Israel-Palestine: Petraeus' Intervention Shakes Up US Policy?

I'm not a big fan of General David Petraeus' interference in US foreign policymaking, given his challenge to (and potential undermining) of his President on an issue such as Afghanistan, but Mark Perry in Foreign Policy offered a tale where Petraeus' manoeuvres may lead to a significant --- and, I think, productive --- re-alignment in US foreign policy.

To be blunt, if you take a charitable interpretation of Petraeus' move (he was telling the US diplomats to get out of their dead end of caving to Israeli steps such as settlement expansion) rather than the cynical one (he was again seeking to expand his authority), this may open up a prospect --- limited but visible --- of the US staking out a position where it can challenge Israel's unilateral obstacles to the peace process.

Israel: Obama Shows His Teeth, Netanyahu Steps Back?

On Jan. 16, two days after a killer earthquake hit Haiti, a team of senior military officers from the U.S. Central Command (responsible for overseeing American security interests in the Middle East), arrived at the Pentagon to brief Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.


The team had been dispatched by CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus to underline his growing worries at the lack of progress in resolving the issue. The 33-slide, 45-minute PowerPoint briefing stunned Mullen. The briefers reported that there was a growing perception among Arab leaders that the U.S. was incapable of standing up to Israel, that CENTCOM's mostly Arab constituency was losing faith in American promises, that Israeli intransigence on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was jeopardizing U.S. standing in the region, and that Mitchell himself was (as a senior Pentagon officer later bluntly described it) "too old, too slow ... and too late."

The January Mullen briefing was unprecedented. No previous CENTCOM commander had ever expressed himself on what is essentially a political issue; which is why the briefers were careful to tell Mullen that their conclusions followed from a December 2009 tour of the region where, on Petraeus's instructions, they spoke to senior Arab leaders. "Everywhere they went, the message was pretty humbling," a Pentagon officer familiar with the briefing says. "America was not only viewed as weak, but its military posture in the region was eroding." But Petraeus wasn't finished: two days after the Mullen briefing, Petraeus sent a paper to the White House requesting that the West Bank and Gaza (which, with Israel, is a part of the European Command -- or EUCOM), be made a part of his area of operations. Petraeus's reason was straightforward: with U.S. troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military had to be perceived by Arab leaders as engaged  in the region's most troublesome conflict.

[UPDATE: A senior military officer denied Sunday that Petraeus sent a paper to the White House.

"CENTCOM did have a team brief the CJCS on concerns revolving around the Palestinian issue, and CENTCOM did propose a UCP change, but to CJCS, not to the WH," the officer said via email. "GEN Petraeus was not certain what might have been conveyed to the WH (if anything) from that brief to CJCS."

(UCP means "unified combatant command," like CENTCOM; CJCS refers to Mullen; and WH is the White House.)]

The Mullen briefing and Petraeus's request hit the White House like a bombshell. While Petraeus's request that CENTCOM be expanded to include the Palestinians was denied ("it was dead on arrival," a Pentagon officer confirms), the Obama administration decided it would redouble its efforts -- pressing Israel once again on the settlements issue, sending Mitchell on a visit to a number of Arab capitals and dispatching Mullen for a carefully arranged meeting with the chief of the Israeli General Staff, Lt. General Gabi Ashkenazi. While the American press speculated that Mullen's trip focused on Iran, the JCS Chairman actually carried a blunt, and tough, message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: that Israel had  to see its conflict with the Palestinians "in a larger, regional, context" -- as having a direct impact on America's status in the region. Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn't. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus's Mullen briefing:  "This is starting to get dangerous for us," Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. "What you're doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace." Yedioth Ahronothwent on to report: "The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel's actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism." The message couldn't be plainer: Israel's intransigence could cost American  lives.

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers -- and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden's trip to Israel has forever shifted America's relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America's relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America's soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.

Obama's Public Diplomacy Corner: Big Symbols, Limited Interaction with Muslim World

Darrell Ezell writes for EA:

On 4 June 2009, President Barack Obama announced in Egypt that he had come to “Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world”. Fulfilling his Inauguration promise to extend a hand to the Muslim world, Obama stated his administration planned to seek a new way forward “based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

With Obama proposing this progressive policy, Americans, as most of the Muslim world, were confident a broad strategy would follow. Instead, a piecemeal approach to engaging the Muslim world has taken place.


Indeed, to a degree, this administration’s approach to interaction with the Muslim world resembles outreach under the Bush administration. Most of the outreach strategy of Assistant Secretaries of State like Charlotte Beers and Karen P. Hughes strategy revolved around listening tours with elite audiences and a bold secular agenda on Education, Science/Technology, and Economic Development.

Mindful of the many setbacks under Beers and Hughes generated by an overreliance on symbols, one might imagine this administration would grasp the importance of assessing their strategy in order to avoid complications. Instead, It appears the Obama administration has lapsed into the same problem, with those symbols standing in for direct interaction with Muslim communities.

Those of us who take this process seriously comprehend that to effectively restore relations with Muslim communities, equal attention is required at two levels. The first level focuses on government-to-government interaction, which includes restoring executive relations with predominantly Muslim countries of interest. The second level emphasizes direct interaction with Muslim communities at a grassroots (or people-to-people) level.

While the Obama Administration has taken the correct steps to make engagement a top priority on its agenda, unfortunately, its approach is imbalanced. Since Cairo, this engagement has been primarily directed to restoring communication with elites rather than with Muslim communities. With this imbalance, PD symbols try to mollify Muslim communities until a broad strategy is developed::

*Reinstating existing cultural exchange and PD programs directed primarily at Muslim youth and women;
*Appointing Special Representative Farah A. Pandith and Special Envoy Rashad Hussain;
*Recurring visits by Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Muslim countries; and
*Promoting America’s secular vision to the Muslim world

While PD symbols are often effective in launching engagement, in recent years they have ineffective in communication with the Muslim world. Hence, a more sustained effort is required.

Regardless of how many PD symbols this administration decides to implement, recognizing and incorporating religious perspectives is vital to an enriched engagement. Real dialogue must occur at the grassroots level, incorporating the aspirations and perspectives of religious leadership and civic activists into the administration’s foreign policy vision. Integrating this important dimension will require Obama quelling political fears in Washington toward the religion of Islam. Rami Khouri reminds us:

The best and worst in American attitudes towards things religious and international [are] clearly visible. The negatives on display include: how serious the engrained negative perceptions and ignorance of Islam and Muslims are among the American population; how simplistic and blind the government can be when addressing the interplay between religion and foreign policy; and, how persistently resistant the American political and cultural elite are to acknowledging that US foreign policy -- and actions by its ally Israel and friendly Arab and Asian autocrats -- play a major role in triggering defiant and often violent responses from Arabs and Asians, who often have no means other than religion to express themselves.

A broad White House and State Department strategy is necessary. This means rethinking Washington’s current approach to interaction, which has yet to incorporate the dynamics of religion and communication into the process of engagement.

Some State Department officials will argue that a host of cultural exchange and PD programs exist that “reach out” to religious networks. Unfortunately, many of these programs are often limited to elite perspectives which overlook an engagement of religious leadership which may be opposed to America’s foreign policy. Finding common ground begins with U.S. officials recognizing communication and practicing social dialogue with allies and foes alike in the Muslim world.

Unless this administration takes the dynamic of communication and the impact of religion in foreign policy seriously, its lapse into reliance on PD symbols will soon be irreversible. Below are four reasons why those symbols will be a hard sell this time around:

First, the impact of emerging religious-based perspectives cuts against America’s secular PD symbols.

Second, the Muslim world is mindful of the damage caused by the 2005 Hughes agenda that exposed an administration less interested in listening and more concerned with projecting its world view within Muslim communities.

Third, reliance on symbols is less likely to aid in restoring what Hama Yusuf acknowledges as the U.S.-Muslim world trust deficit.

Last, an executive-to-grassroots approach is less effective in reaching a common ground with 1.3 billion Muslims. Ensuring a more sustained effort that begins at the grassroots and moves upward is more likely to assure President Obama’s vision on a new way forward.

Afghanistan: Getting the Real Point Of The Marja "Offensive"

Gareth Porter has an excellent piece up on Inter Press Service, "Fiction of Marja as City Was U.S. Information War," in which he breaks down the media disinformation campaign on the size of Marja:

Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley.

"It's not urban at all," an official of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), who asked not to be identified, admitted to IPS Sunday. He called Marja a "rural community".

"It's a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," said the official, adding that the homes are reasonably prosperous by Afghan standards.

Porter is right on, and you should read the whole thing for an idea on exactly how these disinformation campaigns are spread, but I'm afraid in the case of Marja, we might be missing the point. We're complaining that Marja is only an excuse for a propaganda victory while at the same time complaining that the victory won't be worth anything because it's not a city.

As Woody Allen said on a much different topic, "This food is terrible, and such small portions!"



This shouldn't be news to anyone, but Afghans live in rural communities. We're supposedly there to protect Afghans from the Taliban after all. Rajiv Chandrasekaran described the strategy last year in the Washington Post:

The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.

Great, so if the plan is to protect Afghans from the Taliban, then you'll want to go where Afghans actually live, right? That would be in "a collection of village farms, with typical family compounds," just like the anonymous ISAF official told IPS.

Big cities like Kabul and Herat don't speak for the entirety of all Afghans, so focusing all of our attention on the major urban centers doesn't do anything to extend the legitimacy and credibility of the government, much less provide security from the Taliban. President Karzai's derisive nickname as the "Mayor of Kabul" was one small indicator of just how well the strategy of focusing on city centers, at the cost of conceding rural territory to the Taliban, was working. That is, not working at all. We also can't discount the effect concentrating on cities had on the Taliban propaganda narrative of western-occupied Kabul (or Islamabad) oppressing the mostly-rural Pashtuns.

In this case, Marja being a small farming community might actually be a positive step. So, ISAF finally went to the population, but are they protecting them? From Military.com:

At least 35 civilians have been killed in the operation, according to the Afghan human rights commission. Spokesman Nader Nadery said insurgent bombs killed more than 10 people, while NATO rocket fire killed at least 14.

Not only are we failing to protect the civilians from the Taliban, but we seem to have killed more Afghans than the militants themselves. Perhaps the Afghans will show their legendary patience, and accept that the government had to massacre 14 of their friends and relatives with rockets in order to have a more peaceful, prosperous Afghanistan. Will they side with Karzai? From the same article above:

"Are you against me or with me?" Karzai asked the elders. "Are you going to support me?"

The men all raised their hands and shouted: "We are with you. We support you."

But...

[Tribal Elders] complained - sometimes shouting - about corruption among former Afghan government officials. They lamented how schools in Marjah were turned into military posts by international forces. They said shops were looted during the offensive, and alleged that innocent civilians were detained by international forces.

But they still said they said they support Karzai, right?

Mohammad Naeem Khan, in his early 30s, said his loyalty is to whoever will provide for him.

"If the Taliban tap me on the shoulder, I will be with them, and if the government taps me on my shoulder I will be with them," Khan said.

So we wind up with the exact same bloody stalemate we've had since about 2002. They'll side with the government, except for when they side with the Taliban. That's not a victory, propaganda or otherwise.

The problem is not the size of Marja, it could be a teeming industrial metropolis of millions, it still wouldn't matter as long as we continue using military force and propping up a corrupt, illegitimate government. Until we have a strategy that doesn't involve violently imposing our pet gangsters' will on the Afghan people, we'll have a hard time even distinguishing ourselves from the Taliban, much less convincing the citizens to take our side against them.

Had enough? Become a fan of the Rethink Afghanistan campaign on Facebook and join our fight to bring the Afghanistan war to an end.

Josh Mull is the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read his work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan.

The "Violent Semi-Peace": Elections in Iraq, Escalation in Afghanistan

This weekend Iraqis turned out in the millions to vote in their 2010 parliamentary elections. By most accounts, it was a relative success. There were very few instances of fraud or polling issues reported. Several prominent religious leaders, including Moqtada al-Sadr, issued calls for Iraqis to defy "the enemies of Iraq" and cast their vote. And by mid-day, the government eased security restrictions, such as the ban on vehicles in Baghad, although security at polling centers remained tight.

The Day After the Iraq Election: “Politics Takes Over”
Iraq LiveBlog: Election Day

Oh yeah, and 38 people were killed by violence and 73 were injured:

Baghdad bore the brunt of the violence, with around 70 mortars raining down on mostly Sunni muslim areas as Iraqis headed to the polls in the second parliamentary vote since US-led forces ousted Saddam Hussein in 2003.

A Katyusha rocket flattened a residential building in northern Baghdad, killing 12 people and wounding 10, officials said, adding that a second blast killed four when another building was targeted by a bomb.

Eight people were killed by mortar attacks or bombs in Baghdad that between them wounded 40. Thirty more were wounded in attacks in the capital and elsewhere in the country.

That's only on election day. On Friday 14 people were killed, 27 two days before that. That's what success looks like in the US occupation of Iraq. That's what we got for the bargain price of $710 billion, 4700 dead Americans and 30,000 wounded, 100,000 dead Iraqis, and millions of displaced refugees.



And that cost is still rising. We still have more 100,000 troops in Iraq until at least 2011, maybe longer, and every day Iraqis are ripped to shreds by car bombs, suicide attacks, rockets, mortars, and IEDs. This is what a New York Times op/ed piece by Michael O'Hanlon and others referred to as a "violent semi-peace":

As 2008 and the Bush presidency conclude, Iraq has settled into a kind of violent semi-peace. The population-protection strategy initiated by Gen. David Petraeus has been a remarkable success on balance. Its logic continues even though American force numbers in Iraq have nearly returned to pre-surge levels.

So a successful "population-protection strategy" leads to the "violent semi-peace." That sounds exactly like the new NATO/ISAF strategy for Afghanistan, premiered in their latest incursion into the village of Marjah in Helmand province. The Christian Science Monitor reported last month:

Top American officials say the two-day-old operation is going well, despite a setback Sunday in which a dozen Afghan civilians appear to have been killed during a rocket strike. That is significant because current US-NATO strategy puts the protection of the civilian population ahead of killing enemy fighters.

Note that slaughtering 12 Afghan people is only a "setback" to the population-protection strategy, which doesn't mean thatthe strategy of  General David Petraeus --- er, I mean, General Stanley McChrystal --- can't still be a success.

And what is that success going to look like? President Obama's envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, told us last week in his press conference:

McChrystal, yesterday in Marjah, in effect said the military phase was coming to an end. But there are always going to be IEDs. There’s always going to be terrorist attacks. Those happen in the middle of Kabul and, for that matter, they happen in the middle of major cities all over the world these days. I have a feeling, however, that some of the energy has gone out of this approach to warfare.

Just as O'Hanlon predicted, the successful military operation winds down into a "violent semi-peace". Oh, but Holbrooke has a feeling that the violence will go away. Good for him. Afghans will still languish through insufferable violence and terrorism, corruption, and a lack of basic human services (we need the schools we built for military operations) while the US Government's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan basically wishes upon a star that the Taliban will follow his gut feeling and abandon the "approach to warfare" that has led to them commanding most of Afghanistan, as well as huge swathes of Pakistani territory.

And just like Iraq, we're paying for every bit of that "violent semi-peace". The current cost is $257 billion, 1700 dead ISAF soldiers, tens of thousands of dead civilians, countless wounded, and millions displaced, and the price just continues to climb. And for what? A "violent semi-peace" where we congratulate ourselves for only 38 people dying in a fiery explosion on voting day, and only 12 people were killed by a rocket attack for the crime of driving their truck on a road in Afghanistan.

This doesn't seem like a good deal at all.

Had enough? Become a fan of the Rethink Afghanistan campaign on Facebook and join our fight to bring the Afghanistan war to an end.

Josh Mull is the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. You can read his work on The Seminal or at Rethink Afghanistan.