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Stabilizing aghaniStan: threatS and ChallengeS1
 
OctOber 2008
The next president o the United States willace a daunting set o challenges in seeking tostabilize Aghanistan and its region. Yet thisis one part o the world where the tempta-tion to keep a sae distance is not a realisticoption. It remains the prime operational areaor al-Qaeda; it is replete with interconnectedsecurity dilemmas with the potential to areinto highly destructive open conict; and itis an area where the reputations o both theUnited States and NATO are squarely on theline. All this suggests that Aghanistan willbe at the top o the next president’s oreignpolicy agenda and is likely to remain there orsome considerable time.The recent experience o the “troop surge”in Iraq may tempt the next U.S. presidentto ocus on expanding troop numbers in Aghanistan. But Aghanistan is a rather dier-ent case. Beore heading down such a path, it is vital to reect on what use should be made o troops and military resources in Aghanistan.I the legitimacy o the post-Taliban transi-tion is to be enhanced, U.S. troops must frsto all help bring security to the small villages where more than hal o the Aghan people
Sazng Aghansan:thas and changs
WilliAm mAley
Posso  co, as-Pcfc Co o dpomcy, aus no Uvsy
endOWMent Or internatiOnal PeaCe
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as co  s y quck fxs. t U Ss, natO,   s  o mk  suscommm o  o m.
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is o  smp “su,”  s o   muc c ocus o  scuy o as’ y vs. Oyoc s s cv w as’s ovm v  svos o mcy.
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as s o  sv w y s 2004 Cosuo, wc c  ysuco sysm o ovm s oo muc o  ps o. t U Ss sou suppo sysmc oms, fs ou vopm o  cv xcuv ofc o suppo  a ps.
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Coucocs pocs  as mus k ccou o omsc sococoomc compxs,   s oo-m vopm pojcs  cs  us om cuv  cops.
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Sous ou s o  v o cou mo Musm ss o cou pso o suppo  po-moo o um scuy  vopm  as.
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Pks s o  pssu scy u vy soy o s  a t sp  Pks.
Summar
 
F  O R E I  G N  P O L I  C Y  
f o r  t h e  N e x t  P r e s i d e n t 
 
2POliCY brie
live. But raw numbers are only a small part o this story. In Aghanistan, village and districtpower structures are oten made up o collec-tions o notables. Outside actors can only gainthe support o these leading locals by makingsustained eorts to engage them and by liv-ing in their midst or a considerable time. Yetmilitary personnel are oten rotated out o anarea just as they are beginning to make prog-ress with these kinds o residents. All this points to the huge importance o along-term vision. Ater the ailings o recentyears, there is simply no shortcut to stabilizing Aghanistan.
th budn o rn Hso
To understand why the challenges Aghanistanaces are so daunting, it is necessary to appre-ciate how things have gone awry since thehigh tide o optimism immediately ater theoverthrow o the Taliban regime in November2001. It is simply not the case that all was well until very recently. Rather, a number o crucial aws in the international community’sapproach to Aghanistan have merely takentime to reveal themselves in all their erocity.Three have been particularly signifcant.First, though the Bonn Agreement between“non-Taliban” Aghan parties that was signedin December 2001 contained many positiveeatures (such as the recognition o the needor an International Security Assistance Force,or ISAF, to help fll a security vacuum), it wasexecuted with very little thought about itsimplications or the uture structure o the Aghan state. Departments in the new interimadministration were distributed to politicalactions as inducements to participate in theprocess; indeed, the recent memoirs o U.S. Ambassador James F. Dobbins show how newministries were created simply so that there would be more prizes to go around. Becausethese actions were in many respects patron-age networks rather than modern politicalparties, this set the scene or a spoils system o appointments to public ofce and encouragedfendish competition or donor dollars, which worked against the development o a consen-sually unifed political elite.Second, though blunt warnings to Pakistansecured a degree o cooperation in the periodimmediately ater the September 11, 2001,terrorist attacks, General Pervez Musharra’sadministration proved a ar-rom-adequateally in fghting radical transnational terrorism.Musharra, like the military establishmentrom which he sprang, had been a patron o the Taliban, and with the onset o OperationEnduring Freedom, the key Taliban leader-ship and thousands o Taliban fghters sim-ply relocated to Pakistan, where they took upopen residence in the Pushtunabad area o thecity o Quetta. In August 2007, during a visitto Kabul, Musharra openly acknowledgedthe importance o these Taliban sanctuaries:“There is no doubt Aghan militants are sup-ported rom Pakistani soil. The problem thatyou have in your region is because support isprovided rom our side.” This issue shouldhave been immediately pursued by the majorpowers; instead, it was allowed to ester to thepoint where a local spin-o Pakistani Talibanmovement has now become a serious challengeto the Pakistani state, greatly complicating theprocess o stabilizing the West Asian region.Third, in early 2002 the Bush administra-tion blocked ISAF’s expansion beyond Kabul,causing a disastrous loss o momentum in Aghanistan, with consequences that simply compounded over time. In the atermatho the Bonn Agreement, the vast majority o Aghans eagerly awaited the appearanceo international orces in their districts. Tothose gripped by images o Aghans repel-ling the British in the nineteenth century andhammering the Soviets in the twentieth, thismight seem quite perverse. But by 2001, or-dinary Aghans had grown acutely aware o how much suering they could expect at thehands o predatory militias or criminal gangsbacked by regional powers with geopoliticalobjectives to pursue. When ISAF expansion was blocked (essentially to conserve airlit as-sets or uture use in Iraq), this sent a signal to
Willi mle
s posso co o  as-PcfcCo o dpomcy  aus no Uvsy.h s sv s  vsposso   russdpomc acmy  s vs sc ow  ru Sus Pom Oxo Uvsy. h s uo o
Rescuing Afghani- stan
(hus, 2006) 
The Afghanistan Wars
(PvMcm, 2002, 2009). h s couo o
RegimeChange in Afghanistan:Foreign Intervention and thePolitics of Legitimacy 
(Ws-vw Pss, 1991) 
Political Order in Post-Communist  Afghanistan
(ly r,1992). h 
Fundamental-ism Reborn? Afghanistan and the Taliban
(nw Yok Uv-sy Pss, 1998, 2001),  co
The Soviet With-drawal From Afghanistan
(Cm Uvsy Pss,1989);
Russia in Search of ItsFuture
(Cm UvsyPss, 1995);
From Civil Strifeto Civil Society: Civil and Military Responsibilities inDisrupted States
(Unos Uvsy Pss, 2003);
Global Governance and Diplomacy: Worlds Apart? 
(Pv Mcm, 2008).
 
Stabilizing aghaniStan: threatS and ChallengeS3
 Aghans that they should not be too confdentabout the strength o Western promises, andlikewise sent a signal to Pakistan that it mightbe prudent to keep the Taliban alive as an assetor uture use. All this has come to pass. Aghans’ conf-dence in their transition has plummeted. In2004, 64 percent o Aghan respondents in amajor survey elt that the country was movingin the right direction. By 2008, this propor-tion had plunged to 38 percent. In 2004, only 11 percent elt that the country was movingin the wrong direction. By 2008, this hadnearly trebled, to 32 percent. These are alarm-ing fgures or both the current Aghan presi-dent, Hamid Karzai (who aces an election in2009), and the next American president. Thiscollapse o confdence comes in the context o a mounting insurgency in southern and east-ern Aghanistan, and with U.S. orces com-ing under fre rom Pakistani units near thePakistan-Aghanistan rontier. The next U.S.president aces a dire inheritance in this parto the world.
Govnan and Jus
One reason why many Aghans eel discon-tented is that their high hopes or the post-2001 state-building exercise have been disap-pointed. Some scholars have raised seriousdoubts about whether this enterprise was well conceived in the frst place, and theBush administration’s approach to the com-plex challenges involved certainly seems tohave been unduly casual—with AmbassadorRobert Finn’s pleas rom Kabul or moreassistance in the critical years o 2002 and2003 going largely unanswered, and with Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad’s perceivedskills as a “fxer” receiving primacy rom 2003to 2005. However, any attempt to shit to aradically dierent approach in 2009 wouldnot only be burdened by what has been doneup to this point but would also run the risk o being seen as a cut-and-run strategy. The nextU.S. president thus will need to promote sev-eral key state-building goals while recognizingthat Aghans are rightly sensitive about issueso sovereignty.It would be useul, frst o all, to reect on whether Aghans have been well served by thestrongly presidential system that was put inplace at the 2004 constitutional Loya Jirga.For Americans, this system’s appeal is obvious,not least because it establishes a clear execu-tive leader with whom outside actors can deal.But in ethnically diverse Aghanistan, thissystem also has the severe downside o creat-ing one winner and many losers, potentially ueling ethnic tensions. The system thus hasput President Karzai, an honorable and de-cent incumbent with no ethnic agenda, in a very difcult position. His responsibilities—assymbolic head o state, as executive head o gov-ernment, and as a one-man interagency coor-dinator—are simply too arduous and exactingor any single person, especially because thereis no equivalent o the U.S. Executive Ofceo the President to assist him. Developing suchan ofce—staed not with Aghan expatriatesbut with young Aghans reshly trained orsuch work—would be a very positive initiativeor a new U.S. president to support.But it is not just the presidential systemthat needs repairing. The lower house o the Aghan Parliament is elected through a bi-zarre electoral system that avors independentsand works against the emergence o politi-cal parties. The result is that many memberso Parliament simply seek to secure beneftsor particular constituencies without payingmuch attention to what might be good or thecountry as a whole, and ethnic identity hasemerged in the absence o a party system as abasis or trying to create cohesive parliamen-tary blocs. Although corruption is widely perceivedas a serious problem in governance, the abuse
Aghansan w  a h op o h nx ps-dn’s ogn po agnda and s k oan h o so onsda .
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