As of the end of 2012, Afghanistan is neither a democracy nor a properly

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1 This paper is part of the Transatlantic Policy Briefs series published by the Slovak Atlantic Commission (SAC) and its thinktank, the Central European Policy Institute (CEPI). The briefs bring together experts from Central Europe to propose solutions to the most pressing issues on the transatlantic security agenda. SAC and CEPI are grateful to NATO s Public Diplomacy Division for their financial support. NATO has downgraded ambitions for its Afghanistan mission; it now focuses on keeping the country together after allied combat forces leave in This does not make the operation any less important; the security of NATO countries and their reputation depend on a successful outcome. The four Visegrád countries (V4) have performed well in some regards; they have sent more forces to Afghanistan relative to the size of their economies than most other allies. But the quality of their troops training and equipment has lagged behind that of other NATO countries. The Central European Policy Institute is a new regional thinktank established in Bratislava in 2012 by the Slovak Atlantic Commission. It links the top research institutions and experts from across Central Europe. CEPI is devoted to improving the quality of the region s contributions to the EU and NATO debates on the main challenges of today. We believe that Central Europe should take on more responsibility in the EU and NATO for issues ranging from the economic crisis to energy and security. After NATO combat forces withdraw, the V4 should remain engaged and focus on the reform of Afghanistan s security sector, where their relative strength lies. In the late 1989, the decline of Soviet influence in Afghanistan reached the point of no return: the USSR ended its greatest geopolitical misadventure and left. More than two decades later, Afghanistan faces a déjà vu, with another foreign force about to withdraw. NATO countries, including the four Visegrád states (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic the V4 ), have invested much money, energy, manpower and political capital in the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Although the allies had tried, they ultimately failed to create the conditions for the Afghan national authorities to assume full control of security, development and governance of their country. So what should NATO do to prepare for the withdrawal of combat forces in 2014? And how can the Central European countries help? As of the end of 2012, Afghanistan is neither a democracy nor a properly functioning state. NATO has downgraded its original ambitions and shifted its objectives to building minimal local capacities, to avoid state-failure. This brief identifies the main obstacles to forming a secure, stable and functioning Afghanistan. It also describes the V4 countries role in NATO s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and recommends ways in which they can assist in the final stage of the transition process and beyond Challenges in forming a durable Afghan national security force The international community s efforts to help to build a unitary state floundered in the face of Afghanistan s ethnic divisions. Pashtuns dominate the south and the east, while the main ethnic minorities Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazaras inhabit mainly northern provinces and Kabul.

2 The political and military capital of Afghanistan remains the only significantly multi-ethnic part of the country. While senior posts in the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) have been evenly distributed among Pashtuns, Uzbeks and Tajiks, the ethnic composition of the lower ranks copies this geographic pattern. A truly Afghan army does not exist; regional loyalties dominate over national ones. NATO and other partners working in Afghanistan lack the influence to reform the ethnic composition of the armed forces. NATO lost most of its leverage over President Hamid Karzai s domestic policy by failing to act early to tackle corruption, and allowing a patronage system to emerge with Karzai at its centre. The prospects for reducing corruption are as distant as ever; foreign donors have undermined their own cause by failing to co-ordinate efforts: when one Western country suspends aid to a particularly corrupt government agency, the Afghans have been known to simply turn to another Western country for money. NATO has reduced its objectives in line with Afghanistan s messy reality. In practice it now focuses on keeping the country from descending into a civil war after most allied forces leave in This requires that Afghan security forces be enlarged and improved. By the end of 2012, the ANSF, consisting of the Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan National Police (ANP), has reached its full operational strength of 352,000 forces. However, this number includes thousands of trainees without any operational experience. The ANA suffers from desertion and extremely low re-enlistment rate (the army loses a third of its entire force every year); the departures undermine morale and performance among the rest of the military. To keep the ANSF going, the central government needs to recruit and train tens of thousands of soldiers annually. The training and operations of the ANSF alone cost more than the entire country s budget (the revenue in was a measly $1.65 billion). The international community has been making up the difference but it is losing the will, and the economic crisis has forced budget cuts in nearly every NATO country. Should donors give up, Afghanistan faces an impossible mission: the central government alone cannot build the sort of ANSF that is required to keep the country together. The Central European role in the development of Afghanistan All four Visegrád countries have sent forces to NATO s mission in Afghanistan. Though their motives vary, most have joined because they saw Afghanistan as a test of solidarity among the member-states, and because they want to be seen as dependable allies, in order to secure others help when they need it. The V4 countries role in Afghanistan has evolved along with the overall ISAF mission. In the early years, they deployed small, often non-combat units. With the expansion of ISAF presence in 2006, the Central European countries took a bigger role as lead nations in Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs); hybrid civilmilitary units that allies created to accelerate the development of Afghanistan. When NATO shifted focus to training and mentoring the Afghan forces, the V4 added instructors to their missions. The Czech Republic and Hungary deploy around 420 and 550 soldiers, respectively. Both countries manage a PRT and an Operational Mentoring and Liaison Team (OMLT), tasked with training an Afghan National Army battalion. Under American leadership, Hungarian and Czech pilots jointly train and mentor Afghan Mi-35 attack helicopter pilots in Kabul. Hungary also has a Mi-17 transport helicopter advisory team at Shindand airbase. Slovakia has the smallest armed forces and contingent in Afghanistan among the V4 countries. The bulk of its 340 soldiers are stationed at the Kandahar Air Base. Slovakia has deployed an OMLT as well. Poland (whose military is larger than those of the rest of the V4 combined) is the only country to have been

3 able to concentrate almost all of its forces in one geographical area. It has around 1,800 soldiers in Ghazni province, Eastern Afghanistan, who lead a Provincial Reconstruction Team and operate a dozen police and military OMLTs. The Central Europeans have also sent special forces (SF) to Afghanistan; these play a prominent role in NATO s counter-insurgency strategy. Slovakia and Hungary have special forces in eastern Afghanistan, in Nangarhar and Kunar, where they train local provincial response companies in close co-operation with US colleagues. Hungary has just doubled the size of its special forces in the summer of The Czech SF units were withdrawn from Afghanistan last year. Poland SF units work as part of the main Polish military contingent in Ghazni province. As the end 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of combat forces approaches, most of the ISAF countries have been restructuring their force postures in Afghanistan. All combat missions will end in mid Provincial Reconstruction Teams will disband, OMLTs will transform into military advisory teams and ISAF will thin out as ANSF capabilities increase. Correspondingly, the V4 countries (excluding Hungary) have decreased the size of their contingents in recent months, by about per cent on average. How much difference have the Central European contributions made? By some standards, they have tried harder than most others. The V4 are in the top ten among the 28 members of NATO in the number of deployed soldiers relative to the country s GDP. i This shows a serious commitment especially from the three smaller countries, whose defence budgets are at around one per cent of their GDP. At such low budgets, Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic have at times struggled to maintain presence in Afghanistan while fulfilling commitments to other NATO, European Union or United Nations peacekeeping missions. All have prioritised NATO, preferring to end other engagements when money was tight in order to keep up their contribution to ISAF. In the first years after joining NATO, Hungary was regularly singled out as the new member most reluctant to contribute to the alliance s operations. It responded by deploying a sizeable contingent to Afghanistan, whose number has varied between 300 and 400 troops. Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were among the early allies to take over or establish new PRTs. These have been challenging teams to build, as they combine reconstruction with combat, development with diplomacy. Of the ten new member-states who joined in 1999 and 2004, only Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland have been able to operate a complex and challenging PRT mission (on paper, Lithuania is also a lead nation in the PRT in Ghor, but this team relies exclusively on US support). Slovakia compensated by deploying expensive engineering and guard units to one of the most dangerous provinces, Kandahar. When the US revamped its Afghanistan strategy in 2009 to focus on counterinsurgency, it asked allies for additional contributions for a temporary surge. The V4 countries increased their troop numbers proportionally (or more). However, they struggled when ISAF s focus shifted from reconstruction to combat and training missions. With the usual exception of Poland, the other Visegrád countries ignored the call for more combat troops (except for the SF forces), instead increasing the number of trainers. One reason for this recalcitrance was fear of further military casualties. Public support for the ISAF mission has been dwindling gradually since it had been launched in the early 2000s, and governments in Central Europe have been keen to avoid news of fighting and casualties. NATO will start a new training and support mission from 2015: an Afghan Nato Training, Advisory and Assistance Mission (ANTAAM). Its size or exact composition are not yet known, but will be decided in the first half of Special forces will be the key assets in the ANTAAM. Hungary is planning to keep around soldiers or keep its current SF forces in the country. Pavol Svetík, political director of the Slovak ministry of defence, said that his country

4 planned to deploy a self-sustainable special operations task group of over 100 personnel. ii Poland and the Czech Republic are likely to deploy even more troops. The future size of the planned ANTAAM mission has not been publicly disclosed so far. However, one can reasonably speculate about the share of the V4 countries contribution. As of December 2012, they represented three per cent of all ISAF troops and provided around 20 of the 465 different training teams; iii this ratio will likely remain the same or increase modestly in the future. The particular military history of the former Warsaw Pact countries sometimes generates surprising ways to reach out to their Afghan partners. During the fifth rotation of the Hungarian Mi-35 air mentor team in 2012 old classmates met unexpectedly. The Hungarian and Afghan pilots, mentors and those to be mentored had shared the same classroom for two years in the Soviet town of Frunze (now Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan). iv The officers of the two countries greeted each other as old friends and worked together in an unusually close co-operation, even as attacks from Afghan troops on their NATO trainers increased elsewhere. In other regards, the V4 have performed less well than their NATO allies. The quality of equipment and training of the former Warsaw Pact countries still lags behind that of the older NATO members, which partly explains why the V4 prefer non-combat missions like reconstruction and training over fighting. High intensity combat as part of NATO also requires good command of English at all levels of units, the ability to understand allied tactics, and equipment that is compatible with the rest of NATO. In these aspects the V4 and other new member-states are simply not in the same league as most of the old NATO countries. The individual soldiers are just as committed as any of their colleagues. But they often receive less training and inferior equipment because of low defence budgets. Only two former Warsaw Pact countries Poland and Estonia deployed manoeuvre forces in the south and east of Afghanistan. Not coincidentally, these are the only two new members of NATO to spend anywhere near 2 per cent of GDP on defence (1.95 and 2 per cent, respectively). Others in Central Europe cannot hope to replicate Poland s and Estonia s performance on budgets close to 1 per cent of GDP. Beyond 2014: Staying committed to Afghanistan s future NATO s withdrawal from the country will represent an ideal opportunity for the Taliban and its affiliated groups to challenge the Afghan National Security Force s ability to hold the country together. The ANSF will likely need to fight simultaneously on two fronts. On the first, it will face the Taliban, which will seek to take away territory from the army in remote rural areas and, eventually, in the capital. On the second front, the Taliban will try to dissolve the country s internal security and political apparatus the police, government and the army by demoralising it and prompting police and soldiers to desert. NATO has tried and failed to build a lasting ANSF when allies had over 100,000 troops in the country they are unlikely to fare better in two years, when NATO will have a fraction of that number in Afghanistan. In May 2012, NATO and Afghanistan signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement, which defines their long-term security relationship and co-operation. The alliance has committed itself to a lasting presence for the purposes of training, intelligence co-operation and special forces missions. NATO will also need to give the ANSF substantial assistance to hold its own against the Taliban and to maintain the territory which NATO forces had secured. Afghanistan s foreign backers have pledged to provide significant contribution to the ANSF budget $4.1 billion annually v and they will need to live up to their promises if the Afghan forces are to have a chance of succeeding. For most of NATO s long presence in Afghanistan, ISAF commanders have emphasised the provision of security over building governance; they took comparatively less interest in electoral reform, fight against corruption or the need to give moderate

5 opposition a bigger political say. NATO governments need to shift focus to these political objectives, both before 2014 and after. The US, by virtue of its size and its past leading role, will need to be in charge of the effort. But the V4 countries have an important role to play if Afghanistan is to remain a viable (even if weak) state. Their previous experience from Iraq and the Western Balkan gives the V4 valuable knowhow to further develop the ANSF; security sector reform is arguably the best contribution the Visegrád countries can provide to Afghanistan. The former Warsaw Pact states had to largely rebuild their internal security forces after the fall of communism; they should focus on using that experience, where relevant, to train the Afghan police, public administration and justice sector as well as counter narcotics teams and border forces. The V4 should press the alliance to restrict its support to Afghanistan unless the country s government meets agreed minimal standards of democratic values, rule of law and human rights. Most of NATO members, either individually or via the EU, have successfully used aid to demand political change; they have done poorly in applying this principle in Afghanistan. This must change: Afghanistan s government shall be no exception. Some V4 governments may be tempted to cut contributions to Afghanistan to save money; the economic outlook for 2013 looks particularly poor. They need to understand that the reasons for which they went to Afghanistan in the first place will persist beyond The country is weak and fragile; its failure would allow terrorists to operate with impunity and do great harm to the security of NATO countries and their reputation. The alliance has held for a decade that there is no real alternative to solid engagement; this still remains the case, even if the nature of this commitment needs to change. i Nik Hynek and Péter Marton, What makes alliance s/tick?. In: Nik Hynek and Péter Marton, Statebuilding in Afganistan, 2012, Routledge, London, p. 16. ii Centre for European and North American Affairs, NATO 2020 and the armed forces: Way ahead, summary and conclusions of conference held on October 2 nd -3 rd 2012 in Bratislava, Slovakia, p. 5. iii International Security Assistance Force (ISAF): Key facts and figures, NATO, December 3rd iv Stumpf András, We Heard They're All Dead, Hungarian Globe, October31st v Summit Declaration on Afghanistan NATO, May 20 th Tomas A. Nagy is an associate fellow at CEPI. Peter Wagner is research fellow at the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and a guest lecturer at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) in Budapest. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of their employers or of the publisher. Slovak Atlantic Commission, 2013 This publication has been co-financed by the NATO Public Diplomacy Division.