What to do about Afghanistan? That's a top priority for the Obama Administration. The Senate foreign relations committee today put together a panel of experts to address the question. And The World's Matthew Bell listened in.
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MARCO WERMAN: I'm Marco Werman. This is The World. There's widespread agreement that the war in Afghanistan is not going well. The Pentagon is preparing to send 30,000 more US troops and is looking to its NATO allies to increase their commitment to the fight. The Obama administration is conducting a policy review to determine the best way forward. The Senate Foreign Relations committee is part of the effort, and today it brought in a panel of experts to describe the situation in Afghanistan. The World's Matthew Bell listened in.
MATTHEW BELL: Everyone on the panel agrees that the situation in Afghanistan is dire, and one thing they all mentioned was the problem of governance.
ASHRAF GHANI: The challenge in Afghanistan is not the strength of the insurgency but the weakness of governance.
BELL: Ashraf Ghani was Finance Minister in Afghanistan from 2002 to 2004. Weakness of governance includes the inability to stamp out rampant corruption by officials. Sarah Chayes has been doing aid work in Khandahar since 2002. She says people there actually miss the stability that the Taliban brought to their lives.
SARAH CHAYES: To say that the feeling of the Afghan population toward their government is one of losing trust or credibility is a little bit of an understatement. I'd say we're reaching at least in the south, a situation of rage.
BELL: Chayes gave a couple of examples. One of her friends, she said, was recently beaten by police officers when he refused to pay a bribe at a checkpoint. Chayes said even the simplest activities can turn into marathons.
CHAYES: To pay your electricity bill, you have to go to eight different desks in two different buildings and you have to pay bribes in order to have the privilege of paying your electricity bill. Now, for that “privilege,†you receive approximately 4 to 5 hours electricity every two to three days in Kandahar, seven and a half years after the US intervention.
BELL: The former Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani, said the US needs to shift its focus from chasing down terrorists to pursuing a comprehensive strategy of counter-insurgency and nation-building.
GHANI: The key action that is emerging and is needed regarding the use of force and the use of resources is how to turn US and international intervention into catalysts of building institutions of good governance in Afghanistan.
BELL: Ghani says these efforts have long been hampered by a lack of planning in Washington.
GHANI: The problem has been that long-term objectives have been formulated that require 20 or 30 years of realization, but the approach has always been 6 months -- in terms of funding, in terms of commitment, in terms of change of personnel.
BELL: The challenge for the Obama administration in Afghanistan is that so much needs to be accomplished in so little time. David Kilcullen is a retired Australian military officer and a counterinsurgency advisor at the US State Department.
DAVID KILCULLEN: This year we have a crisis in Afghanistan. We're on the brink of failure. Violence is up. Narcotics production is up dramatically. Government legitimacy is collapsing. Food and water are also critically short. The insurgency's spreading, it's getting worse. And the Afghan presidential elections, which are now scheduled for August, which is the peak of the fighting season, are going to bring all of that to a head.
BELL: Kilcullen said the Obama administration will have to make some hard choices in Afghanistan. Given the economic crisis, Washington might not be able to afford the kind of comprehensive and expensive approach that would bring the best chances of success. On the other hand, he said, paring down the US commitment in Afghanistan almost certainly means failure. For The World, I'm Matthew Bell.
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