today’s conflicts?

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Making Sense of Afghanistan

This is a guest post by Erik Goepner, a Phd student at George Mason University.  He commanded units in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

American and international expertise, money, and blood have flowed into Afghanistan for 14 years, yet stability appears more elusive today than it did in 2002. High rates of civil conflict continue with record numbers of civilian deaths, corruption that plagues the government, and transnational terror groups such as the Islamic State appearing to grab power.

The first stop in America’s war on terror has not gone as planned.

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Stumbling Through Foreign Policy – Not History



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Tuesday Linkage


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Post-Kristof Monday Links

Good morning Ducks, here are your links from South Asia… (I am not even going to pretend I know what’s going on in the Ukraine, Syria, Somalia, or Venezuela.  I’ll stick to what I sort of know…).

  • Redhead Duck and offspring. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

    Vasundhara Sirnate at The Hindu writes passionately in defence of the offensive. While Indian liberals will (rightfully) continue to be upset at Penguin India’s capitulation to the so called “offended” feelings of a small and obscure group of Hindu fanatics, the liberals fail to realize that the increasing pressure to censor and protect the sentiments of various religious communities is actually just an extension of the dominant state ideology, what Manjari Chatterjee Miller labelled as “Post-Imperial Ideology” in her recent book Wronged by Empire.  Miller argues that Indian prickliness (in international relations) toward perceived slights in status and Indians’ desire to consistently frame relations in terms of victimizers and victims is a major legacy of the trauma of colonialism.   So perhaps it should not surprise us that in the domestic arena, the work of a brilliant (foreign) scholar of Hinduism can be painted as little more than an attempt to humiliate and offend pious Hindus.  India will need to change more than its censorship policies (which are actually pointless in a digital age), it will need to change its hegemonic ideology — which is of course highly unlikely.  In the meantime, the lesson for foreign scholars and foreign diplomats is clear: speaking boldly in India will result in little more than squabbles in which the foreigner is accused of deliberately seeking to humiliate the Indian state or people.

  • Arwin Rahi at the Diplomat argues that Afghanistan must recognize the Durand Line as its permanent border with Pakistan.  Rahi is at least correct that Afghanistan needs to come to terms with this boundary — because for better or worse South Asia has inherited Westphalian definitions of statehood, but if anyone thinks that Afghan recognition of the border will end Pakistani efforts at influencing the character of the regime in Afghanistan, they are forgetting the broader strategic orientation of the Pakistani military.
  • Javid Husain at the Nation (Pakistan) calls for national reconciliation in Afghanistan to avoid a civil war. Unsurprisingly, he claims that the Afghan Constitution should be modified to meet the “reasonable” demands of the Taliban. Umm… right.  Moving on…  He also says that Karzai has displayed a “belated eagerness” to reach a deal with the Taliban, which indicates that the author was mentally on hiatus for the last decade.   Despite the howlers, the article may indicate that there is at least a faction in Pakistan that would settle for using the Taliban as a kind of veto player (as opposed to seeking outright hegemony) in post-Karzai Afghanistan.

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Hard to Say I’m Sorry




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Monday Morning Linkage

sitting ducksGood mornin’ duck fans! Let’s start the week by revisiting last week’s firestorm in …


  • Hamid Karzai has become a bewildering enigma for many Americans as he launched yet another verbal tirade against the US last week.  This time he recklessly accused the US of colluding with the Taliban.  The NY Times speculates that Karzai is keen to shape his legacy given the ultimate fate of Mohammed Najibullah and many other Afghan leaders who came before him.  This is certainly plausible, but hardly the whole story.  Unfortunately, the article also condescendingly implies that the Afghan head of state simply “does not understand” that his government is totally dependent on international funding.  Karzai understands; everyone in Afghanistan knows who is paying the bills.
  • President Karzai’s accusation that the Americans are currently colluding with the Taliban is extremely implausible and completely unsubstantiated.  However, me thinks some Americans doth protest too much.  Beneath all of the American outrage and bluster, it is important to remember that the US engaged and supported the Taliban regime after they took Kabul in 1996.  Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush sought to work with the Taliban.  Bush even invited the Taliban to his Texas ranch in 1997.  The US was perfectly aware of the Taliban’s treatment of women and their general abuse of human rights from early 1996.  Moreover, in recent years the US has negotiated with representatives of “the” Taliban (as if the Taliban were still just one organization) without involving Karzai – although there is no evidence that the US is currently negotiating with Taliban members as Karzai claims.

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Winding Down in Afghanistan?

US “combat operations” in Afghanistan are officially scheduled to wind down in 2014.  And media attention is now turning toward speculating (i.e. relaying contending institutional preferences between the White House and the Pentagon) on the level of US troop presence in Afghanistan after 2014.  Current estimates, in case you still care, are that US troop levels will be roughly around 10,000 assisted by a couple thousand NATO troops — assuming, of course, that President Karzai agrees to prolong the suspension of his country’s full sovereignty.  For next year, however, it is likely that at least 60,000 US troops will remain through the fighting season.

The notion that “combat operations” will be wrapped up by 2014 while US forces shift toward an advisory “support role” reflects a typically deceptive use of an innocuous sounding phrase like “support role” that the public has come to accept uncritically from our military leaders and policymakers.  Regardless of what US troops actually do in their “support” capacity, it is clear that the narrative arc — despite the salacious demise of one of the story’s chief architects and protagonists — is still oriented toward reassuring Americans that the decade long war is nearly over and that Afghanistan has been miraculously stabilized.  This noble lie may be necessary for extricating the bulk of US/NATO/ISAF forces from this war, but it is also dangerous given the way that myths about the successful use of force create their own reality over time. Continue reading

The Trafficker-Terrorist Myth

Another Sunday, another military puff-piece from the NY Times. Yesterday’s issue promoted the idea that America is threatened by a drug trafficker-terrorist network emanating from Central America. The source of this idea is–no surprise–the U.S. military, our fearmongers in chief. But the Times unquestioningly reported their statements as front page news, as part of a longer article about the new Central American wars such propaganda is justifying.

According to Col. Ross A. Brown, commander of the military’s Central America operations, his mission is “disrupting and deterring the potential nexus between transnational organized criminals and terrorists who would do harm to our country.” Or as his boss Vice Adm. Joseph D. Kernan affirms, combating the drug cartels is “necessary to preventing terrorists from co-opting criminal groups for attacks in this hemisphere.”

What is one to make of this claim? What evidence or logic supports the “potential” of this trafficker-terrorist “nexus?” There is none. But Kernan supports his assertion by noting one “insidious” parallel between terrorists and traffickers: “They do not respect borders.”

What a profound insight! Surely that explains everything! And the Times dutifully bolsters the claim with allusions to oh-so-scary bête noirs du jour—Honduras’s “vast ungoverned areas” where homicide rates are some of the “highest” in the world. [Notes to Times editor: What do you mean by “ungoverned”—something like the locales all over America where countless citizens consume illegal drugs daily? Might this insatiable American demand for drugs have just a little to do with Honduras’s homicide rates?]

But it seems too much to ask the reporters of our most important newspaper to think about this claim, rather than assume, following the military’s suggestion, that all things evil must go together. Yet now that the trafficker-terrorist “axis of evil” is being used to mutually reinforce two senseless wars, the logic of this connection cries out for examination.

Sure, the few “terrorists” who are genuinely trying to harm the U.S.—as opposed to countless wannabes who spout off about doing so in blogs or emails—might dream of drug-trafficker profits. But why would drug-lords agree to share the wealth? Last I checked, they are not charities.

And why would kingpins want to work with terrorists? For one thing, the vast majority of the bozos we inflate into terrorist “threats” are laughably incompetent. They’d never make it in the sophisticated drug empires that we’ve stupidly created through our War on Drugs.

In any case, working with terrorists would threaten the traffickers’ profits. There are few better ways to cure an addict than the possibility of his supplier blowing himself up on delivery.

Worse yet, forging such a link might lead to even more U.S. resources being thrown against the druglords. It might even convince more Americans to decriminalize drugs—the greatest blow that could be struck against drug traffickers. No, if nothing else, kingpins are savvy businessmen. Why would they want to destroy their own best market or make their operations more difficult than they already are?

What of Kernan’s claim that terrorists might “coopt” criminal groups? As any military man should know, cooptation is a weapon of the powerful—yet terrorist group are far weaker than drug cartels by all measures except bluster. Any terrorist’s attempt at cooptation would likely be met by the traffickers’ own deadly force.

No the trafficker-terrorist “potential nexus” should be seen for what it is–yet another transparently illogical excuse for projecting American military force in places where it will do no good.

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But don’t look to the Times to point these things out. Indeed, the article is another example of “stenographic journalism,” slavishly reporting the propaganda of the powerful as “news.” The article’s focus is how the U.S. is using the “lessons” from a decade of counterinsurgency to fight the War on Drugs.

Normally, the word “lessons” would suggest that we have in fact learned something. So what exactly have we learned? According to the Times, the main lesson of COIN was to move troops from “giant bases to outposts scattered across remote, hostile areas so they could face off against insurgents.”

But what have been the results? A decade after our invasion of Aghanistan, much of the country remains a no-go zone for American troops. Only our drones dare patrol it–bravely raining death upon “suspected insurgents,” aka, all too often, civilians. The Afghan troops we have so skillfully and expensively trained are riddled with recruits who regularly turn their weapons on Allied troops. President Obama, fearfully shuttling into Bagram Air Force base (yes, a “giant base”) by dead of night, has inked an agreement for another decade of futility in the graveyard of empires. And, surprise, Afghanistan remains a major source of drugs for the world. Or, as the article so coyly puts it, the U.S. has “lowered expectations of what Washington can do to halt heroin trafficking there.”

So much for the supposed lesson that “forward bases” can work to fight drugs in Honduras. Inadvertently, however, the Times highlights the real lessons our leaders have learned. The “new offensive” in Central America is “emerging just as the United States military winds down its conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

What a coincidence! A new battlefield opens as others dwindle. But wait, the War on Drugs, first declared in 1971 by Richard Nixon, is hardly new. Still, it serves its purpose–just as the War on Terror doubtless will for decades to come. Anytime America wearies of one theater for military extravagance, it can always shift to another eternal “threat.”

Indeed, as the Times trumpets, Honduras “showcases the nation’s new way of war: small-footprint missions with limited numbers of troops . . . and narrowly defined goals.” And the most important lesson of all: these “small-footprint” operations, may be fought “with little public notice.” After all, why should the taxpayer need to know about the millions the State Department lavishes on our incorruptible Honduran allies for machine guns and “air support” without which, one Honduran honcho admits, “we can’t do anything?”

Fortunately, however, the U.S. military has evidently chosen to post its best and brightest to lead the fight on this pressing new front. That would be Col. Brown. He commanded the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment’s Third Squadron in southern Baghdad in 2005-06. As the Times reports, without irony, in 2005-06 Iraq was “so violent that President George W. Bush ordered an increase in troop levels to retake the initiative.” It is unclear whether Brown’s Central America deployment is a promotion or a demotion.

Whatever their fighting credentials, however, Brown and Kernan at least know how to deploy “psy-ops”–against the American people. Hence, the trafficker-terrorist “potential nexus.”


The Civil-Military Relations of Footwear






The Monopoly

Why should academics and policymakers prioritize a state’s acquistion of  “… the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory”? Obviously, this monopoly is fundamental to masking the violence of the state in daily domestic affairs, but what about in areas where that violence cannot be masked under the guise of a neutral, rational-legal state that speaks for the “nation” in the first place? Is a Eurocentric model of the state still an appropriate priority for all territories, particularly in regions which have a long history of embattled states as well as fractured societies, and which are experiencing multi-pronged challenges to state authority?

Historically, of course, “pre-modern” states did not always feel the need or desire to acquire a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. For example, one of the greatest imperial states in history, the Mughal Empire which eventually covered much of modern South Asia (including Afghanistan), never sought or obtained a monopoly on violence and this “failure” did not hinder its progress. At the height of its power in the 17th century, the Mughal empire was more opulent than all of Europe combined. The cultural and particularly the architectural achievements of this imperial state are still considered among the finest in the world. Technologically, in 1526 it was the first to introduce the combined use of handguns and cannons with its military in the sub-continent. While its military superiority would eventually decline, it was never more than a decade behind its rivals in terms of military technology. In any case, in the early and middle period of the empire, the Mughal army could defeat any single opponent on the open battlefield, including European upstarts (see Child’s War 1686-1690). Economically, the empire produced goods for the world market. The arrival of European merchants only further extended direct trade links to northern and western Europe, although prior to industrialization there was little to nothing that the Europeans could offer in exchange for goods produced in South Asia except silver bullion.

The Mughal state had some of the trappings of a modern state, including a large bureaucracy and an extensive police and intelligence apparatus. However, it did not seek to disarm the peasantry or dispossess local and regional rivals who acknowledged its superiority. In fact, as Peter Lorge argues in The Asian Military Revolution (Cambridge, 2008, pp. 130-131), Mughal emperors sat atop a vast “military labor market” of over 4 million infantrymen. The Mughal state’s confidence rested on the fact that it had the best concentration of infantry and equipment as well as a massive treasury and spy network. The goal of the emperor was not to disarm its local and regional rivals, but to manage violence. In other words, the objective was “… to maintain the internal balance of center and periphery, not to annihilate external threats to the throne,” (Lorge 2008, p. 138). This balance was maintained in part by keeping the state literally on the move  en masse from one hot spot to the next. The treasury could also be used to purchase a sufficient additional supply of soldier in order to deny those resources to regional rivals. In any case, military resistance to this peripatetic imperial state by regional rivals was often part of an elaborate bargaining procedure for improving one’s rank within the finely graded official status hierarchy. Of course, once it was weakened by fighting against the guerrilla tactics of the Maratha Confederacy in the mid-17th century, the empire began a steady decline, eventually succumbing to domination by their British vassals and the creation of a “modern state” which did vigorously pursue a strategy to disarm the countryside and to monopolize legitimate violence. Notably, however, the emperor remained remarkably legitimate to large numbers of Hindus and Muslims even up to the dying days of the empire as the Great Rebellion of 1857 demonstrated.

I ask the question about the need for a monopoly not because I want to bring Babur & Co. back from the dead (although… well… that would be fun… after all, nobody parties quite like a Timurid…) but because it is clear that there are several territories in contemporary international affairs where the claim to a monopoly on legitimate use of violence is clearly unlikely to be established in the near future. Labeling such states as “failed” or “failing” in lazy and counter productive.

In places like Afghanistan, for example, the state does not have the monopoly of the legitimate use of force and won’t for the foreseeable future; Afghans know they will have to pay homage indefinitely to a range of actors who have the ability to threaten the use of violence against them: warlords, insurgents, foreign troops, the police, etc. As Noah Coburn argues in Bazaar Politics: Power and Pottery in an Afghan Market Town (Stanford 2011, pp. 182-207), the Afghan state cannot serve as a vertical container of societal conflicts because many of the major actors in society are rivals of the state. Coburn adds that even the notion of a discrete border between the state and society is an artificial construct maintained in large part by society to prop up the state. In other words, the Afghan state is so weak and porous that it is up to society to sustain the illusion of the state as rational and professional. Maintaining the illusion allows aid to flow and keeps the peace, such as it is. Nonetheless, the population is not motivated solely by fear of violence, Afghans value the idea of a sovereign state and the integrity of their state’s territory. The people of Afghanistan do not want their country partitioned or to have their state’s sovereignty further diminished or humiliated by regional or global actors. At the same time, people are realistic enough to know that the state will not vanquish the insurgents and warlords — even with massive international military and financial assistance.

But the choice is not between a monopoly on violence or total anarchy. For embattled states the issue is whether the effort to prioritize acquiring a monopoly by defeating the insurgency and all other challengers to the state is realistic. Building up massive armies in weak states through foreign funding is unsustainable if the state is ever to regain full sovereignty. Moreover, the prolonged presence of foreign troops and unaccountable international non-governmental organizations often undermines the state’s authority and autonomy as much as warlords and insurgents. Perhaps the aim should be to develop sufficient violence capability and financial patronage to keep rival coercive threats in check. To paraphrase Coburn’s depiction of the Afghan state a few years ago: it is too weak to be despotic but strong enough to keep warlords from the temptation of increasing their despotism. Perhaps that should be considered both sufficient and realistic as a marker of success, no? If so, then the question becomes how many elite forces, how much hi-tech weaponry, and how much direct budgetary support would be necessary to maintain that balance while gradually strengthening the state’s ability to increase revenue extraction. This advice will be lost on the US and its partners who are moving toward the exit doors, but India, Russia, and Iran may see its wisdom after 2014…

Kajaki and Power Politics

Like the ancient Greco-Buddhist colossi of Bamiyan, the High-Modernist era Kajaki dam is a product of foreign influences and has been a mute witness as well as an occasional victim of domestic political disarray and failed attempts to integrate and incorporate Afghanistan into contending spheres of influence. Each alternate modern (i.e., capitalist, communist, islamist, praetorian) or anti-traditional/utopian fundamentalist (i.e., Deobandi) ideology has attempted to inscribe the future of Afghanistan on this palimpsest.

The dam was built from 1946 to 1953 as part of what became known as the Helmand Valley Authority (HVA) project in Afghanistan.  It was funded initially by King Zahir Shah and later, as funds ran low, from loans by the United States (Washington Post 8/7/2011). The vast project was obviously modeled on the  Great Depression era Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) project. The belief in the High Modernist era of development planning was that massive infrastructural investment was the key to setting off a virtuous circle of self-reinforcing economic growth. Although that model of development is highly discredited today for environmental and political as well as practical reasons, the dam, irrigation canals, and highways associated with the project did eventually help to transform the landscape into a fertile valley. By the mid-seventies, the dam had two Westinghouse 16.5 MW turbines to generate electricity for the entire valley. This project was for its time, one of the most expensive US foreign assistance projects in history.

With the Saur Revolution, insurrection, Soviet invasion, and civil war the dam naturally fell into a brief period of disrepair. The occupying Soviet forces prioritized linking Kabul directly to the Soviet power grid. However, they also built gas turbines and diesel generators in several other Afghan cities and towns. Czechoslovakia was given the task of restoring the dam and they provided much of the equipment to “modernize” the Kajaki dam and increase its irrigation capacity. By 1982, the dam’s power lines were restored and power flowed once again to Alexander’s city, Kandahar, in the neighboring province. Not surprisingly, the dam soon attracted several Mujahedeen attacks on Soviet and PDPA soldiers guarding the site. With the Soviet withdrawal and the warlord period, the dam and associated infrastructure again fell into disrepair.

By the late nineties as order returned across much of Afghanistan, the Taliban expressed hopes that their increasingly warm friendship with the US (which seemed all too willing to overlook Taliban abuses toward women and minorities at the time) would mean that Americans would return to Helmand to once again fix the dam’s power generating units and particularly the silted irrigation canals (Philadelphia Inquirer 1/19/1997). The irrigation canals associated with the HVA were now vital to the production of the world’s largest supply of opium and Afghanistan’s main export, even though the Taliban had officially announced plans to stamp out the crop.

When US assistance for the dam did not materialize a few years later, the Taliban turned to Pakistan and China for assistance.  The Pakistanis, who increasingly saw Afghanistan as a colony or at least a “gateway to Central Asia” after the Soviet withdrawal and collapse, were committed to restoring electricity and promoting a modicum of stability and development in order to consolidate the gains of their Taliban client regime. Under the Lahore Agreement, Pakistan planned to build a high voltage transmission line to connect the Afghan city of Jalalabad directly to Pakistan’s own electricity grid. In Helmand, the Pakistanis proposed to build new sluice gates to increase the power generation and irrigation capacity of the dam.  These plans obviously came to a screeching halt in September 2001.

During the initial US invasion of Afghanistan, the dam’s power station was deliberately targeted by American forces (Guardian 12/20/2001).  Once the US occupied Afghanistan, the teams switched sides and the dam became the target of the Taliban while the US played defense.  In 2003, a force of sixty Taliban were captured after firing three rockets at the dam — all of which missed the target (Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/3/2003).

In 2006, the US gave $1.4 billion to two private contractors to increase the amount of power generated by the Kajaki dam by adding a third turbine and also repairing a large power plant in Kabul.  Adding the third turbine to the dam entailed a famous 2008 mission, Operation Kryptonite, in which 3,000 British troops protected 100 vehicle convoy as it hauled a gigantic turbine across a 180 km of insurgent dominated areas. Apparently between 15 to 200 insurgents were killed (depending on which account one believes) during this Hollywood style “Wild West” stagecoach mission.

The mission “succeeded” in reaching the forward operating base but repairs and installation of the new turbine was painstakingly slow – the third turbine has never been unpacked. Repairs to the dam were supposed to be finished by 2008. By mid 2009 auditors were complaining that the two plants (Kajaki and Kabul) combined were only generating 12MW instead of the originally contracted 140MW (USA Today 11/11/2009). Plans for adding the third turbine were deferred indefinitely after a Chinese subcontractor abandoned the site. US taxpayers have since paid a $1 million per month to guard the dam while the program was suspended to look for another subcontractor and to make the road to the dam “secure.”

In the interim, US and ISAF forces performed annual surges to tame the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.  An inattentive and uncritical American and European public was repeatedly told by blatant propaganda that this time the province had finally been secured, only to witness a repeated need for a surge of troops and bribes the next year. Despite these surges, ISAF soldiers soldiers openly admit that their influence does not extend beyond 500 meters of their security bases (see Daily Mail 10/8/2011).

The electricity grid once again became a priority issue for American generals during a surge in the neighboring province of Kandahar in 2010, when the generals realized that restoring electric power was critical to winning over the civilian population and defeating the Taliban. They took $106 million dollars in discretionary funding to pay for new generators and all the diesel fuel necessary to power the grid for four years (Globe and Mail, 7/11/11). No provisions were made for the Afghan government to restock the fuel after four years and the government lacked the staff to monitor or repair the system.

Finally, having failed to stabilize the province, much less fix the electricity supply, ISAF forces have simply declared victory and they have begun to hand over responsibility to ill trained Afghan Security Forces in preparation for a withdrawal in 2014.

In November 2011, it was reported that water levels in the reservoir had dropped by 20 meters over several months endangering the ability of the dam to generate any electricity if another 5 meters were lost (Shamsad TV, 11/23/2011).  The electricity generation which had reached 20MW was now back down to 12MW. The drop in water also threatened the agricultural capacity of the valley which was already threatened by drought.

This week (12/13/2011) with a 50% cut to the USAID budget, the US is considering permanently deferring the installation of the third turbine and instead calling it a day after simply refurbishing the existing two turbines, power lines, and substations.  What was once seen as essential to winning hearts and minds is now on the chopping block of a cost-benefit analysis.

Thus, the dam remains a symbol of false promises and failed efforts to reorient decisively Afghanistan’s future. But even if the dam were made operational, it would still remain problematic. Somewhere in the many struggles to “modernize” this modern dam, it became an end rather than a means to development. The broader failings of an unsustainable infrastructure-led development model were never unpacked and thought through. The dam represents a desperate hope that there is a short cut to development, prosperity, and peace.

[Cross-posted from Humanyun]

Transitioning Toward Anarchy

The second phase of the transition of security responsibility from ISAF/NATO to Afghan Security Forces has begun (the first phase began in July 2011).  This means that roughly 50% of the population will now be under the protection of Afghan troops.

Some of the areas being handed over are still quite active insurgent zones including many parts of Helmand, Ghazni, and Nangrahar provinces.  For example, Ajristan, one of the districts in Ghazni, is reportedly completely under Taliban control. In fact, the Taliban have a strong presence in 13 out of the 19 districts in the province and there is little or no presence of government employees in the Taliban dominated districts. The few secure districts are also not easily accessible because the road networks pass through surrounding districts that are dominated by the Taliban, according to the independent newspaper, Hasht-e Sobh (1 December 2011).
The situation might not be so bad if the Afghan Security Forces were well trained, professional, and a capable fighting force, but they are not really any of those things.  This is not for lack of funding. By 2014 billions of dollars will have been spent by foreign governments, mainly the US, to rapidly train and equip the soldiers, but Afghan experts fear the Afghan forces are still completely inadequate for the task. Unfortunately, Afghan forces have been bedeviled by high desertion rates, illiteracy, insurgent infiltration, and hurried training.

Of course, we should expect the announcement of several major new operations led by ISAF forces to clear out insurgent areas next spring and deal a death blow to the Taliban, but similar operations — despite lots of hype — have had limited long term effectiveness in the past — regardless of NATO propaganda

It is likely that the timing of the second phase, just before the 2nd Bonn Conference, was meant to show the international community that progress is being made. However, since the relationship between ISAF & NATO and Pakistan has publicly deteriorated in the last few days — with Pakistan now boycotting the conference, the transition process is in significant danger. A crumbling security situation, unprepared Afghan forces, and a hostile Pakistan on the border implies that there is almost no chance for the creation of a stable state in Afghanistan before foreign forces are scheduled to leave… if there was any hope to begin with.

[Cross-posted from Humayun]

Words are Wind?

 In the fifth book of the Game of Thrones series, it seems like every character at some point says: “Words are Wind.”  This means that a promise or threat is being made, but there may not be any credibility.  Without getting sunk into an overly academic debate about the credibility of commitments, signaling and resolve, I just wanted to highlight a promise or two that might be “wind-worthy.”

Specifically, NATO, the US, the Danes, the Canadians, and everyone else keeps telling the Afghans that they will not be abandoned even as everyone is already heading out the door with official transition to take place in 2014.  Why should the Afghans believe the international community?  Are there any other promises that folks are making that have heaps of doubt built in?

So, here is the contest: can you name a promise or threat in international relations (we will omit statements of confidence by owners and general managers in various NFL head coaches aside for now) that has as little credibility as the assurances made to the Afghans?

Comprehending Gingrich

Newt Gingrich














President Hamid Karzai has called another jirga (assembly) to attempt to gain support for the creation of a long-term defensive pact with the United States. The traditional Loya Jirga is a mechanism for legitimizing the creation of a new dynasty or constitutional order in Afghanistan, but it is not supposed to be used in place of the parliament that was created with the new constitution nearly a decade ago. Most scholars would agree that the President of Afghanistan has the right to call a consultative Loya Jirga, but summoning a traditional Loya Jirga after a constitution is operational is much more problematic.

Unfortunately, the Afghan Parliament has been deadlocked for months because of a constitutional crisis stemming from last year’s flawed elections and attempts to unseat MPs who may have been elected under questionable circumstances. Politics within Parliament have also been marred by increasing ethno-linguistic factionalism. Nevertheless, it is important to note that Parliament is empowered to discuss the matters under consideration by the current jirga. It is for this reason that some MPs are boycotting the meeting and arguing in public that the meeting is illegal and unconstitutional. (The Taliban have also threatened — via SMS text messages — retaliation against MPs who participate in the Loya Jirga.) The Upper House of Parliament has issued a statement that the decisions of the Loya Jirga are only consultative and must still be submitted to parliament for approval.

In his opening address today, President Karzai called the meeting a consultative assembly, but closed the speech by saying that “You can represent the people of Afghanistan in such issues better than we can. We will take your recommendations and act as you have ordered.”  Thus, it is not at all clear that Karzai intends to submit the recommendations of the Jirga to Parliament.

The proceedings of this assembly are also complicated because the agreement with the US has not yet been hammered out.  (An agreement with India has already been announced. Negotiations are underway with the EU, UK, France, and Australia.)  Thus, the Jirga is meeting to discuss a hypothetical agreement or (more generously) the idea that Afghanistan should have a pact with the United States. Karzai has already framed the only conditional objections to the agreement as 1) ending night raids on civilian houses; and 2) eliminating any “parallel” structures of authority run by foreign forces in Afghanistan.

Regardless of what this Jirga recommends, the institutions of democracy in Afghanistan will be further eroded — if that is still possible.

[Cross-posted from Humayun]

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