(Originally published in the Seattle Times)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was dinged recently in Newsweek by an anonymous National Security Council staff member who suggested she had no strategic vision, but was good at having a "list of the nine or 10 things she has to do and check them off one by one."
As Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai steps into Washington, D.C., this week, Clinton's "to-do" list will come in handy for a country that is awash in big-think strategies, but few checked boxes.
The Monday-to-Friday meetings in Washington offer both sides an opportunity to agree on a pragmatic "to do" list.
When Karzai was inaugurated in November last year, he laid out three key themes for his administration: improved security, regional cooperation and development.
(Under heavy pressure from the United States, Karzai added a fourth -- battling corruption -- but this was never a serious part of his domestic agenda. Karzai has long held that the high pay and overheads for international contractors, consultants and advisers is a form of corruption -- and should be addressed as part of the discussion on corrupt practices.)
To date, Karzai has made some progress on his national priorities. On security, he pledged to open negotiations with the Taliban, and this approach is now widely accepted as a necessary aspect of a comprehensive political solution to the conflict. This is doubly important given the slow progress of training Afghan national-security forces, his other stated security priority.
On regional cooperation, Karzai has met with the leadership in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, India and Bhutan since his inauguration. He has uttered diplomatic niceties about the ever-contentious Pakistan relationship and Iran. As a landlocked country stuck between Iran, China and Pakistan, Afghanistan badly needs good regional relations for transportation, trade and security.
But the economic-development agenda remains threadbare. In his inaugural speech, Karzai said he wanted to strengthen agriculture and irrigation, raise more cattle, sheep and goat, increase electricity by harnessing the extraordinary rivers of Afghanistan, bolster education and complete the 18th-century roads and highways. This is a long list, but it aptly focused on the basic needs of average Afghans.
While Karzai is clearly committed to improving security and regional cooperation, his dedication to economic development is questionable at best. Since his inauguration Nov. 19 -- nearly six months ago -- Karzai has not made a single a speech, site visit or even distributed a presidential news release to highlight progress on agriculture, irrigation, livestock, energy, education or roads.
Not one. And that's his list.
Making progress will require an intense focus from Karzai moving forward, but it will also require a unity of effort by the Obama administration.
American leverage is lost if funding is scattershot. Financial assistance should target these six development priorities -- agriculture, irrigation, livestock, energy, education and roads -- and the dollars should go directly to the appropriate Afghan ministries. (Other donor countries can and will pick up the missing pieces.)
The State Department, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. Agency for International Development should all agree on this list, and coordinate their collective and substantial strengths. And every U.S. hire working on Afghanistan -- whether in Washington or Kandahar -- should be able to repeat this list in their sleep.
Even in the best of circumstances, the list will remain a work in progress for the next two or three generations, with or without international forces in Afghanistan. Success will require good governance.
All of this is necessary to enable U.S. troops to begin leaving Afghanistan in July 2011 -- which is essential -- if Afghans are going to assume more responsibility for their future.
"The primary objective of any counterinsurgency is to foster the development of effective governance," Gen. David Petraeus accurately noted in the 2006 counterinsurgency field manual for the U.S. military.
It's not a big strategy; it's a simple to-do list. But it's time for a few more concrete achievements in Afghanistan.
Can anyone justify why Kabul, the nation's capital, still has dirt roads after eight years and $51 billion in U.S. reconstruction funding?
"At the end of the day, have you solved the problem or haven't you?" Clinton told Newsweek, describing her pragmatic approach. "Have you crossed it off the list or haven't you?"
It's time to cross a few items off the economic-development list -- and Karzai needs to explain in Washington, D.C., what his plans are to do this. The U.S. has committed to giving him more resources, now he needs to take a pointer from Clinton and measure his success against the list.