Yesterday’s presidential address at the American Enterprise Institute was advertised as a major speech on Afghanistan. It was the first time in years that the president made that country the focus of his comments, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the remarks were spliced into a speech on the global war on terror, in which the first five minutes were devoted to Iraq and Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Nevertheless, the president had quite a bit to say on Afghanistan, and some of it was new.

The speech may earn the president some credit for returning his attention to the central front in the war on terror. However, the plan he articulated suffers from the same problems that have plagued our five-year effort: too few resources, and too much spending on military solutions to complex problems.

The centerpiece of his announcement is $11.8 billion in new assistance to Afghanistan over two years. But when we delve further into the budget and supplemental requests, we learn that $10.1 billion of this money is earmarked for “training and equipping Afghan security forces.” Of the remainder, $370 million will be allocated for “emergency assistance programs that will complement U.S. military objectives.” Rebuilding Afghanistan’s army and police force is critical, and rapid-response budgets for military commanders can prove useful, but these measures are no substitute for rebuilding Afghanistan’s roads, reforming its judiciary, developing its non-opium economy, and strengthening local governance. These tasks are equally important if Afghanistan is going to thrive. Yesterday they were allocated a sizable portion of the president’s speech, but tomorrow Congress will learn that they have been allocated only a tiny sliver of the administration’s budget.

The second big announcement is that the president has extended the stay of 3,200 American troops for four months, a boost that will be sustained “for the foreseeable future.” This is a sensible increase that military commanders have requested for some time, even as they acknowledge that it is only part of the solution. Reinforcements at this juncture raise a troubling question: if Afghanistan had received the forces and the development resources it needed from the start, and if attention had not been diverted to Iraq, might the president today be announcing that he was starting to bring troops home?

In his speech, the president laid out a sensible plan with five pillars: train and equip security forces, boost NATO’s presence, strengthen provincial governance, fight poppy cultivation, and combat corruption. These are each worthy priorities, but with 90 percent of the funding focused on the first pillar, the president’s plan can be expected to function as well as a one-legged stool.

We should be able, amidst the $739 billion we spend on defense and the $35 billion we spend on diplomacy and aid, to find some spare change for a nation we cannot afford to see fail. The new Congress can play a helpful role here by questioning the current allocations, many of which seem to have been arrived at through inertia rather than fresh examination. Hearings on Afghanistanhave started; over the coming months, members of Congress should use the information presented at these hearings and available from other sources to determine:

• Is there a better counternarcotics strategy? Representative Tom Lantos, in a session this morning, argued that the military must be more proactive in targeting drug kingpins and corrupt officials. This is a necessary step, but will hardly be sufficient given the scope of the problem, which pervades the Afghan economy and involves perhaps 10 percent of the population. Meanwhile, the drumbeat continues for aerial eradication, a strategy that would turn the Afghan people against American forces. There is no quick fix: Congress needs to identify a successful long-term strategy.
• Why is our reconstruction spending so inefficient? As in Iraq, Afghanistan’s reconstruction has been plagued by inefficiency, with a small fraction of promised funds delivered within a meaningful time frame. The Afghan people increasingly resent that only a tiny fraction of the money allocated for reconstruction is channeled through the Afghan government or goes to Afghan companies. According to a senior diplomat in Kabul last year “The average cost of building a road in Afghanistan is half a million dollars per kilometer. . . . You start out with a certain amount, and by the time the contractor pays a consultant $1,000 a day to write a project report, pays for security and offices and cars, then subcontracts it out to an NGO, only about 20 percent goes into the project itself.” These dynamics result from factors ranging from poor Afghan capacity to insufficient staff levels at USAID to investigate contractor malfeasance. The Afghanistan compact last year called for a larger role for the Afghan government, as well as for sharper oversight, including the use of closely monitored trust funds. Congress should investigate which mechanisms will provide the greatest efficiency and transparency.
• How can we reform the courts? The president, to his credit, cited this as a central challenge in today’s speech. Congress should keep attention on this issue. The administration has requested a lot of money to correct a broken police system, but even the best police force in the world cannot operate without functioning courts and prisons.

Yesterday’s speech left more questions than answers. Hopefully we will hear some solutions in the coming months.

Carl Robichaud, a Program Officer at The Century Foundation, is editor of Afghanistan Watch.