Federal Judiciary

Why Ditching McChrystal Was Wrong -- By: Brock Dahl

General McChrystal, for all his staff?s missteps, was the right leader for the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan. If recent reports are to be believed, the U.S. military has started focusing more resources on collecting information on corrupt Afghan officials and the widespread criminal syndicates with which they are involved. As I have written elsewhere, the criminal economy in Afghanistan is at the core of the country?s current problems.

During a recent fellowship sponsored by the American Society of International Law, I spent several weeks in Kabul interviewing dozens of Afghans, ranging from victims of human-rights abuses to government officials. The need for U.S. action in three key areas could hardly have been more apparent. We must correct our contracting procedures, our strategic posture, and our diplomats? methods for engaging with Afghans.

General McChrystal showed leadership relevant to the first two. Rather than ditching him, the administration should have focused on improving its civilian engagement and supporting the type of innovation that is necessary to win in Afghanistan. In firing McChrystal, they risk sacrificing necessary strategic innovation in the war for political pride at home. With American lives and treasure at peril, it is the wrong time to make such a sacrifice.

One point of relief, nonetheless, is that Obama has replaced General McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus. Petraeus has shown a strong proclivity towards avant-garde strategy, and seems likely to continue McChrystal?s push to reform our efforts in Afghanistan. The administration must act to make sure he can do so.

COMING TO TERMS
In order to minimize U.S. casualties and expenditures, we executed a unique war strategy in 2001 that involved our Special Forces? supporting the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. The Alliance was composed of various Afghan factions who had fought the Russians as mujahidin (holy warriors). When the Russians left, these mujahidin fought one another for control of Afghanistan -- and in the process committed a bevy of atrocities against various Afghan communities, which helped bring the Taliban to power. In pursuing a minimalist strategy after 9/11, we implicitly consented to a division of the country among these various warlords. This division now undermines any possibility of our being able to leave Afghanistan an independent, sustainable state.

In the wake of the defeat of the Taliban, the warlords used their advantageous positions to capture key economic sectors. Today, some enjoy monopolies over various industrial and commercial activities. Some have used their advantage to develop empires of trading, construction, and private-security firms that are -- lo and behold -- some of the only firms capable of bidding on U.S. reconstruction contracts.

Enriched by their control of the lucrative drug and reconstruction industries, the warlords have also expanded their control to encompass essential state institutions. This control ensures their continued dominance, and establishes an impunity through which they can commit a variety of criminal acts that American taxpayers should be sickened to learn their hard-earned money is tacitly supporting.

Honest Afghan businessmen are kidnapped and held for ransom by groups with ties to the police and state officials. Children in the provinces find themselves subject to sexual exploitation that often goes unchecked by state institutions. Victims of horrific criminal acts watch helplessly as offenders are freed after conviction because they have enough money or sufficient connections. In some cases, criminality is deployed for profit, in others, merely because impunity permits it. In both, the Afghan people sense an injustice that is the primary driver of social unrest.

All the while, simple Afghans watch as these same monsters continue to enjoy a cozy relationship with the vast contracting machine of Western bureaucracies. Thus, for all of the international community?s self-congratulatory rhetoric about establishing democracy, what the Afghan people often experience is not representative government, but a shadow play of the past projecting an increasingly hopeless present. The light is fading fast, and U.S. officials must act to reverse this dark tide.

ENABLING JUSTICE
The U.S. must choke off the financing and end the impunity of those warlords guilty of human-rights violations. It must also commit to a medium-term strategy of support and enabling Afghans who are currently yearning for the chance to serve honestly. Finally, U.S. diplomats must depart from the shelter of embassy compounds and talk with everyday Afghans.

Ending impunity will require that the U.S. stop the overwhelming cash injections and limited oversight that occur when normal contracting rules are applied to stabilization situations, in which large amounts of money must be moved in short periods of time. This deeply flawed -- and undermanned -- system must be fixed, and General McChrystal?s staff seemed to be taking steps to address it within the Defense Department. On the civilian side, however, there are no indications of a changing approach to contracting.

Contrary to the push for an early withdrawal, moreover, we must also take a medium-term approach to our friendship with Afghanistan. Such an approach would cast aside the year-to-year strategizing that has inhibited our efforts over the last decade and that empowered criminal warlords. A multi-year strategy to enable positive players and decrease warlord support is the only option that could create a sustainable ally upon our withdrawal. The administration must make longer-term goals a more evident component of its vision.

Finally, bureaucratic politics means that American diplomats, unlike their military counterparts, who are getting out every day, spend most of their time in internal policy meetings debating abstract programs that have limited relevance to the real problems on the ground. Officials must get out and hear from average Afghans and the civil-society organizations struggling to help them survive. As Afghans themselves will point out, the only reason Americans think the warlords are too strong to combat is that it is largely from circles that have an interest in maintaining the status quo that they get their information.

Remarks by the general?s staff, though ill-advised and foolish, revealed a deeper -- and partially justified -- discontent with inadequate civilian engagement with and understanding of the current situation. What?s more, Petraeus?s demotion from CENTCOM -- in which he oversees U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan -- could cost us the imaginative leadership we need in the broader region. For a replacement, Obama will have to look hard to find someone cut from the same cloth as Petraeus and McChrystal.

Though the current state of affairs in Afghanistan is bleak, there are clear steps the administration can take to turn the dark tide that threatens the future of Afghanistan. The administration must focus as much energy on what really needs to be fixed as it has on defending its wounded pride.

-- Brock Dahl, an Arthur C. Helton Fellow at the George Washington University Law School, is a former U.S. Treasury Department official who served on the Afghanistan Interagency Operations Group.

Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on June 24, 2010 (boomark / email).