A prominent Pentagon task force that has sought to help Afghanistan exploit its mineral wealth and expand private-sector employment is being gutted by resignations and will be forced to scale back significantly because of a congressional demand that its operations be folded into the U.S. Agency for International Development.
The director of the task force, Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Paul A. Brinkley, has decided to quit on June 30, a move that has prompted several key members of his 100-person team to announce their departures as well. The exodus has alarmed senior U.S. military officials, including Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who view the group’s job-creation efforts as an important component of the overall U.S. counterinsurgency mission.
The resignations are a result of a few paragraphs tucked into the massive Defense Department authorization legislation Congress approved in January that will cut off funding for the task force on Sept. 30 and direct the Pentagon to transfer its functions to USAID. The move was driven by a handful of key Democrats, then in the majority, who decided that Brinkley’s business-development activities, which are largely focused on civilians, should be overseen by the State Department, not the Pentagon.
Brinkley, a former Silicon Valley executive who joined the Defense Department six years ago to help rebuild businesses in Iraq, contends that shifting his group’s work to USAID will smother an entrepreneurial organization in a risk-averse agency that is more oriented toward providing development assistance than brokering business deals.
“We do capitalism. We’re about helping companies make money,” Brinkley said in an interview. “That mind-set cannot exist in a humanitarian organization. It’s like asking General Motors to make potato chips.”
Brinkley’s task force rocketed to prominence last year with the release of a report that projected that Afghanistan has as much as $1 trillion worth of untapped mineral deposits, although much of it is in places that are too dangerous or too remote to easily access. The report nonetheless raised hope among some in the U.S. government that Afghanistan, which has long depended on foreign aid, will eventually be able to sustain its own government and security forces.
Until last year, much of the group’s work had been focused on Iraq, where it helped to facilitate $8 billion in private investment commitments to former state-run factories. The group has since shifted its attention to Afghanistan, where it is working on minerals-extraction deals, projects to expand the sale of Afghan carpets and fruit, and the development of an information-technology industry. Brinkley recently brought a team from Google to Kabul, and he helped facilitate a deal for fashion designer Kate Spade to purchase Afghan cashmere.
“The U.S. government has spent billions on development in Afghanistan since the conflict began, but the focus hasn’t been on the sustainability of the economy,” he said. “Tactical economic development expertise is what the people want — and that has been the missing piece of our foreign policy.”
Loading...
Comments