Chapter Four: International Military Support

Abstract

By the middle of 2007, Afghans had become increasingly disillusioned with a state-building process that had failed to deliver the peace dividend that they were promised. For many Afghans, the most noticeable change in their lives since the fall of the Taliban has been an acute deterioration in security conditions. Whether it is predatory warlords, the Taliban-led insurgency, the burgeoning narcotics trade or general criminality, the threats to the security and stability of Afghanistan are manifold. The response to those threats, both in terms of the international military intervention and the donor-supported process to rebuild the security architecture of the Afghan state, known as security-sector reform (SSR), has been largely insufficient to address the task at hand. NATO has struggled to find the troops and equipment it requires to complete its Afghan mission and the SSR process, from its outset, has been severely under-resourced and poorly directed. Compounding these problems, rampant corruption and factionalism in the Afghan government, particularly in the security institutions, have served as major impediments to reform and a driver of insecurity. This paper charts the evolution of the security environment in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, assessing both the causes of insecurity and the responses to them. Through this analysis, it offers some suggestions on how to tackle Afghanistan's growing security crisis.

Notes

1. Statement by General Tommy R. Franks, Commander in Chief, US Central Command, Senate Armed Services Committee, 7 February 2002.

2. While OEF usually refers to the war in Afghanistan, two other subordinate OEF operations are being conducted in parallel, OEF–Philippines and OEF–Horn of Africa, both focusing on monitoring and disrupting transnational terrorists operating in their regions.

3. Lawrence Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper 379 (Milton Park, Routledge for the IISS, April 2006), p. 61.

4. Bernsten and Pezzullo, Jawbreaker, p. 314.

5. Ibid.

6. Mark Hewish, ‘Underground Attack Initiatives Expand’, Jane's International Defense Review, 1 November 2002.

7. Military Technical Agreement Between the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and the Interim Administration of Afghanistan (‘Interim Administration’), Article IV: Deployment of the ISAF, Chapter 3.

8. The British public did not have a clear sense of the mission either. An ICM poll for the BBC found that nearly half (46%) believed that the purpose of UK involvement in Afghanistan was to stop the flow of drugs. Raymond Whitaker, ‘Afghanistan’, The Independent, 5 November 2006.

9. France had around 200 special forces troops from the Special Operations Command based in Spin Boldak and Jalalabad, under US command. At the end of 2006, then French Minister of Defence Michelle Alliot-Marie announced that they were being withdrawn from Afghanistan.

10. The Ink Spot strategy was first used by the British against the communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. It was invented by Sir Gerald Templer, the British High Commissioner in Malaya between 1952 and 1954. Templer also coined the phrase ‘winning hearts and minds’.

11. Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry, US Commander, Combined Forces Command–Afghanistan (CFC-A), Defense Department News Briefing, 21 September 2006.

12. Michael Smith, ‘British Troops in Secret Truce with the Taliban’, Sunday Times, 1 October 2006.

13. Kim Sengupta, ‘NATO Troops Kill Up To 80 Militants in Helmand’, The Independent, 5 December 2006.

14. Anthony H. Cordesman, Winning Afghanistan: Facing the Rising Threat (Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 5 December 2006).

15. See NATO in Afghanistan Factsheet, http://www.nato.int/issues/afghanistan/040628-factsheet.htm.

16. Robert M. Perito, The US Experience with Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan, Lessons Identified (Washington DC: US Institute of Peace, October 2005).

17. David W. Barno, ‘Afghanistan: The Security Outlook’, address delivered at the Center for Security and International Studies (CSIS), Washington DC, 14 May 2004, p. 10, available at: http://www.csis.org/isp/pcr/040514_barno.pdf.

18. Michael J. Dziedzic and Colonel Michael K. Seidl, Provincial Reconstruction Teams and Military Relations with International and Nongovernmental Organizations in Afghanistan, United States Institute of Peace Special Report 147 (Washington DC: USIP, September 2005); and Mark Sedra, Civil–Military Relations in Afghanistan: The Provincial Reconstruction Team Debate, available at: http://asiapacificresearch.ca/caprn/afghan_project/m_sedra.pdf.

19. Mark M. Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secret to Policy (Washington DC: CQ Press, 2006), pp. 27 and 86.

20. Interviews with US special forces field officers, Kabul, May 2006, and Boston, MA, November 2006.