American Policy for South-Central Afghanistan
Soft Power Places Demands on Kabul Government
Mar 28, 2009
In his address to the American people President Barack Obama outlined America’s policy for the continuation of the war in Afghanistan. Using a three pronged plan of attack, Obama requires Kabul to fight corruption, curb the drug trade and share power. “The new policy sets the most explicit demands ever presented…to the government in Kabul,” reported the Dallas Morning News on March 27th. “In imposing conditions on the Afghans…Obama is replicating a strategy used in Iraq two years ago….”
Afghanistan's Internal Governmental Corruption
President Obama scolded Afghanistan for corruption in his speech on Friday. “Endemic corruption remains Afghanistan's biggest problem….” said the State Department's top official for South Asia to Washington Times reporter Nicholas Kralev on February 19th. Vice exists in three main areas that Washington must correct.
- Government – corruption extends from regional offices to the nation’s capital, Kabul. Kralev continued, “…everyone against whom there is evidence of wrongdoing must be prosecuted, including President Hamid Karzai's brother…” accused of rampant duplicity. In a research paper, Reforming Afghanistan's Police, by the International Crises Group, the authors’ state, “President Karzai’s government still lacks the political will to tackle a culture of impunity and to end political interference in appointments and operations.”
- Security Forces – mainly consist of the Afghan army and border guards. According to US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in a speech given December 11th 2008 to AFN, “The Afghan National Army is largely a success story… [but] the 12,000 border personnel are poorly trained and [ripe] for corruption.”
- Police – James Neuger, of the Bloomberg Press reported on March 21st that US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said, “Fixing Afghanistan’s corrupt…police force will be a key plank in the new U.S. policy….” The police are “an inadequate organization, riddled with corruption….They’re the weak link in the security chain.” Afghan National Police currently act “…as a coercive tool of governing elites,” according to the ICG. Obama’s plan calls for “…ensuring that the population is reflected in the make-up of the command and control structure.”
Social, Cultural and Economic Reality of Drugs
Connor Sweeney of Reuters reported on March 27th, “…a group of Middle East and Central Asian states dominated by Russia and China pledged to cooperate with…NATO on Afghanistan ….to counter the threat of narcotics....” Sweeney continues, “Russia is the world’s biggest heroin consumer and…3 billion doses [of heroin] arrive there each year from Afghanistan.”
More than a social problem, drugs have become a financial tool for the Taliban military effort. The UN Drug Czar spokesman Walter Kemp reported on 11/27/08 “Afghan opium production has exceeded world demand. The bottom should have fallen out of the opium market, but it hasn't.” Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa said, the “…lack of price response in the opium market can only be the result of stock build-ups, and all evidence points to the Taliban…[who] manipulate the opium market.” Costa continued, “If the Taliban can disrupt the market, so can NATO....”
President Obama’s plan calls for “…destroying high value targets like drug markets, labs and convoys.” It further calls for increases in "alternative sources of income [for]…farmers…[like] wheat which has tripled since 2007.” It calls for reducing the inflow of precursor chemicals needed to produce heroin and combat drug money laundering.
Local, National and Regional Power Sharing Plan by Afghans
The plan calls for the central government to share power with the regions. A time when daily life is not improving and the intervention by American-led foreign powers is widely resented, the Taliban regained control over areas of Afghanistan. The German magazine Der Spiegel wrote on 3/27/08 that the new plan calls for the use of “soft power” and “place heavy emphasis on a civilian surge."
As in Pakistan, coalition nations will work with these regional governments’ new powers and allow civilian NGOs to rebuild the nation on a local level. However, Der Spiegel points out a fundamental problem, “Germany will not increase its number of troops in Afghanistan. Instead it wants to intensify its civilian reconstruction efforts. But that can't be truly successful without the security that only the military can provide."
 |
