Why “Success” in Afghanistan Matters Part II

Been a little slower than usual in finishing up this topic. If you’ve read my blog before you know I live in one of Colorado’s bicycling Mecca’s. Let’s just say I rode “a bridge too far” on my bike, damaged my body, and have spent most of the last few days in the only comfortable position I could find, laying on my right side muttering words that can’t be repeated here. Now on to the task at hand.

I ended my last blog by saying I wanted to discuss the question of how will we know if our Afghanistan strategy starts to fall apart? For your reading convenience, here again are our goals and objectives as stated by the Obama administration:

Goal:

• Disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and to prevent its capacity to threaten America and our allies in the future.

Objectives to meet that goal:

• Deny Al Qaeda a safe haven
• Reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government
• Strengthen the capacity of Afghanistan’s security forces and government so that they can take the lead responsibility for Afghanistan’s future

I thought I’d start by looking at what caused our initial success there in the aftermath of 9/11 to go south. One of the best pieces I’ve seen on this topic was a June 2011 paper written by Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies called The Failures that Shaped (and Almost Lost) the Afghan War. The paper cites the following key points under the headline, “The US and ISAF Waste Eight Years Losing By Default”:

• Afghan government fails the Afghan people. Power brokers, militias, corrupt officials alienate the people.
• US, allied, and ISAF failures to control funding and contracts become the driving force that raises Afghan corruption to unacceptable levels.
• No serious effort to address corruption and lack of capability in Afghan government, rise of corruption, and alienation of people.
• US gives priority to Iraq while spinning false sense of progress in Afghanistan.
• Key Allies virtually deny or ignore the fact a serious war is developing.
• Aid focuses on mid to long term programs as if war did not exist, but does not operate outside the increasingly limited areas which are not safe.
• US and ISAF focus on defeating the insurgent in clashes in the field or in ways that threaten Afghans without offering any lasting protection.
• No consistent or meaningfully resource effort to create an effective ANSF.
•  Failure to deal effectively with Pakistan creates a second war in a nation of far greater strategic importance.
• No ISAF nation provides meaningful transparency and reporting to its legislature and people

The report also states, “At the same time, it is critical to stress that the other parts of this report show that progress is being made in addressing many of the issues involved, and metrics are only part of that story. For all of the omissions that still affect reporting on the war, major progress has occurred over the last two years, and additional major efforts to correct these problems are underway.”

It would seem to me that we need to be very careful not to repeat the mistakes the recent past. I’ve blogged before about the success of the recent policies in halting Taliban momentum, but what about the corruption issue? Many of the participants in the series of Department of Defense Roundtables I’ve participated in continue to mention Afghan government corruption as a major problem to our continued success there and have put a lot of effort towards solving it with limited results.

Continuing to follow this train of thought, on 20 July 2011 the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) put out a quarterly report called: Limited Interagency Coordination and Insufficient Controls over U.S. Funds in Afghanistan Hamper U.S. Efforts to Develop the Afghan Financial Sector and Safeguard U.S. Cash. Congress established SIGAR to provide independent and objective oversight to funds giving to Afghanistan. The report opens with the following statement:

“Since 2002, Congress has appropriated more than $70 billion to implement security and development assistance projects in Afghanistan, with some of those funds converted into cash and flowing through the Afghan economy. The United States is implementing programs to increase the capacity of Afghanistan’s central bank (Da Afghanistan Bank, or DAB) to regulate the nation’s 17 commercial banks and to strengthen U.S. and Afghan law enforcement agencies’ oversight over the flow of funds through the Afghan economy. This report (1) evaluates U.S. efforts to improve the capacity of the Afghan government to regulate the financial sector (which includes commercial banks and informal financial organizations, or hawalas) and (2) assesses the controls that U.S. agencies use to track U.S. funds as they flow through the Afghan economy.”

The following are SIGAR’s conclusions in this most recent quarterly report:

“Although U.S. agencies reported some progress in strengthening the Afghan government’s ability to regulate its financial sector, two challenges prevent U.S. programs from fully achieving their intended results. First, U.S. agencies have not fully coordinated the implementation of their efforts. For instance, a key interagency working group did not include all U.S. agencies involved in implementing financial sector development programs. Additionally, DOD and DHS officials have not coordinated their work with the same commercial banks. Limited interagency coordination puts U.S. agencies at risk of working at cross-purposes or, at a minimum, missing opportunities to leverage existing relationships and programs. Second, Afghan ministries have not cooperated consistently with the United States, thereby delaying U.S. programs or preventing them from succeeding. For instance, Treasury reported that its programs to strengthen the Afghan government’s ability to identify financial crimes have had limited results because of Afghan officials’ reluctance to prosecute some cases. Additionally, because of disagreements between the U.S. and Afghan governments, the Afghan government has banned U.S. government advisors from working at DAB. Without full cooperation from the Afghan government, U.S. financial sector development efforts are limited.

While U.S. agencies have taken steps to strengthen their oversight over U.S. funds flowing through the Afghan economy, they still have limited visibility over the circulation of these funds, leaving them vulnerable to fraud or diversion to insurgents. First, U.S. agencies do not record the serial numbers of cash disbursed to contractors and other recipients. Second, commercial banks do not record the serial numbers of electronic payments made by U.S. agencies to contractors and other recipients when their electronic payments are converted into cash. Third, U.S. contracting regulations neither prohibit prime contractors from using unlicensed hawalas to pay subcontractors nor require them to use banks capable of handling electronic funds transfers. These vulnerabilities limit the U.S.’s ability to track information on U.S. funds as they enter and circulate through the Afghan economy – information that could be important for law enforcement purposes.”

Think I’ll end here. Will continue. As always my views are my own. On Wednesday I’ll be heading out to Aspen, Colorado for the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum. Click on the link for the impressive agenda. All sessions will be streamed live at http://aspensecurityforum.org/watch-live. I’m hoping to get a bike ride or two in while I’m there.