Mr Obama's War? Waiting for the US Strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan

Related Post: Afghanistan - Former Taliban Ready for Talks with US

So what is the Obama Administration's new approach to American intervention in Afghanistan and Pakistan?

Really. What is it?

Administration officials had set up the media this week for a dramatic re-launch of the US strategy, based on a series of reports for the President. The latest study, headed by Obama campaign advisor and former CIA officer Bruce Riedel, was on Obama's desk on Monday. US envoy Richard Holbrooke was holding forth for the media and briefing NATO members; less publicly, CIA Director Leon Panetta was visiting Pakistan. The President was telling 60 Minutes on Sunday night, "What we're looking for is a comprehensive strategy. And there's gotta be an exit strategy."

This spinning, however, does not add up to a new approach. For Afghanistan, there is still no detail on US troop levels, American non-military programmes, the contributions from Washington's allies. And for Pakistan, which Obama's people are now putting as Number One Crisis, there is no sense of how the expansion of missile strikes and covert operations matches up to a political approach, either towards the "sanctuaries" in the Northwest Frontier Provinces or towards the central Government in Islamabad.

What we have gotten instead from the US is vacuous cheerleading posing as "analysis". Jim Hoagland on The Washington Post wrote a love letter to "Gen. David Petraeus and diplomat Richard Holbrooke [who] are as smart as they come". Even worse, commentators like Jackson Diehl of The Washington Post and David Brooks of The New York Times have been treated to a Grand Tour of US bases in Afghanistan so they can parrot the words of American military commanders, "Over time this will work -- it has worked over and over again through history" (Diehl) and "When you put more boots on the ground, you not only augment your army’s firing power, you give it the capacity to experiment". (Brooks)

This puffery should be set aside for the leaked ideas coming out in British newspapers. The outgoing US ambassador in Afghanistan, William Wood, tells The Observer that "America would be prepared to discuss the establishment of a political party, or even election candidates representing the Taliban, as part of a political strategy that would sit alongside reinforced military efforts". The Times writes of an American approach linking economic aid, a build-up of Afghan security forces and police, and a crack-down on heroin production.

Most striking, sources tell The Guardian, "The US and its European allies are ­preparing to plant a high-profile figure in the heart of the Kabul government in a direct challenge to the Afghan president." Expecting that President Hamid Karzai will win re-election in August, despite its best efforts to build up a rival candidate, the US will insist on a "Chief Executive" or "Prime Minister".

The US strategy on Afghanistan and Pakistan --- really, what is it?

From The Archives: Hit or Miss in Pakistan (18 September 2008)

First published on our partner website Libertas:

[This] leaves only the Pakistani military, whichever way it chooses to play the hand with the Americans, as the only significant force in the country with a symbolic and real modicum of power. If Zardari protests this, the prospect of his overthrow emerges. If he accepts his emasculation, he is no more than an irrelevant figurehead. Either way, it’s an effective coup.

Last Thursday, I embarked on a new, challenging, and exciting project, working with postgraduate students at the Clinton Institute for American Studies in Dublin . Introducing a course on contemporary US foreign policy, I tried out the idea of dissecting that morning’s Page 1 story, whatever it might be, in The New York Times.

I punched in the URL and upon the large screen is the headline, “Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan”.

The opening paragraph confirmed I had more than enough for discussion, “President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.”

Well, there you go. By chance rather than design I could open the course with perhaps the most significant development in US foreign policy this year. Significant because the US Government was making clear that it was taking the war against the Afghanistan insurgency across the border into Pakistan. Even more so because the US would be fighting not just with bombs from the air but special forces on the ground. Especially so because the US would do so without the overt co-operation of the Pakistani Government.

To be blunt: on Monday, Asif Zardari finally reached his goal of becoming Prime Minister of Pakistan, a country portrayed as a steadfast ally of the US in the “War on Terror”. By Thursday, Washington didn’t give, to use the academic term, “a rat’s ass” about the thoughts of Zardari. On Monday, Pakistan’s military was portrayed as side-by-side with American counterparts; by Thursday, there was the prospect of armed clashes between the two sets of troops.

With allies like these, who needs....? You fill in the blank.

The backdrop to this story is now well-known. On 11 September 2001, the Head of Pakistan’s intelligence services, Mahmood Ahmed, was in Washington discussing co-operation with US officials. Indeed, as the planes hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ahmed was having breakfast with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. Within 24 hours, discussions had become a showdown. Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage set out a seven-point ultimatum to Ahmed. When Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf confirmation to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that the American conditions would be met, the essential alliance in the War on Terror had been established.

There were holdover tensions from Pakistan’s years of support for a liaison with the Taliban. In January 2002, Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker blew the whistle on the hundreds, maybe thousands, of Pakistanis who had fought on the wrong side and been captured by the Americans during fighting in Afghanistan . The detainees were shipped to Kunduz, from where Pakistani helicopters took them home. As US attentions turned to Iraq , the inconvenience that Osama bin Laden was also now sheltered in Pakistan ’s autonomous tribal areas as gradually accepted. Months turned into years, and President Musharraf’s attention (and that of his critics) turned to internal political/judicial matters and, eventually, the imposition of martial law.

So what has happened to re-make Pakistan from sturdy if arguably ineffectual partner of the US in regional politics and the War on Terror into obstacle to US operations? No doubt the forced handover from Musharraf to Zardari is a partial explanation; there is no sign of American faith in the reliability of the new President, who is likely to be focused on his battle with the judiciary rather than a showdown with Al Qa’eda.

The catalyst, however, is the Bush Administration’s last roll of the dice in Afghanistan. As I noted Monday, the President’s statement two weeks ago offered both victory without substance and a challenge without an answer. If the small number of US troops being pulled with Iraq belied a long-term occupation that is increasingly out of touch with political developments, the small number of US troops being sent to Afghanistan showed that the Administration has nothing but a small bandage to slap on its new Number One Emergency Case.

An extra 9000 boots on the ground won’t cover much of the problem area in Afghanistan. At most, it will allow the US to carry out well-publicised operations to clear the Taliban from villages which are likely to vulnerable during the next counter-attack of the insurgency. Put very bluntly, in the absence of effective political and economic reconstruction, Washington has to hope that local leaders and their militias are strong enough to keep the Taliban out. It’s notable, for example, that Herat in the western part of the country is relatively stable under a local regime on good terms with Iran, while Mazar-al-Sharif in the north is “secure” because of the local but forceful presence of General Dostum.

This doesn’t add up to long-term influence, however, for the Americans and it far from signals long-term authority for the Kabul Government of Hamid Karzai. So Washington gets the worst of both worlds: potential rivals reap the benefits from the areas that they control or influence while the US carries the can for instability in other regions.

Even if European governments and other allies in NATO and the International Security Assistance Force were willing to shift a token number of soldiers to the conflict zone in the south and centre of the country, that wouldn’t offer any resolution of the underlying problems. And it certainly wouldn’t address the emerging headache for the Americans and Kabul , the insurgent violence in the east along the Pakistan border.

So, if you haven’t got the troop numbers or a meaningful plan of reconstruction to bring villages into a secure nation, what do you do? Well, you resort to those limited but hopefully effectively targeted operations that “decapitate” the opposition. That means air power and that means special operations on the ground, special operations to assist with targeting of the airstrikes and special operations to liquidate the bad guys.

It is no coincidence that the “surge” in Iraq has included recently-hyped “fusion cells”, small units of specially-trained soldiers to capture and kill insurgents. And, given the incomplete if not false impression that this has made a long-term difference in Iraq the Americans will be trying to spread the model to the next battleground.

But even as this strategy covers up the problem of the lack of long-term troop numbers to “stabilise” Afghanistan, it ignores some fundamentals of special warfare. Even the Iraq example should be instructive: the “fusion cells” complement the cultivation of local leaders and their militias to secure a particular area. In Pakistan, where is that cultivation of leaders in the tribal areas going to take place? Well, given that the airstrikes and operations are alienating that leadership, their families, and their communities, the answer would be Nowhere. Tribal leaders have already responded by promising to raise forces to fight the US .

And here’s another lesson that it ignores. You can’t limit the effect of dropped bombs and elite forces trained to kill. Far more important than any ripples of stability you hope to get on the other side of the border are the waves of instability you set off in Pakistan. The warning of the Pakistani military leadership that it will opposed American ground incursions may be a bluff or even the Janus trick of giving a stern face of defending their people and sovereignty while privately giving another face of acceptance to the Americans. But, at a minimum, Zardari is exposed as a political leader with barely a shred of authority.

And, in Pakistan with its recent history, what do you think that means? I’m guessing that it leaves only the Pakistan military, whichever way it chooses to play the hand with the Americans, as the only significant force in the country with a symbolic and real modicum of power. If Zardari protests this, the prospect of his overthrow emerges. If he accepts his emasculation, he is no more than an irrelevant figurehead. Either way, it’s an effective coup.

I’ve only seen one commentator reach back for the historical parallel. In 1969/70 the Nixon Administration, frustrated at the mobility of the Vietnamese insurgency, starts the airborne demolition of Cambodia. Eventually that tearing apart of the Cambodian “sanctuary” took the ground from under the country’s leadership, and Prince Sihanouk was overthrown. The eventual victors who promised to restore sovereignty and dignity? The Khmer Rouge.

It’s not an exact replay of history, and Pakistan may not have to be reset to Year Zero. Neither, however, does the American strategy offer any advance. Seven years after promising that it would pursue the War on Terror to preserve the security and sovereignty of those were “with us”, Washington is now shredding that assurance.

Mr Obama's War: Karzai Seizes The Opening on Afghanistan

A few hours ago, we noted the distortion by The New York Times of Friday's interview with President Obama into the misleading headline, “Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of the Taliban”.

That was enough for Afghan President Hamid Karzai, however. Facing domestic political pressure, and having conceded that the Presidential election will take place in August rather than April, Karzai seized on the Times presentation to advance his own agenda:

Yesterday, Mr. Obama accepted and approved the path of peace and talks with those Afghan Taliban who he called moderates. This is a good news ... this is approval of our previous stance and we accept and praise it.

While Karzai has long advocated this approach, his immediate enthusiasm speaks more to his relationship with Washington. It will be far more difficult for the Americans to dislodge Karzai, either at the ballot box or through a political coup, if they are presented as supporters of his negotiating strategy.

Watch carefully on Monday for the Obama Administration's reaction to both the New York Times spin and Karzai's ploy.

Mr Obama's War: Playing for Time in Afghanistan

Related Post: Transcript of President Obama’s Interview with New York Times

President Obama gave a 35-minute exclusive interview to The New York Times on Friday. On the economy, it's an essential read. On foreign policy, the Times made a complete hash of its exclusive.

Despite Obama's attention to the economic crisis, the Times headlined, "Obama Ponders Outreach to Elements of the Taliban", declaring:

President Obama declared in an interview that the United States was not winning the war in Afghanistan and opened the door to a reconciliation process in which the American military would reach out to moderate elements of the Taliban, much as it did with Sunni militias in Iraq.

That is quite a scoop. Although Secretary of Defense Robert Gates raised the possibilities of such talks, it has not arisen as part of the possible Obama strategy, especially amidst the attention to the sharp increase in US troops in Afghanistan.

Only problem? It's not close to what Obama said. Here's the exchange:

Q. Do you see a time when you might be willing to reach out to more moderate elements of the Taliban, to try to peel them away, towards reconciliation?

A. I don’t want to pre-judge the review that’s currently taking place. If you talk to General Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and the Pakistani region. But the situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex. You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes. Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, so figuring all that out is going to be a much more of a challenge.

So it was the Times, not Obama, that broached the possibility of engagement with the Taliban. And the President stonewalled: yes, there had been talks with former foes in Iraq but this approach could not be simply applied to Afghanistan.

Obama's clear signal, which the Times reporters missed, was that his investment was in the review being headed by US envoy Richard Holbrooke and Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution. As we've noted, that review followed Obama's refusal to accept fully the approach --- based on three earlier reviews --- proposed by the US military.

The President may have seized the political initiative in Washington, but in Kabul the immediate issue is President Hamid Karzai's bid to hold onto power. The Obama Administration has made a public commitment to a review which includes Afghan and Pakistani participation. And possibly most importantly, the first priority for Obama and his advisors right now is Pakistan. Obama told the Times reporters:

At the heart of a new Afghanistan policy is going to be a smarter Pakistan policy. As long as you’ve got safe havens in these border regions that the Pakistani government can’t control or reach, in effective ways, we’re going to continue to see vulnerability on the afghan side of the border. And so it’s very important for us to reach out to the Pakistani government, and work with them more effectively.

The explanation for the misleading headline in the Times is an easy one. Helene Cooper, one of the two reporters writing up the interview, has a "Week in Review" piece in today's paper, "Dreaming of Splitting the Taliban". The article is based on the opinions of think-tank experts and a "European diplomat", but it has no input from an Administration official. No problem: Cooper just stuck the theme of his Week in Review analysis on top of the Obama interview, twisting the President into the inside source for the piece.

Even if the concept of talking to the moderate Taliban is one that should be supported, that's lazy journalism. So toss aside the Times fluff, keep your eyes for the moment on Pakistan, and wait --- possibly until the NATO summit at the start of April --- for a real story on an Obama strategy in Afghanistan.

Breaking News from Afghanistan: Canadian Soldiers Killed, Blast outside Bagram, Election Delayed

Three Canadian soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan, while a car bomb was detonated and a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the US airbase at Bagram, injuring several people.

Meanwhile, the Afghanistan electoral commission has rejected the attempt by President Hamid Karzai (pictured) to hold elections in April, maintaining a date of 20 August.