Seth Jones has, in his latest review essay in Foreign Affairs, highlighted an important aspect of current thinking on Afghanistan.
Jones’s point is that top down, centralised solutions don’t/won’t/can’t work in Afghanistan. Reforming and strengthening the Karzai regime (the erstwhile Mayor of Kabul), it would seem, is a side-show and will not bear fruit no matter how well it is done.
Instead, the focus must be at the villages; build up capacity for ‘good enough governance’ at that level and be satisfied. Jones, based on both research and anecdotal advice from the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, is clear:
Rural communities have been protecting their villages for centuries and can do it better than the Afghan government or international forces.
That may well be the desired endstate, but what are we to do in the meantime? How do we get there? Citing LSE researcher Antonio Giustozzi, Jones states that
a durable peace will likely require a careful combination of top-down institutionalization and bottom-up co-optation of local leaders. Focusing only on the former has failed to help the Afghan population, which continues to feel deeply insecure because of insurgent and criminal activity. Moreover, there has been — and will likely continue to be — an insufficient number of U.S., NATO, and Afghan national forces to protect the local population in rural areas. But that is all right, since many rural Afghans do not want a permanent central government presence in their villages; they want to police their own communities.
Good stuff.
Hang on a minute though…it can’t be that easy. What might the implications be of a bottom-up as opposed to a top-down approach? (NB: See my earlier comments in previous posts about the ease with which we go for one strategy and if it doesn’t turn out, we automatically go for its polar opposite. When that doesn’t work, or if we can’t make a clean break with past practice, we go for the Goldilocks Option–not too hot, not too cold, something juuussst right.)
Jones mentions one implication, but quickly dismisses it:
Some worry that empowering local leaders may help the Afghan government and the international community achieve short-term goals but will undermine stability in the long run by fragmenting authority. This is an academic debate.
The conventional wisdom of ‘grassroots empowerment’ has been all the rage in development circles for decades, but it has recently been seen to be problematic. By empowering local movements one does, of course, take something away from the central government. That can be handled well (say, like in the Swiss confederal system, where cantons and communes have enormous control over their own affairs); they can be designed to be in opposition to each other, acting as checks and balances, allowing each level to the subversive from time to time, in a Gramscian light; or it can lead to what Ernest Gellner called atomisation, where fragmentation occurs to such an extent as to render social action impossible. If each patch (village, tribal area, etc.) takes care of itself, we might see a Rouseau-esque peace, with each community isolated from his neighbour, living in tranquility. Or, to see it another way, the extreme end of the ‘localised’ spectrum might become asymptotic to some kind of Hobbesian state of nature.
Not exactly what we are hoping for in Afghanistan, to be honest. Lawless, tribal and kin-based feuding? We got that already… and more, in spades, in Pakistan.
The second fly in the ointment is a both more subtle and more fundamental. Let’s assume that bottom-up, local empowerment works (either on its own or as part of a Goldilocksian construct). Make the local ‘man on the spot’ the boss and let him provide for the needs of his people. Perrr-fec.
Ahhh…but there’s the rub. Can WE actually MAKE someone function in this way? Or, is our very involvement, our very presence (not to say our very existence, although for some opposed to the nature of the West that may be case) part of the problem? If Westerners are the ones empowering, or building the capacity of, the local headman (yes, man), is it really empowerment? Or does the whole strategy fall into that uncomfortable category of ‘things that should work, except that they don’t and never will, so long as we have anything to do with it’?
If bottom-up empowerment really does work, is there any place for foreigners to make it so in Afghanistan?
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This is a great post. I love Seth Jones’ work, and I look forward to reading the report. Initial reaction to your post:
I like your way of thinking. To me, the whole “end state not end date” debate seems a moot point. It has to be an end state. If NATO pulls out next July, and the Afghan people still lack the wherewithal and infrastructure to self-police, the country will once again collapse and possibly fall again to the Taliban. Then NATO would be obliged to return and try again. There must be a functioning state in place before NATO troops leave.
The phrase that I personally have in reserve for this situation is: “The government in Afghanistan will not look anything like any government that exists anywhere in the world at present. But it will be stable, and largely self-sufficient.”
Your question: “What do we do in the meantime?” is the crux of where my thinking is at the moment. I feel like most of the strategy that is currently in place works–on the tactical side perhaps a little more subtlety would be nice. The most frustrating thing, from an outsider’s point of view, is that it takes patience. All the writing about counterinsurgency from the 50′s and 60′s (I am aware that your own John Mackinlay argues that things have changed since then, but I think that the basic concepts are still sound) simply suggests that it takes time to establish the trust and cooperation of the local people, and to establish the authority of the local police, over the insurgents, as the key security providers.
Unfortunately people want instant results.
Nazif Shahrani has been writing on (advocating, actually) decentralized governance in Afghanistan for at least 15 years. This is his latest: http://www.cigionline.org/sites/default/files/Afghanistan%20Paper%202.pdf
I saw him lecture on the subject a few years ago. At the end during the Q&A a bunch of NGO people started hollering at him about warlordism. It’s been amusing to see his ideas go from pariah to flavor of the week in the circles that matter.
David Kilcullen tackled this issue in his latest book, “Counterinsurgency”. He uses the example of Somalia/Somaliland as an excellent control group for demonstrating the effectiveness of top-down v. bottom-down approaches. The typical UN approach seeks to strengthen government from the top down, while peacekeepers in Somaliland have been implementing a bottom-up approach with better results. Or so he argues. I don’t know enough about Somalia to judge.
The counterargument to “expert” Seth Jones can be found at this address:
http://aan-afghanistan.com/index.asp?id=763
The Faceless Bureuacrat wrote:
Actually, the Afghan people when left to govern themselves, free of a central state government and free of the Taliban, have rejected the Hobbesian bargain as well. See the following excerpt from Thomas Barfield, Culture and Custom in Nation-Building: Law in Afghanistan, 60 Me. L. Rev. 347, 355 (2008).
TJM, I take issue with Barfield’s idea that there was an “absence of [central] government,” ever, in Afghanistan. Perhaps it was not present like the United States government is in the lives of local American communities, but the central government has always provided a background against which local issues played out. Even in the very remote communities of Nuristan and elsewhere in eastern Afghanistan, customary law could always give way to a government adminstrator who could send a judicial dispute up the ladder. This imaginary Afghanistan where customary law existed in vacuum pockets of nongovernmentality is a fantasy.
Also, the statement “Instead, the freedom of the individual to do as he pleased was restricted by his acceptance of a common cultural code of behavior, the norms of which were enforced by the community members at large” is true of every human community and not evidence for the bright idea of hyperlocalized sovereignty in Afghanistan.
Obviously, the passage needs to be understood in the full context and copyright laws prevent me from copying and pasting the entire article. The phrase “the absence of government” is ideally read not as an absence of any central government, but rather an absence of a central state government. This was argued to apply to the distant, rural areas, and explained in a passage preceding my earlier one…
I suppose that “customary law could always give way to a government adminstrator who could send a judicial dispute up the ladder,” but that doesn’t seem all that significant. There is a world of difference between “can” and “may” and “must.” Just because parties have the option of bringing a dispute to a state court, does that mean they are really governed by that state? What if they otherwise ignore laws or feel only a negligible influence of the state?
Also, I am not asserting that the Afghans came up with an original idea. With regard to the quote about restricted freedoms through norms enforced by the community, you point out that this is “true of every human community.” Okay, fine. Then it is true of Afghanistan as well. I’m not sure what the problem is.
TJM, sorry, didn’t mean to start something. I was sort of agreeing with you and disagreeing with Barfield, because I agree that there is and was no “Hobbesian” condition in Afghanistan (and I am skeptical there is one anywhere based on my comment about community norms being restrictive).
“Just because parties have the option of bringing a dispute to a state court, does that mean they are really governed by that state? What if they otherwise ignore laws or feel only a negligible influence of the state?”
An excellent theoretical question. I think you can assume my answer is “yes.” Sovereignty belongs to the highest appellate court available, so to speak.
BTW if you or anyone is interested in a thought-provoking read, Jon Anderson’s “Khan and Khel dialectic” essay (dig up the ref in Christian’s bibliography) deals in a very theoretical way with the question you are asking. And yes, with “dialectic” in the title you can expect it is a dry read; thought-provoking nonetheless, and written by a guy with a lot of field experience in 70s Afghanistan.
Sovereignty is another issue that he addresses – he asserts that many communities simply never accepted the idea of placing the power of coercion or retribution within the power of some sovereign, but rather those powers are retained by the aggrieved parties (and, by extension, their kinship groups). That is paraphrasing from memory, so maybe Barfield would quibble with it. Would you disagree with that, too? I think it’s a useful construct that seems to be backed up by available facts. But I’m far from being an expert on Afghanistan.
Incidentally, thanks for the tip on the Anderson. I have been looking for more information about the khans, but have been surprised at what little I have found thus far – a perusal of his works looks promising.
things that should work, except that they don’t and never will, so long as we have anything to do with it
I’d like to offer an alternative to the above as my general take on the politics in Afghanistan:
things that should work, and they do, (except not in the way we would define “work”), in spite of everything we do
I am struck by the observation that we are not the only ones that are attempting to chisel a sustainable political solution out of these mountains. So my question is: given that the Taliban’s primary goal is to subvert, (that is, to govern), are they experiencing the same difficulties?
If not, what are we doing to learn from their successes?
If so: how can we exploit this?
Is that the consensus view? That the Taliban is seeking to subvert by asserting its alternative mode of governance? It seems to me that the Taliban is replicating our strategy from the 1980s. Make Afghanistan ungovernable, thus making ISAF’s continued efforts unsustainable. That is one significant quibble that I have had with the continued assertion from GEN McChrystal that this endeavor resembles a poll in a political campaign. In my opinion, it does not. This is not a competition for who will govern. This is a fight simply to ensure that one party (the ISAF-backed GIRoA) does not govern. After that issue is settled, the Taliban will figure out where to go from there – either enjoying sanctuary in a fragmented society of communities and proto-states or reconstituting a force to impose itself upon the country once again.
I’m no expert or analyst so please put me in my place if I’m completely wrong here.
Actually, I’d say that there’s a strong narrative out there that “we didn’t have these problems when the Taliban were in power” or “the Taliban’s way of governing put an end to warlord abuses,” if only the narrative. They also, in the places where they have something like control, offer the one social service that locals in rural areas want: an alternative dispute-resolution avenue (when customary law is not enough/unsatisfying to the parties in a dispute).
But, they ain’t doing it Hezbollah-style with hospitals and stuff, which makes disruption+summary court judgments a simpler equation than “governing.”
TJM,
Neither am I, so please accept these ruminations at face value.
If we have to consider that what had recently happened in Swat, I think it is fair to observe that, if allowed to, the Taliban will start to govern – and they will oil-slick their area of influence out very quickly.
I am of the opinion that this is mainly due to the allure of offering Sharia Law (as governance) as an alternative to “Western Decadence” – and fits within the framework of Jihad. They have to offer Sharia to the population – their past and present rhetoric compels them.
I am further of the opinion that the Taliban are experienced in the governance of Afghanistan. They know what the issues are (having encountered these first hand before the West came along). It didn’t exactly go their way the last time around – and it should be interesting to see if they have adjusted their approach on the basis of their past experience, or if their religious fervour compels them to stick with a less than ideal formula – one that is known to have failed in the past.
And please consider this… who knows what is happening in Hindu Kush at the moment? Or in the all the areas bordering on Waziristan and NWPF? Not COMISAF. His population-centric campaign design restricts ISAF activities to 121 key districts – mostly around the Ring Road, and with the bulk of the action occurring in RC-South (as it existed at the time of the most recent Report on Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan). Yet the Hindu Kush (and surrounds) was the location of some of the most intense fighting during the Soviet-Afghan War. The Hindu Kush is not covered at all, and not all of Paktika, Khost and Nangarhar is either. Khost, incidentally, was the first area to be “liberated” from communist rule during the Soviet-Afghan War. Who knows? Figure 5 of the above mentioned report supports the possibility that history may be about to repeat itself (if it hadn’t already done so).