Reconstructing Afghanistan?
In the year I spent in the White House, I kept being surprised by government agencies that simply ignored the president's instructions and directives. In some cases, the political heads of the agencies were more liberal than the president and had their own political agendas; in others, the civil servants just refused to play ball. (Dealing with high levels of inflation I suggested that the government issue some gold-based bonds, which I hoped would demand a much lower interest rate and hence reduce the costs to the public. The president sent me across the street to the Treasury to discuss the matter with the civil servant in charge of the issuance of bonds. The guy in charge said that he did not consider this a sound idea. When pushed, he responded: "you and your president will soon be out of here. I have seen four come and go. And--I will still be here." My little idea was never tested.)
All this came to mind when President Obama recently conducted a carefully crafted and deliberate review of the United States' goals in Afghanistan. After the review was completed, the president announced that he would seek "to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-Qaeda," period. There was no mention of democratization, reconstruction, or promoting open markets. However, it seems that his voice has not carried very far. General Stanley McChrystal, who has just been appointed the new commander of US troops in Afghanistan, is pushing development of that country as an essential step for stabilization. To be fair, some of his goals are properly narrowly crafted, like those focused on essential security. He states that his measure of success in Afghanistan "will not be enemy killed. It will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence." More ambitious is his drive to form a social contract with farmers and small business leaders, so if they plant legitimate crops rather than poppies and pay taxes, they will be guaranteed secure transportation routes to markets without the pressure of bribes at illegal checkpoints. This is a very tall order.
Others have pushed for more reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan: the British have pledged more than $43 million for reconstruction projects in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan, while Canadian soldiers have begun what some have dubbed an "adopt-a-village" program in which soldiers secure Afghan villages and remain in them for weeks after doing reconstruction projects like building roads and installing solar-panel streetlamps. However, given the level of corruption in Afghanistan, the huge profit drug dealers make off the opium trade, the poor conditions of the country and the high illiteracy rates, major economic and social and political development in the foreseeable future is just not going to happen.
People who believe we can effectively develop nations through massive, foreign-funded and -guided social engineering projects best study a report on USAID's efforts in Afghanistan. Rajiv Chandrasekaran recently provided an extensive and rich account of such efforts in The Washington Post: A $40 million strawberry plantation was launched on soil too salty to grow crops; a highway from Kabul to Kandahar was finished quickly but the asphalt was too thin to withstand melting snow; cobblestones used to build roads hurt the hooves of Afghan camels, and so on and on. For scores more tales of American misadventures in regime change and reconstruction, one should read Chandrasekaran's book, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, which chronicles similar tales of gross incompetence in Iraq.
A new book, Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East, by Neil MacFarquhar, details many other examples of US failures in the region. A typical sample: The United States tried to help the Lebanese combat hashish cultivation by promoting dairy farming and so granted them 3,000 high-quality American dairy cows, but the farmers could not afford the cows' upkeep. When Iran learned about the American debacle, it provided the farmers with cows that were cheaper and easier for the farmers to maintain.
Before the Neo Cons' support of forced regime change was discredited, they made a good point about changes in the United States: changing society through public programs is a very challenging task. It is odd to see that they--and others who do not share their philosophical persuasion--act as if what the United States cannot do in LA and Detroit and West Virginia and New Orleans, it will be able to do in Kandahar and Kabul and Herat. Promising too much has its own costs. Sadly, we must learn to accept that development will be slow, expensive, and must largely be advanced by the people whose nation is being developed.
**I will respond to the comments of those persons who are willing to identify themselves, because I hold this essential for a civilized dialogue.
Amitai Etzioni is a professor of international affairs at The George Washington University and the author of Security First (Yale, 2007). He can be contacted at icps@gwu.edu. www.gwu.edu/~ccps/securityfirst.html
Something interesting is happening in Afghanistan:
Source: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KF25Df01.html
Certainly not the answer to all of Afghanistan's troubles, still, are not small steps away from opium better than none?
June 24, 2009 12:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Fascinating, isn't it, that "we" are always doing something, going to do something, or have done something to rebuild a nation?
Yet, so little of what "we" do seems to have any impact or staying power on rebuilding "their" nation.
During my time in Iraq (2007/2008), I carried my dog-eared copy of "Implementation," an insider's account of the foibles and failures of the effort to rebuild Watts after the riots in the 1960's. Despite unlimited Great Society funds and governmental commitment to the effort, it just didn't work out.
If only we could make "Implementation," and all the lessons it imparts for public administration professionals, a required read for all these military and foreign-policy types, perhaps they would better understand why they continually march off the same cliff.
US efforts to run reconstruction can only succeed if they are genuinely Iraqi or Afghani projects and programs, otherwise they just undermine nation building.
Giving a fish or teaching to fish....it doesn't change the basic principle just because the fish is being handed out the back of a Hum Vee or C130.
Absent a program focused on supporting locals to fish from their own boats in their own ponds to catch local fish, we are simply running a US-funded aid program until our money and will runs out. Nothing has been built, and nothing will remain---except an implanted empire of dysfunction and graft.
Why does it have to be so complicated?
Steve D
June 24, 2009 1:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
It's been explained to you many times that people use handles on this site to avoid reprisals from their employers. Sigh.
Onto the substance of your entry today: the programs surrounding hashish and poppy cultivation don't work because they're attached to our ridiculous drug war. Maybe we should encourage their farmers to grow what they want and leave it at that.
So far as other construction projects go... well... we did bomb the hell out of the place. Maybe we should get to fixing it up? And maybe, just maybe our general talks about wider goals because it'd be pretty dangerous for our troops if the general made incendiary comments like "we're only here to get rid of al-qaeda and establish order." Most of the victims of the war aren't al-qaeda or even the Taliban and they would rightly point out that our tanks don't give us the right to impose an order upon them without their consent.
June 24, 2009 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Destor, people are afraid of reprisals from their employers? You think employers are reading, taking notes, and able to distinguish various John Smiths from each other?
June 24, 2009 4:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Tintin, folks have certainly lost their jobs over things they've posted on blogs, even political statements.
What's funny about Etzioni's stance here is -- he won't reply to a substantive comment from me, or from you for that manner because we use a handle but, heck, if I found a handle that sounded like a real name and any thumbnail picture of a random guy or gal on the web, he'd engage me? If I posted under the name Rachel McIntyre, would he assume that's who I really am and answer my comments? Why on Earth would he make that assumption?
June 24, 2009 4:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
In my case, the name "Cloudy" (which is what people call me in everyday life) is a standard nom-de-whatever, perhaps with less gravitas than Lenin or Trotsky, but hey -- I never crushed anyone at Kronstadt or anything like it either. Couldn't someone argue that names like Lenin,Trotsky and Tito were merely "handles"?
The rule Amitai Etzioni mentions is also applied at Democratic Left, where I post, but I got them to more or less tolerate 'Cloudy'. I use the same name (or a variant, where the site, say Democratic Underground already has the name taken and unavailable, such as the more complete
"Cloudy the Scribbler"). I use the 'handle' Cloudy in activism within the new sds, at TPM Cafe, on various listserves including Democratic Left, at Democratic Underground, FaceBook, MySpace, and elsewhere.
Well, I suppose if I identify myself as "Cloudy" from Springfield MA that is pretty specific. I agree that people can be full fledged trolls under an actual name (I could specify some, but won't) or be perfectly serious and civil under a screen name. I wonder if it would make any difference if I took the time (it is hard for me to finally get this) to upload the image of my face I use on FaceBook and MySpace
June 25, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe not as far-fetched as you might think.
June 25, 2009 3:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
I guess I'm agreeing in part with Dick Cheney (remember his anonymous energy task force), but sometimes people speak more freely when they don't have to worry about how friends, relatives, customers, employers, etc. might react to what they say. When you speak publicly under your own name, you are constrained a bit by the potential impact of your words on other important parts of your life. When you speak anonymously, the constraints are removed. There are both good and bad things about the removal of such constraints. Having the constraints does, I think, contribute to a more civilized dialogue and also a more carefully considered one. But it also may lead to a tad less honest dialogue. Ultimately, what should be important to everyone, however, is the quality of a person's comments and not the name of the commentator. Etzioni, if he wasn't such a pompous ass, could respond to good anonymous comments. But I think it's pretty clear that Etzioni is a pompous ass who's clearly much more interested in lecturing than learning from others. The result, of course, is the rather bland, predictable, and ultimately forgettable ideas he publishes. If Etzioni weren't so smug, he'd be smarter. As it is, he comes over as a windbag who long ago shut his mind to new ideas.
There was a lesson for Etzioni in his inability to get that civil servant to take his ideas seriously. It's quite clear that Etzioni never learned that lesson.
June 25, 2009 7:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well then ... Fuck you! You arrogant, shriveled fuckhead! You receive the dialog you engender. :-)
It seems a bit of localized research and investment in pre-construction engineering would eliminate pretty much every foible you described to support your (reasonably superficial) conclusion. Doesn't this premise essentially boil down to: because Bush was incompetent at managing reconstruction/economic improvement it shouldn't be a useful aspect of our engagement in Afghanistan?
June 25, 2009 3:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Would you say that under your "real" name, or at least identify yourself so that the above comment (which some people, including probably Amitai Etzioni, I suspect) would consider uncivilized discourse, can know who you are and where you come from?
Cloudy
Springfield MA
June 25, 2009 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
My point wasn't very subtle, so I assume you are intentionally ignoring it.
IMO, a guy who goes out of his way to draw down on the majority of TMP's forum participants in his article is a total dickhead. Seriously, fuck this guy! Liz Warren, Dean Baker and many others have respectfully engaged commenter thoughts/questions when they post articles here - regardless of avatar or alias. Compared to Baker or Warren, who are actively shaping our national policy, this hide-from-the-world-in-academia professor seems sort of putzy. Why should someone who is disrespectful (where his betters have been gracious) be shown respect?
In an online discussion - respect should be earned by the quality of a poster's ideas, not by the quality of their surname.
June 26, 2009 1:21 PM | Reply | Permalink
As for the substantive issue, I can only suspect that, in the context of overall military-run "development" programs, like in Vietnam during the war, where the objectives were always inseparable from command-and-control of the population and convenience of the military, these horror stories reflect an attitude of a deep lack of genuine concern about the well-being of the population in the formulation and development of policy decisions.
Democratic participation from the grassroots up doesn't mix well with the whole mentality of military imperialistic enterprises, which is what the US is engaged in throughout the Middle East region. Somewhere along the line, the rude and uncivilized concept of "imperialism" (and not just as something Republicans do that Democrats like Obama don't) needs to be seriously and routinely incorporated into mainstream political discourse in this country.
June 25, 2009 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is how it works in Iraq and Afghanistan; an army Lt. is sent out to meet with a local tribal leader/sheikh/warlord/authority figure to discuss how a project might benefit the area. After the tea drinking and socializing the project is discussed in general terms - what the priorities are, what the project might be, where the project could be, how the project could be built and who will build it. In almost all cases, the locals are encouraged to build the project themselves using local labour. The Lt. returns to his base and then makes his assessment of the need for the project, under what catagory it falls such as education, medical, infrastructure improvement etc.. This assessment is then moved up the line for approval and funds are approved for the project. The Lt. then returns to the local authority with the approval, the guidelines and the CASH.
The local authority is then responsible for lining up the construction/labour/local resources to build the project and disperse the cash accordingly. Since most of these projects are in the middle of nowhere, there isn't much in the way of local resources to build the project. If there are materials, they are generally shoddy which of course means that the materials have to be brought in which then entails distribution and shipping which accordingly costs much more (for many reasons, chiefly though, bribery and cuts of the materials and money) which of course takes many, many weeks and months to co-ordinate.
By the time the project has been whittled down and at least promises something of its original plan, the civil affairs unit which was overseeing it has been ordered home and a new unit is then overseeing the project. What ensues from that is another round of the same thing that occurred in the last nine months. With a new bag of cash, of course.
So while it is easy to criticize the effort put into the project by the army, the problem is that it IS dealing with the locals and local resources and that is why projects are finished poorly or not finished at all. It is not anything remotely like a building project here in our comfort zone where the project is handed to a construction company and the construction company has access to materials and the ability to distribute those materials in a timely and contractually ordered manner.
Let me also add that the army Lts. Cpts et al that are involved in these projects are not trained contractors or construction workers. Their training is not in engineering and construction - they are trained to be soldiers, a fact that seems to escape many people. They aren't city managers, garbage collectors, road builders, drug law enforcement officers, farmers or water management workers. The Seabees aren't building the projects and neither are the Army corp of engineers or combat engineers. For the most part they are reserve officers who receive some training in civil affairs and then thrown into a situation that many construction companies would find impossible.
Hiring locals is a sure way to not get a project built.
June 25, 2009 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any type of war in Afghanistan is not winnable.
Ask the soviets.
obama knows this too.
So why is he getting us into another Vietnam?
Everyone knows the real reason we are there is to insure the safety of the gas line we hope to build and its ramifications against Russia.
But, it wont ever come to pass.
Just another blemish on what might have been a great president.
June 26, 2009 5:48 PM | Reply | Permalink