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Buying Time in Afghanistan, WPJ Fall 2007 |
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Written by NotOverYet
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Friday, 16 November 2007 |
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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.
Afghanistan can still be salvaged, but continued donor commitment is not
sufficient without a reformed strategic approach. Doctors sometimes refer to
the period immediately after a multi-system failure as the "golden hour"
during which intervention is especially consequential. Unfortunately, the
United States and its allies missed this window in Afghanistan by pursuing a
flawed approach with far too few resources.
This has all been well documented. What is less understood is the degree to
which these mistakes are related to a central pattern: a narrow focus on
counterinsurgency when a comprehensive approach to statebuilding was needed.
This remains the dominant pattern of engagement today.
Virtually every major decision taken during the early years of the
U.S.-ledintervention in Afghanistanfrom the choice to extensively
co-opt warlords
into counterinsurgency and government roles, to the criteria and methods by
which development assistance was deployed, to the mode of engagement with
Pakistanwas driven by the exigencies of a narrowly conceived
counterinsurgency. While dozens of countries contributed to political,
economic, and humanitarian goalsefforts touted by diplomats and heralded by
the pressthese efforts, even taken cumulatively, were but a meager fraction
of what the U.S.-led military operation (known as Operation Enduring Freedom
or OEF) was expending. From 2001 to 2005, according to the Congressional
Research Service, the United States spent 11 times as much on military
operations as it did on reconstruction, humanitarian aid, economic
assistance, and training for Afghan security forces combined.
The result has been a mission driven overwhelmingly by military
considerations and solutions. The shape of the military deployment provided
the contours of the intervention. The United States, wary of replicating the
Soviet debacle and skeptical of working through the United Nations, sought
an approach that minimized entanglements. But the choice to forgo a
comprehensive security presence for a focused counterterrorism campaign
became the central constraint for operating in post-Taliban Afghanistan,
circumscribing not only American actions but those of the Afghan government
and international non-governmental organizations. |
