Afghanistan Analysis: McChrystal, Counter-Insurgency, and Blaming the Ambassador (Mull)

EA correspondent Josh Mull is the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. He also writes for Rethink Afghanistan:

Supporter's of General Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency policy are heart-broken over his firing.  Very few COINdinistas took the position that McChrystal should be permitted to undermine civilian control of policy, as he did so plainly in the Rolling Stone piece; however, they put out the line, "He's our only hope", with warnings about ruining the war effort.

They also want revenge.

The target of this vengeance is quite clear: Karl Eikenberry, US Ambassador to Afghanistan. Take a look at these snippets from across the blogosphere:

Josh Shahryar:

When McChrystal finally got troops, he had to figure out a way around Eikenberry’s meddling into what was supposed to be his operation.

Bouhammer:

So now I am waiting for that POS [piece of s***] Eikenberry to be fired along with that ineffective Holbrooke. The relationship between the military and civilian leadership in Afghanistan is a two-way street. If the Ambassador and Special Envoy don’t get along with [Afghan President] Karzai and cannot influence him or even get a meeting with him, then they need to be FIRED asap and some people need to be put into place that can be effective at their job and get along with the military leadership.

Anonymous at Danger Room:

In fact, one e-mails: “It would be a travesty if we fired McChrystal and kept Eikenberry.”

Not only is McChrystal the “only one with any sort of relationship with [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai,” says this civilian advisor to the McChrystal-led International Security Assistance Force. Eikenberry “has no plan, didn’t get COIN [counterinsurgency] when he was the commander and still doesn’t.” Plus, the advisor adds: “The Embassy hates Eik. That’s not necessarily an indictment (I’m no fan of the Embassy). But it contributes to the dysfunction and it means that half the Embassy is focused on keeping Eik in line.”

Streetwise Professor:

Eikenberry was a backstabber from day one.

See the narrative building? McChrystal was doing a good job (they've leaked red meat to give pro-McChrystal progressives some lefty cover), it was that "POS Eikenberry" and his "meddling" that are really at fault. He's a backstabber and dysfunctional. McChrystal's violation of the relationship between civilian government and the military is no longer at issue; it's practically ignored.

McChrystal and Eikenberry have been feuding for some time now, so it's no surprise he draws the most wrath from the general's dismissal. But if we actually look closer at the tension between Eikenberry and McChrystal, we see that the Eikenberry-haters are way off base. Their attacks are at best childish displays of sour grapes; at worst, they are a fundamental misunderstanding of their own strategy.

Ambassador Eikenberry is not at fault here. In fact, Eikenberry was right all along.

What is this feud between McChrystal and Eikenberry about? It's usually described very ambiguously, a disagreement over "implementation" of the strategy or something like that. But, in fact, it is a few specific actions which amount to the battle between general and ambassador over conduct of the war.

From the Washington Post:

At times their differences over strategy have been public, particularly after two of Eikenberry's cables to Washington last year were leaked to the news media. The cables warned that McChrystal's request for new troops might be counterproductive as Karzai was "not an adequate strategic partner." McChrystal's staff members were particularly upset that they weren't made aware of Eikenberry's position before he sent the cables to Washington, they said in interviews.

Eikenberry has resisted some of McChrystal's wartime experiments. The ambassador refused to release funds to expand a military effort to turn villagers into armed guards. He opposed one Army brigade's plan to form an anti-Taliban alliance with a Pashtun tribe and funnel it development money. He criticized the military's proposal to buy generators and diesel fuel for the energy-starved city of Kandahar and supported a longer-term hydroelectric dam project.

In each of these cases, including the disagreement over the energy situation in Kandahar, it's clear that Eikenberry has had a better understanding of COIN strategy, the blending of civilian nation building with military combat. Eikenberry consistently prioritized governance, rule of law, and other long-term objectives over McChrystal's short-term concerns about winning battles and killing the enemy.

Stabilizing Afghanistan, not winning battles, is what counterinsurgency is supposedly all about. And yet Eikenberry is made out to be the bad guy.

Counterinsurgency requires the dual (dueling?) roles of military leader and diplomatic leader. As COINdinistas like to say, there has to be "unity of effort." Both sides have to work together. But now what we hear from them is that the McChrystal should have had free rein to do whatever he wanted while anything Eikenberry did was "meddling", some sort of illegitimate interference with the all-important war effort. Do the sellers of COIN even understand their own strategy? It's not clear that they do.

Why would Eikenberry dare question our military leaders? Why would he see Karzai as "not an adequate strategic partner?" Possibly because Karzai is corrupt and sits atop an illegitimate government that functions only as an organized criminal enterprise?

Why would Eikenberry oppose arming and bribing local militias? Could it be because support from the military legitimizes these groups, even though they're outlaws that pillage Afghans just the same, if not worse, than the Taliban does, in addition to undermining the central government in Kabul?

Boy, that Eikenberry sure is a jerk for pointing all this stuff out.

When we add up all the leaked cables, the wartime experiments, the history of their involvement in the war, etc, we see the full picture of Eikenberry's trespasses against McChrystal.

The High Crimes and Treason of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry:

• Failing to decisively win the war in Afghanistan when all attention and resources were focused on Iraq


• Leaking important information about the war to the press


• Resisting "short-sighted" military domination of reconstruction/nation building efforts


• Opposing the escalation of 30,000 more US troops


• Criticizing the corruption and illegitimacy of Hamid Karzai


• Opposing a US strategic security guarantee with Karzai's illegitimate administration


• Opposing Karzai's CIA-narco-lord brother having a role in the government


• Opposing formation of militias which undermine the government


• Opposing bribes of development money which corrupt and distort rule of law, nation building, etc


• Opposing short-term energy solutions which are too expensive and cripple an already broken central government

Is it clear why everyone hates Eikenberry so much? No? I don't understand it either.

Don't take any of this the wrong way. Eikenberry is not a saint, a war hero, or even particularly effective in his conflicts with McChrystal. The point here is that Eikenberry was right. He was right to be transparent about strategic deliberations. He was right to oppose the military's faulty tactics. He was right to oppose the escalation of more troops. He was right about all of these arguments with McChrystal, and with the Obama administration itself.

Obviously there is plenty of room left to criticize Eikenberry and the State Department as a whole. Their continued association with criminal organisations like Blackwater all but negates any positive outcomes they might reach, and certainly erases any honor or integrity the institution might have. Corruption is a thriving malignancy throughout our development operations, from the contractors at the bottom to the sleazy crooks at the top.

Then, of course, there's the State Dept's participation in the first place in COIN, which is a deviant, militarist perversion of traditionally civilian-controlled policies like foreign aid, development, and nation building.

General McChrystal's downfall was his own making. Eikenberry should not be thrown in with that, least of all as part of some pathetic blame game by McChrystal supporters. What's at stake here is the war in Afghanistan, and that is clearly hopeless and unwinnable. Firing McChrystal didn't change the fact that the US has absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose by continuing its war in Afghanistan, and neither will the revenge-firing of Ambassador Eikenberry. To get to the root of any of these problems, to really see solutions for countering terrorism and developing a stable Afghanistan, America's longest war has to end.

Afghanistan Analysis: Assessing the National Consultative Peace Jirga (Mull)

EA correspondent Josh Mull is the Afghanistan Blogging Fellow for The Seminal and Brave New Foundation. He also writes for Rethink Afghanistan. The views expressed below are my own.

You better bite down on something, because here comes some NATO propaganda:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFiX9WsWGew[/youtube]

That wasn't so bad, was it? Very short, and they devote a fairly large chunk of time to criticism of the whole affair. It's a little pedestrian for anyone with extensive knowledge of the region, but the explanation for the jirga is accessible.


However, since the jirga has just gotten under way, it's far too early to draw any substantive conclusions about the criticism or the praise of the jirga. Even if they aren't making decisions and only building a broad consensus, it's going to take a while.

However, it's not too early to engage in that most reptilian form of analysis, gauging the "optics" of the event. How does it look? How does it register in your gut? And if we swirl our hands over the newsprint, what secrets of the future can we mystically divine?

Not much, really. Most conclusions we come to about the optics of the meeting will be rendered meaningless soon enough when the jirga wraps up and the consequences to reality begin to take shape. But just as we can live through a little NATO propaganda to learn about the jirga, we'll lower ourselves to the level of gut reactions.

Thomas Ruttig blogs his gut reaction on AAN:

The Peace Jirga that began today in Kabul, will fail its declared main aim: to establish a real national consensus on talks with the Taleban. In order to be able to, too many relevant political forces are absent - and those who attend are massively monitored and manipulated. The jirga does not bring an end – or at least a reduction - of violence closer.

Those are tough words, but again nothing has actually happened yet. Ruttig does raise some important questions, however, about exactly who and what is represented at the jirga. He explains further:

On the surface, the jirga with its 1,600 delegates bears all insignia of Afghan tribal ‘democracy’ which, although, is male-dominated. (The women were only able to push through their 20 per cent attendance quota after Western diplomats intervened – another example of ‘foreign interference’, so often blasted by Karzai.) Bearded and turbaned men from all corners of the country provide a blaze of colour that is supposed to create the impression of plurality that does not exist in reality. The delegates are rather handpicked. The main opposition party is absent and also some women rights activists boycott the jirga which they consider part of a Karzai legitimisation machine. They fear that burning issues like ‚justice’, i.e dealing with the civil war crimes, and human rights might be sacrificed for a deal with the Taleban. This shows: if a pseudo-consensus is pushed through, only new conflicts will emerge.

The intervention of Western diplomats is very important here. It wasn't 100,000 troops that got a solid victory for women's rights, it was tough negotiations. The US didn't gain anything at the barrel of a gun, and the West didn't actually do anything for the Afghans. A tiny bit of Western engagement simply made room for the Afghan women to make positive gains on their own.

After all, the Western-backed 20 percent quota pales in comparison to the benefit of actually having those voices contribute to the jirga. It should also be pointed out that the US Congress is about 20 percent women, and I don't think anyone would say they're somehow impotent or ineffectual because of their relatively small numbers. I'm less pessimistic than Ruttig when it comes to the role women will play in the jirga.

I'm also less pessimistic about the absence of the Taliban. For all its faults, this jirga could be construed as an arguably sincere effort by Karzai to reach a peaceful settlement. With the Taliban absent, and worse, attacking the meeting with suicide bombers that Mathew Hoh calls "counter-productive as they distance the [Taliban] from the Afghan people," it appears that it is Karzai who is sincere while the Taliban is only interested in war. In years past, the Taliban have at various times come to the table for talks, only to be greeted by US and/or Pakistani air strikes and arrests. Karzai appeared duplicitous, and the Taliban got the moral high ground. Now the perception is reversed, Karzai is sincere and the Taliban look malicious.

Karzai said in his speech to the jirga, "My dear Taliban, you are welcome in your own soil. Do not hurt this country, and don't destroy or kill yourselves." The Taliban looks bad, and this is all about optics. It's possible pressure from the population over these shameless attacks can bring them to the table once again, if this perception holds sway.

But what about the opposition members and activists boycotting the jirga? That can't be good, right? Well, it's not good that they have to boycott, but a boycott is still political engagement. They want rule of law, not informal consensus-building jirgas. They want accountability for civil war atrocities, past and present, and they're not willing to sacrifice those things for a simple handshake peace with the Taliban and other murderous warlords. Even though the opposition's boycott harms the jirga's legitimacy, it does raise awareness of the issue and is far better than them remaining silent.

Activist engagement may harm this specific meeting, but it shows a political vibrancy that defies the media portrayal of Afghans as helpless and unable to stand on their own. Take a look at this description of Afghan politicians running in the upcoming parliamentary elections:

“The way into parliament this time is going to be by money, having a powerful patron or armed men to issue threats. Which of those routes are these guys taking or are they hoping their fame will win them votes?” [...] “Once catapulted into parliament, they think they’ll get lots of bribes - for example, when it’s time to approve or reject the cabinet. They’re after the money.”

Sound familiar? It's eerily similar to the US government, with its system of plutocratic lobbyists and shady, backroom dealings. It's difficult to argue that President Obama taking huge contributions from Goldman Sachs and then stacking his cabinet with its employees is any different from Karzai taking bribes from powerful drug dealers (Big Poppy?) and then filling his cabinet with his closest accomplices.

Democracy is hard. Accountability is hard. It requires fierce pressure from the citizens to achieve properly, and just as Americans seek to counter the machinations of the banking lobby, Afghans must fight for accountability to counter the forces of lawlessness and corruption in their country. I agree with Ruttig that the opposition boycott looks bad for the jirga, but I also see it as a positive sign that the grassroots democracy movement in Afghanistan is alive and well.

Most telling for US policy are the Afghan activists' demands. They want accountability for crimes committed in the civil war, a civil war in which the US is most obviously taking a side. The intense military presence only exacerbates that civil war, and empowers both the corruption of Karzai and the violent rebellion of the Taliban. If the US sees Afghanistan as important to its national interests or desires any sort of positive outcome in governance, development, or human rights, and as always that is up for domestic debate, then it can achieve those outcomes without the use of the military.

A little Western pressure opens the door to the national jirga for Afghan women. Supporting a free press and fair elections can improve governance and accountability. In contrast, Obama's policy of escalating the occupation runs completely counter to those goals, as does the US refusal to deal with the civilian government of Pakistan. The effect there is the same, with more war, more terrorism, and more despotism.

So we can learn something just from the appearances of the peace jirga, indeed we may even see signs to be optimistic about the process. But, once again, the jirga hasn't actually done anything yet, so it's not really possible to come to any firm conclusions on whether it will turn out positively or negatively. What if the Afghan women in attendance are shunned and ignored by the jirga? What if the Taliban remains defiant, and continues to attack instead of negotiate? What if those activists seeking rule of law fail miserably, and Afghanistan remains a narco-state torn by civil war? Our perception, the optics of the jirga, could change dramatically once the real consequences set in. Some optimism is not out of line, but we'll see.

In the meantime, join us on Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook page and collaborate with the tens of thousands of others around the country working to bring this war to an end.