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Afghanistan: The Nexus between Disarming and Rebuilding Armed Forces

United States Institute of Peace

February 3rd, 2011

Christopher R. Mantas

The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) hosted an event exploring the challenges which faced the
Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) and Security Sector Reform (SSR) processes
in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2005. Four distinguished panelists provided valuable insights into
the dialogue. The first speaker was Dr. Caroline Hartzell, Senior Fellow at USIP and a professor of
political science at Gettysburg College, who is currently composing the USIP paper on this topic. Dr.
Hartzell was followed by Shahmahmood Miakhel, Director of USIP’s Afghanistan office, and former
Deputy Minister of Interior of Afghanistan between 2003 and 2005. The next speaker was Thomas
Donnelly, a defense and security policy analyst, and director of the Center for Defense Policy. The last
panelist was Mark Sedra, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI).

Although the panelists held some dissimilar political philosophies, a common theme emerged
throughout the event: the US and other donor nations missed a key opportunity for DDR to work in
Afghanistan during the first couple of years after the war began, as violence was down and the local
populations were supportive of change, due to a lack of a comprehensive plan/strategic framework, an
absence of effective coordination efforts, and an astounding lack of political will by the international
community and the local government. This failed DDR process made the long term goal of effective
SSR exceptionally difficult, as creating sustainable institutions and ingraining the rule of law into
society requires bad actors to be disarmed, demobilized and reintegrated. The DDR and SSR processes
are not unrelated and linear as conventional wisdom puts it, but connected and must be taken on
simultaneously to have a positive effect.

Dr. Hartzell underscored the difficult environment of DDR to take root in Afghanistan. The DDR
process is customarily undertaken in post-conflict states, Afghanistan has seen 30 years of continuous
conflict, therefore institutions are weak and security forces are localized, and the nature of the key
agreement, the Bonn Agreement, did not even mention DDR. An interesting aspect of her presentation
was the argument that scholars who argue that the DDR process was a success in Afghanistan usually
point to the high numbers of weapons seized and security forces created, whereas the process should
be judged on the criteria stipulated in the “New Beginnings” program, a UN initiative which detailed a
three-pronged approach to success: to break the historic patriarchal chain of command which plagued
Afghanistan, for militia-members to transition from military to civilian life through creating an
environment where employment is accessible, and to retrieve/store a large supply of weapons. Dr.
Hartzell argued that in each regard, the process failed, citing the continual reliance on illegally armed
groups (IAGs) such as local warlords and militias, 40% unemployment and failure of reintegration into
civil society, and the seizure of the weapons thus far as only a drop in the bucket. Dr. Hartzell ended
by underscoring the failure of capitalizing on the window of opportunity during the first couple of years
which was available to impose an effective DDR program and encouraged the evaluation of DDR in
Afghanistan not in terms of outputs, but by the three objectives of the New Beginnings program.

Shahmahmood Miakhel began his commentary by characterizing the DDR process in Afghanistan as a
“failure of design and implementation.” Political will, Mr. Miakhel believes, has been and will continue
to be the most problematic aspect of the DDR process, as the theoretical approach to bettering
conditions on the ground rarely culminates in practical improvements. The security vacuum created
during the period the US was focused almost exclusively on Iraq provided a “marriage of convenience
between arms dealers and drug dealers in Afghanistan”, with many bad actors coming from Central
Asia to partake in a lucrative business. At one point, Mr. Miakhel recalls, some senior commanders
talked about potentially dismantling the whole Afghan National Police (ANP) force because of the
deeply rooted corruption within the organization and the deteriorating security presence around the
country. Mr. Miakhel disagreed with Dr. Hartzell contention that only the first couple of years were
conducive to an effective DDR process. Mr. Miakhel recalls that during the first three or four years of
the ANP, no shots were fired at the ANP because of the “good will and faith” that the local population
held, underscoring the locals’ eagerness for change. Mr. Miakhel ended by stating that the biggest
failure of the DDR process in Afghanistan was that it was not connected to SSR, citing the 2nd Vice
President of Afghanistan as an example. This VP was chief of the internal DDR process and was
himself a local warlord who was not demilitarized. Under these circumstances, institutions cannot be
built and effectively engage in SSR.

Tom Donnelly then began discussing the main problem of DDR in Afghanistan as the ever-changing
support structure personnel in the country and the rapidly changing “trial and error” approach to the
design and implementation for the process. Afghanistan “does not represent a ten year war, but ten
one-year wars”. This discontinuity devalued the DDR process, which Mr. Donnelly contends, was
successful in reducing the number of weapons held by IAGs throughout the country. His argument was
that the goal of the DDR was never to seize control of all the illegal guns in Afghanistan, but to control
the heavy-machinery so that the Afghan Government will never “lose a firefight”. Also, Mr. Donnelly
contends that far too much was encapsulated into the DDR process prior to implementation, as
demobilizing and reintegrating the various militias worried about losing control to other groups was an
unrealistic goal from the very beginning. The disarmament portion of the DDR process was done very
well, Mr. Donnelly believes, as it answers the central question: “Who controls the means of violence?”
“The on-deadline and under-budget approach to DDR was a main contributor to other failures,” said
Mr. Donnelly.

The last panelist, Mark Sedra focused on the nexus between DDR and SSR. DDR creates the security
space through breaking down armed groups by which SSR can take shape. Political will, planning, and
coordination efforts were all abysmal failures in Afghanistan. An interesting aspect of Mr. Sedra’s
presentation was his argument that unless a DDR process is done correctly, following a strategic
framework whereby the preceding factors are capitalized, it is better not to do anything at all because
the failure of DDR can do harm. The breakdown of patronage networks not only failed, but the process
of attempting to deconstruct the networks has had an adverse effect through consolidating local
militias and giving the local population the feeling that the current process is merely a break between
ongoing civil wars, making the population less likely to support US initiatives, as militia groups will be
in Afghanistan far after coalition forces leave. The goal of effective DDR should not be to de-politicize
the process, Mr. Sedra believes, but to leverage political tools effectively to incentivize adherence to
agreed upon principles. Mr. Sedra ended by reemphasizing the missed opportunities and subsequent
failures of other programs attempting to do the same things in the same failed ways.