Q&A With Kim Barker on Afghanistan

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Letter From

Letter From Kabul: Solving Afghanistan's Problems

Kim Barker

As the Obama administration prepares to send more troops to Afghanistan, what are the problems U.S. forces will face, and what, if anything, can they do to overcome them?
Part I: Corruption
Part II: The Warlords 
Part III: The Taliban

Collection

From the Archives: Afghanistan

The Editors

A collection of Foreign Affairs articles on Afghanistan.

Reading List

What to Read on Fighting Insurgencies

Eliot A. Cohen

An annotated Foreign Affairs syllabus on fighting insurgencies.

Paula: The recent attempted bombing of an airplane on Christmas Day highlighted the danger posed by Islamic extremism and terrorist groups in Yemen. In what sense (if any) are the issues facing Afghanistan and Yemen related? What parallels should the United States draw between the insurgencies in the two countries? And how are the two conflicts different?

A: There are certainly parallels between Afghanistan and Yemen -- Muslim majorities, weak governments, poverty. But the extremists of Yemen self-identify with al Qaeda and therefore seem more concerned with striking out at Western targets and with this worldwide sense of "jihad." In Afghanistan, the insurgents are more local -- bent on driving out the foreign forces and establishing their version of an Islamic state. Yet the two movements can also be symbiotic, as we saw with the Taliban's sheltering of al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks, and as we have seen with certain training camps in the border area between Afghanistan and Pakistan. In general, I think it is dangerous to isolate what is happening with Islamic extremists on a country-by-country basis. Whether we are talking about the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Tayyiba or al Qaeda in Yemen, or militancy that is spread on the Internet, the groups share similar ideologies, even if their targets may be different at a certain moment.

Robert: In announcing the "surge" of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, President Barack Obama announced a timeline of 18 months to begin withdrawing forces. Will the Obama administration keep combat forces in Afghanistan as long as necessary to ensure that the Taliban never offer sanctuary to al Qaeda again, even if this exceeds the stated deadline?

A: Ever since Obama announced the July 2011 deadline, others in his administration have taken pains to say that the date is only a starting point and that the administration will evaluate the situation on the ground when making troop decisions. Although I am not certain what the Obama administration will do, I think officials would be willing to push that date back, if only slightly. But just because the administration starts pulling out troops does not mean that all the troops will be pulled out. It is likely that the U.S. military will have some presence in the region for a number of years, given the United States' goals there and Afghanistan's perceived strategic importance.

Nigel Morris: An effective counterinsurgency strategy requires the local population in Afghanistan to have confidence in the Afghan government and army, particularly in relation to corruption. What steps can the Obama administration take to reduce corruption (and the perception of corruption) in the Afghan government and army? Has there been any progress on this front since you wrote your Letter From Kabul, which highlighted the effects of corruption?

A: Corruption resides more with the police and various ministries than with the army. But you are right: corruption is a major problem, and has continued to be since I wrote my Letter From Kabul. A new poll released this week by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime showed that Afghans worried more about corruption than violence or poverty, and that bribes amounted to 23 percent of Afghanistan's GDP (just below the opium trade). A new unit has been formed in the Afghan Justice Ministry to tackle corruption. There is also increasing acknowledgment that Afghans are not the only ones profiting from corruption. The office of the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) recently reported that about three-quarters of its active corruption investigations involved Westerners. But with all this talk, it remains to be seen whether there will be action. Maybe there will be. The former presidential candidate and Hamid Karzai critic Ashraf Ghani, also the country's former finance minister and a former World Bank official, has been tapped to come up with an anticorruption plan before this week's London conference on Afghanistan. He has the kind of name-brand credibility that could help convince Afghans that the country is serious about tackling the problem. Besides urging Karzai to do the proverbial "more," the Obama administration can try to make sure that USAID contracts are not rife with the potential for corruption, and that any of the SIGAR cases are vigorously prosecuted and highlighted. But I am still waiting for my test case -- the sitting Afghan minister charged with corruption and convicted with actual evidence.

Brown N. Ugbaja: The rest of the world seems to have abandoned the United States in the effort to stabilize Afghanistan. Countries in the developing world seem especially uninterested or unable to help. What hope does the Obama administration have for expanding the alliance of states working to resolve the conflict in Afghanistan? Is there a sense in neighboring countries and in other developing states that the problems of Afghanistan are in some sense strategic and universal and could appear in their countries, too?

A: I do not think the rest of the world has abandoned the United States: there are troops from 43 countries in Afghanistan. While you are right that countries in the developing world may not be helping as much as Europe or the United States, I do not know that they could do all that much, given their limited budgets and militaries. In the region, India has been very involved in trying to send aid and government help to Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been considered a crucial ally in fighting terrorists on the Pakistan side of the border. I do think there is a sense in the entire region that what happens in Afghanistan has repercussions throughout Asia and that issues there, whether the heroin flowing through Iran and Russia or the militants gaining strength in Uzbekistan, are universal and strategic.