A New Afghanistan Strategy: Better Efforts to Disarm and Reintegrate

Nation-building – a fuzzy term that brings to mind everything from latrine digging to election monitoring – has invaded our parlance on Afghanistan. The US entered Afghanistan to protect our own national security interests. To get out of Afghanistan, we need to neutralize what threatens America’s security. How do we do that? Nation-building? Democratization? What is our new strategy?

Perhaps, the answer lies in repairing and enhancing certain programs that already exist. Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) is the process by which ex-combatants are disbanded and rejoined with society. Well known as an operational model employed by UN missions across Africa, DDR programs are essential to security sector reform in particular and successful peacekeeping in general.

DDR began in Afghanistan in 2003 under the auspices of Afghanistan’s New Beginning Program (ANBP) initiated by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). The ANBP’s DDR project was very conventionally designed. First, an operational group within Afghanistan’s Ministry of Defense selected the individuals and units to be decommissioned and disarmed. Then, ex-combatants were referred to one of eight Regional Verification Committees. Finally, those who complete DDR joined the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police, enrolled in school or college as civilians, or received civilian job training.

The ANBP’s disarmament phase was slow to begin, ineffectively implemented, and hastily finished. Only 56% of previously registered – i.e. ‘legal’ – weapons were collected and, of the weapons collected, 36% were useless. The reintegration process was even more flawed. Job training was actually conducted in the houses of former militia commanders, extending the warlord patronage system new legitimacy. Providing hyperbolic example of the missteps and lack of information that haunted this first attempt at DDR, fifteen new tailors were trained to cater to one small village.

In June 2005, hoping for a fresh start, the UNDP began another DDR-type program called the Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG). Designed as the Taliban insurgency coalesced and intensified, the scope of DIAG and its goals are far less ambitious than that of ANBP’s DDR.

DIAG’s tasks include licensing private security companies, registering legally obtained weapons, estimating the size and location of illegal armed groups, identifying government officials linked to illegal armed groups, and spreading public awareness about corruption, insecurity, opportunities, etc.

However, in the coming months, DIAG will accept more bold responsibilities. In a DIAG progress report released by UNDP this summer, one of the program’s new strategic components is to assist the Afghanistan National Program for Peace and Reintegration.

“Through detailed provincial and district analysis on the causes of instability, DIAG will provide instrumental project management support in post-negotiations by collecting weapons, facilitating the insurgents, IAGs, and other destabilizing elements’ reintegration back to civil society, and delivering development projects.”

As efforts at DDR are (once again) beginning again, the Obama administration should emphasize the importance of the taks currently assigned to DIAG in any revamped Afghanistan strategy. Reintegration programs are crucial to neutralizing the threats to US national security. Our timely withdrawal is contingent on timely and effective reintegration programs.

We should be sure to study the failures of ANBP’s original DDR projects that operated without much oversight out of regional verification offices not armed with the information  – in the form of rural livelihood analysis and feasibility studies – or the tactics requisite to ensure job training programs were successful, not undermined by persistent warlord oligarchies.

About $11 billion was allocated for Afghanistan in the US budget for fiscal year 2009. $14 billion has been allocated for fiscal year 2010. DIAG’s annual operating budget is only $117 million, or about 1% of USA’s Expenditure on Operation Enduring Freedom last year. Also, DIAG receives funding from many other donor countries, Japan outstanding among them. If DDR is to be a success this time around, then the US needs to play a larger financial and managerial role in DIAG.

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