Opinion Let’s,er,try to work together

The general raised a touchy issue: whether to buy generators to supply electricity to Kandahar. For months,the ambassador and many civilian development experts had opposed doing so now,because it didn’t fit long-term national plans for power generation. But Kandahar is the Taliban stronghold that is the American military’s next target. And General Petraeus,according to an official familiar with the conference call,said the basic services were so badly needed there that it justified going ahead. The ambassador fell into line,the official said. In the perennial tug-of-war between civilian aspirations and military imperatives,score one for the Pentagon.

That,at least,is one way to read the conversation,especially in light of the harsh comments about civilian officials that General McChrystal had allowed members of his staff to make in front of a reporter. But another is that the McChrystal episode — and rumours that Ambassador Eikenberry might be replaced — have chastened officials on both sides,and that both now want to avoid a zero-sum game between State and Defence in Afghanistan. There,more even than in Iraq,the military and civilian sides need each other.

The State Department grew used to a bitter separation in the early years of the Iraq war. Back then,civilian-military collaboration meant sidelining the diplomats,starving the State Department of funds,and marginalising the secretary of state,Colin Powell.

But by 2007,when the American troop surge was in full swing,the State Department — then under Condoleezza Rice — had managed to achieve a respectable supporting role on the ground,deploying some 700 civilians in provincial reconstruction teams that helped fix sewage systems and train Iraqi judges.

No one was more responsible for that change than General Petraeus. As overseer of the team that wrote the Army’s field manual on counterinsurgency strategy,he stressed the necessity of civilian participation. And as the commander in Iraq,he made the American ambassador,Ryan C. Crocker,his Sancho Panza,bringing him along on tours of Iraq and testifying with him on Capitol Hill.

With the change in administrations in 2009,the State Department’s role seemed destined to expand further. President Obama chose a political star,Hillary

Rodham Clinton,as secretary of state,and Defence Secretary Robert M. Gates called on Congress to increase her department’s funding,so it could do more to help the Pentagon. During the White House policy debate on Afghanistan,Clinton went toe-to-toe with the Defence Department,producing colour-coded maps that showed how a “civilian surge” would unfurl across Afghanistan.

Holbrooke built a high-powered shop inside the State Department,drawing experts from nine other agencies,from the agriculture department to the Central Intelligence Agency. As a young diplomat,Holbrooke had seen firsthand a failed strategy,dominated by the military,in Vietnam. Still,the interwoven nature of military and civilian goals in Afghanistan was plain. Ambassador Eikenberry was given oversight of more than 1,000 civilians on the ground,triple the number in January 2009. But he came to the job as a retired lieutenant general,who himself was once the commander in Afghanistan.

Yet critical problems remained: Military officials expressed frustration at how long it was taking civilians to move aid into the field,and some critics blamed the civilian leadership for mishandling Afghanistan’s elections last year,which President Hamid Karzai is widely believed to have rigged.

“It’s very ironic that two military commanders have already been fired when the military has performed relatively well,while no one has been fired on the civilian side,when its major achievement so far has been the fiasco of the Afghan election,” said Bruce Riedel,a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution,and who helped the administration devise its initial war strategy.

It is tempting to conclude that the arrival of General Petraeus will consolidate the supremacy of the Pentagon in the war effort. He certainly starts out with great prestige in Washington,drawn from his performance in Iraq,and his status as the intellectual father of the strategy.

But there are reasons to believe that the State Department will continue to play a substantial role,if only because that is what

General Petraeus wants. He has pledged a “unity of effort” between the civilian and military operations,and he met with Ambassador Eikenberry at a NATO meeting in Brussels so the two of them could fly into Kabul together on Friday.

For all the parallels between Afghanistan and Iraq,there are key differences that will require robust diplomacy. In Iraq,General Petraeus was able to turn the tide by peeling away Sunni leaders who were willing to work with American forces against jihadi extremists. But in Afghanistan,any similar process requires Pakistan’s cooperation. Afghanistan’s neighbour has influence over powerful players like the Haqqani network,which is closely allied with the Taliban,and it is a sanctuary for leaders of the Afghan Taliban.

Officials say that General Petraeus plans to shuttle between Kabul and Islamabad,conferring on issues like reintegrating Taliban fighters into Afghan society. But it easy to imagine that in the negotiations for a broader political settlement between Karzai and the Taliban,the general could turn to Holbrooke,whom he described last week as his “wingman.” Holbrooke,after all,played a central role in the Dayton peace accords,which ended the war in Bosnia.

“One of the reasons the selection of General Petraeus was such a masterstroke was that he understands the importance of a civilian-military effort,” said John A. Nagl,president of the Centre for a New American Security,who helped write the counterinsurgency handbook under General Petraeus. “He’ll bend over backwards to make it work.”