J. Alexander Thier

Assistant to the Administrator and Director, Office of Afghanistan and Pakistan Affairs, USAID

(Stanford University)

Why He Matters

Thier's experience in Afghanistan, the country that has dominated his professional career, goes back all the way to the 1993-1996 civil war when he worked for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan.

After several years in think tanks, Thier is now a civil servant once again: he recently accepted a leadership position at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) as the assistant administrator for AfPak policy.

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Background

At a Glance

Career History: U.S. Institute of Peace (2005-2010); Project on Failed States, Stanford University (2004-2005); advisor, Afghanistan Constitutional and Judicial Reform Commissions (2002-2004)
Alma Mater: Brown University, B.A.; the Fletcher School at Tufts University, M.A.; Stanford Law School, J.D.
DC Office: 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, (202) 712-1900

Path To Power

Thier has lived and worked in Afghanistan on and off since the 1993-1996 civil war. During that period he was based in Kabul and served as the officer-in-charge of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance to Afghanistan.

Later in his career, after having earned a master's in law and diplomacy (MALD) from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a law degree from Stanford, Thier specialized in legal issues related to Afghanistan and other conflict zones like Sudan and Iraq. He has held positions at the U.N., U.S. National Security Council, and British Department for International Development.

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The Issues

Well before he joined the U.S. government and USAID, Thier applauded the Obama administration's renewed focus on Afghanistan. In a January 2010 panel discussion at the Center for American Progress (CAP), Thier said that the past year "has been like watching the U.S. government awake from a semi-catatonic state as regards Afghanistan."

Speaking from this vantage point, Thier said that in the early years of the war "we focused far too much on killing insurgents and not on securing the population," and failed to cope with the political realities like rampant corruption and Afghan society's decentralization.

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These statements echo a 2007 article in the World Policy Journal in which Thier discussed how Afghanistan had suffered from a lack of substantial early aid and a focus on state-building, and made the case for more resources for an increasingly unpopular war.

Thier has said that he agrees with the Obama administration's stated goals for Afghanistan - a stable government that provides resources to its people and prevents the country from being a safe haven for al-Qaeda or a source of destabilization for neighboring Pakistan - and sees them as within reach.

Decentralized Power

At the 2010 CAP talk, Thier argued that "only second to security, rule of law is the most important thing to shore up Afghan support," and emphasized looking at non-state actors on the village level for dispute resolution and stability. "There actually is a lot of existing capacity in Afghanistan, but it resides at the village level; it resides with people," he said.

This strategy of decentralized rule of law also has the advantage of working even if a strong central government cannot be established, something which has so far been difficult to build in Afghanistan. "The good news is that I don't think that we need a centralized powerful bureaucratic state for stability," Thier argued.

The 'Civilian Surge'

Thier supports President Obama's emphasis on sending more international civilian experts to Afghanistan to aid with development efforts, alternately termed the "civilian surge" or "civilian uplift." He argues that previous non-military efforts over the course of American involvement in Afghanistan have been insufficiently funded and poorly coordinated with NATO partners.

"Our challenge in Afghanistan is not just to fight the insurgents," he said in 2009. "It's fundamentally to create an environment where governance and rule of law and economic development will also thrive. And those are things fundamentally that can be carried out by civilians."

New-found Mineral Deposits

In June 2010, The New York Times reported that vast deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and lithium were discovered in Afghanistan by American officials. Thier said the untapped deposits, valued at a potential $1 trillion, could help provide a sustainable source of funding for Afghanistan, whose national budget today is a mere $1 million.

"I think that these natural resources for Afghanistan represent a real turning point," he said. "Afghanistan could become Chile or it could become Congo," depending on how well the state manages and invests the profits from its new-found mineral wealth. "Natural resources of this scale in a country that's poor and doesn't have sufficient rule of law can turn into a curse and they can fuel corruption," he warned.

The Network

Thier's career rise in D.C. is somewhat atypical, in that most of it was spent outside Washington, frequently working in the field in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Africa. He first came to Washington to work full time only in 2005, working on programs around the world through the US Institute of Peace, and becoming part of the foreign policy community.

At USAID, he will be working closely with the the senior AfPak team, including USAID Director Rajiv Shah and Craig Mullaney, as well as AfPak Envoy Frank Ruggiero.

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Campaign Contributions

Identifying himself as a self-employed attorney in San Francisco, Calif., Thier donated $400 to Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean in December 2003. While at the USIP, he gave $1,000 to Barack Obama in June 2007, and gave another $200 to the presidential candidate in February 2008.

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