by Lt. Gen. (Ret.) David W. Barno, U.S. Army; commander, Combined Forces Command Afghanistan (2003-2005); director, Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, Natl Defense University. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.
Q: Where do you see Afghanistan fitting into the overall picture in the region?
Well certainly the overall trends in Afghanistan and Pakistan are troubling right now, and I very much see Afghanistan and Pakistan as part of a singular region with a singular set of problems that has to be looked at as really kind of a hyphenated conflict right now. Afghanistan and Pakistan, there’s really no logic in speaking to them without talking about the other one in any conversation I can think of with regards to conflict. In the broader region, I think that there are a number of interesting connections as you look to the economic linkages but more importantly on the military side I think everyone is keenly attuned to the fact that you now have—as the conflict diminishes in Iraq you are seeing a growth of the conflict in Afghanistan. I remember testifying, probably about a year-plus ago, and suggesting that we’re going to see movement from Iraq to Afghanistan of fighters coming back in to open up that second front or increase that second front and it seems like, for good reasons from the sense that they’re under tremendous pressure in Iraq, but I think that they’re very much seeing that in Afghanistan today. And that’s in part responsible for some of the tremendous uptick we’re seeing in violence there.
Q: Will the downward trend in Iraq continue to be linked to the upward trend in Afghanistan?
From the sense of violence, yeah, none of those are irreversible on either side of the equation. But I think that if the military and the political establishment with the Iraqis can consolidate these gains, and I think that’s one of the huge challenges out there that was a problem in Afghanistan over the last few years. But if they can find the ability to consolidate these gains that have been made in Iraq, that those trends in Iraq, those positive trends will continue. And I think that it’s going to take some significant changes in approach in Afghanistan potentially to turn the trends in a positive direction from the negative trend-lines they’re in today.
Q: What kind of significant changes can we make in Afghanistan?
Well, it’s a tough question. I think only part of it is military. I’ve had the chance to testify twice earlier this year, and I said success in Afghanistan equals leadership plus strategy plus resources. Success is meeting our overall objectives, really our regional objectives, in Afghanistan. But the leadership strategy and the resources part is all connected. Resources-wise we look at number of troops, we look at dollars going into development programs, we look at international dollars, Euros, Yen, etc. going in there. The resource aspect of that, maybe aside from the troop part, troubles me less than the strategy and the leadership aspect if it. I think that one of the challenges in Afghanistan, because there are so many nations involved and NATO’s involvement in the military sphere has made this even more complex, is that there are multiple strategies, as opposed to a single unifying strategy, which was probably closer to where we were in 2004 and 2005 when it was still largely a U.S.-Afghan effort with other international players. The dominant players in ‘04 and ’05, when I was there, were clearly the United States and the Afghans, although everyone else played important roles. Today there are so many players, and in some respects, the U.S. involvement, or certainly the centrality of U.S. leadership is in some ways less today then it was three and four years ago because of all the other players. So that’s troubling. I think there has to be a very strong move towards a unified strategy. And NATO has been less than fully successful in achieving that, to be generous. I would argue that the United States has to take a much stronger central leadership role, has to be much more assertive in terms of its equities there: it has the bulk of the troops and a substantial proportion of the dollars. But in some ways its leadership equities are not as strong today, and its voice is not as strong today than it was in the 2004-2005 era.
Q: Is it possible for the United States to do that through NATO?
I think so. I don’t think the United States should be looking for ways to do this without NATO. NATO is part of the fabric of the approach in Afghanistan today. The United States is a primary player in NATO but I think it has to recast its leadership role inside of NATO in ways that give it a stronger role in the country. One of the things I have argued for is that the United States play to its comparative advantages in counterinsurgency warfare and take a much more active role–maybe have primacy in the southern half of Afghanistan, not simply in Regional Command East but across all of southern Afghanistan where most of the conflict is going on. I think the United States could provide major advantage by having, essentially under NATO, military oversight of the whole of southern fight, the counterinsurgency zone as I describe it, while having other elements of NATO, more of the European elements of NATO, focus on the northern half of the country which I characterize more as the stability operations zone. I think that plays to the comparative advantage of the American military and it plays to the comparative advantage, and the political sustainability, of many of the other European members of NATO where, of course, quite a few of them are there today. That doesn’t mean that the Brits and the Canadians shouldn’t be in the south, but I think there should be opportunities for them to play other roles in Afghanistan and perhaps look to a more significant American effort across the southern part of the country.
Q: Is there a widely shared international recognition that things are not going well in Afghanistan?
Well I think as any of the nations look at statistics and the metrics for suicide attacks or violent incidents across the country, for roadside bombs in Afghanistan – one of the ones I look at regularly is how many coalition and American-NATO bombs have been dropped by aircraft in Afghanistan – those numbers are all up fairly significantly even from this period of time last year. My suspicion is, that any nation that is looking at the actual statistical analysis of what’s happening, at least using those fairly simple markers, would have to think that things are not moving in the direction we would like to have them move in.
Q: Do you think that that awareness has translated into willingness to make difficult policy decisions in foreign capitals?
Well that’s a good question. And it very quickly gets to, are the other countries willing to commit more resources to Afghanistan. My personal take is that I think it’s less likely we’re going to see a substantial increase in troop contributions by other NATO countries than we might have wished and we might have even thought a year ago. I don’t think that the military sustainability for growth is there and I don’t think the political sustainability for growth in troop numbers is there. I think the depth of commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan by the United States and by the people of the United States is substantially deeper than it is in many other countries, if for no other reason than the 9/11 attacks originated from Afghanistan and the tribal areas there and Pakistan. Our depth of understanding of why we’re in Afghanistan and the commitment to that is extraordinarily strong and remains strong in the United States. I think that, because of the fact other nations weren’t struck on 9/11, I think that’s much less of a point of commitment to those countries and their depth of commitment because of that is considerably different than the United States.
Q: What do you think are the challenges in dealing with Afghanistan and Pakistan and what ought we be doing differently with Pakistan?
I think the two nations and the conflict, if you will, two conflicts, but really one. are inextricably linked and that this is all a single set of challenges. Part of our difficulty in the past has tended to be that because of the way our government is organized we’ve approached it as a policy approach, to some degree to Afghanistan and to some degree for Pakistan, and have had some challenges in making that a unified policy approach. I think that day is now coming to a close and I actually think we’re beginning to work pretty hard to make this, to the extent it’s possible, a singular set of policies between the two countries. I know there’s some legislation that talks to this on the Hill.
I personally think there’s a lot of value in giving some thought to a Presidential special envoy, or something to that significance, that can get in there on the U.S. side and work this as a Pakistan-U.S., Pakistan-Afghanistan and U.S.-Afghanistan three-sided set of issues. This is clearly a situation in which Afghanistan is not an island, it can’t be treated as a separate entity and the conflict is not contained to Afghanistan.
Much of the genesis of the insurgency and of the fighters is coming out of the tribal areas of Pakistan. Even if things were working perfectly in Afghanistan, there would still be an external dimension that would threaten to upset all the calculations and overturn the entire process. It is going to have to be looked at in a unified respect. There is a military aspect to that, and that’s not to say there should be active military operations there, but the military has to look at how to enable the Pakistan military to be more engaged in this and to work through what’s required, and there have been some steps with that. And, of course, the new Pakistani government is still in the very early stages of finding its footing. There’s some question if the current government is going to stand in its present configuration. So, the political dimension inside of Pakistan itself is troubling.
One final comment on Pakistan. Until the United States can articulate a vision for a U.S.-Pakistani partnership that extends out into the future and is not simply rooted in the current war on terror partnership - unless we can articulate a vision of that partnership 10-15 years from now that doesn’t rely solely on our common interest in the war on terror – then I think the Pakistanis are always going to be suspicious that the United States is simply going to walk away from that part of the world once again. Particularly in light of the new Indian accord between the U.S. and India, they might think that the United States is going to turn wholly to India and abandon Pakistan. We must think through how to come up with a compelling vision of the U.S.-Pakistani partnership that extends beyond the current level of requirements based on the War on Terror.
Q: How much of the situation turns on the evolving relationship between the United States and India?
I do think that the Pakistanis in some ways see this as a zero-sum game between them, India and the United States – that if one benefits the other loses. From my travels out there and talking with a number of people from the region I get the sense that the relationship the United States has now begun to build with India are of very serious concern to the Pakistanis. Again, in part because they don’t see this vision of a relationship beyond the current set of requirements. Some people have argued that the Pakistanis have an interest in this conflict not ending because they view their connection and their partnership with the U.S. as being solely based on this conflict so there’s a disincentive to ending the conflict. We’ve got to think through with the Pakistanis what’s the partnership, what’s this vision look like beyond simply the needs of both sides today in fighting terrorism in the region.
Q: A recent GAO report said that there was little progress in training the Afghan police and army. How much of that is tied to the diffusion of responsibilities between different NATO countries?
When I was first there in late 2003, the primary ownership of the police-training department was the Germans. I believe that came out of the Bonn Process. There were different countries assigned various sectors in the security-sector reform process: the British had counternarcotics; the Italians had the judicial sector; the Germans had the police; the U.S. had the military and the Afghan national army. So, each nation took its own approach and essentially coordinated, to a degree, what it was doing with others. The German approach was fairly limited in terms of the number of Afghan police it was going to touch and the U.S., I think, quickly became involved in looking for ways to add our resources and our capability to police training. Initially that was under the State Department. We made the argument during my final year there that that needed to be moved under some more holistic leadership probably in a similar fashion that was done with the Afghan Ministry of Defense in the Army. Ultimately it did come to the Defense Department and it’s kind of a joint Defense-State program now built into the same military headquarters that’s running the national army and ministry of defense training program. As of probably mid-2005 there’s been a much more robust program to deal with the Afghan police.
Having said that, it appears from a distance, at least, that the police are still suffering some major shortcomings in Afghanistan, not the least of which are the lack of mentors, embedded trainers if you will, to be down there with the police once they receive training, to stay and connect with them, and to keep them connected to the NATO and U.S. military architecture for things like fire-support, if that’s required, or emergency reinforcements and things of that nature. There’s a shortfall I think, if my memory is correct, of well over a thousand police trainers and mentors which have been sought from the European nations, even from NATO and the U.S.. Until the police system overall is dramatically improved I think that the counterinsurgency approach is going to continue to be increasingly difficult because the police are the first line of defense locally against insurgents, criminals, and others that might challenge the central government. That, to this day, has remained one of the most frustrating aspects of the Afghanistan portfolio.
Q: How does that link with the elections that are scheduled to take place next August?
Our center is doing some conferences here, we just finished one two weeks ago in London partnered with RUSI, we have another one starting next week and we’ll do two more in the next 8 months or so to focus attention on the Afghan elections. The election was the main effort of the U.S. military endeavor during the year 2004. We deliberately made it the main effort because it was such a demanding proposition and it required security throughout the country, it required polling places in over 350 districts and 34 provinces in the country at that time. And that same level of effort is going to be required next year within a security environment that’s substantially worse than it was in 2004.
I think there is a perception that the reason we have all the violence now is we’re out in these areas that the Taliban have always owned and this is the first time they are being confronted. Well, in 2004 we facilitated, through military efforts in coordination with the United Nations and the Afghan electoral commission, the opening up of polling places across the entire country in every province and almost every district and encountered next to no opposition out in these areas. So I reject that argument. Something substantially has changed in the security dimension from 2004, when it was essentially an unopposed election, till today where in all likelihood we’re going to see a fairly significant challenge from a security standpoint to that election next year.
Q: Do you think that the mission requires more troops and, if so, how many?
I would agree, and I think all observers would agree, that more troops are needed. I would not be able to put a number on that without getting on the ground and talking to the commanders. I have seen numbers in some speeches as high as 400,000 which was derived from some metric from the Balkans years back. That’s clearly not the number that’s required. But what is required is a closer look at not only what we need in the way of NATO troops, including U.S. troops, but what we need in the way of Afghan National Army troops and Afghan National Army police. All of those go under the mix of collective security forces that are going to be required across Afghanistan. Afghanistan is a country that is almost 50% larger than Iraq, and has four million more people than Iraq has, If you look at just Afghan security forces, they are a fraction of the size of what is being built for Iraq - with the Iraqi national security forces, police and army. I think that’s one of the first places that has to be looked at and I know there are a number of efforts under way to amp up the number of Aghan National Army and perhaps the police as well. But with that, given the insurgency is proving resurgent, I think there is going to be a requirement for additional number of NATO troops and I suspect that a substantial number of them will be American troops.
Q: Did you have a sense when you were on the ground that resources were being diverted from Afghanistan to Iraq? Or that new resources were going to Iraq rather than Afghanistan?
I think there are some interesting statistics you can take a look at, and I’ve been putting together some charts recently tracking violent incidents, roadside explosives, suicide bomb attacks, bombs dropped by coalition airpower, I think I have about five different charts. On every one of those charts there was a relatively flat trend line until you hit the beginning of 2006 when all of those charts went into a 75 degree vertical ascent and then continued up 35-45 degrees, 55-65 degrees since than. There was a knee of the curve that occurred starting at about the end of 2005 in all of these categories. I counted in a couple of places recently the total number of bombs we dropped in Afghanistan during the year 2004, which was the central year I was there, and it was in the neighborhood of 86 total for the year. Last year, they dropped over 3,500 hundred bombs in Afghanistan. So you get a feel of what was going on then versus now. By the spring of 2005, after the Afghan presidential election and in the run up to the parliamentary election, in tactical headquarters in Bagram, we had a chart that said, “How do you know your enemy is defeated?” that one of our staff officers had put together. And we had checked about half the blocks on that chart because we were seeing those things out there in the field: the Taliban was flat down hard by the end of 2004, early 2005. So we were convinced that these guys were not only on their back foot, they were down hard and they were going to have a lot of difficulty getting back up and that all turned around in about 12 months. So you have to ask, “What happened during that time?”
During my tenure there from October 2003 to May 2005 we grew the number of troops in Afghanistan from about 14,000 to, I think our highwater mark was, 21,000 right about the time I was leaving. So we had about a 50 percent growth in the American troops on the ground during that window. So, I wasn’t constrained in troops. I think I did note in that New York Times article a year or so ago that we didn’t see a lot of new stuff coming in, in terms of intelligence capabilities and whatnot. We were clearly, intentionally, the second priority within the theater for things as they became available, and of course the enemy’s situation supported that prioritization as well. The enemy was on a tremendous uptick in Iraq and on a significant downward trend in Afghanistan, so there was a logic behind that. The real question is, what transpired in 2005, perhaps, that caused 2006 to be this knee of the curve year that’s now accelerated into where we are today?
Q: So what did happen?
Two things jumped out at me and I don’t have any evidence to take to court to support this. One of them was that the perception changed about the continuity and the long-term commitment of the United States by the end of 2005. I think that when we announced in the summer of 2005 that we, the United States, were turning over the military effort in Afghanistan to NATO and then at the end of 2005 we announced we were withdrawing 2,500 combat troops. I think that the combination of those two announcements, and a number of other things we were doing, sent a very strong message to our friends and our adversaries alike that the U.S. was in some effect disengaging. That was not our intent, that is not what we were really doing, but that I think that was read very clearly by the Pakistanis, by the Afghans, by the Taliban, by al Qaeda and by other neighboring states – that the United States was in some sense divesting itself from the Afghan effort or even reducing further its priorities there. I don’t think we intended to send that message, but that was what I sensed was received. I think the Taliban in particular saw the advent of NATO in 2006 as an opportunity to fracture the alliance at the very beginning of its time there and cause the political will behind the alliance to collapse. Which they failed at. But I think you can trace a lot of the ascent in violence and the resurgence of the Taliban to that era.
Q: Do you see linkages between the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan?
I do think, from what I’m reading at least in reports, that there’s an increase in foreign fighters in Afghanistan. Some of the commanders there are indicating that there’s some reason to believe that elements of them have come from Iraq. I’ve very much felt that this foreign fighter grouping, I don’t know what we would call it, this organization of foreign fighters, has mobility back and forth between the two theaters, between the Iraq fight and between the Afghanistan fight. I think they will move back and forth where they find opportunities and where they’re pressured out of one, and I think that’s clearly what is happening today. They’re not all necessarily hardcore, card-carrying al Qaeda members. But they’re all, I think, in concert with the general objectives of al Qaeda in the region, much more so than perhaps some of the localized groups there. So when we’re talking about anyone who’s not from that part of the world – in this case Arabs, this case Chechens, Uzbeks – we’ve seen handfuls of other fighters from other countries that kind of move back and forth. I think there are indications, at least that I’m reading about, that these folks have begun to move back and forth and certainly have shifted some of their capabilities, under tremendous pressure in Iraq, and moved into an area where they can continue that fight in Afghanistan. But again, I don’t have any hard facts to support that other than what I’m reading in various news reports.
Q: Is there a potential positive role for Iran?
Well Iran can always play a positive role and they can always play a negative role. It’s never entirely clear what their choices are going to be and if they are not trying to do both at once, they are immensely capable of being bifurcated on any given policy. I don’t know where they see this. During my tenure in Afghanistan, and I think it’s been commonly reported, and certainly during the Bonn process, the Iranians were playing a relatively positive role. They played quite a positive role during the Bonn Process in terms of being a regional neighbor that was helpful. They certainly have tremendous economic interests in western Afghanistan; they are very influential in that part of the country. They have great opportunities there to be positive neighbors or negative neighbors, it remains to be seen which path they will take.
Q: Based on your experience on the ground, how good are we at implementing, and how much can we affect change the choices people make with our economic programs?
I think, we the United States, have a capacity problem in our ability to generate that impact out in foreign countries, especially in conflict nations. This is not a post-conflict reconstruction effort, this is an in-conflict reconstruction effort, as Jean Arnault, who used to head the UN effort, and I talked about at length. We’ve got to be able to put people out in as areas where there are hostilities going on and try and do some of these things. And we’re very thinly manned to do that and not structured necessarily in the U.S. to do that. That’s not what the U.S. Department of Agriculture was designed to do, needless to say. But Afghanistan is at root an agricultural country and the rebuilding of the agricultural sector is an essential if you’re going to have a functioning future economy, and certainly one that’s not wedded solely to narcotics. I think that that’s got to be an extraordinarily important line of effort for our undertakings there. Of course, the international community has played largely in this and they’ve had a lot of ownership of that and have had very limited success. So I think we’ve got to think through ways to make that more effective. For a good bit of my time there, as an analogue, the entire State Department oversight of the police training program and the entire State Department oversight of the counter-narcotics program was performed by a single person at the U.S. embassy. That was the governmental oversight. Now, that’s better today obviously. But one person trying to do two programs that were in the hundreds of millions of dollars, that’s kind of an exemplar of the problems we’re having in terms of generating civilian capacity to do these things. We have a provincial reconstruction team out East now that’s comprised of Missouri National Guardsmen who are farmers and agricultural specialists who we purposely designed to be able to do that, but they are military guys. That doesn’t exist in the southern part of the country or the western part of the country and that type of support is desperately needed everywhere. I think we’re going to have to think through with our international partners how do we do this effectively in an environment where, again, the security situation is a lot tougher today than its was even three or four years ago.
Q: Is there anything else you think we should we have asked?
I think the only other piece I would harp on again is, there’s a requirement for a unified strategy that includes the military within an overarching strategy for Afghanistan. I subscribe to the idea that in a successful counterinsurgency only 20 percent, give or take, is the military component. The other 80 percent is the economic component, the political component, the education component, the infrastructure component, etc. We have been singularly unable to pull together all of the disparate players to get on the same map sheet with the same mile markers for that strategy. That is an essential as we move forward if we’re going to make the whole more than the sum of the parts Today, in some ways the whole in Afghanistan with all the international actors is less than the sum of the parts. We need to move it to where the whole is more than the sum of the parts and create some synergy. We have yet been able to get across that threshold.
