Coordination will take time. It is one of the biggest challenges in Afghanistan. I believe the coordination on the long-term development strategy has been quite good now that there is the ANDS and there is leadership in place that is in charge from the Afghan side, namely the ANDS secretariat, with Professor Naderi running it. That creates a plan for the international actors to support.
However, in the short term you're right that NATO is having a problem, as are other agencies and donors in the country. The question is, who owns the short-term strategy? In Afghanistan there has not been an envoy position that can sort of hold people to task and lay out the steps that need to be taken. But I find that coordination on the military front has improved greatly since ISAF has spread around the country. The PRTs are under NATO command, the soldiers are under NATO command, and that has brought a lot of focusing of the military structure.
We need that same kind of effort on the R and D front. In the country there are very few opportunities for the R and D officials from the PRTs and the various development agencies to sit together to develop a short-term strategy to attack the R and D plans or to share the analysis they each have.
If we could find ways to bring these groups together in the country, where they are closest to the people and the decisions that need to be made, I think it would be helpful. They should be structured within the NATO command. Right now all the R and D officials are taking their directions from their embassies, as opposed to jointly devising a plan with the Afghan government. There are partners within the Afghan government who can also work with this. I think the PAG process is the place to pull officials from to serve on this R and D strategic planning group.