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Foreign Affairs
A New Model Afghan Army
By Anja Manuel and P. W. Singer
An Uneasy Peace
An unforeseen result of the U.S. military’s stunning success in Afghanistan was the overnight suspension of that country’s vicious, 23-year-old civil war. Afghanistan’s future—including whether it again degenerates into a terrorist base—now largely depends on what is made of this precious opportunity.
In countries recovering from civil war, the most critical requirement for long-term peace is the demobilization of the formerly warring parties and their integration within a unified military. Angola and the former Yugoslavia provide cautionary tales about the difficulties of military reintegration; Mozambique and South Africa give more hopeful examples of how building a cohesive army can help solidify peace after a national conflict.
In Afghanistan, the process of military integration has barely begun, but it is already close to collapse. Not only are perennial ethnic, factional, and religious disputes hampering progress, but the political elements of postwar transition are moving ahead without the requisite military corollary. Indeed, the interim administration inaugurated in December 2001 never answered basic questions about the size, composition, and tasks of a national army. Meanwhile, the international community remains ambivalent about how it will assist, and what little aid it has promised has been slow in coming.
The dangers of continued delay are growing by the day. The U.S. and allied forces entered Afghanistan to rout the Taliban and al Qaeda; demobilizing the country’s many warring factions was not on the agenda. Thus, the operations may have abruptly suspended the civil war, but they have created only a tacit truce without dismantling the full war-fighting capabilities of the armed groups. Many of these groups may now be tempted to either reject the peace process or manipulate it to their advantage. If they do, Afghanistan could plunge straight back into war.
Motley Crew
Civil wars can yield three types of disgruntled local parties, or “spoilers,” who can derail peace processes. “Limited spoilers” are simply suspicious of promises made by the peace brokers and demand additional guarantees that they will be treated fairly; “greedy spoilers” seek to take all they can get from the postwar reconstruction, even beyond the point of diminishing returns; and “total spoilers,” feeling they have no stake in the peace, will try to make it fail at all costs. Unfortunately, Afghanistan today contains archetypes of all three.
In addressing these spoilers, the new national government will need to exert its leadership over a nation in which mistrust of central authority runs deep. Afghanistan as a state was created by late-nineteenth-century British imperialists along borders that, like most colonial divisions, reflected little historical or ethnic logic. The government has usually been controlled by the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, who nevertheless make up fewer than half of Afghanistan’s roughly 26 million people and are themselves riven by tribal fissures. Hobbled by the Pashtuns’ own . . .
Anja Manuel is an Attorney with Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering. P. W. Singer is Olin Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution and Coordinator of the Brookings Project on U.S. Policy Towards the Islamic World.