America’s war in Afghanistan began in 1979 — not 2001 — when we supported the mujahedeen in resisting the Soviet invasion. When the Cold War ended in 1991, we left Afghanistan. We had successfully stopped communism’s spread, and the American public was understandably tired of spending lives and money in this faraway land. We are in a similar position today. We have killed Osama bin Laden and dismantled al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and we are rightly tired of fighting.
Tragically, we thought our interests in Afghanistan were met with the Soviet withdrawal in 1991, and our war fatigue kept us from seeing the bigger picture. But, Afghanistan is historically predisposed toward civil war, and a civil war there can have disastrous consequences. After all, the Taliban regime that won the Afghan Civil War (1994-2001) provided critical safe haven for Osama bin Laden in the period leading up to the 9/11 attacks.
We have to see past our war fatigue today and commit to preventing Afghanistan’s reversion to civil war because doing so is strongly within our interests. In order to achieve this goal, our top priority must be convincing Afghan ethnic groups and tribes to settle disputes within the political system. To do that, we must decentralize the currently hyper-centralized Afghan federal government.
Afghanistan is home to four major ethnic groups. Civil war expert James Fearon argues that ethnic violence does not grow from inherent ethnic hatred. Rather, he says, it results when leaders build coalitions along ethnic lines to achieve political aims. The latter is exactly what has happened in Afghanistan. During the Afghan Civil War, the United Front (or, the Northern Alliance) organized Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks from the west and north to oppose the Taliban-led Pashtun army from the east and south. These ethnic alliances remain potent in Afghan politics and present the possibility that if the state fails post-U.S. withdrawal, then armed ethnic coalitions will once again vie for power.
Afghanistan, to be sure, has a long history of tribal warfare. Although tribes form the building blocks of the ethnic coalitions that have historically fought national conflicts, most tribal fighting over the years has taken the form of turf wars. Such conflicts have helped to prevent Afghan unity for centuries. For instance, although Mohammad Zahir Shah’s reign (1933-1973) saw relative peace, tribal disputes hindered development projects that would have helped make the peace more sustainable.
Ethnic conflict and tribal warfare occur when leaders — especially at the provincial- and district-levels — believe that settling disputes violently will be less costly and more beneficial than doing so within the political system. It must be our goal to create a system that proves the opposite: that settling disputes politically will be more beneficial and less costly. To prove this, such a system must demonstrate its abilities to consistently distribute public goods to local ethnic and tribal leaders, including federal funding and security, and punish those leaders who break the rules.
The U.S. began rebuilding the Afghan government in 2001, believing that a hyper-centralized federal government was the best path towards building such a system. But as Foreign Policy’s John Arquilla points out, this system does not yield efficient distribution of public goods because it is extremely difficult to build coalitions to pass legislation through the parliament, and the executive branch often intercedes in local projects. And, it cannot punish rule-breakers because it lacks the cohesion to develop a formidable security force.
My research shows that the best way to build an efficient and strong Afghan government is to decentralize it. Province- and district-level leaders should be empowered to make most budgetary decisions within their territorial jurisdiction. This does not guarantee just allocation of federal funds. But, it does guarantee that local leaders will be incentivized to cooperate with the federal government in order to retain their wealth and power. Furthermore, decentralization will actually improve state capacity — and therefore its ability to efficiently provide public goods — by decreasing the points-of- approval needed for local security and development initiatives.
In order for decentralization to succeed, the federal government — not province- or district-level representatives — must be empowered to manage all foreign aid and investment contracts. This is critical because foreign support in particular provinces or districts could provide opportunities to sub-state militias to grow and challenge the federal regime. Foreign support might also motivate militias to rebel with the promise of more money and supplies if they can expand their power. For instance, China is currently investing in mineral extraction projects in Logar province. If China were to divert some investment funds to local leaders to help maintain an investor-friendly political environment, those funds could be used to build a provincial militia to challenge the regime in Kabul.
Provincial leaders should be able to take a portion of the national revenue from aid and investments as a positive incentive to abide by the rules, while the remaining revenue should be distributed by the federal government across provinces on the basis of need. In addition, the federal government should disincentivize sub-federal leaders from seeking foreign support by empowering security forces to punish leaders who violate the above arrangement. Finally, using monetary and political incentives, a collective security agreement can be arranged between all province leaders to punish those who break the rules under the assumption that any member’s defection is a threat to all.
The end result of this recommendation is to create a loose federal system in Afghanistan that simultaneously raises the costs of settling disputes violently and the benefits of cooperating within the political system. Under the proposed decentralization plan, leaders will understand that those who break from all leaders’ agreements to cooperate within this system will be punished by the remaining body. Given the cost of defection, they will see that abiding by the political system is the surest way to secure wealth and power over their territorial jurisdictions.
The implementation of this plan will take time and money. But, now is not the time to give in to war fatigue and let Afghanistan fall back to chaos, for doing so will only hurt us in the long run.
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