Academic Year 2007-2008

Why Are We in Afghanistan?
December 5, 2007, 5:30PM
Speaker: Barnett R. Rubin, New York University

Summary

Barnett Rubin, Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University, spoke about the root causes of instability and the challenges of nation-building efforts in Afghanistan. Part of the Charles Adam Frances Lecture Series, his lecture was cosponsored by The Fletcher School.

Rubin noted that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 brought peripheral humanitarian issues in Afghanistan to the centerfold, quickly transforming the state and its non-state elements into the "pre-eminent security threat" of the United States. The conceptual framework of intrastate war mandates the use of troops to kill or capture the enemy until it is overpowered. Rubin commented that, relying upon this outdated framework, Operation Enduring Freedom has coincided with a de-politicization of the actual sources of conflict in Afghanistan. The prevalence of terrorists in ungoverned spaces has much to do with the politics that underlie and impact the capacity of state control. When these politics are ignored, cultural reasons for conflict materialize in their place. Rubin argued that the international community has made a fundamental mistake in not realizing fully that the challenge at hand is a political struggle, in which normative and legitimacy issues are at stake.

The Bonn Agreement of December 2001 represented an attempt to legitimize the international system in Afghanistan through elections, as well as a high point in Iran-U.S. cooperation. Yet, the fact that the United States turned to the United Nations for assistance in securing leadership in Afghanistan is reflective of the low priority given to its political process. Issued in January 2006, the Afghanistan Compact proposes a framework for nation-building in Afghanistan based upon three pillars: security, governance, and development. While the document outlines a number of goals—which are critical to informing an appropriate distribution of available resources—Rubin cited its main flaw as its apolitical international agreement status. Because U.S. national interests are highly relevant to military operations in Afghanistan, decisions related to nation-building are rarely apolitical in actuality. The Afghanistan Compact does not take this chasm between objectives and reality into account.

In the absence of an effective state structure based on a self-functioning contract with citizens of the state, Afghanistan has relied upon outside funding for its subsistence. Initially, the borders of Afghanistan were demarcated by the British and the Russians, for whom the territory served as a buffer. These superpowers thereafter provided subsidies in exchange for influence. Parallel and informal judicial and legislative processes were developed in the 1970s, but these systems did not survive the process of modernization. Rubin noted that, generally speaking, Afghans desire a centralized government based on meritocracy. Yet, since meritocracy does not exist in Afghanistan, they must rely instead upon a clientele system in which the benefits of state control are distributed to kinship groups and redistributed through lineage, reinforcing the personal relationships between ethnic groups and their patrons. In this context, a transition to the impersonal nature of rule of law is especially difficult.

The international community has attempted to convince Afghanistan that its government should be decentralized, especially to improve the distribution of resources to citizens, but the legacy of external subsidies cannot be easily replaced. International donors reinforce externally driven priorities, monitoring, and evaluation; and the long-term presence of international aid undermines rather than reinforces the power of the state. Rubin recommended that countries providing aid to Afghanistan should report on their activities in a manner that is compatible with the bureaucracy of the Afghan government. He cited the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund, established by the World Bank, as a potentially effective structure for distributing aid. The fund serves as a clearinghouse in which external donors pool their aid, the use of which is then approved by the Afghan parliament and a panel of representatives from donor governments. In this way, Afghans are aware of and involved in how international aid is being spent in their own country.

Afghanistan entered the international system through warfare and insecurity, and its introduction into the global economic system has been characterized by illegality. Making a transition to security and legality is difficult, but legitimate integration into the economic system is critical. Rubin noted that scholars and policymakers should consider whether institutions actually serve the Afghans and whether they instead should be subverted or ignored. For instance, treating counter-narcotics as a criminal or legal issue ignores the needs of the population, sends a message that drug dependencies of Western nations are prioritized over the livelihoods of Afghans, and de-legitimates operations that seek to reduce narcotics production. In responding effectively to the needs of the Afghan population, international actors must balance the political imperative of legitimization against the security imperative of counter-terrorism.

As the mouthpiece of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden attempts to appeal to the Muslim market niche and to the anti-imperialism and anti-globalization market niche. Rubin noted that the latter segment of supporters is more widespread, but also that many people share Osama bin Laden's grievances without endorsing al-Qaeda's program. In remarks of October 7, 2001, Osama bin Laden explained that, "what you [the United States] have tasted is only a small bit of the humiliation and suffering that we have been tasting for the past 80 years." In Rubin's view, this comment references the international instruments that divided the Ottoman Empire into colonial nation-states and that abolished the political authority of the Islamic caliphate. There are significant populations in the world for whom the nation-state system, with its accompanying software of international laws and human rights, is not conducive to success. Such populations might not necessarily support Osama bin Laden, but they are increasingly susceptible to his influence.

Just as there are populations for whom the nation-state system is ineffective and resisted, global superpowers do not always perceive the multilateral system as capable of operating sufficiently to their advantage. Rubin emphasized that there is a relationship between the reluctance of the United States to bow to multilateralism and the contestation of that same system by the Afghans, who perhaps benefit from it the least. As some observers contend, even when working together, the international system might not be capable of delivering for Afghanistan. Primarily because of the repercussions of this possibility, it is that much more important for international actors to attempt success through cooperation.

By Julia Bennett (MALD '08)