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Though it may seem superfluous when Joshua Foust is a fellow co-guest-blogger, I’m writing about Afghanistan. Dr. Kimberly Kagan, the head of the Institute for the Study of War, has a really befuddling op-ed in the Washington Examiner. Though most of the op-ed is really quite stock and reasonable, one phrase is particularly befuddling. She writes that "The Afghan political system is considerably more mature than Iraq’s governing structure when the ‘surge’ began."
ISW is a small think tank, but it has a decent amount of leverage among conservatives. What worries me about this claim is that it’s closely related to the mistaken statements we made in early years about Iraqi governance. Though the Afghan government has a lot of staffers, and frankly the upcoming elections are likely to be less violent than some elections were in Iraq, but that a strong government does not make. Afghan ministries are over-stuffed with poorly-qualified patronage staff, and US/ISAF assessments of their capabilities are particularly low. The Ministries of Interior and Defense are still poorly run, and the MoI lacks even the ability to run logistics for its own police forces. The Ministry of Justice lacks legal training (including oftentimes basics such as copies of the legal code), funding, and relevance on much of the ground.
The government in Kabul is in many ways more legitimate across ethnic and regional lines than in Iraq, but lacks capability on the ground level. The institutional background that was assumed in Iraq – the basic knowledge such as how to run an army’s logistics, or how to run a town court according to codified law, or heck, even high literacy rates – often don’t exist in Afghanistan. So the Afghan political system has relatively speaking more buy-in from elites of all ethnicities and regions, sure. But I’d argue that the Afghan government’s capabilities will grow far more slowly, particularly outside the key urban areas. In Afghanistan, getting troop numbers of is utterly important, sure. But the Iraq Surge’s success tempts us to ignore other factors at our peril.
(Disclosure #1: Dr. Kagan was a keynote speaker at the Yale Political Union while I was one of the leaders of that organization. She was a great guest. Disclosure #2: I wrote about these issues previously in a co-authored report soon to be released by CSIS Press, but I have not discussed Dr. Kagan’s op-ed with my co-authors, and my conclusions are my own)
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Not superfluous at all — I’d rather be lost in a sea of smart people talking about Afghanistan, rather than spending too much time picking out the flaws in what the generic experts are saying.
Here, you’re right that her op-ed is befudling (or however you spell it): mostly boilerplate mixed with some significant errors of fact. Her argument suffers from two problems:
1) Fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of Afghan society and how that influences governance (and its severe corruption); and
2) Thinking the “Surge” is a relevant framework for Afghanistan.
The second one is perhaps understandable, since a lot of pundits (and Pentagon-types) have fallen under the Surge Spell… fully forgetting that 2008 saw an enormous influx of additional troops into the country anyway, and things still went to hell. But it’s not necessarily forgiveable: Kim Kagan used to be hugely respected in war studies, but the last couple of years have seen that reputation get buried under a partisan edge that I would have thought it beneath her. I blame her husband because I am petty and ignorant.
Anyway, good post.