British Bribes, Afghan Tribes

Kimberly Martin suggests that it's a bad idea to try to bribe Afghanistan's tribes and thus repeat the mistakes the British made a century ago:

The plan draws on the ideas of David Kilcullen, formerly the senior counterinsurgency adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. He recommends that in any tribal situation, the trick is to recruit community leaders who are local power-brokers, able to enforce consistent rules in their communities — in other words, new official maliks. The plan will pay militia members $150 a month for their services. A new Afghan directorate will take over the payments from the United States

At a tactical level this plan may allow the U.S. to compete against the Taliban for immediate influence. But its long-range political consequences sound disturbingly familiar. An outside state gathers intelligence to decide who is powerful and then pays them, making their power even greater. The power-brokers use the funds for patronage. The state continues the payments after the outside power leaves, perhaps eventually being blackmailed to do so. This creates an artificial hierarchy. Resentment grows among those cut out of the deal. Radical Islam may look like an attractive alternative to those not favored.

Mr. Kilcullen helped design the “Awakening Plan” in Iraq, where the U.S. military paid Sunni sheiks to use their militias on behalf of the Iraqi government instead of Al Qaeda. As U.S. forces withdraw, those militias are being integrated into Iraqi security forces. The process is plagued with difficulties, including accusations that Awakening leaders are being targeted for arrest by Shiite officials. Amid resurgent violence in Baghdad, it is premature to declare the plan a long-term success.

Furthermore, Afghanistan is not Iraq. As the RAND analyst Nora Bensahel notes, powerful Sunni sheiks in Anbar Province approached the Americans for protection from Al Qaeda, not the other way around. The sheiks did not want their existing local political control usurped by brutal and predatory outsiders.

Martin concludes that only training the Afghan National Army and using large number of U.S. troops to provide protection will suffice. By doing so, we will supplant the tribal structure, or at least not have to pick-and-choose which tribes we'll co-opt.

Which sounds plausible, as far as it goes. But, again, where is the cost-benefit? Martin suggests, correctly, that we need "tens of thousands" of U.S. and allied soldiers to defend the Afghans from the Taliban. Ok. For how long? At what cost? Which other foreign policy priorities get demoted because the U.S. military, in addition to defending the United States, is now defending Afghans too? Where does the money come from?

Also missing from Martin's analysis is the viability of the Afghan National Army if the "Afghanistan" it purports to defend is actually an appendage of the Karzai family and connected drug kingpins and warlords. Are we nurturing this institution so that it can stage a coup?