tom mohan's List: Middle Eastern Studies

• colloquially known as "AfPak," that plan is notable for its embrace of two contemporary realities
• The first is a recognition that Afghanistan, in modern economic parlance, is simply "too big to fail."
• The second is an understanding that Afghanistan is, at its core, a derivative problem. Much of the instability that exists there today is a function of radicalism nurtured in neighboring Pakistan.
• U.S. military officials have warned that - unless it marshals a serious counterinsurgency strategy in short order - the government of President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad could fall, putting the safety and security of the country's nuclear arsenal at risk.
• That is why the Obama administration's plan for Afghanistan focuses heavily on Pakistan as well, envisioning robust military assistance and an investment of $7.5 billion over the next five years on "schools, roads and hospitals" as a way of providing a moderate local alternative to the Taliban's corrosive ideology.
• What is already exceedingly clear, however, is that Afghanistan has become Barack Obama's war just as surely as Iraq was George W. Bush's

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• To succeed, we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban’s gains and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government. . . . Afghanistan has an elected government, but it is undermined by corruption and has difficulty delivering basic services to its people. The economy is undercut by a booming narcotics trade that encourages criminality and funds the insurgency. The people of Afghanistan seek the promise of a better future. Yet once again, they have seen the hope of a new day darkened by violence and uncertainty.
• There are four major threats to securing Afghanistan’s future. First, Al Qaeda is a renewed force moving fluidly between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Second, an expanded, well resourced, and multifaceted insurgency presents a continual threat to Afghan and international actors. Third, a narcotics production, processing, and distribution network fuels corruption and violence and is becoming concentrated in the hands of a few nefarious individuals. And fourth, poor governance, underpinning all these problems, is now so entrenched that many organs of government are seen as the instruments of corruption, not of legitimacy and the rule of law.
• A coherent approach to state-building can produce a capable and accountable Afghan government.
• First-order functions include the rule of law, to ensure that the Afghan state can control its territory through the use of effective security and police services that use force within a clear space defined by strict rules. They also include public finance, to ensure that resources, both internal and external, are channeled effectively and spent accountably at every level of government using robust national accountability systems.
• Second-order functions include market-building, creating sustainable jobs that can draw in unemployed youth who provide the basis for the insurgency and the narcotics industry. This will involve developing key initiatives in support of agriculture, through a bold initiative that works from market access backward through value chains, supply chains, knowledge, and infrastructure and uses trade concessions and innovative financial tools to ensure sustainable and profitable production.
• Third-order functions include a focus on infrastructure, to consolidate territory, harness space, and release market forces using domestic and regional capabilities to build key roads, develop alternative energies and capitalize on new technologies while focusing on social policy, through rural programs that allow for generating wealth and developing social and institutional capital from the bottom up.
• Fourth-order functions include public borrowing, to ensure that external resources can be channeled effectively in support of the budget as the central instrument of policy. They demand effective management of public, cultural, environmental, and innovation assets through credible contracting and regulation and the formalization of property rights.
• These institution-building processes can be justified strategically because they build on the successful state-building efforts under way in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2005 and take advantage of the readiness of the Afghan people for good governance, the rule of law, and an end to violence and poverty.
• The counter-insurgency (COIN) approach that is now beginning to guide American military actions in Afghanistan, as it has been in Iraq, also emphasizes a coherent and coordinated approach to good government to win public trust—to use force only when necessary
• • Ensuring a level playing field for the presidential elections in August 2009 and supporting a process through which Afghans can truly engage in constructive debate about the country’s future.
   
  • Developing a coherent international strategy, using the COIN manual as a basis for military operations and a Marshall Plan approach to simplify the actions of the broader international community.
   
  • Preparing new national programs with implementation plans in place for immediate roll-out by the new Afghan administration.
   
  • Using the National Solidarity Program, a community-level development program, as a platform for rural enterprise and wealth generation.
   
  • Focusing on eight model provinces across the country, which provide a demonstration and multiplier effect for the rest of Afghanistan to underpin a slowly broadening area of good governance.
• The situation in Afghanistan is difficult, but by no means impossible,
• • The potential value of Afghanistan’s opium, morphine, and heroin exports was $3.4 billion, a third of the estimated GDP of $10.2 billion in 2008.
   
  • Initial U.S. support to Afghanistan was $300 million a year.
   
  • Afghanistan is at the center of 3 billion potential consumers in China, India, the Gulf, and Europe.
• Rural incomes per capita have to increase from $1 a day to at least $4 a day, the tipping point for opium production to become unprofitable.

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