All Politics Is Local

What do be done when the increasingly authoritarian, mildly unhinged and steadfastly corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan wants to retain its death grip on the funnel of aid coming in from international donors? Whether Karzai likes it or not (and whether we like it or not), we're going to have to apply our own pressure to get the resources flowing where they're really needed. All politics is local -- the old adage applies ferociously in areas of Afghanistan contested by the government and the Taliban.

Ironically, the international community is going to have to force the Afghan state to do what its leaders say they want to do -- extend sovereignty over all of the country's territory, especially in the villages and regions where the Taliban roam freely.

The latest example of the need for this approach came soon after the newly-appointed American commander landed in the country.

Despite only having recently taken over the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus has already come into conflict with Afghan President Hamid Karzai over the U.S. military program to equip and train local militias against the Taliban. While Karzai objects to the plan as possibly building "private militias" according to the Washington Post, the argument hints at Karzai's long-standing opposition to strengthening local institutions at the expense of the central government, despite consistent U.S. pressure to improve local governance. But despite these objections, increased support for provincial and local government is necessary if the United States wants to bring stability to Afghanistan.

Being a devil's advocate, there certainly is a risk of inadvertently undermining the state if private militias ultimately work at the discretion of local warlords rather than local villages or regions that are still ultimately loyal to the Afghan state. But the past strategy for training up the Afghan Army is neither effective nor sustainable. As one analyst notes:

Because they are partnered with our troops, Afghan soldiers are copying our rules of engagement and risk-avoidance procedures. Since they wear our heavy armor, they too cannot pursue the light and mobile Taliban forces. When the enemy initiates contact, the Afghan soldiers are trained to wait alongside our troops until our attack helicopters force the Taliban to flee. The Afghan soldiers will not be able to fight that way as U.S. resources are reduced. The Afghan security forces simply cannot take over the fight anytime soon. 

Of course, politics at the local level isn't just about who has the guns (although that is an overriding question in Afghanistan). It's about institution building. When the government cannot securely provide law courts or public services and the "local" member of parliament is actually staying in Kabul, unable to interact with their constituents, Afghanistan's frail democracy is undermined. For the system to work, there needs to be trust between federal and local interests:

This trust requires strong local governing structures that take Afghanistan's ethnic and tribal diversity into account. One of the members of the provincial council from Ghazni told me this month that Ghazni's security worsened during the times when governors came from other provinces to serve there, even though viable candidates from the province existed. The outside governors could not work within the dynamics of the ruling tribes in Ghazni and the people could not trust them. He said the governors "came today and will go tomorrow, but it's us dealing with the same elders and tribes forever, so who would we be faithful to?" 

In the Karzai regime's insistence that all aid and planning for provincial districts must go through a central administration that's leakier than a certain well-head in the Gulf of Mexico, it undermines its own ability to manage affairs outside of Kabul. We should note here that the international NGO community that might serve as an alternative to providing direct state-to-state aid is at least as corrupt -- if not more corrupt -- than the government in Kabul.

How the international community helps the provinces without developing a parallel and counter-productive administration is complicated. If it were simple, these questions would have been sorted out back in 2001 or 2002, not 2010. But this must remain a key objective of the overall project to ensure Afghanistan does not fall back into chaos.