Afghan mess bigger than we thought

By Robert A. Wehrle

Are we winning? After returning from a 15- month stint in Afghanistan, I find this is the single most-often-asked ques -tion as I make the rounds to re-establish old acquaintances and friendships. Strategically, our focus seems to have sharpened in the past 10 months. We've finally agreed to fight a counterinsurgency, and that will focus efforts at every level. But I know least about that. 

At the operational level, where I worked with the Afghan National Police (ANP) for 15 months, things look a lot worse. 

Operationally, the effort is broken. Assets are misdirected, poorly managed and misused. Graft and corruption in the Afghan forces are endemic, and coalition forces unwittingly enable that corruption. Let's break that into two parts: 

Misdirected, mismanaged and misused:
There are several related facets to this issue. Aid agencies, nongovernmental agencies and coalition state and defense departments have all poured money and materiel into the country in poorly coordinated efforts. The Afghan National Army (ANA) has received orders of magnitude more money than the ANP. In any counterinsurgency effort, the police play a vital role in maintaining the rule of law at the local level, but the Afghan police force is pathetically underresourced and undermanned.

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