Mr Obama's War? Waiting for the US Strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan

Related Post: Afghanistan - Former Taliban Ready for Talks with US

So what is the Obama Administration's new approach to American intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Really. What is it?

Administration officials had set up the media this week for a dramatic re-launch of the US strategy, based on a series of reports for the President. The latest study, headed by Obama campaign advisor and former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, was on Obama's desk on Monday. US envoy Richard Holbrooke was holding forth for the media and briefing NATO members; less publicly, CIA Director Leon Panetta was visiting Pakistan. The President was telling 60 Minutes on Sunday night, "What we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an exit strategy."

This spinning, however, does not add up to a new approach. For Afghanistan, there is still no detail on US troop levels, American non-military programmes, the contributions from Washington's allies. And for Pakistan, which Obama's people are now putting as Number One Crisis, there is no sense of how the expansion of missile strikes and covert operations matches up to a political approach, either towards the "sanctuaries" in the Northwest Frontier Provinces or towards the central Government in Islamabad.

What we have gotten instead from the US is vacuous cheerleading posing as "analysis". Jim Hoagland on The Washington Post wrote a love letter to "Gen. David Petraeus and diplomat Richard Holbrooke [who] are as smart as they come". Even worse, commentators like Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post and David Brooks of The New York Times have been treated to a Grand Tour of US bases in Afghanistan so they can parrot the words of American military commanders, "Over time this will work -- it has worked over and over again through history" (Diehl) and "When you put more boots on the ground, you not only augment your army’s firing power, you give it the capacity to experiment". (Brooks)

This puffery should be set aside for the leaked ideas coming out in British newspapers. The outgoing US ambassador in Afghanistan, William Wood, tells The Observer that "America would be prepared to discuss the establishment of a political party, or even election candidates representing the Taliban, as part of a political strategy that would sit alongside reinforced military efforts". The Times writes of an American approach linking economic aid, a build-up of Afghan security forces and police, and a crack-down on heroin production.

Most striking, sources tell The Guardian, "The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president." Expecting that President Hamid Karzai will win re-election in August, despite its best efforts to build up a rival candidate, the US will insist on a "Chief Executive" or "Prime Minister".

The US strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan --- really, what is it?

Truthiness Update: Stephen Colbert Moving to Outer Space

From today's New York Times:

NASA’s online contest to name a new room at the International Space Station went awry. The comedian Stephen Colbert won. The name Colbert beat out NASA’s four suggested options in the space agency’s effort to have the public help name the addition. NASA’s mistake was allowing write-ins. Mr. Colbert urged viewers of his Comedy Central show, “The Colbert Report,” to write in his name. And they complied, with 230,539 votes. That beat Serenity, one of the NASA choices, by more than 40,000 votes. Nearly 1.2 million votes were cast by the time the contest ended Friday. NASA reserves the right to choose an appropriate name, and an agency spokesman said NASA would decide in April.

The four sections of the Space Station will now be named Unity, Harmony, Destiny, and Colbert. News which clearly deserves a Tip of the Hat.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y4BIwYx4Z0[/youtube]

Engagement with Iran: A Hopeful US Approach

Related Post: Engagement - And There's Hope on the Iranian Side As Well....

On Friday we suggested a handy three-step process to evaluate the significance and impact of President Obama's message to the Iranian people and leaders.

Wow, only 48 hours later, we're at Step 3: The US Reaction to the Iranian Response.

Even more surprising, and indeed reassuring, that reaction seems to have fulfilled our hope "that Washington does not follow Obama’s message by trying to box Iran in on issues such as the nuclear programme, Israel-Palestine, Lebanon, and general relations with the Arab world".

Fed by Administration officials and European diplomats, New York Times reporters Helene Cooper and David Sanger write that Obama's message is “part of a strategy intended to emphasize a positive message to Iran in the prelude to that nation’s presidential election this summer. Among other measures being weighed are a direct communication from Mr. Obama to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, and an end to a prohibition on direct contacts between junior American diplomats and their Iranian counterparts around the world.”

Even more importantly, at least in the short term, the President “had set aside for the next few months a quest for more punitive sanctions aimed at Iran”.

The statements indicate Washington's recognition that the Iranian leadership would be in no position to move to direct, general talks before June's Presidential election. And, while it is unclear if the officials spoke to the Times before Ayatollah Khameini's remarks on Friday, there is no hint in the article that the Supreme Leader's comments will alter the American approach.

Cooper and Sanger are led by their sources to a detailed reading of Obama's signals in his message: “[He] directed his comments not just to the Iranian people but to Iran’s leaders,...he referred to Iran as 'the Islamic Republic',... [and he] went so far as to quote the medieval Persian poet Saadi.” Far significant, however, is the clue that Washington and Tehran have worked out the Iranian participation at the US-led conference on Afghanistan in The Hague next week.:”Iran is expected to send a delegation, and a senior administration official said Mrs. Clinton would probably greet Iranian officials on the sidelines.”

This is all encouraging, especially in contrast to the Administration's march to possible disaster in Afghanistan and Pakistan, even if the approach may not be completely the product of American desires. Moscow seems to have played a part in its rebuff of any linkage of US-Russian talks to a shift in its position on Iran: “Russia in particular appears unlikely to support tougher sanctions until Mr. Obama demonstrates that he has first gone significantly further than President Bush did to engage Iran.”

From The Archives: Hit or Miss in Pakistan (18 September 2008)

First published on our partner website Libertas:

[This] leaves only the Pakistani military, whichever way it chooses to play the hand with the Americans, as the only significant force in the country with a symbolic and real modicum of power. If Zardari protests this, the prospect of his overthrow emerges. If he accepts his emasculation, he is no more than an irrelevant figurehead. Either way, it’s an effective coup.

Last Thursday, I embarked on a new, challenging, and exciting project, working with postgraduate students at the Clinton Institute for American Studies in Dublin . Introducing a course on contemporary US foreign policy, I tried out the idea of dissecting that morning’s Page 1 story, whatever it might be, in The New York Times.

I punched in the URL and upon the large screen is the headline, “Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan”.

The opening paragraph confirmed I had more than enough for discussion, “President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.”

Well, there you go. By chance rather than design I could open the course with perhaps the most significant development in US foreign policy this year. Significant because the US Government was making clear that it was taking the war against the Afghanistan insurgency across the border into Pakistan. Even more so because the US would be fighting not just with bombs from the air but special forces on the ground. Especially so because the US would do so without the overt co-operation of the Pakistani Government.

To be blunt: on Monday, Asif Zardari finally reached his goal of becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan, a country portrayed as a steadfast ally of the US in the “War on Terror”. By Thursday, Washington didn’t give, to use the academic term, “a rat’s ass” about the thoughts of Zardari. On Monday, Pakistan’s military was portrayed as side-by-side with American counterparts; by Thursday, there was the prospect of armed clashes between the two sets of troops.

With allies like these, who needs....? You fill in the blank.

The backdrop to this story is now well-known. On 11 September 2001, the Head of Pakistan’s intelligence services, Mahmood Ahmed, was in Washington discussing co-operation with US officials. Indeed, as the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ahmed was having breakfast with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Within 24 hours, discussions had become a showdown. Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage set out a seven-point ultimatum to Ahmed. When Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf confirmation to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the American conditions would be met, the essential alliance in the War on Terror had been established.

There were holdover tensions from Pakistan’s years of support for a liaison with the Taliban. In January 2002, Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker blew the whistle on the hundreds, maybe thousands, of Pakistanis who had fought on the wrong side and been captured by the Americans during fighting in Afghanistan . The detainees were shipped to Kunduz, from where Pakistani helicopters took them home. As US attentions turned to Iraq , the inconvenience that Osama bin Laden was also now sheltered in Pakistan ’s autonomous tribal areas as gradually accepted. Months turned into years, and President Musharraf’s attention (and that of his critics) turned to internal political/judicial matters and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.

So what has happened to re-make Pakistan from sturdy if arguably ineffectual partner of the US in regional politics and the War on Terror into obstacle to US operations? No doubt the forced handover from Musharraf to Zardari is a partial explanation; there is no sign of American faith in the reliability of the new President, who is likely to be focused on his battle with the judiciary rather than a showdown with Al Qa’eda.

The catalyst, however, is the Bush Administration’s last roll of the dice in Afghanistan. As I noted Monday, the President’s statement two weeks ago offered both victory without substance and a challenge without an answer. If the small number of US troops being pulled with Iraq belied a long-term occupation that is increasingly out of touch with political developments, the small number of US troops being sent to Afghanistan showed that the Administration has nothing but a small bandage to slap on its new Number One Emergency Case.

An extra 9000 boots on the ground won’t cover much of the problem area in Afghanistan. At most, it will allow the US to carry out well-publicised operations to clear the Taliban from villages which are likely to vulnerable during the next counter-attack of the insurgency. Put very bluntly, in the absence of effective political and economic reconstruction, Washington has to hope that local leaders and their militias are strong enough to keep the Taliban out. It’s notable, for example, that Herat in the western part of the country is relatively stable under a local regime on good terms with Iran, while Mazar-al-Sharif in the north is “secure” because of the local but forceful presence of General Dostum.

This doesn’t add up to long-term influence, however, for the Americans and it far from signals long-term authority for the Kabul Government of Hamid Karzai. So Washington gets the worst of both worlds: potential rivals reap the benefits from the areas that they control or influence while the US carries the can for instability in other regions.

Even if European governments and other allies in NATO and the International Security Assistance Force were willing to shift a token number of soldiers to the conflict zone in the south and centre of the country, that wouldn’t offer any resolution of the underlying problems. And it certainly wouldn’t address the emerging headache for the Americans and Kabul , the insurgent violence in the east along the Pakistan border.

So, if you haven’t got the troop numbers or a meaningful plan of reconstruction to bring villages into a secure nation, what do you do? Well, you resort to those limited but hopefully effectively targeted operations that “decapitate” the opposition. That means air power and that means special operations on the ground, special operations to assist with targeting of the airstrikes and special operations to liquidate the bad guys.

It is no coincidence that the “surge” in Iraq has included recently-hyped “fusion cells”, small units of specially-trained soldiers to capture and kill insurgents. And, given the incomplete if not false impression that this has made a long-term difference in Iraq the Americans will be trying to spread the model to the next battleground.

But even as this strategy covers up the problem of the lack of long-term troop numbers to “stabilise” Afghanistan, it ignores some fundamentals of special warfare. Even the Iraq example should be instructive: the “fusion cells” complement the cultivation of local leaders and their militias to secure a particular area. In Pakistan, where is that cultivation of leaders in the tribal areas going to take place? Well, given that the airstrikes and operations are alienating that leadership, their families, and their communities, the answer would be Nowhere. Tribal leaders have already responded by promising to raise forces to fight the US .

And here’s another lesson that it ignores. You can’t limit the effect of dropped bombs and elite forces trained to kill. Far more important than any ripples of stability you hope to get on the other side of the border are the waves of instability you set off in Pakistan. The warning of the Pakistani military leadership that it will opposed American ground incursions may be a bluff or even the Janus trick of giving a stern face of defending their people and sovereignty while privately giving another face of acceptance to the Americans. But, at a minimum, Zardari is exposed as a political leader with barely a shred of authority.

And, in Pakistan with its recent history, what do you think that means? I’m guessing that it leaves only the Pakistan military, whichever way it chooses to play the hand with the Americans, as the only significant force in the country with a symbolic and real modicum of power. If Zardari protests this, the prospect of his overthrow emerges. If he accepts his emasculation, he is no more than an irrelevant figurehead. Either way, it’s an effective coup.

I’ve only seen one commentator reach back for the historical parallel. In 1969/70 the Nixon Administration, frustrated at the mobility of the Vietnamese insurgency, starts the airborne demolition of Cambodia. Eventually that tearing apart of the Cambodian “sanctuary” took the ground from under the country’s leadership, and Prince Sihanouk was overthrown. The eventual victors who promised to restore sovereignty and dignity? The Khmer Rouge.

It’s not an exact replay of history, and Pakistan may not have to be reset to Year Zero. Neither, however, does the American strategy offer any advance. Seven years after promising that it would pursue the War on Terror to preserve the security and sovereignty of those were “with us”, Washington is now shredding that assurance.

Pakistan: Mr Obama's Air War Coming to the Cities?

The New York Times reports this morning:

According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta.

That might mean little for folks who have not heard of Quetta, which is the capital of the province of Baluchistan in northwestern Pakistan. The city was briefly prominent in Western media in the first days of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, when there were massive demonstrations against the American bombing and even talk of a local uprising against the central Government.

If this step is adopted, however, it may pose a double challenge to the US and the Pakistani Government. It could spread the insurgency in Pakistan, rather than stopping support for the insurgency in Afghanistan. And it could be the sign that Pakistani sovereignty (and thus the Zardari Government) is dispensable.

US bombings and missile strikes have been carried out for years in the Northwest Frontier Provinces, and they have increased under the Obama Administration. This proposal, however, would take the air war to an area controlled by the central Pakistan Government rather than local tribes. And Quetta is no small town: the 2005 population was more than 850,000.

Of course, President Obama has yet to decide on the proposal, but the story in the Times, fed by civilian and military officials, is a clear sign of pressure for its acceptance. The airstrike expansion is not only in the report of General David Petraeus, which has been treated with scepticism by the President; it is also in a study by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute which has been received with general approval.

And there's more: "[Advisors to Obama] are recommending preserving the option to conduct cross-border ground actions, using C.I.A. and Special Operations commandos." A "senior official" confirmed, "It is fair to say that there is wide agreement to sustain and continue these covert programs. One of the foundations on which the recommendations to the president will be based is that we’ve got to sustain the disruption of the safe havens."

It seems, however, that those "safe havens" are growing ever-bigger. And it seems that the Obama Administration is on the brink of decisions that will turn those havens into a new centre of battle, one with far more dangers than the intervention in Afghanistan.