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| Afghanistan-Pak-India |
| Afghanistan Four Years On: An Assessment |
| 2005-11-16 |
| By Sean M. Maloney (Fall 2005 Parameters Magazine, US Army War College) PDF file. Not sure how I was referred to this article. An Excerpt: New Challenges The main supporting effort of the âchess gameâ mechanism will be police and judicial reform. In time, the incremental deployments of central government people to the outer reaches of Afghanistan will have to be backed up with a functioning legal system. Italy is in charge of assisting the Afghan government in this area. Though Italy brings to bear substantial experience in combating organized crime, the reform process has been slow and cultural differences are significant. The same can be said of police training. Germany is the lead nation in this regard, and for reasons most likely related to the Afghan budget, progress is slower than anticipated. At some point, it will no longer be desirable for the Afghan government and Coalition entities to continue to use military force to police the country. This takes us to the narcotics problem. The assumption among some international entities operating in support of the Afghan government in 2004 suggests that the removal of chieftains engaged in narcotics cultivation and trafficking via the âchess gameâ may have two effects. It may result, in the worst case, in better networking under the guise of legitimate government activity. Second, the removal of the prominent leadership will devolve power to second-, third-, and even fourth-tier local personnel engaged in narcotics production, trafficking, and protection. By no means are all of these personnel former militia force personnel, which complicates attempts to identify and deal with them. Though this works to the advantage of the Afghan government in that the traffickersâ ability to organize a ânarco-insurgencyâ is severely reduced, the lack of police and judicial capacity means that Kabul cannot yet target these dispersed, low-level groups. Similarly, an anti-corruption force will have to be formed to police the chieftains and others in the government to ensure that they remain uninvolved in narcotics production and distribution. In effect, Afghanistan will become like every other nation trying to take on organized crime (and not a Colombia-like narco-insurgency), but only if the right tools are forged and brought to bear. Two other extremely important aspects of extending government influence to the provinces are sometimes overlooked in military assessments. These are the lack of roads and other infrastructure, coupled with the extremely high illiteracy rate. How does one provide anti-narcotics information to a nearly illiterate population? How does one deploy police and a legal system when the roads do not facilitate vehicular traffic? The deployment of PRTs, be they NATO or OEF, will assist in collecting information as much as they will assist in the local and provincial coordination effort, but how will Afghanistan âbalance its booksâ in the reconstruction effort? And what priorities will be assigned? Politically motivated criticism in theWestern media can interfere with the assessment and establishment of priorities. Demands by Western politicians and their mouthpieces for a huge and expensive counternarcotics force could divert the Afghan leadershipâs attention from what they rightly view as their own established reconstruction priorities. The seemingly constant demand by critics that more and more international troops need to be deployed to Afghanistan was addressed earlier. However, the PRT expansion program, whereby NATOmembers have in principle agreed to accept lead-nation status for several former American OEF-run PRTs, has stalled out because of a lack of contributors.20 The PRTs and their associated Forward Support Bases are supposed to be manned by approximately 5,000 personnel (100 per PRT, and 400 to 500 per FSB), yet NATO member nations canât seem to come up with the additional personnel to meet this requirement. The reason is principally attributable to the stultifying eurobureaucracy, but there also are serious problems in how ISAF is commanded asit expands to the provinces. In 2004, the Eurocorps took command of ISAF, while the Franco-German Brigade was placed in command of ISAFâs Kabul Multinational Brigade. The relationship between the two French-led or dominated NATO headquarters with Combined Forces Command Afghanistan and certain American, British, and Canadian nations contributing forces to ISAF can be described in polite terms only as dysfunctional. The infighting, kept to a minimum under Canadian command last year but now detrimental to ISAFâs effectiveness, has reached the point where a new command concept should be considered. Steps were taken to conceptualize a NATO âAfghanistan Forceâ that would command both CFC-A and ISAF, but the lasting problem over the international command of American forces will prevent significant and effective movement in this direction for the time being. As usual, the demand by the French to command the planned NATO force grates on the sensitivities of other NATO members. The only entities to benefit from these fractures are France and al Qaeda. An Afghanistan Force option was rejected by NATO in spring 2005. As it stands, the phased replacement of OEF PRTs with NATO PRTs will result in the transfer of some American-led PRTs to NATO command. Special operations forces engaged in the hunt for high-value targets will continue to operate in the region. The command relationship between those forces and the new, expanded ISAF is currently under discussion. In effect, ISAF will absorb elements of OEF, not replace them. SHAPE planners are, as of summer 2005, developing a campaign plan for the entire country. The problem of who will conduct the ârobustâ portions of that plan and what national restrictions will be placed on those forces will remain the main issues. Another emerging challenge is the demands by international legal personalities for Balkans-style war crimes trials in Afghanistan. These demands appear to be rooted in simplistic notions that one size fits all when it comes to international law (other motives, like personal ambition and job security, cannot be ruled out). Afghanistan is not Bosnia, nor is it Kosovo. The Balkan wars were comparatively short in duration and had identifiable protagonists who could be singled out as instigators of mass crimes against humanity. Afghanistan, on the other hand, has had 25 years of war. The existing polity includes people who fought on both sides during the Soviet era but against the Taliban in more recent years. Milosevic-style indictments will not work in Afghanistan, where almost everybody may be guilty of violating some Western-based law. Indeed, if we are to have war crimes trials for Afghanistan, one should first call to the dock Soviet military and political leaders for acts of genocide, followed by every Soviet soldier who fought there, before moving on to any current Afghan leader or American soldier. A South African-style Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be the better tool. Afghanistan needs reconciliation, not a reprise of Nuremberg. A disturbing trend is the belief among some in OEF that the Coalition is barely breaking even in the information war. Recent events in Jalalabad, where 15 people were killed during rioting over the alleged mistreatment of the Koran at Camp Delta in Cuba, coupled with the persistent ongoing hunt for another Abu Ghraib by media outlets, will require deft handling.We can assume the Jalalabad riots were externally stimulated, but if it can happen in Jalalabad, it could happen elsewhere. The best response is an effective and integrated Afghan response, not the imposition of OEF or ISAF troops to put down these information-warfare events. The Coalition, working closely with Afghan authorities, must become better at countering the more salacious allegations by media sources rather than remaining mute in an effort to ride them out. Similarly, concerns within the intelligence community of the âmigrationâ of tactics used in Iraq to Afghanistan are very real: in May 2005, a mosque in Kandahar was attacked with a significant death toll. In July, captured Afghan police were beheaded by insurgents, while a car bomb was used against the PRT in Kandahar. This new emphasis on mass civilian targets and gruesome terrorism against police indicate that while there has been success in countering the insurgency, there are still those who seek political change through violence. The best response, however, is an Afghan response. |
| Posted by:ed |
| #1 seems to me that perhaps it's time to rethink how we want to wage the narco war. The problem with our narco war is that we treat it the same way that the French treat their riots. We really have no intentions of doing anything effective. We can't even talk about it honestly. We talk about it as if stopping the supply would eliminate the demand. Um, no. As capitalists, we should easily grasp that's not the way it works. The demand creates the supply. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-11-16 15:11 |