This study finds that experiences in Afghanistan highlight significant tension between stabilisation and internationally recognised guidelines and principles governing civil–military interaction. Civil–military dialogue was more effective when it was rooted in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and strategic argumentation, such as advocacy focused on reducing harm to civilians. The report suggests that aid agencies invest more in capacity for engaging in civil-military dialogue and, together with donors, seek to generate more objective evidence on the impact of stabilisation approaches.
Through an examination of the Afghanistan case, this study seeks to better understand the challenges of civil-military dialogue in the context of stabilisation. In particular, it looks at the challenges posed by military forces that actively seek to pursue development and reconstruction as a central component of military strategy. It draws on a literature review, consultations with experts and staff, research in Afghanistan and telephone interviews with aid workers, military actors and others with direct knowledge or experience of civil-military interaction in Afghanistan.
Humanitarian actors were most effectively able to pursue their objectives in civil–military dialogue where that dialogue was grounded in International Humanitarian Law and/or used arguments based on military efficiency. Advocating against PRTs, stabilisation or COIN was ineffective. Didactic arguments based on the perceived rights and special status of aid agencies were also largely ineffective, and often resulted in military actors becoming frustrated. Dialogue rooted in strategic argumentation, such as advocacy focused on protecting civilians, was more persuasive. Such engagement is complex and time-consuming, requiring a significant level of capacity that many aid agency staff simply did not have. Other findings include the following:
- The lack of a clear unified humanitarian voice has undermined effective dialogue. Part of this arose from competition for resources and competing agendas, and from the diverse mandates and objectives of aid actors.
- The lack of oversight resulting from insecurity quickly gave rise to corruption, fraud and waste, creating perverse incentives leading to further destabilisation and conflict.
- In Afghanistan and other stabilisation contexts, the role of evidence in policymaking and programme design appears to have been minimal.
- The difficulties encountered in civil-military dialogue were exacerbated by a more fundamental problem. There was, by all actors, a failure rooted in misperceptions and faulty, even unrealistic, assumptions underpinning their positions and interventions.
- For aid agencies that remain in Afghanistan, military strategies have severely eroded the distinction between combatants and civilian aid actors in the eyes of both insurgents and ordinary Afghans. Aid agencies must begin civil-military dialogue anew with Afghan security forces. The capacity and willingness of the ANSF to engage in this dialogue remain unclear, and aid agencies will have to identify new strategies and new means of engaging to ensure that they are able to operate safely, and to improve protection for the populations they aim to assist.
