By Dr Sharifullah Dorani*
Introduction
In June, 2011, President Barack Obama made the decision to withdraw the 30,000 US troops by the end of 2012, and the rest by 2014. The decision, in effect, marked the beginning of the end of the US’s longest war, the Afghanistan War, highlighting a major turning point in US Afghan policy. According to the decision, while most, if not all, US forces would leave by the end of 2014, the decision set out US long-term policy for the next decade and beyond.
As seen in my other articles, the surge in 2009 had three components to it: military, civilian (including development) and diplomatic. There were numerous assumptions that each pillar of the strategy carried. Most of these assumptions, however, were questioned by the Vice President Joe Biden group in 2009. Biden and his group in turn made their own assumptions during the Af-Pak review. The accuracy or otherwise of these assumptions was directly linked to Obama’s decision to draw down.
This article focuses on the development pillar (of the civilian aspect) of the surge decision by examining which sides’ development assumptions proved mistaken once they met reality in Afghanistan, and why and how.
The development pillar of the strategy championed by Holbrooke
The ‘development’ part of the civilian surge for the purpose of helping governance and consequently security did not produce a great deal either. US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke wanted USAID to focus on agriculture, because 80 per cent of working-age people in Afghanistan were small-scale farmers, and because, as assumed, it would help reduce the production of opium. So he employed a programme to help farmers with seeds and fertilisers, and USAID took responsibility to build roads so that the crops were delivered to markets – the policy was especially aimed at Helmand and Kandahar.[1]
But this as well as other developmental efforts faced a number of challenges that did not ensure success. First, security was the biggest obstacle. As of 2003, 387 USAID staff had been killed and 658 wounded in Afghanistan, and the death toll doubled from 29 a month in 2009 to 57 a month in 2010.[2] Lack of security forced the security office in the US Embassy in Kabul to impose strict rules to ensure nobody working for the embassy was killed. This near-zero-risk policy prevented diplomats and USAID workers from doing their work effectively, particularly in Helmand and Kandahar.[3]
Second, relations between US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and US Commander in Afghanistan General Stanley McChrystal, as well as their respective staff, were not good, and, generally speaking, the civilian officials from the embassy did not believe in the surge, while the military did. The different viewpoints, the deep division, remained during the surge period in Afghanistan.[4]
Third, bureaucracy in the State Department, including the US Afghan Embassy, made the process of employing civilian staff and then deploying them to the theatre in Helmand and Kandahar very slow and time-consuming. The civilian side should have been ready to provide developmental aid after military operations were over to ensure the military effort was sustained and built upon. It was important that the Afghans saw their lives as getting better.
But, due to the above obstacles, the civilian efforts (and embassy staffers who implemented those efforts) were either delayed or provided in short supply.[5] To make matters worse, even though Holbrooke and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton talked of improvements in the multifaceted anti-drugs strategy,[6] the facts on the ground showed that the argument did not prove correct ─ opium production rose considerably after 2010, its traffickers remained as powerful, its shipments carried on, and the Taliban continued to benefit from it. This was another wrong assumption made by Clinton and Holbrooke a year and a half ago.[7]
Conclusion
In summary, the development pillar of the civilian surge in Afghanistan failed to meet its ambitious goals. The underlying assumptions that agricultural aid and infrastructure projects would quickly win over the population proved inaccurate. As this article has shown, the efforts were undermined by a trifecta of systemic problems: pervasive insecurity that prevented aid workers from operating effectively; a fractured relationship between US military and civilian leadership that hindered coordination; and the crippling bureaucracy of the State Department that caused critical delays. The result was a development strategy that was under-resourced, poorly executed, and unable to build upon the military’s temporary gains, ultimately demonstrating that goodwill alone could not overcome the realities of a war zone.
References
Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war.
‘Generation Kill: A Conversation With Stanley McChrystal’, Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2013, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/generation-kill>.
Hastings, Michael, ‘The Rolling Stone profile of Stanley McChrystal that changed history’, The Rolling Stone, June 22, 2010.
Holbrooke, Richard C., ‘Civilian Strategy for Afghanistan: A Status Report in Advance of the London Conference, Hearing Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, January 21, 2010, <http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HolbrookeTestimony100121p.pdf>.
Singh, Robert. 2012. Barack Obama’s post-American foreign policy: the limits of engagement. London: Bloomsbury academic.
Statement of Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan: Governance and the Civilian Strategy,’ Hearing Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 14, 2010, <http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Holbrooke,%20Amb.%20Richard%20C1.pdf>.
Their, J. Alexander, ‘Afghanistan: Right Sizing the Developmental Footprint’, Hearing Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, September 8, 2011, <http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Thier%20Testimony.pdf>.
Transcript of Interview by President Karzai with Wall Street Journal conducted by Yaroslav Trofimov and Matt Murray. [Office of the President Islamic Republic of Afghanistan]. February 15, 2012. <http://president.gov.af/Content/Media/Documents/TranscriptofInterviewbyPresidentKarzaiwithWallStreetJournalconductedbyYaroslavTrofimovandMattMurray2522012162819915553325325.pdf>.
[1]Holbrooke, Richard C., ‘Civilian Strategy for Afghanistan: A Status Report in Advance of the London Conference, Hearing Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, January 21, 2010, <http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/HolbrookeTestimony100121p.pdf>; Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 106-108.
[2] Their, J. Alexander, ‘Afghanistan: Right Sizing the Developmental Footprint’, Hearing Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, September 8, 2011, <http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Thier%20Testimony.pdf>.
[3] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, p. 176.
[4]Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 380; ‘Generation Kill: A Conversation With Stanley McChrystal’, Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2013, <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/interviews/generation-kill>; Singh, Robert. 2012. Barack Obama’s post-American foreign policy: the limits of engagement. London: Bloomsbury academic, p. 82; Hastings, Michael, ‘The Rolling Stone profile of Stanley McChrystal that changed history’, The Rolling Stone, June 22, 2010; Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 204, 219; Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 218.
[5] Chandrasekaran, Rajiv. 2012. Little America: the war for Afghanistan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, pp. 204, 219; Gates, Robert Michael. 2014. Duty: memoirs of a Secretary at war, p. 476.
[6] ‘Statement of Ambassador Richard C. Holbrooke, Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan: Governance and the Civilian Strategy,’ Hearing Before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, July 14, 2010, <http://www.foreign.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Holbrooke,%20Amb.%20Richard%20C1.pdf>.
[7]Karzai blamed the US for not tackling the mafia who pocketed 98 percent of the profit, as only one billion out of 68 billion or so went to the Afghans. Karzai implied that the West came across as if it persuaded to grow poppy rather than destroying it, Transcript of Interview by President Karzai with Wall Street Journal conducted by Yaroslav Trofimov and Matt Murray. [Office of the President Islamic Republic of Afghanistan]. February 15, 2012. <http://president.gov.af/Content/Media/Documents/TranscriptofInterviewbyPresidentKarzaiwithWallStreetJournalconductedbyYaroslavTrofimovandMattMurray2522012162819915553325325.pdf>.
*Sharifullah has a PhD from Durham University in the UK on America’s Afghanistan War. He has authored several articles and two acclaimed books: The Lone Leopard, a novel set in Afghanistan, and America in Afghanistan, published by Bloomsbury Publishing. Sharifullah is the founder of CEPSAF and the South Asia and Middle Eastern Editor at CESRAN International.