Travels with Nick 2010 #2: Are We Winning?
I’m in Kabul! I inspect the city on my drive from the airport. It seems pretty similar to my last visit with one big annoying exception: traffic. There are just more cars on the road now (both Afghan and expat) and the result is close to gridlock. The 30 minute drive from the airport turns into total nightmare as protests at Kabul University completely paralyze the road. We end up bailing out of the car, flagging down a taxi, and heading to the Gandamack for dinner. I suppose traffic is actually a good thing. It either shows that more Afghans are buying cars, more are out and showing confidence in the regime, or the civilian surge has had a secondary effect of gridlock.
Our initial meetings feature a variety of senior civilian and military officials representing State, USAID, ISAF, RC-South, and Task Force Raider. Our discussions go quickly to the issues at hand: are we winning? If so, why? How is the civ-mil collaboration working?
The general consensus from those on the ground is that we are making progress in security and the population is responding, especially in the south. The story here sounds pretty close to the COIN manual. The extra forces and more dismounted approach are improving the security environment in the areas that used to be dangerous. Areas in Helmand and Kandahar that used to be Taliban strongholds have been cleared or will be, and the rapid follow up efforts show results with the population. Additional staff and resources are generating a lot more activity in the political and economic areas. These approaches are particularly effective in areas where the civ-mil team is closely integrated and strikes the right balance between stabilization, reconstruction, and development (not all do). There is measurable progress in capacity building in some areas.
Several US officials dismissed US and western media reporting on the war, noting that the media reports on violence and controversy rather than understanding operational effects. The US offensive is fueling more violence in the short term as the Taliban resist the clear operations with both fighting and information operations. Public access and activity is seen as an indicator of diminished Taliban intimidation (one officer noted “you see more kits flying in Kandahar city every day”) and therefore political progress (a leading indicator). Reduction in violence will tend to be a trailing indicator. This matches the Iraq surge effects many of them saw firsthand in the 2007-2008 time frame.
That said, not all is well, particularly at the national and provincial political levels. There is broad skepticism about the Afghanistan government in both its capacity and integrity. Key power brokers and government figures like the Karzai brothers and Gul Aga Sherzai (and many others) are masters at manipulation for political and personal gain, at the expense of political progress. They cultivate and reward allies, vacuum up US reconstruction dollars through affiliated companies, look the other way at shake downs and intimidation, and profit off other licit and elicit activities. Rarely are they —to expend political capital for long term progress or to do the right thing. Governing capacity and legitimacy remains poor, particularly in the provinces and municipalities, and the central government control hinders efforts by ineffectively controlling them and blocking progress.
What is most clearly lacking is the same thing I saw in 2009 on my last visit: leverage with national and provincial officials over key issues such as corruption and management. How can we get these guys to clean up?
Next stop: Kandahar and Helmand to see how civil-military integration is working at the regional platforms, Task Forces, PRTs and DSTs.
SWJ Editors’ Note: 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.
