The 28 January 2010 London International Conference on Afghanistan was the most recent meeting of international leaders seeking to restore peace and prosperity to that country. This session differed from previous ones, however, in its stress on the need for the Afghan government to assume a more prominent role in pursuing these objectives. “Today’s Conference,” the London communiqué hopefully affirmed, “represents a decisive step towards greater Afghan leadership to secure, stabilize, and develop Afghanistan.”
The reason for this emphasis on a “transition of responsibility” from foreign to Afghan institutions is obvious. The British hosts, along with other NATO governments, are striving to manage domestic public pressures to curtail their military and other commitments in Afghanistan without prematurely abandoning their allies in Kabul or their other international partners.
This tension between internal and external imperatives has manifested itself most visibly in how NATO countries have been simultaneously declaring troop increases and military force departures. For example, when President Barack Obama announced a 30,000 American troop increase in Afghanistan last month, he also affirmed that US forces could begin withdrawing by the summer of 2011. At the conference, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton observed that, “July of 2011 will mark a point of transition for American troops as we take stock of where we have come with our security efforts.” The Secretary added that, by then, “we will move forward to transition out our forces as they are replaced by trained and qualified Afghan forces.”
NATO governments have sought to bridge this gap by accelerating and expanding the planned growth of the Afghan government’s own security forces. The London Conference raised the goals for the Afghan National Army from 102,400 personnel today to 171,600 by October 2011. The corresponding increase for the Afghan National Police is from the current 92,600 to 134,000 officers by October 2011. Pentagon planners are considering expanding the combined Afghan security forces to 400,000 by 2013 if the security situation remains unstable.
The London communiqué also proposed that Afghan forces might assume the lead role in securing their country, with the first provinces potentially coming under their responsibility by the end of this year. In his State of the Union message last month, President Obama reassured members of Congress that, “We are increasing our troops and training Afghan security forces so they can begin to take the lead in July 2011 and our troops can begin to come home.”
The problem is that these timetables do not align well with Afghan realities. Afghan President Hamid Karzai reassured the conference attendees that “the aspirations and demands of the people of Afghanistan today can be summarized in four simple words: Afghan leadership, Afghan ownership.” Yet, by his own admission, Afghan institutions remain incapable of taking the lead in many areas due to their limited resources and other deficiencies. Most notably, whereas NATO leaders publicly describe their military commitments as lasting for only another year or two, Karzai insists that his government will need 10-15 years of sustained Western funding, training, and military assistance before the Afghan military and police forces will be capable of countering the Taliban insurgents without direct NATO combat support.
Uncertainty also prevails about when the Afghan government and its foreign backers will accomplish what NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen termed before the conference the “political road map” for achieving peace and security in Afghanistan. Its key components include improving good governance and the rule of the law, promoting economic development and job creation, combating corruption and narcotics trafficking, as well as reintegrating Taliban members into peaceful Afghan society.
Kai Eide, the retiring UN Special Representative to Afghanistan, has complained that the international community is preventing implementation of this political road map by pursuing an excessively militarized approach toward Afghanistan. “Very unfortunately,” he told The Times (London), “the political strategy has become an appendix to the military strategy. The strategy has to be demilitarised – a political strategy with a military component.” Eide argued that one reason the Taliban insurgency had been spreading throughout Afghanistan was that military priorities had determined international development efforts, resulting in aid flowing to the violent southern provinces, breeding resentment elsewhere, rather than being more evenly distributed across the country.
The conference participants sought to address this issue by agreeing that the share of foreign development aid administered by the Afghan government could rise from the current 20% to as much as 50% by 2012, providing that Afghan institutions made further progress, with international support, in improving their financial practices and capabilities. Accomplishing these civilian goals is essential for winning the insurgency since the government’s agenda, if realized, offers the Afghan people a considerably more attractive platform than the Taliban’s retrograde vision.
The London communiqué restated plans to convene an international conference in Kabul this spring. It will assess progress and develop specific benchmarks and implementation plans for the Afghanization goals announced in London, including those for a “phased transition to Afghan security lead province by province…as rapidly as possible.” By then it should become clearer whether the Afghan government and its foreign backers will succeed in turning the London aspirations into concrete results.
Richard Weitz - Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute-Washington DC.
