In Praise of Warlords

The following article appeared in FPIF. Follow the link above for the original version.

The United States helped develop and gradually train the Afghan National Forces (ANF) to defeat the resurgent Taliban. The Obama administration is stepping up this effort. The United States plans to makes the ANF the basis of a strategy that will allow the gradual turnover of tasks in July 2011. However, the United States is banking too much on the ANF. A better approach would be to empower the tribes, their elders, and the local militias to reject insurgency and play a greater role in the politics of their country.

The United States has made some efforts in the past to use local militias but only in a limited fashion. Instead, since 2001 the United States has continuously increased its role in fighting Afghanistan’s counterinsurgency, while the indigenous fighting capabilities effectively withered or passed over to the Taliban. The 30,000 troop escalation reinforces that mentality and is likely to be counterproductive in the long run. The strategy relies on a false belief that the surge in Iraq worked because of more foreign troops. Rather, it worked because the conflict between Shias and Sunnis exhausted both factions.

Instead, the solution lies within the Afghanis themselves and in particular the tribal system of the Pashtuns. The U.S. military must change its approach and emphasize tapping into these existing regional power structures. U.S. military officials must identify the leaders that are ready to work with the central government, reject insurgency, and do the fighting themselves instead of having foreign troops do it for them. Failure to do so will only put the ANF in the same situation that U.S. troops experienced over the last eight years — except that the Afghani army will be worse equipped and the overall governance structure will remain incoherent.

Last week, the ANF successfully defended Kabul against a brazen yet small-scale Taliban attack. But this was an anomaly. It took place in the capital away from the tribal regions. The ANF is not likely to become effective on a national level in 18 months.

First, despite last week’s successes, the ANF’s fighting capabilities have achieved a very poor record. The police and the Afghan army — the two major components of the ANF — have constantly given ground to anti-Afghan groups, which include the Taliban, other insurgent groups, and freelancing “commanders.” It has lacked the staying power, the discipline, and the courage that their opponents have. Additionally, central government agents such as the soldiers and officers of the ANF have a reputation for stealing from the population and being corrupt. The population of the rural regions often perceives the Taliban as stronger in providing security and fairer in dispensing justice.

Worse, the ANF is likely to face even greater problems. If we go by the experience of the creation of the Iraqi National Army, the ANF is likely to go through rampant desertions, defections, the possible use of the uniform to deliberately attack rival groups, and a general lack of will to fight. These problems will only become apparent when the United States presence starts to withdraw.

Furthermore, the head of the ANF training program, Maj. Gen. Richard P. Formica, has said that the ANF will not reach maximum capacity before 2013 — and that is probably an optimistic assessment. Building a modern central army is a long and expensive process.

Problems on the Ground

Afghanistan faces deep levels of corruption and fragmentation of governance which doesn’t bode well for the ANF either. “Commanders” exact fees for providing security to convoys and moving goods through their territory. These commanders aren’t part of the central government. They are essentially self-serving private groups that govern their stretch of road or parcel of territory. Some are Taliban, some are associated with them, and yet others have unclear allegiances.

The orthodox view is that the surge will knock the wind out of the insurgents and create some breathing space for the ANF and its civilian counterparts. But even a more aggressive timetable for training the ANF — which the Pentagon has asked for — is unlikely to help. In short, the United States is banking too much on the ANF.

Instead, the United States — as it still has the power to determine what direction the country takes — should go the path of least resistance and emphasize a bottom-up approach. The United States should recognize that corruption and fragmentation of power in the regions is, to a certain extent, endemic to Afghanistan. The United States should embrace this situation, rather than fight it. To do so, the United States needs to identify and empower the groups that are friendly to the central government and make every effort to reconcile those that aren’t. General McChrystal, the U.S. commander of the Afghan theater, has rightly said that “you can’t kill your way to victory.”

A Different Approach

Engaging local groups made up of tribes and warlords (or commanders) means according greater autonomy to them. Over time, they would consolidate and incorporate within the greater security apparatus of the country.

These grassroots efforts need greater emphasis — through intelligence on tribal politics, Afghan government reconciliation initiatives, and U.S. military engagement and empowerment of tribes and local leaders — because Afghanistan is a decentralized country. The most important and irreducible political unit is the tribe, at least in the Pashtun lands. Implementing a central government with western apparatus of control is akin to social engineering, bypassing the native political workings of the environment.

A centralized country has certain advantages. But going too fast with centralization (and dictating to someone else how fast they should go) risks implementing structures that are too weak to survive.

Currently, government agents lack legitimacy in the eyes of the locals, therefore giving rise to repeated accusations of corruption and injustices that erodes their capacity to operate and empowers the anti-Afghan forces. This lack of legitimacy and the weakness of the central government have created anarchy that has increasingly defined the country since 2002.

In a country where the internal politics look more like relations between states — rather than the normal relations inside a country in which the state has the monopoly on violence — self-determination is all the more important. It's also conducive to a long-term cooling down of the violence through a process of balancing power and negotiating relationships at the national level.

The Virtues of Decentralization

Yet there are many observers who see tribal politics, warlords and militias as a serious threat to the central government. Seth Jones clearly states “the U.S. assistance to warlords weakened the central government” in the aftermath of 2001. He and others believe that this kind of business is the principal reason why governance in the country has been so poor and the insurgency so strong. This viewpoint has been predominant amongst western deciders and intellectuals.

In fact, it’s the other way around: The poor governance and the resulting insurgency have stemmed from attempts to rule the country from the center in the image of modern states. The U.S. assistance to warlords was always as a last resort, done in an ad hoc fashion, and there was never any follow up to get the warlords in line with the central government. Instead, there is evidence that grassroots efforts, when properly supported, have a greater chance of success.

Ann Marlowe reported from Afghanistan last year that 250 soldiers of the 82nd Airborne were able to secure the highly contested province of Khost during their tour. The troops were able to win the support of Khost’s 13 tribes but when their tour was over the Taliban were able to regain control of much of the province, despite an increased American footprint. She also mentions the demise of a warlord in Herat that nevertheless resulted in a net security loss in the province.

Marlowe concludes:

If troops don't understand Afghan culture and fail to work within the tribal system, they will only fuel the insurgency. When we get the tribes on our side, that will change. When a tribe says no, it means no. IEDs will be reported and no insurgent fighters will be allowed to operate in or across their area.

This is a lot more than what the ANF can offer. Unlike the ANF, tribes and their leaders have the authority and legitimacy to stop their members from joining the insurgents.

Warlords in Afghanistan have a bad reputation because of their poor human rights records and their tendency to fight one another ever since the 1990s. But “warlord” doesn’t necessarily mean the big warlords of old. Rather, the label applies to any local commander who can muster a militia and garner local legitimate support. The commanders who can be friendly to the central government hold the keys to stability and rejection of the insurgency because they are legitimate elements of the social fabric.

This has been demonstrated time and again in Iraq where tribal culture is also important. The Sunni insurgency in Anbar and elsewhere, while couched in a greater national struggle, started to improve when the U.S. Army and Marines engaged rather than estranged the village elders and tribal leaders.

In Afghanistan, in the northern province of Kunduz, mounting pressure from the Taliban was successfully reversed by Bakhtiar Ludin, a former mujahedeen, and his militia after gaining the support of the central government in 2009. Mr. Ludin was helped by U.S. Special Forces, the CIA, and their Afghan counterparts. They revived the old Mujahedeen in their area — one of them was running a fish restaurant. They responded to the Kunduz governor who said if nothing was done, he’d have to side with the Taliban.

In another example, the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines in Helmand province turned a bad situation around this summer by adopting a population-centric rather than an insurgent-centric approach. Gen. Michael T. Flynn explains:

Many local elders quietly resented the Taliban for threatening their traditional power structure. The Taliban was empowering young fighters and mullahs to replace local elders as the primary authorities on local economic and social matters.

Based on its integrated intelligence, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines took steps to subvert the Taliban power structure and to strengthen the elders’ traditional one.

This speaks volumes for the presence of an indigenous tribal political structure that must take a central role in the greater counterinsurgency strategy and the rebuilding of the country.

The Tajik Example

Finally, there is the experience of Tajikistan recently documented in Foreign Affairs. With a minimal budget, international efforts were able to stabilize the country in the 1990s by allowing local warlords to retain more autonomy. Instead of less effective governance, warlords were able to generate more of it because they had genuine control over their area. On the national level, an essential balance of power was struck, borders were controlled and the country eventually moved on:

Rather than forcing free and fair elections, throwing out warlords, and flooding the country with foreign peacekeepers, the intervening parties opted for a more limited and realistic set of goals. They brokered deals across political factions, tolerated warlords where necessary, and kept the number of outside peacekeeping troops to a minimum. The result has been the emergence of a relatively stable balance of power inside the country, the dissuasion of former combatants from renewed hostilities, and the opportunity for state building to develop organically. The Tajik case suggests that in trying to rebuild a failed state, less may be more.

But giving a greater role to the tribes and the militias isn't a new idea. Just over a year ago, an American-backed plan experimented with the arming of a militia in Wardak province. The Obama plan itself talks about the need for U.S. troops to work with local political units and their militias. Yet it's a matter of what elements are emphasized and whether the U.S. military can change its culture.

Even the intelligence community has severe shortcomings in the knowledge department necessary to fight a successful counterinsurgency. In a scathing report, Flynn said the intelligence community was “ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced...and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers.”

Adding more troops is possibly counterproductive in the long run, because it only postpones the inevitable playing out of the situation after the Americans are gone. In the end, the solution to Afghanistan will have to come from Afghans. The sooner tribes are engaged and the the sooner American and ISAF deciders stop seeing Afghanistan through their own political institutions, the less painful it will be. If this doesn’t happen, then the fledgling ANF is likely to crumble rapidly after the foreign forces are gone. And that will only extend the U.S. mission beyond what the American public, the Afghan population, and even the U.S. military itself can tolerate.

What Needs to Happen After the Marjah Offensive

In Afghanistan, the Marjah offensive is about to begin. NATO and Afghan troops will invade the Taliban controlled town of 80,000 people and more than likely dislodge them. Thereafter, a new security force and government will be created. It is difficult to judge how much of a fight the Taliban will put up. Some have reportedly left the area aware of the publicity surrounding the operation. Yet other insurgents have built defensive positions and mined roads and pathways ready to defend. 

Historically, it has been easy for NATO troops to defeat the Taliban in any given area. The problem has been to keep the land once they hand it over to the Afghan police and army. In the spirit of the new Obama strategy, this time must be different. Marjah can serve as a new model that can set the tone for things to come. For that, Afghan forces must take the lead in the offensive and they must receive praises from their government in the aftermath of their victory in a sort of publicity stunt similar to what we had in the repelled Taliban attack on Kabul a few weeks ago.

The real issue however is what the coalition and the central government do to administer and secure the area after the offensive is over. We can expect whatever is put in place in Marjah to survive just by the sheer weight of attention and resources likely to be poured in, but the decisions taken now may only reveal their impact one or two years down the road. Decisions about the structure of the new government and the composition of the security forces will be crucial for the longevity of the arrangements in this Pashtun tribal locale. It will be important to stress local elements and engage any potential pro-government commander and its militia to take an active part in the security arrangements. Just as important will be to give a strong and effective role to the elders in governing their own traditional land. This is to avoid the past mistakes of putting in place weak, corrupt and disconnected central government agents. At the risk of irritating the Karzai government, funds and resources ear tagged for the area will have to be distributed directly to local elements. Failure to do so will mean the temporary stability will disappear in a year or two.

The Afghan interior minister recently convened the Marjah elders in an effort to coordinate the transition after the military offensive. The tribes will be allowed to form two councils which will advise the government of the region on policy and local political appointments. Going further than this, the U.S. and central government powers must be able to seat the real power within those councils. They cannot be mere advisers or the governance problems of the past will repeat themselves. Tribes represent the basic political structure for the area; anything superimposed on top of that must be able to gain consent from the elders of the tribes. If the central administrators fail to win local support and if they act in a corrupt way in the eyes of the local population, elders may switch their support to or otherwise facilitate the return of the Taliban. This is what happened in the past and it can happen again.

The real problem is with legitimacy. It is not, as some claim, a matter of reconstruction. If the reconstruction efforts take place in a climate of political discord, it will appear to be the act of outsiders and will not gain any traction no matter how many hundreds of thousands is spent on schools, roads and irrigation. It is time we make room in the Afghan constitutional framework to devolve powers to areas such as these to accountable local powers. In these rest the tradition of governance and justice that will help extricate the regions from Taliban control and influence.

The second aspect of the issue is with the security forces that will keep the peace and prevent the Taliban from coming back. "Give me your sons and we will make a national police force with them" said Afghan interior minister Hanif Atmar. Recruiting locally is no doubt the right thing to do. The presence of central government forces in the area is also necessary. However, beyond those measures, efforts must be made to seek out local commanders in the area that may be willing to defend the area in conjunction with official government forces. Disbanding local militias has been a mistake in the past.

Perhaps the local militias are currently aligned with the Taliban. Once they are defeated, those local elements and their commanders must be allowed to remain full and must be empowered to play a role in this fairly remote area of Afghanistan. Allegiances can change and no where have they done so more than in Afghanistan in its 30 years of war. The pro-government forces must avoid branding individuals and their groups as necessarily Taliban when they are a potential help to the stability of a locale. Most of these people only want peace and don't really care whether the powers above are from the central government or the Taliban. Sometimes, they resent both and this is why they must be allowed to play a greater role in their own backyard. This is follows a basic principle of accountability and respect.

Recognizing instead of disbanding local militias presents the problems of fragmentation and coordination of security efforts, but failure to do so has a greater potential of breading dissent and helping the opposition in the longer run. Politics is never easy.

Disambiguating Corruption in Afghanistan

Some observers on Afghanistan claim that ending corruption is key to a successful resolution of the Afghan conflict. However, ambiguity over what what constitutes corruption and which type of corruption is bad for Afghanistan can create empty statements and hazy recommendations. There are two types of corruption - political and economic - which we can further subdivide into local or central phenomena.

Afghanistan is a primitive economy with little legal framework and few institutions to regulate the way business is done. A contract to move goods for instance can be sealed over a cup of tea and a hand shake. This leaves a lot of room for corrupt practices such as pocketing money for personal gain, patronage, bribery and other impairments to "economic competitiveness". However, because of the weakness of governance, enforcing laws pertaining to economic transactions is difficult - neither is it necessary. A society can effectively function without complex legal contracts and procedures. Patronage, for instance, was a mainstay of the politics and economy of the Roman Republic and Empire throughout its history.

The U.S. government, in its attempts to help Afghanistan, is wasting its time trying to change local economic corruption. Yet there is still one aspect to be wary of here and that is how much international monetary assistance actually find its way into the hands of the enemy. By controlling territory, the Taliban and other insurgent groups have ironically the capacity to indirectly receive funding provided by the U.S. government (for instance, the U.S. will subcontract a trucking company, which then has to pay local insurgents duties to pass through territory they control). Given the economic situation of Afghanistan, some of this is unavoidable until the enemy is destroyed or reconciled.

The second category of corruption in Afghanistan is also economic but takes place at the top. Here, the problem is more important because the scale is bigger. It's also something the U.S. and the Afghan government can do something about.

Due to the same weaknesses we find at the local level, Afghanistan's resources can similarly be funneled to a handful of well connected cronies. Because the rich spend less of their incomes, and because it is easier at this level to take the money or profits out of the country, economic corruption at this level is worst.

Since this type of corruption affects international aid, the U.S. has the power to act on this and it should. In principle, international contributions are made to accomplish something. If that something is not fulfilled, then we have a failure of foreign policy. Big ticket items such as building roads, trucking contracts and construction projects should be handed out with greater accountability. Instead of supplying those services and goods through our own means (such as PACs), the U.S. government should continue to enable local elements. But they should break it down in smaller pieces (think micro-financing) and bypass the central government when it makes sense going straight to local endeavors. They can also use a tiny portion of the contribution money to hire a small army of American civil servants to monitor projects and see that things are being done.

To curb the problem of top economic corruption, the Afghan government could also heed the recommendations of Ashraf Ghani, an Afghan politician, and create an independent auditory body to monitor the financial transactions of government officials and members of their entourage.

The third category is local political corruption. This concerns the administration of the regions, tax collection, law enforcement and security. It is often what we call "governance" and it is of utmost importance. The amount of political corruption and the weakness of governance in the regions are the main reason why the insurgency has gained strength. Since I have discussed it before, I will not do so here. Suffice it to say that the root causes for local political corruption were a lack of legitimacy in local institutions administered by the central government and interference in tribal self-determination. The solution should be a move towards a de facto federative state granting more autonomy to the Pashtun tribal areas.

Lastly, let’s discuss political corruption in the central government. The latest example of that comes from the formation of the Karzai cabinet which was rejected initially by parliament at the end of December 2009. The progressive parliament wants an end to political appointees nominated for reasons other than technical merit, or open democratic appeal. There is no denying it: Karzai nominates cabinet members based on their ability to bring blocs of votes during the campaign as well as their capacity to deliver more broadly political support for the government. Afghanistan is not a democracy like we have come to expect in the West. Its internal situation is more akin to the international landscape of states vying for power in an anarchic environment.

While empowering progressive parliamentarians and reducing political corruption is a good objective, it should not be of immediate concern. In fact, the type of power broking and dealings that continues to take place is a necessary process that still needs to go a distance with the discontent Pashtun segments of Afghan society.

By and large, fixing corruption will not resolve the conflict in Afghanistan should therefore not be central to the solution. It is an impossible or incoherent task given the nature of the Afghan system. Moreover, corruption is primarily a problem within the Afghanistan that "works" - the one governed by the northern coalition of victors in 2001 and headed by Hamid Karzai. The Afghanistan that doesn't work is in "Pashtunistan". While recognizing that political corruption at the local level is the primary cause of the insurgency, fixing the corruption in the system is not the right angle. Instead, the U.S. should focus on supporting the right local actors therefore bypassing the problem of corruption or passing it on to the local actors instead of weak central government agents.

Resolving the economic corruption at the top would also have a positive impact on regional economics which would in turn keep young men away from insurgency, but it will not resolve the fundamental problems which are political and military in nature. The solution rests in negotiations and reconciliations with what Karzai called his "discontent brothers", and incorporation and representation for them within Afghan society and government. Alternatively - but also conjointly -  the means are to destroy the enemy that seeks no compromise.