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AFGHANISTAN After the Taliban: Nation-Building in Afghanistan, by James F. Dobbins. Washington, DC: Potomac Books, 2008. 170 pages. Reviewed by Nake M. Kamrany
This book is an account of the Bonn (Germany) conference which took place in November 2001 at Hotel Petersberg for the purpose of selecting an Afghan transitional government to succeed the Taliban. Dobbins, who purports to be an expert on "nationbuilding," congratulates himself for succeeding to create an Afghan transitional government but faults the Bush Administration for failing at nation-building thereafter. He criticizes Defense Secretary Donald Rumsefeld's minimalist strategy, though Rumsfeld's strategy was cost-effective in keeping the Taliban at bay for several years. Instead, Dobbins advocates the ratio of one international soldier to every 50 inhabitants of an unstable country. Since there are approximately 30 million Afghans, by Dobbins' and Rand's formula, some 600,000 international soldiers should have been deployed in Afghanistan, disregarding the military and economic burden of such deployment.
Nation-building did fail in Afghanistan for eight years - from 2001 through August 2009, when the second presidential election took place. During this period, there was an inverse correlation between the number of US, UN International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), and NATO soldiers and security in Afghanistan, as the number of terrorist attacks tripled between 2002 and 2007 and continued through the summer of 2009. This correlation totally discredits the formula used by Dobbins, who fails to understand that the Afghanistan dilemma cannot be solved by military force.
Second, there was an inverse correlation between economic development and the amount of assistance that was promised to Afghanistan in the Tokyo, London, and Paris conferences, as the unemployment rate increased beyond 40% and abject poverty rose.
Third, there was a negative correlation between poppy eradication efforts and the production of...