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i Copyright by Mark Silinsky 2014 All Rights Reserved ii For the builders of Afghanistan iii Executive Summary The initial hypothesis of this dissertation was that Afghan insurgents’ attacks on Afghan civilians have lowered popular confidence in the Afghan government and its institutions. The goal of the insurgents has been to convince Afghans that their local, provincial, and national governments and security forces cannot protect them. Insurgents harm and kill civilians as part of their strategy of intimidation. Conversely, counterinsurgents try to convince the Afghan people that their government is responsive, that the economy is promising, that the rule of law is strong, and that Armed Forces of Afghanistan are viable. For the counterinsurgency to have been successful, the level of national confidence would need to have been high. National confidence is intangible, often fleeting, and sometimes difficult to gauge. There are standard measurements of human development, such as economic growth; longevity; access to medicine and health clinics, levels of literacy, potable water, security, and others. However, measuring confidence presents unique challenges for the researcher. The Taliban were, by far, the most powerful and largest of the insurgent groups, but there were others. The strategy of the insurgents to break confidence in the Afghan local, provincial and national governments was based on three basic principles: crippling the economy, terrorizing their domestic enemies; and destroying the will of foreign states to continue their support for Kabul. All these tactics were predicated on violence. iv In this dissertation, quantitative methods associated the impact of violent incidents, which were the independent variables, to various indicators of national morale, which are the dependent variables. The results confirmed some elements of the hypothesis and disproved others. Several components of national confidence declined from 2008 and 2010, but only marginally. For the scales that were measured, there was a decline of national confidence in four scales, but an increase in one scale. There were decreases in the confidence of economic prosperity in villages and neighborhoods where citizens live, and a decline in the confidence of citizens in national and provincial governments. In security, there was a very slight decline. However, there was an increase in the confidence of citizens in institutions, organizations, and officials. The findings suggest that the overarching counterinsurgency strategy of building national confidence through sustained human development was successful in the years analyzed in this dissertation. Despite a spike in insurgent attacks during 2009, national confidence in 2010 was not significantly eroded. The author of this dissertation is a military analyst for the Department of Defense. All material in this work – its observations, conclusions, recommendations, and opinions – are those of the author and his alone. No element of this dissertation, officially or unofficially, reflects the policy of the Department of Defense or any element or agency of the United States government. v TABLE OF CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 5 LIST OF TABLES 7 LIST OF FIGURES 13 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 26 INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER ONE: STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM, OVERALL RESEARCH DESIGN, AND LITERATURE REVIEW Statement of the Problem 5 Null and Research Hypotheses 6 Literature Review 6 Challenges in the Literature 23 Summary 31 CHAPTER TWO: WAR AND NATIONAL CONFIDENCE 33 PART ONE: WAR, INSURGENCY, AND HISTORY 35 Insurgency and Counterinsurgency – Definitions 39 Insurgencies, Peoples’ Wars, and Morale 42 The General Template of the Taliban 45 A Chronological Approach 48 Afghan Insurgents 51 War Termination and Reconstruction Efforts 53 PART TWO: NATIONAL CONFIDENCE AND WAR 55 vi Confidence and the Home Front 55 Attacking Confidence in War – A Historical Perspective 56 PART THREE: INSURGENCIES AND THE INDEX OF NATIONAL CONFIDENCE 59 Indicator One: National Morale 59 Indicator Two: Economic Prosperity and National Confidence 64 Indicator Three: Public Administration: Institutions, Organizations, and Officials 70 Enforcing Contracts and Agreements 72 Elements of Building Confidence in Public 76 Administration Indicator Four: Security and National Confidence 78 Maslow’s Hierarchy and its Application to Confidence and Development 80 PART FOUR: MEASURING NATIONAL CONFIDENCE IN AFGHANISTAN IN 2008 AND 2010 83 Null and Research Hypotheses 83 Overview of Study Design/ Secondary Data Analysis 84 Sampling Design and Weighting Approach 85 Study Participants and Their Characteristics 86 Data Collection and Quality Control 92 Sampling Techniques and Over Sampling 93 Weighting and Oversampling 95 Variables Used 96 Independent variable 96 vii Indicators and Scales Used as Dependent Variables 99 Overview of Four Indicators of National Confidence 99 Indicator 1: National Morale/Direction of the Country 100 Indicator 2: Economic Prosperity 100 Scale 2A: Economic Prosperity 100 Measuring Situations in Citizens Households 101 Scale 2B: Economic Prosperity: Measuring Conditions in Villages Where Citizens Live /Neighborhoods 102 Indicator 3: Confidence of Citizens Public Administration 103 Scale 3A: Confidence of Citizens in Institutions, Organizations and Officials 103 Scale 3B: Confidence of Citizens in National and Provincial Governments 104 Indicator 4: Security 105 Scale 4: Security -Do Citizens Feel Secure in Various Ways? 105 Scales with Complete Data 108 Variables on Which Respondents Were Similar From Year to Year 108 Characteristics of Survey Respondents 109 Methodology 120 Statistic Analysis for Detecting Differences between Years 124 Overall Analyses of Variance 124 Explanatory Variables 125 Graphic Displays of Meaningful Differences 126 viii Summary 126 CHAPTER THREE: WAR AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT Introduction 129 PART ONE: AFGHANISTAN’S DEVELOPMENTAL BACKGROUND 131 Afghanistan’s Poverty and Governance 131 Economic Development Programs 138 Soviet Aid 141 The Afghan Economy in the 1970s and 1980s 145 The Soviets – Destroying Development 150 Afghanistan’s Sub-Economies 151 PART TWO: NON-ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT 157 Public Administration; Institutions; Associations; and Limited Modernization 157 Health 162 Education 165 Security and Rule of Law 166 PART THREE: POST-TALIBAN DEVELOPMENT 169 Economic Development Programs 170 Business Climate 177 Taxation and Foreign Direct Investment 182 ix Building in the Villages and in the Provinces 184 Education 187 Health 191 Post-Taliban Public Administration 196 Building a Police Force 200 Building Security Forces 202 Summary 207 CHAPTER FOUR: THE TALIBAN IN AND OUT OF POWER PART ONE: THE TALIBAN 209 The Mind of the Taliban 209 The Taliban’s Rise to Power 212 The Characteristics of the Taliban 213 The Taliban’s Political Philosophy 217 PART TWO: THE INSURGENCY AND INSURGENTS 221 The Structure of the Taliban 222 The Four Goals of the Taliban and the Battle of Confidence 226 The Taliban’s Tactics 228 Tactics of Michael Collins 229 Targets 232 The Taliban as a Criminal Enterprise 235 PART THREE: FATALITIES CAUSED BY INSURGENT ATTACKS IN 2009 238 x Summary 247 CHAPTER FIVE: THE COUNTERINSURGENCY AND NATIONAL CONFIDENCE 248 Developmental Challenges 249 A New Doctrine 256 Armed Development –The Micro-economic Development Mission 259 Principles of Counterinsurgency 260 Summary 269 CHAPTER SIX: RESULTS 271 Measuring the Changes in National Confidence 2008-2010 271 Results from ANOVA 273 Explaining the Differences Using Factorial ANOVA 276 Shifts in the Indicators 280 Strength of Association of Explanatory 285 Summary 289 CHAPTER SEVEN: MEASUREMENT AND DISCUSSION OF THE RESULTS Measuring Success or Failure in Counterinsurgencies 290 Measuring the Effectiveness of Strategy 291 Measuring Post-World War Counterinsurgencies 293 Measurement in Afghanistan – Strategic Doctrine and Opinion 294 Discussion of Results 298 Suggestions for Further Research 302 Summary 303 xi CHAPTER EIGHT: COMMENTARY The Taliban Made War on the United States 305 After the Taliban Were Routed 307 Those Who Disagree 310 Only the Dead… 312 APPENDICES 313 Appendix A: Results from the Asia Foundations 2008 and 2010 Surveys on Afghanistan 316 Appendix B: ANOVA Results from Factorial Analysis 322 Appendix C: Orders Of Battle 2009 377 GLOSSARY OF TERMS 381 BIBLIOGRAPHY 386 BIOGRAPHY 393 LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Hypotheses and Null Hypotheses 6 Table 2: U.S. Army Doctrinal Literature 20 Table 3: Which of the following statements do you think best describes the level of comprehension of the survey questionnaire by the respondent? 28 Table 4: Defining Characteristics of an Insurgency in Afghanistan 41 xii Table 5: The Five Insurgency Strategies and Their Application to Afghanistan 48 Table 6: Three Phases of Warfare and the Taliban 51 Table 7: The Three Major Insurgent Groups in Afghanistan 53 Table 8: The Watson Principles Applied to Success in National Confidence 63 Table 9: The Ten Most-Unstable and the Ten Most-Stable Countries in the World as of March 1, 2008 68 Table 10: The Failed States Index 2008- Fund for Peace 69 Table 11: Maslow’s Pyramid and Its Broad Application to Development and Counterinsurgency 82 Table 12: Characteristics – Region 2008 87 Table 13: Characteristics - Region – 2010 87 Table 14: Characteristics – Gender – 2008 87 Table 15: Characteristics – Gender – 2010 87 Table 16: Employment Status – 2008 88 Table 17: Employment Status – 2010 88 Table 18: Age Distribution – 2008 88 Table 19: Age Distribution – 2010 88 Table 20: Average Household