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.

Regrettably, the international community and the Afghan leadership have not heeded history's lessons. As of this writing, only a single, one-day meeting had taken place among all the major parties to negotiate the future of the Afghan armed forces. Although the gathering of warlords on March 6 brought patriotic speeches proclaiming each faction's good intentions, it did not answer any of the fundamental questions.

These questions -- the military's role, command structure, and force size, as well as the demobilization of the various standing forces -- should be addressed immediately in formal negotiations involving all the Afghan parties. These all-important meetings could be mediated by the UN as a continuation of the Bonn agreements that brought the interim government into being. Although the international community cannot ultimately control this process, it should use its lobbying power, including promises of aid, to shape opinions and induce the parties to reach agreement on fundamental issues.

Even after these meetings conclude, however, the job is far from complete. Outsiders can play an important role in generating trust among former enemies and strengthening their overall commitment to the peace process. Too often, outside powers squander these opportunities by promising too much and then failing to deliver, or by allowing their own disagreements to undermine compliance.

Financial assistance is a prime example. At a donors' conference in Tokyo in December, the assembled governments completely ignored the need to fund an integrated Afghan army. A follow-up conference in Geneva in April did yield pledges of $235 million for this cause, but few of the funds have materialized. Yet lack of security is the major source of instability and human rights violations in postconflict situations. Only "fixing" the security sector can generate the confidence necessary to complete the peace process. Adequate, timely funding, with its distribution monitored by the international community to minimize corruption and waste, is required.

As part of the Afghan aid package being debated in Congress, the United States should double its proposed military assistance with an initial, immediate grant of another $50 million (for a total of $100 million, the same amount spent by the United States on a similar program to train and equip the Bosnian army). At the same time, Washington needs to call on other countries to follow through on their pledges and seek to involve U.S. allies in the Islamic world in the process. All the international pledges should be centralized in a fund administered by a joint military commission composed of Afghan parties and members of the donor community, to ensure that the money is properly managed and that neighboring states do not use their gifts of aid to foment dissent.

The required amounts may be small in comparison to the $17 billion spent on Operation Enduring Freedom by mid-May, but they could determine its ultimate legacy. Outside assistance is not only needed to solidify the future of the Afghan army, and with it the Afghan state, but it also offers an excellent insurance policy against the country's ever harboring terrorists again. Furthermore, it provides a concrete example to the Islamic world that the United States does not abandon moderate Muslim regimes that stand with it against terrorism.

Aid money will be ineffective, however, if the peace process does not win the support of the Afghans themselves. It will be much more difficult to sustain a peace agreement, no matter how well thought out or well funded, if no outside enforcement mechanism exists to check spoilers and arbitrate disputes. In Bosnia, for example, the presence of an international military force has been absolutely critical to keeping potential spoilers in line and monitoring compliance with the Dayton accord.

Yet the extended deployment in Bosnia has become political ammunition for those opposed to expanding the ISAF beyond Kabul. Several senior U.S. officials have been adamant on this point, arguing that Afghan security is best handled by a new, national Afghan army. Unfortunately, that arrangement leaves a dangerous gap in time: recruiting, training, and equipping an army capable of providing real security will take several years. In fact, expanding the peacekeeping force could even speed up the creation of an Afghan army. The peacekeeping forces in a number of countries, including Bosnia, have acted as valuable stabilizers and training partners for young local armies. On this evidence, many argue that a wider international force presence is exactly what is needed to convince local warlords to cooperate.

But with the expansion of the ISAF now seemingly ruled out, the United States must consider stopgap measures to bolster Afghanistan's security -- beyond just hunting down the Taliban and al Qaeda. The Pentagon should continue posting advisers with local warlord forces and should sanction air strikes against any greedy spoilers who take up arms to disrupt the peace or challenge the government. In early May, for example, the CIA sent an unmanned spy plane to kill Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, leader of a hard-line Islamic group and a former warlord who was reportedly planning attacks against the Karzai administration and U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The mission to kill him may have failed, but the right message was sent.

Finally, the international community must better coordinate its presently disparate military training programs. Foreign military educators can help former adversaries overcome their mutual distrust, teach responsible civil-military relations, and instill a professional ethic in Afghan soldiers, many of whom have received no formal training. The limited steps taken by the ISAF and the United States toward these goals are positive -- but they also contain seeds of trouble. The ISAF and the U.S. forces must coordinate their army training programs both with each other and, most important, with the formation of anti-al Qaeda strike forces in the south. To avoid these local units' adding to the rogue armed forces that pervade Afghanistan, the strike forces -- like the U.S.- and ISAF-trained battalions -- should be brought under the command of the Afghan government as soon as possible.