U.S. President Barack Obama is right to think political strategy before resources. For too long, the West has thrown troops and money at Afghanistan, without any clearly articulated objectives for the mission. While NATO has fought already-lost battles against the Taliban, or against the opium business, no one has taken charge of building effective and legitimate institutions of Afghan government. The one international organization that should do just that -- the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan -- has seen its operations significantly shrunk over the last two years and has emerged from the elections divided and discredited. Meanwhile, the European Union, which often boasts of its soft power and crisis management tools, is still struggling to deliver the 400 police trainers it committed to deliver years ago.
But so far the debate in Washington has focused too heavily on the assessment put forward by the NATO International Security Assistance Force commander, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The real story is what the report only indirectly alludes to and what has been seldom debated until the electoral crisis: the Afghan political "context" in which Afghans will be given reasons to bet on their government rather than sit on the fence or support the Taliban. If McChrystal's counterinsurgency proposition proposes an ambitious if not artificial approach to win the trust of local communities, in the end the one institution that should and can durably win Afghan hearts and minds is an Afghan government.
An Afghan political surge must take place simultaneously at top and bottom levels, combining formal and informal institutions. First, a greater share of international aid money needs to be channeled to the government's coffers by strengthening the system of trust funds co-administered by U.N. agencies. Under the current system, 80 percent remains in international hands, where each dollar spent comes with a $2.50 overhead. A recent internal survey by the Ministry of Rural Development shows, against received wisdom, that aid money spent by Afghan communities in Helmand is more cost-efficient and less wasteful -- even taking into account Afghanistan's well-known corruption problems.
The government should send administrators from basic services ministries such as rural development, agriculture, and Justice to major cities and municipalities. Kabul has failed to do so, consumed by its politics of survival, but also for lack of serious incentives from the international community, which too often has substituted itself for an Afghan presence on the ground, and for lack of capacity. To address the latter, European governments should commit to fund a new Afghan civilian academy, which, if created this winter, should be able in two years time to send its first graduates to local institutions. District Development Assemblies, which are community-based consultative bodies for development projects, are present in almost all 365 districts in Afghanistan and should be beefed up to something more like mini-administrations with programs rather than just projects. Informal institutions like community-based jirgas and shuras, which resolve most local disputes, should be given legal status, helping to make the judiciary more responsive to the Afghan people's demands.
On the security front, training of the Afghan National Security Forces has to balance the need for numbers with an imperative for professionalization. Today, less than half of the 95,000-strong Afghan National Army (ANA) is fit for combat operations. But provided the NATO training mission receives sufficient support -- and this will mean a generational commitment from the United States and its partners -- this number can reach 100,000 combat-ready troops in the next five years, according to senior NATO officials.
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