© 2011, Small Wars Foundation July 7, 2011
A Tale of Two Design Efforts (and why they both
failed in Afghanistan)
by Grant Martin
Trying to be a "good neighbor" to the Afghans
One Friday morning not too long ago I sat facing a row of ISAF officers assigned to one
of their many information offices. Maybe Strategic Communications (STRATCOM), I
wondered. No, I thought, the new director of STRATCOM had changed their name, but to what
I could not remember. Maybe they were from the Public Affairs office. On my side of the table
a jumbled mix of staff officers from other sections of ISAF talked in low voices waiting for the
lead planner to begin the meeting. A brand-new School of Advanced Military Studies (SAMS)
graduate walked in and sat down confidently, his assistant clicking on the ubiquitous power point
title slide that begins every gathering in the U.S. Armed Forces today from Washington, D.C. to
Kabul, Afghanistan.
"Okay, everybody, we've got a directive from the Chief of Staff to come up with ideas on
how to meet the commander's comment on being a better neighbor in Afghanistan," he began.
"We will use a Design-like framework to first look at our environment, state the problem, and
then come up with some solutions," he continued, describing SAMS's process of conducting
"Design", the U.S. Army's doctrinal take on dealing with complexity.
We then spent the next hour wrestling with what the commander had really meant when
he had reportedly said during a meeting that the Coalition needed to be „better neighbors‟. The
Public Affairs-types started off dominating the discussion through their higher-ranking
representative, a colonel, and her greater number of section representatives. She insisted that the
commander had meant that we needed to stop bombing and doing night raids. Although this was
something President Karzai seemed to never stop saying, the position seemed a little outdated.
Any more efforts along those lines, I thought, would have meant sending all our weapons home
in boxes and canceling all air support.
Instead, the alternative (voiced by everyone else in the room) was that the statement had
been made in the context of how not to be an "Ugly American". Bombarding ministers' offices
with multiple and uncoordinated visits from different NATO commands, driving with our
electronic jammers on where there was no associated threat, and wearing body armor at all times
and driving in fast-moving convoys of up-armored vehicles were all examples given that had
been brought up multiple times recently by various Afghan leaders as being problems.
In the end trying to avoid the "Ugly American" won out. The Public Affairs colonel and
most of her staff did not return after the first day and the group ran smoothly through the SAMS-
approved process of environment-problem-solution identification to arrive at several
recommendations for the Chief of Staff: mandate that visitors to Afghan ministries from NATO
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