Tajikistan

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The Tajik Example

Finally, there is the experience of Tajikistan recently documented in Foreign Affairs. With a minimal budget, international efforts were able to stabilize the country in the 1990s by allowing local warlords to retain more autonomy. Instead of less effective governance, warlords were able to generate more of it because they had genuine control over their area.
On the national level, an essential balance of power was struck, borders were controlled and the country eventually moved on:
Rather than forcing free and fair elections, throwing out warlords, and flooding the country with foreign peacekeepers, the intervening parties opted for a more limited and realistic set of goals. They brokered deals across political factions, tolerated warlords where necessary, and kept the number of outside peacekeeping troops to a minimum. The result has been the emergence of a relatively stable balance of power inside the country, the dissuasion of former combatants from renewed hostilities, and the opportunity for state building to develop organically. The Tajik case suggests that in trying to rebuild a failed state, less may be more. But giving a greater role to the tribes and the militias isn't a new idea. Just over a year ago, an American-backed plan experimented with the arming of a militia in Wardak province. The Obama plan itself talks about the need for U.S. troops to work with local political units and their militias. Yet it's a matter of what elements are emphasized and whether the U.S. military can change its culture.
Even the intelligence community has severe shortcomings in the knowledge department necessary to fight a successful counterinsurgency. In a scathing report, Flynn said the intelligence community was "ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced...and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers."
Adding more troops is possibly counterproductive in the long run, because it only postpones the inevitable playing out of the situation after the Americans are gone. In the end, the solution to Afghanistan will have to come from Afghans. The sooner tribes are engaged and the the sooner American and ISAF deciders stop seeing Afghanistan through their own political institutions, the less painful it will be.

Källa: Foreign Policy In Focus, February 17, 2010

a) Norman Mailer

b) Günter Grass

c) Clausewitz

d) Kissinger

e) Harold Pinter

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