The Obama Team Gets Interesting, Danger Ahead

American civilians in war zones are now getting as much or more press than the military guys. One might consider this to be a good thing--that governance and development are becoming priorities. Except that the news is not that good.

Peter Galbraith, a diplomat with a long record of, ahem, being true to his beliefs, just got canned as deputy to the UN Special Representative in Kabul. Jonathan Western at Duck of Minerva has a good post that raises heaps of questions about the impact of Galbraith's dissent. He did not last nearly as long as the previous one, Canada's Christopher Alexander (the tall blond guy in the picture), who is now seeking to be a member of the CA parliament. Galbraith was making a big stink about the fraud in the election, and he was critical of how close the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) was/is to Karzai.

This raises all kinds of issues, but really cuts to the heart of the challenge in Afghanistan and how it differ from the experiences in the Balkans. In Bosnia, the Office of the High Representative (OHR) had the power to remove Bosnian politicians from office if they were too obstructionist, and the international community via the OHR coordinated with the military side (NATO's Stabilization Force--SFOR). Of course, even with that power, the OHR could not force people to vote for less nationalist parties.
In Afghanistan, the UN and the Special Rep have far less power (and resources), and have to work through the Afghan government, not around or over it. So, improving governance--improving the capability and legitimacy of the Afghan government is really quite hard, even if one had significant influence and power. I am not sure Galbraith is right or wrong--there might have been an opportunity for the UN to intervene to clean up the election, at least just a bit.

While this is blowing up on the frontpages, Thomas Ricks has been documenting a significant rift between the US military and Christopher Hill, the US Ambassador to Iraq. This is in sharp contrast to the positive relationship between Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker, but reminds folks of the bad old days between LtGen Sanchez and Jerry Bremer. Hill has no Iraq expertise and seems to resist taking advice from the guys in uniforms to influence the Iraqis. On the other hand, the process of building Iraq capacity means letting them make thing own mistakes--as the Petraeus playbook and all COIN manuals suggest. Just as in Afghanistan, the course ahead is hardly clear and the folks on the ground face daunting challenges and difficult tradeoffs.

While it is hard, the focus must be on institutions and not people, even as we need to influence people to make the right choices. The problematic election in Afghanistan is bad for many reasons, including undermining the institutions that the outsiders are trying to build AND increasing dependence on the individual in the office, even as he gets increasingly unreliable or decreasingly reliable. Likewise, in Iraq, the unraveling that Ricks continues to document is all about how the institutions are not really binding behavior--that the government is being used by one side to dominate the other.

The future is going to be bumpy, to say the least.