The Al Muntaha restaurant and bar sits majestically atop the legendary Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai, mirroring the mast-top spars of the sailboat shape of the iconic hotel. Originally touted as the world's only seven-star hotel (now since more realistically categorized by Jumeirah Group as five-star premier), and uber luxe hotel bar is an ironic place to contemplate my upcoming two-week expedition into the southern slopes of the Hindu Kush and to try to better understand Coalition efforts to stabilize Eastern Afghanistan.
What brings us to Afghanistan? My company trains and supports DoD and State in the non-lethal and interagency dimensions of war. In both training programs and our handbooks, we help military and civilian staffs to better understand the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of their mission and we teach them how to form an effective team with other parts of the interagency and NGO space. You will be relieved to know I don't do this training. Rather we have a team of about sixty veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan PRTs and similar reconstruction or advisory roles in these wars. My role is to manage this extraordinary collection of interagency talent and lend my perspective of working stability operations at the policy level for more than 16 years. Quite simply, we are the experts in small war soft power."
As I sip my $32 blueberry martini (delicious but, crikey, not THAT delicious), I ponder several questions :
(1) What are the political, economic, and human dimensions of conflict and instability in Eastern Afghanistan (and Western Pakistan for that matter)? Do our military units, PRTs, and NGOS understand and agree on the local sources of conflict and is there an integrated strategy to promote stability at the provincial and local level?(2) Is the capacity building mission of extending legitimate governance from Kabul still the right development strategy? Or should we put greater emphasis on addressing needs and capacity at the local and tribal level as a means to build political support among the people?
(3) Is the military-PRT structure in Afghanistan working effectively? How can we enable more effective civil-military teams focused and capable of provincial and local level engagement and assistance?
(4) Perhaps a shorter summary of these questions: what the hell is going on with governance, economics and reconstruction in Afghanistan and what needs to be fixed?
I hope to report back to SWJ on what we (myself and two of my Afghanistan trainers) find on our travels. We will be meeting and traveling with a wide range of folks at many levels, including the military, PRTs, journalists, and the Afghans themselves. But first, can someone wire me some cash to cover my Al Muntaha bar bill?
Nick Dowling is a small wars policy wonk with experience in OSD, the NSC Staff, NDU, and the contracting sector. He has worked on stability operations for 16 years, most prominently on Bosnia and Kosovo as a Clinton Administration appointee and Iraq and Afghanistan as a DoD contractor. He is currently President of IDS International, a leader in interagency and soft power" types of support to the US military. He is a graduate of Harvard, got his masters at Georgetown, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Although a veteran of print and television media interviews and publications, this is his first foray into SWJ.
Comments
Nick,
Having just returned from RC-East, I am delighted that someone is going in and asking these hard questions. I don't think you'll find any easy answers, but I do predict you'll see the following --
1. American commanders not sure of their role
2. No strategic vision being pushed down from higher echelons
3. Extreme corruption in Afghan government, especially security forces
4. Not enough emphasis on supporting mentoring efforts
5. In my AO, there was no understanding of "clear-hold-build" -- security and reconstruction efforts were operating independently and without any common goal