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.

Quetta Shura

Balochistan is another example of the unintended consequences an external military force can have on the legitimacy of a region’s political institutions. A well intended effort can quickly spread instability and alienate potential allies. Instead of quickly fixing a problem, it can take longer if the goal does not carefully match the means.

Balochistan is a large province in the south-west bordering both Iran and Afghanistan. Quetta is the southern tip of “Pashtunistan” and the presumed refuge of Mullah Omar the leader of the Afghani Taliban. He is part of the Quetta Shura, a collegiate group from which radiates Taliban and jihadist command and control and influence. The Shura is one of 3 main Taliban political center in Pakistan.Osama bin Laden could also be holed up in Quetta or the Pashtun part in the north of the province.

Historically Balochistan - much like the Tribal Areas to the north-east - has benefited from a large degree of autonomy due to its tribal background. The Balochs are a people who came from Iran 900 years ago. Balochistan was also the battle ground of a proxy war between the British and the Russians in the 19th century in the “Great Game” for resources and access to the sea in the Hindu Kush. The location of Afghanistan and Pakistan can again become the center of more international attention as China and India are looking west.

In any case, the autonomy and the future of Balochistan is currently in danger. The Baloch Assembly increasingly sees its power compromised by the greater penetration of the central government in its affairs. Some internal opinion believes there is potential for a civil war. The arm of the central government are the Frontier Corps (FC) in Balochistan, a central paramilitary organization responsible for maintaining security in the border areas for Balochistan but also for the Tribal Areas.

These incursions have come to a point where an analyst of Balochistan talks of a “parallel government” ran by the cent pak gov through the FC.

The pressure in Balochistan is likely to mount as the United States seek ways to engage the Quetta Shura. Despite being the location of Mullah Omar, the United has been unable to target Balochistan militarily like it has done in other sanctuary areas directly or through the Pakistanis. 

The central government has led successful military offensives in both the Swat Valley and South Waziristan in 2009. In those areas, the Pakistanis saw vital threats to their own power and is the reason why they acted at great costs of their own. Historically, these offensives only took place after a treaty between the Tribal Areas and the central government collapsed amidst the turmoil left by the demise of President Pervez Musharaff.

The Pakistanis have recently said they would suspend any renewed offensives for a year. So that leaves North Waziristan and Balochistan untouched. Yet, North Waziristan is under heavy aerial drone campaign. Balochistan is different and no direct action by any side appears possible.

So what parties have to look for is the FC. But a better alternative would be the Baloch provincial institutions of government.

Many Balochistan people see the FC as a self serving entity, more concerned about increasing their power at the expense of the indigenous (democratic) institutions. They are seen as enriching themselves by controlling the lucrative smuggling activities while neglecting their duty. Officially, it’s protecting the Baloch people, denying access to the border to the “bad” people and seeking out anti government - and anti-afghan forces - within the province.

Since they do not serve their primary purpose the U.S. command is denied an important sanctum in Pashtunistan. And yet the FC continues to receive substantial portions of the U.S. aid sent to the Pakistani military.

The behavior of the FC is somewhat similar to the roles independent commanders - large and small warlords - play on the other side of the border in the lawless, anarchic parts of the country. While the afghan equivalents come from a weak central government, the Baloch case exhibits a predatory and corrosive effect on already existing institutions. The tip in the balance comes from resources – arms, money, and external support – that is being given to the FC but not to the Balochistan natural authorities.

The other forces in the region also destabilizing Baluchistan is, of course, the Taliban and other similarly minded groups. This is where things get so complicated because support for the Taliban comes from different sources. The FC is sometimes unconcerned with the Taliban and can also be quietly supportive. Similarly, within the province of Balochistan, there are those who reject the Taliban and wish to conserve and augment democratic and western liberal values, and those who have a soft spot in their heart for Muslim militancy and traditional values.

But even the democratic faction in Balochistan - who should favor efforts to defeat the most subservient religious extremists in their midst – disapproves the presence of the FC. This is because of the FC’s conflict of interest, their corrosive effect on Balochistan’s political institutions, and, also an invasion of privacy and human rights.

In America, there are debates over how much government should encroach upon civil liberties in the name of greater security. Similarly, the people of Balochistan demand at what cost can the FC go after religious extremists and impose draconian measures such as sealing the borders, clamping down on protests, intrusively investigating the public and carrying kinetic actions in the midst of the population.

The growing instability of Balochistan can be another lesson for American endeavors in Afghanistan: governance must be served through the bottom up instead of top down. Whatever your intentions, external forces wielding military might entering a region will necessarily corrode indigenous political institutions - making the external force illegitimate. The external forces will also inevitably slowly shift its purpose becoming less inclined to battle fringe extremist insurgents and more inclined to self-serving privateering or otherwise get involved in running the area.

Throughout history, for any given political system where there is a center dominating the periphery, the relative power of the center vis-à-vis the periphery will fluctuate over time for various reasons. Sometimes, the “barons” are stronger and sometimes the “king” is. Clearly, given the socio-economic nature of the tribal areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the relatively weak means or intent the Pakistani center or the Americans in Afghanistan have to bring about change, the tip of power must lie with the barons. An invading power bent on establishing full central control must be ready to do things neither the Pakistani nor the Americans are ready to do. Historically, such measures have included things like purging the local intelligentsia, establishing colonies or otherwise being ready to stay for the long run.

As a consequence, the money and support that went to the FC should have gone to the government of Balochistan. If it had been the case that Balochistan authorities were supporting actively enemies of the Pakistani government or US government, efforts should have been made to support indigenous factions to dethrone the authorities. Instead, bypassing local institutions is only likely to alienate the whole population of Balochistan -including your natural allies - and creates multiple levels of instability within the political community and the structure of power instead of simply targeting the authorities.

US Command Ready to Engage the Taliban

Hamid Karzai has for years said that reconciliation with the insurgent groups would be necessary for the future of his country.  The United States who was instrumental in ousting the Taliban in 2001 refused any rapprochement with those it viewed as threatening its national security. The Karzai government never had strong enough incentives to follow up on its idea because the US was interposed between them and their enemies.

But now, Gen McChrystal, who has said in the past that the US cannot “kill its way to victory” in Afghanistan went further by floating the idea that some Taliban may be allowed to join a future Afghani government. This would follow a period of diplomatic negotiations between the parties. Gen McChrystal’s boss defense secretary Robert Gates has also recently stated the Taliban was part of Afghanistan’s “political fabric”.

These are steps in the right direction. The political situation in Afghanistan will not be resolved by national elections, but by first giving official recognition to regional blocs of interests. This blocks can then be allowed to enter into negotiations to share power and determine the right levels of autonomy in a federative state. Without a doubt, that must include the people siding with the Taliban and similar groups.

This is a sound strategy because to defeat an insurgency, you must take away their reasons to fight which is. Immediately, for a large segment of discontent Pashtuns, this is a lack of representation in the politics of their country and a right to self-determination in their ancestral lands.

One such group, Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami, which operates independently from the Taliban but has far reaching control and influence in three provinces in the east – has publicly stated that they would be amenable to negotiations. This is a sign that negotiations are possible and a case where the leader is ripe for reconciliation.

On the other hand Haqqani, the leader of the most important Taliban network aimed against Afghanistan but operating out of North Waziristan, Pakistan, recently said of the recent attack on Kabul that it was his group’s response to Karzai’s overture for negotiations.

Yet, even when leadership is not ready to lay down the arms and parley we must assume that there are pragmatic forces within these groups that would abandon and renounce the hard line adopted by their leaders if given the right incentives.

This is a valid assumption because the Taliban are people too, and like you and me, can respond to more material concerns and have the capacity to move away from impossible ideologies. The extremism in their organization comes from the top. David Rhodes gave us a glimpse of that in his report on his seven month captivity. He said that whenever the leaders weren’t around his captors attitude would relax, but when the leaders came back the discussions turned ideological and attitudes turned more stringent.

This is because any group needs an ideology upon which members can agree and coalesce. And it is often incumbent upon the leaders to remind its members their purpose and in this case why they are fighting. The maintenance of the group depends on the leader’s ability to continue to attract new members - in this case radicalized youth coming from all over the Muslim world to do jihad, or homegrown Pashtuns whose land were invaded.

The leaders often come to be much more extremist than any of their members, sometimes developing megalomania or at least a sense of grandeur and historical purpose that sets them apart. You do get a feeling in the Bin Ladden or Haqqani videos that they believe they are holy men fighting a holy war. This isn’t new, and many individuals throughout history either involved in desperate causes or wielding immense power have showed similar traits such as emperors or religious martyrs.

But take away their base - or their base’s reason to fight - and recruits will stop coming. From a Muslim jihadist’s point of view, this is the harm done to its flock by outsiders, the invasion of their land, and the destruction of their way of life. But from a Pashtun point of view, this is simply a denial of political representation and autonomy in their homeland.

Therefore, keeping the door for negotiations is an important new aspect of the US strategy that would at least address the Pashtuns’ more immediate needs.

Gen McChrystal justified his new intent by saying that “as a soldier, my personal feeling is that there’s been enough fighting”. After years of conflict this has a certain amount of truth. But in fact, the door should have been kept opened since 2002 after the Taliban was soundly defeated. Instead, the Bush Manichean view of the world seems to have dictated the purpose and actions of US actors in foreign land framed in the extremist “War on Terror”. Intransigent action calls for an answer in kind and Bushism found its match.

Opening the door to insurgents for negotiations is important because the following tactical military truth is also a sound strategic principle: a cornered enemy will fight to the end. If you completely and cordon off all escape routes, your target will have no choice but to fight to the death. The escape route for the Taliban and the Pashtun as a whole is a greater role in their government and a greater right to autonomous self determination amongst their tribes on their turf.

The lead role in this endeavor will have to be the Afghan central government, the northern factions that support and constitute it, and other already won over Pashtun groups. While this is taking place, a bold and accelerated turn over of military tasks will have to take place to put – literally – Afghan skin in the game. These tasks will be best served by local groups tied to tribes, militias and regional commanders within the Pashtun areas who are more likely to effectively deal with the insurgents amongst them than the Afghan Army can. This will also allow the natural political channels and basic political units of the country – the tribes in the Pashtun lands – to express themselves. These local groups will ultimately, through coalitions and political consolidation, be the ones who will broker power with the central government and the other national regional blocks – the other Pashtun groups, the Tajiks, the Uzbeks, etc.

Baathist Witch Hunt Dangerous for the Future of Iraq

Much of the future of Iraq hinges on the upcoming legislative elections to be held in early March. The elections were originally scheduled for January but have been postponed because the Sunni, Shia and Kurdish power brokers could not agree on who could run for election. More than 511 candidates have been disqualified from running in a Shia dominated government (which is coincidentally reminiscent of the frequent massive disqualifications of presidential candidates in the other Shia country next door).

The reasons given or otherwise are that the banned candidates were too high up in Saddam’s former Baathist regime, or that they had links with insurgents in the past years when ethnic violence was at its highest.

This amounts to a witch hunt. A political witch hunt is when a group of people is systematically targeted by a majority through a combination of discrimination, imprisonment/interrogation, barring from positions of power, or defamation of character and public humiliation, for illegitimate reasons based on identity or ideology.

I believe that the security and ability to survive for a regime depends on its ability to generate an image of justice and legitimacy in the minds of the its relevant constituents.

Justice and Legitimacy are cognitive categories and while they are influenced by material conditions – the distribution of wealth, the efficiency of courts, the application of repressive and security instruments, the lawful transfers of power - they are abstract entities. The calculus of material factors determining whether or not such and such an arrangement is legitimate or just can sometimes leave a gap with the effective sentiments of justice and legitimacy within a population.

Indeed the nature of a state of justice or injustice and of legitimacy or illegitimacy within someone’s mind is often best studied by the poetic traditions studying the drama of personal relations rather than the scientific traditions looking at empirical material and economic statistics. The government of Iraq may have all intents of splitting the spoils of oil fairly between the different factions, but the perception of injustice in the interaction between the political actors could matter more in the end.

It all depends on "what’s the story" – what narrative or spin the constituents are putting on the material events. Ultimately, those perceptions can make the difference whether or not a group of people decides to take up arms against its government.

In this case, the widespread barring of former Baathists, who are of course all Sunnis, by the Shia dominated government on specious grounds will be perceived as an injustice against their group and will delegitimize the government after the elections. It will further create injustices by the resulting material lack of representation for Sunni interests within the government over the next electoral cycle.

Of course justice and legitimacy can be different looking at the same events depending on your constituency – and indeed, when two constituencies are opponents, they are always different. The Shias’ narrative is that former Baathists element were at the core of the horrendous sectarian violence that tore apart their country a few years ago. Baathists were the people who repressed them under Saddam too, and, by psychologically transposing their past suffering to the Sunni community as a whole, for centuries indeed.

The Shias are also suspicious of the Baathists credentials as great democrats. But this is all a mistake on the Shias' part and the burden of changing attitudes lies on their side.

Saddam is no more and the current political community of the Sunnis - which has for leaders former Baathists by the force of things, is different from the regime of yore. A political community is not a regime (understood here as the structure of government), no more than a regime is the authorities of the regime. Those are three different elements defining the nature of political systems and we cannot confound them. There is no reason why the former Baathists will not play by the new regime’s rules.

A lot is hanging in the balance. The cessation of out of control sectarian violence a couple of years ago was only permitted by a parallel robust political effort to integrate the country at the national level. The unraveling of the national political process could rekindle the devastating fires of the religious schism. Sunni participation in the political process is critical.

The burden of changing attitudes and to compromise is also on the Shias because they are the strongest faction. They are less likely to get up from the metaphorical negotiating table than their Sunni counterparts for whom this could very well be make or break.

Link: Political Turmoil Follows Barring of Hundreds from Iraq Ballot - NY Times

Photo Credit: AP through NY Times.

Another Video of Afghan Jihadists

This is another video made by a courageous female western journalist named Claire Billet. She was embedded with a Taliban faction for 3 days.
While these events took place in 2007, the information contained in the video is still relevant to understand the depth of control the Taliban has over territory in Afghanistan. It is also a unique look at who the insurgents are and their tactics.

She amazingly filmed an attack on an afghan police outpost from their perspective. She also carried interviews, shared meals and traveled around with them in their zone of control.

The other peculiar thing about this report is that the leader of the band in the video, Abu Tayyeb, was also the man responsible for kidnapping New York Times journalist David Rohde for 7 months in 2008-2009. (You can read David’s full story here in case you missed it.)

There are two videos from Claire Billet - one in French, the other in English. Both have different content and are equally worth watching.

English news report, French news report (English translation of the French report).

Here’s what I could tell about the insurgents from watching these videos.

1) They have poor military training. The footage of the firing range shows they have amateurish command of their firearms. They are probably very poor marksmen.

2) The attack on the police outpost wasn’t rehearsed. They were still passing orders at only 100 meters or so from the target. They didn’t approach the outpost in any kind of formation either.

3) Yet, the orders, once given, emanated from sound tactics presumably passed down by the old timers from the 1980’s to the new generation. They positioned two firing groups then drew enemy fire with a bait. Once they knew where to shoot at they responded with all their punch . They had a reserve group in case one group was intercepted and they knew not to linger too long. The attack was successful and caused 3 deaths according to a government report in the days after.

4) The band itself is composed of a leader, Abu Tayyeb, supported by a few experienced fighters probably in their 50’s who act as a source of knowledge. Then there are the younger recruits. One of them came from Iraq and spoke no Pashto. He was in Afghanistan to fighting jihad and more specifically was waiting for a suicide mission.

5) The band controls the area they operate in through and through. They – or the greater group around them, administer justice, supervise education, are free to travel openly, and, we know this from other sources, collect duties from goods passing through their area. (This is a similar situation to the tribal areas in Pakistan. In fact, Abu Tayyeb travelled between both areas in the narration of David Rohde. This is what the Taliban mini-state consist of.)

6) They are extremely courageous. They are not afraid to die because they are very religious. They are always courteous to the young journalist and appear to abide by a code of honor in everything they do. They love each other and are clearly bound by a strong feeling of brotherhood.

7) The threat of American airpower was of little concern to them. But then again, this was 2007 when most American material and personnel was occupied in Iraq. The threat is probably much greater today, if only for the fact that the use of drone attacks is currently being stepped up tremendously. If you knew where they were, it would be easy to hit them.

A Short History of American Strategic Mistakes in Afghanistan

President Bush announced that major combat operations were complete with the overthrow of the Taliban regime in November 2001. It is astonishing to look back and realize that US forces only amounted to 1,300 boots on the ground at that time. The war was won by the United Islamic Front (UIF) - or Northern Alliance as it is known in the West, who had been fighting the Taliban (or, at times, each other) in a complex decade-long civil war. The Americans provided decisive air power, intelligence and Special Forces but their footprint was small.

How did we get to a point where we need 130,000+ ISAF troops (plus an additional 100,000 defense contractors in the country) to fight a counter insurgency against an enemy whose control of the country has admittedly been growing again but is obviously nowhere near what it was in 2001?


Tora Bora

First, we need to look at Tora Bora and the escape of Bin Laden to Pakistan. The failure to capture him was attributed to an over reliance on afghan troops. From that point on, the Pentagon decided they needed to take things in charge themselves and play a front role in hostilities when their national interests was concerned.

Listen to what General Franks, then Commander of the US Central Command, had to say about the Tora Bora episode.

"Our relationship with the Afghans in the south and east was entirely different at that point in the war [before Tora Bora]," he said, "it's no secret that we had a much more mature relationship with the Northern Alliance fighters." Franks added, "still thinks that the process he followed of helping the anti-Taliban forces around Tora Bora, to make sure it was crystal clear to them that we were not there to conquer their country . . . was absolutely the right thing to do." (Washington Post)

This is from an April 2002 article.

And then this, from the same article

"We [messed] up by not getting into Tora Bora sooner and letting the Afghans do all the work," said a senior official with direct responsibilities in counterterrorism. "Clearly a decision point came when we started bombing Tora Bora and we decided just to bomb, because that's when he escaped. . . . We didn't put U.S. forces on the ground, despite all the brave talk, and that is what we have had to change since then."

The truth is that both approaches are not mutually exclusive and can coexist within the conflict in Afghanistan. Tora Bora should have been branded a "unilateral opportunity" and the US command should have spared no effort in targeting their direct enemy Osama Bin Laden. At the same time, the "swamp draining" activity where you deny a favorable environment to your enemy must be done in support of indigenous forces. Instead, the US armed forces eventually took upon itself almost all security tasks and consequently all nation building since the latter is conditional to the former.


Dismantling of the Northern Alliance

Secondly, at the same time in 2002, and since then during the creation of the interim and then the permanent central government, the UIF was disarmed and dismantled. The natural fighting abilities of the victors of 2001 were effectively phased out (which was not unlike the banning of the Iraqi army in 2003 with its own disastrous consequences).

Why was the UIF dismantled and disarmed?

First, the UIF was a coalition of armed factions separated along ethnic and religious lines that coalesced in 1996 after Kabul fell to the Taliban. To a large degree, they only united to face a greater enemy and it was feared that, after the Taliban was defeated, the UIF would disintegrate into its constituent parts and fighting would erupt in between them as it did in the past.

The second factor in importance was the efforts to create a strong central government that could lawfully wield the country's armed forces. The fear was that Uzbek, Tajiks or Shia Hazara warlords would serve their own interest in a lawless fashion and diminish the unity of the country.

Finally, in the decade long civil war, few if any of those warlords had shining human rights records which made supporting them unpalatable to the Americans and to the UN who sponsored the Afghan government.


Conclusion and Results

These two factors - the US taking on all aspects of security and nation building, and the dismantling of the UIF contributed to the inability and unwillingness of the Afghanis to provide for their own security, organically build their country, and engage the resurgent Taliban as early as 2004. The American boots on the ground rose steadily since the invasion and yet failed to prevent the anti-afghan forces from out pacing them because of weak central governance.

The Americans have the power to capture villages from the Taliban and other anti-afghan forces, but, as soon as they leave, the anti-afghan forces move back in. It has been constantly reported since 2002 that the troop level was insufficient to take on all the tasks of carrying a successful counter insurgency. Although that is the wrong goal, this is what they set themselves up for.

Moreover, american soldiers, their generals and civilian officials, and even the CIA lack the proper knowledge of the workings of Afghan society and the tribal system. Troops may acquire knowledge of one village or area and successfully work with the local leaders but then hand it over after their tour is done only to see their work undone.

Finally, American forces are seen as occupiers and not a single human being on the planet likes to see strangers irreverently stumping on their backyard and making the law.

As I will argue in my next piece, facing the prospect of a yet to be fought out counter-insurgency, the US must transfer rapidly security tasks to the Afghanis and reverse the situation of the last eight years. The Obama plan gets that, but still makes a mistake of emphasizing the ANF (Afghan National Forces which includes police and Army) instead of using the intrinsic tribal political systems of the country. The UIF will have to be revived to some extent and local militias established within the tribal system will have to be incorporated in the greater security apparatus of the country while acknowledging that these efforts must primarily be done within the Pashtun lands who have suffered the greatest from poor governance and poor security.


Note: Some will say that the conflict has changed between then and now: the Americans are very good at ousting governments like they did with the Taliban in 2001 or in Iraq in 2003 and can do it relatively cheaply, but fighting a counter-insurgency is different and demands more boots on the ground. But there are evidence that local militias and local warlords are better at it and offers a better approach, as we shall see in a later article. Moreover, fighting the war of someone else is not in the national security of the US.


Photo Credit: Life.com

Afghanistan: The Difference with Iraq

We are hearing that there are still disagreements about the implementation and interpretation of the Obama plan for Afghanistan. The differences seem to pit the Pentagon against the civilian executive. The American generals wish for a more expensive, fuller counter insurgency strategy while the civilians insist on a narrower engagement. The Obama administration is eager to find a way out and is ready to tolerate a certain level of violence within Afghanistan as long as true counter-terrorist action is carried out effectively. The Pentagon, on the other hand, is reluctant to give up a strategy that seems to have worked so well for them in Iraq. 

There lies the problem. I believe that the ongoing resolution of the conflict in Iraq has much less to do with American military involvement through a Surge of troops and a re-writing - however praise-worthy it was, of the Counter-Insurgency manual by General Petraeus, than it had to do with changing conditions in the indigenous conflict between the Sunnis and the Shias.

In Iraq, an active civil war was going on. The Sunnis had lost their traditional position of dominance in the country and were fighting for their future against a vindicative and revived Shia majority. Partly because of Saddam's past policies of integrating the country by settling Sunnis in traditional Shia or Kurdish territory, there was now a central area in Iraq that became the hotbed of inter-sectarian violence centered in and around the capital Baghdad. On top of the century old sectarian rivalry, Iraq had rich oil reserves that acted as a strong centralizing force.

The turning point came late in 2006 - before the Surge was even announced, when the Sunnis collectively figured they could not win. They were in desperate need for an ally and that ally came in the form of the US occupier. At the same time, the US forces changed their approach and instead of fighting them like they did in 2004 and 2005 in Fallujah or Ramadi, engaged the Sunni population at the village and tribal level creating more human contacts and offering local leaders money and development support in exchange for their help in turning the irreconcilables within their midst. Not only that, but the Americans also offered political protection against their Shia adversaries vis-à-vis the creation and composition of the national government. The US successfully came in between both parties and the political process of forming a government and the reconstitution of the country could move forward. The Surge itself provided the additional security needed to cement the tacit truce, particularly in Bagdad which was the focal point of the sectarian violence, but it could not and was not the primary factor in the consumption of the inter-sectarian conflict.

The Shias were also exhausted on their side and so the parallel political process at the national level could move forward. The opportunity was seized, the security gains cemented but only because an equilibrium had been reached in the intestine conflict. In many ways, the "violent dialogue" of the inter-sectarian conflict was a necessary step.

Since then, the violence has dropped both in between Shias and Sunnis and against American forces although there continues to be few but spectacular attacks every other month perpetrated by the Sunni irreconcilables. December was the first month in the war without a single American casualty, and the inter-ethnic violence continues to go down on a year by year basis in a conflict that has made over 100,000 Iraqi casualties by most estimates - only a fraction of which came from direct American action. The next step for Iraq is the parliamentary election now slated for March. How successful they are will dictate whether the country continues down the path of peace or if tensions reappear between the factions.

The situation in Afghanistan is largely different and this is why the American cannot hope to successfully fight a counter-insurgency without going beyond their national tolerance, surtaxing their treasury and perpetuating a legacy that is weakening their international standing. They should not do it on the principle of balancing responsibilities and national interests. And they cannot expect the same success from a new Surge because they fail to see the fundamental differences between the two conflicts, and overestimate their role in the improvement of the situation in Iraq.

In Afghanistan the war is not between two indigenous factions, but between the anti-afghan forces and the US government. The Taliban and other groups loosely associated with them are fighting the Americans first hoping that one day they will get at the central government and its northern allies. The civil war between the old afghan adversaries is frozen and the "violent dialogue" will not resume until the Americans rescind their front role. The Karzai government is not only shielded by the presence of the US government (see "Afghanis fighting for Afghanistan") but also by its geography. In Iraq, both warring factions were intermingled in the infamous sunni triangle. Not so in Afghanistan where the Pashtuns are located primarily in the South and East and have sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan effectively forming a Taliban mini state. There is no violence in Kabul like there was in Baghdad. There is neither a centrifugal pull exerted in Afghanistan by the equivalent of Iraqi oil. The conflict is currently more religious, more about freedom and less pragmatic. The Sunni tribal leaders and power brokers were interested in keeping a stake in their country and eventually joined the central government. The anti-afghan forces are true mujahedeens and currently see no reason to engage the central government. Neither are the Karzai governement and its northern allies ready to extend a hand to their foes since they have little incentive to do so.

Of course, there are different paths for conflicts to resolve themselves and certainly not all should look like Iraq. But basing a strategy on "what worked in Iraq" and applying it to fundamentally different conditions on the ground makes for a very dubious outcome. At the core is a discrepancy between national interests - that of the Americans and that of the Afghan government, and their security responsibilities. There needs to be an intellectual separation made between the afghan conflict which is the affair of the afghan factions to resolve, and the counter-terrorism and support role - not front role, in the afghan conflict which is the affair of the Americans.


My next piece will be about the prospects of the Afghan National Forces and the historical mistake of the Americans to play a front role in the Afghan conflict after Tora Bora and the disarmament of the Northern Alliance.

Photo credit: CFR.org

A Rare Look at the Political Intents of an Afghan Mujahideen Leader

The landscape of armed Afghan political groups is large; it is more than Taliban vs the Karzai government or its American protector. In fact, the Karzai government has to govern by maintaining a balance between different factions that are formed largely along ethnic and religious lines. At one point in time, some of the parties of Karzai's coalition have fought one another and this is largely the reason they have been disarmed since 2001 fearing defections and usurpations, and why they continue to be largely compensated by political appointments and corruption money coming from the massive international contributions to the country, and why they are more or less free to carry their most dubious local economic activities.

The opposition to the Karzai government is also formed by different groups of which the Taliban is only the strongest. Some of these groups have very limited interactions amongst one another. Many are only local while others have more national appeal and claim thousands of fighters such as the group Hezb-e Islam led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

The "anti-afghan" groups are united in their Islamic freedom fighting cause, but can have different views about how they want to run the country. Hekmatyar actually favors democracy within an Islamic framework. "The important issue for us is to end occupation, re-establishing the country's sovereignty, transferring the political power to an interim non-reconcile government and establishing an Islamic government in a free Afghanistan via a free election to correspond with the will of the people", he said in a rare interview with a western journalist just before the elections in 2009. He however rejects the current government saying "Kabul's government consists of looters, corrupt men and criminals". He nevertheless says that he is open to negotiations if they are "sincere" and have something to offer.

The American top military brass - including Gen. Petraeus, have said that a key to the new strategy will be to operate a separation amongst all of the anti-afghan forces between those that are reconcilable, and the hardliners which aren't and must ultimately be destroyed or kept in check. Is Hezb-e Islam reconcilable?

You can judge for yourself in the full interview with Hekmatyar in which he reveals the nature of his ties with other Mujahideens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, his grievances with the occupiers and the central government, and his intents for the future.

Alternatively, at the top is a report by the courageous journalist who carried the interview in which you can see the soldiers of Hezb-e Islam in the field.