Step 1: Decentralize Afghanistan

[George L. Singleton]

If you want to see what a loose confederation of provinces, etc. looks like, how it doesn't work but instead creates and encourages corruption & despotic warlords, take a hard look at FATA, Waziristan, the NWFP, all in Pakistan.

Very bad idea, with all due politeness and respect.

From an old retired Colonel who has been there and done that in Pakistan of yore.

[Entropy]

Christian, thanks for coming by and commenting - your views are particularly valuable, but I would like to disagree on a few things:

I would argue that at the moment people are still most threatened by people in and near their communities than by the central government. So if there is to be decentralization, it needs to be a gradual process. The National Solidarity Program is probably a good start.

The first part is true - most threats are local. However, two points, which you raise in your excellent post at your blog:

1. In several cases central government officials are the same people who create problems at the local level. These officials use their "official" government power to further their own, local agendas. In such cases central government is not the problem, but it exacerbates the problem. Look at the various governors of Helmand, for example.

2. As you noted in your post, central authority is largely theoretical. In my view part of the reason for this is that local people realize that a strong central government is not going to serve their interests because of corruption - it's only going to serve the interests of the corrupt officials enriching themselves. They might be willing to accept and even enable more authority under a more decentralized system where money and services do not have to trickle-down through some ministry in Kabul.

I really like what you wrote in your post:

What do the people in these local communities want? Anecdotally, the want the state to provide services, protect them from harm and to act as an honest arbiter for local disputes. I would argue that many exasperated people in Afghanistan’s periphery are, at this point, willing to settle for a strong central state, but only if it is benevolent. The strong state is there in law but not in practice (beyond governor’s appointments) and the “benevolent” aspect is still often aspirational.

My argument is that a strong, central and benevolent state is, at the very best, unlikely in Afghanistan. A strong state will have to be authoritarian in nature, but even that will be difficult given all the barriers to extending state control. Iraq is a case where centralization is theoretically much easier than Afghanistan, yet the Iraqi government is much less centralized than Afghanistan's.

Agree with you on the NSP.

George,

If you want to see what a loose confederation of provinces, etc. looks like, how it doesn't work but instead creates and encourages corruption & despotic warlords, take a hard look at FATA, Waziristan, the NWFP, all in Pakistan.

Here's how I see Pakistan: Pakistan as a nation-state is really just the provinces of Punjab and Sindh. Most of the rest of the "country" is either administered and/or treated as colonial possessions.

That isn't what I, at least, would like to see in Afghanistan, and would suggest there is a lot of room between the (theoretically) strong central government now in place and a "loose confederation" of provinces. Two ideas are to give the provinces some discretionary budget and more say in who is appointed to official posts.

But the immediate problem is not necessarily what form of stable, effective government Afghanistan wants or needs in the long term. The reality is that the central state has shown time and again that it is not able to deliver at the local level. In the near and medium terms the problems with the Afghan government cannot be fixed and it also seems unlikely, in my view, that the central government's power will much grow. So what can be done?

[CloseDanger]

Ground up may be the way to go.

Registan has their take.