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06 July 2010
GPPi takes part in workshop on Afghanistan policy
Thorsten Benner, GPPi Associate Director, and Philipp Rotmann, GPPi Fellow, participated in a workshop on "The Future of the Afghanistan Operation: Benchmarks, Timetables and the Quest for Strategy." The conference took place on 1-2 July 2010 at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Berlin and was co-sponsored by the University of Konstanz (Research Group on Conflict Generators, Cluster of Excellence). The event was organized by Timo Noetzel (University of Konstanz) and Christos Katsioulis (Friedrich Ebert Foundation).
Benner moderated the opening panel on the evolution of the German debate about Afghanistan, featuring contributions by Walter Kolbow, a former Deputy Minister of Defense, and Christoph Grams, a security expert with the GTZ.
Rotmann gave a talk on the Afghan National Army. The talk was part of a panel on the role of security force development in NATO’s strategy of conducting population-centric counterinsurgency on a tight timetable driven by domestic politics. He reviewed the evolution of that strategy in terms of the choices made during 2009 that led to sharply increasing investments, a rearrangement of responsibilities among the various military headquarters in Kabul and a number of conceptual changes. Most recently, for example, NATO and the US military acknowledged fundamental flaws in their system of assessing the progress and effectiveness of Afghan Army units and replaced that system entirely. At the same time, while the Afghan Army continues to outperform other security forces such as the police in every way, there are a number of weaknesses and risks that are often overlooked in the current strategy. These include the army’s persistent ethnic-political fragmentation as well as the opportunities for corruption and creating factional, uncontrollable power centers by pouring funds and weapons into an organization whose accountability systems are unable to keep pace.
Joining Rotmann on the panel was Cornelius Friesendorf, a police expert at the Peace Research Institute Frankfurt (PRIF). Friesendorf's presentation covered the Afghan National Police. The discussion was led by Franz H.U. Borkenhagen, former head of the planning staff at the German Ministry of Defense.
For further questions, please contact Philipp Rotmann