Raising and Mentoring Security Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan

The effort to raise host nation security forces was central to the U.S. strategy in both Iraq and Afghanistan. The U.S. poured massive resources into both countries. Unfortunately, U.S. planners failed to understand the cultural and political environments in which these forces would have to operate. Thus, the United States attempted to build ministries and forces based on U.S. models that simply were not appropriate for those nations. Although the training teams successfully recruited, trained, and deployed almost a million Afghans and Iraqis, Iraqi forces have collapsed and the Afghans are struggling to keep the insurgents at bay.     

美军从伊拉克到阿富汗的战略转向

2月17日,美国总统奥巴马在北卡罗来纳州的军事营地宣布,美国已经着手进行结束伊拉克战争的工作,截至2010年8月31日以前美军将撤出大部分作战部队,只留下大约5万军人在伊遂行有限非战斗任务。根据前总统布什与伊拉克政府达成的安全协议,剩余部队将在2011年底前全部撤离伊拉克。同时,美军将战略重点转向阿富汗,计划2010年前向阿富汗增兵1.7万人,据估计美军驻阿部队将从目前的3.4万人增加到6.6万人。此次战略调整既是奥巴马兑现总统竞选时的诺言,更是美国出于重新调整和规划其在全球范围内反恐的战略考虑。     

Transitional politics in Afghanistan and Iraq: inclusion,consultation, and public participation

This article explores three main themes in comparing the transitional processes in Afghanistan and Iraq: (i) the clarity of the transitional frameworks and the need to separate discussions on such frameworks from debates on new constitutional arrangements; (ii) the degree of representation in the transitional institutions and the availability of channels for political consultation in the transitional processes; and (iii) the participation of civil society and the public at large in the transition processes.     

Flipping the Switch: Combat,State Building,and Junior Officers in Iraq and Afghanistan

Contemporary us counterinsurgency doctrine in Iraq and Afghanistan requires junior leaders to engage in both combat and state-building activities. This study aims to explain the fundamental challenge in merging these. I argue that difficulty lies in separating insurgents from civilians, and translating doctrine from senior to junior officers. Junior officers consistently develop a similar ad hoc decision-making tool— role-switching—to simplify complex situations to a binary of “hostile or not.” They understand themselves to fill only two roles, the violent “on” role and the non-violent “off” role and develop several tools to minimize the difficulty of role-switching, help their subordinates switch, and signal switching to local populations. Ultimately, however, problems with role-switching—role stickiness, inappropriate switching, and role bias—can in some cases encourage indiscriminate and excessive violence, pointing to the fundamental failures of using military forces as a one-size-fits-all solution to state-building projects abroad.     

‘Phase IV’ Operations in the War on Terror: Comparing Iraq and Afghanistan

This article identifies the obstacles and prospects of implementing President Obama's surge strategy in Afghanistan by examining four issues: (1) the origins and implementation of the Iraq surge policy; (2) U.S. counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan; (3) a comparative examination of Afghan and Iraqi tribal insurgent structures; and (4) suggestions for a counter insurgency policy more in sync with regional social and tribal structures.     

Militias,tribes and insurgents: The challenge of political reintegration in Iraq

Following its overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, the United States was confronted with one of the most complex state-building enterprises of recent history. A central component of state building, emphasised in the literature yet given scant attention at the time of the invasion, is the process of political reintegration: the transformation of armed groups into political actors willing to participate peacefully in the political future of the country. In Iraq, political reintegration was a particularly important challenge, relating both to the armed forces of the disposed regime and to the Kurdish and Shia militias eager to play a role in the new political system. This article examines the different approaches employed by the United States toward the political reintegration of irregular armed groups, from the policy vacuum of 2003 to the informal reintegration seen during the course of the so-called “surge” in 2007 and 2008. The case study has significant implications for the importance of getting political reintegration right—and the long-term costs of getting it badly wrong.     

Peace-building and the predatory political economy of insecurity: evidence from Cambodia,East Timor and Afghanistan

International peace-building interventions in post-conflict countries are intended to transform the socio-political context that led to violence and thereby build a stable and lasting peace. Yet the UN's transitional governance approach to peace-building is ill-suited to the challenge of dealing with the predatory political economy of insecurity that often emerges in post-conflict societies. Evidence from peace-building attempts in Cambodia, East Timor and Afghanistan illustrates that the political economy incentives facing domestic elites in an environment of low credibility and weak institutionalisation lead to a cycle of patronage generation and distribution that undermine legitimate and effective governance. As a result, post-conflict countries are left vulnerable to renewed conflict and persistent insecurity. International interventions can only craft lasting peace by understanding the political economy of conflict persistence and the potential policy levers for altering, rather than perpetuating, those dynamics.     

Bureaucratic façade and political realities of disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan

Internationally sponsored disarmament and demobilisation in Afghanistan was characterised by a marked divergence between the bureaucratic process designed by the UN and the political reality of disarmament. The bureaucratic process had several flaws of its own, which were particularly obvious in the case of DIAG, but the main reason for the substantial failure of disarmament was the absence of political will among key Afghan partners. International players in the process choose to compromise on ratherunfavourable terms, saving the façade of demobilisation thanks to the formal disbandment of the militias incorporated under the Ministry of Defence, but in fact allowing thousands of militias to continue operating throughout the country. The article shows how the very limited impact of DDR and even more so DIAG was already obvious in the early stages of the process and was deliberately ignored. The article concludes that the compromise could at least have achieved some limited aims, such as delegitimising the militias, had not many of their leaders been allowed to compete successfully for parliamentary seats shortly afterwards.     

The Big Problem of Small Allies: New Data and Theory on Defiant Local Counterinsurgency Partners in Afghanistan and Iraq

Alliance politics are critical yet understudied in counterinsurgency interventions. Despite the importance of local allies, traditional research on alliances fails to account for the challenges of managing in-country counterinsurgency security partners or explain variation among which types of policy requests from large intervening allies are likely to result in compliance or defiance by local partners. When did US intervening forces have leverage in Iraq and Afghanistan, and when was American influence limited? Utilizing thousands of US government documents to analyze over 250 US demands of allies in Kabul and Baghdad, this paper reexamines established variables in the literature on inter-alliance bargaining—namely allied interests and dependencies—to offer a new model describing the interaction of these variables in asymmetric counterinsurgency partnerships. The theory predicts when large allies are likely to influence local partners and when these intervening forces will likely fail to coerce them.     

Adapting violence for state survival and legitimacy: the resilience and dynamism of political repression in a democratizing South Korea*

Capacity in violence and its utilization is generally understood to be a first-order condition of the state-building process. As capacity increases and a state gains supremacy over would-be competitors, the use of violence by the state is hypothesized to decline, especially in polities that have made the democratic transition. However, we here demonstrate theoretically and empirically that the conventional wisdom is inadequate. We argue that political violence ubiquitously evolves according to the changing socio-political environment and varying tasks of the state.

Using the case of South Korea, a high-capacity, consolidated democracy, as a prism for theory building and corroboration, this study chronicles the evolution of political violence from the state’s explicit mobilization of thugs to suppress opposition at the early stage of state building through its collaboration with criminal organizations for developmental projects to the manipulation of quasi-governmental organizations after democratization in the late 1980s, coeval with the traditional use of public sources of force. We specifically look at how political development, that is, democratization, has produced new demands for – and constraints on – political violence and how post-authoritarian governments have responded.     

阿富汗:失去的机会和前景

本文试图对阿富汗战争失败的原因进行总结,并对阿富汗的前景作出分析.阿富汗战争已进行9年,对它军事败局的原因见仁见智,本文对其进行了整理,提出了作者的看法.从2010年开始,阿富汗进入了喀布尔进程,美国将在一年后开始撤军,阿富汗政府将接管全部管理和安全职能.阿富汗处于历史的十字路口,对于它的前景,本文也予以探讨.     

论现代阿富汗发展进程中的伊斯兰教育

阿富汗是当今世界上教育入学率和成人识字率最低的国家之一。在这个国家,以古兰经、“圣训”和伊斯兰教教义为主要内容的伊斯兰教育,源远流长。伊斯兰教育的主要机构有清真寺教育和现代宗教学校教育。在阿富汗的现代教育中,也离不开伊斯兰教育的成份。     

Afghanistan: the politics of post-war reconstruction

Post-war reconstruction has become a dominant feature of Western political discourse and a key policy concern since the 1990s. While there is an acute need for informed debate between political scientists and practitioners engaged in such activity, this requirement is often ignored. From a practical perspective, most post-war reconstruction initiatives have, in recent years, been mired by lack of donor support or by no reduction in the dangers that were present prior to the outbreak of violence. Using Afghanistan as a case study, this article seeks primarily to advance policy thinking on what has become known in the literature as ‘state building’. Based on a theoretical and empirical examination, it attempts to assess the political future of Afghanistan following international involvement in the country over the past year. Most importantly, it highlights that the reconstruction of Afghanistan is dependent on developing a new political culture and a new way of thinking among the citizenry that ranks compromise over con?ict. More generally, the paper concludes that contemporary approaches to post-war reconstruction have been depressingly limited in their results.     

Elections in Afghanistan and the Role of China-India-Russia Trilateral Cooperation in Rebuilding Afghanistan

With the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan declaring President Harmid Karzai as the winner in the presidential election, the eventful elections in Afghanistan finally came to an end. The dramatic ending of the Afghan presidential and provincial council elections, which were held on August 20, 2009 but had since mired in disputes and allegations and counter-allegations of frauds, however, is not the beginning of the end of the perilous situation in Afghanistan.     

移交主权后的伊拉克

6月 2 8日 ,美国领导下的联军当局向伊拉克提前移交主权 ,但伊拉克并未收回完整主权 ,联军的军事占领也没有结束。伊临时过渡政府对多国部队的军事行动只享有发言权 ,无否决权 ,联军享有治外法权。伊政治结构三分天下 ,什叶派占据了主要权力 ,逊尼派得到了名誉权。联合国第 1 5 4 6号决议授权美国领导下的多国部队继续在伊拉克驻留 ,多国部队有了联合国的合法外衣。伊拉克收回的仅仅是有限主权 ,包括有限立法权、有限司法权、有限安全权、有限国防权、有限石油资源权等。目前主宰伊拉克命运的是美伊双重领导机构 ,美伊两个权力中心并存     

NGO monitoring and the legitimacy of international cooperation: A strategic analysis

States often invite NGOs to monitor international cooperation. Under what circumstances are states likely to take this step? We argue that NGO monitoring allows states to provide domestic publics with credible evidence regarding successful cooperation, but that this credibility carries a cost: if states fail to cooperate, a participating NGO will expose this failure and thus delegitimize the cooperation effort. Our formal analysis indicates that states obtain a dual benefit from NGO participation: in addition to enhanced legitimacy, NGO scrutiny helps states credibly commit to high cooperation levels vis-á-vis each other. The increased costs of failure, however, may deter state use of NGO monitoring. Surprisingly, we find that NGO monitoring is the most useful for states when the cooperation cost is relatively low. We explore the empirical relevance of our theoretical argument in NGO monitoring of World Bank development projects and compliance with the Kyoto Protocol. We also explain why NGO monitoring has been disallowed in the Global Environment Facility. Our analysis provides a firm strategic foundation for the idea that NGO participation sometimes confers benefits to states, and our theory has several empirically falsifiable implications.