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The insistence of a powerful group of policymakers and military commanders on the use of counterinsurgency strategy subverted U.S. humanitarian efforts in service of a corrupt system of violence, according to an op-ed from Feinstein International Center’s Andrew Wilder. The piece summarizes recent research conducted by him and his colleagues on the effect of aid spending in Afghanistan. Wilder concludes that no evidence exists that our "humanitarian spending" is endearing us to Afghan hearts and minds.
From the op-ed on Boston.com [h/t Steve Hynd]:
Instead of winning hearts and minds, Afghan perceptions of aid and aid actors are overwhelmingly negative. And instead of contributing to stability, in many cases aid is contributing to conflict and instability. For example, we heard many reports of the Taliban being paid by donor-funded contractors to provide security (or not to create insecurity), especially for their road-building projects. In an ethnically and tribally divided society like Afghanistan, aid can also easily generate jealousy and ill will by inadvertently helping to consolidate the power of some tribes or factions at the expense of others – often pushing rival groups into the arms of the Taliban.
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The most destabilizing effect of aid, however, is its role in fueling massive corruption, which in turn is eroding the legitimacy of the government. Our research suggests that we have failed to win Afghan hearts and minds not because we have spent too little money, but because we have spent too much too quickly, often in insecure environments with extremely limited implementation and oversight capacity.
Significantly, the main cause of insecurity identified by most Afghans we interviewed was not poverty, or a lack of reconstruction, or even the Taliban, but their highly corrupt and ineffective government…
…[F]oreign aid should focus on promoting humanitarian and development objectives, where there is evidence of positive impact, rather than on promoting counterinsurgency objectives, where there is not.
In other words, we should help people for their own sake. Who would have thought?
From top to bottom, the U.S. effort in Afghanistan commits the fundamental sin of domination: the valuation of people as means instead of as ends. Counterinsurgency values the well-being of a population only insofar as that population supports our local ally, who in turn is only valuable insofar is (s)he supports our goals in the region. People do not have intrinsic value. Their relationship to the government or to the insurgency renders them an asset or a liability, and nothing more. COIN is not a strategy–it’s sociopathy. (The COIN manual uses a fantastic euphemism on page xxxix for its sociopathy: "Counterinsurgency favors peace over justice." What they mean is that the well-being and/or grievance of a population suffering under the boot of our allied government does not matter to the counterinsurgent nearly as much as the stability of a government helping us get what we want.) It should not surprise us that when people discover that they are a target of sociopathic manipulation posing as humanitarian aid, they get angry.
Afghan hearts and minds don’t need to change–ours do.
Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the dangers posed to U.S. national security by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six): Security, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.
15 Comments
By their own definition..the US were the insurgents when they invaded Afghanistan.
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(page 1-1 of the COIN PDF)
“1-2. Insurgency and its tactics are as old as warfare itself. Joint doctrine defines an insurgency as an organized movement aimed at the overthrow of a constituted government through the use of subversion and
armed conflict (JP 1-02). Stated another way, an insurgency is an organized, protracted politico-military struggle designed to weaken the control and legitimacy of an established government, occupying power, or other political authority while increasing insurgent control. “
http://www.fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-24.pdf
So, Derrick, this piece of yours, and the piece by Andrew Wilder that you cite, are in the same relationship as the military and the humanitarian aid in Afghanistan. The Wilder article points to a problem which is one of the big problems with the aid efforts in Afghanistan: that they are frequently corrupt, and that the corruption results from subsuming them to a military mission and running them for an ulterior purpose.
Fair enough, and very accurate. The objectives are confused, the military is running something that should not be military and should not be run for an ulterior purpose and that is causing corruption. But then you yourself append to this observation an ulterior purpose and context, when you start talking about ‘domination’ and ‘oppression’ under the ‘boot’ of….
The situation in Afghanistan cannot be understood from the point of view of world domination and imperial occupation and boots on the necks of oppressed populations. That is some other war, some other time, some other place. The situation in Afghanistan cannot be understood without clearly differentiating the ISAF/NATO mission from the abomination called ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’, with its criminal AUMF and its preservation and extension of illegal prisons and immoral detentions. The situation in Afghanistan cannot be understood without understanding local hegemonic interests, either. People in countries other than great powers have agency and intelligence, and use it in their own interests, and do both good and bad things that way.
But most of all, the situation in Afghanistan cannot be understood as a dichotomous, Manichaean choice of winning versus withdrawing. Neither winning (the problem at the root of Andrew Wilder’s article, and at the root of our inability to denounce the Karzai government’s election behavior), nor withdrawal (the “solution” based on the absurd notion that another Somalia is a good thing compared to trying to rectify a multinational foreign aid fuck up) is anything more than a cardboard cut-out version of reality.
The necessity of dealing in cardboard cut-outs in America speaks volumes about our inability to put the intelligence and effort necessary into solving problems as they now occur in 2009, instead of forcing everything into historical models that increasingly are losing their relevance.
Now, wait a second…You’re attacking a judgment I made about the moral view of counterinsurgency by conflating it with the well-worn “Empire America” image. That’s not what I said. What I said was this:
Please address this point and not the words you’re lifting out of it to make it easier to argue against. The “boot” referred to here is the boot of an ally, not the U.S. The “domination” referred to above is the treatment of people as means to an end rather than as ends themselves. The COIN manual makes it very, very clear that that is the perspective of the strategy. For example, pages xxxix – xl just in the introductory section of the manual clearly outlines a strategic view that does not recognize the right of a people to throw off an allied government when it fails to establish justice. And in that context, you get gems like this:
No one is implying a Manichean conflict. I’m pretty sure I said that very clearly in other places.
I don’t think I’m really perverting your argument. The Manichaean choice I’m referring to is the dichotomy of ‘winning’ or ‘withdrawing’, and you are rather known for being a proponent of the latter horn of that dilemma. The argument that counterinsurgency is perverse because it perverts the motives of aid and other measures is a good one. The arguments about boots and domination and oppression are, frame-wise (Lakoff sense), propagandistic. A government, like the Karzai government, which has trouble asserting itself in the countryside, cannot simultaneously be oppressively asserting itself in the countryside. And the boot meme is one of a conqueror over its conquest, not a meme of rampant corruption.
I agree with your premise, I just think your language is not appropriate, probably because we disagree on the solution to the problem.
Okay I need a clarification then: with which premise do you agree?
I’m a solid opponent of a) the use of military force and b) of funneling aid through the military or subjugating it to military objectives. But that’s different than being for completely turning our backs on the Afghan people and never looking back.
Now I think you’re making a simplistic argument. A government that lays claim to power by intentionally subverting its constitution, making alliances with war criminals and drug lords, etc., may not be able to enforce its legislation, but it absolutely can be a predator vs. the local population. Karzai’s brother comes to mind, as do a number of folks in official positions. But more generally, the comments about boots and domination have to do with COIN’s general outlook and are not specific to Afghanistan. El Salvador, for example. But if you’re happy with a restatement that talks about predation vs. domination, fine with me. But it would be my assertion that, should we ever succeed in helping to create a Kabul regime that can enforce its writ in the countryside, given its level of corruption and its composition, would absolutely fit the “boot” description.
That counterinsurgency is a mental illness because it perverts aid (see (b) below).
With regards to a), because nobody built the local police to effective capacity (responsibility originally with the Germans, now with the U.S. as far as I can tell), it’s probably not possible to have no use of military force in Afghanistan and accomplish not turning our backs on the Afghan people. But it needs to be radically restructured. Because nobody will complicate our policy towards Pakistan, there isn’t going to be much accomplished, and we’ve also fucked up there, too, by not backing the lawyer’s movement and by paying lipservice to the Charter for Democracy, and by not accounting for our role in the ‘disappeared’ and by not threatening them with putting them on the list of state sponsors of terror.
But if you remember Eric Shinseki, and you read UNDP and others, then if you ask the military to provide the solution in Afghanistan, as General McChrystal appears to have been asked (see Siun’s article this morning), then what General McChrystal is saying is accurate, he is not being disingenuous, he is not propagandizing, or anything else. A totally military solution in Afghanistan (using the Shinseki metric) would require 600,000 foreign troops. That’s unacceptable to everybody I can think of (and I’ll wager, you can think of, either ;-)). Dropping the problem, or asking aid workers to work in grave danger is unacceptable too, or should be (on your say so, I will retract my belief that you wanted to withdraw non-militarily too, and apologize for the error). So that leaves only inventing something new. By all the accounts both you and Siun, and others, quote daily, time is running out. So what is that new thing going to be?
I’ll be happy to posit a way out, but with preceding comments:
**Asking someone who’s opposed to military action what to do now that we’ve taken military action and have been met with disaster is a little like asking someone who is against drunk driving what to do now that you’ve wrapped your car around a tree. By taking the initial big bad plunge, you’ve totally limited your options, so now, there are no options left that don’t leave the driver, the passenger, and the tree severely damaged. So I suppose what I’m saying is, there no good options left, just less bad options.
At the moment, I’m leaning toward a solution given by Afghans in insurgency-prone areas to UK’s DFID researchers. Folks in these areas communicated a remarkably consistent preferred end game for the U.S. occupation:
1) Establish a fair, universally applied set of criteria for blacklisting Afghans from the political process. This would result in some of the people not on the list (due to their alliance with the U.S.) being put on it, and some people on the list (due to Taliban ties) being taken off of it. Folks in the insurgency prone areas have noticed the hypocrisy of allowing war criminals from U.S.-backed factions on the ballot while much more innocuous people have been blackballed for Taliban ties, and it’s undermining GoIRA’s legitimacy.
2) Hold an election with these names on the ballot to establish a true “will of the people” government and re-establish legitimacy.
3) Once this government takes office, it should begin immediate negotiations with the U.S. on a withdrawal timeline.
There are all sorts of problems with this scenario (that only the Afghans, not the U.S. can take these steps; possibility of election fraud; the time-span between now and the next possible election given the climate, etc.), but the advantage is that it at least ponders the political way out of Afghanistan, vs. the COIN/McChrystal approach that leaves that endgame out of the picture. I could be convinced by alternative approaches, but they’ll have to at least contemplate a political endgame.
Brass tacks: we are not going to create a liberal democracy in Afghanistan, period. That means we have to a) stop giving the cruel impression to the Afghans that that is one of our objectives, and b) be honest with ourselves about the plausible end states, and decide from among them which compare favorably to the more-than-half-million troop commitment needed for what the COIN pushers are trying to do in Afghanistan.
Thank you. I assume your caveat refers to aiding the Northern Alliance to topple the Taliban in 2001, i.e. that you don’t think that should have happened, so I assume that, at the time, you knew of some “political endgame” that would have gotten rid of the training camps somehow, or you were okay with Pakistan and al Qaeda and others running training camps, but, whatever.
As to 1), do you mean that any ties or alliances with the U.S. should be a predicate for disqualification from the election process? That would be just as unfair as the reverse, wouldn’t it? As for ties to the Taliban, the U.S. (and others) allege far more ties with the Taliban than probably exist, so no problem here with putting some of those people back on the list. Actually, no problem with allowing Taliban to run for office per se, as long as disqualification would result from ties to heroin runners or to the Pakistani ISI (fair is fair, no?). I would also disarm the warlords or make ties to them a disqualifying factor in some cases.
Agree wholeheartedly with 2), but implementation has always been the problem, so this suggestion is a lot bigger than it seems. The NATO forces are not the principle party causing corruption in the elections. Corruption needs to be ended, but how to do it has been the problem that the U.N. has grappled with several times (and usually recommended postponement on discovery of factors that need to be addressed). At any rate, pending the completion of the current recount, a plan for re-doing the election needs to be made ready as they are almost certainly now headed for a verdict of massive fraud.
On 3) the government is not free if it must undertake a particular agenda on taking office, so your stipulation that it begin withdrawal negotiations immediately is your will, not the will of those who vote it into office, no matter how it is disguised. If that’s what it decides to do, the U.S. should immediately enter into negotiations with it and withdraw. If it decides to do otherwise, you should not compel it to the negotiations you believe are the correct ones. Anything else is asking for a guaranteed outcome.
On the brass tacks point: A failed state is a failed state, and leaving because of an assertion that a liberal democracy cannot be formed is still leaving. If you leave a failed state, you should be responsible for all future outcomes, just as you would hold people responsible for invading and ruining a country with an operating government. I don’t agree that all end states are currently being considered, or even known, I don’t agree that just because you want to leave, it will no longer be your responsibility when you go. I think that point should be carefully considered by all those who say that nothing will be any better than leaving. They should be made to prove it and own it, and if necessary, face prosecution just as an aggressive war criminal would, if they cause massive inhumanity by their actions and orders. If you are sure you are the one in possession of the very best solution, this stipulation shouldn’t bother you. I think you very much underestimate the feelings of people in Afghanistan toward the Taliban, and I think you very much imbue the Taliban with a qualities they do not deserve. If the Afghans find that they are faced with a Taliban inevitability, you may find they will blame you for your abandonment.
Re: whether I think/thought the invasion should have happened: No, I do not accept the premise that “training camps in Afghanistan” were the problem that led to 9/11. The problem is not that people got “basic training” in some backwater, but that they got flight training in the U.S., got into the U.S., etc. So no, I would not have launched that operation.
1)
No, not at all. I mean what I said: that a fair, universally applied standard should apply to whether a potential candidate is allowed to run for office, meaning that some (but not all) of the U.S. allied factions would be placed on the list and that some (but not all) of the blackballed Taliban-connected names be taken off of the list. In my view that kind of fair standard is the only thing that’s going to get a legitimate outcome and split the Talibs who are reconcilable off of the Quetta Shura Taliban, who are not.
On #2:
Agree totally–problem is that the climatic conditions in the north will mean we can’t pull it off until spring. The real ugly scenario, though, is the one that’s shaping up: that U.S. policymakers put their public stamp of approval on the election, setting the stage for Abdullah’s factions to enter the fray in the region containing our northern supply route.
On #3:
Well, first, this wasn’t my idea. This is part of a well-articulated preferred outcome described in in-person interviews by Afghans living in insurgency-prone areas. That’s what they told DFID interviewers that they wanted, and I agree with them.
Re: this:
Look, I don’t disagree that there are no good options, but it’s ridiculous to throw phrases like “war criminals” around when talking about ending military involvement in a country. That doesn’t work definitionally or morally.
Look, we are not in a scenario where there is a plausible positive outcome. Bad outcomes are the only outcomes at this point, and continuing to shove munitions and dollars and lives at it amounts to a criminal face-saving exercise that should end as soon as possible. The outcomes you want to lay at the feet of folks calling for withdrawal are outcomes caused by the very bad decision to try to fix Afghanistan by attacking it in the first place. But again, what I said in the above was that I favor the process suggested by the Afghan population that’s the target of both the insurgency and the counterinsurgency: fair standard for standing for election, an election, and a negotiated withdrawal. If, however, Karzai’s corrupt government insists on holding onto power after such a discredited election process, and u.s. policymakers insist on propping him up until such point as they can enforce their predatory writ on the whole of Afghanistan, then yes, by God, I want the plug pulled.
That’s a great find, Derrick. It describes a lot of the current problem very well.
ondelette: I think I see your point, but I keep stumbling on a feeling that now that insurgency is entrenched, we are seen as a force for bad in the area. In other words, the downward spiral towards a Somalia seems to me already to be triggered. I don’t know how we reverse that, but I have a very hard time seeing our troops being present as a part of the reversal. Perhaps supporting peacekeeping forces from other countries could work, but even forces we are supporting will have a high likelihood be a destabilizing influence, I think.
The quote you picked, and Derrick picked before that, is illustrative of the problem, just like the Andrew Wilder article is. I hate to go all Zen on you but there are a large number of concurrent tasks that need to be attended to in Afghanistan to end the failed state (in the phase space sense) of things there, because failed states (in the foreign policy sense) are by nature complex systems, much more akin to the hand to hand combat of medieval infantries writ large than to organized armies on a Risk board. And one of the paradoxes of these systems is that they require “in the moment” solutions, and that means constantly changing reactions in which all motives must be pure. Aid must be to aid people. If it appears that there must be a sacrifice of justice for peace, more effort and thought must be devoted, since ‘justice and peace’, not ‘justice or peace’ must be accomplished somehow. Bombs are always failures.
And the stakes are extremely high, but not the stakes that General McChrystal and probably President Obama are concentrating on. Somalia will provide the preview for this Afghanistan problem all the way down the course. Afghanistan is Somalia in the gigantic. During the next five to ten years, we will see how bad it will be: The Kilimanjaro glacier will disappear around 2015 or so. Kenya is already experiencing the climate shift as this happens, and Kenya has been where all the refugees who have any luck at all wind up from Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda.
So it will go around 2050 when, if either the ’screw up and withdraw’ or the ’screw up and fight the cold war against nobody’ solutions put the South Asian state failures in full progress when the great Himalayan glacial system ends. Only instead of millions of people with a suddenly changed food and water supply like in East Africa, there will be between 3 and 4 billion people so affected. So screw up and don’t care in Afghanistan if you like. After all, the problems really are daunting and hard to solve. But there will be consequences, just move your gaze over to Guandong and Assam and around all there and look at the size of that brown cloud. It’s a bigger killer than H1N1 will ever be, and it’s our baby even if we won’t be around for the consequences.
What I’m trying to say about the problem is that since it’s complex (both in the ordinary usage and in the dynamical systems sense), using history to find a convenient approximation can be a fatal chess move. What I’m trying to say about the solution is that we can currently afford to fuck it up and leave, but by 2050, the consequences of continued inhumanity, either through ignorance, washing of hands a là Pontius Pilate, or excessively simplistic applications of force a là Rumsfeld, will greatly increase the probability that the excesses of Hitler, Stalin, or Mao will all seem like chump change. People fight a lot harder over water than they do over oil.
It really is a great quote, and it seems like something inherent to the COIN doctrine.
Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed:
France and America in Vietnam
Soviet Union in Afghanistan
America in Iraq and Afghanistan
We have learned nothing. We just keep killing other people’s kids and our own. Stupid! Stupid! Monstrous!
Shorter version: If, because of the choices of U.S. and Afghan policymakers, my choices become limited to a) supporting the corrupt and predatory Kabul regime and b) yanking our support for that government, then Karzai and his cronies can rape and pillage on their own dime, thank you very much.
response to Derrick Crowe at both 13 and at 14:
This is the premise on which you are operating, but is not established fact, and does not follow from established fact. It is one of the possible views of what is happening right now. I do see, and do understand how it leads to your choices. I just don’t believe it, and the reason I don’t believe it is because mostly what has gone on so far has not been inevitable. It may be that due to a variety of factors, including, I might say, enough negative popular input from people who agree with you, that no real effort to change things will be made, in which case there will be only bad outcomes. That might happen even if you have no influence, or I have no influence. But I find your above viewpoint cynical, no offense.
As with what I said above, I find this both hopeless and cynical, and far from being indicated as the only possible outcome. Were I to think it was, I would agree with you. But I don’t, so I don’t agree that these are the only choices, and I don’t believe I should engage in any behavior that would make such choices self-fulfilling. My dimes are limited, but I would choose to spend them trying to make things different there, thank you very much. To me, we are talking about a region I regard as one of the great cultural capitals of the world, historically and probably in the future. I believe very much in its importance, and do not much like it that my avocational study is constantly filled with such pain.
Keep up the good work Derrick. I don’t agree with you, but it is important what you do, that you bring Afghanistan to light on a daily basis. I mean that sincerely.