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On the Hill: Strategic chaos and the Taliban resurgence
April 2, 2008
By Beth Hearn
The strategic importance of Afghanistan was widely emphasized at a hearing of the Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on Wednesday. “It is the place where al Qaeda and their Taliban allies are strongest and fight us still,” said Committee Chairman Gary L. Ackerman (D-N.Y.). “It is the place where the fight against terrorism began and it is the place where we have to finish it.”
Yet those present were in agreement that the situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate: witnesses and committee members alike were eager to offer examples of the “strategic chaos and Taliban resurgence” currently being seen in Afghanistan.
Dr. Seth G. Jones of the RAND Corporation cited statistics illustrating the increase in violence since the initial success of the invasion. In 2004 there were three suicide bombings, and in 2007 there were more than 130. Likewise, Afghanistan has seen soaring numbers of remotely detonated bombings and armed attacks, he said.
In addition, and directly linked, to this increase in violence, the country faces numerous other difficulties. “The Afghan National Army is still incapable of operating effectively on its own,” Ackerman said. “Opium production has skyrocketed providing cash for warlords and terrorists alike. The Afghan National Police are uniformly considered a disaster and Afghan citizens are actually more afraid of the police than they are of the Taliban. And the judicial system has utterly failed to demonstrate to ordinary Afghans that criminals will be prosecuted.”
Several reasons were offered for why the process of rebuilding Afghanistan has gone wrong. “As with most insurgencies, the critical precondition is the collapse of governance,” said Jones. This is related to troop levels that are, compared to other nation-building efforts, extremely low, he added.
The “lack of strategic coherence” is another factor which, said Mark Schneider, Senior Vice President of the International Crisis Group, “is reflected in separate civilian special representatives of the United Nations, of the European Union and of NATO, with no clear authority one over the other; and in a reluctance on the part of the United States and other major country contributors to be coordinated by any one of them.”
It was argued that the division of the nation-building effort among the international community has meant a lack of leadership and coherence. “Secretary Rice has said that in Afghanistan there are too many cooks,” said Ackerman. “She’s right, but she missed the more fundamental problem: there’s no recipe.”
Offerings of advice for how to move forward were a little more indistinct. It is vital that the U.S. and the international community “stay the course” in Afghanistan, said Schneider, “but they must do it better.” Resources, attention, priority and energy must be devoted to Afghanistan in order to avoid a return to civil war, extremist lawlessness and increased intervention by regional powers, he said, adding that the Afghan government must be “held accountable to its commitments on disarmament, transitional justice and human rights, and anti-corruption.”
Jones emphasized the importance of U.S. leadership in solving the problems faced by Afghanistan. This stems, he implied, from the reluctance of other nations to participate in the process. Schneider, meanwhile, placed more importance on coordination of efforts under United Nations leadership.
What was clear from the statements was that in order to build stability, the core problem of effective government must be tackled. “While effective military action may deny victory to the insurgency, only effective governance will defeat it,” said Schneider.
Retired Lieutenant General David W. Barno, Director of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, emphasized the “strategic crossroads” at which we currently stand, and offered a solution in simple equation form: “success equals leadership plus strategy plus resources.”
Jones said that 76 percent of Afghans continue to see the U.S.-led overthrow of the Taliban as a good thing, and 65 percent still view the United States favorably overall. He cited these statistics as reason, despite all of the problems faced in the region, to be hopeful. However, there is a clear trend visible in the fact that the former has dropped from 88 percent in 2007 and the latter has dropped from 83 percent in 2005. “The key now is to take advantage of a shrinking window of opportunity,” Jones said.
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