nerdgirl 0 #1 February 28, 2009 Interesting and insightful (imo) comments released yesterday from LG Barno, USA (ret), who testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday. Agree with some … less sanguine about other aspects. From LG Barno’s written testimony submitted:“First, the Afghan people are the center of gravity of all efforts. This fundamental understanding must underpin and influence every aspect of a new approach in Afghanistan. Securing the population entails more than simply protection from the Taliban: success requires the Afghan people to have confidence in their personal security, health and education, access to resources, governance and economic future – a broad “human security” portfolio. The Afghan people, down to the local level, are the ultimate arbiters of success in Afghanistan. On the other hand, international civil and military activities that alienate the Afghan people, offend their cultural sensibilities, or further separate them from their government are doomed to fail. Nurturing the reasonable hope and cautious optimism of the Afghan people in a better future is the sine qua non of our collective success in Afghanistan.” I.e., just ‘killing terrorists’ – nevermind, the problem of exactly how one disaggregates “terrorists” from civilians or scared/stupid/brainwashed folks induced into Taliban is less than clear – ain’t gonna work. Mullah Omar is most likely in Quetta (southern Pakistan) these days anyway. “Second, creating actual unity of effort within the civil and military spheres is essential -- and ultimately integrating the two. Countless dollars and tens of thousands of troops have been committed to Afghanistan over the past eight years, but a sober assessment would conclude that the whole has totaled far less than the sum of the parts. The enemy seeks to disrupt our unity of effort; we have given him many of the tools to do so. Only by dramatically improving the coherence of the military effort and by connecting it to the civil reconstruction, governance and development effort will effective progress be made. The civil dimension of the enterprise has been even more fragmented than the disjointed military effort.” I.e., purely military solutions will not work (one can quote SecDef Gates there too). And the USAID, State’s CRC, etc need to get in gear as well. The US still doesn’t do the |R| of SSTR well. “Third, simultaneous bottom-up and top-down action is required. The recurrent debate between strengthening the central government versus strengthening capacity at the local level must be ended. Afghanistan requires both a capable national government in Kabul and effective, legitimate local institutions at province, district and village level. Models for this relationship exist in Afghan history over the centuries, most recently in the 1960s and early 1970s. Action in this realm must be two-pronged: Kabul and the central government as the ‘top-down’ focus of the Kabul-based international community; and province and district level ‘bottoms-up’ action, enabled (and sometimes led) by military efforts.” I’m less sure history supports LG Barno’s assertions here. He outlines a timeline through minimally 2025 of US and NATO military and civilian involvement in Afghanistan. He also notes the importance of Pakistan. One factor that I’m coming to the conclusion must also be addressed if Afghanistan is not going to return to a failed/failing-state for radical Salafist haven is the simmering Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, i.e., see Steve Coll’s latest in The New Yorker “The Back Channel.” Grand chessboard, eh? /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
BIGUN 1,488 #2 February 28, 2009 Quote The US still doesn’t do the |R| of SSTR well. And on that note - as a civilian contractor for |R| and our past discussions... Quote Responses by the United States to recent crises demonstrate an important but false dichotomy between civilian and military roles in post-conflict reconstruction. In contingencies like Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo, uniformed services created a safe and secure environment, and set the conditions for the reconstruction of war-torn societies through their expertise in logistics, engineering, policing, and support for humanitarian needs—but only to a point. If civilians are better suited to leading the reconstruction effort, where are they? Once reasonable security is established in theater, it is paramount that reconstruction begin immediately, or the potential to slide back into armed conflict is high. I agree that if major civilian agencies have the standby capacity to deploy, then they should take primacy in the reconstruction effort—but that isn’t the current reality. Many civilian policymakers and agencies continue to think of peace operations in a linear fashion, insisting that a determination of specific civilian and military tasks in the post-conflict phase provides a bright line delineating specific roles and responsibilities in different stages of conflict. Maybe the intent is to be able to assign credit or blame for progress in the various areas; however, this linear thinking falls short in a place like Afghanistan where some areas of the country are ripe for recovery while other areas remain in Afghan-on-Afghan conflict. Post-conflict reconstruction instead requires integrated security, social, economic, and political development efforts, not separate tracks that diverge. On closer examination, the military and the civilian agencies are not really working at contrary purposes, but have complementary abilities that should be meshed together into a well-designed effort. Those aspects of reconstruction that the military are not specifically trained to accomplish are well filled by the various civilian agencies . . . once they get to theater. On the other hand, the military brings a level of responsiveness and organization that the agencies do not inherently have at the beginning of a peace operation. The challenge now is to determine how best to coordinate this effort between the military, IOs [international organizations], and NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] for the benefit of the host nation. If the goal is to rebuild the country’s infrastructure in order to jump-start the economy and strengthen security, the military is the organization that is most suited to begin this mission within the first year. However, there are artificial roadblocks that greatly limit the military’s effectiveness in post-conflict reconstruction leading to limited reconstruction funds, inappropriate troop strength, and absence of an organization for combined civil-military reconstruction planning. This results in a lack of military focus on the long-term benefits of immediate reconstruction in favor of a short-term focus on security and stability operations. Instead, give the military the reconstruction mission at the outset so we can begin to rebuild—the civilian leadership can assume the helm once they get there. Source: Col. Garland H. Williams http://www.cfr.org/publication/15426/who_should_lead_postconflict_reconstruction.html We could just get Lowe's and Home Depot to build a store and issue gift cards... Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
StreetScooby 5 #3 February 28, 2009 Ralph Peters had a really good opinion article the other day. His question was: why are we spending so much effort supporting boundaries established by Europe 50 years ago? Re: Afghanistan and their people, do they even want to be educated? Let's face it, if your culture forces you into poverty, believing in whatever interpretation of God you have can be a source of great comfort. I don't think their culture is ready to be modernized, and may never be ready. Why force it on them?We are all engines of karma Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
spootch 0 #4 February 28, 2009 Or we could split Afghanistan and give it to it's neighbours, and pull out completley. Afghanistan will not exist, and Pakistan will be huge. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
nerdgirl 0 #5 February 28, 2009 Thanks for the CFR piece - printing out the on-line piece and will order Engineering Peace: The Military Role in Post-Conflict Reconstruction. QuoteIf civilians are better suited to leading the reconstruction effort, where are they? My favorite PhD historian has addressed the “where is the civilian reconstruction” capacity issue: US foreign service/USAID was decimated capacity-wise since the 1980s, so responsibility has largely fallen to the military. 2004-2006 State's Office of Reconstruction hemorrhaged staff because of lack of political support and inter-agency tension. /Marg Act as if everything you do matters, while laughing at yourself for thinking anything you do matters. Tibetan Buddhist saying Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
