Rumsfeld during one meeting. “There’s nothing to be gained by blundering around those mountains and gorges with armor battalions chasing a lightly armed enemy.”24 Instead, they sent in three brigades from the 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne (Air Assault) Divisions, as well as the Marine Expeditionary Unit already at Camp Rhino in Kandahar. As mentioned earlier, most senior U.S. officials—especially in the Defense Department and the White House—did not support deploying a peacekeeping force outside of Kabul, preferring to spend the money on training an Afghan army.
U.S. military officials were also primarily interested in countering al Qa’ida, not in nation-building. One senior U.S. official explained to Afghanistan National Security Council staffer Daoud Yaqub: “Our objective in Afghanistan is to combat al Qa’ida. Everything else is incidental.25
The UN’s Lakhdar Brahimi also agreed on a light footprint. While he had advocated expanding NATO’s peacekeeping presence outside of Kabul, his vision of the international community’s role in Afghanistan was different. Brahimi felt that the guiding principle of international efforts in Afghanistan should be to bolster Afghan capacity—both official and nongovernmental—and to rely on as limited an international presence and as many Afghan staff as possible. This marked a significant departure from the expansive UN missions in Kosovo and East Timor. Both missions, which began in 1999, included a large international military and police presence per capita, and the United Nations temporarily took over governance in both cases. Afghanistan needed to be different, Brahimi argued, and a heavy international footprint was “not necessary and not possible.” Bolstering Afghanistan’s capacity to govern itself, he thought, required Afghans taking charge of their situation wherever possible, an end that could be compromised by throwing international staff into the mix.26
In practice, the light footprint translated into one of the lowest levels of troops, police, and financial assistance in any stabilization operation since the end of World War II.
International troops and police are critical to establish security after a major war. Often, in the immediate aftermath of civil or interstate conflict, states will undergo a period of anarchy in which groups and factions seek to arm themselves for protection.27 These groups and factions may have offensive intentions and want to impose their ideology on others, seize the property of rival factions, or exploit public resources for private gain. Large numbers of troops and police are critical for defeating and deterring these groups, patrolling borders, securing roads, combating organized crime, and policing the streets. Many of these general law-enforcement functions are best performed by police and units specially trained for urban patrols and crowd control.28
There is no simple metric for determining how many troops are necessary to secure a population.29 As Figure 7.1 illustrates, 89.3 U.S. troops per thousand inhabitants were necessary to establish security in the American sector of Germany after World War II, 17.5 troops per thousand were used in Bosnia, 35.3 per thousand were used in Eastern Slavonia, 19.3 per thousand were used in Kosovo, and 9.8 per thousand were used in East Timor. None of those conflicts were resolved easily, even at those levels of troop involvement. But the U.S. and other international forces had only about 1.6 soldiers per thousand Afghans. In terms of historical troop levels, the Afghan mission ranks with some of the international community’s most notable failures: the UN mission to the Belgian Congo (1.3 troops per thousand); the American and international intervention in Somalia (5.7); the U.S. rescue of Haiti (2.9); and the French operation in Cote d’Ivoire (0.2).
FIGURE 7.1 Peak International Military Presence Per Capita30
There were also no international civilian police deployed to Afghanistan to conduct law-enforcement operations.31 As Figure 7.2 shows, this was in marked contrast to such operations as Bosnia and Kosovo, where international paramilitary police had been used effectively to help establish law and order. In Bosnia, Italy deployed a small battalion of its
The United States has traditionally lacked a national police force like the
FIGURE 7.2 Peak International Police Presence Per Capita36
At $60 per Afghan, foreign assistance over the first two years of a nation-building operation was lower than most operations since World War II (see Fig. 7.3). States emerging from interstate or civil war have generally suffered significant damage.37 High levels of funding are necessary to cover the costs of deploying military forces and police, train indigenous police and army officers, provide lethal and nonlethal equipment, and build infrastructure.38 Assistance generally comes from an amalgam of donor states and international organizations such as the IMF, the World Bank, and the European Union. Despite the fact that Afghanistan was a safe haven for al Qa’ida terrorists and that it was the first front in what the administration referred to as a “global war on terrorism,” a wide array of U.S. government officials from the beginning of the conflict strongly opposed providing more resources for reconstruction efforts.39
Despite promises of aid, many countries never delivered. In 2002, Rumsfeld appointed Dov Zakheim—who was already serving as the under secretary of defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense—as the Pentagon’s coordinator of civilian programs in Afghanistan. Zakheim had played a pivotal role as Rumsfeld’s principal financial adviser, overseeing all aspects of the department’s accounting and auditing systems, and negotiating major defense agreements with U.S. allies and partners. Rumsfeld asked Zakheim to take the lead in getting nonmilitary equipment to Afghanistan, including trucks and potable water. Zakheim then began a tour of allied capitals with Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs John Taylor, asking for contributions from U.S. allies.
FIGURE 7.3 International Financial Assistance Per Capita over First Two Years40
“It was like pulling teeth,” Zakheim said. “In general, the levels of assistance were too low. We got some help from Gulf states, including some logistical support and petroleum, oil, and lubricants. But most of this was for support to forces moving through their countries. We didn’t get a lot of material support in theater. Allies simply weren’t providing a lot of support.” Zakheim and Taylor heard the same message during their meetings: “We have limited resources. We’ll see what we can do.” And then, Zakheim complained, “we just wouldn’t hear back.”41
U.S. assistance was also low. A major hurdle for U.S. policymakers in the Departments of State, Defense, and Treasury was the Office of Management and Budget. “The biggest scandal was OMB,” said Zakheim. “It was beyond our comprehension at the Pentagon that OMB refused to provide more support to Afghanistan than it did.” Zakheim and his staff found this baffling, because Afghanistan was largely peaceful. “There was no major insurgency in 2002 and 2003, yet we couldn’t get funding. The levels of poppy cultivation were low, and we lobbied to get assistance for alternative crops. But we couldn’t get it from OMB. Neither could State or USAID.”42
According to several senior officials at the White House and in the Departments of State, Defense, and Treasury, one of the biggest obstacles at OMB was Robin Cleveland, associate director for national security programs. “We repeatedly hit a brick wall with her,” one senior White House official told me. “Robin was the single biggest problem because reconstruction is partly a function of money. And we had major troubles getting
