Conclusion: Reintegration Processes Trump Weapons Metrics

Coalition and Afghan partnered forces currently use the disarmament and reintegration programs to “promote disarmament through development and enhancing the stability and socio-economic condition of the targeted districts” in Afghanistan, yet the vast preponderance of metrics, reports, graphics, and briefing presentations highlight a weapons-centric emphasis that largely espouses a linear-causality logic where “more weapons seized and illegally armed groups disbanded leads to improved security.”[42] While weapon seizure rates and illegally armed group disbandment metrics cannot be anecdotally linked to whether violence decreases in the same region due to the interrelated actions of a complex and adaptive system such as Afghanistan in 2010, weapons metrics alone will not accomplish the strategic objectives established in the original DDR and subsequent DIAG programs.[43] Furthermore, weapon statistics, like all statistics, can present the position the organization wants to see instead of what is actually there.

For example, of the 20,000 weapons originally seized by DIAG from June 2005 to June 2006, reportedly some 7,000 of those collected weapons were “old, rusty, or otherwise unusable” which does not exactly reinforce the pervasive DIAG logic that quantifying total weapons collected equals progress towards security goals.[44] The military as an organization should not fear critically thinking about “the way we do things” because effective questioning of core values and processes in Design leads to deeper understanding and potentially better solutions.[45]

This article explained how Army Design Methodology and critical thinking can initially identify how we think about the current problem with armed combatants in economically unstable regions, and whether the logic associated with why things are going the way they appear has a conceptual basis that supports multiple frames of collected metrics and observations. In other words, how the Asia Foundation and other organizations examines Afghan opinions is relevant and cannot be overlooked by the military’s preference for quantifiable and tangible metrics such as seized or registered weapons, disbanded illegal groups, and numbers of former warlords that join the current political process in exchange for questionable and potentially unsustainable economic incentives.[46]

Strategic planning requires campaign plans that take the deep explanation that Design delivers and integrates into understandable and cohesive products for military organizations and related government agencies to harmonize with. For armed combatants in Afghanistan in 2011 and forward, the need for reintegration on an achievable and enduring level must be implemented through ‘whole-of-government’ efforts that target more than the immediate or tangible artifacts such as weapons, illegally armed groups, or even how many fighters you could pay to register their weapon in exchange for a marginal job prospect.  The logic underpinning the entire complex system needs to be appreciated and explained to the entire organization so that collectively, the organization realizes that simply seizing or registering more weapons may not improve security, and why that occurs in Afghanistan today.

While figure 1 established the highly abstract logic for framing the Afghan environment as dueling tensions of societal values and economic values, figure 2 subsequently applied that high abstraction into a feedback loop that demonstrates the complex factors of self-organization, adaptation, innovation, and perpetual evolution. Criminal networks and ideological movements using violence are often interrelated, and notoriously resistant to extermination. Can the Afghan ‘nation state’ flower outgrow the weeds in the flower pot? As the primary gardener, the military and our international leadership cannot afford to get reintegration wrong, nor can we continue to expect more seized or even registered weapon statistics to substitute for actual understanding of the Afghan complex system. Weapons are part of the problem, but attempting to solve one element of a complex problem does little more than frustrate national will and international unity.

Afghanistan deserves a day in the future where weapons pile up on their own because few Afghans are motivated to “live by the gun”, where fields are filled with more wheat and jasmine instead of poppy, and terrorists face greater rejection by the Afghan population instead of tolerance and tacit support. The phenomenon of Afghan hands passing weapons in and out of circulation can come to an end, but not as long as the Coalition and international efforts remain fixated on the weapon and the hands currently holding it, instead of the deeper Afghan phenomenon of why over three decades of various hands have reached for and subsequently passed that weapon around.

Notes

[1] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, May 24, 2010; online: http://www.sipri.org/blogs/Afghanistan/aprp-the-afghan-plan-for-peace-and-reintegration-2013-all-theory-and-no-reality Last accessed: 01 August 2011.

[2] Ethan B. Kapstein, Military Metrics: How Do We Know When We’re Winning (or Losing) a War? (Small Wars Journal: http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2011/07/military-metrics-how-do-we-kno/ last accessed: 09 July 2011; Small Wars Foundation, 2011) 2.

[3] Peter Dahl Thruelsen, From Soldier to Civilian: Disarmament  Demobilization Reintegration in Afghanistan (Danish Institute for International Studies, DIIS Report 2006:7, 2006) 16. The report footnotes these statistics with “the numbers are March 2006 (www.undpanbp.org).   

[4] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, Disbandment of Illegal Armed Groups (DIAG) (Annual Project Report 2010, project ID: 00043604; Crisis Prevention and Recovery Component, 2010) 6.

[5] Thruelsen, 22. The survey that generated a 94,000 combatant number came from a UN assessment using UNAMA field officers.

[6] Islamic Republic of Afghanistan National Security Council, D&R Commission, Afghanistan Peace and Reintegration Program (APRP), April 2010; online: http://www.sipri.org/blogs/Afghanistan/Afghan%20Peace%20and%20Reconciliation%20Programme-%20draft-%20Apr%2010%20.pdf Last accessed: 01 August 2011. 4-6. Weapons are only registered, not collected. “Those who join the peace process may…immediately return home…the upset brothers and weapons will be registered, and subject to the laws of Afghanistan, upset brothers who accept the Constitution and a cessation of violence, will be given amnesty.” The financial costs are born by the international community, largely the United States. “The financial cost will be substantial and will be dependent- in large part- upon donor financial support for an extended period…”

[7] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 18. This project report makes the link between weapon seizure and security by identifying the risk of continued “high levels of insecurity in many districts” caused DIAG efforts to collect weapons at a reduced rate. Once again, the logic of “collect more weapons and gain more security” underpins the logical framework of the DIAG strategy; See also: Sayed Yaqub Ibrahimi, Afghan Disarmament: A Never Ending Process (Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 17 May 2006, online: http://iwpr.net/report-news/afghan-disarmament-never-ending-process Last accessed: 31 July 2011). “Past and present warlords are unhappy that they are expected to hand over their weapons with no recompense.”

[8] Afghanistan’s New Beginning Programme, Introduction to DIAG (United Nations Development Program UNDP open-source website: http://www.anbp.af.undp.org/homepage/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13&Itemid=34 last accessed: 10 JUL 2011). On this official UN website for the Afghan DIAG, the entire DIAG achievements section centers on the statistics regarding weapons seized, criminal groups disarmed or arrested, and political candidates associated with illegally armed groups disqualified in Afghan elections.

[9] Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Unofficial website with open-source script; http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/mphg/mphg.htm#Scene%203 Last accessed: 19 July 2011.

[10] Jeff Conklin, Wicked Problems and Social Complexity, (CogNexus Institute, 2008. http://cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf (accessed 05 January 2011) 4-5. “This is the pattern of thinking that everyone attempts to follow when they are faced with a problem…this linear pattern as being enshrined in policy manuals, textbooks, internal standards for project management, and even the most advanced tools and methods being used and taught in the organization.” See also: Qiao Liang, Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare, (Beijing: People’s Liberation Army Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999), 140-141. Liang and Ziangsui argue that over the last 20 years, the world has grown more complex, yet the military ignore the increased complexity of war and instead focus “on the level of weapons, deployment methods and the battlefield, and the drawn-up war prospects are also mostly only limited to the military domain and revel in it.”

[11] Thruelsen,13. “It was recognized that the current armed groups in the country needed to be disarmed before a government controlled army could be sovereign…” 48. “Instead of applying local communities as the focal point for all DDR activities, the programme applied the military and social structures of the armed forces.” See also: United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 3-4. The executive summary of this report highlights the linear logic of disarmament leading to security. “In doing [DIAG], it contributed to community development, promoted stability and security, fostered disarmament, and enhanced good governance.” Subsequent paragraphs of this summary cite weapons metrics, IAG disarmament, but no metrics supporting a reduction in violence.

[12] Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1973), 7. “The arrangement of selected events of the chronicle into a story raises the kinds of questions the historian must anticipate and answer in the course of constructing his narrative.” White explains in Metahistory the construction of narratives so that humans relay information through conceptual constructs that relate to language, society, period, and intent. See also: Paul Ricoeur (translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer), Time and Narrative, Volume 3, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985) 107.

[13] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 7-8. The report provides numerous graphs and charts on weapons collected and groups disarmed, but significantly less on levels of violence and reintegration success of disarmed groups.

[14] Ruth Rene (editor), Mohammad Tariq, Najila Ayoubi, Fazel Haqbeen, A Survey of the Afghan People; Afghanistan in 2010 (http://asiafoundation.org/country/afghanistan/2010-poll.php last accessed: 11JUL2011; The Asia Foundation, 2010).

[15] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 7.

[16] United Nations Integrated Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Standards (IDDRS), 01 August 2006; Introduction to the IDDRS; section 1.10. 1,2. The UN defined DDR’s objective in their doctrine as “to contribute to security and stability in post-conflict environments so that recovery and development can begin.  The DDR of ex-combatants is a complex process, with political, military, security, humanitarian, and socio-economic dimensions.” The weapons-centric fixation of the Afghan DIAG program does not appear to match the core objectives and structure within DDR strategy in this author’s opinion.

[17] A Survey of the Afghan People, 30.

[18] The International Crisis Group, The Insurgency in Afghanistan’s Heartland (http://www.crisisgroup.org/en/publication-type/media-releases/2011/asia/the-insurgency-in-afghanistans-heartland.aspx last accessed: 15 July 2011).

[19] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 7. See also: A Survey of the Afghan People, 30.

[20] Ibid, 7. The UN results do not break down Southern Afganistan into ‘east’ and ‘west’ southern as the Asia Foundation does; this article makes the assumption that ‘south’ correlates to similar regions and population centers divided by the Asia Survey into South East and South West. See also: A Survey of the Afghan People, 30.

[21] DOD News Briefing with Major General Jones via Teleconference from Afghanistan, May 19, 2011; online: http://newsroom-magazine.com/2011/executive-branch/defense-department/isaf-general-jones-sees-afghanistan-reintergration-efforts-taking-some-really-big-steps-forward/ Last accessed: 01 August 2011.

[22] Jerry Meyerle, Nilanthi Samaranayake, Mike Markowitz, Lonn Waters, Hilary Zarin, Brian Ellison, Chris Jehn, Bill Rosenau, Conscription in the Afghan Army: Compulsory Service Versus an All Volunteer Force (CAN Analysis and Solutions, CRM D0024840.A1/SR1, March 2011) 23-25.

[23] Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General System Theory; Foundations, Development, Applications, (New York: George Braziller, 1968 ) 19. Bertalanffy describes open systems in General System Theory as entities consisting of “parts in interaction. The prototype of their description is a set of simultaneous differential equations which are nonlinear in the general case.”

[24] Design Theory is referred to as ‘Design’ in the most recent planning doctrine for the U.S. Army, however it is also known by several other similar terms; United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Field Manual 5-0; The Operations Process (Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2010), Glossary-4. See also: United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Field Manual-Interim 5-2; Design (Draft) (draft under development-Headquarters, Department of the Army, 2009).

[25] Ben Zweibelson, Cartel Next: How Army Design Methodology Offers Holistic and Dissimilar Approaches to the Mexican Drug Problem (Small Wars Journal, smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2011/06/cartel-next-how-army-design-me/ ; Last accessed: 10 July 2011) 9. This article by the same author uses the same graphic as figure 1 to explain tensions between legal and illegal commodities in Mexico in relation to drug cartels, corruption, and violence.  At this high level of abstraction, figure 1 might function in many societies for Design-related exploration.

[26] Gerald M. Weinberg, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975) 37.

[27] Kate Clark, Taliban Claim Weapons Supplied by Iran (The Telegraph, 30 July 2011; online: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/2958093/Taliban-claim-weapons-supplied-by-Iran.html Last accessed: 31 July 2011).  “Iranian-made weapons, [Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, British Ambassador in Kabul] said, whether smuggled or donated, were the most popular among Taliban fighters and fetch premium prices on the open market. “A Kalashnikov rifle made in Iran costs two to three hundred dollars more than one made anywhere else” he said. “Its beauty lies in the fact that it can also fire grenades, up to 300 meters. This is something new and it’s in great demand.”

[28] United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes, Afghan opium production halves in 2010, according to UNODC annual survey (http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2010/September/afghan-opium-production-halves-in-2010-according-to-unodc-annual-survey.html last accessed: 15 July 2011). “30 September – Afghanistan’s opium production halved in 2010 but soaring prices may encourage farmers to go back to opium cultivation…These regions are dominated by insurgency and organized crime networks. This underscores the link between opium poppy cultivation and insecurity in Afghanistan, a trend we have observed since 2007.” See also: Jerome Starkey, Drugs for guns: how the Afghan heroin trade is fuelling the Taliban insurgency (The Independent.co.uk 29 April 2008, online: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/drugs-for-guns-how-the-afghan-heroin-trade-is-fuelling-the-taliban-insurgency-817230.html Last accessed: 31 July 2011. “Russian gangsters who smuggle drugs into Britain are buying cheap heroin from Afghanistan and paying for it with guns.”

[29] Ibrahimi. “Many of these groups are involved in drug cultivation and trafficking, assisting or protecting drug smugglers, and creating insecurity in the country,” [DIAG spokesman Ahmad Jan Nawzadi] told a press conference in Mazar-e-Sharif in early May [2006].”

[30] United States Office of National Drug Control Policy; Section IV. A Comprehensive Approach; 7. Reducing the Supply of Illegal Drugs (https://www.ncjrs.gov/ondcppubs/publications/policy/99ndcs/iv-g.html Last accessed: 15 July 2011). US drug policy uses the terms ‘arrival’, ‘transit’, and ‘source’ zones to explain the role of each in criminal activity and economic action. See also: Zweibelson, SWJ. This article also relied upon the term ‘Illicit Commodity Cycle’ to explain this abstract cycle of action and adaptation in holistic terms.

[31] Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, UN Says Afghanistan’s Neighbors Consume Most of World’s Opium (http://www.rferl.org/content/UN_Afghanistan_Neighbors_Consume_Opium/2080450.html Last Accessed: 15 July 2011).

[32] Starkey. “A kilogram of the best Afghan heroin is worth £600 in Afghanistan. It is worth twice as much at the bazaar in Tajikistan. But rather than take cash, they take weapon parts, because they double their value in Afghanistan. An AK-47 assault rifle costs £50 at the bazaar. It is worth up to £100 in northern Afghanistan, and even more in the south and east where demand for guns is higher, because of the fighting.”

[33] Jim Michaels, Afghan drug traffickers face more resistnace (USA Today, May 9, 2010, online: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanistan/2010-05-09-opium-afghanistan_N.htm Last accessed: 31 July 2011). “The encounters with drug traffickers have been violent as militants attempt to protect their goods by firing on U.S. and government forces. Mills said drugs have been seized along with weapons and roadside bombs after the firefights or in caches. Some analysts say interdicting drugs will only provide a temporary fix because drug smugglers will adapt their tactics to evade an increase in law enforcement or military presence.”

[34] Gerald M. Weinberg, An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1975) 37; See also:Trent Scott, Adapt or Die; Australian Army Journal For the Profession of Arms, Volume VI, Number 3 (Duntroon: Land Warfare Studies Centre, 2009) 119. “Typically, we ignore the deeper, more fundamental questions associated with the structure of the system or systems with which we interact.”

[35] Thruelsen, 16. DDR total numbers for weapons seized from 2002-2006 cited as 36,500.  See also: United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 7. The DIAG numbers for 2005-2010 for weapons seized under that program are 54,138. Adding these two numbers results in 117,538.

[36] Herald Sun, Australian Military Forces Seize Drugs, Weapons in Afghanistan, 22 July 2011, online at: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/breaking-news/australian-military-forces-seize-drugs-weapons-in-afghanistan/story-e6frf7jx-1226099787778 Last accessed: 31 July 2011. The Commander was unnamed for ‘security purposes.’

[37] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 21.

[38] Ibid, 9-10.

[39] Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

[40] Ibid.

[41] Lester Grau, Breaking Contact Without Leaving Chaos: The Soviet Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Fort Leavenworth Foreign Military Studies Office, April 2007;  http://handle.dtic.mil/100.2/ADA470066  Last accessed: 14 OCT 2011)  21.

[42] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 3, 14. This author also attended an unclassified briefing with the NTM-A Commander where the latest DIAG program results were briefed in a PowerPoint presentation in early July, 2011 in the NTM-A Commander’s Conference Room, Kabul, Afghanistan. The slides consisted entirely of weapon seizures (with obligatory photos of weapon piles) and group disarmament statistics and how the ANSF process seized weapons (destroyed, assimilated into supplies, or re-issued).

[43] Jeff Conklin, Wicked Problems and Social Complexity (CogNexus Institute, 2008. http://www.cognexus.org Last accessed 05 January 2011) 4. “Traditional thinking, cognitive studies, and the prevailing Design methods all predicted that the best way to work on a problem like this was to follow an orderly and linear ‘top-down’ process, working from the problem to the solution.” See also: Shimon Naveh, Jim Schneider, Timothy Challans, The Structure of Operational Revolution; A Prolegomena (Booz, Allen, Hamilton, 2009). Naveh criticizes the military’s preferred logic as rigid and lacking in the ability to adapt and create.

[44] Ibrahimi.

[45] Qiao Liang, Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare (Beijing: People’s Liberation Army Literature and Arts Publishing House, February 1999) 13-14. “Some of the traditional models of war, as well as the logic and laws attached to it, will also be challenged. The outcome of the contest is not the collapse of the traditional mansion but rather one portion of the new construction site being in disorder.”

[46] United Nations Development Programme Afghanistan, 14. DIAG implemented “activity 4.1” on 09 September 2009 through a Vice Presidential decree that outlawed any persons associated with IAGs from holding public office. This essentially politicizes the DIAG process and suggests that internal Afghan tribal and political conflicts extend beyond the DIAG scope.