Two broad strands are apparent in the policy literature on the U.S.-led intervention in Afghanistan. One holds that there was not enough intervention to succeed (see, e.g., Seth G. Jones, In the Graveyard of Empires, 2009) and the other that the Western presence itself became part of the problem and not the solution (see, e.g., Anand Gopal, No Good Men Among the Living, 2014). Vanda Felbab-Brown’s Aspiration and Ambivalence belongs to the former; indeed, it recommends a continuous and deep U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
Written as a contribution to the discussion over the 2012–14 transition—the scheduled transfer of security responsibility from the international forces to the Afghan government, and the closing down of NATO’s International Security Assistance Force mission—the book’s recommendations invite reflection today as well. After 15 years of intervention at an enormous cost in lives, injuries, and money, what can the United States do at this point to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan? What interests and obligations do the United States and its allies have in this regard? These issues were central in the discussion over the transition, and they remain equally salient today.
Felbab-Brown believes that the United States has long-term interests in fostering a Western-oriented Afghanistan with a measure of liberal political democracy and inclusive economic development. This objective, she argues, entails continuous international commitment to defeat not only Islamists with a global jihadist agenda but also Taliban and related Afghan militants who seek local and national power.
Critics might ask why previous U.S.-led efforts over more than a decade in pursuit of precisely these aims have had such modest results. So does Felbab-Brown. Her book details a long litany of shortcomings: nepotism and corruption, the failed narcotics eradication campaign, the failed police reform, the mostly disastrous Afghan Local Police project, stalled public-administration reforms, the abuse and crime attributed to local strongmen, and the unreliability of leading partners (including Hamid Karzai). These factors, she argues, have decisively undermined efforts to fight the insurgency.
There is broad agreement in the literature that governance and legitimacy are key elements in a counterinsurgency strategy. The point was put succinctly in Ambassador Karl Eikenberry’s famous cable to President Barack Obama in the heat of the 2009 strategy discussion. But at this juncture, policy analysts part. Some, like Eikenberry, maintain that under prevailing conditions in Afghanistan, a U.S.-led counterinsurgency campaign cannot succeed. External parties cannot create local legitimacy, something the government itself must develop relative to its people. In its fullest version, this argument holds that externally supported democratization, statebuilding, and social transformation of the kind that was attempted in Afghanistan had inherent limitations and contradictions that fatally jeopardize the project. (Full disclosure: This is the thesis of my own 2011 book, When More Is Less: The International Project in Afghanistan).
Felbab-Brown articulates the opposing view: The United States and “the international community” must simply try harder and do it better, particularly as leverage will decline with troop withdrawals and probable reductions in aid. She singles out several areas needing sustained attention and firm interventions: corruption, public administration, and the security forces. Yet looking more closely at the general prescriptions she offers, problems become apparent. For a start, short-term objectives in U.S. policy that focus on tactical military offensives have conflicted with long-term strategies of statebuilding, not simply because of poor statesmanship but because of genuinely conflicting interests and their institutional advocates. This cannot be changed just by better prioritization of objectives, as Felbab-Brown agues.
Similarly, is shaming, naming, and punishment of Afghans involved in particularly egregious cases of corruption a solution when the problem is systemic and transnational? The recent case of the suspiciously expensive natural-gas filling station in Shebergan near the gas fields in northern Afghanistan is revealing. The U.S.-funded station cost over $4 million (a similar station in Pakistan costs about $500,000), but what caught the attention of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) was the overhead cost of $30 million. The overhead probably flowed in part to the most powerful person in the area, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is vice president of the Republic and also has a large militia force in the North. The Pentagon might have gotten value for its money in the end—Dostum’s militia stopped Taliban advances in neighboring Faryab Province the summer of 2015—but the transaction was neither transparent nor accountable. It was emblematic of the kind of external financial flow that has fueled systemic corruption in Afghanistan since 2001 and requires systemic corrections.
Years of training and massive support by the U.S. coalition notwithstanding, the weakness of the Afghan Security Forces are legion. Felbab-Brown recommends that U.S. forces extend their post-2014 mentoring role to continue to provide operational support. She may well be right that without such assistance, the Afghan army cannot confront, let alone roll back, the Taliban. The point was vividly demonstrated in Kunduz in October 2015 and again this year. Yet will another, say, 10 years make much of a difference to an army that is factionalized and seems demoralized? Will the U.S. military presence be just enough to keep the civil war going, too small to beat back the Taliban but too strong to compel the army and the political leadership to reform? Felbab-Brown does not pose the questions.
The book is symptomatic of the contradictory impulses in the American engagement in Afghanistan. The author is clearly sympathetic to the Afghan people. She has traveled repeatedly to the country, and not always on visits facilitated by the U.S. embassy. She conveys the sense that past U.S. involvement, and the costs for all parties concerned, has created a moral obligation to continue assistance. Yet there is a distinct lack of awareness of Afghan sensibilities and sense of sovereignty. She recommends, for instance, that U.S. forces continue to accompany Afghan forces on night raids, a role that alienated villagers whose compounds were invaded and doors kicked in by American soldiers at night. U.S. participation in night raids was strongly opposed by the Afghan government and was formally ended with the transition. Felbab-Brown also recommends that the United States intervene in Afghan appointment processes to reduce patronage, factionalism, and corruption by ensuring that promotions in the military and civil administration are based on merit. A long imperial arm of this kind belongs to another era; to the extent it was tried in Afghanistan after 2001, it proved both ineffective and counterproductive.
When the underlying logic is that this is still a winnable war, there is, not surprisingly, little discussion of the possibilities for negotiation and what an acceptable peace settlement might entail. Readers who are interested in this would need to look elsewhere. They would find that there is by now a considerable literature on this aspect of the Afghan conflict (see, e.g., Michael Semple, Reconciliation in Afghanistan, 2009). Texts on the rationale, strategies, potentials, and pitfalls of peace talks have ebbed and flowed with the rhythm of the conflict, but gained momentum after 2010–11 when the beginnings of a peace process seemed in evidence. Although the process spluttered, influential voices in the U.S. foreign policy establishment have continued to outline possible peace strategies (see e.g., James Dobbins and Carter Malkasian, “Time to Negotiate in Afghanistan,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 2015).
