Colonel Abdul Razziq is currently the executive officer for the 3rd Zone Afghan Border Police. The mission of the border police is to protect the borders of Afghanistan against criminal offenders by providing a law enforcement capability at international borders. They control pedestrian and vehicular traffic at border crossing points, and international airports and are also responsible for aviation security. Razziq oversees the Wesh-Chaman border crossing point, the second busiest port of entry in Afghanistan. Instead of just focusing on his duties as an Afghan border police officer, Razziq has created a fiefdom in Spin Boldak district of Kandahar Province. He is part of a new class of warlords who are more politically and economically savvy than his mujahedeen predecessors. Instead of relying on his guns, he has become the conduit of foreign aid and dominates local governance.
Opponents of Razziq have portrayed him as a warlord who is allegedly into narco-trafficking and is involved in various other forms of corruption. Proponents of Razziq portray him as a fierce fighter of the Taliban (they killed his brother) and a source of stability. Military officers can’t stomach parting with the stability that seems guaranteed with Razziq while foreign service officers feel that having a police official meddling in civil official activities undermines the central government. Combinations from both parties argue that Afghanistan has never been a strong centralized state, and that condition is impossible to change. Nevertheless, a recent essay published in Foreign Affairs offers a case study for centralizing state power through dealing with the Razziqs of Afghanistan.
Sheri Berman’s essay, “From the Sun King to Karzai,” which appeared in the magazine’s March-April 2010 issue, proposes that the ancien régime serve as a case study for centralizing state power. Before the 17th century, Europe consisted of nothing more than a few kings who ruled capital cities. The dukes and the clergy had the real power outside the capitals. That sounds eerily similar to the Abdul Razziqs, the Matiullah Khans, and the mullahs in Afghanistan today. Consolidation of centralized power “involves destroying, undermining, or co-opting these actors so as to create a single national political authority,” according to Berman.
In 17th-century France, local power brokers were destroyed, undermined,
or bribed. Defeating committed opponents proved to be a Pyrrhic victory,
so Louis XIV adopted the “co-opting” approach. The palace of Versailles
was used as a venue for “political entrepreneurs” to procure and vie for
power. The smarter ones eventually came to understand that Versailles was
more akin to a white-collar detention facility than anything else. By then,
Louis XIV had already broken them.
The first and most vital step to centralized government is to monopolize violence, and that has been achieved to a certain degree in Afghanistan through the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). However, many ANSF units are more loyal to their local power broker than to the country. This comes as no surprise in the volatile south where new police recruits earn $240 per month compared to the $600 their rival armed security groups make monthly. Therefore, one solution is to promote or move these local power brokers away from their political, economic, social, and military power base.
Karzai has demonstrated that he can do
this when it is in his favor by moving Gul
Agha Sherzai from the post of Governor
of Kandahar to the post of Governor of
Nangahar. Ironically, by 2009, Sherzai
“had become the type of leader Karzai
did not want to create: a politician with a
base in Kandahar as well as considerable
popularity and influence in the east,”
according to Carl Forsberg in his article
“Politics and Power in Kandahar” (The
Institute for the Study of War, April 2010).
Nevertheless, by transitioning the former
Afghan National Army lieutenant general
into a civilian position, Karzai has forced
Sherzai to expand beyond his military
power and therefore to a certain degree
tied Sherzai’s success to the success of the
government of Afghanistan. It is uncertain
whether promoting Razziq to another
province’s chief of police or into a civilian
position will either propel him into the
success that Sherzai has seen or destroy his
relevancy. Will Razziq be a better civilian
or military leader?
Dr. Mark Moyar puts the leadership
issue above all other discourses concerning
this war in his article, “Lessons Learned,
Lessons Lost,” published in the Small Wars
Journal. This applies to both the military and the civilian leadership.
Recent experiences in
Iraq show that host nation
armies will prove to be more
competent and efficient than
the police; this is a direct
reflection on their officer
corps. In some aspects, the
police force is more important
than the army. The Afghan
National Police has more
day-to-day interactions with
the Afghan people than any
other organization. They are
the face of the government.
Moyar cites a statistic that in
2007, General David Petraeus
and Ambassador Ryan
Crocker “helped convince the
Iraqi government to relieve
seven of nine National Police
brigade commanders and more
than 2,000 Interior Ministry
personnel.” He compares this
to the replacement of “20
provincial chiefs and 124 district chiefs”
from 1968 to 1971 in South Vietnam.
Is Razziq a competent colonel? Are the
borders of his area of operations really
secured? Is ISAF, with both its military and
civilian components, capable of influencing
his removal if he isn’t doing his job?
Foreign intervention with host national
military and civilian leadership is often met
with accusations of challenging host national
sovereignty. Therefore, it is necessary to
leverage the silent fi nancial power brokers
behind the local power broker. The dukes of
Afghanistan are known only because they
are in the media spotlight, as evidenced
by Razziq being the subject of Matthieu
Aikins’s article in the December 2009
Harper’s Magazine, “The Master of Spin
Boldak.” As the saying goes in Hollywood,
there is no such thing as bad publicity. Due
to his recent stardom, he has been frequently
courted by generals and ambassadors. All
the attention on Razziq means less attention
on the silent power brokers.
No intelligence analysts truly know
the silent financial power brokers behind
them. There isn’t a concerted effort to dig
deeper than the face of corruption. The
military knows the importance of networks:
defeating the improvised explosive devices
(IED) network is almost as important as
defeating the IED itself. Yet, intelligence analysts, especially above the brigade level,
continue to expend a significant amount
of time and energy on anything but the
financial network. Instead, there should be a
concerted effort to identify people who can
be leveraged: silent financial power brokers.
Tactical intelligence assets will in the
foreseeable future ignore financial forensics
but a separate task force or operational
level intelligence asset be dedicated to this
endeavor.
MG Michael T. Flynn’s article, “A
Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant
in Afghanistan,” is having an effect on intelligence analysts above the brigade
combat level going down to the ground for
information. Sadly, the primary source of
population-focused information requested
so far has been “tribal.” A recent Human
Terrain System report warns that “‘tribal
engagement’ in Afghanistan … is based on
an erroneous understanding of the human
terrain,” and, “‘Pashtuns’ motivations for
choosing how to identify and organize
politically-including …‘Tribe’ is only one
potential choice of identity among many,
and not necessarily the one that guides
people’s decision-making.” Another issue
is the insular tendencies of the intelligence
community for classified information on
classified systems. An intelligence analyst
in Ottawa recently requested information
to be sent via Stoneghost, an allied top
secret network (which I had not heard of
until that request). Luckily, most “white”
activity (the Afghan population, economy,
development, and government) are
unclassified and therefore can be shared
through unclassified systems.
NATO and the Afghan government have failed to politically or militarily destroy, undermine, or co-opt the dukes of Afghanistan into submission. It is time to tame them through economic violence by leveraging their silent financial power brokers or shifting them away from their economic and political base. To achieve this effect, there must be a concerted effort in identifying and leveraging the silent supporters through financial forensics by the intelligence community.