What do be done when the increasingly authoritarian, mildly unhinged and steadfastly corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan wants to retain its death grip on the funnel of aid coming in from international donors? Whether Karzai likes it or not (and whether we like it or not), we're going to have to apply our own pressure to get the resources flowing where they're really needed. All politics is local -- the old adage applies ferociously in areas of Afghanistan contested by the government and the Taliban.

Ironically, the international community is going to have to force the Afghan state to do what its leaders say they want to do -- extend sovereignty over all of the country's territory, especially in the villages and regions where the Taliban roam freely.

The latest example of the need for this approach came soon after the newly-appointed American commander landed in the country.

Despite only having recently taken over the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus has already come into conflict with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the U.S. military program to equip and train local militias against the Taliban. While Karzai objects to the plan as possibly building "private militias" according to the Washington Post, the argument hints at Karzai's long-standing opposition to strengthening local institutions at the expense of the central government, despite consistent U.S. pressure to improve local governance. But despite these objections, increased support for provincial and local government is necessary if the United States wants to bring stability to Afghanistan.

Being a devil's advocate, there certainly is a risk of inadvertently undermining the state if private militias ultimately work at the discretion of local warlords rather than local villages or regions that are still ultimately loyal to the Afghan state. But the past strategy for training up the Afghan Army is neither effective nor sustainable. As one analyst notes:

Because they are partnered with our troops, Afghan soldiers are copying our rules of engagement and risk-avoidance procedures. Since they wear our heavy armor, they too cannot pursue the light and mobile Taliban forces. When the enemy initiates contact, the Afghan soldiers are trained to wait alongside our troops until our attack helicopters force the Taliban to flee. The Afghan soldiers will not be able to fight that way as U.S. resources are reduced. The Afghan security forces simply cannot take over the fight anytime soon. 

Of course, politics at the local level isn't just about who has the guns (although that is an overriding question in Afghanistan). It's about institution building. When the government cannot securely provide law courts or public services and the "local" member of parliament is actually staying in Kabul, unable to interact with their constituents, Afghanistan's frail democracy is undermined. For the system to work, there needs to be trust between federal and local interests:

This trust requires strong local governing structures that take Afghanistan's ethnic and tribal diversity into account. One of the members of the provincial council from Ghazni told me this month that Ghazni's security worsened during the times when governors came from other provinces to serve there, even though viable candidates from the province existed. The outside governors could not work within the dynamics of the ruling tribes in Ghazni and the people could not trust them. He said the governors "came today and will go tomorrow, but it's us dealing with the same elders and tribes forever, so who would we be faithful to?" 

In the Karzai regime's insistence that all aid and planning for provincial districts must go through a central administration that's leakier than a certain well-head in the Gulf of Mexico, it undermines its own ability to manage affairs outside of Kabul. We should note here that the international NGO community that might serve as an alternative to providing direct state-to-state aid is at least as corrupt -- if not more corrupt -- than the government in Kabul.

How the international community helps the provinces without developing a parallel and counter-productive administration is complicated. If it were simple, these questions would have been sorted out back in 2001 or 2002, not 2010. But this must remain a key objective of the overall project to ensure Afghanistan does not fall back into chaos.

Of course everyone wants an end to the conflict in Afghanistan. Canadians and other allied nations with forces in Afghanistan have implemented rules of engagement that attempt to minimize the risk of civilian casualties in tactical confrontations, even at the expense of a longer strategic involvement.

Our motivation is of course noble and humane. Unfortunately, we have learned not to expect reciprocity from the other side, as Bing West points out:

IN AFGHANISTAN, population protection and nation building have been emphasized at the unintended expense of aggressive war fighting. The top commander there, General Stanley McChrystal, has issued severe restrictions on the use of artillery and air support. While there is an admirable moral aspect to this restraint, the strategic rationale is less clear. If NATO so alienates the population by accidentally killing civilians that many more join the Taliban, then why do the Taliban deliberately kill three times as many ordinary Afghans without causing three times the backlash, leading to their defeat?

Kilcullen recommends “putting the well-being of noncombatant civilians ahead of any other consideration, even—in fact, especially—ahead of killing the enemy.” That too is a wise and moral admonition. But don’t expect reciprocity. The Pashtun tribes do not betray the Taliban in their midst. Few are arrested, and even fewer are put behind bars, because the police and judges routinely accept bribes in return for releases. The result is that Afghanistan on a per capita basis holds fewer criminals (insurgents included) in jail than does Sweden.

H/T to Unambig

We've been hearing some very encouraging things over the last while from honorable MPs like Bob Rae and other politicians in the Conservative minority government and even in the NDP about a continued role for Canada in Afghanistan post-2011. Yet those nice words have not yet evolved into a really comprehensive public discussion. In the absence of talk and planning, the action we're seeing is basically preparation for withdrawal.

From MarkOttawa:

A series of ceremonial handovers is bound to take place between Canadian and American commanders between now and next Canada Day. They will mark the close of an unlikely chapter in Canadian military history — an unexpected combat deployment that was initiated with almost no public discussion by the Chrétien and Martin governments that is now ending with the first withdrawal of Canadian combat forces before the war they were fighting has concluded.

Just as the war ramps up this year with a surge of U.S. troops, Canada’s military footprint has already begun shrinking.

Where until recently Canadian troops were stretched across a territory the size of New Brunswick, they are now mostly squeezed into an area the size of Ottawa.

Canada remains responsible to NATO for all of Kandahar, but most of Canada’s combat forces are now in Panjwaii District, to the west of Kandahar City. A couple of hundred Canadian soldiers still remain in the provincial capital, which is to come under U.S. command by early fall [emphasis added]. Another handful of Canadian troops are scattered across Spin Boldak near the Pakistan border and in Arghandab and Dand districts…

A logistics colonel, who is to be promoted to brigadier-general next year, has already been chosen to lead the closeout mission. His troops are to be protected by soldiers from the Alberta-based Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry [that will be Task Force 1-11, 3 PPCLI--not a battle group as with previous rotos].

Detailed inventories of what is where at Kandahar Airfield and at forward operating bases and strongpoints have begun to be compiled. More than 1,000 vehicles must be retrieved as well as thousands of weapons, pallets of ammunition, office and communications equipment and temporary accommodations.

Once this mountain of gear is at the airfield, several months will be spent cleaning and re-organizing it for the return to Canada.

One of the most under-reported Canadian projects in Afghanistan will be helping to provide benefits for a huge number of locals. This is the Dahla Dam project, already providing much-needed water to long-parched lands. In the Globe and Mail:

It appears the money and years of hard work are finally starting to bear fruit, quite literally.

For the first time in decades, the Dahla Dam is channelling badly needed water into the Arghandab district's once-parched fields. During a recent flyover of the dam and its surrounding environs, lush green orchards resembling those in the Okanagan Valley could be seen for miles.

“To see the amount of green that's there now and further inland is really encouraging,” federal International Development Minister Bev Oda said at the time.

“When you can visually see progress, it's very rewarding and I think Canadians will have a very good news story when we complete the work that we're doing.”

The Dahla Dam is the largest dam in Kandahar province and the second largest in Afghanistan. The dam, 34 kilometres north of Kandahar city, was first built in the 1950s.

But three decades of war have taken their toll.

“Afghanistan has gone through 30 years of warfare, and there's been significant degradation in the downstream systems that results in 70 per cent of the water from the reservoir being wasted,” Rowswell said.

Once finished, the project is expected to double the amount of irrigated land in the Arghandab River basin — a godsend in a country where food is often in short supply.

Is the Afghan government seriously considering selling out the rights of half of its population in order to get a deal with the Taliban? The signs are ominous. Excerpted from a great essay by Wazhma Frogh in the Guardian:

The idea of subsuming women's rights so that the war can end has come in formal and informal talks between some parliamentarians, government officials and is also reported to be part of cynical discussions among some of the international diplomats in Kabul gatherings.

Many women activists believe the growing Talibanisation of the Afghan government will not only bring further instability, as it could upset the diverse ethnic composition of Afghanistan, but also predict that they will pay for this political settlement with their rights.

Despite receiving promises from the members of the international community and the Afghan government about the so-called "red lines" of talks with the Taliban, women activists are concerned that recent developments are step-by-step moves towards the loss of women's rights.

The Afghan peace jirga earlier this month legitimised criminal aspects of the insurgency by referring to offenders merely as political "angry brothers". It ensured that impunity will continue – for example, through the formation of a commission to review the cases of militant prisoners.

In the past two weeks, according to Afghan national television, around 15 ex-combatants have been released from two prisons in Parwan and Kabul. The longest trial that took place was four hours.

Women activists fear that the judiciary is not equipped to distinguish between the guilty and the innocent. As a result, notorious war criminals and human rights violators will be released under this political settlement, including the men that threw acid in the faces of girls in Kandahar, those who assassinated the senior police officer, Malalai Kakar, and those militants who continue to target girls' schools.

I'm no general, but this seems like an awfully bad idea if the overall strategy is to ensure Afghan National Security forces are the ones ultimately exercising sovereignty over Afghan territory.

Instead of disarming insurgents who agree to stop fighting, the new program would let them keep weapons to provide security for their own communities, said British Maj. Gen. Philip Jones, who directs the reintegration effort for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.