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Thursday, May 10, 2012

Reconstruction Update


  1. “Market Order in War-Torn Iraq.”  Joel Poindexter.
In the course of my deployments to Iraq I learned a great deal about economics, though I didn't realize it at the time. I hadn't yet been introduced to the Austrian School or a Rothbardian view of laissez-faire capitalism. Looking back, however, I can see quite clearly that in several important areas voluntary systems not only existed in that country but thrived.
My first deployment was to Baghdad, that ancient Mesopotamian city positioned on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It was there I discovered how, even during the most violent and unstable times, markets can adapt to the needs of consumers and peacefully provide essential services to humanity.

  1. “Transition in Afghanistan: Looking Beyond 2014.”  The World Bank.
Transition—the full assumption of Afghan responsibility for security by end-2014, the drawdown of most international military forces and the likely reduction in overall assistance—will have a profound impact on Afghanistan’s economic and political landscape, extending well beyond 2014.
This study assesses the medium to longer term impacts of declining aid and military spending on economic growth, poverty, fiscal management, service delivery and government capacity.
It suggests options to Government of Afghanistan (GoA) and the international donor community to manage and mitigate the adverse impacts of transition while exploiting the opportunities to improve aid effectiveness and encourage inclusive growth.
This is the beginning of the process – additional analysis from the World Bank will develop these themes further over the coming months. http://www.worldbank.org.af/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/AFGHANISTANEXTN/0,,contentMDK:23052411~menuPK:305990~pagePK:2865066~piPK:2865079~theSitePK:305985,00.html

  1. “Coddling Iraqi Kurds.”  Foreign Policy.
Iraqi Kurdish leaders are pressing Washington to codify a "special relationship" with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The idea has gained support among certain members of the U.S. Congress, think-tanks, and others concerned about diminishing U.S. influence in Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's concentration of power, and the destabilizing Iranian role in Iraq. A special United States-KRG relationship, they argue, could hedge against these threats and better assure U.S. interests in the region. Others assert that the United States has a responsibility to protect Iraqi Kurds, who have proven to be a valuable and dependable ally.
But, in fact, the United States has little to gain by creating a privileged relationship with the KRG. Not only would it send the wrong message to Iraqi Arab populations and aggravate communal relations, but it would create another cushion for the KRG leadership and dissuade political accommodation with Baghdad. The key issue for the United States is not about reciprocating Kurdish goodwill but clarifying the conditions in which a United States-KRG partnership can be sustained based on American principles and larger commitments in the region. 

  1. Audio: Statesmen's Forum: Afghanistan Minister of Defense Wardak and Minister of Interior Mohammadi. CSIS.
The CSIS International Security Program and Program on Crisis, Conflict, and Cooperation (C3) hosted a Statesmen’s Forum on The Afghanistan – U.S. Partnership: Opportunities to Move Forward with distinguished speakers: His Excellency Adbul Rahim Wardak, Minister of Defense of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and  His Excellency Bismellah Mohammadi, Minister of Interior of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

  1. Blogs by diplomats:
-          The DiploMad 2.0 http://thediplomad.blogspot.com/
-          Consul-at-Arms http://consul-at-arms2.blogspot.com/
-          Daily Demarche http://dailydemarche.blogspot.com/
-          Diplomatic Baggage http://diplowife.wordpress.com/
-          Weblog of a Syrian Diplomat in America China http://imad_moustapha.blogs.com/my_weblog/ 
-          The Life Diplomatic http://www.thelifediplomatic.com/ 
-          Charles Crawford http://charlescrawford.biz/MSH8MB288721
-          Midlife Diplomatic Crisis http://hogline.wordpress.com/   

  1. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/17/afghanistan_the_beautiful       

  1. Historysis. “Can conquests centuries ago explain the democratic deficit in the Arab world today?”  http://www.economist.com/node/21552198      

  1. Conflict Management and ‘Whole of Government’: Useful Tools for U.S. National Security Strategy?” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College.
Today, America faces security challenges that are exceedingly dynamic and complex, in part because of the ever changing mix and number of actors involved and the pace with which the strategic and operational environments change. To meet these new challenges more effectively, the Obama administration advocated strengthening civilian instruments of national power and enhancing America’s whole of government (WoG) capabilities. Although the need for comprehensive integration and coordination of civilian and military, governmental and nongovernmental, and national and international capabilities to improve efficiency and effectiveness of post-conflict stabilization and peacebuilding efforts is widely recognized, Washington has been criticized for its attempts at creating WoG responses to international crises and conflicts that result in the overcommitment of resources, lack of sufficient funding and personnel, competition between agencies, ambiguous mission objectives, and the undermining of the military’s primary purpose of defending the national interest. Presenting the results of an international symposium held at Kennesaw State University in February 2011, this volume traces the genesis of WoG, critically examines current WoG practices, and draws lessons from the operational contexts of Iraq and Afghanistan. The first part of the book describes the overall global security context within which peacebuilding and stability operations are currently conducted, examines the merits of WoG approaches, and discusses their efficacy for responding to a range of emerging threats. The second part addresses some of the practical challenges of implementing WoG approaches for international conflict management and specifically for U.S. intervention in fragile states. The third and final part examines WoG efforts in the field and draws lessons learned from operational experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq that may be useful in future interventions.

  1. “Are Afghans Too Depressed to Beat the Taliban?” Wired.com.
Maybe the reason that the Afghan counterinsurgency has been such a flop is that the people there are too traumatized and depressed to make nation-building work.
That’s the controversial conclusion of an Air Force colonel who recently spent a year in Afghanistan as the head of a reconstruction team. In an unpublished paper, Col. Erik Goepner, currently serving as a military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argues that the Afghan counterinsurgency was all-but-doomed before U.S. troops ever landed there. The reason, he writes, is “the high rate of mental disorders” in Afghanistan and other fragile states. Pervasive depression and post-traumatic stress disorder leads to a sense of “learned helplessness” among the people. And that makes it next-to-impossible to build up the country’s economy and government.

  1. “Afghan Reintegration Dilemma.”  The Diplomat.
Off and on for a decade, the Afghan government and its allies in the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (IASF) have tried to convince Taliban fighters to lay down their weapons and rejoin mainstream society.
But so-called "reintegration" has proved difficult, to say the least. Across Afghanistan, government authorities have reported only a handful of documented, successful reintegrations among the thousands of active Taliban fighters.
Efforts in Paktika Province, in remote eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan, illustrate the obstacles to large-scale reintegration.

  1. “Grasping the nettle: why reintegration is central to operational design in southern Afghanistan.”  Australian Civil-Military Centre.
On initial consideration, the idea of reintegration might seem peripheral to achieving the objectives of a counterinsurgency campaign, and that demanding surrender should be the order of the day, not seeking mutual forgiveness.  However, nothing could be further from reality.  In countering an insurgency the motives of each fighter and supporter dictate their adversarial actions, and the potential size of the insurgency is theoretically limited only by the population of the country itself.  On deeper reflection then, the salience of reintegration rapidly emerges as central to any successful strategy to conclude an insurgency.
An enduring peace among antagonists in an insurgency and a lasting recourse to the sovereignty of the in-power government can only be properly expressed in terms that encompass the reintegration of the host society.  In its most holistic form, reintegration encompasses not only fighters who have taken up violent resort to obtain their own ends, but also fragments and factions in society that are disenfranchised, ostracised or otherwise excluded from participating in a country’s social-political construct between its government and the people.
Lasting reintegration is much harder to foster and generate than simply announcing a policy.  Personal allegiances, misgivings, fear, and human and institutional frailty all seem arrayed against even attempting reintegration, yet is a valid and indeed fundamental aim in counterinsurgency that must be grasped, like a nettle, with confidence and vigour.  Reintegration not only has a role for all actors – police, civil and military – but indeed demands of them a common purpose, and a truly concerted effort to attain it.  This paper draws on six months of field work in southern Afghanistan grappling with these challenges.

  1. “The Fate of India’s Strategic Restraint”, Brookings Institution, April 2012, by Sunil Dasgupta.
In February 2012, India selected a French jet, the Rafale, as the new mainstay fighter for its air force. A month earlier, the country had leased a nuclear submarine from Russia. The acquisition of the fighter aircraft and submarine is part of an ambitious military modernization that has made India the number one arms importer in the world.
This rearmament effort, riding on the nation’s unprecedented economic growth, has prompted some observers to wonder whether India has decided to balance Chinese power in Asia or is seeking to correct the anomaly of strategic parity with Pakistan, a country one fifth its size. Indians themselves want their country to act more assertively, and India’s primary rival, Pakistan, has never bought into neighborly restraint.
So, could we be witnessing the start of an India-China arms race in Asia that would become the defining global conflict of the twenty-first century— as the United States returns to its traditional role of offshore balancer, reduces its overseas presence, and husbands resources for domestic recovery? Could we also be standing on the precipice of a nuclear confrontation with Pakistan?

  1. “No Boutique State”: Understanding the Debate on Turkey’s Involvement in Afghanistan”, German Marshall Fund, 13 April 2012, by Şaban Kardaş.
The debate about Turkish involvement in Afghanistan has provided interesting clues about the parameters of Turkish foreign policy in general and Turkish perceptions of the future of Afghanistan in particular. The debate revealed two competing visions for Turkish foreign policy among political actors. The AK Party has so far been pragmatic enough to recalibrate Turkey’s policy on Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan and work in tandem with the United States. The West can count on cooperation from Turkey, provided that it develops a nuanced understanding of the sensitivities of the ruling AK Party.

  1. “Annual Report on Afghanistan”, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, April 2012.

  1. “Afghanistan Factsheet”, Asian Development Bank, May 2012. http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/PDF_181.pdf      

  1. Stop Being Stupid: “There Is No ‘Kinder, Gentler’ Taliban.”  Commentary.
Are the Taliban the sort of people we can successfully negotiate with to guarantee the future of Afghanistan? You would think so based on the number of voices in Washington claiming the Taliban have learned lessons from the past decade and they will not be as dedicated to their hateful agenda in the future. We hear they supposedly are willing to give up their alliance with al-Qaeda, their insistence on enslaving the Afghan people to their fundamentalist philosophy, and so on. If only it were so. Alas, this is all wishful thinking from those who want to pull out of the war but avert their eyes from the consequences of an American pullout.

  1. Enduring Strategic Partnership Agreement Between The United States of America And The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan”, 02 May 2012.

  1. “Afghanistan Price Bulletin, April 2012”, Famine Early Warning Systems Network and the United States Agency for International Development, April 2012.

  1. “U.S. Military Information Operations in Afghanistan: Effectiveness of Psychological Operations 2001–2010”, RAND Corporation, 2012, by Arturo Munoz.

  1. “Local institutions, livelihoods and vulnerability: lessons from Afghanistan”, Humanitarian Policy Group Working Paper, Overseas Development Institute, April 2012, by Adam Pain and Paula Kantor. http://www.odi.org.uk/resources/docs/7653.pdf  

  1. “The State of Telecommunications and Internet in Afghanistan Six Years later (2006-2012)”, United State Agency for International Development and Internews, March 2012, by Javid Hamdard.

  1. “Complex Environments: A Sociopolitical Assessment of Corruption in Afghanistan.”  U.S. Army National Ground Intelligence Center. 
This assessment introduces an alternative way of thinking about corruption in Afghanistan. Corruption is explained both as a habituated, systemic outcome of the sociopolitical environment and as a deliberate strategy of governments and governed. This assessment is intended to help improve operations in theater by introducing an anthropological framework for recognizing and understanding the different conditions, causes, and forms of corruption in Afghanistan and their effect on society.

  1. “Post Occupation Iraq: The Brittleness of Political Institutions.”  Peggy Garvin, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
As in other Arab countries, mass demonstrations did make an appearance in Iraq, but these were comparatively small and lacked the staying power of the ones that had toppled regimes and/or plunged countries into bloodshed. What distinguished the protests in Iraq was the nature of their declared goals, in which the demands for free elections and fresh faces that had defined the uprisings in other Arab countries were almost absent. And this was hardly surprising; the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki had been in power for less than six years, having been put there by the Iraqis themselves in two free and fair elections in December 2005 and March 2010. If the protestors were demonstrating about anything, it was the abysmal performance of the freely elected Maliki government ...

  1. “Global Jihad Sustained Through Africa.”  Adrian Janes, Royal United Services Institute (UK).
As the central leadership of Al-Qa’ida is weakened and challenged, the terrorist movement is looking to partnerships in Saharan and Sub-Saharan Africa to re-group and re-energise itself.
Despite greater co-operation, there seems to be an unresolved tension between transnational aims of Al-Qa’ida-core and the local grievances of African partners.
Following the alliance with Al-Qa’ida-core, regional affiliates such as Al-Qa’ida in the Maghreb and Al-Shabaab have undergone similar patterns of strategic, tactical and propagandistic evolution.
Nigeria’s Boko Haram is still focused on a local campaign, but recent operational refinement and ability to stage deadly ‘spectaculars’ suggests disturbing connections with other regional terror groups.
Links between Al-Qa’ida-core and some jihadist groups in Africa have been established over the last decade which vary in strategic and operational significance.
A range of new challenges are possible as jihadism evolves and disperses into territories of ungoverned space across large stretches of the African continent. Among these are the potential for radicalisation and mobilisation of a new subset of British youth in the UK.