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The Need for Strategic Focus, Transparency and Credibility

By Anthony H. Cordesman

Military Progress is only one of the tests that the US and ISAF must meet to accomplish a successful transition in Afghanistan – even on the basis of minimal security and stability or Afghan “good enough:”

• The Afghan civil government must have enough public support and provide enough services to win popular support once outside military and aid programs largely depart.

Afghanistan’s de facto system of governance is a politically driven “hybrid” order made up of shifting links among many different formal, informal, and illicit actors, networks, and institutions. Because its central government does not have the capacity to govern through its extremely centralized system and will not have that capacity for at least a generation, it will need to share the burden of stabilizing and governing the country with other governance and political actors. Alone, those other actors will not have the capacity to keep Afghanistan together either.

The economics of Afghanistan are only one aspect of the challenges posed by US, allied, and Afghan efforts to accomplish a successful transition. There are many reasons that transition will either fail or be determined by Afghanistan’s internal dynamics and the role of regional states regardless of what the US, Europe, and other aid donors do:

• The weakness and corruption of Afghan governance mixed with growing de facto power of regional and ethnic power brokers.

By Nick Langton and Sagar Prasai

Author: Haim Malka