FEB 22, 2016
A previous Burke Chair report has addressed the fact that it has now been a year since U.S. and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) combat forces formally left Afghanistan. It has also addressed the fact that a wide range of indicators warn that the Afghan government and Afghan forces are losing at many levels: politics, governance, economics, security, and popular support.
This report has been updated to include a wide range of additional indicators. This expanded overview of key data and metrics is available in a report available on the CSIS website entitled Afghanistan: The Uncertain Impact of a Year of Transition is available athttp://csis.org/files/publication/160211_afghanistan_failed_state_Wars.pdf.
This report also reflects the fact that the Obama administration is revising its plans for Afghanistan, extending the military train and assist mission from a planned end in 2016 to well beyond 2017, and gradually adapting the size and nature of U.S. military efforts in Afghanistan to reflect the fact that the various threats to the Afghan government and Afghan forces are gaining in military terms and in their political presence, control, and influence.
The trends shaping the war in Afghanistan are complex, and involve the civil dimension as much as the military one. They go far beyond the tactical issues that are the focus of many studies and media reports. Even with the additional data in the new Burke Chair report, it is still impossible to put all of the key variables in their proper context. There are many areas where reliable data and summary metrics are not available, or where summary maps, graph, and charts do more to reveal key analytic and policy differences than some clear conclusion about the course of the conflict and the outcome of the deep political, governance, and economic problems that divide the Afghan civil sector.
There is, however, enough work by the Resolute Support Mission, the Afghan and other governments, international institutions like the United Nations and the World Bank, various think tanks and NGOs, and media sources to illustrate both the key trends in post-Transition Afghanistan and many of the key differences in estimates of what has happened since most allied combat force were withdrawn in the course of 2014.
There Is Still No Meaningful U.S. Strategy for Afghanistan
Some of the data reflect more positive trends than the previous report, but the differences are limited. One key problem is that the United States seems to be focusing on highly uncertain peace negotiations that may well simply become a forum the Taliban uses to challenge the Afghan government and for visibility exercises, as cases like Nepal, Cambodia, and Syria have demonstrated, politics can become a form of war by other means.
Press reports now indicate that the Obama Administration still has no clear strategy that can compensate for the divisions and weaknesses in the Afghan government and Afghan forces. It has slowly extended the time it plans to keep its current military mission in country, and seems to be committed to some use of U.S. counterterrorism forces and airpower in combat. It has never, however, clearly shifted from a focus on withdrawal to one based on the real-world conditions in Afghanistan and the region. It has never declared any credible overall strategy for dealing with the Taliban and other hostile elements that make up the insurgent threat to the government.
Simply extending the present train and assist mission without any net assessment of the limits imposed by the fact that it cannot even cover every Afghan corps – much less directly support Afghan major combat units – or the potential need for U.S. combat airpower – has not been a real world strategy. It at best may end in being little more than a way of passing responsibility on to the next administration in the form of a legacy that would become a virtual “poison pill.”
The latest Department of Defense (DoD) 1225 report on the war makes this all too clear. It is entitled Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan and was issued in December 2015. The data generally cover 2015 only through the end of October, but this includes the key fighting seasons. (Seehttp://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/1225_Report_Dec_2015_-_F... )
This DoD report provides a frank and useful summary of many of the tactical military problems in the Afghan government and Afghan forces. It makes it clear that the Afghan forces were not ready for the withdrawal of U.S. and other ISAF combat forces at the tactical level, that the divisions in the Afghan government since the 2014 presidential election have had a critical impact in weakening the Afghan military effort, and that the Taliban and other insurgents are making serious gains.
The Department of Defense report also makes it clear, however, that there is no real U.S. strategy for Afghanistan. The report does not describe any plan to try to correct the problems in the Afghan forces, merely ongoing programs and efforts. It also only focuses on the tactical dimension: fighting the insurgents rather than addressing the broader political-military effort necessary to defeat them.
The report also fails to address the problems in reducing Taliban and other threat areas of influence, and in ending their growing ability to exploit the political and other failures of the Afghan government. In fact, it repeats one of the most consistent problems and failures in U.S. warfighting since Vietnam: A focus on tactical outcomes to the exclusion of the political, ideological, and civil actions of the insurgents. It also lacks any net assessment of the failures in the host country governance and security effort that now enable the Taliban and other insurgents to survive, expand their influence, and move toward victory. As such, the report has value but fails to describe critical aspects of the security situation or present a credible strategy for the future.
There is, however, at least a military report. There is no such United States government report on the civil dimension. Unlike the pre-Transition 1230 reports to Congress, the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have no declared strategy at all, do not report on developments, and issue little more than public relations statements and empty generalities. While the current Department of Defense 1225 report may use the word “stability” in its title, it does not address any aspect of stability, and no other U.S. government report shows any indication that there is a broader strategy for the war.
The closest thing to a combined civil-military report is the work of the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, whose Quarterly Reports provide a good overview of many aspects of both U.S. and Afghan activity, but whose mission focuses on the effectiveness and integrity of past and current efforts rather than future plans and strategy. (seehttp://www.globalsecurity.org/jhtml/jframe.html#http://www.globalsecurit... . )
There Is No Real Afghan Strategy for Afghanistan
In fairness, the primary failures are not American. The United States does not have primary responsibility for Afghanistan. That responsibility lies with the Afghans. The near paralysis in many aspects of Afghan leadership and governance under Karzai, and then under Afghanistan’s present divided government, have made Afghan failures all too clear as well as the fact that far too many Afghan leaders could not put the interest of their nation before themselves, their tribe, their faction, or their ethnic group.
President Ashraf Ghani has made attempts to correct this situation, as has Abdullah Abdullah, his uncertain partner and Afghanistan’s CEO. Announcing reform plans and an October 2016 election, however, do not mean any serious effort has taken place to implement reform or that there is an effective move toward resolving the problems in elections and a divided leadership. It does not mean that the host of Afghan power brokers, warlords, and corrupt leaders that have done so much in the past to weaken the nation have made any serious effort to move toward unity and serve Afghanistan’s people.
If anything, former president Hamid Karzai is still encouraging Afghanistan’s divisions and problems, and he has more than ample company at every level of politics and governance from Kabulstan down through the provincial level to the district level. No matter how unformed the U.S. effort may now be, it is unclear that any outside effort can help a nation that cannot help itself.
“Losing” Does Not Mean “Lost”
It is important to note, however, that the growing problems that have emerged since “Transition” do not mean that the war is lost or that Afghanistan cannot achieve both security and stability. The margin of Taliban and other insurgent gains is limited, and the Taliban, ISIS, and other rebel forces have major limitations of their own and are divided. The lack of any coherent U.S. strategy and effective Afghan leadership may well still be correctable.
At the same time, the wide range of problems and issues that emerge from the various maps, graphs, and data shown in Afghanistan: The Uncertain Impact of a Year of Transition clearly reflect the fact that Afghanistan remains one of the least-developed countries in the world and that much of the reporting on its “progress” in politics, governance, economics, human development, and unity before the withdrawal of U.S. and ISAF forces—and most civil aid efforts—was little more than dishonest political spin.
Afghanistan did make some real progress in some areas during 2002–2014 by Afghan standards, and President Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah seem to have the potential capability to lead. If they and other Afghan figures can become a more effective government, they may still succeed. The Taliban and other insurgent movements are not sufficiently strong, popular, and united to defeat a better organized and focused Afghan and U.S. effort—particularly if other nations can be brought into a better structure for providing outside aid.
Similarly, limited additions in terms of U.S. and allied airpower, and providing an expanded train and assist mission that reaches down to the major combat unit level, might still make a decisive difference at an affordable cost and with limited casualties. Focusing on meeting immediate economic and social needs, rather than abstract development goals and project aid, might meet Afghan expectations if Afghan leaders could focus more on the needs of their people rather than themselves.
Analyzing the Afghan Conflict
That said, making a reliable assessment of all of the challenges now posed by the Afghan conflict is not easy in spite of the wide range of different material presented inAfghanistan: The Uncertain Impact of a Year of Transition. As the report shows, the moment different sources are compared, their differences and uncertainties become all too clear. The Afghan conflict has become steadily more complex with time and steadily more difficult to assess.
The process of Transition during 2014 withdrew outside combat forces, and many aid, consular, and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) had to withdraw in the process. As a result, the United States and its allies have lost access to many sources in the field, have cut back sharply on official reporting, and have sometimes shifted from realistic assessments to public relations exercises that exaggerate success and either disguise key challenges or fail to mention them. Official Afghan reporting has become even more uncertain, and some data often seems to be generated by computer models that make detailed estimates based on only tenuous data collection.
Yet, the report shows there are still a wide range of sources that examine key aspects of the fighting and the current situation in Afghanistan. Some European countries have provided assessments of insurgent strength. NGOs like the Institute for the Study of War and the Long War Journal have contributed regular analyses, as have major media sources like the New York Times, Washington Post, and BBC.
The United Nations still provides casualty and risk data that provide key insights into the fighting. A range of NGOs like Vision of Humanity have provided key data on the patterns of terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, many drawing on the START database as well as their own sources. They include important survey efforts examining Afghan perceptions by the Asia Foundation and critical data on population numbers and “youth bulge” issues, and on population density, sectarian, and ethnic issues from the United Nations, CIA, U.S. Census Bureau, and USAID. They also include reporting from a range of experts and NGOs on corruption, narcotics, and human development.
Finally, there are important official sources that examine the causes of instability in Afghanistan. These include data on governance, economics, and aid flows from international bodies like the United Nations, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund (IMF), as well as reporting by the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction (SIGAR).
Key Limitations to Such Reporting
At the same time, many of the data that these sources provide are complex and contradictory. It is often necessary to extrapolate from a wide range of sources to get what is still a rough picture of basic trends. In some cases, it is also necessary to ignore or sharply discount given sources simply because they are clearly political in their content or based on models and data sources that are too uncertain to use.
Many of the official sources that do have value make little serious attempt to define key facts and figures in proper detail or assess their level of uncertainty, which is often “acute” at best. Both international organizations and governments seem to feel that some of the most critical aspects of analysis—defining one’s terms and stating uncertainty—are not required in official reporting. There often is also a clear attempt to avoid controversial or critical data and assessments—effectively “spinning” the outcome of Transition in favorable ways for political purposes.
Comparing Key Data, Metrics, and Maps
The report on Afghanistan: The Uncertain Impact of a Year of Transition begins by focusing first on the civil dimension. The search for security and stability can scarcely ignore the fact that a war is under way, and the Afghan government must win at the tactical level, as well as at the level of defeating the insurgency in ideological, political, and economic terms. Far too much of the analysis of the Afghan war, however, focuses on the fighting rather than the factors that allow extremist insurgent movements to keep on fighting, win more territory, and gain influence and control over the population.
The grim reality is that the Afghan government is its own worst enemy in many dimensions of the fighting, and reforms in its conduct and the nature of outside aid need the same attention as the fighting. As Vietnam showed all too clearly, a war that slowly loses the population makes individual tactical victories irrelevant.
At the same time, the sections on security and the fighting that follow often show that failing honestly to address the current limits to Afghan forces and Taliban and other insurgent gains can lose a war as well. Here, the narrative portions of the Department of Defense 1225 report on the war— Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan—are far superior to the now almost nonexistent metrics and data provided on the fighting. U.S. official metrics are down to one glaringly meaningless metric on “Effective Enemy Initiated Attacks,” statistics that are undefined, unrelated to their tactical much less the strategic effects, and little more than military rubbish.
It is striking that aside from one now-dated German map, the only meaningful metrics on the fighting do not come from governments, but rather from the maps provided by NGOs like the Institute for the Study of War and the United Nations, and that the only meaningful trend data on the scale and intensity of the fighting consist of the UN casualty data.
The report is divided into the following sections:
Key Lessons of “Failed State” Wars summarizes key lessons of the fighting and nation-building effort to date, the need to address complexity, both civil and military trends, to provide suitable net assessments, and to focus on all the dimensions of an insurgency rather than the tactical dimension alone—lessons that have not been learned in practice.
Uncertain Outside Claims of Success versus Very Different Afghan Perceptions highlights the fact that many past official claims of success in building up Afghan forces, helping Afghanistan develop, and modernizing and reforming the afghan government have been exaggerated and uncertain. It is also clear that many and are not supported by either objective reporting or a survey of Afghan popular perceptions by the Asia Foundation—a poll that shows a sharp decline in popular expectations and confidence in the Afghan government.
A Nation Under Acute Population Pressure and with Critical Ethnic and Sectarian Divisions provides detailed tables and comparative charts and maps describing the impact of population growth, Afghanistan’s deep ethnic and sectarian divisions, and the impact of its exceptionally young population and youth “bulge” on the need for jobs to maintain stability. It highlights the fact that the pressure on Afghan security and stability are sharply affected by demographics, the “youth bulge,” and Afghanistan deep sectarian, ethnic, and tribal divisions.
Key Civil Challenges provides a detailed analysis of the real world civil challenges that Afghanistan still faces and the extent to which the State Department and USAID have made exaggerated claims of progress and success. It provides metrics on Afghanistan’s level of corruption, human development indicators, real world progress in education, and how the Afghan people view such challenges.
Uncertain Politics and Large Areas of Failed Governance highlights the critical problems in the quality of Afghan governance and the political problems that limit public support and trust. The comparison of the trends in World Bank assessments of governance and Asia Foundation surveys of Afghan perceptions provide critical warning indicators.
The Corruption Challenge provides equally critical warning data. It shows why many Afghans do not trust their government—a warning reinforced by later data on the broad perception that the Afghan police are corrupt and that there are serious problems in the justice system.
The Budget Challenge warns that the Afghan government is not meeting its goals for raising domestic revenues and remains acutely over-dependent on aid. It highlights the impact of other data showing the impact of aid and military spending cuts on key factors like employment and perceptions of progress. It also highlights the critical absence of any data that go beyond assessing the impact of the budget in terms of Afghan ability to spend the money available, the lack of any estimates of the impact of corruption and waste, and the lack of any reliable estimates on the impact of spending and measures of effectiveness.
Economic Challenges explores the key problems in Afghan economics and development—highlighting World Bank warnings about the impact of the Transition process and SIGAR’s warning that the Tokyo reforms have effectively been abandoned and not replaced with any tangible course of action.
Poverty Challenge summarizes World Bank and otherwarnings that Afghan poverty began to increase well before Transition and that popular concerns over income and employment provide valid warnings of discontent.
Economic Stability and Development Challengeswarns that Transition has led to serious problems in sustaining development and Afghan perceptions of such progress. It also highlights Afghanistan’s acute dependence on a fragile and rain-driven agriculture sector and a service sector that cannot be sustained now that military and aid spending has been sharply reduced.
Business, Investment, Mining, and LoC Challengeswarns about the myth of any major near-term wealth or increase in government income from mines, pipelines, outside investment, or concepts like the “New Silk Road.”
Narco-Economy Challenge warns that the counter-narcotics program has been a dismal failure, that drugs are a far more critical aspect of the entire Afghan economy than many sources have been willing to admit, and that estimates based on farm gate prices are inherently ridiculous in a country where power brokering and narco-trafficking interact to create “value added” that goes far beyond farm gate prices and the grower.
Warfighting and Violence Challenge highlights the fact that the “surge” in U.S. forces in Afghanistan failed to have any lasting effect and the levels of violence have grown sharply in the process of Transition. A comparison of the previous civil trends, and overall trends in Afghan perceptions, shows the interaction between civil progress and violence, and that the Transition is not succeeding in its current form.
A Focus on Tactical Outcomes Disguises a Lack of Meaningful Reporting on the Key Impact of the Insurgency: Growing Insurgent Influence and Control and Declining Support for the Governmentprovides a grim warning that a focus on tactical clashes, rather than the relative level of government and insurgent influence and control, marks critical failure in any meaningful and objective analysis of the course of the war, and that a lack of transparency and objectivity present dangerous risks in addressing real world warfighting problems. It is clear that the various assessments made by governments, the United Nations, media, and think tanks are so different that there is a critical need to improve the official data collection and analysis effort. (The estimates made by the Institute for the Study of War [ISW] have become steadily more sophisticated over time, and the actual estimates made by the Institute seem to do a much more accurate job of portraying the complexities involved than the media adaptations of the ISW data.)
Terrorism Challenge provides a range of estimates on the sharp rise in terrorism in Afghanistan, as well as metrics on these trends relative to those in other areas and countries. The data, however, are based on press reports and not declassified intelligence estimates and raise serious questions about how terrorism should be assessed versus fighting in insurgency and counterinsurgency.
Casualty Data provides relatively reliable data on the trends in violence, as well as important metrics on the fact that the surge in Helmand has proven to be largely a failure and that violence is sharply increasing in the East and North.
Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) Strength and Readiness Challenge provides an overview of the readiness of the Afghan forces and popular sympathy for the Taliban and other insurgents versus support for the Afghan Army and Afghan Police. Here, the narrative excerpts from the Department of Defense 1225 report on the war— Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan—provide far more meaningful assessments of actual Afghan combat capability, and the real world problems in given force elements, as well as in the Ministry of Defense (MoD) and Ministry of the Interior (MoI)—than the metrics.
The additional narratives that are not excerpted and cover each of the following force elements are also far more useful than the metrics and do provide a strong indication that limited improvements in leadership, putting train and assist advisers in major combat units, and providing adequate U.S. and allied air support could make a major difference.
Ministry of Defense and Afghan National Army (ANA) Forces and Readiness: The official metrics here are of very limited value and do more to disguise problems than reveal them. The only useful data are the attrition data, which do not seem particularly reliable. They do, however, warn of a high desertion rate and a force that may be overstressed. Reports of a 27% increase in ANSF casualties in 2015 are not well defined or put in context of efforts to allow forces leave and time to train and regroup, but they are a warning. Like the other readiness data that follow, the lack of detail does not seem driven by security as much as by a desire to avoid added pressure to provide more forces for an adequate train and assist mission.
Afghan Air Force vs. U.S. and Allied Air Supportagain provides anodyne official data. The public reporting is essentially meaningless. It disguises grave problems in the ANSF data, as well as the critical need for more sustained outside air support from the United States and other allied countries.
Afghan Ministry of Interior Forces and Readinessprovides similar data on the MoI and various elements of the police. Once again, the readiness data are largely meaningless and do nothing to illustrate either paramilitary capabilities or the ability to provide a functioning local justice system. Unofficial polling data do highlight broad levels of corruption in the police force, corruption that has extended in the past into much of the MoI and many elements of the Afghan justice system.
The U.S.-ISAF Force Drawdown and Withdrawaldata highlight the problems inherent in cutting forces to meet a deadline, rather than a conditions-based level that reflects Afghanistan’s progress and continuing needs. New decisions to maintain a significant advisory presence through 2016 may help but cannot correct for the lack of clear plans to extend the train and assist mission to Afghan combat units or provide the necessary level of air support.
U.S. Civil and Military Aid draws heavily on the work of SIGAR and others to show how critical aid remains, but also that past funding and program stability has been poorly managed and in ways that sharply limit the benefits of such spending. Reporting on the ongoing level of corruption and waste by SIGAR warns that these problems continue, but it is equally clear that rapid cuts could effectively undermine the Afghan Transition effort. The lack of any meaningful data on future plans or effectiveness is striking, as is the lack of any tie between aid and conditionality in actually executing reforms. The total lack of meaningful State Department and USAID reporting is a serious indictment of the quality of senior leadership in both State and USAID.
An Uncertain Pakistan warns that Pakistan remains an ally that is also a threat and continues to play an important role as a sanctuary for insurgents.
A Cautionary Note
This is a working paper and will be revised over time. Comments, corrections, and additional material will be gratefully received. More broadly, any summary of this kind presents several serious problems. It often presents data that were never designed for direct comparison, takes them out of context, and does not provide the narrative behind the data shown, which is critical to a full understanding.
It is a guide to issues that need further study and examination and that have a critical impact on the course of the fighting and Transition, but it is not in any sense a definitive analysis. It also only represents material that is public and unclassified; the selection is the author’s and so are the judgments made about the data presented.
The practical problem, however, is that some base is needed to provide an overview of the data available, its limits and differences, and how broad comparisons of the full range of factors shaping Transition can be displayed and sometimes quantified. It is also all too clear that such a comparison often highlights critical problems in past decision making and areas that urgently need more policy-level attention.
Anthony H. Cordesman holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
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