Counterinsurgency In Eastern Afghanistan 2004-2008: A Civilian Perspective

Robert Kemp

Description

After the 2001 ouster of the Taliban from Afghanistan, the United States and its allies found themselves in a country devastated by a series of wars. This book looks at how, working with their Afghan counterparts, they engaged in a complex effort to rebuild security, development, and governance, all while fighting a low-intensity war.

Sujets

• Afghan War
• Histoire
• Military
• History

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780990447153
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Counterinsurgency
in Eastern Afghanistan
2004–2008

PRAISE
"Robert Kemp's candid account of the joint efforts of American military officers and civilians to help local government officials and ordinary citizens in remote, often dangerous areas to reconstruct their war-torn country is a valuable contribution to our understanding of American achievements and failures in Afghanistan. It also usefully illustrates how 21st century challenges have greatly widened the range of activities our diplomats must pursue."
–– HOWARD B. SCHAFFER, U.S. Ambassador (ret.)
 
“Robert Kemp’s Counterinsurgency in Eastern Afghanistan 2004–2008: A Civilian Perspective is a must-read for all those following developments in Afghanistan since 2001. The book succeeds both as thoughtful analysis and as a practical guide for military and civilian personnel in the field. Perhaps its greatest value is that the approach taken is relevant not only for Afghanistan but also for other regions of the world where similar conditions exist.”
–– ARTURO MUÑOZ, RAND Corporation
 
 
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ROBERT KEMP, a U.S. State Department Foreign Service officer, served in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2005 and from 2007 to 2008, as well as for two shorter assignments. He was the Deputy Director of the Pakistan Desk in Washington and also completed several short-term assignments in Pakistan. Other posts included China, the Philippines, USNATO/Brussels, Bolivia, and Brazil. Kemp holds Master's degrees from the University of Kentucky and the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and was a Dean Rusk Fellow at Georgetown University. He was awarded the Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Public Service for his work in Afghanistan.
 

In 2003, the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), a nonprofit organization founded in 1986, created the Memoirs and Occasional Papers Series to preserve firsthand accounts and other informed observations on foreign affairs for scholars, journalists, and the general public. Through its book series, its Foreign Affairs Oral History program, and its support for the training of foreign affairs personnel at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, ADST seeks to promote understanding of American diplomacy and those who conduct it. U.S. Foreign Service officer Robert Kemp’s account sheds light on both the civilian and military aspects of civil-military cooperation in counterinsurgency and on the resources in time, people, and money devoted to achieving allied goals in Afghanistan.
 
OTHER TITLES IN THE SERIES
Claudia Anyaso, ed., Fifty Years of US Africa Policy
Diego and Nancy Asencio, The Joys and Perils of Serving Abroad: Memoirs of a US Foreign Service Family
Janet C. Ballantyne and Maureen Dugan, eds., Fifty Years in USAID: Stories from the Front Lines
John Gunther Dean, Danger Zones: A Diplomat’s Fight for America’s Interests
Robert E. Gribbin, In the Aftermath of Genocide: The US Role in Rwanda
Allen C. Hansen, Nine Lives: A Foreign Service Odyssey
Joanne Huskey, The Unofficial Diplomat
David T. Jones, ed., The Reagan-Gorbachev Arms Control Breakthrough: Eliminating Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF) Missiles
John G. Kormann, Echoes of a Distant Clarion: Recollections of a Diplomat and Soldier
Armin Meyer, Quiet Diplomacy: From Cairo to Tokyo in the Twilight of Imperialism
William Morgan and Charles Stuart Kennedy, eds., American Diplomats: The Foreign Service at Work
John David Tinny, From the Inside Out
Daniel Whitman, A Haiti Chronicle: The Undoing of a Latent Democracy, 1999–2001
Susan Wyatt, Arabian Nights and Daze: Living in Yemen with the Foreign Service
 
For a complete list of series titles, visit < adst.org/publications >

 
 
 
Counterinsurgency
in Eastern Afghanistan
2004–2008
 
A Civilian Perspective
 
 
Robert Kemp
 
 
M EMOIRS AND O CCASIONAL P APERS S ERIES
A SSOCIATION FOR D IPLOMATIC S TUDIES AND T RAINING
 
 


Washington, DC

 
 
 
Copyright © 2014 by Robert Kemp
 
New Academia Publishing/Vellum Books 2014
 
The views and opinions in this book are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training, DACOR, Inc., or the Government of the United States, including the Department of State.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system.
 
Published in eBook format by New Academia Publishing/VELLUM Books
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
 
ISBN-13: 978-0-9904-4715-3
 
 
An imprint of New Academia Publishing
 
New Academia Publishing
PO Box 27420, Washington, DC 20038-7420
i [e-mail] - www.newacademia.com
 
 
All photographs in this book were taken by the author

 
 
 
For Kate and Kiara
Foreword
America was attacked from and went to war in Afghanistan in the first year of the twenty-first century. Nearly midway into the second decade Americans are winding down only their own participation; the war continues. With but a few exceptions, writings about the war have focused either at the policy level or on aspects of combat and the military. Americans are vaguely aware that civilians also served; particularly diplomats, aid workers, contractors, and civil servants from numerous cabinet departments, including Agriculture, Justice, Homeland Security, State, and others. But as to what these many civilians did, risked, and tried to accomplish few in the general public could say. When journalists or inspectors occasionally criticize, they often do so with no discussion of why decisions were made or with any understanding of either the challenges or reasons for action. This is not to argue against the view that many mistakes were made; they were. In general that is the story of all wars, particularly irregular wars fought in strange surroundings that need to be learned even as events demand decisions before learning can take root.
Against that background Robert Kemp’s work fills in many blank spots about the civilian side of civil-military cooperation in counterinsurgency. It is the personal account of a Foreign Service officer who was prepared to return several times to Afghanistan to serve his country. That in itself is a story of service that exemplifies many American diplomats and their civilian colleagues and is much too little appreciated by those who still hold a striped pants and teacup view of what it means to be a diplomat.
Kemp’s work focuses on Eastern Afghanistan in the period 2004 to 2008, part of which occurred during my time as US ambassador to Afghanistan. It was a period generally marked by under-resourcing, particularly in civilian personnel, some of which resulted from the flow of resources to Iraq. Much of it however, derived from the hollowing out of American diplomacy during the previous twenty years, when administrations of both parties thought they could do with either less diplomacy or fewer people to carry it out. The frequent reference in the book to staffing gaps and responsibilities that exceeded any reasonable grasp were a direct result of the massive personnel shortages that the American Academy of Diplomacy documented in 2008. 1 Our war efforts paid the price for this neglect. We should not repeat the experience.
The reader will find certain themes recur through the book. Progress early on was strong; but as the insurgency picked up speed, much of the progress was reversed. In examining this trend in Eastern Afghanistan, the area covered by Kemp, two facts are particularly important. One was that much of the impetus for the increase in fighting came from across the Pakistani border. The other was that American inputs did not keep pace with the change. In April 2007, in my last major report before leaving post, I noted that while we were not losing then, we could be in a year, and we had no margin for surprise. 2 This book deals with parts of the field-level work that gave rise to that analysis.
Another recurring theme is that of the harmful results of our short-tour policies. Military and civilian personnel come for a year or so and depart. Knowledge is lost, plans are changed (often to the confusion of Afghans who remain), focus is shifted before efforts have put down solid roots, and the increasingly disgusted locals have to reeducate the foreigners every few months. Until we are prepared to keep senior personnel in place for considerably longer tours we will not succeed in building a learning organization to deal with complex local realities.
Lack of sufficient, trained Afghan bureaucratic personnel was a continual roadblock. That was simply a fact of life. It needed longterm training over many years to reverse the effects of twenty-five years of war and the near-total destruction of Afghanistan’s educational system. Some of that training is now happening; but those like Robert Kemp who worked in the early years simply had to live with the problem. No amount of concepts and coordinating structures could wholly make up for the absence of people––something to remember when evaluating the results of that period.
As the insurgency worsened, we increased our security––”force protection,” in the jargon. The result, as Kemp notes, was to reduce the mobility of our personnel and their interaction with Afghans, which in turn, reduced our local knowledge and ability to refine our actions. Clearly, the result was lost effectiveness. More recently, after the politicization of the losses in Benghazi, this trend has considerably worsened. We have not always been this risk-averse. We operated on quite different principles in Vietnam. If the current trend continues, so will the reductions in knowledge essential for intelligent policy.
A particularly interesting development