Mr Obama's War: Pakistan Military, Prime Minister Act Against Zardari

Related Post: The Spin is…It’s Not Afghanistan. It’s Pakistan.

Hours after we asked, "[Is] Washington envisaging a Pakistani military running Islamabad’s policy, either behind the scenes or quite openly after toppling President Zardari?", the Asia Times offers a short-term answer:

Chief of Army Staff, General Ashfaq Parvez Kiani (pictured with US General David Petraeus)....met President Asif Ali Zardari for the first time this week --- actually twice --- after returning from Washington, where he had met with senior officials. As a result, a planned crackdown against opposition parties has been shelved.

The newspaper reports that the Punjab Assembly will be reopened; it had been closed after the disqualification of the Chief Minister, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's brother Shahbaz. And, after pressure from Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani, Zardari has given up on a plan for mobile law courts. Opposition parties feared these could be used to punish their activists during protests in forthcoming weeks.

The article continues:

On Thursday, Kiani discussed the situation at a meeting with the corps commanders - the heads of the regional army groups - and shared Washington's concerns about governance in Pakistan....This military intervention - and Gillani getting closer to the army - coincides with a drop in Zardari's popularity within his own Pakistan People's Party, the lead party in the ruling coalition.

So, does this mean Zardari is a dead President walking? This is the provocative conclusion of the report:

Although Kiani has become more active, neither the Americans nor the Pakistan army actually wants to change horses in mid-stream. Yet the country is becoming less and less governable under the present arrangement, and quick action is required.

This does not necessarily mean getting rid of Zardari, but he could well be forced to make further concessions to his political rival, former premier and opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, by giving him a share of power. If Zardari does not do this, the military's hand could be forced.

Clinton to Iran: You Can Play in the (Afghanistan) Sandbox

This is getting just a bit silly. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has wagged her finger at Iran all week, stoking up ideas of a renewed Iranian-Arab conflict, trying it on with the supposed letter to Russia linking missile defence to a cessation of support for Tehran's nuclear and missile programmes, and re-applying the label of Iran as supporter of "terrorism" (Hamas). So what is her encore?

Setting up the prospect of its first face-to-face encounter with Iran, the Obama administration has proposed a major conference on Afghanistan this month that would include Iran among the invited countries, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

“We presented the idea of what is being called a big-tent meeting, with all the parties who have a stake and an interest in Afghanistan,” she said at a news conference here after a meeting of NATO foreign ministers. “If we move forward with such a meeting, it is expected that Iran would be invited, as a neighbor of Afghanistan.”

In itself, that move is both wise and necessary. The Bush Administration never grasped, or chose to set aside, the significance of Iranian influence in the west of Afghanistan, and the recent travails of the US military --- supply lines closed, insurgency spreading, opium/heroin production out of control --- have only highlighted that Washington needs a regional strategy which includes Tehran.

But it's a bit rich, if not stupid, to do this after putting the rhetorical and diplomatic squeeze on Iran all week. The chances of a warm Iranian reception and possible attendance at the meeting, scheduled for the Netherlands on 31 March, would have been greater if the US Secretary of State had not spent the last 96 hours portraying Tehran as an untrustworthy, even pariah regime.

The resolution of this apparent contradiction in Washington policy is actually straightforward. What Clinton has attempted, rather crudely, is to define where the US will allow Iran to have influence. The Middle East, especially Israel-Palestine, is a no-go area. However, in Central Asia, Washington will accept that Iran has a role to play in logistics and support, while trying to ensure that Tehran has only a limited place in the re-arrangement of Afghan politics (and, of course, no place at all in US military operations in the centre of the country).

Clever, ain't it? Well, it would be, if you presume that Tehran will simply say, "Gee, thanks," and accept the American definition on where it is allowed to go. That's the naive response of The New York Times, which burbles, "Afghanistan may provide the most promising avenue for opening a diplomatic channel to Iran," --- and then forgets to mention Clinton's statements on the Middle East in the 1000-word article.

I could be wrong --- there might be winks, nudges, and secret discussions in which the Americans have tipped off Iranian colleagues, "OK, we're going to pose as if we really don't like you for a few days, but just go along with it until the next act" --- but I suspect the Iranian Government is going to bristle at the high-handed treatment since Monday. They may throw the Afghanistan offer back at the US; at the very least, I expect they will demand that Washington drop the hostile rhetoric on the Middle East and the Iran nuclear programme.

This latest Clinton move is the equivalent of a parent yelling at her child, "No, no, no!", then pointing the kid to the "right" place to play in. Well, I've done that, and I can tell you a litte secret:

The little b****** wouldn't stay in the sandbox.

Mr Obama's War: The Spin is...It's Not Afghanistan. It's Pakistan.

Related Post: Pakistan Military, Prime Minister Act Against Zardari

We've found an intriguing article in Time, "The Afghanistan Problem: Can Obama Avoid a Quagmire?", valuable not as much for Joe Klein's analysis as for the inside information fed to him.

The immediate impression is of an Administration effort to build up the urgency of the Afghanistan crisis. So we get a glance at the first, "pretty alarming" meeting on the country, held three days after Obama's Inauguration. Of course, the President "was extremely cool and in control", rather than screaming wildly or crying in the corner, "but some people, especially political aides like Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod who hadn't been briefed on the situation, walked out of that meeting stunned". To sum up, from another participant, "Holy s***."

No spin surprises there, but then we get good stuff. Such as that General David Petraeus, the mastermind heading US Central Command, is pissed off he didn't get his way on policy. Trashing Obama's decision not to accept the recommendations from Petraeus' review, one of the General's acolytes complains about the meetings, "You had people from the Department of Agriculture weighing in. There were too many cooks. The end result was lowest-common-denominator stuff. The usual Petraeus acuity wasn't there."

Obama's people threw the criticism right back at Petraeus, praising instead another study by General Douglas Lute, the Bush Administration's "war czar", which was "very skeptical about the Pakistani army's willingness to fight the Taliban and equally critical of the Karzai government in Afghanistan" They added, however, that the report "didn't provide much detail about what to do next".

So the President has commissioned another review, headed by US envoy Richard Holbrooke and Bruce Riedel, who was his campaign advisor on South Asia and is now outside the Administration in the Brookings Institution.

And here's the stinger. Even though that review isn't due until end of review, its conclusions (or what Obama's officials will spin as its conclusions) are already being leaked:

Afghanistan pales in comparison to the problems in Pakistan. Our primary goal has to be to shut down the al-Qaeda and Taliban safe havens on the Pakistan side of the border. If that can be accomplished, then the insurgency in Afghanistan becomes manageable.

Klein gets a bit fuzzy at this point, primarily because the Administration is still fuzzy on what a Pakistan-first effort means. It can throw in the $1.5 billion/year authorised by Congress, running over five years, in economic aid, but officials are unsure how to distribute the money to have any effect. (It is irrelevant, of course, that Pakistan has a President who was charged/convicted in various countries with corruption.)

So what to do? This paragraph offers the most enlightening, but most disturbing, scenario:

"We have to re-establish close personal relationships with the army," said a senior member of the National Security Council, who was involved in an intense series of meetings with the Pakistani military leadership during the first week of March. "We have to be sure they're on the same page as we are. Based on what I saw, they aren't yet."

So, does this mean that the Pakistani military is kicking up a fuss about the US missile strikes and proposed American strategy in the Northwest Frontier Provinces? Or does this farther, with Washington envisaging a Pakistani military running Islamabad's policy, either behind the scenes or quite openly after toppling President Zardari?

Watch this space.

In response

Persian Letters: Iran, Missile Defense, and a Clinton Power Play?

Related Post: Ms Clinton’s Wild Ride - Iran is Still Very, Very Dangerous
Related Post: Ms Clinton’s Wild Ride - A US “Grand Strategy” on Israel-Palestine-Iran?

If Hillary Clinton's proclamations this week do signal a new American approach on Iran, the initiative is already coming a bit unstuck.

On Tuesday, we noted the Obama Administration's leak to The New York Times of a letter to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, sent in January, reportedly offering to trade US missile defence plans for Moscow's abandonment of Iranian nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. We predicted the manoeuvre was a non-starter: "The Russians have no desire to link their relations with the US to a change in their position on Iran."

We should have taken that bet straight to the bookies. Within hours of the Times revelation, Medvedev was telling reporters that "any swaps...would not be productive". Obama scrambled for cover, “What I said in the letter was that obviously to the extent that we are lessening Iran’s commitment to nuclear weapons, then that reduces the pressure for, or the need for, a missile defense system."

But, with the text of the letter still secret, here's the key question: did it actually link a US pullback on missile defense to a Russian concession on Iran or did someone, possibly in Clinton's circle, make that up as part of the grand scheme she unfolded in the Middle East?

Here was the initial response from Medvedev's office: "Obama's letter contains various proposals and assessments of the current situation. But the message did not contain any specific proposals or mutually binding initiatives." That is in accord with the US President's statement, which suggests either that this is close to the truth.

We have already the US military spin furiously against the White House to push their plans on Iraq and Afghanistan. I would be far from surprised if a bloc in the State Department is doing the same here: today's New York Times drinks the Hillary Kool-Aid again, "Iran Looms Over Clinton’s Mideast Trip", making it seem as if she is merely reacting to an unexpected wave of concern from those she is meeting: "After three days of meetings in Egypt, Israel and the West Bank, Mrs. Clinton said she was struck by the depth of fear about Iran and the extent to which officials say it meddles in their affairs."

Clinton made no comment on the letter to Moscow, a wise move given Obama's reaction to the leak, but she kept up the general drumbeat: "It is important to make the case that I, and others, have been making, that we think Iran poses a threat to Europe and Russia."

So we now have the prospect that in trying to play one diplomatic hand --- mobilising support against Iran --- Clinton or someone else influential in the State Department has jeopardised another effort, the US rapprochement with Russia. In which case....

Can anyone get me in the White House when Barack welcomes Hillary back from her journey?

UPDATED Scott Lucas at the Bath LitFest

Update (5 March): A really nice post at Mr B's Blog of Bloggy Delights on the panel. Thanks for the thumbs-up both for "clear, informed messages" and for "cross-firing pub banter, albeit with professorships for beermats and transcontinental experience for session ale".

I'm setting off for a public appearance at the Bath Literary Festival tonight, sharing a panel with Bronwen Maddox of The Times and author Zia Sardar on "The World and The United States". Somehow I think my opening gambit --- "For me, the term 'anti-Americanism' is at best useless and at worst dangerous" --- may not be to their liking....

The session begins at 6 p.m at The Guildhall in Bath.