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Afghanistan Politics of War

What is winning?

That is a question that GeneralDan McNeill asked when he was the newly installed commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2006. As Craig Whitlock of theWashington Postexplained to Dave Davieson NPR's Fresh Air, McNeill asked further, "What do you want to accomplish in Afghanistan? And he said nobody could define it for me. They just said, go over and do your best and try and do good things."

McNeill was not the only one at sea on this Afghanistan. Years earlier, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hadpennedin one of his now-famous snowflake memos, If we don't come up with a plan, we'll never get our troops out. And then he ended the memo, the snowflake, with one word. It was help, exclamation point.

The stalemate, or quagmire if you will, that is Afghanistan situation today, is reminiscent of cases where companies get themselves into binds because they don't know what they were doing strategically. As a result, like the U.S. in Afghanistan, they do a great many things tactically but fail to focus on results. Tragically time, treasure, and lives are lost.

To date, the war in Afghanistan has cost the lives of over 2,300 U.S. troops and at least 160,000 Afghani lives. It has cost trillions, and after 18 years, the war seems as untenable now as it did when it began in 2001. Whitlock was the lead reporter on theWashington Postteam that published an account, adapted fromLessons Learnedthe Pentagons own account of the Afghan war.

What is admirable about the report is the frankness that the military shows with itself. From officers on the ground to commanding generals, everyone interviewed in the official documents conceded that mistakes were made and that the war was not being won. The problem was that point of view was not embraced by successive presidential administrationsBush, Obama, and Trump. Each administration kept pushing for victory, even though, as General McNeill had pointed out, no one knew what "victory" meant.

As it relates to Afghanistan, every officer who served knows strategy and the consequences of not operating with one. But due to an inept bureaucracy and poor civilian oversight, the strategy proved elusive. NATO forces did good things. They began rebuilding the infrastructure, roads, hospitals, and schools. They also provided humanitarian aid. The one thing they did not do was defeat the Taliban, or prevent aid money from being siphoned off by senior members of the Afghan government.

It's easy to throw stones from 7,000 miles away, but the lesson that emerges from Post's reporting is those good intentions fail when there is no stated end goal. In fairness, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan because Al Queda, operating there, had masterminded the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. was defending itself.

What to Know

There are pragmatic insights to be gained from the Pentagons Lessons Learned that can help civilian managers make better decisions.

Know the situation.Before you invest in the project, study the issues as well as the competition. Know what you can offer and why it matters.

Know your resources.How much can you invest? Initiatives begin with funding that often proves insufficient when you do continue to invest or pull the plug.

Develop a strategy.What does success look like? If you can answer it quickly, then you are on the right path. If you dont know the end-game, you know that you are headed for more trouble.

Revise your strategy.When the situation changes, re-examine your approach. What do you need to do differently, and why.

None of these ideas are new or unique. The problem is we may overlook them in our rush to complete a project. The challenge for leaders is to hew the path but also know when to step off the path when it is no longer clear.

Finally, follow a dictum of Harvard Business School professorMichael Porter, considered a seminal thinker on strategy, who wrote,The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.Keep focused on the mission and align everything toward it. Avoid the distractions of the "next big thing." Strategy is a discipline, and without it, missions are destined to flounder.

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What Afghanistan Teaches Us About The Need For Strategy - Forbes

The Washington Posts Afghanistan Papers is the latest contribution to a growing argument over whether the conflict or any of the forever wars was worth the cost.

Who gets to tell the story of the Afghanistanwar?

Is it angry veterans and war-weary journalists? Is it Pentagon public relations pros, putting the spin on the best story they can for Washington politics and the public? Is it the ground troops and their families who led their men and women through combat, took terrain, won hearts and minds, killed the enemy, and then came home to heroically saveeach other once again, yet this time from their demons? Is it the Hollywood movies that dont get the story quite right? Is it the 4-star generals who still methodically and earnestly warn politicians and the public that this war, like all of the United States contemporary missions against worldwide violent extremism, will be messy, complicated, and take much longer than 18 years to win? Is it Americanvoters?

The latest retelling of the war, and most assuredly not the last, is the Washington Posts Afghanistan Papers investigation. It landed with a splash in December, revealing raw documents obtained from John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, or SIGAR. He is a man whose office for years has been a respected and unflinching presenter of overwhelming evidence of the wars unfulfilled promises to American taxpayers. Here comes another Sopko report is frequently uttered in newsrooms when the next email hits their inboxes. There have been so many, frankly, that theyve lost impact. But with an eye-catching digital format, the Post presents the SIGARs latest findings, and their own reporting, as a major scoop. Indeed, the paper touted the package as a modern-day version of Pentagon Papers. In that legendary news moment of the 1970s, a contract analyst for the Defense Department, Daniel Ellsberg, amassed, copied, and leaked to reporters 7,000 pages of classified analysis revealing that U.S. leaders for years during the Vietnam War secretly had believed it to be an unwinnable morass but constantly and deliberately lied to the American people to keep itgoing.

As quickly as it caught attention, the Posts work drew criticism from veteran war leaders, politicians, scholars, and journalists, both for the comparison to the Pentagon Papers and for its essential argument and conclusion: that contemporary U.S. officials across the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump have for 18 years lied to the American public in a purposeful conspiracy, either with willful deceit or with crafty spin to paint the rosiest-possible pictures of what it claims was a constantly failing effort. Even Sopko said that goes toofar.

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Why arent the two papers the same thing? In December, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Gen. Mark Milley, asked twice about the report, shot down its claims and premise. Esper said the insinuation that theres been this large-scale conspiracy isridiculous.

Milley, a true believer in keeping U.S. military forces in Afghanistan to prevent terrorist groups from orchestrating another 9/11-level attack on the United States, was having none of it. I know theres an assertion out there in some sort of coordinated lie over the course of, say, 18 years. I find that a bit of a stretch. More than a bit of a stretch, I find that a mischaracterization, Milley said, because it assumes the participation of hundreds of people across DOD, CIA, and more, and it would be impossible to get that level of coordination to do that kind ofdeception.

I know that I and many, many others gave assessments at the time, based on facts we knew at the time, and those were honest assessments never meant to deceive the Congress or the Americanpeople.

Milley called Post reporter Craig Whitlocks work a good piece of investigative journalism, but I also think it is not the Pentagon Papers. Those papers, he said, were written in advance of decision making whereas the Afghanistan ones were post-event reviews, which is fundamentallydifferent.

Ok, even if one accepts their explanations, what they were asked is not the real question. The real question, asked by the website Task and Purposes Jeff Schogol, is: Has the United States been throwing away Americanlives?

Thats the realquestion.

I dont think anyone has died invain. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

Absolutely not, not in my view, Milley said. I couldnt look myself in the mirror. I couldnt answer myself at two or three in the morning when my eyes would pop open and see the dead roll in front of my eyes, so no I dont think anyone has died invain.

As far as military victory, for years we have clearly stated that there is not going to be a rational reasonable chance of a military victory against the Taliban or the insurgency, something like signing the surrender documents on the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. President Bush said that early on before Christmas in 2001, and that remains true today. Theres only one way this is going to end, and thats a negotiatedsolution.

In a sense, Milley is right. Thats the entire war, simply put. And thats the same description, same plan and same anticipated result that Pentagon leaders have been telling the public to expect for years. The only thing that has changed is the publics willingness to believe leaders like Esper and Milley, or to accept the insistence of five successive White House staffs that say a long-war in Afghanistan has to be theway.

The story of the Afghanistan War, by now, has become as much about the length of its duration and what it has not accomplished than it is about what it has. Sorting out whats right and wrong, worth it or not, moral or not, secure or not is an ongoing debate in todays commentary-sphere, even in the 2020 presidentialcampaign.

But which narrative wins? How the story of Afghanistan is told matters most, perhaps, to Americans. The way that they come to view Afghanistan shapes elections and future policies. If the war has been worth it, the mission should be worth continuing. If it was all a waste, the mission should change, dramatically. Its clear that American voters care little about Afghanistan when they pull their Election Day levers. But they do care about forever wars, and whether their government leaders are being honest about their toll a frequent complaint heard from Democraticcandidates.

Some critics say the military needs to heed the lessons of this long war and be more honest with the American public about the bleak chances for Afghanistan peace talks with the Taliban. Here, a Trump critic claims theres a direct line from the government-based deception in the Afghanistan Papers to the rise of Trump and Trump culture. Here, retired Col. Andrew Bacevich, a longtime war opponent and Gold Star father, writes that the Posts work is yet more evidence that warrants Trumpsimpeachment.

Brookings researchers who criticized the Posts assertion of a widespread coverup wrote that in Afghanistan the problem was not the publics misperception of the truth, it was their indifference to bad policy and their leaders unwillingness to walk away: When failure became inevitable, U.S. leaders didnt look for an acceptable off-ramp, and the public didnt pressure them to do so. No doubt a future president will confront the question of whether to launch an ambitious project abroad with uncertain hopes of success. By then, Americans need leaders who can tell them how and when they will decide to pull theplug.

Everyone has anopinion.

The night before Espers December press conference, Democratic candidates were asked in a primary debate if Afghanistan was worth it. That question would not have come without the Posts investigation and the end forever wars that is a platform by most of the Democrats andTrump.

Do you believe that you were honest with the American people about it? former Vice President Joe Biden was asked. Biden said his critical view of the war was well-known to Obama at the time and, eventually, to the public. I was sent by the president before we got sworn in to Afghanistan to come back with a report. I said there was no comprehensive policy available. And then I got in a big fight for a long time with the Pentagon because I strongly opposed the nation-building notion we setabout.

The frustration with Afghanistan is only part of the wider frustration with all U.S. military interventions since Sept. 11, 2001, including the unrelated Iraq War and ongoing Middle East counterterrorism operations against ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Shabab, and others, including now the worry of war with Iran or its proxies. In December, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders responded to Biden by saying that the vice president had helped lead us into the disastrous war in Iraq. What we need to do is, I think, rethink and the Washington Post piece was very educational what we need to rethink is the entire war on terror. He also said he was wrong to vote in support of the Afghanistan war at the time. I was wrong. So was everybody else in theHouse.

There are too many people with too many experiences in Afghanistan that any accounting of the war is going to please all of them. But its the telling that is a current issue. Its the telling that could change enough American minds as to whether and when this war ever ends. The long war in Afghanistan has had many battles. The battle over whether it was worth it may be the longest ofall.

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Who Gets to Tell the Story of the Afghanistan War? - Defense One

WASHINGTON - Afghanistan and Pakistan witnessed a spike in reported polio cases last year, further highlighting what local officials call an imminent threat to the border region between the two countries caused by militant threats and misinformation.

2019 has really been a bad year for polio eradication in Pakistan, Rana Muhammad Safdar, Pakistan national coordinator for polio eradication, told VOA.

Misconceptions about the vaccination and polio eradication are seen as a Western agenda especially after the Shakil Afridi episode, said Safdar, referring to a Pakistani doctor who allegedly helped the CIA to track and ultimately kill Osama Bin Laden in 2011 through a fake hepatitis vaccination program.

In Afghanistan, officials say parents refused to immunize their children because of fear of being targeted by the Taliban, which sees medical teams as a threat to its control in the region.

One of the reasons for Talibans oppositions to house-to-house vaccination is that they suspect the vaccinators might spy on them, said Hedayatullah Stanikzai, a polio eradication representative to the Afghan health ministry.

Polio is a disabling and potentially deadly infectious viral disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the virus spreads from person to person and can infect an individuals spinal cord, causing paralysis.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria are the only countries in the world where polio has not been eliminated. While WHO is on the verge of declaring Nigeria polio-free, Afghanistan and Pakistan are seeing an uptick in new cases since 2018.

Current statistics show the number of Wild Polio Virus (WPV1) cases in 2019 to be 137 in Pakistan and 28 in Afghanistan, a significant increase since 2018 when 12 polio cases were reported in Pakistan and 21 in Afghanistan. Pakistan in 2019 reported an additional 18 cases of Circulating Vaccine-Derived Poliovirus (cVDPV2), a strain of polio declared eradicated several years ago.

Afghan and Pakistani officials say the majority of the reported cases come from predominately ethnic Pashtun areas along the border between the two counties. For years, the area has been infiltrated with militants who often target vaccination teams.

Gunmen Kill Two Pakistani Policemen Guarding Polio Vaccinators

Attack occurred during ongoing nationwide immunization campaign targeting 40 million children

Militant targeting

While no incidents have been reported in Afghanistan in 2019, at least 11 polio workers were killed on the Pakistan side of the border, raising the number to 92 deaths since 2012. A Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) attack in December on a vaccination team in Lower Dir District of Khyber Pukhtunkhwa last month left two policemen dead.

In addition to militant threats, polio workers complain that they are also faced with hostility from parents who refuse to vaccinate their children.

Zalija, a female polio worker in Quetta, Baluchistan, told VOA that many polio workers are forced by parents to put fake polio markers on their children who were not vaccinated. Those workers who refuse are threatened with violence.

They even threatened my life. Some tell me they will shoot me with their gun or pistol; they push me, they swear at me, and say all kinds of things to scare me away from giving their children drops, said Zalija, adding that many unvaccinated children were given markers on their fingers because of pressure from local parents.

Both governments in Kabul and Islamabad have made the vaccinations compulsory to motivate parents. Programs remain difficult to enforce because of a lack of trust in the vaccines, however.

Misconceptions

Afghanistans national immunization director Gula Khan Ayub told VOA that during the nationwide vaccination drive in 2019, some 10 million children were targeted but only 8 million were vaccinated. Pakistans Health Minister Zafar Mirza previously reported about 200,000 vaccine refusal cases out of 40 million.

Polio campaign workers say many parents fall victim to anti-polio propaganda by extremist groups who claim anti-virus drops are a ploy by the West to create infertility amongst Muslims.

WATCH: Polio Remains Imminent Threat in Militant-hit Areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan

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The parents that refuse to give their children polio vaccinations tell me that the drops make you infertile. Some tell me that that the vaccination is made of pig fat or the urine of Americans. Others refuse, saying that it is a Western conspiracy, Irfanullah, a polio-worker in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa told VOA.

According to the World Health Organization, the vaccine and the oral drops are produced primarily using the Sabin vaccine seeds or through inactivated poliovirus strains.

A Peshawar schoolteacher last April made a video that went viral on social media, claiming that the government administered polio drops were poisonous causing illness among children. Following the video, thousands of parents refused to vaccinate their children.

Raising awareness

Some officials charge that local communities also use eradication campaigns as bargaining points to voice their grievances with the government. Officials in Baluchistan cited demand-based refusal as a major hurdle in high-risk polio endemic areas where local residents conditioned accepting polio drops in return for more government services.

Said Mohammad Omar, a resident of Qila Abdullah who refused to give his child polio drops, accused the Pakistani government of neglecting the communitys basic health care needs.

Omar told VOA, I will not give polio drops to my child. Polio teams keep coming to my home, yet we do not have doctors in our hospitals here. The government is concerned about eradicating polio but they dont care about our basic health needs, he told VOA.

Governments on both sides of the border have tried to combat the misinformation, including seeking out help from local religious institutions and international organizations such as WHO and the UNs children agency UNICEF.

People in some conflict-stricken areas, where schools are closed and the level of awareness is low, dont know about the importance of polio vaccines, said Stanikzai of Afghanistans health ministry. Afghan health officials, he added, believe that religious scholars can play a vital role with the issue of awareness and have asked the local Imams to speak out about the importance of polio vaccination during their sermons.

Regardless the efforts, many local communities maintain their anti-vaccine views, according to officials.

Nadeem Jan, the head of the Khyber Pukhtunkhwa Polio Emergency Operation, said that the ethnic Pashtuns along the border are particularly vulnerable to the misinformation campaign because of their conservative beliefs.

Despite religious clerics clarifying that these rumors are not true, they persist, he told VOA.

VOAs Shaheen Shah Afridi , Naimat Ullah Serhadi, Arshad Mohmand and Ibrahim Rahimi contributed to this report.

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Polio Remains Threat in Militant-hit Areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan - VOA News

For Najibullah Quraishi, covering the war in Afghanistan is personal.

The journalist grew up in Northern Afghanistan and though hes now based in London, he has been chronicling the U.S.-led war in his home country since it began nearly two decades ago in a post-9/11 bid to kill Osama bin Laden, destroy al-Qaeda and oust its ruling ally, the Taliban.

More than 18 years and tens of thousands of civilian deaths later, Quraishis latest on-the-ground report from inside Afghanistan paints a dire picture: As President Donald Trump says he wants to end the war and potential negotiations unfold with a resurgent Taliban, ISIS fighters are waiting for what they see as their moment a peace deal that the group says will drive dissatisfied Taliban fighters into its ranks.

This is a war where right now, the Taliban thinks they will be the winner. The U.S. president thinks he will be the winner. But as for the people of Afghanistan, Quraishi says, nobody will be the winner.

That grim assessment is drawn from what Quraishi saw and heard on the ground while filming Taliban Country, a FRONTLINE documentary premiering Jan. 21. Late last year, as peace talks unfolded in fits and starts, he made a rare and dangerous journey inside both Taliban- and ISIS-held territory in Afghanistan, tracking down and interviewing fighters from both groups.

I wanted to find out, if the Taliban come to a deal, if the fighting in Afghanistan will finish or not, Quraishi says. But the answer is very clear: not. Most of my sources are telling me that as soon as a peace deal is signed, most of the Talibans foot soldiers will join ISIS. An ISIS commander told me the exact same thing. That means the war is never going to end.

I wanted to find out, if the Taliban come to a deal, if the fighting in Afghanistan will finish or not. But the answer is very clear: not.

Najibullah Quraishi

Quraishi has filmed with Taliban and ISIS fighters more than 10 times, for FRONTLINE documentaries including 2009s duPont-Columbia Award-winning Behind Taliban Lines and 2015s Peabody- and Emmy-Award winning ISIS in Afghanistan. But while making his newest documentary, he secured something unprecedented: the first-ever media interview with Taliban co-founder Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was released from prison in Pakistan in 2018 and now serves as the groups lead negotiator.

He is a really, really important person in the Talibans ranks, Quraishi says. Literally, he sat down with Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban, 25 years ago, and they created the Taliban network. Mullah Omar nicknamed him Mullah Brother, because he was like a brother to him. He trusted him more than anyone else.

Getting Baradar to agree to an interview took some serious convincing. The Taliban spokesman Quraishi reached out to initially told him it would be a no-go. But Quraishi persisted wanting to question the man now representing the Taliban in peace talks with the U.S. firsthand. In making his case, Quraishi emphasized his many years of reporting on the conflict, and the fact that he was an Afghan himself. Eventually, through a spokesman, Baradar agreed.

After that, many times, he wanted to take back his promise by making some little excuses, Quraishi remembers. Then I said, through their spokesman, Come on, we are Afghans. Once we promise something, we have to stick with it.

Come early January, Quraishi was sitting in a room in Qatar with the Talibans top political leader: He was really scared of the camera, because he had never seen a camera in front of him before, recalls Quraishi.

Journalist Najibullah Quraishi interviews Taliban co-founder and lead negotiator Mullah Baradar on Jan. 6, 2020 in Qatar.

He went on to press Baradar on the groups terms for a peace deal (The war will end when the U.S. withdraws, Baradar said) its treatment of women, and its ability to guarantee that ISIS would no longer be a threat in the country should an agreement with the U.S. and Afghan governments be reached.

Whether with leadership like Baradar or rank-and-file fighters in Afghanistans foothills, safely going face-to-face with the Taliban is a different beast than doing so with ISIS, the journalist says: While violent, the former group is organized. It has spokespeople through whom access can be negotiated.

Not so with ISIS, which operates in Afghanistan with far less formal structure and which has made brutal executions of journalists part of its strategy. Elders acting as go-betweens assured Quraishi that hed be safe when he met with an ISIS cell while filming Taliban Country, but he says he couldnt believe that even for a second. In fact, the night before he was to meet with ISIS fighters, he said goodbye to director Karim Shah for what he thought could be the last time.

I said, probably I wouldnt come back, he remembers. This group is, to be honest, really, really crazy. They dont care about peoples life.

In the end, though, Quraishi placed his trust in the fixer who had helped make the arrangements a local journalist with whom he had been working for 15 years, including on 2009s Behind Taliban Lines. In that case, he ended up in a firefight, with IEDs exploding all around him. He remembers thinking, I might die there.

Once youre inside, you dont know what could happen.

Najibullah Quraishi, on reporting from inside Taliban- and ISIS-held territory

But then as now, he stayed focused through the fear: As a journalist, when I get to these kind of situations, I just carry on working either with my camera or asking my questions. I completely forget about my life. I just keep doing my job.

When asked why he takes such risks, Quraishi chuckles. I think I was made to do this, he says. He emphasizes that safety is his first priority, and that he always takes proper precautions when arranging a dangerous interview or embed. But he acknowledges that once youre inside, you dont know what could happen.

The risk is worth it to him, though, to be able to paint a full and complex picture of whats really happening in his home country as peace negotiations about its future unfold. He wants viewers of Taliban Country to know that Afghanistan is a beautiful country, whose ordinary citizens have been caught in the midst of proxy conflicts for over four decades now, whether between Pakistan and India, or between Western countries and Russia, Iran and China.

Unfortunately, Afghanistans geographic location is really, really bad for the Afghan people, Quraishi says.

As far as the current conflict, most ordinary Afghans hes spoken with especially the women are fearful of a U.S. withdrawal and unhappy that the Taliban is once again wielding power, he says. And he notes that many of the ISIS fighters he has encountered in the country arent even Afghan. Some cant even speak the language.

This is a really complicated and crazy war, he says, in which Afghan civilians are perpetually caught in the middle.

They pay, he says, with their lives.

Taliban Country premieres Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 10 p.m. E.S.T./9 p.m. C.S.T. Tune in or stream on PBS (check local listings), at pbs.org/frontline or on the PBS Video App.

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I Might Die There: Journalist Najibullah Quraishi on Going Face-to-Face with ISIS and the Taliban in Afghanistan - FRONTLINE

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The international community has provided unstinting aid to help Afghanistan stabilize, prosper, and develop; as a result, great achievements have been made toward that objective. However, insufficient effort was devoted to establishing a functional government that could sustain itself and function as a guardian and defender of the gains achieved over the past 18 years. Therefore, many fear the loss of previous gains as a possible peace deal between the United States and the Taliban nears. A functional and accountable government that can manage all its public affairs and effectively lead and utilize development efforts should be at the core of post-peace agreement aid and assistance to Afghanistan.

In a normal democratic environment, political leadership strives to build good government institutions as citizens monitor and hold them responsible for their actions. Elections and oversight from the media, judiciary, civil society, and other well-organized and functioning mechanisms are means citizens use to hold governments accountable and require officials to perform well and in the interest of people. Due to long periods of conflict in Afghanistan, these means of accountability have been either been weakened, do not exist, or operate under the influence of powerful individuals. Core structures of society are broken, and the population is exasperated and marginalized, stricken by poverty, illiteracy, and often indirectly suppressed. In such conditions, a key pillar of society that can ensure the accountability of the government and its officials has remained on paper only, allowing abuses of power and giving little incentive to build good governance apparatus and institutions throughout the country.

When the Taliban government was ousted in 2001, several anti-Taliban groups returned to Kabul and became part of the new government, led by President Hamid Karzai, alongside some highly educated technocrats who returned from other countries. Many Afghans were excited about a democratic government when the first presidential election, with a turnout of over 70 percent, was held in 2004. The momentum to build government institutions, systems, and processes was keenly underway. Some institutions, notably in the financial sector, were developed due to the IMF, USAID, and World Banks focus on structural reforms.

However, the process slowed down as government formation became more deal-based rather than election-based and power was continuously shared among the few powerful and influential groups and individuals. People gradually lost confidence in the democratic process, resulting in greater distance between people and the government. The formation of the National Unity Government (NUG) in 2014, disregarding the results of the elections, was a major blow. Although insecurity was to partially blame, voter turnout of around 20 percent in the 2019 presidential election indicated declining confidence in elections, further endangering the future of democracy in Afghanistan.

Election results continue to be disputed as a capable election administration with a transparent and trusted governance structure does not exist. The situation paves the way for the formation of a deal-based government and increased claims to power based on justifications other than elections. When in power, leaders and interest groups increase their share of power by filling key government positions with often incompetent individuals, many of whom have interests and objectives in conflict with government policies and programs. Since little public accountability exists, serving group interests becomes a priority over the public interest. Government departments operate at the mercy of such individuals and little effort is made to reform and build process-based institutions that provide public services to all. Departments are politicized from top to bottom and personal relationships are key to daily operations, including enforcement of laws, making it difficult for common Afghans to receive services. Many join groups, mostly ethnic-based, to ensure they can receive protection, government jobs, and other needs the government should provide for equally to all. In the meantime, such a politicized work environment forces out educated and experienced professionals committed to Afghanistan stability and prosperity.

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Meanwhile, incapable institutions, as counterparts to development agencies, are one of the causes of the corruption, misuse, and waste of aid monies. A few implementers of aid projects preferred incompetent counterparts as this gave them the freedom to act according to their wishes, not the development needs of Afghanistan. They far overstated their achievements in progress reports to their donors, signed off on by their counterparts.

This explains why, despite massive aid to the country, 85 percent Afghans live in deprivation and are disappointed with their lives, according to a 2019 Gallup survey. Thousands of Afghans fly to India for basic medical services selling off their land and other valuables to fund the trip. Insecurity and poverty are on the rise and the justice system is either corrupt or does not exist in many areas. Instead, people turn to the Taliban or other groups to solve disputes. Areas outside major cities are no-mans lands attractive to anti-government groups. A deprived and suffering population with no rule of law is a perfect recruiting target for groups like Islamic State and others.

Development aid will be wasted without a functional government that can protect the development gains and ensure effective utilization of aid project benefits per the needs of its people. It is essential to invest in building government institutions, mechanisms, and systems in fragile states like Afghanistan at the district and provincial levels before pouring billions of dollars into development projects. Had a resilient, responsive, and people-supported government with a functional governance apparatus and institutions existed in Afghanistan, Afghans would not fear losing the gains of the past 18 years. Moreover, the Taliban would not be able to avoid negotiating with a strong and people-oriented government.

Steps must be taken to ensure public interest and confidence is reinstated in democratic processes, such as elections, and thereby in the government. Institutions that are responsible for holding elections are at the core of such trust-building. Therefore, officers elected to the election commission must be appointed through a transparent process, protecting the commission from political influences.

Additionally, Afghanistan has a significant number of professionals who not only have technical expertise but are knowledgeable about the Afghan cultural, political, and social landscape. These professionals, however, have been sidelined as they are not affiliated with specific groups or powerful individuals and Afghanistan has no transparent process of merit-based appointments. A full reform of the civil services to choose professionalism and merit over personal and political affiliations in appointments will pave the way for such professionals to play a role in building a resilient system of governance, rebuilding public confidence and trust in the government. All-inclusive policies with checks and balances, process-based operations with all officials held accountable, and a justice system that provides service to all and implements laws equally across the board should be at the heart of governance.

War alone has not put Afghanistans stability in jeopardy; the governance problem has further fueled the war and increased problems on the ground. A peace deal between the Taliban and the United States may end the war, but only a functional and a responsive government, rooted in society, will stabilize Afghanistan. It is the government that works as a foundation for development, effectively utilizing its benefits, and leading the country from fragility to stability. Without such a base, the impact of development is not unsustainable and often lost. Building functional government institutions across the country must become a priority for development organizations and donors, now and in a post-peace agreement Afghanistan.

Gul Maqsood Sabit teaches business at Ohlone College of Fremont, California, U.S. He is former Deputy Minister of Finance in the government of Afghanistan and former President and CEO of Pashtany Bank, a state-owned bank in Afghanistan.

Read more from the original source:
Ending the War Won't Solve Afghanistan's Governance Problem - The Diplomat