Conor, did that Guardian article on Garmser you’ve linked to strike you as convincing? I’d certainly like it to be true, but there have been so many ‘Afghanistan turns the corner’ stories that I’m a little sceptical.

Not particularly Dan. A lot of these short trips are basically PR exercises for the government and army. I would be a bit embarassed to write an article which starts ‘I have just spent two weeks in Helmand, talking to dozens of civilian stabilisation advisers and military officers. . . . .’

But the sentence I picked up on was ‘And though the formal justice system has been slow to take root because of the difficulties of putting judges and prosecutors in district centres, in its place an informal justice system has developed supported by international advisers.’

I did hear that the British PRT in Helmand was looking at the whole issue of land rights and customary law about a year and a half ago and that does seem to mark a change in strategy from the Italian government approach (who have formal responsibility for justice sector reform).

I thought Julian Gover was quite good today, by the way, ‘the feeling, among both British military and civilian forces in the country, is of a mission heading for the end. The question is not whether to get out, but how and when. . . . . precipitous retreat would certainly result in the collapse of everything we have sustained in Afghanistan, and the triumph of a foul insurgency that would inflict horror on the people of the country and that does not have their support.’

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2009/nov/23/afghanistan-horror-insurgency-wrong-people

I have never been to Afghanistan, though I have worked in a number of conflict and post-conflict states and I try to follow some of the reconstruction and state-building issues as they relate to Afghanistan. I get the impression that the international community has not engaged at all with the question of local level institutions: it is therefore trying to rebuild a state from the top downwards. But without some knowledge of local institutions, this has become a futile exercise. I also get the impression that local institutions were weakened by the people that the international community backed to fight the Soviets, so traditional institutions have become heavily influenced by warlords. Any thoughts?

Yes, ‘a little sceptical’ was some pretty serious understatement on my part.

Re journos’ trips to Afghanistan courtesy of the British military being ‘PR exercises for the government and Army’- I think you’re right, and I absolutely despair at the missed opportunity these represent.

A friend of mine who’s an officer in my unit worked on civil-military relations when he was out there, and he was furious that PR policy was basically ‘keep the journos away from any difficulties we’re having’.

As he said, journalists could have helped to provide the informed criticism the army and civilian agencies need. I’d agree with that, and I’d add that the lack of informed criticism in 2006-7 was one reason why things went so wrong.

Christina Lamb, who knows Afghanistan well, wrote a story in summer 2006 recounting her experiences with a Para unit that was ambushed, and the MoD responded by banning all journos from going out to Helmand for several months. (What makes this even more ridiculous is that Lamb greatly admired the soldiers she was with, and said so: the MoD just didn’t want to admit that there was heavy fighting.)

When journos do go out, a mixture of steering from PR officers and their own sympathies mean we get a lot of stuff about the courage of the troops on the ground (which I agree is admirable to see) but next to nothing about the nitty-gritty of development and politics in Helmand.

Dan @ 4 absolutely.

Guano Yes, I think that is basically right, but subject to an important proviso. Afghanistan has always had a very weak central state, but strong local institutions headed by tribal elders. The latter were weakened during the Jihad against the Soviets because the ISI channelled US funding towards young Islamic radicals like Hekmatyar. When the country descended into civil war post-92 local gangsters took control of various areas and it was their unpopularity which led to the rise of the Taliban.

Post-2002 the international community needed to build up a new central state. I think they should have done that by tackling warlordism and corruption at the centre and empowering traditional elders in the communities. Some attempts were made to do the latter through an aid project called the National Solidarity Program (fund small-scale projects in villages based on decisions by community councils) but they turned a blind eye to corruption at the centre.

What was needed was a lot more international troops (Bosnia had 60,000 post-Dayton Bush turned down a request to provide the UN with 25,000 and so for most of the time I was there we only had 4,500) some kind of international criminal tribunal to take the worst gangsters out of circulation (like ICTY or the Court for Sierra Leone) and enough funding to build up a proper national justice system (paying police, judges and civil servants professional wages).

I write a bit more about this here

http://crookedtimber.org/2009/08/27/afghanistan/

Alongside that they could have strengthened local justice mechanisms – based on an understanding that the vast majority of cases do not go anywhere near the formal criminal justice system. One of the problems about customary Afghan law is that it does not respect women’s rights – but the formal system is not much better in that regard.

So the question now is ‘What would you do now? Keep Western troops in Afghanistan or pull them out?’

My answer would be a tentative ‘keep them in for at least another five years, because the Afghan security forces can’t keep the Taliban out of the Southern cities on their own. But insist on serious reform to government as a pre-requisite of military support.’ Not a slogan you can write on a banner, but I’d be interested to see what you think, Conor.

OK. But why the reluctance to support local-level institutions and to look at accountability and trust in society as a whole? There would appear to be a built-in bias for creating highly centralised state structures that will either be
- authoritarian
- irrelevant because they are divorced from the rest of society.

Dan @ 6. yes, I agree, but with the same reservations.

Guano @ 7. it should not really be either or. A state needs a police force, army and civil service to function and if you don’t pay them proper wages that is a recipe for corruption. At the same time in a country like Afghanistan it makes sense to decentralise as much as possible. One problem, though, is that the further you get from the centre the weaker the rule of law is and so you have to have more and more intensive monitoring and evaluation mechanisms to check the money isn’t been stolen. That is also becoming more difficult as the insurgency spreads and so now there is a Catch-22: donors don’t want to fund the government because it is corrupt, but without a proper state you can’t tackle corruption.

The other problem with focussing on local-level institutions is that it rests on a baisc theory that aid can be used for counter-insurgency purposes, which has so far proved wrong. Here is something on it from yesterday

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/22/us-anti-taliban-militias-afghanistan

and something I wrote a few weeks ago

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/28/afghanistan-aid-workers-un