Deteriorating Proximity between Liberal Peacebuilding and Counterinsurgency: Warlordism and Corruption in Afghanistan

Abstract

This essay aims at a critical analysis of liberal statebuilding efforts in Afghanistan as a counterinsurgency strategy. It interrogates the consequences of recent statebuilding policies of the counterinsurgency campaign in reproducing and perpetuating, rather than ameliorating, unequal sociopolitical relations in Afghanistan. Since statebuilding is a very broad area to analyze in a single article, this essay focuses on warlordism and corruption as two important issues that illustrate the failure of statebuilding efforts as a strategy of counterinsurgency. The biggest criticism posed by the research is the ignorance of local people’s needs and expectations due to the hubris and arrogance of western interveners vis-à-vis their own technological and cognitive “superiority.” Thus, this essay has a local population-based approach which enables that ignored local population to explain their perspectives and evaluate efforts in the country.

• Afghanistan
• corruption
• counterinsurgency
• liberalpeacebuilding
• statebuilding
• warlordism

Notes

1 The coercive approach, contrarily to population-centrism, asserts that the actions of local populations are more important than their hearts and minds. Persons are rational actors who behave according to a cost–benefit calculation. If they decide that the cost of supporting insurgents is high (due to the coercive policies of the government), “they will support the government regardless of their negative feelings towards the government” (Larsdotter 2014, 140).

2 This group of followers of what some called “neo-classical COIN” (counterinsurgency) came to be termed “COINdinistas” in the literature (Rich 2014, 5; Moe 2016, 102). For a short list of COINdinistas, see Ricks (2009).

3 According to Call (2008), statebuilding is a crucial part of stability in peacebuilding, but the deeply political process of statebuilding can itself be destabilizing. It is important to balance the imperatives of legitimacy and capacity.

4 Securitization is “a process of constructing a shared understanding of what are to be considered security issues” (Buzan, Wæver, and de Wilde 1998, 26).

5 Indeed, in the mid-1990s, the economic interests of international oil companies meant the Taliban were seen as a source of stability, to be supported economically and politically (Maley 2002; Nojumi 2008, 102; Rashid 2002; Saikal 1998).

6 Semple et al. (2012, 5) note there is an important theological difference between the Taliban and al-Qaeda: “(the Taliban belonging to the Deobandi school of South Asia, while Al-Qa’ida are Wahabis, which originates in Saudi Arabia), and that Osama bin Laden was originally invited to Afghanistan not by the Taliban, but by members of the mujahedeen regime.” This stereotyping perspective also supported the alienation of the Taliban from the political process.

7 According to ACSOR’s (2015, 2) public opinion survey conducted in Afghanistan with the participation of 2,051 Afghans, 53 percent of participants say the runoff election was mostly fraudulent, while 44 percent believe it was mostly fair and transparent. The Free and Fair Election Forum of Afghanistan (FEFA) (2014), an independent Afghan non-profit civil organization, asserts that almost half its respondents thought foreign countries would influence the upcoming elections; among these the United States was named by 87 percent, followed by Pakistan (71 percent), and Iran (63 percent).

8

Bringing democracy in … Afghanistan is not a state problem; … we are suffering from poverty [and] security problems. They worked here for democracy, for example, if you have not food for eating, no security, what will be important point that bring democracy? There will be no advantage having in Afghanistan. (AN1, pers. comm., September 17, 2015)

9 On 19 March 2015 a mob of men viciously attacked a 27-year-old female, Farkhunda. She was accused of burning a Quran by a mullah with whom she argued on his practice of selling charms. The mob beat her, set her body ablaze, and tossed her into the shallow waters of Kabul River (Motley 2015). This dreadful murder mobilized civil society to protest the incident and ask justice for Farkhunda. At her funeral, Afghan women’s rights activists dressed head-to-toe in black broke with tradition to carry her coffin (Al-Jazeera 2015).

10 Forty-nine suspects were tried and four men were sentenced to death. The sentences were handed down by Judge Safiullah Mojadedi in Kabul on 5 May 2015. Eight other defendants were sentenced to sixteen years in prison. The trial was noted for its unusual brevity, lasting just two days (Rasmussen 2015). On May 19, eleven police officers were sentenced to one year in prison for failing to protect Farkhunda (BBC News, May 19, 2015). On 2 July 2015 an appeals court overturned the death sentences. Three men had their sentences reduced to twenty years, while the fourth was re-sentenced to ten years, prompting street protests and a debate on women’s rights (Shalizi 2015).

11 Suhrke (2011, 6) defines extreme dependence as the important characteristic of “the political phenomena called the rentier state, [which] is the exact opposite of what might be said to be the goal of a statebuilding process … formulated in the Bonn Agreement.”

The rentier state is a familiar concept in Afghan history. [For instance], Daoud’s presidency is usually singled out as the prototypical rentier state, but other modernizers received substantial foreign funding as well, or subventions in the language of British imperial officers who supplied Afghan rulers with funds in the late nineteenth century.

12 A light machine gun similar to the AK-47.

13 For a detailed account of warlords and their roles, see Mukhopadhyay (2014).

14 In 2013, because of a big corruption scandal, five day-long demonstrations and protests took place in Nangarhar against the governor, Gul Agha Sherzai. He is one of the famous warlords of the country, and was a governor between 2004 and 2013 with the support of the coalition forces (Foschini and Ali 2013). After the invasion, he was made governor of Kandahar, but despite the insistence of the US-led forces, Karzai replaced him (Aikins 2009).

15 For example, a storage facility in Gereshk cost $2.89 million, but the facility was unused due to lack of investors (SIGAR 2014). SIGAR only investigates and audits US development projects, and there are many reports of poor oversight, corruption, wasted investment, and bribery. According to SIGAR (2016, 21), the total number of individuals and companies referred for suspension or debarment based on evidence by SIGAR had reached 743 (393 individuals and 350 companies) since 2008. When other projects are considered, the number is probably even higher. The most cited reason for inadequate control of such projects is a lack of security in the region.