we helped strengthen local and national governance, in particu-
lar by providing the security envelope at the time within which
the Afghan Government could provide rudimentary services.
In addition, international donors and coalition units from the
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) also directly
engaged in development projects and humanitarian assistance.
In my view, we should not have given so much as a pencil or
a soccer ball directly to an Afghan citizen without it going
through local government officials. Otherwise, the local or
national population just grows dependent on the outsiders, thus
weakening Afghan governance, or more specifically host-nation
government legitimacy—thus inadvertently prolonging our
deployment there.
For years, Afghan President Hamid Karzai was jokingly re-
ferred to as “the Mayor of Kabul” because his government’s
reach in terms of providing security and other services did not
extend much beyond the capital. Therefore, his legitimacy was
weakened in the eyes of his constituents, particularly those in
conflict zones in far-away border areas where both national and
local-level government officials were either absent, or perceived
as ineffective.
A large part of the problem was that the Afghan constitution vi-
olated the principle of Subsidiarity, through which responsibil-
ity and power devolves to the provinces and local communities.
By having the power to appoint governors and regional chiefs
of police, Karzai undermined local legitimacy. The provincial
governors and chiefs of police only had to please President
Karzai and not their constituents. The coalition should have
demanded elections for all sub-national government officials so
they remained beholden to the voters.
Most Afghans have probably never heard of the Federalist
Papers or the Magna Carta, and often understand democracy
and representative government only in the sense that one gets
to vote for one’s political leaders. Yet I saw pure grass roots
democracy taking place in Chagcharan, where ordinary male
and female citizens sat on the floor in a government office with
someone taking notes on flip charts when the first Afghan
National Development Strategy (ANDS) was developed in
September 2007. I watched them list their specific desires for
better security, governance, health care, education, justice, and
agricultural and economic opportunities. The idea was to feed
these ideas and requests up to Kabul, and I found it very mov-
ing. This was a holistic Afghan internal attempt to build a sense
of nationhood. These Afghan citizens wanted the same things
we all want: safety, security, economic opportunity, access to
education and healthcare, and a better future for our children
than we have had for ourselves. The open question was whether
the Afghan government could deliver on these raised expecta-
tions, either at the local or national level. At least many Afghan
citizens felt like they were consulted and heard by their local
government officials.
So the larger question remains, and not just for Afghanistan
or Iraq, but for all fragile states: how does a host nation gov-
ernment establish its legitimacy with its own people? That
legitimacy cannot be conferred by outside sources, whether
they are international organizations such as the UN or EU, or
other governments. The local authorities must earn legitimacy
by demonstrating inclusivity, evenhandedness, and effectiveness
across as much of the national territory as possible, and by not
being corrupt. Governmental corruption drives the need for
free and fair elections, so the people can vote them out of office.
So then, how can the United States and its partners appropri-
ately help a new, fledgling government build its governance, se-
curity, justice, and economic structures to function well enough
to earn legitimacy in the eyes of its own people and the inter-
national community? Certainly, the U.S. military continues to
help Afghanistan and Iraq with security, but our diplomatic and
political influence and USAID development programs can only
go so far—which is as far as local authorities’ own interests and
capabilities will let them go.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction
(SIGAR) released a report in July 2018 called, “Stabilization:
Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan.” Among
those lessons, author David H. Young, the Stabilization and
Elections Team Lead, cited the following:
■ Physical security is the bedrock of stabilization.
■ The presence of local governance is a pre-condition for
effective stabilization programming.
■ Stabilization was most successful in areas that were clearly
under the physical control of government security forces,
had a modicum of local governance in place prior to [out-
siders’ development] programming, were supported by
coalition forces and civilians who recognized the value of
close cooperation, and were continuously engaged by their
government as programming ramped up.
Another lesson I have been pondering is what are the best prac-
tices for providing security in various states? For our own his-
toric cultural reasons in preferring that provision of government
services be kept on as local a level as possible, the United States
has no national police force. Yet, in rebuilding war-torn coun-
tries like Afghanistan, the USG has insisted upon building a
national police force. Washington has invested untold resources
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