Pentagon official speaks out on rebuilding Afghanistan—and maybe Iraq

When the Bush administration came into office, officials immediately began to disparage the whole idea of nation building and its corollary, peacekeeping. They changed the name of the Pentagon's Office of Peacekeeping and Peace Enforcement to the Office of Stability Operations. They tried to dramatically scale back the number of U.S. peacekeepers in the Balkans-and were promptly rebuffed by the Europeans.

The administration was criticized during the early months of war in Afghanistan for not providing enough humanitarian aid, and for food drops that went awry. Now, however, administration officials are spending a good deal of energy figuring out how, if it becomes necessary, to rebuild and keep the peace in a postwar Iraq.

Joseph J. Collins is the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for stability operations. He oversees the military's role in stabilizing postwar Afghanistan and will do the same, if necessary, in Iraq. He served for 28 years in the Army, is a former professor at the U.S. Military Academy, and has a doctorate from Columbia University. Collins sat down with National Journal reporter Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. to discuss security and reconstruction in Afghanistan, and potentially in Iraq. What follows is an edited transcript of his remarks.

Q: What was the challenge you faced last year when you learned we were going to war in Afghanistan?

A: When we went into Afghanistan, it became clear that to win the war, we were going to having to win the humanitarian situation as well. The United Nations, the nongovernmental organizations, and the military forces-those three things had to be coordinated. It was done in the field, primarily in Pakistan; and it was done at Tampa, [Fla.,] at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, where for the first time in history we had U.N. agencies and NGOs working directly with the headquarters of a war-fighting command. There's a virtual trailer park full of these people down there.

The result was that, as the war escalated in November and December, so did the delivery of food. A year ago at this time we were worried about millions of Afghans dying over the winter, and that's not going to happen this year.

Over the next year, the United States government will transition from primarily combat operations in Afghanistan, with a small percentage of our activities related to stability operations and reconstruction, to having a much larger percentage of our people on those issues.

Q: How important are the private relief groups, the so-called nongovernmental organizations, in providing relief and reconstruction after a conflict has ended?

A: There were a lot of Afghans inside the country who were still working for the United Nations and NGOs throughout the 1990s civil war in Afghanistan. They did a great job and truly risked their lives to do it.

Today, there are a few hundred NGOs in Afghanistan. They're doing a lot of the heavy lifting. In military operations, you have the military at the tip of the spear; and behind them, you have the diplomats; and then behind them, you have the U.N. agencies; and then behind them, you have the NGOs. In humanitarian assistance, it's just the opposite: The tip of the spear is where the NGOs are; and behind them are the U.N. agencies; behind them, the U.S. government and the diplomats; and behind them is the military, doing special things that only the military can do, such as providing security.

One of the problems that you have with Iraq, is there are only a handful of NGOs in the country now, and very few U.N. agencies. And so you have a completely different situation-one that's at the same time easier and more difficult. It's easier in that there are fewer people to coordinate with, and more difficult in that that also means there are few people to actually do the heavy lifting.

Q: The U.S. government and other donor countries have been criticized for not doing enough, fast enough, to rebuild Afghanistan. How do you see it?

A: The coordination of the fundraising first and foremost belongs to the Afghan Reconstruction Steering Group, a group of about 65 nations co-chaired by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and the European Union. Of the first year's pledge, which is a little over $2 billion, about 89 percent is in the pipeline; close to 70 percent of it is on the ground.

People are fond of saying reconstruction hasn't begun. But what they really mean is it took a lot of humanitarian assistance to get Afghanistan up to the point where it could really talk about reconstruction.

I've been to Afghanistan three times. I've been involved in reconstruction activities from the first; and to all the people who say not much is happening in Afghanistan, I just say, name me a country that was as bad off as Afghanistan was a year ago, and in 10 months has received the bulk of over $2 billion dollars' worth of economic assistance-nearly all of which was given as a grant. That's a tremendous down payment on stability. And the Afghan government has made tremendous progress.

Q: How is the interim regime doing in Afghanistan in terms of establishing a stable central government?

A: The struggling Afghan state is a sovereign state in charge of its own affairs, but on the other hand, it is struggling to gain basic capacity in some [government] ministries. We had a team from the United States visit an Afghan minister who was asked, "What's your biggest problem?" The minister said, "My building is falling down; can you help me with that?"

The Afghan finance ministry, led by Ashraf Ghani, has developed something called the Afghan National Development Framework that is helping to guide the international community, the NGOs, and everyone else. The finance minister is also keeping the Afghan government itself working very smoothly: They had a huge budget deficit this year, refused to borrow money, and worked their way through it. They're in the middle right now of a currency exchange, which was a daring operation to be done by such a young government.

The Afghans are doing an awful lot to bring their own house in order so that reconstruction will have a solid framework. More and more, the Afghans are leading the way.

Q: Is Afghanistan in danger of collapsing into "warlordism" again if we don't do more to ensure security there?

A: The notion that Afghanistan is disintegrating into warlordism is just not borne out. The only area of the country today where significant fighting is going on between rival warlords is in the north. I just returned from Afghanistan. We met with the major leaders in the north: To a man, they described the fighting going on there as skirmishes and the people doing it as on the fringe; and they all, to a man, agreed that we had to strengthen the national government. These certainly are not rogues.

First and foremost, the most important thing that we've done is defeat Al Qaeda and the Taliban; and the most important thing we're doing right now is mopping up the remnants. That's a very, very difficult long-term process.

Second, the International Security Assistance Force in Kabul means that the Afghan government has not only U.S. but also international protection. The era of changing the government by force in Afghanistan is over, and everyone has come to realize that-even the regional warlords will tell you that. It's out of the question. It's beyond the pale. It's not going to happen.

Third, in about 10 locations around the country, we have teams of Special Forces and civil-affairs soldiers, maintaining liaison with the local authorities. These groups have been very important in damping down factional violence.

Fourth is building the Afghan national army, which is ultimately the way to go. We don't want international peacekeepers all over Afghanistan 10 years from now.

Q: The president came into office saying that he would reduce the number of U.S. military peacekeepers around the globe. That doesn't seem likely now, does it?

A: The issue is not "peacekeeping good, peacekeeping bad." The issue is making the best use out of scarce resources and manpower. We're not talking here about a huge change, but what we are talking about is using our resources and our manpower to the best effect possible. If that's peacekeeping, that's fine.

You clearly don't want to stay in missions beyond the point where the mission makes sense. There are any number of them that appear like they're going to go on forever-the mission in Cyprus, the mission in the Sinai. The politics of peacekeeping are really the politics of inertia: A peacekeeping operation set in motion will continue in motion. But as things get better, as they have in Bosnia and Kosovo, then we can begin to draw down.

We have made some progress. We have not decisively lopped off any particular operation, but the percentage of U.S. forces that are involved in U.N. and major non-U.N. peacekeeping has come down, and we've been very successful in getting our friends and allies to do more. You're seeing U.S. reductions in KFOR and SFOR in the Balkans; and ISAF in Afghanistan has no U.S. participation. ISAF is a very good operation that's being run by friends and allies; and because of the strength of ISAF, the United States is free to use its troops to perform combat operations and other tasks along the way. There's a really effective division of labor.

Q: The criticism of peacekeeping during the Clinton years was that it was a drain on resources and on military readiness. Yet the military keeps being called to this kind of duty. Will that continue?

A: Among my brethren in uniform-and I served for 28 years, so I think I understand their perspective-there is this strong notion that the military exists to deter, fight, and win wars, that's it, and any other use of the military is some kind of borderline abuse. My friend John Hillen said in a famous article that "superpowers don't do windows," and that peacekeeping and humanitarian operations ought to be done by other people. That would be a wonderful distinction, but it's just not practical.

In today's world, the military aspects of a problem and the humanitarian aspects of a problem are wrapped together like a pretzel, and it's awfully difficult to unravel. In some cases, you can seek an effective division of labor, where the United States can lead the war-fighting coalition and then other regional partners or allies will come in and do peacekeeping and post-conflict activities. But that's often not feasible.

People in the military have to realize that this is part of the strategic environment. And you don't get to pick your strategic environment. You don't always have the choice to play the game the way you would like to play it. You have to adapt to the situation, which I think we've done extremely well, particularly in Afghanistan.