Some of the flag officers I would be particularly interested in hearing your assessment regarding are:
-Chief of the General Staff, General Bismillah Mohammadi Khan
-Vice Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant General Mohammad Eshaq Noori
-General Staff Chief of Intelligence, Major General Abdul Khaliq Faryad
-General Staff Chief of Operations, Lieutenant General Shir Mohammad Karimi
-Afghan National Army Training Command, Major General Aminullah Karim

Thanks for your time Dvid (Mhd.Dawood.)

Why do so many think that unless Afghanistan achieves maximal goals in the short term, it is a “loss”? Perhaps it is international and American excessive expectations that are the problem.

The question of the military’s input in the overall Afghanistan strategy is of critical importance now. Tony Cordesman’s article is a good example. This debate will heat up over the next several weeks and will reach a crescendo—perhaps reaching levels not reached since the heights of the Vietnam war debate. This is why we need to be very wary of the advice which only takes into account a military view point (or for that matter only viewpoints of diplomats). The situation is more complex and significant. While Cordesman makes a number of good points, he misses the essential. Cordesman is correct when he says that Afghanistan has been under-resourced—under-resourcing is in fact Afghanistan’s real story.

However, on the whole, Cordesman comes short, does not propose any feasible strategies and does not seem to understand the dynamics of an extremely complex situation in Afghanistan today. He states that the Afghan security forces need to take over US and NATO forces. Yes, we do need to increase the size and quality of the Afghan forces. But anyone who calls for the Afghan army to take over a regional security situation anytime soon (if ever) does not understand the nature of the threats faced in the region nor the extreme financial and political costs in maintaining a large army – a la Pakistani Army, which is perhaps the reason why Pakistan still harbors the enemy.

Cordesman states that US forces need to “build the provincial, district and local government capabilities that the Kabul government cannot and will not build for them”. In fact, no outside forces (or even civilian “experts”) can actually “build” provincial or local governance. A closer understanding of Afghan history will show that the locals do not accept an Afghan government mingling inside their villages–let alone an outside force telling them how to behave at the local level. No one should talk about Afghanistan is they do not understand this simple fact. We need to stop calling for outside forces to set shop inside Afghan villages and to show people there what governance means. This is a sure recipe for disaster. Instead, via effective development aid and furthering education and training, we need to let the Afghans find their own path and future.

Finally, Cordesman advocates for letting the US military brass do what they need to do there. While the new military leaders are capable individuals, no one should advocate for them alone to decide the direction of the Afghanistan engagement. Afghanistan will never be won by any military strategies. The solution instead includes a military plan as part of a much larger plan. Afghanistan calls for the best of our strategies on all diplomatic, economic and military fronts. And, if the words “regional strategy” did not exist, it needs to be invented for Afghanistan. Engaging India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue is in fact more central to addressing the security situation in Afghanistan than the size of the Afghan army. China, Russia, the Gulf States and the situation in the Central Asian countries plus Iran are all of crucial importance to this particular security issue—this is where diplomacy and open engagement is needed, not military strategies. We can’t solely rely on the capabilities of our military brass—even though they are indeed very capable. Doing so would be misleading the current public debate in tackling the actual challenges of the most complex US foreign policy engagement of post WWII.

I’m not sure we’ll ever succeed in empowering Afghans through an elaborate process of telling them what to do.