NATION BUILDING IN AFGHANISTAN

							NATION BUILDING IN AFGHANISTAN

S. F. Starr,
sfstarr@jhu.edu


My argument goes back to the debates at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and the
Federalist Papers:

For the development of healthy participatory institutions, a market economy, and
voluntary associations, there must first be national governmental institutions that enjoy
legitimacy among the population of all regions. The historic compromise that was oiled
by the agreement to place the national capital here on the Potomac provides the key to
successful nation building in Afghan today.

In Afghanistan nation building is not at issue: the Afghan nation has showed surprising
strength, as reflected in the total absence of calls for secession or use of the threat of
secession as a negotiating ploy.

The question, rather, concerns the state and who will control it.
This relates in turn to the crucial issue of legitimacy and its sources.

I would argue that, until recently, the Karzai government has been illegitimate and has
been perceived as such by large segments of the population.

This was due to the pre-Bonn power grab by the Northern Alliance and its allies, which
led to the exclusion of most other groups from the core staffs of all principal ministries.

 Rather than face this reality, the international community chose to consider the problem
manageable over time. The leisurely pace of the development of a national army reflects
this naïve conviction.

Germany’s foreign minister Fischer, for example, thought Afghanistan’s problems could
be fixed merely with a dose of German (i.e. American)-style federalism.

Missing was an appreciation of the fact that the writ of the resulting central government
would extend only to those areas whence its key staff were drawn, i.e., the northeast and
north-central regions, and not the south, center, south-east, or north-west..

The fact that the Kabul government as perceived as illegitimate in these areas conferred a
certain legitimacy by default on kinship- and client-based local leaders and some 10-15
warlords, who therefore set up independent security systems (with some 100,000
militiamen) and provided what few services they could.

The resulting chaos had important consequences:


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       1) It undermined the work of 2,000 national and international NGOs, most of
          which were dedicated to poverty reduction, education, etc.

       2) Worse, it placed them in conflict with the central government, which, they
          correctly judged, was not perceived as representing or serving the populations
          among whom they worked.

       3) At the same time, the gross underdevelopment of governmental institutions at
          the local level (police, courts, tax collection, human services) meant that the
          few ill-paid and unqualified local civil servants resented the presence of well-
          paid foreigners or returnees in their midst.

       4) The fact that neither governmental programs such as USAID, CIDA, etc., nor
          international NGOs devoted any attention to building local governmental
          institutions further exacerbated the above problems.

       5) The alienation of local civil servants and populations in much of the country
          meant that these groups actively undermined coalition efforts to capture bin
          Laden and destroy the remains of al Queda.

In spite of these fundamental problems, all arising from the Karzai government’s
fundamental “birth defect,” much was accomplished between 2001 and 2003.
Accomplishments include the introduction of a new currency, macroeconomic
stabilization, the construction of some 700 schools, the introduction of new text books,
the removal of a million mines, etc.

Nonetheless, by the autumn 2003 the policy that undervalued the importance of achieving
a perception of legitimacy throughout the country and that neglected the importance of
governance at the local and regional level, had clearly failed.

       Except for the presidency, the government was largely controlled by Tajiks,
              northerners, and their few allies.

       The government’s writ was not being extended into new regions.

       Others, notably Pashtuns and Hazaras, still felt excluded.

       Warlords continued to take advantage of this situation.

       Even the new “national army” was being undermined by warlord-based clientage
              groups in its midst.

       The refusal of many regions to turn over taxes, the absence of local police and
              other institutions, etc., hindered economic recovery. For example, local




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               civil servants were not available to define property rights of 2 ½ million
               returning refugees.

       NGOs came to view the central government as hostile, which in turn became self-
            fulfilling. As recently as last week (April 2004) Mohammad Ramezan,
            Minister for Planning, declared in Berlin,

                              “it would heal no wounds of our war-battered country if the
                              [international aid] money was given to non-governmental
                              organizations instead of the Afghan government.”

To repeat, the shortcomings of nation building in Afghanistan between autumn 2001 and
autumn 2003 were due to two related issues: the failure at the outset to address the issue
of legitimacy and disinterest in, and even coolness to, the role of governmental
institutions at the regional and local levels.

There are parallels between this situation and what prevailed in Vietnam, the role of the
12 soon to be 16) provincial reconstruction teams in Afghanistan recalling the hamlet
development program in Vietnam. Both were in many respects well conceived but both
were doomed so long as fundamental problems of legitimacy remained unaddressed.

Over the past six months, with virtually no publicity, a radically different approach has
been adopted:

This approach consists of :

       1) Balancing the representation of personnel from all regions in the staffs of
             central ministries. In practice, this has meant, among other measures,
             imposing three new non-Tajik deputies on Minister of Defense Fahim.

       2) Coupled with the above measure, using the power of the Ministry of Internal
            Affairs to remove half of the governors and three quarters of the local
            police chiefs, replacing them with people ready to cooperate with Kabul.

       3) Pressuring warlords to make deals with the Kabul government as a condition
             of further cooperation with the US military. Such deals involve
             disarmament and the turning over of tax receipts to Kabul.

       4) A new emphasis on training and upgrading local civil servants, as evidenced
             by the inclusion of a proposed Civil Service Academy in the 2005 budget
             allocation for Afghanistan.

These new policies are advancing steadily. In the short term they have given rise to
concerted rear-guard actions by warlords Ismail Khan in Heart and Abdul Rashid Khan in
Maymana in Faryad Province, but neither of these appears likely to succeed in the long
run. Interestingly, both reactions arose in response to initiatives from Kabul and both



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warlords have gone out of their way, even as they resist, to acknowledge Kabul’s
supremacy in their area, even in the area of tax collection. Like Lee before Appomatox,
they are fighting over the end game.

Conclusion:

Non-governmental organizations are important, but as Madison said of his native Orange
County, Virginia, their efficacy depends on the existence of a legitimate national
government and of viable governmental institutions at the local level. To attempt to use
the former to build the latter is to build a house from the roof down. It won’t work.
The same can be said of efforts at poverty reduction and economic development.

In the end, the lesson of Afghanistan for nation building is to remind us that however
minimal a state we may wish, it must be perceived as legitimate if it is to function
nationally, and until it functions effectively at the regional and local level it will be
unable to provide the necessary framework in which private economic endeavor and
voluntary initiatives can go forward.

Afghans have voted for a unified state and against federalism, let alone separatism. They
have supported a strong (perhaps too strong) executive. Neither will be achieved without
first providing regional and ethnic balance in the staffing of core governmental offices in
Kabul and elsewhere and and then providing the support and training necessary for local
administrators to carry out their work without succumbing to corruption.

The latter in particular requires money. It would have helped if, at the recent Berlin
conference, Germany would have pledged more than $288 million (versus $569 by
Britain), if France had pledged more than a meager $37 million (vs,. $2.9 billion by the
United States), or if Russia had pledged even a penny.

But the money is a means to an end and not the end itself. The determining factor
remains the commitment of the international community to the establishment of balanced
institutions in the center that inspire perceptions of legitimacy among the population at
large, and the creation of functioning state institutions at the regional and local levels. In
other words, if nation building is to succeed at all, it must proceed on the back of state
building.

This is now official US policy, fully accepted by both the State Department and
Pentagon. The first fruits of this new direction can already be detected. The way forward
will be difficult. But it appears that finally, two years after destroying the Taliban
government, the United States government is finally “getting it right.”




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