It is the frequent experience of coalition forces in southern Afghanistan
that security precedes development. Nonetheless, the debate between
security and development has become akin to the chicken or the egg debate.
It is time to unscramble this puzzle. Persistent security must be established
before development can begin.
A field grade commander operating in Afghanistan effectively captured the
gist of the issue: “They want us to Sun Tzu the enemy with everything besides
committing forces, but it doesn’t work.” Evoking the name Sun Tzu, an ancient
Chinese general, strategist, and author of
The Art of War, suggests that one does
not necessarily need to fight to secure victory: “Hence to fight and conquer in all
your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking
the enemy’s resistance without fighting.”
1
Insightful strategists understand that while some stratagems are timeless,
others are not. Some apply to all situations; some do not. In the case of southern
Afghanistan, where there are areas with substantial numbers of enemy fighters
ideologically determined to return the Taliban to power, it will take far more than
the promise of development projects to effect their return to civil society and
their reconciliation with the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
(GIRoA). The following process advocates persistent security, followed by stabilization, followed by development. However, while persistent security precedes
development, a good counterinsurgent plans for development and all other lines
of operations throughout the process. Furthermore, development can actually
improve security, but this happens only if persistent security is first established.
Persistent security is an approach introduced
by retired General William Wallace to establish a
“reasonable level of security in such a way that all
aspects of national power can be applied near simultaneously.”2
Units may achieve persistent security
through offensive and defensive operations during
their rotations; however, once they have successfully conducted such initiative-creating operations,
many do not follow-up with timely stability operations to retain the initiative. Therefore, the next unit
arrives and, before conducting stability operations,
it has to reestablish a security environment that
has already been purchased, quite literally, with
blood, sweat, and tears. Persistent security is the
sufficient condition for stability operations and,
in turn, stability operations are required to sustain
persistent security.
For example, abandoned or ruined schools litter
the landscape of southern Afghanistan. There is the
often-told example of the provincial reconstruction team that confidently builds a village school.
During the celebratory ribbon cutting ceremony
the provincial reconstruction team commander, the
battle-space commander, and a handful of Afghan officials are all smiling for public relations pictures.
That very night the Taliban slips into town, deposits
a few well-placed night letters, and, sure enough, on
the next day no teachers or students are present at
the school. A few sheets of A4 European letter-size
paper effectively undermined and embarrassed the
provincial reconstruction team, the military unit,
and the GIRoA in one fell swoop. The lesson of
the story is simple, inescapable, and fundamental:
persistent security must be present at the moment
development begins. The corollary, of course, is
that one must have planned development activities
(i.e., have shaped the environment) so that they
can be executed as soon as persistent security is
established.
Stabilization versus Development
There are significant differences between stabilization and development. According to the
Department of Defense, stability operations “help
establish order that advances United States interests and values. The immediate goal often is to
provide the local populace with security, restore essential services, and meet humanitarian needs.”3
Development can be measured by the increase in
quality of life for the average citizen. There are
multiple spheres of development. Governance,
healthcare, education, gender equality, infrastructure, economics, human rights, and the environment are common examples. All of those elements
of development are necessary for a self-sustaining
Afghanistan, but few, if any, are achieved without
the precursor of stability.
In many military circles, stability operations are
an uncomfortable topic. Part of this discomfort is
due to the lack of formalized stability operations
training available to units in predeployment. Given
the difficulties most military units have in executing
them, some even claim that stability operations are
not a military task. Nevertheless, the Department
of Defense is the only instrument of national power
with a responsive and substantial stabilization
budget in the form of the Commander’s Emergency
Response Program (CERP), whose funding in Fiscal
Year 2010 amounted to $1.2 billion. In southern
Afghanistan, senior decision makers have realized
the necessity of a “CERP machine” due to the paucity
of spending: only $37 million has been committed
for execution as of late May 2010. However, blind
spending and haphazard projects have to be avoided.
The military lacks the expertise necessary for stabilization, to include its Civil Affairs Corps, which
has been torn apart by frequent deployments and
inadequate training. Many civil affairs companies
coming into southern Afghanistan report that they
have never received training on how to administer
CERP. The answer to these difficulties is to tap into
civilian expertise resident in the Department of State
and the U.S. Agency for International Development
(USAID). A framework common to both civilians as
well as the military must be established and used for
such unified, synchronous efforts to occur.
The current attempt to achieve this unity is the
“tactical conflict assessment and planning framework” (TCAPF). USAID recently created this framework, and in the past few years, the Army
has made the TCAPF part of its doctrine, as confirmed by its inclusion in Field Manual 3-07, Stability Operations.
4
The TCAPF conceptual model
identifies three main factors that foster instability:
- Grievances (frustrated people).
- Key actors with means and motivations (Taliban).
- Windows of opportunity (presidential elections).
The underlying notion is simple: achieve stability by removing the sources of instability.
While the intellectual concept of the framework
is solid, two prerequisites for successful practical
application are predeployment training and total
battalion and brigade staff buy-in.
One problem with TCAPF is that its trainers
advocate that units adopt it as their only targeting
methodology, in lieu of the other doctrinal targeting and planning processes (e.g., the Military
Decision Making Process and the “decide, detect,
deliver, and assess” process). After adopting and
operationalizing TCAPF in Afghanistan, my battalion commander, a former corps-level targeting
officer, described it as “an incredible assessment
tool, but no substitute for our traditional targeting
methodology.” Another problem is that TCAPF
lures staffs to focus in on one source of instability
at a time, when the truth on the ground is that there
are many sources of instability at the local level,
and they must be targeted simultaneously. Finally,
tactical units may not have the capability to target
the source of instability. A State Department official once quipped to me that the “local” source of
instability across all of southern Afghanistan is
Quetta, Pakistan.
A complementary method to achieve civilmilitary synergy is to assign a senior civilian representative to the brigade combat team. My unit
was fortunate to have a State Department foreign
service officer assigned through the first two-thirds
of our deployment. The officer had two roles. He served as the brigade’s traditional political advisor,
accompanying the brigade commander to key leader
engagements and meetings with our NATO and
GIRoA partners. Even more critical was his role
as the integrator of the nonmilitary instruments of
national power into brigade plans and operations.
The senior civilian representative regularly tapped
into his rolodex of contacts to bring agricultural,
rule of law, governance, and other experts into the
discussion to solve complex problem sets. Senior
civilian representatives at the brigade level seem to
be a waning trend in southern Afghanistan. After
serving 14 months in Afghanistan, our senior representative returned to the United States. He was
replaced briefly by another foreign service officer,
who was quickly reassigned to another province,
leaving the brigade without a senior representative
for our final four months in combat. It does not
appear that any of the four U.S. brigades deploying
to Regional Command South this summer will be
assigned senior civilian representatives.
Some development organizations believe that
providing the local population with schools, hospitals, and money will generally lead to better
security as well. If one follows that line of thought,
it is certainly conceivable that development could
occur side by side with offensive and defensive
operations. After all, those are security-achieving
activities. However, many experts disagree with
that argument. Amitai Etzioni, a leading American
intellectual, thinks the argument that “development
is essential for security and hence must precede it, is
erroneous because without basic security, development cannot take place.”5
I will argue the following sequence of events:
- First, the unit conducts offensive and defensive
operations to regain the initiative and establish persistent security.
- Second, the unit conducts stability operations to
maintain the initiative and sustain persistent security.
- Third, when persistent security is sustainable,
development starts.
We must not neglect development experts while
we execute offensive and defensive operations. In
fact, planning for all phases of this framework (or
shaping and clearing the environment) must occur
throughout the whole sequence so that development
can “hit the ground running” once persistent security
is established. Regrettably, there are numerous cases
in southern Afghanistan where persistent security was established but development was never realized,
all because adequate planning did not occur or scarce
development resources were wasted in areas that
did not have the level of persistent security needed
to allow success.
Regaining the Initiative
The commander of the 5th Brigade, 2d Infantry
Division (Stryker Brigade Combat Team), Colonel
Harry D. Tunnell, deliberately entered areas that
previous coalition force units had avoided. Consequently, counterinsurgency (COIN) operations in
select districts of Kandahar Province (for example,
Spin Boldak and Maiwand) have just finished their
first continuous year with coalition force presence.
Therefore, judging these operations as a continuation of a series of operations that has stretched for
years would be shortsighted. Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates seemed to agree as he considered
Afghanistan to have had two wars. The first war
was in 2001, and the coalition prevailed. The second
war started in late 2005, and its outcome is still very
much in doubt. According to Mr. Gates, “the United
States really has gotten its head into this conflict in
Afghanistan, as far as I’m concerned, only in the
last year.”6
The fact that some units in southern Afghanistan
are entering new territory makes it difficult to fully
comply with the International Security Assistance
Force commander’s COIN guidance. As he has
stated, “Strive to focus 95 percent of our energy on
the 95 percent of the population that deserves and
needs our support.”7
The best way to accomplish his
guidance is to live among the population in combat
outposts, making daily access to the population
possible. This reasonable notion is complicated by
the fact that limited engineer resources in southern
Afghanistan cannot keep pace with the demand for
many new combat outposts. These outposts are in
accordance with the International Security Assistance Force COIN operations guidance.
These facts should sound a note of caution to
those who wish to promote development in areas
that do not have persistent security. For instance, a
primary area needing development in Kandahar is
the Arghandab River Valley. As important as this
area is to Afghanistan National Security Forces
(ANSF), coalition forces, and insurgent forces, the
problem remains that parts of the Arghandab are
still being contested, and persistent security has yet
to be established.
Despite remarkable kinetic efforts on the part of
coalition forces, those with a little knowledge of
the area’s history will not be surprised to know that
the issue is still in doubt. According to an article
in Small Wars Journal, “Armies from at least three
countries have ventured into the Arghandab River
Valley: British, followed by Soviets, and more
recently Canadians; all were unsuccessful.”8
At
present, the first successful unit to contest and hold
the Arghandab was the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry
Regiment, which entered the valley in August
2009. In what some might consider a counterintuitive operational move, the 2d Battalion, 508th
Parachute Infantry Regiment, replaced them in
December 2009 instead of augmenting them. An
often-heard argument supporting the presence of
more than one battalion was expressed by Carl
Forsberg:
The regiment’s experience in Arghandab
has demonstrated that a battalion-sized
unit is insufficient to reverse the Taliban’s
entrenched control over the strategically
critical Arghandab District in the time
available.9
In the event that the whole district tips decisively
toward ANSF, coalition forces, and the national
government, stability operations can start and
development can follow. Having the tactical and
political patience to establish persistent security
leads to a more stable and enduring peace, and
ultimately a self-sustaining secure environment.
10
The only way to gain the initiative in areas with
limited prior coalition forces and government presence is to conduct offensive and defensive operations. Yet, COIN has become so indoctrinated that
such operations are highly scrutinized. A series
of geographically and temporally disconnected
successful COIN anecdotes—building a retaining wall in one village turned the whole village to the coalition or drinking three cups of tea with
a fence-sitting tribal leader turned his tribe to the
coalition—has some senior decision makers convinced that combat should be avoided at all costs.
Recent suicidal attacks on Afghanistan’s largest
bases demonstrate that there are still ideologically
driven men who are willing to fight to the death.
Building retaining walls and drinking cups of tea
can only do so much.
Offensive and defensive operations should not
be constrained or needlessly pressured by a timetable, but should proceed with shaping, clearing,
holding, and building activities across the security,
governance, and development lines of operations.
All these ambitious COIN activities must be done
with the GIRoA and ANSF leading the coalition of
international civil-military organizations as often
as possible.
Maintaining the Initiative
Stability operations should start by enhancing traditional systems that worked. For example, instead
of entering the temptingly easy but actually murky
business of “well digging” and “karez-cleaning”
(karezes are ancient underground irrigation systems), units should find and engage the village or
community mirab bashi (water master) to see what
has traditionally worked, and start from there. Kai
Wegerich, a development researcher, writes—
There is a danger that externally funded
projects, involving either construction of
intakes or maintenance work, might weaken
collective action within the canal communities or increase already existing inequity
in maintenance work requirements…It is
recommended that prior to rehabilitation of
intakes the communities agree on the future
sharing of water and of maintenance tasks.
These agreements should be presented to the
irrigation departments, which then would
have the responsibility to enforce them.11
In areas where water is an issue, grievances usually arise due to water management and distribution
issues rather than lack of wells or clogged
karezes.
Digging more wells lowers the water table and does
not always alleviate the grievance. In some cases,
there are legitimate reasons to dig a well or clean
a
karez. Whatever the case may be, units tend to
find that addressing most grievance-related issues
through the traditional tribal mechanisms of
shuras
and
jirgas will provide solutions:
The shura and jirga are both traditional
Afghan conflict resolution and community
decision-making bodies. The main difference between the two, according to scholars,
is that a shura meets in response to a specific
need, especially during wartime, whereas
a jirga is more egalitarian and meets on a
consistent basis—which is why the jirga
has become a national political structure,
whereas the shura has not.12
These decision making bodies need to be engaged
prior to most, but not all, activities. These engagement processes take time, but sometimes the “by,
with, and through” concept can be taken to the
extreme as time is running out. Nevertheless, if
a community is vested in a particular activity or
project, there is a significantly higher chance that
they will protect it.
For example, a survey conducted by Human
Rights Watch found that schools built by the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development’s
National Solidarity Program were less likely than
other schools to be targets of Taliban vandalism and
destruction.13 Because such mobilized communities
elect their own community development councils
to identify, plan, manage, build, and monitor these
schools, they tend to survive better. The dynamic
demonstrates the “sweat equity” concept rather than
the utility of the highly regarded program, which
has been silent and absent for the last year in Kandahar province. Furthermore, some experts caution
that these councils may be good for attracting and
administering donor contributions of funding and
projects, but they are “not necessar[ily] equipped
to resolve inter- or intra-community disputes.”14
Others take criticism of the program a step further and assert it does not work at all in southern
Afghanistan due to poor security and widespread
corruption. Ultimately, upcoming district council
elections will negate the necessity for an artificially created system existing side by side with a constitutionally established system: the district
council. Despite these upcoming changes, both the
shura and jirga system remain viable processes for
dealing with internal community and local issues.
Meanwhile, project management and administration
would be better placed in the hands of the elected
district councils, which will be the face of Afghan
governance. Using shuras, jirgas, and, ideally, district councils (district elections were not held in the
last elections), local communities will provide their
own “sweat equity” and district officials will put
their names on the line, which makes it more likely
they will defend their projects with their lives. This
is the definition of maintaining the initiative. The
combination of ANSF and coalition forces security
and local community investment sustains security
until more civilian-led, sophisticated, and ambitious
development activities and projects enter the scene.
Development
Development should only begin when persistent
security is established and the area stabilized. In
September 2009, the district development jirga of
Arghandab District, just northwest of Kandahar
City, consisted of about 10 to 12 village elders.
Identifying the elders’ village on a map led to
the discovery that all the elders came from the
very eastern edge of the district. Coalition leaders
informed the district leader that there could be no
development until there was a truly representative
jirga with representatives coming from across the
district. The district leader acknowledged the lack
of representation, but in the absence of district-wide
security, he could not muster the requisite representative shura. However, after only two months of
ANSF and NATO clearance operations, a level of
persistent security resulted in more elders attending
the shura. At the beginning of November 2009, over
50 elders showed up when the provincial governor
visited the district. This increased participation is a
metric to measure persistent security and indicated
that the time was right for development.
U.S. Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency, states, “Military forces can perform civilian
tasks but often not as well as the civilian agencies
with people trained in those skills. Further, military
forces performing civilian tasks are not performing
military tasks.”15 However, with persistent security
obtained in the Arghandab District, other instruments of national power, such as USAID, could
safely and consistently bring to the area their multimillion dollar programs and projects. For example, the Afghanistan Voucher for Increased Productive
Agriculture Plus Program, which has a budget of
$240 million, was introduced into the Arghandab
River Valley. This program is widely considered by
many in the military, including select commanders
of the 2d Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Helmand
as well as select stabilization officers of Task Force
Stryker in Kandahar, to be the top-performing
USAID program.
With a sizable budget, quick and flexible funding,
and proactive staff, the program provides—
- Immediate cash for work programs to decrease
unemployment.
- Small grants for farming cooperatives giving
them the equipment, saplings, seed, and fertilizer
they need.
- Agricultural voucher programs to “wean”
farmers from poppy production.
- Training to improve agricultural output
through simple techniques and knowledge previously unknown to local farmers.
In Kandahar alone, as of late May 2010, 40,555
fighting-age males have been hired, 57,046 vouchers redeemed, 82 small grants signed or disbursed,
and 28,079 farmers trained.
Success along either or both the security and
development line of operations is not enough. Governance plays an equally important role. Andrew
Wilder, a research director at the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, writes,
In an ethnically and tribally divided society
like Afghanistan, aid can easily generate
jealousy and ill will by inadvertently helping to consolidate the power of some tribes
or factions at the expense of others—often
pushing rival groups into the arms of the
Taliban.16
Development activities in the absence of good
governance can actually lead to situational deterioration.
In the Arghandab District, this lesson was heeded
and additional effort went to establishing good
governance. The results have been rewarding. For
example, at first, the Alokozai tribe questioned
their leaders’ support of the government and coalition forces. Arghandab has a population estimated
at 115,000 and the Alokozai tribe makes up 60
percent of that. In terms of wealth and power, the
Alokozais had once been one of the big four tribes
of southern Afghanistan, the Popalzai, the Barakzai,
the Mohammadzai (a subtribe of the Barakzai),
being the others. However, since the 2001 invasion,
the Alokozai tribe began to lose its significance.
President Karzai belongs to the Popalzai tribe, and
Gul Agha Sherzai, former Governor of Kandahar,
belongs to the Barakzai tribe. The provincial governor and the Kandahar City mayor are Mohammadzai. These tribes gain tremendous wealth and power
from coalition force contracts while the other tribes
see little benefit. Consequently, while establishing
persistent security, coalition forces shared many
cups of tea with the Alokozai tribal leaders. After
achieving adequate security and starting development, the Alokozai leaders began making decisions
on the what and where of development projects for
their people. The emphasis on the governance lines
of the operations permitted the successful establishment of the conditions necessary for this previously
affected tribe to reenter the governance dialogue.
The three lines of the operation are security, governance, and development.
Synchronization of effort is the solution to many
of the challenges of development. Without thoughtful
movement along all three main lines of operations,
development can disrupt stability and jeopardize
persistent security. In the recent history of Afghanistan, both civilian and military entities have failed at
stability and development. Perhaps the most glaring
example of military failure is indiscriminate distribution of humanitarian assistance, which should be
distributed for humanitarian reasons, period. Very
often, well-intentioned units think that humanitarian assistance is primarily a means for winning the
population’s “hearts and minds,” and distribute it
without reference to the population’s actual need. An
anonymous writer in the Small Wars Journal wrote,
“Hearts and Minds is a wonderful name for a teen
romance novel, but I’ve always thought it to be a poor
name for a counterinsurgency concept.”17 During a
regional governor’s conference in August 2009, a
provincial governor requested that coalition forces
stop distributing humanitarian assistance, because
it was creating an image of him as a government
official who could not provide for his constituents.
An example of a civilian-led effort gone amiss
involves a provincial reconstruction team that
decided to distribute humanitarian assistance in 2008
during Eid-Akhtar (breaking the fast) in observance of zakat, which calls for charity to poor and needy
Muslims. The team wanted to distribute humanitarian assistance to the 200 poorest families in the city.
What started as a worthy and noble effort turned out
to be anything but. All of the humanitarian assistance
ended up in the hands of the town’s local powerbroker who distributed the items to his powerbase, not
those with the greatest need. Sometimes even the
best attempts to win over hearts and minds can fail.
The Way Forward
There is a clear, logical sequence of events
that units should execute in the shape-clear-hold-build-transition continuum. The first step—shape
and clear—is to conduct offensive and defensive
operations to gain or regain the initiative and establish persistent security. The second step—hold and
build—is to conduct stability operations to maintain
the initiative and maintain persistent security. The
third and final step—transition—is to support properly planned and executed civilian-led developmental
efforts leading to self-sustaining, transferable security.
Proper planning must occur throughout the process
so that once persistent security is established, the
initiatives of governance and development are not
lost. Long-term development combined with Afghan-led security is the key to transitioning the war to the
Afghans. Once persistent security is established,
development must occur alongside governance for
efforts to be sustainable.
Notes1. See <www.chinapage.com/sunzi-e.html>
2. William Wallace and Edmund J. Degen, “Persistent Security,” RUSI 152:4
(August 2007): 26.
3. Department of Defense Directive 3000.5, 28 November 2005.
4. Field Manual (FM) 3-07, Stability Operations, Appendix D, “Interagency
Conflict Assessment Overview” (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office
[GPO]), D-7.
5. Amitai Etzioni, “Reconstruction: A Damaging Fantasy?” Military Review
(November-December 2008): 116.
6. Elisabeth Bumiller, “Gates’s Trip Hits Snags in Two Theaters,” New York Times,
13 December 2009, A16
7. Stanley McChrystal, “CF Commander’s Counterinsurgency Guidance,”
August 2009.
8. Michael Yon, “Arghandab and the Battle for Kandahar,” Small Wars Journal
(December 2009).
9. Carl Forsberg, “The Taliban’s Campaign for Kandahar,” The Institute for the
Study of War (December 2009).
10. William Wallace and Edmund J. Degen, “Persistent Security,” RUSI 152:4
(August 2007): 27.
11. Kai Wegerich, “Water Strategy Meets Local Reality,” Afghanistan Research
and Evaluation Unit, April 2009, xvi.
12. Ali Wardak, “Jirga—A Traditional Mechanism of Conflict Resolution in Afghanistan,” University of Glamorgan, UK, 5.
13. Gregory Warner, “The Schools the Taliban Won’t Torch,” Washington Monthly,
December 2007.
14. Kai Wegerich, “Water Strategy Meets Local Reality,” Afghanistan Research
and Evaluation Unit, April 2009, 54.
15. FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency (Washington, DC: GPO), 2-9.
16. Andrew Wilder, “A ‘weapons system’ based on wishful thinking,” Boston
Globe, 16 September 2009.
17. Vegetius, “The Myth of Hearts and Minds,” Small Wars Journal (December
2009).