NY Times Editorial Board: Backsliding in Afghanistan. A huge mistake for Obama

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12/6/14, "Backsliding in Afghanistan," NY Times Editorial Board, 12/7 print ed.

"No one has sounded more determined to extricate the United States from Afghanistan than President Obama. It is “time to turn the page,” he said in May when he announced plans to reduce American forces to 9,800 troops by the end of December, with a full withdrawal by the end of 2016. That goal appeared to be on track — until now. Mr. Obama’s recent turnabout and other developments seem to be sucking America back into the Afghan war, a huge mistake.

First, Mr. Obama authorized a more expansive mission for the American military in 2015 than originally planned. His order would put American troops right back into ground combat by allowing them to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militants. He had previously said that the residual force would be engaged only in counterterrorism operations aimed at remnants of Al Qaeda. The new order also permits American jets and drones to support Afghan military missions.

The decision by Afghanistan’s new president, Ashraf Ghani, to lift the ban on night raids imposed by his predecessor, Hamid Karzai, could also push American troops into direct fighting. The Afghan special operations forces, which are to resume night raids in 2015, could bring along American advisers, backed by American air support. While military officials say night raids are an effective tactic, enabling the Taliban to be seized in their homes, such intrusions are offensive to many Afghans and likely to provoke a new wave of anti-American sentiment.

Already, the number of American troops to remain in Afghanistan after December has been increased by 1,000, up to 10,800. NATO allies are supposed to provide 4,000 troops next year, bringing the total of foreign forces to 12,000 to 14,000. Secretary of State John Kerry has said that any additional American troops above 9,800 are temporary and are merely covering for NATO allies that are still trying to decide how many forces to contribute.

But if NATO fails to contribute sufficient troops, then what?

Mr. Obama seems to be having second thoughts about his Afghan strategy after the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the sudden collapse of the Iraqi army. He may be trying to avoid blame if something similar happens in Afghanistan, where Taliban attacks are on the rise.

But he should resist the advice of military commanders, who are again pushing for broader involvement. They were unable to defeat the Taliban when more than 100,000 American troops were in the country; there is no reason to think that a very limited American force will be more effective now.

That is not to say that Mr. Ghani, a former World Bank executive, should not be supported. He shows more promise, energy and purpose in dealing honestly with his country’s staggering challenges — including the insurgency and a weak, corrupt economy — than Mr. Karzai did.

Since Mr. Ghani was declared the winner in September of the disputed election and formed a power-sharing deal with Abdullah Abdullah, the new chief executive, there has been progress, including the signing of a security agreement with the United States, a reopened probe into the corrupt Kabul Bank and an initiative to repair relations with key countries, including Pakistan. Last Thursday, Mr. Ghani laid out a thoughtful, if incomplete, vision for reforming the economy and tackling corruption to a conference in London of Afghanistan’s international donors, including the United States and Britain.

Still, Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah have struggled to make other important decisions, including the appointment of a cabinet, which they promised would be done before the conference and now say will take several weeks more. Given Afghanistan’s perilous security situation, the country’s leaders and political factions might be expected to put aside their differences, but that hasn’t happened yet.

One lesson learned over the last 13 years is this: No amount of foreign assistance — not tens of thousands of troops, billions of dollars or unlimited amounts of military equipment — will make any real difference if the Afghans cannot or will not pull together a functioning, relatively uncorrupt and competent government, and take primary responsibility for themselves and their country.

Administration officials are still insisting “the combat mission ends” by the end of this year, but that’s simply not credible. Mr. Obama should stick to his original plan to have the remaining troops focus on training and advising the Afghan army and going after Al Qaeda. Realistically, that seems the most the American-led military coalition can achieve."

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"Millions of (US) contracting dollars have ultimately ended up in the hands of the Taliban."

 

4/26/13, "The US Is Still Spending Billions In Afghanistan, But No One Seems To Care," Fiscal Times, David Francis

"Hard-fought gains in Afghanistan over the last decade are at risk of being squandered – unless immediate action is taken to determine the fate of tens of billions of dollars in questionable reconstruction projects, the chief of the Afghan audit agency said.

In an exclusive interview with The Fiscal Times, John F. Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, said that the Pentagon, aid agencies and the State Department must quickly evaluate these projects to determine whether the billions being spent in Afghanistan right now will yield the desired results or not. Many projects are simply not sustainable, he said – and continuing to spend money on them results not just in a wasted fortune, but very real risks to nearly 70,000 American soldiers who are still there.  

“They have not thought about sustainability,” Sopko said, referring to the military, aid agencies and the State Department. “If you don’t think about that, you’re going to build a bridge and give it to the Afghans who can’t sustain it.”

He added, “There’s pervasive corruption throughout the country.”

These warnings from Sopko – who was appointed to his post last summer by President Obama – come as lawmakers, the public, and the policy community in D.C. have largely turned their attention away from the war and from the soldiers still fighting and dying there. Despite spending some $500 billion to fight in Afghanistan, the war is becoming invisible. Sopko and his team at SIGAR are among the few voices reminding the country about financial mismanagement, corruption and the continuing threat to American lives.
“I believe in the mission in Afghanistan,” he said. “We lost too many lives and we’ve spent too much money” to ignore it. 

Dollars to the Taliban

In recent months, SIGAR has been especially busy identifying waste, fraud and abuse. Earlier this month, it found that a $53 million USAID project meant to supply power to Kandahar was unsustainable.

It also found that millions of contracting dollars have ultimately ended up in the hands of the Taliban. As The Fiscal Times recently reported, the Pentagon did not have the required protocols in place to prevent 80 percent of all contracts from getting into the hands of the enemy.

A quarterly report issued by SIGAR in January said that the United States has spent more than half of the nearly $100 billion in Afghan reconstruction funds on developing the country’s police and security forces. But numerous reports have found that the Afghan forces are not ready to take over security responsibilities.

Two recent SIGAR reports also found that police and Army buildings built by the United States for $26 million in two key strategic provinces were underutilized or sat empty. One was even being used as a chicken coop.

All of this is especially troubling in the wake of a February 2013 GAO report that determined Afghanistan would essentially collapse without extensive U.S. financial support. Sopko painted a picture of a country with intractable corruption, a U.S. military that had not properly planned or executed countless projects, and an aid apparatus that has

failed to acknowledge realities on the ground.
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“We found systemic problems almost everywhere we looked,” Sopko said....Unlike other inspector generals who work for the agency they’re inspecting, Sopko is independent. He has the power to audit any program related to Afghanistan reconstruction, whether the projects are implemented by DOD, State or USAID. In his tens months on the job, Sopko, a veteran investigator and attorney with more than 30 years in oversight work, has discovered that corruption within the Afghan government is the primary obstacle to effective reconstruction.

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“Afghanistan, according to Transparency International, is the most corrupt country [in the world] except North Korea and Somalia,” he said.

But there are also a myriad of problems on the American side. Sopko said poor planning and inadequate quality assurance practices make it nearly impossible to effectively implement reconstruction programs.

“What’s caused the extensive problems is something I emphasized in the last quarterly report: inadequate planning, poor quality assurance,” he said. “We’re not enforcing quality. The successful programs are the ones that [were] planned properly,” Sopko added. “They had talked to the Afghans, they had worked out sustainability. They dealt with corruption.”...

He referenced a story written by The Fiscal Times’  Josh Boak when Boak was with The Washington Post. In 2011, Boak found that a school built by the U.S.in a remote region of Afghanistan had actually been taken over by the Taliban.

“You’ve got to go kick the tires. You’ve got to make certain someone we trust goes out and makes certain the money is spent the way it was intended,” Sopko insisted. “You’ve got to verify that the money you gave to buy fuel bought the fuel.”

Sopko refused to say whether fatigue has contributed to a lack of oversight by U.S. agencies and departments. But he did say many government employees would prefer that the audit process disappear altogether.

“There are too many people in this government, in the bureaucracies, who would like IG [inspector general] reports to be classified, secret and show up in the dead of night in a sealed envelope. If that happened, there will never be any improvements in how the government’s run,” he said....

Sopko said he is especially concerned about continued direct foreign assistance to the Afghan government. “It’s a big area of concern,” Sopko said of U.S. assistance to Afghanistan. “Afghans don’t have the capability to handle the direct assistance.”

The amount of money provided to Afghanistan is expected to exceed $100 billion by the end of the year – and the U.S. will need to fund the country far into the future if the government is to have any chance of success.

USAID also lacks the ability to effectively monitor money being given to the Afghan government, suggested Sopko. “When I talk to some of the people in USAID, they refer to direct assistance programs they’ve done in Egypt and Israel. They’re not Afghanistan. I’m looking for models where this has worked in a kinetic environment,” he said."...via Lucianne

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2011 LA Times piece: Afghanistan is controlled by mafia-like system, hands out US wealth, punishes anyone who speaks up:

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9/25/11, "Government by crime syndicate," LA Times, Op-ed, Sarah Chayes
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"In Afghanistan and elsewhere, rampant corruption threatens security and the rule of law."
"Afghanistan is controlled by a structured, mafiaesque system, in which money flows upward via purchase of office, kickbacks or "sweets" in return for permission to extract resources (of which more varieties exist in impoverished Afghanistan than one might think) and protection in case of legal or international scrutiny. Those foolish enough to raise objections are punished. The result is a system that selects for criminality, excluding and marginalizing the very men and women of probity most needed to build a sustainable state."...
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Ms. Chayes is the "author of "The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban" and designed an anti-corruption strategy for the command of the international forces."

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