An insurgency battles a host nation’s government for the right to rule all or part of the country.1 An intervening power generally aims to help the host nation government defeat the insurgent threat. US counterinsurgency doctrine presumes alignment between the host government and the external counterinsurgent.2 Political scientist Thomas Grant argues that good allies are rare among host nation governments that are fighting insurgencies because effectively governed countries tend not to provide “inspiration or excuse for guerilla war.”3 Adverse selection is the political science term for this problem. “The same governmental shortcomings that facilitate the emergence of an insurgency,” notes Walter Ladwig, “also undercut the effectiveness of the counterinsurgent response.”4 These kinds of conflicts, Stephen Biddle argues, are “strongly associated with weak states and corrupt, unrepresentative, clientelist regimes.”5 A counterinsurgency is thus unlikely to succeed without reforms by the host government, Daniel Byman contends, “but these regimes are likely to subvert the reforms that threaten the existing power structure.”6
Adverse selection is part of a broader phenomenon known as principal-agent theory. This theory, developed by economists to explain interactions by parties to a contract, describes challenges in which one actor (the principal) delegates authority to another actor (the agent) to carry our actions on its behalf.7 I will use Ladwig’s term, patron-client relationship, because of the equal status in international law between the host country and external power.8 The patron, in this case the United States, supports a host nation government (the client) with the primary aim of advancing American strategic interests. The faster a host nation can govern and secure itself, the quicker the United States can withdraw its troops and reduce capacity-building, aid, and assistance expenditures.
This aspiration has proven difficult in practice. Three challenges in patron-client relationships are interest misalignment, information asymmetry, and moral hazard. These problems can impede the intervening power’s ability to change a losing or ineffective strategy, damage capacity-building efforts, and undermine the prospects of a successful outcome. Interest misalignment occurs because the primary objectives of the intervening power (defeat the insurgency, enable the host nation to secure and govern itself, and return home as quickly and inexpensively as possible) compete with powerful incentives for the client (maintaining power and international largesse). This difference results in the host government promoting political, economic, sectarian, ethnic, or other arrangements that benefit its core supporters—even if these same measures are inspiring the insurgency.9 Many of the standard prescriptions for counterinsurgencies, such as political and economic reform, a professional military, greater political inclusion, and reconciliation, can be more threatening to the regime than the insurgency itself.10 “The regime’s interests are thus typically focused less on external enemies than on internal threats from rival elites,” observes Stephen Biddle, “and especially the state military itself, which is often seen as a threat at least equal to that of foreign enemies.”11 This situation complicates efforts to develop host nation security forces. Because armed elites can pose a much more significant threat than the insurgency does, regimes tend to undertake various forms of appeasement, cooptation, or enfeeblement of the security forces.12 In Samuel Huntington’s framework, they opt for subjective control of the military to prevent a coup.13 US military advisors raised on the principle of objective control, in which the military agrees to be apolitical in return for substantial professional autonomy, can have difficulty recognizing the difference in their host nation partner. “The kind of powerful, politically independent, technically proficient, non-corrupt military the United States seeks,” notes Biddle, “is often seen by the partner state as a far greater threat to their self-interest than foreign invasion or terrorist infiltration.”14
Information asymmetry occurs because the host nation is unlikely to divulge its corrupt practices. The client is likely to manipulate the patron to maintain military and economic support while maximizing autonomy. Hiding information, disguising intentions and interests, and paying lip service to the patron’s demands are typical parts of the playbook. “In reality,” Ladwig suggests, the patron “has, at best, only indirect control over its client’s economic, political, and military policies.”15
A moral hazard occurs when the patron is committed to the client’s survival, and the client does not bear the full consequences of its actions. This situation may create incentives for the client or rival elites to engage in high-risk behaviors, knowing that the patron will not allow things to go too far.16 To encourage reform, patrons may reassure clients that the aid and support will be forthcoming if the regime undertakes actions the patron deems necessary. To maintain domestic support for the ongoing assistance and troop presence, the patron may paint the client’s survival as a vital interest. This combination could raise doubts in the client’s mind that the patron will halt the intervention or support if the client does not comply with the reforms. Why risk internal instability by enacting painful and potentially destabilizing reforms if the insurgency threat will be met by the intervening power anyway?17
Conversely, publicity of the client’s problems may reduce the patron’s public support for the intervention. The client may avoid enacting what it deems to be risky reforms if the intervening power is going to leave anyway or not make good on its promises.18 In short, a client has the incentive to resist changes that may heighten the risk of domestic instability even if such reforms would improve its chances to defeat the insurgency or bring it into a peace process. These problems undermine the prospects of transition strategies.
How can patrons sway clients? Walter Ladwig examines two influence strategies patrons frequently use: inducements and conditionality.19 Inducement seeks to persuade a client to change behavior with promises of aid and support. This approach, Ladwig notes, tends to be preferred by US policy-makers. Conditionality, on the other hand, uses rewards and punishments to affect a client’s behavior and reduce moral hazards. To know if the client is enacting the reforms or shirking, the patron must use intrusive monitoring.20 Such oversight can be very resource-intensive and unpopular with the host nation. Conditionality increases the likelihood of frictions in the patron-client relationship. The client may highlight or amplify these challenges to reduce the willingness of the patron to enact such measures. Inducements are the path of least resistance for the patron, but Ladwig and Biddle show that conditionality is more likely to be effective.
In September 2006, as Karzai was heading to Washington to meet with President Bush, Ambassador Ron Neumann noted that the Afghan president “is at the lowest point of public confidence in his government. A deteriorating security situation, coupled with rampant corruption at all levels, has sapped confidence and feeds public perceptions of a weak government and governance system.” The ambassador also cited the problems with Pakistan and the nexus of corruption, narcotics, and insecurity. He advised Bush to improve funding for Afghanistan, increase the size of the security forces, and urge Karzai to “do more” on corruption and narcotics. “We, in turn, must recognize he is not strong enough and Afghanistan not stable enough for him to do these things without our encouragement, our occasional pressure, and a lot of our money and force to back him up.”21
Bush took stock of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fall of 2006. He fundamentally changed the strategy in Iraq, as chapter 27 will show. For Afghanistan, he simply provided more resources. “Today, five short years later, the Taliban have been driven from power, al Qaeda has been driven from its camps, and Afghanistan is free,” President Bush announced in a February 2007 speech on Afghanistan. “That’s why I say we have made remarkable progress.”
Nonetheless, he noted the significant Taliban offensives in 2006 and decided to increase support to Afghanistan even as he was surging military forces in Iraq. He outlined five capacity-building efforts: increase the size of the Afghan Army from 32,000 to 70,000; strengthen the NATO forces in Afghanistan (to include an increase of US forces); build provincial government capacity and develop local economies; reduce poppy cultivation; and help Karzai fight corruption, especially in the justice sector. He added a sixth effort, which was to work with Pakistan’s President Musharraf to defeat terrorists and extremists in Pakistan.22
Confirmation bias reinforced the Bush administration’s tendency to overestimate the legitimacy of the Afghan government and underestimate the growing strength of the Taliban. They misdiagnosed the problem in Afghanistan as one of inadequate capacity. Warning signs of an increasingly capable insurgency with external sanctuary and a predatory, corrupt Afghan government were met with more resources but not a new approach. Exploitable bureaucratic silos and interest misalignment between the US and Afghan governments meant that more resources were at high risk of elite capture, as was discussed in the preceding chapter. Without addressing these problems, more resources might even make corruption worse.
Relations with Pakistan, which was designated by the United States as a major non-NATO ally in 2004, were misaligned, too. A Pakistani military offensive to eliminate Afghan Taliban sanctuaries could theoretically bring about an end to the insurgency. Still, Musharraf was not about to go to war with a group that was advancing Pakistan’s interests in Afghanistan, even if they undermined American interests and conducted operations that killed American soldiers.23 Musharraf, instead, used US funding to support operations against the Pakistani Taliban.24
Despite Bush’s desire to increase support, by August 2007 the US training teams fielded only 1,000 of the 2,400 trainers required. NATO provided only 20 of their agreed 70 teams. The ANA had only 53 percent of the equipment deemed critical by the Combined Security Training Command—Afghanistan (CSTC-A).25 By June 2008, only 2 of 105 Afghan Army units had a fully capable rating.26 The Afghan police were in even worse condition.27 CSTC-A revised its readiness forecast by only one year in 2008, noting the army and police would be “fully capable” by the end of 2011.28 When Lieutenant General James Dubik conducted a CENTCOM-directed assessment of the ANSF in 2008, he found that their slow rate of growth was unable to keep pace with the growing insurgency.29
As the Taliban threat and US resources grew, so did the scale of corruption. In 2005 Afghanistan ranked 117 out of 158 in the Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index. By 2009 it vaulted to 179 out of 180, behind only Somalia.30 Afghanistan expert Astri Suhkre blames the growth in corruption on international community largesse: “The money flow simply overwhelmed the country’s social and institutional capacity to deal with it in a legal and socially acceptable manner.”31 This argument presumes that international aid that was aligned to Afghanistan’s “absorptive capacity” would have been used for its intended purposes, and excess would not have been available for misappropriation.
Patron-client challenges cast doubts upon this premise. Sarah Chayes, for instance, illustrates that the government had become a vertically integrated kleptocracy. As noted earlier, government positions were sold by power brokers in Kabul at increasingly high prices. In exchange, officials had license to recoup the money and turn a profit—many using predatory practices to do so. An official who did not pay the power brokers would lose the job.32 Even if international aid and contracts had aligned to Afghanistan’s “absorptive capacity,” the problems would persist. The main incentive for many government officials was sustaining the kleptocracy, not serving the people.33
The Department of Defense’s semi-annual report to Congress in January 2009 cites data showing governance getting worse from 2006 to 2008.34 By 2010, according to a United Nations report, corruption had eclipsed insecurity and unemployment as the most significant concern among Afghans.35 Annual surveys showed that an overwhelming majority of Afghans viewed corruption as a significant problem in their everyday lives (see figure 3).36 A highly sophisticated kleptocracy and international largesse became mutually reinforcing. Officials’ and power brokers’ insatiable demand for money and power was sapping the legitimacy of the government and the international community. The predatory nature of the government and associated warlords led more Afghans to withhold their support or even transfer it to the Taliban.37 Civilian casualties by international forces, meanwhile, continued to undermine the mission. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) attributed 39 percent of the civilian fatalities in 2008 to foreign forces.38
Bush changed the strategy in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan. In 2007 Iraq was unraveling rapidly. Afghanistan was a slow, less perceptible failure. Confirmation bias had led to a dangerous complacency as American officials fixated on examples of progress.39 The tendency to operate in bureaucratic silos created seams that were being ably exploited by Afghan elites and fault lines that were interacting in destructive ways. Military efforts were damaging governance and legitimacy; elites captured political milestones; diplomatic efforts resulted in Pakistan being awarded major non-NATO ally status despite their support for the Taliban, which reinforced Karzai’s cynicism and India’s alarm. Patron-client challenges reinforced these problems. The United States had not developed a coordinated strategy with the Afghan or Pakistani governments, so interests and incentives remained dangerously misaligned. Political instability and kleptocracy in Afghanistan and double-dealing by Pakistan were undermining US interests. The harder the international community tried to fight and to spend its way out of the problems, the more deeply it was sucked into the quagmire.40