We spoke with Admiral James G. Stavridis, CDRUSEUCOM, and -- as Supreme Allied Commander, Europe -- commander of NATO forces. The transcript of the discussion is here. There were a number of interesting questions about the way forward in Afghanistan, from training the ANA to balancing civilian and military support for the mission. The admiral is a strong supporter of rebalancing the load to include more civilian agency support, both in the US component and in the NATO component. In this, he is in line with the "smart power" position that was the upside of our visit to the State Department. All of his remarks are worth reading for those interesting in the Afghan mission. In the interest of brevity here on the frontpage, I'll only quote the one exchange I had with him personally. GRIM: Good morning, sir. I'd like to ask about the development piece of the way forward. Big picture, we have to get out to the most rural regions of Afghanistan and tie those regions back to the core in such a way that when we're finished with our big surge efforts or whatever we're calling them, the government of Afghanistan is going to be able to continue to get out to these regions and compete for the loyalty of the population. That implies to me some pretty significant infrastructure improvements. Could you talk about what we expect NATO allies to be doing to support that development mission, whether on the civilian side or in funding or civil affairs, training soldiers, that kind of thing? ADM. STAVRIDIS: I sure can. And I think you are exactly correct. A big piece of this -- and this is that civil-military balance. A big piece of this is getting the infrastructure improvements so that we can convince farmers not to grow opium but to grow pomegranates because they can get their pomegranates to the market, they can get to the Ring Road, and from the Ring Road they can get to modern infrastructure. The good news is that we are seeing some high-level pledges from allies all around the world, to include NATO. The Japanese, for example, just offered $5 billion, a great chunk of which will be devoted to this direction. The London conference that's coming up at the end of the month will be the real opportunity to put money against that part of the challenge. The United States is doing a great deal in this regard. We've just upped our aid from 150 million (dollars) to 500 million (dollars) in the agriculture sector. We've seen similar levels of increases, 100, 200 percent increases from a number of the NATO allies as well (to focus ?) on infrastructure. So -- (inaudible) -- training piece for the security forces because we have to get security right. In addition to that, the next most important resource is money for this kind of infrastructure improvement. So you're spot on. Thank you. The London Conference is something we'll need to watch closely. Making sure that there are adequate resources for the Civil Affairs/CMO/development piece of this mission is indispensable to successful COIN in Afghanistan. If you can't tie these rural areas to the core of the state, the central government isn't going to be able to hold it together when we're done there. They need to be able to get in and provide services; and they need to be able to show the people in those regions a plausible stake in terms of economic progress, as well as security, in order to compete for their loyalty. Indeed, I would suggest that this "stake in economic progress" may be more important than the security piece. Rural populations can often provide their own security, if they make up their minds to do it. For example, the early Texas Rangers fought a very powerful Commanche nation as a volunteer organization of homesteaders without large-scale governmental support. If the people in a rural region of Afghanistan are divided, they are easy for the Taliban or others to manipulate. If you can unite them behind a clear and tangible set of reasons to support you, they can provide a large piece of the security puzzle without much central GOA support. What wins their loyalty is what the GOA provides them, in terms of making their lives and the lives of their families better. If you can convince the people to fight for you, you won't need much in the way of an army. That's good, because Afghanistan's GDP is not large enough to provide a sizable army in the long term without significant outside support. So the key is: why should the people fight for you? Everything else we do in Afghanistan is about creating a window to build this piece. If we can do it, the GOA will have a chance to reach out and tie these rural regions to itself. If we can't, they won't.
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Posted
Jan 13 2010, 02:37 AM
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