Center for a New American Security

An article in the Financial Times this morning intimated that perceptions of both government corruption and support for militant groups are causing international donors to keep their pocketbooks closed in supporting victims of the floods in Pakistan. I do not know enough to say one way or another, and the UN humanitarian aid chief, John Holmes, says it's too early to tell. But the statistics so far are interesting. The United States and the United Kingdom have pledged the most aid thus far to Pakistan: $76m and $32m, respectively. But the earthquake in Haiti generated $1b in pledges within 10 days. Pledges by the international community to areas affected by the 2004 tsunami were similarly robust (~$7b). Are the people of Pakistan now suffering because of the corruption of their leaders, real and perceived, and the support, real and perceived, given by the Pakistani military and intelligence services to militant groups?

There's more that connects drone attacks and the AirBlue crash than the fact both relate to Pakistani airspace. Huma Yusuf writes in the Dawn newspaper that in Pakistan the thread of poor governance runs through terrorism and natural disasters.

As Huma points out, where government fails to provide, extremist groups see plenty of opportunity:

"Few can forget that five years ago, in the wake of the October 2005 earthquake, the government's failure to cope with immediate relief efforts created a vacuum within which the Jamaatud Dawa pulled off its greatest publicity stunt. The extremist organisation had the most efficient response teams on the ground, and boasted the most functional and well-stocked relief camps. Its mobile X-ray machines and operating theatres made international headlines. Through their clever use of mobile technology, the group's volunteers established an unparalleled communications infrastructure that facilitated relief work.

The government and army, meanwhile, fumbled in early relief and reconstruction efforts, as charges of corruption in the distribution of aid and resources were rampant. The consequences of Jamaatud Dawa stepping in where the government should have been exercising its authority are obvious today in the support and influence that the organisation enjoys"

The Jamaatud Dawa to which Huma refers is the new front group for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Christine Fair and Jacob Shapiro did some polling about a year ago on militant support in Pakistan and came to the conclusion that increased living standards or the provision of aid did not lead people to abandon support for militancy. To me, it sounds like the structure of the polling was a bit off. In 10 years of reporting around the Muslim world, I have seen countless times extremist or fundamentalist groups step in and provide social services where a government seen as incompetent and corrupt has failed. And everytime they have done this, they have increased their level of grassroots support. In Ain el Helwe camp in Sidon, it's Hamas that is seen to look after the interests of the Palestinian refugees, not the bumbling and corrupt Palestinian secular organisations. The same was true in Gaza before Hamas took power there. Since the 1920s, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt has built up a formidable national network through social service provision. The Jordanian chapter of the group has replicated that model in the Hashemite Kingdom and predictably has gained support. So maybe it's not about aid in $ terms persuading people not to support militants, even though that's nice and easy to quantify. Really, its about aid supporting better governance.

In the Muslim political consciousness, Islamic governance equates to social justice and social services provision, which is why the "Islamic state" bandwagon is so tempting a short cut for leaders looking to replace competence with PR. In my view, one of the reasons al-Qaeda has failed to gain widespread popular support is due to the fact that it has failed to demonstrate its commitment and ability when it comes to providing "Islamic" governance. This, coupled to its bloody butcher's bill of Muslim lives and its zealous pursuit of communal warfare makes it fundamentally unattractive to most Muslims. It's only claim to popular support is its "Jihad against the crusaders and their allies". Ultimately, that's not enough.

The earthquake was five years back, Huma has more current examples to take note of:

"The collapse of the legal system - the backbone of efficient governance - in the Swat Valley led to locals supporting the call given by Sufi Mohammad of the Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi for Sharia law in the mid-1990s, and again last year. The closure of civil courts in the Malakand division indicated the usurpation of the state's authority by militants and extremist organisations. Indeed, Maulana Fazlullah and Sufi Mohammad were only able to win over (or terrorise) the Swatis because of the government's seriously compromised administrative capacity in the region."

And to the events of the past week:

"Official responses to the past week's events have betrayed equally problematic failings in governance. Much has already been written about the poorly coordinated rescue operation at the Margalla Hills - a situation in which rescue workers are prevented from reaching the site of a disaster by security forces indicates a crippling level of administrative chaos.

Meanwhile, the government's handling of relief and rescue operations for flood victims in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan has been totally inadequate. As the rains abate, the variety of ways in which the government has again failed its people is becoming obvious: ill-conceived evacuation plans; a shortage of boats and helicopters for rescue missions; sparse provision of food and other relief goods to those stranded or displaced; defunct district-level disaster management authorities.

I haven't heard that militant groups have stepped in to fill the gap but they definitely have the capacity and the motivation.

Another option, as expressed to me by a non-posh friend in Lahore: "If the Americans really care about the well being of Pakistanis why don't they send helicopters or planes with aid? They are just across the border and it's because of them that the army doesn't have the manpower to handle the floods."

As everyone has been getting all excited about the "new relationship" the Pakistanis and Americans have been forging in Washington, I've been trying to figure out a way to express my pessimistic grumblings without coming over like a grouchy old git who enjoys letting the air out of the footballs local kids kick into his garden.

Finally, I've figured out a way. I'm gonna let a former Reuters colleague look like the man who stole Christmas.

Michael Georgy has a great story from Swat spelling out the reality in Pakistan in the places that are no longer in the headlines.

"The drive to win over the population by providing better economic opportunities and basic services is moving at a slow pace, as evidenced by grim living conditions, joblessness and lack of industries."

The point highlighted by the story is that, yes, you can talk about developing infrastructure, social services and the rest of it. But it all means very little without the ability to make it a reality on the ground. And, in Pakistan, the gap between commitment and realisation is the sticking point.

"We expect a lot from the government," said one of the men, who looked far older than his 47 years, perhaps from the stress of fighting and the ruins it left behind. "We have no jobs now."

Tyler Moselle, a smart and capable researcher based at Harvard's Carr Center, has a bizarre op-ed in today's Financial Times in which he warns that counterinsurgency not be considered "a panacea for American national security and foreign policy." Which is quite good advice save for the fact that I cannot name a single person arguing that counterinsurgency should be a panacea for American national security and foreign policy. (To be fair, Tyler calls this a "basic fact." Which is exactly what it is, in the sense that you cannot argue with facts.)

If I am reading Tyler's op-ed correctly, though, one of the things that concerns him is that a lot of the aid and development work being done in Afghanistan is being effectively militarized by the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy. For this concern I have some sympathy. But not much.

As I see it, the U.S. mission in Afghanistan is one of stablization. That's not the same thing as nation-building, which is what Andrew Bacevich claims -- not without justification -- the United States and its allies are doing.

Moselle seems to want something more. He wants, in his words, "a mixture of nation-building, stability operations, long-term humanitarian and economic development, precision-based counter-terrorism strikes, political negotiations with the Taliban -- plus counter-insurgency to put down the Taliban."

Goodness gracious, Tyler, is there anything you don't want?

This is the kind of stuff that drives people like Bacevich nuts, because it's a prescription for a 30-year occupation of the country without any discussion of resources (hint: they're limited) or prioritization of effort.

So what's the solution?

I have been thinking a lot about this in advance of and since I returned from a conference on assessing the stablization effects of aid and development programs in Afghanistan. Some really good work is being done by folks like Eli Berman and Andrew Wilder to determine which aid and development projects are actually addressing drivers of conflict, which aid and development projects might be exacerbating the conflict, and which aid and development projects are quite nice when considered in and of themselves but which have no real effect on levels of violence.

Considering the fact that the United States and its allies a) have decidedly limited resources and b) do not want to continue to occupy Afghanistan too far into the next decade, it is my humble opinion that we should focus what money and resources we are sending to Afghanistan overwhelmingly on those projects which can demonstrate they are having an effect on levels of violence. In Iraq, as Berman & Co. demonstrate (.pdf), that meant CERP funds -- especially when those CERP funds were used in conjunction with a PRT. In Afghanistan, that might mean whatever they are calling CERP these days (I forget), and programs like the NSP.

It also means that we should be constantly assessing what programs are having an effect, even if that means folks like me have to swallow our pride and hand over our data to the quant geeks who specialize in analyzing it. Because, as Berman points out, if you tried to spend $30 billion on a domestic program in the United States without any pilot programs or means to assess its effectiveness, you would get laughed out of the Congress. The reforms initiated after the Great Society programs, in fact, made doing such a thing hard if not impossible. But we have spent well over $30 billion in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance in Afghanistan, and as far as I can tell, no one really understands yet what programs are having a stablizing effect, what programs are either exacerbating the conflict or turning Afghanistan into a bona fide rentier state (it's already is, actually), and which programs are nice but ineffective.

In conclusion, you may have never thought you would read a call for minimalist means on this blog, but I have come to believe that is more or less what we need in Afghanistan in terms of aid and development.

Congress recently attached a condition that the executive branch certify that Pakistan is moving toward democracy for $1 billion of this year's $10 billion aid package.

Perhaps it should quickly revisit the other $9 billion and attach another condition...that Pakistan cease providing safe havens to militants killing Afghan and Allied soldiers in Afghanistan.

The new "ceasefire," orchestrated by Sirajudin Haqqani, insurgent tribal leader and lead killer of US soldiers in Paktya, Paktika, and Khost provinces, with Baitullah Mehsud, darling of "retired" ISI colonels and accused killer of Benazir Bhutto, should give us pause. Haqqani is licking his lips as he prepares for a spring offensive in which he can attack Afghan and US forces from within a Pakistani border only respected by, well, us and the Afghans (who admittedly wouldn't respect it if they had the power not to).

Why should we give Musharraf a blank check to do nothing except prepare for war with India and suppress democracy? We do this at the expense of making most Pakistanis hate us as we prop the stage of our string-less puppet.

We can't overtly kill terrorists on Pakistan soil for our rent check, and we can't get the Pakistani military to engage in effective operations against the Taliban or Al Qaeda. Nor can we even get them to stay on their side of the border while their military provides excellent vantage points for Afghan and foreign fighters.

Kip hopes Congress and the Administration have good reason to believe that our money and blood are buying protection from Pakistan's nuclear weapons as we facilitate the destruction of both Afghanistan and Pakistan.