Download or read book Political Governance and Strategy in Afghanistan written by Robert D. Lamb and published by CSIS Reports. This book was released on 2012-04-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afghanistan's de facto system of governance is a politically driven "hybrid" order made up of shifting links among many different formal, informal, and illicit actors, networks, and institutions. Because its central government does not have the capacity to govern through its extremely centralized system and will not have that capacity for at least a generation, it will need to share the burden of stabilizing and governing the country with other governance and political actors. Alone, those other actors will not have the capacity to keep Afghanistan together either.To use Afghanistan's hybrid system as a resource for stabilization, the United States should work with its international and Afghan partners to develop a "political governance" strategy. The requirements for such an approach are detailed in this report. The governance component would encourage and enable formal and informal actors to share the burden of governing. To make sure power brokers do not contribute to instability, the politics component would give some a stake in the political and economic system while giving the most malign a set of targeted incentives to behave in ways conducive to stability.
Download or read book Afghanistan Politics Elections and Government Performance written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of a review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan during September-November 2009, the performance and legitimacy of the Afghan government figured prominently. In his December 1, 2009, speech announcing a way forward in Afghanistan, President Obama stated that the Afghan government would be judged on performance, and "The days of providing a blank check are over." The policy statement was based, in part, on an assessment of the security situation furnished by the top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, which warned of potential mission failure unless a fully resourced classic counterinsurgency strategy is employed. That counterinsurgency effort is deemed to require a legitimate Afghan partner. The Afghan government's limited writ and widespread official corruption are believed by U.S. officials to be helping sustain a Taliban insurgency and complicating international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. At the same time, President Hamid Karzai has, through compromise with faction leaders, been able to confine ethnic disputes to political competition, enabling his government to focus on trying to win over those members of the ethnic Pashtun community that support Taliban and other insurgents.
Download or read book Afghanistan Iraq and Post conflict Governance Damoclean Democracy written by Imtiaz Hussain and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2010-01-11 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparative study is made of how conflict-terminating negotiations led to maiden democratic elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, pointing various thresholds out through specific chapters, invoking negotiations theories/stages to deepen interpretations, and prospecting the Bush Doctrine's future mileage in democratizing the Middle East.
Download or read book Afghanistan Governance written by U.s. Government Accountability Office and published by . This book was released on 2017-08-15 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The United States has allocated over $72 billion to Afghanistan since 2002. With other international donors, it is focused on transitioning leadership to the Afghan government and has pledged to provide at least 50 percent of its development aid through the Afghan government budget. Improving Afghanistan's public financial management capacity is critical to this transition. In 2010, the Afghan government, consulting with donors, issued a Public Financial Management Roadmap (Roadmap), which outlines goals to improve Afghanistan's capacity to develop a national budget and expend funds.GAO reviewed (1) U.S. efforts to improve the Afghan government's public financial management capacity, including the extent to which they support Roadmap goals, and (2) the extent to which U.S. efforts have improved the government's capacity. GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID); Departments of State, Defense (DOD), and the Treasury (Treasury); World Bank; and Afghan government in Washington, D.C., and Kabul, Afghanistan. "
Download or read book How We Won and Lost the War in Afghanistan written by Douglas Grindle and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2017-11 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Douglas Grindle provides a firsthand account of how the war in Afghanistan was won in a rural district south of Kandahar City and how the newly created peace slipped away when vital resources failed to materialize and the United States headed for the exit. By placing the reader at the heart of the American counterinsurgency effort, Grindle reveals little-known incidents, including the failure of expensive aid programs to target local needs, the slow throttling of local government as official funds failed to reach the districts, and the United States’ inexplicable failure to empower the Afghan local officials even after they succeeded in bringing the people onto their side. Grindle presents the side of the hard-working Afghans who won the war and expresses what they really thought of the U.S. military and its decisions. Written by a former field officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, this story of dashed hopes and missed opportunities details how America’s desire to leave the war behind ultimately overshadowed its desire to sustain victory.
Download or read book Subnational Government in Afghanistan written by Michael Robert Shurkin and published by Rand Corporation. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This primer on subnational government in Afghanistan is meant to inform efforts to strengthen local government in recently cleared areas. Among the problems afflicting the Afghan state are the lack of effective service provision and representation, which together should constitute the base of the state's legitimacy. This paper identifies the various entities of local government and identifies opportunities for improvement. It is based on a review of the available academic and nongovernmental studies of subnational government in Afghanistan and interviews with civilian experts, including consultants attached to U.S. and allied government agencies. Opportunities to make the system more participatory and representative should be sought at lower levels to compensate for weak central institutions, and the court system must be strengthened where possible. Good intelligence about local politics must precede engagement. Governance metrics should gauge subjective perceptions of the legitimacy of the Afghan state, rather than objective outputs.
Download or read book Warlords Strongman Governors and the State in Afghanistan written by Dipali Mukhopadhyay and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Warlords have come to represent enemies of peace, security, and 'good governance' in the collective intellectual imagination. This book asserts that not all warlords are created equal. Under certain conditions, some become effective governors on behalf of the state. This provocative argument is based on extensive fieldwork in Afghanistan, where Mukhopadhyay examined warlord-governors who have served as valuable exponents of the Karzai regime in its struggle to assert control over key segments of the countryside. She explores the complex ecosystems that came to constitute provincial political life after 2001 and exposes the rise of 'strongman' governance in two provinces. While this brand of governance falls far short of international expectations, its emergence reflects the reassertion of the Afghan state in material and symbolic terms that deserve our attention. This book pushes past canonical views of warlordism and state building to consider the logic of the weak state as it has arisen in challenging, conflict-ridden societies like Afghanistan.
Download or read book Afghanistan After the Drawdown written by Seth G. Jones and published by Council on Foreign Relations. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 55 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States maintains important interests in Afghanistan, even as most U.S. and allied troops are withdrawn in 2014. Seth G. Jones and Keith Crane assess the political, security, and economic challenges facing U.S. policymakers in Afghanistan and evaluate a range of policy options.
Download or read book Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan written by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite vast efforts to build the state, profound political order in rural Afghanistan is maintained by self-governing, customary organizations. Informal Order and the State in Afghanistan explores the rules governing these organizations to explain why they can provide public goods. Instead of withering during decades of conflict, customary authority adapted to become more responsive and deliberative. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and observations from dozens of villages across Afghanistan, and statistical analysis of nationally representative surveys, Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili demonstrates that such authority enhances citizen support for democracy, enabling the rule of law by providing citizens with a bulwark of defence against predatory state officials. Contrary to conventional wisdom, it shows that 'traditional' order does not impede the development of the state because even the most independent-minded communities see a need for a central government - but question its effectiveness when it attempts to rule them directly and without substantive consultation.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Congressional Research Service and published by . This book was released on 2014-10-09 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afghan security forces have lead security responsibility throughout the country, and the United States and its partner countries are in the process of transitioning to a smaller post-2014 mission consisting mostly of training the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF). The number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, which peaked at about 100,000 in June 2011, has been reduced to about 30,000. President Obama announced in May 2014 that the United States plans to keep 9,800 U.S. forces in Afghanistan during 2015, shrinking to 4,900 mostly in Kabul and at Bagram Airfield during 2016. The post-2016 force is to be several hundred military personnel, under U.S. Embassy authority. The post-2014 force was contingent on Afghanistan's signing a Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) with the United States. All candidates in the April 5, 2014, presidential election publicly support the agreement, including Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani, who garnered enough votes to proceed to a runoff on June 14. A dispute over alleged fraud in that runoff resulted in a U.S.-brokered solution under which Ghani was declared the winner and Abdullah was appointed to a new position of Chief Executive Officer of the government. Ghani and Abdullah took office on September 29, and the U.S.-Afghan BSA was signed on September 30. A similar document was also signed between Afghanistan and NATO. Even though the election dispute has been resolved, at least for now, experts remain concerned that Afghan stability is at risk from weak and corrupt Afghan governance and insurgent safe havens in Pakistan. U.S. and partner country anti-corruption efforts in Afghanistan have yielded few concrete results, although the new President, Ghani, has taken steps to prioritize anti-corruption issues. An unexpected potential benefit to stability could come from a negotiated settlement between the Afghan government and the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Negotiations have been sporadic, but in May 2014 produced an exchange of prisoners that included the return of U.S. prisoner of war Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. Afghanistan's minorities and women's groups fear that a settlement might produce compromises with the Taliban that erode human rights. The United States and other donors continue to fund development projects, but increasingly delegate implementation to the Afghan government. U.S. officials assert that Afghanistan might be able to exploit vast mineral resources to prevent a major recession as international donors scale back their involvement. U.S. officials also seek greater Afghan integration into regional trade and investment patterns as part of a “New Silk Road.” Persuading Afghanistan's neighbors, particularly Pakistan, to support Afghanistan's stability has shown some modest success. Even if economic development and investment continue, Afghanistan will remain dependent on foreign aid for many years. Through the end of FY2013, the United States provided nearly $93 billion in assistance to Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban, of which more than $56 billion has been to equip and train Afghan forces. The appropriated U.S. aid for FY2014 is over $6.1 billion, including $4.7 billion to train and equip the ANSF, and the FY2015 request is about $5.7 billion. These figures do not include funds for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Administration officials have pledged to Afghanistan that economic aid requests for Afghanistan are likely to continue roughly at recent levels (about $1.5 billion per year) through at least FY2017. See CRS Report RS21922, Afghanistan: Politics, Elections, and Government Performance, by Kenneth Katzman.
Download or read book Land the State and War written by Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-09 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first detailed study of institutional economics and public choice traditions in Afghanistan.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Kenneth Katzman and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Kenneth Katzman and published by . This book was released on 2013-06-24 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Obama Administration and several of its partner countries are seeking to reduce U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan without jeopardizing existing gains. In a May 1, 2012, visit to Afghanistan, President Obama said the United States and its partners are within reach of the fundamental goal of defeating Al Qaeda, and he signed a strategic partnership agreement that will keep small amounts of U.S. troops in Afghanistan after 2014 as advisors and trainers. During 2011-2014, the United States and its partners are gradually transferring overall security responsibility to Afghan security forces. U.S. forces, which peaked at about 99,000 in June 2011, are being reduced to about 68,000 by September 2012, and President Obama said that "reductions will continue at a steady pace" from then until the completion of the transition to Afghan lead at the end of 2014. A key to the transition is to place Afghan forces in the security lead, with U.S. military involvement changing from combat to a training and advising role, by mid-2013. The Administration view is that, no matter the U.S. and allied drawdown schedule, security gains could be at risk from weak Afghan governance and insurgent safe haven in Pakistan. This latter factor is widely noted as a potential threat to Afghan stability well after the 2014 transition. Afghan governance is perceived as particularly weak and corrupt, despite the holding of regular elections since 2004 and the establishment of several overlapping anti-corruption institutions. As the transition proceeds, there is increasing emphasis on negotiating a settlement to the conflict. That process has proceeded sporadically since 2010, and has not, by all accounts, advanced to a discussion of specific proposals to settle the conflict, although there have been discussions of a ceasefire. Afghanistan's minorities and women's groups worry about a potential settlement, fearing it might produce compromises with the Taliban that erode human rights and ethnic powersharing.
Download or read book Afghanistan Politics Elections and Government Performance written by Kenneth Katzman and published by . This book was released on 2014-12-31 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The capacity, transparency, and legitimacy of Afghan governance are considered crucial to Afghan stability after U.S.-led NATO forces turn over the security mission to Afghan leadership by the end of 2014. The size and capability of the Afghan governing structure has increased significantly since the Taliban regime fell in late 2001, but the government remains weak and rampant with corruption. Even as the government has struggled to widen its writ, President Hamid Karzai has concentrated substantial presidential authority through his powers of appointment at all levels.
Download or read book Iraq and Afghanistan Security Economic and Governance Challenges to Rebuilding Efforts Should Be Addressed in U S Strategies written by Jacquelyn Williams-Bridgers and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2009-08 with total page 27 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From fiscal year 2001 through July 2008, Congress provided more than $808 billion to the Department of Defense (DoD) for the Global War on Terrorism, including military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, since fiscal year 2003, about $49 billion has been provided to U.S. agencies for reconstruction and stabilization in Iraq and $32 billion for similar efforts in Afghanistan since fiscal year 2002. In February 2009, President Obama announced a new U.S. strategy for Iraq and plans to develop a new comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan. This statement is based on an extensive body of work examining U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Illustrations.
Download or read book Afghanistan s Uncertain Transition from Turmoil to Normalcy written by Barnett R. Rubin and published by Council on Foreign Relations Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 43 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the challenges Afghanistan faces and proposes measures to meet them. By delineating tasks in the areas of security, governance, reconstruction, and regional cooperation that still require significant attention and resources, this report makes and important contribution to our understanding of what needs to be done in a country whose importance has for too long and too often been underestimated.
Download or read book Afghanistan Governance written by U S Government Accountability Office (G and published by BiblioGov. This book was released on 2013-07 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is an independent agency that works for Congress. The GAO watches over Congress, and investigates how the federal government spends taxpayers dollars. The Comptroller General of the United States is the leader of the GAO, and is appointed to a 15-year term by the U.S. President. The GAO wants to support Congress, while at the same time doing right by the citizens of the United States. They audit, investigate, perform analyses, issue legal decisions and report anything that the government is doing. This is one of their reports.
