Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010

Counterinsurgency Add-On – I/L – Hurt Hearts/Minds

PMC’s perpetuate corruption which hurts hearts and minds.

Schulman 6/21 (Daniel, Mother Jones' Washington–based news editor, Jan. 21, 2010, http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/01/corruption–afghanistan–its–even–worse–you–think)KFC

The widespread corruption, Costa says, has given Afghans "the impression that it is cheaper to buy a judge than to hire a lawyer." And according to the UNODC's findings, Afghans don't believe the corruption problem is confined to their government. Fifty-four percent of those surveyed said they believed that international organizations and NGOs "are corrupt and in the country just to get rich." Costa told me that the large amounts of development money "consumed" by "transaction costs" (that is, funds eaten up by the organizations providing aid and heading up development projects), along with "all the opacity" surrounding procurement, has fueled the perception among Afghans that "the international community and NGOs are not as clean as they would like." These suspicions are surely warranted: Numerous instances of fraud and corruption in Afghanistan involving contractors, US military officials, and others have been extensively documented. Among those accused of corruption is the former Afghanistan country director of the UN's Office of Project Services, Gary Helseth, who allegedly used funds intended to rebuild Afghanistan's infrastructure to bankroll his own lavish lifestyle. And according to the office of the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, only a quarter of the corruption cases it's investigating involve Afghans—the rest are cases targeting at least one Western suspect. Costa compares Afghanistan's corruption problem to a "cancer" that is eating away at Afghan society—and he says the remedy is both preventative and surgical. In addition to bolstering Afghanistan's lead anti–corruption authority, he says Afghan officials should be forced to file financial disclosures: "Let's see how senior officials can afford fancy cars and flashy villas with salaries of less than $500 a month!" And, when it comes to the appointment of provincial governors and district leaders, Costa suggests the vetting process should potentially include polygraph exams. As for the surgery, he says, "We need to remove the characters—the governors, the politicians, the members of parliament and whoever else has been tainted, not by the allegations, but by the evidence of corruption." He added, "Corruption in particular is an issue where the domestic leadership needs to manifest itself. There has to be leadership by the Afghans and in particular the president in bringing about integrity and fighting corruption." While Karzai has vowed repeatedly to tackle corruption, Western officials and analysts have privately expressed doubts about his commitment. And his comments to Al Jazeera downplaying the issue surely didn't help. If Karzai can't even acknowledge the extent of the problem, how can the US or its international partners rely on him to solve it?
PMC’s lose hearts and minds

Singer 7 (P.W. Director, 21st Century Defense Initiative, Brookings Institution Monday, October 8, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2007/10/05/DI2007100501642.html TBC 6/25/10)

Well said. We need to understand that the U.S. must sway a broader population from hostility to support if it ever wants to oust terror cells and shut down recruiting pipelines. As the newly revised foreword to the famous U.S. Marine Corps Small Wars manual notes, "Small wars are battles of ideas and battles for the perceptions and attitudes of target populations." Within these wars, it is non-kinetic tools (as opposed to fielded weaponry) that make up the fire and maneuvers of small wars. "They frequently are the main effort simply because of the criticality of the functions they perform." It is for this reason that many military experts have grown worried about the backlash that contractors cause unintentionally and how it is hurting the cause. U.S. Army Colonel Peter Mansoor is one of the most influential military thinkers on counter-insurgency. Well before the latest Blackwater episode, in January of 2007, he told Jane's Defense Weekly that the U.S. military needs to take a hard look at security contractors on future battlefields and figure out a way to get a handle on them so that they can be better integrated: "If we're going to allow them to be used in the first place ... if they push traffic off the roads or if they shoot up a car that looks suspicious, whatever it may be, they may be operating within their contract -- to the detriment of the mission, which is to bring the people over to your side. I would much rather see basically all armed entities in a counterinsurgency operation fall under a military chain of command."

Counterinsurgency Add-On – I/L – Key to Stability

Hearts and minds are key to perception of government and troop legitimacy which is key to solving the conflict.
Clarke 9 (“More Effort Needed to Win Hearts and Minds - Afghanistan Opinion Poll 2009” Michael Clarke, Director, Royal United Services Institute, http://www.rusi.org/analysis/commentary/ref:C4990051938E13/)KM

The news from these polls is not all bad. The investment put into infrastructural development over recent years is becoming evident to ordinary Afghans and the visibility of the benefit in terms of schools, roads, water, power and so on, is either increased or at least not diminished from previous polls. Support remains generally strong for women’s rights – a good indicator for the development of civil society as well as for the female population – though these rights will inevitably be expressed in an Afghan way. And there is no intrinsic love for the narcotics business, even if it is ubiquitous in many parts of Southern Afghanistan. Building on the results of last year’s polling, the Afghan people emerge from these surveys as patient, stoical, politically realistic and depressed. The battle for hearts and minds that will ultimately contain the Taliban and chase the jihadis out of Afghanistan is not yet lost, but it is further than ever from being won. The poll reinforces the idea that the credibility of the Afghan government in the eyes of ordinary people is the most critical commodity at stake. The military effectiveness of the Coalition is secondary to that, though important enough in itself; and the perception of that effectiveness may now have slipped to dangerous levels. This will be a difficult year in which Afghan elections will also have to take place and be seen to be successful. The Coalition must articulate a new strategy, based around the fresh approach of the Obama Administration, emphasising the centrality of governance, training and mentoring, and dealing with corruption. There is still something in the Afghan public’s well of patience to work with in these respects, but on the trends presently discernable, it will not last indefinitely.

Hearts and minds are key to stopping extremism but require coordination.
Mahmood 7 (Peace and Stability in Afghanistan: The Way Forward Sohail Mahmood, Pakistan Feb 27, 2007 http://usa.tigweb.org/express/panorama/article.html?start=11965&ContentID=11367)KM

The struggle to uproot extremism was described as a battle for hearts and minds and it was acknowledged that it would take time to achieve this objective. The emergence of extremism in South Asia was linked to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan when groups from around the world were brought to the region to fight the Soviet forces. Better coordination among the forces combating extremists and better and quick intelligence sharing were needed to tackle this problem, the audience was told.
Hearts and minds are key – any counter-insurgency strategy will rely on the Afghan people.
Mark 9 (Eugene Mark Political Science and International Relations at Australian National University, “The US-led Coalition and the Campaign Against the Taliban”, Jul 03, 2009 http://www.siiaonline.org/?q=blog/the-us-led-coalition-and-campaign-against-taliban)

In short, the US-led coalition is losing the anti-Taliban campaign in Afghanistan as the Taliban was able to regroup and launch an insurgency. It cannot be assumed that the US and its allies have achieved any form of stability in Afghanistan. The reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan have been rather slow as there are lack of improvements in education and the infrastructure. The absence of good governance also allowed the Afghan population to lose faith in the Karzai government. That in turn fuels political instability which the Taliban can feed on to recruit more members. In response, there was an initial US decision to reduce troop deployment. The lack of Pakistan’s cooperation in rebuilding Afghanistan also led to the failure to defeat the Taliban totally. Essentially, the US and its allies underestimated the pro-Taliban forces within Pakistan and their capacity to provide help to the Taliban. All these factors lead to the conclusion that there are many ways in which the coalition has failed to defeat the Taliban. The US-led coalition can only stand a chance if the reconstruction program can establish a certain level of good governance and security, which are important pre-conditions to winning. In order to defeat the Taliban, the coalition needs to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan population.