Posts filed under 'Afghanistan'

Why Obama needs to get a move on in Afghanistan

Even as the Pakistani army fights and dies in South Waziristan in their most determined attempt yet to reshape the militant-spawning region, the Obama administration is giving us an object example of how not to plan and execute a war strategy in Afghanistan.  When you’re taking lessons in the political will needed to combat the Taliban from the Pakistani army, it might just be time to throw in the towel altogether.

It’s important to remember, briefly, now we got to the situation we are now in.  America invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and then quickly turned its attention to Iraq.  The Bush administration did not put sufficient resources into Afghanistan to achieve its desired goals; it seems it did not even put in enough resources to forestall eventual defeat.  As the situation in Iraq improved and that in Afghanistan deteriorated, Bush dispatched 7,000 more U.S. troops to the latter country in 2008.  He also launched a policy review, the result of which was kept from the media at the request of the incoming Obama administration (its existence was definitely talked about in the media at the time though, because I remember reading about it).

Then Obama came into office.  It has been his war since January, 2009, although on any given day you might he persuaded by the way he talks that it just landed in his in-tray courtesy of Dubya yesterday.  In March, Obama announced that after a “careful review” he had a “comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan” which involved dispatching 21,000 more troops and switching to a population-centric counterinsurgency approach that was like the one which worked during the surge in Iraq.  The new plan was similar in its broad outlines to the outcome of the review launched by the Bush administration – hardly surprising, given that the two administrations had the same defence secretary.  Obama’s liberal base opposed the strategy, but Republicans were united in their praise for the president.

As 2009 progressed, Western forces launched a bloody campaign to recapture parts of southern and eastern Afghanistan that had fallen under Taliban control – this was the first part of Obama’s “comprehensive new strategy”.  This resulted in dozens of Western casualties, but dealt a blow to the Taliban.  Little else changed in Afghanistan during 2009.  The Taliban failed to disrupt the Afghan presidential election to any appreciable degree, and electoral fraud was of an expected scale, if perhaps slightly towards the high end.  After the initial gains of the summer offensive, General Stanley McChrystal, who was hand-picked by Obama to carry out the new strategy, told Obama that he needed more troops to hold the ground he had captured and capture more.

This was by no means a surprise.  When the strategy was unveiled in March, it was clear to every informed observer that more troops would be needed.  And, we reasoned, Obama would not be announcing his commitment to the new strategy unless he was going to be willing to eventually resource it properly as well.  The staggering of the troop surges were, we thought (we hoped), dictated by the availability of troops and the need to placate his liberal base.

I did not expect to be sat here on 25 October, more than a month into another, completely new ”strategy review”, with Obama having rejected the full implementation of his March strategy as apparently too politically costly at home.  I did not expect to be listening to Obama administration saying that their new policy review was “asking questions that have never been asked” because the Bush administration never asked them, raising profound questions about their own March review and the previous ten months they’ve spent in charge of this war.  I did not expect to have the administration’s internal divisions openly revealed, even flaunted, in the newspapers every day, as if they represented some sort of strength through diversity rather than a dangerous signal to the enemy that Washington is not committed to defeating him.

I will seek to avoid the personal and political attacks that I could launch on the administration after ten months of such undilted dithering and cowardly refusal to take responsibility for the war and the future of South Asia.  Let us consider it purely as a strategic question.  The minimum U.S. goal in Afghanistan is to prevent the country from becoming the base of the international jihadi movement as it was in the late 1990s.

In March, the administration accepted a counterinsurgency strategy which would decouple the Afghan people from the Taliban as the only way of making this happen.  It implicitly rejected all other options, which it is now re-considering.  These options include a dramatic drawdown and a shift to targeting al-Qaeda from outside of the theatre and a new focus on training the Afghan army (the “counter-terror” or “Biden” option), a dramatic new troop surge to do counter-insurgency properly in key areas of the country (the “McCrystal” option) and an ill-defined “middle” option which will likely not give McChrystal all the troops he wants but hope for a broadly similar outcome.

The important thing to realize about the Biden option is that it amounts to a managed retreat, with an attempt to minimize the costs of failure.  This becomes apparent when you consider that everything in the Biden option – the stepped up drone attacks, increased training of the Afghan army – is completely compatible with other, more aggressive strategies.  The Biden option is a subset of the other options; an enhanced counterinsurgency strategy will also include increased drone attacks and training of the Afghans.  The Biden strategy does not have any unique selling point and does not do anything that the other options don’t.  It simply calls for a withdrawal and hopes we can manage the ensuing chaos.  There are numerous reasons to be profoundly sceptical about this plan, and we must realize that it amounts to a pre-emptive admission of defeat.  We can’t win, says the Biden option, so why bother?

The other options, from the middle option to the McChrystal one, require more troops.  What they hold in common is they require the fundamental reshaping of the political reality in Afghanistan to one that is not amenable to the Taliban; that is the point of victory in war, imposing your political reality on the enemy.  The reshaping requires that the Afghan people, who still do not have a favourable view of the Taliban on the whole, believe that the U.S. is committed to defeating the extremists; otherwise they will have to reach an accomodation with them.  It is this reshaping that the Biden strategy says is impossible, and hence does not call for us to attempt.  But if we are to attempt it, we need more troops, and we need a greater commitment to our goals than the enemy has.  This is why Obama’s hesitation over his commitment to this outcome, and his hesitation over sending more troops as soon as possible, is so incredibly damaging.  But really, as he himself acknowledged in March and since, there is no alternative.  He needs to embrace it, and fast.

There is no path to victory that does not involve the commitment of more troops.  Every day that these troops are not dispatched is a day in which the situation for the Afghan government and NATO deteriorates.  There is no strategic benefit in delay, and there are plenty of costs.  Obama’s drawn out seminar sessions might be appropriate if there wasn’t already a strategy already in place, but there is: the man that Obama put in charge of a war plan that Obama himself approved says he can win this war with more resources, and yet the White House acts as if it just stumbled into Afghanistan yesterday.

This long process is designed as a balm to his liberal base – look how learned and careful and un-Bush-like we are, it soothes – but it is much more of a balm to the Taliban.  They have the momentum.  They have the committment.  They have the Afghan people scared.  They have Obama scared as well.  And unless Obama moves to decisively turn all of this around, and unless he does it very soon, they will win.  It is criminal for the administration to play politics with this war, and to ask American, NATO and Pakistani soldiers to die for a conflict to which the civilian leadership is not committed.  America’s allies will vote with their feet soon enough; America’s soldiers will simply die, along with many Afghans, until eventually Obama will have to decide whether to fight this war properly or abandon the country altogether.  He could take that decision now rather than later.  But he won’t.

Add comment October 25, 2009

What is happening in Pakistan?

As you’ve probably heard, Pakistani military and paramilitary forces have just launched an offensive into South Waziristan to take on elements of the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies.  This operation is by far the most important development in the region since Obama took over the presidency, overshadowing his dispatch of 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan earlier this year in importance.  While the deployment of those troops was merely a holding action to prevent a rapid deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan, the Pakistani offensive could – if done properly – contribute towards bringing a real shift in the situation in the region.

However, the improvements, if they come at all, are not likely to come quickly.  To understand what is happening here, a very brief history lesson is required.

During and after the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan in 2001, Taliban and al-Qaeda poured out of Afghanistan through the effectively non-existent border with Pakistan and set up camp throughout the northwest of the country, melding easily into the Pashtun culture from whence many of them came and finding networks of support in the massive Afghan refugee population in the region.

It’s important to recognize the extent to which the Taliban’s initial takeover of Kabul and Afghanistan was in essence a Pashtun colonial project; the homeland of the Taliban has always been Pakistan, specifically the little-governed northwest.  Pakistan encouraged the Taliban to direct their energies in this direction because they viewed Afghanistan as a proxy battleground with India, and because it kept the militants from causing trouble throughout mainland Pakistan.  The U.S. invasion pushed them back.  The Pakistani public routinely describe the U.S. as the biggest threat to their security in polls, and one reason they do this is because they believe the U.S. drove militants from Afghanistan back to Pakistan, there to sow a campaign of terror.

But the groups that were driven from Afghanistan by the U.S. are not the only Taliban.  What we commonly refer to as “the Taliban” is in fact a bewildering array of different groups who lack any centralized command structure.  The Taliban who vex NATO in Afghanistan are not always the same as the Taliban who have been responsible for a recent string of bombings in Pakistan, although the groups have obvious similarities and co-operate with each other.  In December 2007 some 20 groups formed an umbrella organization called Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which has given them some unity, but they still have differing agendas.

The first important point about what is currently happening in Pakistan is that the military offensive is restricted in its goals, and is not aimed at all the Taliban groups who carry out cross-border incursions into Afghanistan.  Rather, Pakistani military spokesman have explicitly stated that the offensive is aimed only at militants belonging to the Mehsud network, which has the stated goal of Talibanizing Pakistan – and a more limited, although very real, role in Afghanistan.  Indeed, the military’s area of operations here does not even border Afghanistan.

If the rest of the militant groups in South Waziristan – those who usually concentrate on the fight against NATO – were to join the battle against the military, then the latter would quickly lose.  Many of the militant groups in Waziristan, even some of those under the TTP banner, actively co-operate with the Pakistani state, and appear to have been convinced to stay neutral during this operation – at least for now.  These include groups who send fighters into Afghanistan.

The drone strike that killed Beitullah has made Hakimullah Mehsud, the new emir of the TTP, more disposed than ever towards harming the U.S., on whom he has vowed revenge.  However, the most destructive acts his group have carried out have been in Pakistan – these include the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, and the recent spate of high-profile bombings that were intended to deter the present offensive.  The TTP is currently experiencing a period of turmoil in its leadership following the death of Baitullah Mehsud in a U.S. drone strike in August, but nothing is more likely to unite the groups than a Pakistani incursion and occupation.  Their attention will be focused on repelling this offensive for some time, giving NATO some temporary breathing room in Afghanistan.

However, the prospect that Pakistan can deliver a long-term pacification even of the limited area of operations in South Waziristan with which it is now concerned is remote.  Much-touted offensives elsewhere against militants have led to proclamations of victory, only to give way to the harsh reality of under-investment in reconstruction and a resurgence of violence.  This is a slight improvement on the peace deals that Islamabad made a habit of cutting with the Taliban during previous offensives, and indeed may be the best that can be hoped for.  But the simple fact is that Pakistan lacks the political will – as well as the military capability – to deliver a long-term pacification of the tribal regions.

The question of political will boils down to who Pakistanis see as their biggest threat, and hence against whom they array most of their military might.  This is India.  The number of troops deployed to the pacification of the tribal regions is a small fraction of the number deployed on the Indian border.  Hundreds of thousands more would be needed to be moved from the Indian border to the tribal regions for the military to be able to clear the area of the enemy, hold it indefinitely, and build civilian projects to win over the population; this would divert an unrealistic quantity of resources from the rest of Pakistan and is likely to fail anyway because of the deep animus felt by the residents of the area towards Islamabad.  It would be a generational effort, at great cost, for a cause that Pakistanis consider of minor importance to themselves and only of concern to their hated U.S. patron.

The Pakistani military also lack the capability for the sort of low-intensity counter-insurgency war that they would need to fight in the tribal regions to be ultimately successful, because the Pakistani militant is equipped for large-scale, Cold War-era battles against a conventional foe, not guerrilla war.  Their previous operations in the tribal agencies have been punitive raids which were over-reliant on air power and artillery and that left the region strewn with civilian casualties.  The Taliban don’t even need to fight in such battles; they just hide, let civilians die, and reap a propaganda victory, much like Hamas did during Operation Cast Lead.  The military then eventually leaves and the militants re-emerge, stronger than before.

In the West, we have to understand that Pakistan considers the risk posed by the Taliban to be, if not insignificant, certainly not the most pressing strategic priority.  There is a broad consensus on this between the military and the civilian population.  The astute observer will also notice that all of the targets of terrorist outrages in Pakistan prior to this offensive have been military or police ones, not civilian.  The terrorists know that civilian outrages would delegitimize them and lead to a violent swing in public opinion against them, where at the moment there is a deep ambivalence.  The message is simple.  To the security forces: leave us alone and we will leave you alone.  To the people of Pakistan: why meddle?

The end-game of this offensive is very hard to fathom.  But it will not be a resolution of the problems in South Asia for either Islamabad or Washington.  It could certainly lead to the death of a great many dangerous people, but if handled improperly it will create more.  It is hard to believe that the hardcore al-Qaeda infrastructure is remaining in the area to be destroyed, and indeed the offensive could have the effect of dispersing a lot of dangerous terrorists all over the world.  Some will be caught as they flee, others will not; don’t expect Osama bin Laden to be found in a spiderhole.  It could, maybe, lead to the pacification of this small area.  A crucial sanctuary for terror could be destroyed, but the ideology, the means, and the people will move on, and the war will continue; as, it seems, it always does.

2 comments October 17, 2009

Obama, the Olympics, and Afghanistan

It’s hard to know where to begin when criticizing Obama’s conduct in Copenhagen.  And it’s equally hard to know where to end.

Should we begin with the fact he inflicted a blow to his own country’s prestige before the eyes of the world?  Or the fact he personalized it, making it a defeat for himself?  Or maybe the fact that the blow was entirely unnecessary and avoidable?  Or that it came at a time when he already has two wars to fight and an overloaded domestic agenda?  Or that it was unpresidential, especially because of his failure?  Or that it gave the lie to Obama’s claim he can charm the world into providing tangible benefits to America?  Perhaps the fact somewhere between a third and a half of his remarks to the IOC consisted of his own biography?

Or maybe we could focus on the sheer incompetence.  The administration demonstrably failed to suss out the likely outcome of the vote before it put the president on the line.  It failed to pick its battles.  Even their greatest cheerleader in the media thinks it was a mistake.

On the way back from Copenhagen, Obama met General Stanley McChrystal in Denmark to discuss the war in Afghanistan.  The 25-minute meeting was only the third time Obama has talked to McChrystal since he sacked his predecessor and appointed the new commander.  He spent more time in Copenhagen than he has talking to the commander on whom the future of the western alliance and the world’s most volatile region depends.  Let’s hope he packed considerably more judgement into those brief encounters than he showed in Copenhagen.

1 comment October 3, 2009

Obama needs to act like a president

I couldn’t agree more with this column:

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.

Take last week’s Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh. There, the candidate-in-full commandeered the television networks and the leaders of Britain and France to give the Iranians a dramatic warning. Yet another of their secret nuclear facilities had been revealed and Obama, as anyone could see, was determined to do something about it — just don’t ask what.

The entire episode had a faux Cuban missile crisis quality to it. Something menacing had been discovered — not Soviet missiles a mere 100 miles or so off Florida but an Iranian nuclear installation about 100 miles from Tehran. As befitting the occasion, various publications supplied us with nearly minute-by-minute descriptions of the crisis atmosphere earlier in the week at the U.N. session — the rushing from room to room, presidential aides conferring, undoubtedly aware that they were in the middle of a book they had yet to write. I scanned the accounts looking for familiar names. Where was McNamara? Where was Bundy? Where, in fact, was the crisis?

In fact, there was none. The supposedly secret installation had been known to Western intelligence agencies — Britain, France, the United States and undoubtedly Israel — for several years. Its existence had been deduced by intelligence analysts from Iranian purchases abroad, and it was pinpointed sometime afterward. What had changed was that news of it had gone public. This happened not because Obama announced it but because the Iranians beat him to it after discovering that their cover was blown. They then turned themselves in to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and, as usual, said the site was intended for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. These Persians lie like a rug.

For me though, the fake crisis cooked up over the Iranian nuclear facility wasn’t the most telling example; that wasn’t so much a failure of leadership as a failure of analysis, as if it really matters at the end of the day what Iran declares to the IAEA and what it doesn’t.

Three things jump out at me as exemplifying Obama’s inability to act presidentially: his propensity for setting deadlines and then watching them sail by, his very public and very disturbing panic attack over the war in Afghanistan, and the way he continues to use the rhetoric of opposition.

First, the deadlines.  As Cohen writes, “It seem[s] not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence — meet it or else.”  So far, we’ve had deadlines for healthcare legislation, Iranian compliance (twice), the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks (twice, if you believe Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth - at the trilateral in Washington Obama apparently gave Abbas and Netanyahu “three weeks” to resume talks) and the closure of Guantanamo Bay.  Every time he sets a deadline and doesn’t meet it – especially when he’s issuing ultimatums to foreign leaders – he diminishes the credibility of himself, the presidency, and the country.

It’s a device that ought to be used sparingly.  I can only remember one deadline issued by the Bush administration.  That was to Saddam, Uday, and Qusay Hussein to leave their country within 48 hours or witness the downfall of their odious regime – they didn’t leave and they did witness its downfall.

Presidents often declare long-term policy goals that they’re not going to be able to deliver on.  Bush’s was “I will democratize the Middle East” and an example of Obama’s might be “a world free of nuclear weapons”.  But because these goals are long-term, and some progress towards them can be demonstrated, it doesn’t matter that they’re never actually completely achieved.  In all of the examples noted above where Obama issued a deadline, the goal was impossibly specific and completely beyond his ability to realize.

This is stupid for more reasons than I can enumerate.  It hands to your enemy the ability to humiliate you, for free.  It’s an entirely self-inflicted blow.  It leads to a situation where nobody believes you when you give your word, an especially dangerous situation in a world where much depends on American security guarantees.  It makes you look weak and ineffectual, even though much of the presidency’s power around the world is the authority that comes from strength.  It’s an analytical failure because it ignores the fact soft power and diplomacy are ultimately grounded only in strength, which is why America has them and Sweden doesn’t.

This leads us to the second point, which is Afghanistan.  One of Obama’s problems with Afghanistan, which has been much remarked-upon, is the fact he called it a “war of necessity” and then refused to act like he considered it one.  His administration is known to be split between those who want to retreat and those who want to stay.  The military have told him he’s going to lose without more resources and he’s refusing to give them more resources immediately.  This, the credibility problem that comes with not following through on what you said, is only part of the problem, however.

The sort of equivocation he is displaying over what is undoubtedly America’s foremost national interest would ill-befit a candidate for the presidency, never mind the president himself.  Indeed, when Obama was a candidate he tried to out-hawk the Republicans on Afghanistan, declaring it the most important theatre and saying he would redouble his efforts there; remember when he even threatened to send troops into the Pakistani tribal areas, with or without the agreement of the Pakistani government?

Now that he is president, Obama has lost his steel.  Certainly, continuing the war is a risk, but one cannot run a credible American foreign policy without displaying a willingness to take risks.  When the interest involved is so blatant and the costs of failure so evident to everyone but the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, to refuse to take the risk begins to look like abject cowardice.  This is not a world in which the president can afford such a luxury.

Even if, in several weeks, Obama announces that he will give McChrystal everything he wants for the war effort, the damage will already be done: the perception and reality of equivocation will be established.  Given that American’s hardest war aim in South Asia is to convince the Afghans and the Pakistanis of U.S. commitment to the area, this equivocation comes close to inflicting a strategic defeat on the U.S. by itself.  Without firm assurances of this commitment, everyone in the region will begin to accomodate themselves to the eventual resurgence of the Taliban, and in so doing they will create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Finally, the rhetoric.  Obama talks.  A lot.  His foreign policy is, according to its own defenders, basically based on talking.  He pontificates to allies.  “I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world,” he told the United Nations.  Anyone who is aware of the expectations that accompany his presidency in Moscow and Tehran had a rueful smile at that one.  The problem, though, is that talk is cheap.  And it’s also demeaning.  The essence of the presidency is action.  The presidency is the power to make history, not to be merely shaped by it.  But all over the world, history is marching forward and the United States appears impotent to influence its course.  The most Obama can do is give speeches apologizing for what he thinks were the historical mistakes of his predecessors.  He has no concept of how important an assertive America is in an ungrateful world.

I think this may have something to do with the popular narrative of the Bush presidency among Democrats.  Because they saw the Bush administration as too strong, bullying, arrogant, and eager to throw its weight around, they now think the presidency should be timid, weak, afraid to make a stir – although evidently also still arrogant.  Playing to the court of world public opinion will never get a president anywhere.  The only people who really matter won’t respect it, they’ll disdain it.  Weakness is not a magical back alley which leads to strength through popularity; it is just weakness.

Barack Obama may love the United States – I am sure he is a patriot.  But his idea of the United States is not the United States that I love – and it isn’t the one most of his countrymen love, either.  He’s going to find that out, very soon.

1 comment September 29, 2009

Crunch time for Obama’s presidency

September is going to be the most crucial month of Obama’s presidency so far, and it could well determine the course of the rest of it.  Anyone who wants him to succeed needs to keep an eye on what he does this month in three crucial areas – healthcare, Afghanistan, and Iran – and one auxillary one, the Israeli-Arab conflict.

For a candidate who campaigned on an aggressive platform of “change” and activism, Obama has shown remarkably little of either since he got into the White House.  He has farmed out key decisions to other groups – Congressional Democrats in the case of healthcare and the stimulus bill, and Attorney General Holder in the case of investigations into Bush-era intelligence activity – and simply carried on business-as-usual in other areas.

His Iraq policy has been to continue with the agreements signed by the Bush administration, and he’s talked about this issue as little as possible.  He’s not much closer to closing Guantánamo Bay – and that deadline of a year is fast approaching – and nor has he fundamentally altered U.S. foreign relations, beyond making some speeches designed to act as outreach to foreign populations.

North Korea staged procative nuclear tests and his response was to invite Pyongyang back to the six party talks begun by the Bush administration.  Iran continued to develop a nuclear weapon and launched a stunning domestic crackdown and his response was to write letters to the Supreme Leader while continuing the Bush administration’s policy of wait-and-see.  Afghanistan slipped further into a morass and his response, wisely, was to dispatch more troops to pursue the goals laid out by his predecessor – but that far from settles the issue.  Pakistan continues to slip into chaos and Obama has continued Bush’s policy of support for the government.

Change in foreign policy is slightly more marked towards Israel, Russia, China, and Latin America – but not much.  Obama has criticized Israel in far stronger terms than Bush, and laid out a genuinely new policy on settlements: the outcome of this remains to be seen.  It might lead to new talks, but if it does the outcome is almost certainly likely to be negative and lead to a new round of bitter recriminations.

He has adopted a strictly realist approach to Russia and China, trying to minimize differences with the former and explicitly stating that human rights would not be made an issue in discussions with the latter.  He has stepped back from the Bush administration’s obsession with trying to influence these countries to adopt western values, but this has amounted more to a difference in tone than substance because Bush’s ability to influence these countries in that area was always limited.  When Russia invaded Georgia and China cracked down in Tibet, the Bush administration barely squeaked; Russian troops continue to occupy Georgia and China continues to brutally crack down on its ethnic Muslims and Obama has hardly made a peep, either.

In Latin America, Obama has continued with Bush-era policy of increasing co-operation with Colombia and Mexico to battle drug traffickers and guerillas.  He said he was going to normalize relations with Cuba but hasn’t done anything about it.  When the American military base deal in Ecuador expired, he turned to Bush’s (and, indeed, America’s) traditional ally in the region – Colombia – to sign a new ten-year lease on base access that has irked the Latin American left.  Hugo Chávez has blasted the agreement, but other Latin American leaders rallied around it.  On Honduras, Obama’s policy has been in step with the rest of the region, who all refuse to recognize the new de facto government and call for Manuel Zelaya to return to office.

None of the above is necessarily meant to be an indictment.  We’re only seven months into the new presidency and Obama has faced a crushing domestic agenda, although one that he has himself complicated by pushing for early action on healthcare.

The United States’ ability to act abroad is also limited by financial and domestic problems.  In the absence of clear crises that have demanded resolute decisions, Obama has remained much like Bush after the invasion of Iraq – the prevaricator-in-chief.  He hasn’t had bold ideas or actions to offer us that might fundamentally alter the approaches he inherited from Bush.

But the time of crisis is now upon us – and it starts at home.

Healthcare.  Obama has taken on one of the most politically-sensitive issues in America.  It nearly destroyed Clinton, and it largely contributed towards the drumming that the Democrats took in Congress in 1994.  The Obama administration is sure to be aware of the relevant history – Rahm Emanuel was an aide to Clinton, and Hillary was at the forefront of Clinton’s healthcare drive - but the devil in the details is what lesson they will derive from it.  We’ll find out when Obama gives his healthcare address to Congress tonight – he’s going to be staking a lot of his credibility on getting the outcome he wants, so it’s important that he keeps expectations realistic.

It’s also important that he make an attempt to speak to the vast majority of Americans who now oppose healthcare reform and think there are more urgent priorities.  These people may be wrong, but it won’t matter one way or another who was right if the Democrats ram through an unpopular bill and then get decimated in the 2010 elections.  The healthcare reform process is going to take a long time – probably decades – to fully enact after a bill is passed, and it’s essential that it has widespread public support.  An issue that affects one fifth of the U.S. economy and every one of its citizens cannot be addressed without some form of consensus.  Just as the uninsured need help, the majority of Americans who are sceptical about reform deserve slightly more than to be angrily dismissed and written off as the tool of special interest groups.

What happens on healthcare is also important for Obama’s foreign policy agenda.  The left-wing of his party have been denied some of the red meat they expected: quicker drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, a legal pursuit of Bush administration officials, a gutting of the CIA, a more marked change in rendition (which, in case you hadn’t heard, Obama is continuing), and an even harder stand on Israel.  Winning on healthcare reform will allow Obama to have more slack elsewhere; losing on it will mean that he has to govern with increasing reference to the extreme wing of his party.

Afghanistan.  Soon, General Stanley McCrystal will request more troops for Afghanistan.  There is apparently a split within the Obama administration on whether he should get them.  Obama is reported to be leaning towards providing them, which is all to the good, even if the appearance of indecision can only help to weaken the resolve of NATO allies and strengthen that of the Taliban.  This is by far the most consequential decision that Obama will make this year for the future of the United States and the world.

The growing chorus of voices calling for disengagement from Afghanistan are, to me, baffling.  The consequences of failure are all too clear: the re-assertion of Taliban control over the country, with all the attendant human horror (have we forgotten already how they ruled before?); the destabilization of nuclear-armed Pakistan and the strengthening of militants there; the increased chance of terrorist attack all over the world, from Australia to India to London; a possibly-mortal blow to the credibility of NATO as an effective military alliance; and the grimly predictable, indeed inevitable, need for the world to intervene yet again, perhaps years later but certainly under much less advantageous conditions.

Afghanistan was the “good war” for so long, and went so unquestioned, that there now seems to be a whiff of panic as people finally wake up to the reality of the situation.  Upon discovering that what they thought was an adequate situation is in fact a deteriorating one, they have over-reacted and decided it is beyond salvation.  But just because the Bush administration made mistakes that we are only now waking up to, it does not mean that all is lost.  McCrystal is one of the most experienced and successful generals in the U.S. military, and he is certainly not under any pressure from this administration to declare that the war is winnable if it is not: his judgement should be respected.  And, that judgement given, Obama should follow it, otherwise he sows the seeds of a mortal danger.

Iran.  September was the deadline that the Obama administration placed on talks with Iran.  If they had not borne fruit by this point – and if the IAEA’s report out this month was negative – then Iran will face further sanctions and isolation.  Well, the IAEA says that Iran continues to enrich uranium and be unco-operative, and the newly-powerful conservative government in Iran has said that it has no interest in further talks.  This was one of the problems with Obama’s campaign plank of talking to America’s enemies – sometimes they’re not interested.  Obama will have to seek more sanctions with the support of Russia and China, who are unlikely to be helpful.

Sanctions are anyway unlikely to persuade the Iranians to change their behaviour.  They can endure them until they have carried out successful nuclear tests, and then the rest of the world will gradually have to change its approach to them anyway – especially this administration, which has proven realistic to the core.  A military strike by the U.S. on Iran is unthinkable given the likely opposition to it at home, especially among Obama’s core voters – who, as discussed, he is having trouble keeping enchanted as it is.  But, on the other side, a strike by Israel – which could further inflame the Middle East and certainly make the Israeli-Palestinian issue unsolvable in the timeframe of this administration – is made more likely by the tense relations between Israel and Washington.  It’s also unlikely to set the Iranians back by more than a few years, and will no doubt harden their resolve to eventually be successful.

These are the three big decisions that make up September for Obama: how to proceed on healthcare, in Afghanistan, and towards Iran.  It’stime to see if this remarkable and charismatic politician turns out to also be the statesman he promised us, with original solutions that will change the rules of the game rather than just continuing in the well-worn lines of his predecessor.  I’m hoping that he does.

1 comment September 8, 2009

The size of the Afghan force

If the Afghan war is going to be won, the U.S. has to send more troops.  NATO forces are currently woefully incapable of controlling enough territory in Afghanistan, and the lack of ground forces has led to an over-reliance on air power that leads to tragedies like today’s airstrike in the north, which could have killed as many as fifty civilians.  This isn’t only horrific but also actively counter-productive because it serves to turn the Afghan populattion against NATO and the Afghan government, which is the surest way to lose this war.

Just like in Iraq in 2006, the most urgent task awaiting NATO is to take control of as much territory as possible, clear it of Taliban, hold it, and build civilian projects that benefit the local population.  This simply cannot be done when a few tens of thousands of troops are rattling around 250,000 square miles of territory.  Afghanistan is much bigger than Iraq, and it’s considerably less urbanized as well: Iraq’s population density measured in people per square mile is nearly twice that of Afghanistan.  Almost 75% of the Iraqi population live on the flat plain between the Euphrates and Tigris, which was where the majority of U.S. forces were stationed.  Nine million people live in Baghdad and only about 2.5 million live in Kabul, meaning the population is much more spread out.  Obama says he wants the Afghan National Army to be about 260,000 strong if it’s going to control all this territory.

Why then do we persist in trying to do the job with a NATO force of less than 100,000, of whom only the 68,000 U.S. and 9,100 UK forces actually do any fighting?  There are a few reasons about which not a lot can be done, such as the need to keep a large footprint in Iraq for another year or so; the fact very few NATO countries are willing to make meaningful contributions; and the limitations placed on spending by the global economic crisis.  But there’s also another reason: because the Obama administration is splint internally on whether more troops would actually be productive or not:

Leading those with doubts is Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., who has expressed deep reservations about an expanded presence in Afghanistan on the grounds that it may distract from what he considers the more urgent goal of stabilizing Pakistan, officials said. Among those on the other side are Richard C. Holbrooke, the special representative to the region, who shares the concern about Pakistan but sees more troops as vital to protecting Afghan civilians and undermining the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has been vocal in favor of more troops, and while some officials said she had not shown her hand during the current deliberations, they expected her to be an advocate for a more robust force.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has voiced concern that putting so many troops in Afghanistan would make the United States look like an occupier, but during a news conference on Thursday he sounded more supportive of the prospect.

This debate sounds a lot like the one that we had prior to the surge in Iraq.  Iraq was seen as an unwinnable war because of political conditions, and it was argued – by many people currently in this administration, up to and including President Obama – that sending more troops would just alienate the population more and lead to more violence.  That turned out to be entirely incorrect, because what was alienating the population from the U.S. and the Iraqi government was the fact neither could provide them with security or a credible future outside of the insurgency.  More troops allowed security to be established and the writ of the Iraqi government to be extended, and as a result the future of the country looks much more secure today than it did in 2006.

The idea that the presence of more forces would act as a recruiting sergrant for the insurgency turned out to be misplaced.  As one of the major strategy documents on which the surge was based noted, “There is no reason to imagine, moreover, that it matters to the insurgency whether there are 100,000, 140,000, or 200,000 Americans in Iraq. Insurgent rhetoric does not count our soldiers; rather, it denounces the presence of any American troops on Iraqi soil.”  Furthermore, the main thing that led Iraqis to join armed groups was ”not so much that coalition forces are perceived as occupiers, but rather that coalition forces are occupiers who have not made good on their primary responsibility — securing the population.”  With U.S. forces and the Iraqi government incapable of providing security, people had to seek it elsewhere.  The same thing is now happening in Afghanistan.

Furthermore, given that many young men who join the Taliban do so not for ideological reasons but for social or economic ones, there is reason to believe that the international forces can change their calculus if they begin to beat the Taliban back and secure territory.  Currently the Taliban believe they are winning, as does the Afghan population: only by inflicting military defeats on the insurgents and physically wresting control of territory from them can NATO begin to turn this around.  It might be true that the Taliban opt to vanish rather than stand and fight when NATO forces move into a new area, but so long as the foreign forces stay there and establish effective governance then this is all to the good; the main focus of this war isn’t physically killing the Taliban anyway, but sapping their support.

This can’t be done without a larger NATO footprint.  To hear people suggest otherwise is frankly quite surprising after our recent experience in Iraq.  It’s true that Afghanistan is not Iraq, but this is about a basic principle: you can’t win if you’re not in the game.  Currently NATO are barely in the game, and that needs to change.

Add comment September 4, 2009

Talking to the Taliban

There’s a great article at The Weekly Standard which serves to expand on the point I was trying to make in my previous post:

First, it seems inevitable that democratic governments will, at some point, get around to talking to their adversaries, the insurgents. Second, “constructive ambiguity” about the political principles guiding a final settlement may be useful for getting people seated at a table, but it is counterproductive in reaching a final accord. And finally, and most important, if talking to terrorists is inevitable, there is “a crucial qualitative difference between talking to terrorists who are the crest of a wave .  .  . and talking to terrorists who have been made to realize that their aims are unattainable by violent means.”

These points are very important because they’re not just relevant to outreach efforts towards the Taliban but also diplomacy in general.  Democratic governments always end up talking to their enemies, because they’re never going to destroy them completely in the fashion that totalitarian movements would seek to.  It’s the conditions under which these talks take place that are important.  We’ve a recent historical example of this process in Iraq.  Many Sunni insurgents were ex-members of Saddam’s security forces who survived the 2003 war.  They continued to wage war against the U.S. until finally they were turned in 2006 – 08 when the tide began to turn against them:

If we have learned nothing else from the experience of the Anbar Awakening in Iraq, it’s that it only occurred because the Sunnis found themselves in the impossible strategic situation of simultaneously fighting al Qaeda and Iraqi and American forces, they had a constitutional alternative that promised a substantial level of local self-governance, and they came to believe that the American troop surge could make their rejection of al Qaeda a realistic alternative.

Talks, under any conditions, are not the answer.  This would only hold true if what the Taliban wanted most fervently of all was peace.  But we know that this isn’t what they want: they want to overthrow the Afghan state and institute Islamic rule.  They’re only going to want to talk to the state when they become convinced they can’t achieve their goal of destroying it by violent means.  And the only way to convince them of this is through military operations.

Similarly, they’re only going to be interested in deals with the multinational forces when they become convinced that those forces are going to be there for a long time.  At the moment, they’re so unconcerned about the presence of NATO that when our forces swept through Helmand last month they didn’t even bother to fight them.  The Taliban aren’t frightened, and Afghans have seen enough invading forces come and go to have a pretty sanguine view of the future: eventually, we’ll leave them alone, just like everyone else did.  While we flounder around, unable to inflict military defeat on them – even unable to find them most of the time – and the Afghan state loses credibility by the week, the Taliban think they are winning.  Forget us talking to them.  Until we start winning this war, why on earth would they want to talk to us?

Add comment August 19, 2009

Afghanistan’s election

Afghanistan’s election will take place on Thursday, but pretty much everyone apart from the Taliban must be wishing it wouldn’t.  Surprises can happen, but at the moment it looks like a large section of the population will be too frightened to vote due to Taliban attacks.  This will have two negative consequences.  The first will be that the new government will be unrepresentative and lack a mandate.  The second is that in the crucial battle to maintain a perception of momentum, the Taliban will win.  They will emerge from this whole affair looking stronger, and the Afghan state and the international force (ISAF) will look weaker.  This of course is precisely the opposite of the election’s intended effect.

Strengthening the credibility and the capability of the Afghan state is practically the entire reason international forces are in Afghanistan.  The point of the war is to extend a form of governance amenable to our interests – that is, one opposed to letting Afghan territory be used for exporting terrorism – over the whole of Afghanistan, and the Afghan state is our chosen instrument.  If there’s never a strong, credible Afghan state, there will never be a day when international forces can withdraw without fearing for the future.  Despite the rhetoric, western countries have never been committed to much beyond this security goal: you only have to look at how little money has been spent on reconstruction to realize that.

The Afghan state is eventually going to have to talk to the Taliban and make peace with moderate elements of it.  The militants are too intertwined in the society of the south, and the country is too difficult to control from the centre, for any other option to be viable.  Afghanistan has never had a strong central government  and its future is going to have to contain a great deal of regional autonomy.  But before this talks can take place, something needs to happen: the government has to start winning the war.

It’s all very well saying we can talk to the Taliban, but this only holds true if they consider it in their interests to talk.  You can’t win at the negotiating table what you can’t take eventually on the battlefield.  At the moment, the Taliban see very little reason to talk.  Much of the country lives in fear of them.  They can stage high-profile prison breaks and they can attack ISAF convoys in Kabul.  They think they’re winning.  Crucially, most of their countrymen agree.  This needs to change.  What’s really important about this election is the propaganda battle and the images that it allows both sides to portray.  After all, elections are supposed to be central to the democratic, peaceful Afghanistan that we’re supposed to be building; if the state can’t run an election, and it can’t ensure representative government, what can it do?

Unfortunately, the Afghan government seems to be flunking the test.  The announcement that media outlets in the country are requested not to report violent attacks between 6am and 8pm on election day smacks of the worst kind of desperation – confidence-destroying desperation.  Imposing a media blackout isn’t going to make people feel confident about voting, it’s going to make them feel more fearful.

If the government has had to resort to measure, then people are not going to assume that things are safe outside – and they’ll have no other evidence apart from their assumptions to go on, presuming the blackout is observed – they’re going to assume that things are unsafe.  The government can’t  guarantee people’s safety, so instead it’s asking them to risk life and limb blindly – and all to re-elect a corrupt warlord, heading a system of dubious permanence, which so far has done little to improve their lives.  Personally, I’d stay home.  And many will.

Add comment August 19, 2009

Boot on detention in Afghanistan

Famed historian and analyst Max Boot, always insightful on Afghanistan, has offered up a piece on the detention policies of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in the Afghan war.  He’s insightful on what still needs to be done by the international force for it to get a detention system in place that works, similar to the one that we saw in Iraq during the latter days of the war.  When NATO countries capture someone in Afghanistan, they have only 96 hours to release him or turn him over to the Afghans, because there is no equivelent to the U.N. mandate which allowed the Americans to hold suspects in Iraq for security reasons.

The result is that hardly anyone is being detained by the international forces, and no-one is sure exactly how many people the Afghans are holding.  What’s also certain is that the Afghans are running an unprofessional and probably unpleasant prison service which will act as a recruiting tool for the insurgents, both by allowing them to be radicalized while in prison and by acting as a beacon of propaganda to be cited by the enemy.  The U.S. managed to sort out its early difficulties in Iraq and grow beyond Abu Ghraib, largely thanks to General Petraeus’ doctrinal innovation: it’s a crucial test for the U.S. military to see if it can transfer what it learned to a different theatre, and make it effective there as well.

The Afghan war might depend on it.

Add comment July 29, 2009

Stating the obvious about the military

Normally I wouldn’t read The Independent. The paper is far too easy to get angry at and I’ve always refused to be one of those people who immerses themselves in media that make them angry and self-righteous for fear of becoming like internet forum-surfers who seek out people with opinions they loathe just to experience the pleasure of belittling them. Surprise, surprise: there are people on the internet who you disagree with! Seeking them out and chastizing them is the lowest form of punditry.

However, on the train today, I found myself sat next to an abandoned copy of The Indie. So I took a look. In the opinion section, I found columnist Bruce Anderson’s take on the topic ‘The British admire their Army – but they don’t understand it’. Bruce’s main sin in this column is tarring everyone with the same brush which is regrettably applicable to readers of his newspaper. Among his penetrating insights are the fact that soldiers did not abandon an easy life to join up just because they are “thick” and that officers do not have an “easy life”. Officers, he reveals, actually read books!

Bruce’s statements are of course entirely correct, but what raises my hackles is the sheer fact that they are considered necessary. Most British people, especially outside the M-25, actually understand the crucial facts about those who serve in our military very well. They do not automatically assume that someone without book-smarts is “thick”, and they prize practical knowledge and experience highly. They don’t think our soldiers volunteered because they couldn’t think of anything better to do, but because they were attracted by the mixture of adventure and self-fulfilment through service that a military career offers.

This might be easier to realize for those of us who have had more than a passing acquaintance with our serving men and women, but it is an understanding that is also not beyond the reach of most British people. This is why respect for our armed forces is always high, even if neither our politicians or many of our snobbish commentators can cough up the material or ideological goods that the military deserves. It is obvious to most British people that our soldiers are brave, committed, resourceful individuals who have chosen a mode of life which is beyond the reach of most ordinary souls, and this elicits feelings of awe, and not pity, from our population. All this ought to go without saying – unless, that is, you’re a member of the Independent’s dwindling readership.

1 comment July 20, 2009

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