Diplomacy / Counterinsurgency Civilian Surge Gains Steam, But Is Strategy Overinflated? by Seth McLaughlin Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month repeated that success in Afghanistan — and other war-torn countries — depends largely on increased and sustainable development, and that depends on greater cooperation between the State Department, the Department of Defense and the U.S. Agency for International Development. It was Clinton’s latest attempt to prop economic and agricultural development up on the same pedestal as defense and diplomacy — forming the triple-headed policy push she often refers to as “the three Ds” (also see “Defense, Development and Diplomacy: Experts Want a Return to the Last Two” in the February 2009 issue of The Washington Diplomat). If the rhetoric reflects reality, this renewed focus on the military-civilian partnership is — or soon will be — the backbone of the counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, commonly referred to by its military acronym of COIN, which among other things calls for protecting population centers, building local government and improving infrastructure. In December, President Obama rolled out his new counterinsurgency strategy by pledging an increase of 30,000 service members to support the 68,000 U.S. troops already in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. While Obama glossed over his desire to triple the number of American civilians in Afghanistan this year, he made it clear last March that the 300 educators, lawyers, engineers and agricultural specialists working in Afghanistan were simply not enough to help farmers develop new crops to replace opium poppies, to make schooling more accessible, and to build the infrastructure projects needed to help sustain local leaders. After months of fleeting mentions about this anticipated but somewhat ambiguous “civilian surge,” the administration finally seems to be moving full steam ahead to have 1,000 civilians in place early this year — a mix of volunteers from USAID, the State, Treasury and Agriculture Departments, as well as other agencies. Now, dozens of these new recruits are passing through role-playing and immersive courses at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, a former mental hospital turned military facility in rural Indiana that simulates what civilian personnel will face when dealing with Afghan culture and the American military. “The work of these development experts helps make future military action less necessary,” Clinton said in a Jan. 6 speech at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It is cheaper to pay for development up front than to pay for war over the long term.” Paul Jones, State’s deputy special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, shared a similar message a month earlier at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. “We are now in the midst of a civilian surge,” he said, explaining that these volunteers will work with Afghan ministries and side by side with the U.S. military in District Support Teams and Provincial Reconstruction Teams — units of soldiers, diplomats and reconstruction experts operating in the hairier regions of the country. Some will also extend the government’s diplomatic presence outside of Kabul by staffing new consulates in Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat. While promising, the push has highlighted philosophical divides in the federal government over who should control the development process and sparked new questions over the metrics to determine success, who’s in charge of oversight, and how to develop the right kinds of civilian expertise needed inside Afghanistan. Moreover, will enough capable civilians line up to volunteer for such a dangerous mission, and how will the military protect them from the dangers? Even more important, do military officials — who have been better equipped, coordinated and largely running the development show for eight years — truly buy into the idea? According to some, the shift away from directly targeting insurgents to “clear, hold and build” critical parts of Afghanistan also reflects the Obama administration’s pared-down expectations of what can be accomplished in the embattled country, even though the renewed focus on development still represents a mammoth undertaking. The question is will paving roads, growing wheat and building schools help wins the proverbial hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s beleaguered population? Is it even feasible in one of the world’s poorest countries, what’s been called “the graveyard of empires?” And can an approach that hinges on long-term goals and strongly smells of nation building mesh with the administration’s more short-term military strategy of dismantling and disrupting insurgents — and transferring responsibility as quickly as possible to local Afghan forces and government? At least publicly, officials say the civilian surge can be effective if kept within the administration’s more narrowly defined parameters of success. Jones has said as much, telling ForeignPolicy.com that, “We’re not there to turn Afghanistan into something we’d recognize as America. What we want to do is what the Afghans want to do.... We’re there to increase governmental capacity.” USAID’s Make-or-Break Moment In her Jan. 6 speech, Clinton assured the crowd she was pushing to iron out the coordination problems that have hampered efforts on the diplomacy and development side of COIN. “Now in the past, coordination among the so-called three Ds has often fallen short, and everyone has borne the consequences,” Clinton said, noting that she is united with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah in their commitment to change that. “The United States will achieve our best results when we approach our foreign policy as an integrated whole, rather than the sum of its parts.” Shah — the most obscure and untested of the three government figures — could become the most important figure in determining the success of the civilian surge for various reasons: his expertise in agriculture, his relative government inexperience, and USAID’s recent struggles, having lacked a leader for 10 months. In fact, USAID’s future has been in doubt for some time, with speculation continuing as to whether the independent agency will ultimately be folded into State’s bureaucracy (its budget and policy are already essentially controlled by State). USAID’s full-time staff has shrunk by 40 percent over the past two decades, while its funding has doubled. As a result, foreign assistance programs have been divided among numerous government agencies, causing duplication and confusion. Before being plucked in December to head the agency, the 36-year-old Shah had been undersecretary of agriculture since June and previously worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charity. During his Senate confirmation hearings in December, Shah pledged to make USAID more accountable, transparent and less reliant on private contractors. While Shah’s involvement in relief efforts in Haiti has put that agenda on the backburner for now, Patrick Cronin of the Center for a New American Security suggests that by the time Shah leaves office, there’s a good chance he will be primarily judged by the role USAID plays in Afghanistan. “He knows that if he can’t get Afghanistan squared away, his tenure is also in jeopardy,” Cronin said. Mobilizing People — and Money It will be an uphill battle. Cronin points to the color-coded maps that government officials use to diagram the Taliban’s pockets of strength and influence in Afghanistan. Last year, the map showed a third of the country green (in government control), a third red (in Taliban control) and a third yellow (contested areas). “Those numbers have shifted in favor of the Taliban in the past year,” he said. Next Page

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