Ambassador Ronald Neumann on Afghanistan Security

Ambassador Ronald Neumann was US ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain, and Afghanistan and a deputy assistant secretary of State for the Middle East. In a 37 year career in the State Department he served also in Iran, Iraq, Yemen, the United Emirates and Senegal as well as office director for Iran-Iraq as well as other positons. He is now president of the American Academy of Diplomacy, an NGO focused on strengthening American diplomacy.  He is the author of a memoire, Three Embassies, Four Wars: a personal memoire (2017) and The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan (Potomac Press, 2009), a book on his time in Afghanistan. He has returned to Afghanistan repeatedly, most recently in November 2018, and is the author of a number of monographs, articles, and editorials.  Ambassador Neumann is on the advisory committees of a girls school in Afghanistan, the School of Leadership, Afghanistan (SOLA) and Spirit of America. He is on the board of the Middle East Policy Council. 

Ambassador Ronald Neumann spoke to Ellie Wainstein CMC ‘19 on February 8, 2019.

 

Since the Afghan army assumed responsibility for security in 2014, presence of the Islamic State has increased throughout the country, attacks have risen, and Afghanistan faces a threat of a resurgent Taliban. Is the Afghan military prepared to handle these threats? If not, how so? What would the military need in order to be more effective?

The Afghan military is partially prepared. Remember, we should really talk about Afghan security forces because it includes the police, army, and intelligence forces. There are some really good forces in the Afghan security forces. The Commandos, for instance, have performed very well.  However, the police have performed much less well and die at a higher rate. The Afghans are not about to lose the country completely, but they are losing ground. As long as the United States forces are there and the Afghans bring their Air Force more fully into being, they will have the power not to lose. However, they are not up to taking the battle to the Taliban. One of the biggest problems is holding the terrain that they won, which is a classic problem of counter-insurgency. In a conventional war, you move forward and you don't have to worry a lot about control behind you. In an unconventional war you have to be able to control everything and the enemy moves around you. There has been a whole series of different efforts to set up control areas and some of them have worked very well. However, even the ones that have worked well cannot survive very easily. The Taliban recognized that they are an extreme threat when there is a local force against the Taliban. So the Taliban will mass against these local forces. The Afghans have not been able to work out ways to reinforce their forces when they are under attack by overwhelming numbers. As a result, the Afghans end up having a good force that ultimately loses because the Taliban mass against them.

At the end of 2018, the Trump administration announced plans to withdraw up to half the US forces currently stationed in Afghanistan, constituting approximately 7,000 troops. Currently, these US forces, in coordination with other NATO troops in the country, are pursuing two military missions: counterterrorism efforts and the training of Afghan security forces. Is it possible to continue both missions with the proposed troop withdrawals? Which mission is more important? What are the possible implications of a mission shift in Afghanistan?

First of all, please note that this has not been ordered. US forces in Afghanistan have not received any order. Trump has talked about intention, but he has not actually done it. A withdrawal of that size would mean that the remaining forces could not continue both missions effectively. At the end of the Obama Administration, there were approximately 8,000 US troops in Afghanistan. The advisory mission did not extend beyond the corps level, which meant that they had no idea what was actually going on out in the field at the brigade, battalion, or company level. In fact, they did not even cover all corps.  That's quite a clear demonstration that you cannot do the advisory mission and the counterterrorism mission at the same time with that troop level.

Asking which mission is more important is kind of like asking a plumber if they need pliers or a screwdriver. Both are needed. The counterterrorism mission is very important to the US for our national security goals in particular. However, you cannot operate the forces in Afghanistan if you do not have someone securing them, which means Afghans. In addition, if you are not training them, then security is likely to decline around you, which makes maintaining a counterterrorism force unsustainable.  Therefore, the choice is highly unrealistic. If you shift to a counterterrorism force, you are not helping the Afghans. You are only there to kill, which is not a reason for them to support us. That mission ultimately fails. If you do the training mission without the counterterrorism mission, you leave larger threats unaddressed.

In your opinion what are the best conditions for US troop removal? Should we negotiate a political agreement first? Or are assurances from the Taliban unreliable, meaning we should stop committing American lives and resources to Afghanistan immediately?

Best conditions for US troop withdrawal are certainly with a real peace agreement. I would not necessarily believe Taliban promises. I would not necessarily believe anyone's promises in Afghanistan. After 40 years of war, nobody has kept most of their promises. However, that does not mean that we should stop committing ourselves. What it means is that you have to pay attention to certain things in an agreement. First, if you want it to work, it needs to be verifiable and enforceable. There are various ways to do that: with peacekeeping forces that roam around the country to monitor what people are doing, with residual military forces to strike out if individuals or groups are not keeping their promises, with strikes from other places, etc.  

A great deal of the argument about Afghanistan is looking backwards and then acting as though that is the present.  The argument you often hear is that we have spent so many billions of dollars and have lost over 2,000 American lives. These numbers create the impression that these costs are continuing. But these are the sunk costs. The fact is that sustainment is approximately 6 to 7 billion dollars, which is less than 1% of the defense budget. In addition, we are losing fewer American lives in Afghanistan than we are losing in training accidents in the United States. If you think about it that way, there is a huge invested cost which does not tell you whether to stay or not. A lot of people hear those figures and say we cannot keep doing that, but actually we are not.

What implication did the announcement to remove troops have on the ongoing peace negotiations between the US and the Taliban? Did the Trump administration diminish the value of its greatest bargaining chip, the withdrawal of American forces? What is the likelihood that the Taliban will finalize a peace agreement instead of simply waiting for the US troops to withdraw? Even if the peace negotiations end in an agreement, who will fill the power void?

Removing troops without an agreement incentivizes the Taliban not to agree to a real peace deal. What the Taliban would like to do, after the US is gone, is whatever it wants despite the agreement. Any kind of agreement that we make that extends beyond our own troop withdrawal is essentially meaningless because peace has to be made among the Afghans. We can make an agreement about withdrawal but we cannot make an agreement about peace. What we are doing so far, as best as I understand it, is we are holding up to the Taliban the idea that they can have some things that it wants. It can have US troops removed, but it must make peace with the Afghan people.  The Taliban are refusing that. The game right now is how far the Taliban can move the United States to withdraw its troops without the Taliban having to make any serious concessions except on paper. This is particularly important because the Taliban is itself internally fractured. If the Taliban really concludes a peace agreement, it will have to confront and resolve these fractures within its own movement. Until it knows that it has received everything out of bilateral negotiations with the US, it has no real reason to deal with those difficult issues. My guess is that we will continue to go along and make various concessions that we are prepared to do in the context of peace. Only when we get to the point where we are not willing to do more of that will the Taliban have to look inward and make a tough decision about dealing with the issues within its own ranks or letting peace talks go away. If the US does not hold that line, the Taliban will continue not to agree. However, that is under the current conditions. There may be another government with the upcoming election.

How does the timing of these peace negotiations, with an upcoming Afghan presidential election in July, complicate the situation?

Everything in Afghanistan complicates everything else, so waiting on the election is a mistake. Nothing that has been delayed in Afghanistan has ever gotten better. Secondly, if you delayed the elections for the sake of the peace process, you are allowing the Taliban to hold the elections hostage to the negotiations. Then you may never get to either one. People talk about the idea of an interim government instead of an election, but then you have to decide who is going to be in the interim government. That is about power. These discussions are difficult enough with the Afghans on one side of the negotiation table. When you involve the Taliban, that discussion could go on for months and, while it goes on, Afghanistan would have no effective government. Without an effective government, security forces would be very careful about how much risk they would take. If you moved into negotiating or trying to set up an interim government instead of the elections, you would have a disaster. If you go ahead with the elections, you have a problem. It is better to have a problem than a disaster.

What must occur in the election for the Afghan government to maintain stability in the face of US troop withdrawal?

The ideal would be an election that is reasonably credible by Afghan standards, that does not lead to a huge political confrontation, and that provides a fairly clear mandate for the person elected. That person would then have a much stronger political position from which to negotiate. This is better than the alternative; namely in Ashraf Ghani’s case, the view that he may have stolen the election, that the government is weak, that the government is probably going to fall anyways, and that his presidency is the product of a political compromise instead of an election. The Taliban view is that the current Afghan government is a puppet slave government of the Americans. As a result, Ghani has a weak hand to play, although he has a strong personality. Overall, the winner of the upcoming election could have a stronger hand if the election is not hugely disputed, the votes are real, the amount of fraud is minimal, and if there is a clear mandate. Realistically, I should add that in view of the past what I am describing is an ideal outcome and that the odds of such an election result are not good.

Is it likely that a legitimate new government can arise with a peaceful transfer of power? If not, does the fault lie with the Afghans or the Americans?

Probably some of the fault lies with each. If we are discussing a legitimate new government and a peaceful transfer of power out of the election, then there is a chance, albeit a small chance. The recent parliamentary elections were a mixed bag. However, there was probably less fraud than in the last presidential election. There was about 40% voter turnout in the parliamentary elections despite the conditions of considerable violence. In some cases, the polling places received occasional mortar rounds. Not many Americans have to worry that somebody will kill them for voting or that the polling place will be mortared while they are voting.

On the whole, popular turnout during the parliamentary elections demonstrates that the people want to vote. However, the administration of the election was a disaster. They had new biometric devices, but the polling places did not receive them in time, they did not train people to use them properly, and the machines broke down. If the Afghans clean up their administrative act and the Afghan people still turn up to vote, then the big question will be whether there was election fraud. We will just have to wait and see.

Elizabeth Wainstein CMC'19Student Journalist

Biography and Photograph courtesy of Ambassador Neumann.

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