A Dangerous Backslide
Age-old problems-and a new Taliban surge-are dragging the Afghans down
Another source of contention is concern among ISAF officials that "there is still too much focus on kinetic operations," according to a senior Pentagon official-military speak for too many sticks, not enough carrots. The military is now rushing in emergency aid for residents of villages affected by Operation Medusa. "It's important that we understand that the way ahead in Afghanistan is to link any successful operation with visible, tangible demonstration of aid and relief available to the local population," said Jones shortly after the two-week offensive concluded last month. He added last week that NATO's job is often to "harmonize" the aftermath of military strikes with rebuilding. "You could call that cleaning up the mess," added a senior State Department official.
But soldiers note, too, that the capacity for construction is limited by lack of security. For their part, soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division in the eastern city of Jalalabad build schools and battle Taliban forces moving across the porous 1,500-mile-long border with Pakistan. In keeping with their roots as the division that once traversed the mountains of Italy on skis, soldiers departing Fort Drum, N.Y., got lessons in how to pack mules, too, from the Department of the Interior. But despite the preparation, they have encountered some considerable challenges. Climbing to elevations of 13,000 feet, carrying 70 pounds of equipment for days "is a shocker" even for troops in peak health, says Sgt. Maj. Jimmy Carabello.
Troops have also found that reconstruction is often tough without local knowledge. Some soldiers report that upon learning a school was burned down, they assumed it was the Taliban, only to learn that it was a tribal elder, upset that he had not been consulted on the use of his land. The key, says Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, is convincing the locals that they will not be abandoned. Troops recognize the risk that once they leave, people can be killed for cooperating, says Freakley, who is commanding general of both the 10th Mountain Division and Combined Joint Task Force 76, responsible for reconstruction in the south and east.
But as they clear villages of Taliban, Freakley and others remain concerned about how to hold such vast territory without a viable local security force. The problem, Freakley says, is "generating local police that aren't corrupt." That's no easy feat, notes Rubin, when the Ministry of the Interior "is the most corrupt institution in the country, and it's utterly penetrated."
And police can do very little without being backed by judicial reform. U.S. State Department representatives are beginning a push to establish courts that integrate local tribal laws into a national judicial system as an antidote to the Taliban courts and criminal networks that have replaced the state as primary arbiters of law and order. Coalition officials are also working to establish an "auxiliary" police force that they hope will be a bridge between the Afghan National Police and local tribal elders-and in the process discourage the formation of private militias.
Jones advocates increasing pay, too, for government prosecutors, who currently earn $65 a month (interpreters for U.S. forces are paid $650). ISAF troops in the poppy center of Helmand, a province southwest of Kandahar, have had to step up economic incentives to match those offered by the Taliban, who pay part-time fighters between $12 and $14 a day, triple the $4 a day they make in the Afghan national Army.
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