Afghanistan-Pakistan: 5 Things Obama Will Say Tonight (and The One He Won't)

I'm not sure we had to wait 92 days --- from the delivery of the recommendations of General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama's speech tonight at the US Military Academy --- to get this outcome. It's pretty much, in substance and in rhetoric, what we've predicted throughout the autumn. But politics is politics, especially when the "easy" solution of an Afghan election to hold up as a beacon of progress didn't materialise.

So here's what America and the world gets this evening:

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1. SEND IN THE TROOPS: McChrystal asked for 40,000 more troops (though he wanted even more). He gets 30,000.

Obama will frame this as a carefully-considered compromise. He shows Presidential strength 1) in not simply giving the military its full demands and 2) delivering most of that demand as a sign of US resolve and commitment. The President carried out the same manoeuvre --- really, the very same manoeuvre --- in March.

In fact, this is effectively an adoption of McChrystal's proposal, albeit through a bit of staging. Obama will also declare that NATO is going to put in 6000 more forces. Though this is more for show than substance --- think of Britain's total of 500 additional troops --- it gets the number close to 40,000, and I suspect there will be some US "support forces" that will make their way into the package.

2. SOFT POWER, SOFT POWER, SOFT POWER: Obama will then need to skip quickly past the troop numbers, because there are a lot of folks (and not just on the "left" of the Democratic Party) who are not happy about escalation. So he will dedicate a long section of his speech to the US civilians who will be working in important sectors from agriculture to education to health care to assist Afghanistan's development.

Obama will be careful not to give numbers because someone might check the back story. Yes, this was also in the March speech, and since then, the US has only been able to get several hundred people into the field.

3. MR KARZAI, DO YOUR JOB: Obama will emphasise that the US additional effort must be matched by a sustained effort by the Afghanistan Government to cleanse itself of corruption as it takes over responsibility for security and other operations. He will say that the the US is a dedicated partner but that Kabul must be just as dedicated.

The sleight-of-hand here will be that this is a new theme in American policy. It's not: Obama made the same demands on Kabul in March, and they were repeated by his officials, notably Secretary of State Clinton, throughout the spring. But, of course, the summer was filled with stories of money going astray, political intrigue, and the failure at the show of democracy.

So this will be a "Political Ground Zero" moment: all starts anew.

4. YOU TOO, PAKISTANI GOVERNMENT (AND YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE). The political shift behind this speech, although it will not get a direct reference, is that Washington thinks it's on firmer ground with the Government in Islamabad. This is because President Zardari, after months of US effort, has effectively been pushed aside. The US wants to deal with Prime Minister Gillani and the Pakistani military, and it seems that the alliance is developing.

With this apparent political evolution, Obama will lay down the challenge for Pakistan to keep moving against the "Taliban", as it has appeared to down with summer offensives. He may even make direct reference to the Bin Laden spectre, suggesting that Pakistani forces can complete a job that was botched in 2001.

No reference, by the way, to the US drone and missile attacks: those might be effective in Washington's eyes, but it gives the appearance that Washington's military is running Pakistan's war.

5. EXTREMIST, EXTREMIST (WHO'S AN EXTREMIST?). Lots of that word in Obama's speech tonight. It's how you sell an escalation when the political and military situation is far from clear and far from winnable. So Al Qa'eda will pop up all over the rhetorical map this evening, even though it's not much of a presence in Afghanistan.

Obama's trick will be to move from Pakistan, where there are the Al Q bad guys, to the sanctuary/haven/breeding ground for extremism in Afghanistan. And there I think even his skills will be challenged: who exactly is the US fighting in the country? The word "Taliban" is the catch-all for a variety of insurgent groups: does Obama dare say that the US strategy is to split off some of those groups by negotiating with "extremists"?

WHAT HE WON'T SAY:

"We're screwed."

Sorry. No deep analysis here. Just being blunt. Even before Enduring Americawe were writing on "Watching America" on the Libertas website that the problem for Washington was the lack of a political centre to its efforts. The "hole in the doughnut" was the weakness of President Zardari and the shakiness of an Afghan Government whose authority didn't extend much beyond Kabul.

While the hole may have been filled in Pakistan, Obama is still trying to cover it with distractions in Afghanistan. If he was being real, he would declare to the US public that President Karzai might be on difficult ground in his own country but he has out-manoeuvred Washington in the last few months to assure power in Kabul, if not beyond. Those deals have kept Karzai in power, but they of course are not the battle against the "extremists".

The great and glorious myth of the American "surge" in Iraq is that throwing in more boots on the ground suddenly rescued a country from civil war. What that myth never acknowledges is that the most important political development was of a stronger central government emerging in Baghdad in 2007/8. So the US Government could bolster, with money as well as discussions, "local" Sunni militias and groups against "Al Qa'eda". All of this might be building later conflict --- what happens when those local groups and the national government compete for authority and profits? --- but by then US forces hopefully would have been able to draw down and call it victory.

No such scenario exists in Afghanistan. There is no "Al Qa'eda" spectre that can be used for the US strategy with local groups --- the contest is between an assortment of indigenous factions. There is no strong national authority.

So Washington either puts forth or supports a wondrous solution in which those factions reach an accommodation over power, one which hopefully means they won't kill each other and anyone who gets in the way (that is the option put forward by Karzai and by the Pakistani Government, though it is not clear how they would achieve this), or the US Government treads military and political water and hopes they don't get sucked down if the undertow of violence gets stronger.

I don't think the Obama Administration has a way forward on the first option, which is why the President after 92 days has finally decided to put on the public face of more troops and a largely-mythical non-military effort. Welcome then ---- over months and over years --- to the second option.

Just don't say: we're screwed.

Afghanistan: The Hole in Obama's Plan (Is There Any "There" There?)

Earlier this morning, I posted an analysis of President Obama's proposed US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, to be unveiled tonight in a speech at the US Military Academy. My overriding conclusion? "The 'hole in the doughnut'...[is] the shakiness of an Afghan Government whose authority doesn’t extend much beyond Kabul."

Moments later, I read this from Juan Cole:

Obama Partnering with Afghan Government: But is there any there there?

President Barack Obama's commitment to "finish the job" in Afghanistan by sending 55,000 US troops to that country (counting the 21,000 he dispatched last winter shortly after being inaugurated) depends heavily on a hope of building up an Afghan government and army over to which the US can eventually turn control. But one of the questions we seldom hear any detail about concerns the country's governmental capacity. Does the government function? Can it deliver services?

Afghanistan-Pakistan: 5 Things Obama Will Say Tonight (and The One He Won’t)
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As might be expected, governmental capacity is low, but here are some specifics. Months after the controversial presidential election that many Afghans consider stolen, there is no cabinet, and parliament is threatening to go on recess before confirming a new one because the president is unconstitutionally late in presenting the names. Almost no one bothers to attend the parliamentary sessions. The cabinet ministries are unable to spend the money allocated to them on things like education and rural development, and actually spent less in absolute terms last year than they did in the previous two years. Only half of the development projects for which money was allotted were even begun last year, and none was completed.

In other words, we can say of the Afghanistan government what Gertrude Stein said of her inability in later life to find her childhood home in Oakland, California: "There is no there there."

President Hamid Karzai pleaded with the lower house of parliament on Monday to delay its winter recess by one week so that he can present his final cabinet nominees for confirmation, according to Pajhwok. Speaker of the House Yunus Qanuni sniffed that the parliament was responsible for setting its own recess, implying that he would not be strong-armed by the president. (Qanuni is a Tajik formerly a leader of the Northern Alliance, and has long been a rival of Karzai, running against him in 2004; he was a counselor to Abdullah Abdullah, Karzai's main rival in the August 20 presidential election.)

But Qanuni seems to have been one of the few members of parliament who cared one way or another. Nader Khan Katawazai, an MP from Paktika, complained that only 30 of the 238 MPs attended Monday's session. This is the government we are being asked to prop up with blood and treasure? Only 30 legislators bothered to come in to work?

By law, Karzai was supposed to have presented his cabinet to parliament within two weeks of being sworn in (which was two weeks ago). Since he has been insisting he was the winner since early September, he should have had time to put together a cabinet. But he presumably had to make some substitutions once he admitted that three of his current cabinet members were under investigation for corruption. (12 other former cabinet members, having fled the country, were also being looked at for criminal prosecution.

That is the government that the US has been propping up for the last 8 years. 15 cabinet members that Interpol is looking into?

Even the non-corrupt ministers may not be confirmed by the parliament because of substantial dissatisfaction with the inability of many of them to spend the development money their ministries had in the kitty.

Seven ministries spent only 40% of their allocated budget in the past year, according to Pajhwok News. And, the sums expended on development projects declined 10% last year from the two previous years!

Let's repeat that. The Afghanistan government presides over the fifth poorest country in the world. It has millions of dollars in aid to spend for the betterment of its constituents. But it actually managed to spend less on these tasks this year than in previous years, despite having more money.

The Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development expended 10 billion Afghanis from its allocation of 22 billion Afghanis;

The Public Works Ministry spent 6 billion of 18 billion Afghanis;

The Water and Energy Ministry 9 billion of 17.6 billion Afghanis;

The Education Ministry 3 billion Afg of 8 billion Afghanis;

The Public Health Ministry: 2.3 billion out of 5.5 billion Afghanis;

The Finance Ministry spent 3.5 billion out of 5.5 billion Afghanis;

The Agriculture Ministry spent 1.5 billion out of three billion Afghanis.

The chairman of the National Economy Commission, Siddiq Ahmad Usmani, continued that 500 development projects were supposed to have been pursued last year with the 111 bn. Afgh. budget allotment, but in fact, "But work on only 263 of 500 was carried out which are yet to be completed,"

The low governmental capacity of the Afghan state bodes ill indeed for Obama's success in Afghanistan. He will be constantly looking for a reliable partner. He will find shifting quicksand.

Meanwhile, the Taliban, whom no one is accusing of apathy or inefficiency, have begun deploying donkey suicide bombs against foreign troops.