By Marc Briz (’14)

According to Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, transitioning troops out of their combat role ahead of schedule in Afghanistan is both “naïve” and “misguided.”  Obama and his Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, however, have stood by the strategy despite the pointed criticism and seem to welcome a heated debate on the subject. Panetta had stated on February 1^st that American troops could end their combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013, eighteen months sooner than expected.[i]  Many incidents including the burning of Qurans at a NATO base and the killing of 17 villagers by a U.S. soldier have stymied decisive statements about the official evacuation strategy in recent weeks. General John Allen, who commands U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, has stated he will present his military recommendations “before the end of 2012,” in other words, once the presidential election has come to an end.[ii] Both Republicans and Democrats are torn on the issue, some clamoring for a prompt pullout and others apprehensive to move out too quickly. Despite partisan differences, the conflict in Afghanistan is seen by both parties as a “war without end.”

Why has the war in Afghanistan been so drawn out? Why does progress on the ground or even the hope of it seem impossible? Some answers lie in Joel Hafvenstein’s Opium Season: A Year on the Afghan Frontier. Published in 2007, the book describes his experiences as a member of a USAID development project. It begins with Hafvenstein’s descriptions of his first encounters with the dry, crackling terrain, and the arduous leadership role thrown upon him. His team’s mission was to create thousands of jobs for Afghans to dissuade them from working in poppy fields. The team certainly had its successes, but towards the end of Hafvenstein’s stay, violent attacks ended the lives of eleven of his team members. His story is not unique: the obstacles he and his team faced are emblematic of a much larger set of problems in the region.

Hafvenstein first explains how he arrived in Afghanistan. Given that opium production represents the lion’s share of the Taliban’s income, the U.S. government has supported development projects such as Hafvenstein’s enterprise and encouraged the military to curtail poppy cultivation. Unfortunately, these efforts have not been effective: In November, the U.N. reported a 7% increase in opium cultivation and a 61% increase in production. “After ten years of US-led war in Afghanistan, the country remains the world’s leading opium supplier, responsible for ninety percent of the global supply”.[iii]  Hafvenstein argues that development is simply not enough. If domestic security remains as weak as it is, no amount of investment will produce results:

We were devoting vast resources to the problem of poppy cultivation while ignoring a more fundamental problem: the wretched state of the Afghan police. As long as the police remained a ragtag bunch of warlord-run militias, ordinary Afghans would not know security–-and the lack of security was the great undertow eroding everything America was trying to accomplish in Afghanistan, including our narcotics policy. (306)

Development projects try to satisfy the need created by reducing poppy production, but with a less than reliable police force, improvement is hard to come by. The deaths of Hafvenstein’s coworkers demonstrate this grim reality. Although he wrote four years ago, the trends Hafvenstein points to have continued: U.S. deaths have only increased with 117 in 2007 (the year the book was published), 317 in 2009, 499 in 2010, and 402 in 2011.[iv]  This past August has been the deadliest month to date with 67 deaths, 30 of which were officers in the attacked Chinnok helicopter.[v] According to a 2011 U.N. report, civilian deaths tolls also reached a record high this past year.[vi]

Going past security issues, Hafvenstein moves beyond the current public debate to unearth even less publicized truths such as the failure to develop a suitable education system.

Education and citizenship rights weren’t just important because they helped Thai highlanders earn a higher income; they also helped the highlanders stand up politically to the powerful forces that were driving the opium trade. In Helmand (southern Afghanistan), by contrast, we were just focusing on the economic forces that pushed people to grow poppy (236).

Without basic literacy, how is a self-sufficient police force going to function? According to a study by the International Council on Security and Development, 84% of people interviewed in Kandahar and Helmand provinces last October were unable to read or write.[vii]  So, it doesn’t come as a surprise when the World Bank and Afghan’s Finance Ministry published an analysis on November 22^nd that estimates “foreign donors would have to pay about $7 billion a year for the next decade to cover the Afghan government’s expenditures on its security forces, basic services such as health and education, and development projects”.[viii]

There have been signs of poor planning and irresponsibly allocated funds from the beginning–suggestive of the naïve and misguided strategic planning Romney enjoys critiquing eleven years later. My concern is that by January 2013, whether it be Obama or Romney, the new administration will follow the same treaded path of military aid and action.

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times this month highlighted the results of the United Nations Arab Human Development Report published in 2002.  The document echoes Hafvenstein’s memoir: “What ails the Arab world is a deficit of freedom, a deficit of modern education and a deficit of women’s empowerment”.[ix]  Though Friedman’s editorial focuses on the situation in Egypt, I agree with his appeal. “Our response should have been to shift our aid money from military equipment to building science-and-technology high-schools and community colleges across Egypt.” The decisions to be made on Afghanistan need to take in account issues of employment, opium production, and education if we ever want this war to have an end.

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Tags: Afghanistan, Education, Obama, Poppy, USAID, War