A New Model Afghan Army

Anja Manuel and P. W. Singer

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2002

Summary:  Afghanistan's peace remains tenuous. Rival warlords still control separate militias, and distrust of government abounds. Only a national army can secure the peace. Yet the Afghans have been slow to create one, and the international community has not helped much. The United States must jump-start the process before war breaks out again.

Anja Manuel is an Attorney with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. P. W. Singer is Olin Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and Coordinator of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World.

Finally, neither the Taliban nor al Qaeda is a spent force. Few senior leaders of either group have been captured, and both groups still enjoy popular support among many Pashtun nationalists in southern Afghanistan and the tribally administered border regions of Pakistan. With no possibility of inclusion in a future government, these groups can be expected to act as total spoilers, seeking to attack the regime in Kabul whenever and wherever they can. One of the current major security concerns is the possibility of a Tet-like counteroffensive against the government, just when it begins to feel secure.

ROAD TO NOWHERE

Unfortunately, international help in building a new Afghan army has been limited -- and the little offered has thus far been so disorganized that it may only make matters worse. The first effort, led by the UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Kabul, recruited and trained an ethnically balanced unit of 600 soldiers drawn from most of Afghanistan's 33 provinces. But the program is only a stopgap measure. By the time the ISAF withdraws at the end of the year, it will at best have trained a mere 4,000 troops (compared to the tens of thousands that will be needed to provide a minimum level of security). Moreover, the exact lines of authority remain unclear.

The United States, in turn, has said repeatedly that it views the building of a national Afghan army as a priority. Many U.S. officials believe such a force could substitute for a large international peacekeeping presence, which they oppose. Accordingly, the Bush administration submitted to Congress in March a $50 million proposal to train and equip 18,000 Afghan soldiers over 18 months, and U.S. forces began some of the basic training pending congressional approval. But it is unrealistic to expect to build an effective, complete force in such a short time. Even 18,000 troops with only basic training, moreover, will still be insufficient to meet the country's security needs.

An added snag is that U.S. special forces have also begun to train and fund separate "anti-al Qaeda" units, often associated with local warlords, to act as American proxies and seek out al Qaeda fugitives in the Pashtun regions of southern Afghanistan. The formation and operation of these units have not been coordinated with Kabul, and, so far, there are no formal plans to integrate them into the future national army. Yet the higher pay in the U.S. units will continue to attract potential recruits away from any force directed from Kabul -- a fact that has understandably caused some concern among the Afghan leadership.

As a result, the motley Afghan force currently taking shape is wretchedly small, disorganized, and not clearly linked to an established command structure that represents Afghanistan's ethnic diversity. Meanwhile, no coherent plan has emerged to either integrate or demobilize the assorted warlord forces, nor are the various spoilers being dealt with decisively. If things continue in this way, the present dream of a self-reliant army serving the Afghan people seems almost certainly doomed to failure.

PLAN FOR SUCCESS

The ultimate success of Afghan military reintegration depends on the political will of the local parties. This will, however, cannot form in a vacuum. The UN, the United States, Europe, and other interested parties urgently need to move the process along. They can do this through four particular types of intervention: first, by pushing the parties to determine quickly, while a tacit truce exists, what type of national military they need; second, by providing critical financial backing; third, by committing themselves to remain engaged and help create an atmosphere in which integration can succeed; and finally, by carefully coordinating the various military aid efforts so they do not end up working at cross-purposes.

Any civil war leaves unresolved grievances and mutual suspicions that linger long after the fighting has ended. During peace negotiations, therefore, both the warring parties and the international community are often tempted to defer the complex issues associated with military reintegration; they hope that the former adversaries will become more reasonable as tensions dissipate. But avoiding thorny questions in this way is generally a strategic mistake. In Bosnia, Angola, Cambodia, and Kosovo, peace negotiations produced only the general outlines of a new, unified military. In all these cases, the lack of detail has since led to frequent misunderstandings and heated arguments that have either stalled or completely stopped the process of military integration.

By contrast, during South Africa's transition from apartheid, military research groups from the forces that had been opposing and defending apartheid, respectively, spent several months working together to outline their views on a joint military. Political leaders on both sides then used these proposals to create a detailed, mutually satisfactory integration program. The process helped all parties adjust to the impending changes and taught the military leadership how to work together constructively, thus creating role models for the ordinary soldiers. Similarly, the peace agreement that ended Mozambique's civil war in 1992 laid out the size and command structure of a new professional army, as well as a detailed time-line for the demobilization of the former combatants. Although it may not be possible to replicate these processes exactly in Afghanistan, efforts must be made to settle the details of military reunification -- now.