Mr Obama's War for/on Pakistan-Afghanistan: Holes in the Middle

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Eighteen hours since Barack Obama laid out the strategy by which the United States will defeat Al Qa'eda and "terrorists" in Afghanistan, 24 hours after we projected both the Administration's approach and the problems with it, I have to say....

We got it right.

1. BRING ON THE MAGIC

The Administration has given the media two marvellous diversions....the headline of 4000 US trainers and the proclamation that the Administration, focusing on the threat of Al Qa’eda, is moving away from the Bush strategy of 'democracy promotion' in Afghanistan.

Obama did that and more. With the Kennedy-esque elevation of lots of aid and a boost of civilians in US programmes (not a huge boost, given the low levels of participation in the Bush years, but a symbolic "doubling"), combined with the show of military force and the harsh rhetoric against Osama's Men, the President was a masterful salesman.

The buzzword this morning is "consensus". Former Bush Administration official Peter Feaver, arch-colonialist Max Boot, and the caretaker of US power, Robert Kagan, swooned over more US boots on the ground to say, "Unlike his approach to economic matters, on national security Obama is acting in a fairly centrist and responsible manner." Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation, a strident critic of US foreign policy in recent years, thought this was a "work in progress" but it wasn't Bush's work in progress: "President Obama's new strategy for the Afghanistan-Pakistan war isn't Quaker-inspired, but it's not neocon-inspired, either." Daniel Markey of the Council on Foreign Relations told the BBC's PM programme that the Obama Administration had finally matched American resources to US intentions in the fight against Al Qa'eda.

Obama's magician's trick, with the re-production of the post-9/11 battle against bin Laden, was to keep his audience focused on how the US would triumph and divert them from against whom. Afghan and Pakistan populations disappeared before the sweeping invocation of a foreign menace threatening Asian, European, and African cities.

And not only the populations disappeared, so did the "real" political challenges that this US plan faces.

2. PUTTING THE PRESSURE ON PAKISTAN

Somehow the US has to turn the “good” elements in the Pakistani Government against the “rogue” elements in the ISI [Pakistani intelligence].

In case anyone thought Afghanistan was the first priority for Obama, his officials were quick to set the record straight. US envoy Richard Holbrooke laid out the new equation:

We have to deal with the western Pakistan problem....Our superiors would all freely admit that of all the dilemmas and challenges we face, that is going to be the most daunting...because it’s a sovereign country and there is a red line.

Even more striking, however, was the rather blunt re-statement of how the US is going to ensure a "proper" Pakistani Government and campaign against insurgents. Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN, "There are certainly indications" that Pakistani intelligence were supporting Al Qa'eda and its "Taliban" supporters in Pakistan and Afghanistan: "Fundamentally that's one of the things that have to change."

But how does Washington make that change? In the case of Afghanistan, which is not-so-sovereign-a-country, the US can almost openly manoeuvre to push aside President Hamid Karzai. With Pakistan, especially after the symbolism of the recent Long March and memories of the "democratic" martyrdom of Benazir Bhutto, the Obama Administration has to be more careful about imposing an American solution.

Of course, the President made no reference to this specific challenge yesterday. The problem is that this may not be discretion but a general befuddlement over how to move around a weak President Zardari and get the Pakistani military to be "good" and move against not only Al Qa'eda and local groups but also elements within the Islamabad power structure.

3. THE HOLE IN THE MIDDLE

The US doesn’t want to get out of Afghanistan, at least not in the near-future, so it needs a “reliable” political centre to hold together its strategy. And that is precisely what it does not have.

Washington may not have an easy solution, apart from the image of "Al Qa'eda", for the political conundrums in Pakistan. But at least Islamabad is getting attention, albeit through well-placed conversations with the press. Kabul is missing.

In the run-up to the Obama announcement, there had been talk of a political push to move aside President Karzai. That disappeared yesterday. Instead, the President indicated that the US was going to take the battle to the countryside with the vaunted fusion of "hard power" and "soft power" promoted by good liberal interventionists in recent years (the 400+ contributors to the Princeton Project on National Security, take a bow). Beat up the bad guys, train Afghan security, build up the villages, burn down the poppy fields and break up the drugs factories.

It's a big issue, of course, whether that Take It to the Villages strategy is viable. It is equally important to notice the political vacuum behind Obama's supposed comprehensive approach. We're still waiting for more on indications that the US will be talking to a variety of local elements, including "former Taliban".

And I'm waiting for the penny to drop that the Obama Administration may be trying to bypass the central Government in Kabul, the one promoted by the US for 7+ years, because it has no faith in it. That is the real significance of the symbolic fluff that Obama and Co. are moving away from a supposed "democracy promotion" of the Bush years.

4. THE UNMISTAKBLE HEAVINESS OF BREATH-HOLDING

Simon Toner, responding to our posts yesterday, offered the important analysis that Obama and his rhetoric might be implementing a sophisticated strategy in which Washington was not linking "Al Qa'eda" to local Afghan and Pakistani groups but, through the invocation of terrorism, separating it from "insurgents". Doing so, the US could then engage with the variety of local movements to search for political settlements.

In theory, that could be a promising approach. Yet even if it is pursued, I'm holding my breath over the challenge: how will the US be working, not with former/current foes, but with current/former allies? Where is the political centre (location, not ideology) of Kabul and Islamabad in this Obama grand plan?

As good as I am at holding my breath, I'm not sure I can last for the time Washington will take to address that riddle.

Full Video and Analysis: Obama Announces Pakistan-Afghanistan Strategy

Latest Post: Mr Obama’s War for/on Pakistan-Afghanistan - Holes in the Middle

President Obama has just spoken to unveil the strategy to win in Pakistan and Afghanistan. All the key points flagged up in headlines (and in our analyses today) were ticked: a "perilous situation" which would be met by the extra US training troops, a major increase in US civilian participation, the $1.5 billion in annual aid to Pakistan, and a campaign against corruption.



The language used by Obama, however, raises further concerns. He framed the campaign as one against "Al Qa'eda":

This is not simply an American problem: far from it. This is an international security challenge of the highest order. Terrorist attacks in London, in Bali were tied to Al Qa'eda and its allies in Pakistan as were attacks in North Africa and the Middle East and Islamabad and in Kabul. If there is a major attack on an Asian, European, or Africa, it too is likely to have ties to Al Qa'eda leadership in Pakistan.

Reducing all the complex political, economic, and cultural dimensions of the situations in Pakistan and Afghanistan to the bogeymen of "Al Qa'eda" may be useful for US domestic politics, but it is a serious mis-representation of the insurgencies on both sides of the border. It does nothing to advance the American approach to local groups who are not simply acolytes of Osama bin Laden.

It looks like the Global War on Terror is alive, well, and being slapped bang on top of Kabul and Islamabad.

Two-Step Analysis of Mr Obama's War Plan: Step Two in Afghanistan

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There's a cold reality in today's Obama Administration war plan, with its projection of Pakistan as Crisis Number One. Yet there's also a bit of magic: in its presentation of Crisis Number Two in Afghanistan, the Administration has given the media two marvellous diversions.

AFGHANISTAN: THE HOLE IN THE MIDDLE

The first diversion is the headline of 4000 US trainers for Afghan security forces. This will enable the Administration to proclaim that its plan is to ensure Afghanistan can protect and police itself, offering the long-term prospect of a drawdown of American forces. In reality, however, this token deployment will do little to confront the immediate situation with the insurgency.

It does, however, allow Obama and Co., after the showdown compromise with the military earlier this year over troop increases, to show that it is still committed to "tough love" in Afghanistan. The commanders have gotten most of the 30,000 extra troops they wanted, and the Administration is making it well-known that this is not an "exit strategy".

The second bit of magic is the proclamation that the Administration, focusing on the threat of Al Qa'eda, is moving away from the Bush strategy of "democracy promotion" in Afghanistan. This is --- let me see if I can find the right academic word here --- rubbish.

The Bush Administration, beyond its surface proclamations of "liberation" after the fall of the Taliban, never saw spread of democracy as the mission in Afghanistan. Once it had installed the "right" leader in Hamid Karzai (yes, I know the obvious irony, given today's situation), the Bushmen --- as any examination of their approach to "nation-building" will establish in about two second --- just wanted a military presence to keep the Taliban in check while they moved on to their top goal of knocking off Saddam Hussein.

How, then, to read this convenient fiction? It has less to do with the strategy against the Afghan insurgency and more to do with the American strategy vis-a-vis the Government in Kabul and, beyond that, some folks in Pakistan.

Sharp-eyed readers will note that there is nothing in the advance spin on the Obama plan on possible talks with "former" insurgents, even though this has been in the wind for some time. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates held out the prospect last year, and it has been conflated with the Iraq precedent of the magical "surge" and linking up with Sunni groups.

But who is to talk to these "former" insurgents or "moderate" Taliban, given that is unlikely that these groups will go into direct discussions with the US? One possibility is that President Karzai could set himself up as the interlocutor --- indeed, he has been pressing for this for some time --- but Washington no longer trusts their former front-man. Another possibility is that the negotiations could go via Pakistan, but that is even more problematic. A former CIA official spelled it out for Time magazine:

[Pakistani contacts with] people we regard as enemies are not so much trying to aid them against America as preparing for a future when Americans and NATO are no longer in Afghanistan.

But the US doesn't want to get out of Afghanistan, at least not in the near-future, so it needs a "reliable" political centre to hold together its strategy.

And that is precisely what it does not have. The Karzai Administration is not to be trusted, but Washington has no successor lined up (thus its very "un-democratic" admission that Karzai will win re-election, whether that comes in April or August, and there really should be a "Chief Executive" or "Prime Minister" to offset him). The US has given up on NATO, since European countries will not increase their military investment, which rules out another external lever (if there was any prospect it might work) for change in Kabul.

So Washington is stuck putting more troops into Afghanistan with no strategy to underpin the commitment.
The alternative is to start striking agreements with local political leaders --- again under whatever label you want to give them --- but the US is not even in the lead position in those manoeuvres. Iran, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and of course Pakistan can claim more of a foothold in various parts of Afghanistan. Perhaps more importantly, the illusion that the US can control a local movement --- the greatest magic trick of all, carried out in Petraeus Wonderland in Iraq from 2007 --- looks shaky here.

Of course, this reading may be premature. It may all come clear, without smoke and mirrors, when Hillary Clinton addresses the international summit in The Hague next week. But the more I look at this, the more it seems to a leak put out by the Obama Administration in January: if they could put in some troops, it would buy time. And then --- somewhere, somehow, much later --- they might figure out what to do.

Figuring out what to do, however, seems to be a solution via the elimination of the Pakistan "safe havens". If that is true, then more than seven years after 9-11, the magic isn't that Afghanistan is no longer to be a "democracy". The magic is that it has become sideshow.

It's a very expensive, very destructive sideshow, of course, but it's still a supporting act for the main event being set up across the border.

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The spin is in. The allies (NATO) and no-longer-allies (Afghan President Hamid Karzai, in a phone call from Barack Obama) have been briefed. So today, in time for Hillary Clinton's showcase conference on Afghanistan at The Hague and the NATO summit over the next two weeks, the grand Obama strategy on Pakistan and Afghanistan will be unveiled.

STEP 1. TO THE CORE IN PAKISTAN

That's right. All the early-Administration scrapping over Afghanistan --- how many troops? nation-building or no nation-buiding? Karzai or no Karzai? --- is still significant but it's not the priority in this plan.

"One official" fed the line to CNN: "Disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and destroy the safe haven that has developed in Pakistan and prevent it from rebuilding in Afghanistan."

Destroy in Pakistan first means the US stops "al Qaeda" in Afghanistan later.

Forget for the moment the obvious: "al Qaeda" in Afghanistan is not the primary challenge (my own suspicion is that's a spectral excuse). Give the benefit of the doubt to the Administration: attention to the safe havens is occuring because they are underpinning the Afghan insurgency --- it is not occurring as a diversion/alternative to the failure of the American political-economic-military approach in Afghanistan.

How will the destruction of these safe havens, presumably by an expansion of US airstrikes and pressure on the Pakistani military to up its ground operations, lead to stability in Pakistan?

The Administration's answer will be the accompanying increase in economic aid, tripling to $1.5 billion per year. Yet that in itself ignores the obvious: Pakistan has been receiving big, big bundles of American cash since September 2001? Given past allegations that US economic aid has been swallowed up by corruption and mis-expenditure, that it has been diverted to other projects unrelated to the "War on Terror", that the current Government of Pakistan is led by a President who has been convicted elsewhere for financial impropriety (and charged with the crime in his own country), how does this version of the Obama "stimulus package" differ from those over the last seven-plus years?

And while we're raising an eyebrow over the easy narrative of a new US-Pakistan co-operation (We Bomb; You Build), how does this square with Thursday's story from the New York Times?

The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government officials.

The support consists of money, military supplies and strategic planning guidance to Taliban commanders who are gearing up to confront the international force in Afghanistan that will soon include some 17,000 American reinforcements.

Support for the Taliban, as well as other militant groups, is coordinated by operatives inside the shadowy S Wing of Pakistan’s spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, the officials said. There is even evidence that ISI operatives meet regularly with Taliban commanders to discuss whether to intensify or scale back violence before the Afghan elections.

So somehow the US has to turn the "good" elements in the Pakistani Government against the "rogue" elements in the ISI. That lead, however, cannot come from President Asif Ali Zardari, who has effectively been sidelined both by Washington and by his internal travails. Another New York Times story tipped off the US head-scratching over a political solution:

Now, as the Obama administration completes its review of strategy toward the region this week, his sudden ascent has raised an urgent question: Can [Nawaz] Sharif, 59, a populist politician close to Islamic parties, be a reliable partner? Or will he use his popular support to blunt the military’s already fitful campaign against the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda?

Instead of working through this complex political equation, the US option will probably be to find its "good" elements in the Pakistani military, who may happen to benefit from the increased American aid. The Pakistani military commander, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, has been across the world from Washington to Kabul to Islamabad in consultations with US officials, and it is notable that CIA Director Leon Panetta was in Pakistan last Sunday for further talks.

The same General, however, has not been on board publicly with an offensive against the "safe havens", and the Pakistani Army in its limited operations in recent months has been firmly rebuffed by local forces. The default position has been a tacit acceptance of the US aerial assault, even though that has not brought a marked change in the political situation. To the contrary, the autonomy of local leaders, symbolised by the declaration of sharia law, has increased.

Could the Obama Administration really be pushing for a tacit strategic takeover by the Pakistani military? In exchange for bowing to the US demands to take a more aggressive approach to the "safe havens" in the northwest provinces and to curb the ISI, the "good" allies would get a healthy cut of US assistance and an enhanced internal power.

Mr Obama's War: Today Proves Pakistan is Number One

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The Obama Administration's long-awaited plan to solve/save Afghanistan and Pakistan is revealed today, but officials have now leaked two headline plans.

First, they have trumpeted the despatch of 4000 troops, along with civilian specialists, to train and assist Afghan police and security forces. This is more token than significant: it is a sop to the military, which got "only" 20,000+ of the 30,000 additional troops it wanted for this year, and it props up the Administration's spin that it is going to make the Afghans self-sufficient in providing their security.

Second, "the president...will call on Congress to pass a bill that triples U.S. aid to Pakistan to $1.5 billion a year over five years". The aid is not new: after 9-11, Pakistan has received up to $1 billion a year for being a "good" ally in the War on Terror.

The symbolism, however, is very new, far from token, and far from insignificant. Pakistan is going "bad", so this is aid not to reward it but to rescue it. Specifically, it is the payment to the Pakistani Government as the US tries to take out the "safe havens" in the northwest of the country.

Pakistan, not Afghanistan, is now the immediate American priority. The economic aid will be accompanied by more airstrikes and Wild West-style rewards for turning in bad guys like Baitullah Mehsud.

Only one tiny problem: there is no sign --- none --- of Washington strategy for the fundamental problem in Pakistan: how is the country's political stability to be assured?

More through the day....