“The arguably most important lesson from the history [...]]]> Over the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a trend of people pointing to terrorist plots hatched in, for example, Europe as evidence that “safe havens” for terrorist groups do not matter. In his monograph Jihad in Saudi Arabia, Thomas Hegghammer comes to a different conclusion:

“The arguably most important lesson from the history of al-Qaida is that unhampered access to territory can dramatically increase a terrorist group’s military capability. For a start, the safe haven allowed al-Qaida to quietly plan operations on its own schedule with virtually no outside interference. Moreover, it allowed Bin Laden to build a core organisation with a relatively high degree of bureaucratisation and functional task division, which in turn improved organisational efficiency. Most important of all, territorial access enabled Bin Laden to set up an elaborate military educational system, the like of which has never been seen in the hands of a transnational terrorist organisation with such a radical agenda. This infrastructure – or “University of Global Jihadism” – greatly improved al-Qaida’s ability to operationalise recruits. The training camps are also key to understanding the characteristic organisational unity of al-Qaida, namely the simultaneous existence of a hierarchical and bureaucratic core and a much larger and looser network of camp alumni.

“Beyond increasing the recruits’ paramilitary expertise, the camps constituted an arena for social processes that improved al-Qaida’s operational capability. Many of these processes imitated those cultivated by professional military organisations. Instructors first of all sought to desensitise the recruits through intensive weapons practice and through the promotion of an ultra-masculine and weapons-fixated camp culture. Moreover, the hardship of camp life made recruits forge strong personal relationships, thus building the deep internal loyalty and trust needed for long-winded operations such as the 9/11 attacks. Finally the ‘graduates’ of these camps were imbued with self-confidence and a sense of being part of a vanguard, which turned many into leading or entrepreneurial figures in the militant communities in their home countries. In addition to these social processes came the ideological indoctrination into global jihadism. Recruits were exposed to lectures and writings of global jihadi ideologues. Instructors also encouraged anti-American statements within the camps, leading recruits to try to rhetorically outdo one another. On the whole, the alumni from these training camps were more brutal, more bound together and more anti-Western than most of their peers.”

Some context for the second paragraph is provided by Hegghammer’s prosopographical study of 197 al-Qaida recruits from Saudi Arabia. Almost all of them travelled to Afghanistan intending to fight in prominent limited conflicts such as that in Chechnya and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Only in the training camps in Afghanistan did some start becoming committed to the al-Qaida vision of a global campaign against the United States or socially recruited into other agendas. The fact that deception about al-Qaida’s actual agenda was involved, not only in fundraising, but recruitment, leads me to hate al-Qaida even more now than I did this morning.

I suspect suspicion about the “safe haven” idea results from skepticism about American policy into Afghanistan bleeding over into one of the primary rationales for our involvement there. I do not, however, draw from the work of Hegghammer and others whom I have read any especially militant conclusions. Specifically, it seems clear that al-Qaida and the Taliban themselves had different agendas, and that many within the Taliban were not keen on harboring Bin Laden’s state within a state. This is, in fact, why he ordered the assassination of the Taliban’s arch-rival Ahmad Shah Massoud ten years ago today. In addition, while it seems common sense that trained terrorists are more capable of inflicting harm than untrained ones, the point about drawing recruits into Bin Ladenism seems irrelevant now that everyone can clearly see what it is. I haven’t closely followed the war in Afghanistan for several years, but given my sense of the situation on the ground, I would not be averse to a withdrawal that involved some elements of the Taliban gaining some measure of political power in the country, along with a sufficient intelligence presence to be aware of and a willingness to act against any new “training camps” that were sufficiently threatening to U.S.’s national interests.

(Crossposted to my blog)

Related posts:

1. Our Midas Guns
2. We Chiseled and We Switched
3. Irreconcilable Differences?

1. If we withdraw or significantly reduce our military presence, the Taliban will retake Afghanistan (presumably that means the [...]]]> One justification for continuing (and possibly escalating) our military/non-military commitment in Afghanistan centers around the potential for al-Qaeda to establish safe havens in that country from which to coordinate attacks on US targets.  This al-Qaeda-based rationale rests on several assumptions that include, but perhaps are not limited to:

1. If we withdraw or significantly reduce our military presence, the Taliban will retake Afghanistan (presumably that means the Taliban will exert more control than the permanent presence it currently maintains in more than 80% of that nation’s territory).

2. If the Taliban retakes Afghanistan, they will invite al-Qaeda back in that country, allowing al-Qaeda a free range of motion akin to what existed pre-9/11 (this, despite the fact that the Taliban currently controls vast swaths of Afghan territory and most US military and intelligence leaders – including Petraeus and McChrystal – maintain that there is no serious al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan at this time).

3. A safe haven in Afghanistan is necessary for al-Qaeda to coordinate attacks against the United States (the current safe haven in Pakistan is, according to this reasoning, significantly less ideal, and the myriad small scale safe havens and potential new safe havens in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere are also substantially inferior to the potential and coveted Afghan safe haven).

4. Despite the vastly increased focus - and allocation of resources – dedicated to counterterrorism efforts on the part of the US law enforcement community, intelligence community, political leadership and military establishment, a safe haven in Afghanistan would significantly increase al-Qaeda’s ability to carry off successful attacks on US interests (the current safe haven in Pakistan, according to this reasoning, does not similarly increase al-Qaeda’s efficacy, and the myriad small scale safe havens and potential new safe havens in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere would also not augment efficacy in the same manner as the potential and coveted Afghan safe haven).

5. Even if items 1-4 are correct, the United States could not successfully disrupt Afghan safe havens from afar using air power and other targeted military strikes (with much looser rules of engagement governing air strikes, more focus and a higher priority placed on anti-terrorist operations, our posture with respect to air strikes varies greatly from the days leading up to 9/11, and such strikes have been used to great success in places like Somalia and Yemen where we maintain very light to non-existent boots-on-the-ground presence).

Without addressing items 1-5 in their entirety, there are some recent developments that call into question the likelihood of item #2 – that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back and provide them with free range of motion in terms of operations, should the Taliban exert greater control over Afghan territory.  Via Marc Lynch, Vahid Brown of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has been picking up chatter on key jihadi websites regarding a growing rift between the Taliban and al-Qaeda: 

Mullah Omar’s Afghan Taliban and al-Qa’ida’s senior leaders have been issuing some very mixed messages of late, and the online jihadi community is in an uproar, with some calling these developments “the beginning of the end of relations” between the two movements.  Beginning with a statement from Mullah Omar in September, the Afghan Taliban’s Quetta-based leadership has been emphasizing the “nationalist” character of their movement, and has sent several communications to Afghanistan’s neighbors expressing an intent to establish positive international relations. 

In what are increasingly being viewed by the forums as direct rejoinders to these sentiments, recent messages from al-Qa’ida have pointedly rejected the “national” model of revolutionary Islamism and reiterated calls for jihad against Afghanistan’s neighbors, especially Pakistan and China. However interpreted, these conflicting signals raise serious questions about the notion of an al-Qa’ida-Taliban merger. [...]

[O]ne thing is clear: the recent shift in the Quetta Shura’s strategic communications is not to al-Qa’ida’s liking, and it is raising serious concerns among the broader Salafi jihadi movement about the religio-political legitimacy of the Afghan Taliban’s leadership.

Like Marc Lynch, I would caution against interpreting these online trends as a definitive indicator of an underlying schism, but this rhetoric is not to be dismissed either.  According to Lynch:

…Brown’s post reminds me of the online furor over the Islamic State of Iraq which foreshadowed the dramatic split in the Iraqi insurgency in which key insurgency factions flipped to the U.S. side and formed the backbone of the Awakenings/ Sons of Iraq.  Back then, in the fall of 2006 through early 2007 we saw growing discord on the forums between al-Qaeda in Iraq’s umbrella group the Islamic State of Iraq and key insurgency factions.  Some of the discord focused on local complaints (ISI attacks on moderate imams), but a lot focused on this tension between the nationalist goals of the Iraqi insurgency factions (which mainly wanted to drive American forces out of Iraq) and the universalist goals of AQI (which mainly wanted to use Iraq as the base for global jihad). 

Those tensions on the forums proved to be a crucial leading indicator of real splits on the ground which energized the “Awakenings” movement.

The prospect for such a rift developing would not be outlandish either, considering the fundamental differences in outlook and orientation of the two parties involved.  While there is some religious and ideological affinity, Afghans (including Taliban) have tended to bristle at the tendency of the foreign al-Qaeda contingent to disregard the concerns, and authority, of the locals.  The Taliban’s overriding goal is to take power in Afghanistan, and maintain that power.  al-Qaeda, on the other hand, is more interested in an international religious struggle – with its primary adversary, in the near term, being the United States. 

Recall, al-Qaeda’s past strikes on the US are responsible for the Taliban losing power and suffering much hardship in the process.  The provocation of the United States, and the aftermath, angered many Taliban, and their experience facing the onslaught of the US military left an impression, to say the least.  In portions of this intriguing piece by Sami Yousafzai (which collected first hand reports by Taliban fighters), some of that animosity comes through quite clearly:

HAQQANI: Two days before the September 11 attacks on America, we were all celebrating the death of [Northern Alliance commanderAhmed Shah] Masood, [who was assassinated by Qaeda agents posing as television reporters]. His forces were already on the verge of defeat, so his death all but assured us of total victory in Afghanistan. But the September 11 attacks turned our cheer into deep concern. We gave those camels [a derogatory Afghan term for Arabs] free run of our country, and they brought us face to face with disaster. We knew the Americans would attack us in revenge.

Realizing the danger, I immediately sent my wife and children to Pakistan. The entire government started to fall apart. I never thought the Taliban would collapse so quickly and cruelly under U.S. bombs.

AKHUNDZADA: When the bombing started, I was commanding some 400 fighters on the front lines near Mazar-e Sharif. The bombs cut down our men like a reaper harvesting wheat. Bodies were dismembered. Dazed fighters were bleeding from the ears and nose from the bombs’ concussions. We couldn’t bury the dead. Our reinforcements died in their trenches. [...]

YOUNAS: …The Islamic Emirate’s collapse was like a nightmare.

I watched as wounded, disabled, and defeated Taliban fighters straggled into Wana and the surrounding villages, along with Arabs, Chechens, and Uzbeks. Every morning as I went to school I could see them wandering around town, almost like homeless beggars. Little by little, the tribal people started helping them, giving them food. Some people even took them into their houses; at first these once proud jihadis survived, thanks to the people’s charity.

The Arabs were disappointed the Taliban hadn’t stood and fought. They told me they had wanted to fight to the death. They were clearly not as distressed as the Afghans. That was understandable. The Arabs felt they had lost a battle. But the Afghans were much more devastated—they had lost their country.  [...]

HAQQANI: I admit Taliban commanders are being captured and killed, but that hasn’t stopped us, and it won’t. Our jihad is more solid and deep than individual commanders and fighters—and we are not dependent on foreigners, on the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency], or Al Qaeda. Personally I think all this talk about Al Qaeda being strong is U.S. propaganda. As far as I know, Al Qaeda is weak, and they are few in numbers. Now that we control large amounts of territory, we should have a strict code of conduct for any foreigners working with us. We can no longer allow these camels to roam freely without bridles and control.

Again, this is not to say that the Taliban would expel al-Qaeda en masseshould it consolidate its position in Afghanistan.  But it is a definite possibility considering the goals of each party, and the stakes should the Taliban continue to allow al-Qaeda to provoke retaliation from the US from Afghan soil.

Related posts:

1. Our Midas Guns
2. We Chiseled and We Switched
3. The Af-Pak Unpack

As it devises a New Afghanistan policy, the [...]]]> The New York Times, to its credit, attempts to dispel some of the stubborn misinformation concerning the interchangeability (or lack thereof) of the Afghan Taliban faction and Pakistani Taliban faction.  Contrary to popular and pervasive fictions, these two groups are quite distinct in terms of strategy and objectives.

As it devises a New Afghanistan policy, the Obama administration confronts a complex geopolitical puzzle: two embattled governments, in Afghanistan and Pakistan; numerous militias aligned with overlapping Islamist factions; and hidden in the factions’ midst, the foe that brought the United States to the region eight years ago, Al Qaeda.

But at the core of the tangle are the two Taliban movements, Afghan and Pakistani. They share an ideology and a dominant Pashtun ethnicity, but they have such different histories, structures and goals that the common name may be more misleading than illuminating, some regional specialists say.

“The fact that they have the same name causes all kinds of confusion,” said Gilles Dorronsoro, a French scholar of South Asia currently at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.

This week, Mr. Dorronsoro said, as the Pakistani Army began a major offensive against the Pakistani Taliban, many Americans thought incorrectly that the assault was against the Afghan Taliban, the force that is causing Washington to consider sending more troops to Afghanistan. [...]

Alex Strick van Linschoten, a Dutch researcher who lives in Kandahar, in the heart of the Afghan Taliban’s power base, said that while leaders of the two Taliban groups might say that they share common interests, the two movements are quite separate.

“To be honest, the Taliban commanders and groups on the ground in Afghanistan couldn’t care less what’s happening to their Pakistani brothers across the border,” said Mr. Strick van Linschoten, who has interviewed many current and former members of the Afghan Taliban. [...]

Mr. Dorronsoro…said the Afghan Taliban were a “genuine national movement” incorporating not only a broad network of fighters, but also a shadow government-in-waiting in many provinces.

By comparison, he said, the Pakistani Taliban were a far looser coalition, united mainly by their enmity toward the Pakistani government. They emerged formally only in 2007 as a separate force led by Baitullah Mehsud under the name Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or Students’ Movement of Pakistan.

Illuminating the divergence, fissures have begun to develop between the two as a result of their conflicting agendas:

In fact, the recent attacks of the Pakistani Taliban against Pakistan’s government, military and police, in anticipation of the army’s current campaign into the Pakistani Taliban’s base in South Waziristan, may have strained relations with the Afghan Taliban, said Richard Barrett, a former British intelligence officer who tracks Al Qaeda and the Taliban for the United Nations.

The Afghan Taliban have always had a close relationship with Pakistani intelligence agencies, Mr. Barrett said recently. “They don’t like the way that the Pakistan Taliban has been fighting the Pakistan government and causing a whole load of problems there,” he said.

The Afghan Taliban, whose group is by far the older of the two forces, have been led by Mullah Muhammad Omar since he founded the movement in 1994. They seeks to regain the power they held over most of Afghanistan before being ousted by the American invasion of 2001.

In an interview this week, speaking on the condition of anonymity, an Afghan Taliban commander expressed sympathy for the Pakistani Taliban, but said, “There will not be any support from us.” He said the Afghan Taliban “don’t have any interest in fighting against other countries.”

“Our aim was, and is, to get the occupation forces out and not to get into a fight with a Muslim army,” the commander added.

It would be foolish in the extreme to ignore the fundamental differences between the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban factions, and the significance each holds for Pakistan.  In this, we can inform our understanding by observing the policies of the Pakistanis – who are able to grasp, and take advantage of, these distinctions. 

For Pakistan, the Afghan Taliban are a useful proxy, and a means of creating regional balance with India.  The Pakistani branch is a nuisance in that Pakistani factions have begun to clash with Pakistani state forces in recent years, with such clashes in reaction, at least in part, to armed incursions in their territory by US and Pakistani military.  Thus, key elements of the Pakistani state continue to support the Afghan Taliban, while the Pakistani factions are targeted (but even then, only half-heartedly) by that same state. 

Because the Afghan Taliban is animated by a desire to regain control of Afghanistan, because it has little interest in conquering Pakistani territory (and, more importantly, it lacks the ability) and because it recognizes that its survival is dependent on support from the Pakistani government, the Afghan Taliban does not and will not turn on its benefactor in order to take up the cause of the Pakistani militants.  If anything, tensions have grown between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliba.

Establishing a baseline understanding of the make-up and motivations of the various militant factions is essential to devising a plausible strategy for stabilizing the region.  However, while necessary, such knowledge is not exactly sufficient.  The ability of any occupier to successfully manipulate such a complex and overlapping matrix of tribes, regional powers and other factions is dubious at best. For the United States, situated half a world away, and at a severe disadvantage in terms of regional understanding and perception amongst the local population, the odds are even longer.  From the same Times piece:

For the United States, regional experts say, the long-term challenge is to devise policies that peel away as many militants as possible from both Taliban forces, isolating Al Qaeda and other hard-liners and strengthening the Pakistani and Afghan governments. But for a non-Muslim superpower, widely resented in the region, that is a tall order. [emphasis added]

“At the moment the ground isn’t very well prepared for splitting the militant groups,” said Stephen Biddle, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who spent a month last summer in Afghanistan. “The security trends are running in their favor.”

While Biddle is right about the difficulties that the United States faces even if leaders on the ground and in Washington develop a deeper understanding of the web of militants, it was Biddle himself who recently penned a piece arguing for prolonging the occupation based on, what seems, a fundamental misreading of the motivating principles of those same groups.  Said Biddle:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

To which I responded:

But Biddle overstates the quality of the threat posed by Afghan Talibs in terms of destabilizing the Pakistani state.  The [Afghan] Taliban have long been on the receiving end of Pakistani government largess.  They have been cultivated as a proxy and ally useful in terms of creating a strategic redoubt in case of conflict with India, and in further establishing an anti-Indian front in the region.  In fact, much of their tenacity and success in Afghanistan today (and previously) is attributable to the ongoing support of their Pakistani patrons. 

That is the nature of the Afghan Taliban: a local phenomenon benefiting from the generosity of foreign benefactors.  As such, the Afghan Taliban enjoys limited reach and power – especially if it were to actually turn on those same foreign benefactors.  Along those lines, what exactly are the Afghan “state’s resources” that are supposed to threaten Pakistan (whose military and security forces are far more numerous, vastly better equipped, well trained, etc)?  The Afghan state (and various militant factions) have limited economic and military resources – and much of what they have comes from…Pakistan.

This tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it.  That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that we are, according to Biddle, supposed to be protecting Pakistan from.  Maybe they know something we don’t?

Maybe indeed.

Related posts:

1. Our Midas Guns
2. Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan
3. Premature Evacuation?

India’s new ambassador to the United States, Meera Shankar, told the [...]]]> James Joyner passes along some rather unremarkable news about India’s views on the ongoing US occupation of Afghanistan - unremarkable news given the regional dynamic that pits India (in support of the Karzai government) against Pakistan (who had strongly backed the Taliban as its proxy/ally in Afghanistan):

India’s new ambassador to the United States, Meera Shankar, told the Atlantic Council that her government believes it is “imperative that the United States stay the course” in Afghanistan even while conceding that “stability will require a sustained engagement.” 

This is not, I am assured by Shuja Nawaz, the director of our South Asia Center, breaking news. It’s a reiteration of India’s longstanding position. 

Right, not surprising at all, again, given the Pakistan/India relationship.  Oddly, though, Joyner fails to acknowledge the elephant in the room.

It’s a view in fact shared by all the key governments of the region, notably including Afghanistan’s. 

Actually, not all the key governments of the region share the view that the US should remain in the region with a massive military presence in support of an India-friendly regime in Afghanistan.  I can think of one that is kind of important, shares a common border with Afghanistan, common ethnic and tribal groups, some spillover of the conflict, etc.  Joyner, however, continues to ignore Pakistan:

Alas, as is by now clear to regular readers of this site, it is not regional opposition that threatens to prematurely end the ISAF mission in Afghanistan but rather faltering commitment in the United States, Europe, and other Coalition countries.

Well, Pakistani opposition is a pretty significant factor in making the mission, whatever that may be at any given moment, exceedingly difficult.  Further, what does it mean to say that the mission could “prematurely” end?  We’ve been at it for about 8 years now, with no immediate end in sight.  Even if Obama were to set a two year timetable some time after or during the recent escalation, we’d be looking at a campaign lasting 10-12 years, costing in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars and leading to thousands of US (and many more Afghani) lives lost. 

One man’s premature is another man’s long overdue I suppose.  To his credit (and I really am fond of his work), Joyneris honest enough about the timeline of what a fully mature commitment would look like: “decades, not years.”  But why something short of a quarter century military occupation of Afghanistan should be seen as a “premature” end to this occupation, at least from an American perspective, is baffling.  India, on the other hand, has a different outlook.

Related posts:

1. Our Midas Guns
2. You Probably Think this War is About You
3. Well, One Out of Three Ain’t Bad

“Early in (2008) it was revealed by the BBC that several hundred UAE Armed Forces’ troops and armoured cars had been deployed to Afghanistan to maintain supply line security and deliver humanitarian aid.  On occasion this contingent has had to fend off Taleban attacks [...]]]> From Christopher Davidson’s new book Abu Dhabi: Oil and Beyond:

“Early in (2008) it was revealed by the BBC that several hundred UAE Armed Forces’ troops and armoured cars had been deployed to Afghanistan to maintain supply line security and deliver humanitarian aid.  On occasion this contingent has had to fend off Taleban attacks thus making it the only Arab force in Afghanistan that is actually engaging the enemy.  The commanding officer stated ‘if we have any types of personal attacks we react with fire.  And after that we go to the elders in this area  and say: “Why are you shooting us?  We came here to help you.”  And we try to convince the people about the US, about British.  They came to give peace.’”

Does anyone remember the anti-UAE outcry from the Dubai Ports World affair?

Related posts:

1. Engaging the Muslim World: Overview
2. Aluf Benn and Reality
3. Moslehi on Rafsanjani

The U.S. invasion has been a failure, and increasing the U.S. troop presence will not undo the destruction the war has brought to the daily lives of Afghans.

…[T]he tired claim that one of the chief objectives [...]]]> Some Afghan women don’t seem to appreciate all the freedom and democracy that we’ve been bringing:

The U.S. invasion has been a failure, and increasing the U.S. troop presence will not undo the destruction the war has brought to the daily lives of Afghans.

…[T]he tired claim that one of the chief objectives of the military occupation of Afghanistan is to liberate Afghan women is not only absurd, it is offensive.

Waging war does not lead to the liberation of women anywhere. Women always disproportionately suffer the effects of war, and to think that women’s rights can be won with bullets and bloodshed is a position dangerous in its naïveté…

Here are the facts: After the invasion, Americans received reports that newly liberated women had cast off their burquas and gone back to work. Those reports were mythmaking and propaganda. Aside from a small number of women in Kabul, life for Afghan women since the fall of the Taliban has remained the same or become much worse.

Under the Taliban, women were confined to their homes. They were not allowed to work or attend school. They were poor and without rights. They had no access to clean water or medical care, and they were forced into marriages, often as children.

Today, women in the vast majority of Afghanistan live in precisely the same conditions, with one notable difference: they are surrounded by war. The conflict outside their doorsteps endangers their lives and those of their families. It does not bring them rights in the household or in public, and it confines them even further to the prison of their own homes. Military escalation is just going to bring more tragedy to the women of Afghanistan.

In the past few years, some cosmetic changes were made regarding Afghan women. The establishment of a Ministry of Women’s Affairs was one celebrated example. In fact, this ministry is so useless many think that it should be dissolved.

The quota for 25 percent women in the Afghan parliament was another such show. Although there are 67 women in the Afghan parliament, most of them are pro-warlord and are themselves enemies of women’s rights. When the famed marriage rape law was passed in the parliament, none of them seriously raised their voice against it. Malalai Joya, an outspoken feminist in the parliament at the time, has said that she has been abused and threatened by these pro-warlord women in the parliament.

The U.S. military may have removed the Taliban, but it installed warlords who are as anti-woman and as criminal as the Taliban. Misogynistic, patriarchal views are now embodied by the Afghan cabinet, they are expressed in the courts, and they are embodied by President Hamid Karzai.

Paper gains for women’s rights mean nothing when, according to the chief justice of the Afghan Supreme Court, the only two rights women are guaranteed by the constitution are the right to obey their husbands and the right to pray, but not in a mosque.

These are the convictions of the government the U.S. has helped to create. The American presence in Afghanistan will do nothing to diminish them.

Sadly, as horrifying as the status of women in Afghanistan may sound to those of us who live in the West, the biggest problems faced by Afghan women are not related to patriarchy. Their biggest problem is war.

More than 2,000 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2008. And disastrous air strikes like the one in Farah province in May that killed an estimated 120 people — many of them women and children — are pushing the death toll ever higher. Afghans who survive these attacks often flee to cities, where overcrowded refugee camps strain to accommodate them. Living in tents without food, water and often blankets, the mortality rate soars.

For those who do not flee, life is not better. One in three Afghans suffers from severe poverty. With a 1 in 55 chance of mothers surviving delivery, Afghanistan has been, and still, is the second most dangerous place for women to give birth. Afghan infants still face a 25 percent risk of dying before their fifth birthdays. These are the consequences of war.

…To make matters worse, corruption in the Afghan government has never been so prevalent — even under the Taliban. Now, even Western sources say that only pennies of every dollar spent on aid reach the people who need it.

If coalition forces are really concerned about women, these are the problems that must be addressed. The military establishment claims that it must win the military victory first, and then the U.S. will take care of humanitarian needs. But they have it backward.

…The first step toward improving people’s lives is a negotiated settlement to end the war.

In our conversations arguing this point, we are told that the U.S. cannot leave Afghanistan because of what will happen to women if they go. Let us be clear: Women are being gang raped, brutalized and killed in Afghanistan. Forced marriages continue, and more women than ever are being forced into prostitution — often to meet the demand of foreign troops.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is doing nothing to protect Afghan women. The level of self-immolation among women was never as high as it is now. When there is no justice for women, they find no other way out but suicide.

There, there, that’s nothing that 45,000 more troops and a few decades more of war can’t solve.  But seriously, the authors do highlight one of the primary obstacles to creating a liberal-ish government that will safeguard women’s rights in Afghanistan: there are no major political factions, or constituencies, that would push for – or even support – such a government.

Even our ostensible allies – the warlords that we back in order to fend off the backwards Taliban – espouse views of women and women’s rights that are in essence, and in many instances, literally, indistinguishable from the Taliban.  And in pursuit of propping up this corrupt, warlord dominated, misogynistic government, we are killing thousands of Afghans – including and especially women and children.  In addition to creating conditions that lead to more and unspeakable hardships for those same women.

Wars have a tendency to do that.  Even the “good” ones.

[UPDATE: Via Rob Farley, some more magical thinking with respect to the appreciation people have for being bombed, and those that drop them:

What we don’t know is if a successful Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities would discredit the regime to the point that it would be forced out of power or if such an attack would be used to discredit the opposition, causing Iranians to close ranks behind their extremist leaders. 

Actually, “we” do know how the Iranian people would respond to an attack by Israel.  And it wouldn’t be to give the Israelis a free pass while blaming their own government for…getting bombed by a country that the Iranians don’t exactly hold in high regard.  Even if it was the US doing the bombing, there would not be a collective, “Thank you sirs, may we have another.”  But with Israel on the delivery end of the ordnance, it’s the ultimate no-brainer.  But hey, maybe we can blame them afterwards for showing insufficient gratitude.

Related posts:

1. Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan
2. For the Good of the People
3. Irreconcilable Differences?

Suppose the U.S. succeeded beyond all its wildest expectations, and turned Afghanistan into Nirvana on Earth, an orderly, high GDP nirvana with universal health care and a robust wireless network (and even suppose that it did this without the expense depriving Americans of the same things).  So what? [...]]]> Marc Lynch makes a very good point:

Suppose the U.S. succeeded beyond all its wildest expectations, and turned Afghanistan into Nirvana on Earth, an orderly, high GDP nirvana with universal health care and a robust wireless network (and even suppose that it did this without the expense depriving Americans of the same things).  So what? Al-Qaeda (or what we call al-Qaeda) could easily migrate to Somalia, to Yemen, deeper into Pakistan, into the Caucasas, into Africa — into a near infinite potential pool of ungoverned or semi-governed spaces with potentially supportive environments.  Are we to commit the United States to bringing effective governance and free wireless to the entire world?  On whose budget?  To his credit, McChrystal adviser Steve Biddle raises all of these questions in his excellent American Interest article from last month — but in my view goes wrong by limiting the policy options to either full withdrawal or full commitment to COIN.

Right.  It’s not like al-Qaeda is confined to this little sliver of land in South Asia such that, once that narrow stretch of land is magically pacified and completely reordered, al-Qaeda will cease to exist.  Thus, as Lynch points out, the game of nation build-a-mole will have to continue in a new setting.  And at a couple trillion dollars a pop, we don’t have the money.  Further, al-Qaeda (and its viral ideology) has penetrated Western Europe and other regions not in need of nation building.  So even if at the end of a century and $50 trillion dollars or so, we managed to purge the globe of potential havens, the problem would persist.

This, for my money (taxpayers too), is the right approach:

Another option which used to be on the table, as I understood it, was a much more narrowly focused policy of keeping the pressure on al-Qaeda while letting Afghan politics sort itself out.  But from my distance, at least, it seems that this approach is being overwhelmed by those arguing for a much more expansive mission (as Michael Cohen has been documenting for a while under the category title “Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch”). And that worries me.   I see why keeping al-Qaeda on the ropes matters.  But I just don’t really see why trying to build an Afghan state is a significant American national interest, or that it can be done at a price commensurate to its significance.   

I fear that the escalation of the war in Afghanistan is following a dangerous path of least resistance.  Given the assignment to win the war in Afghanistan, of course a military which has been reshaped by its experience in Iraq will turn to COIN doctrine.  Once the decision is made to apply a COIN approach, of course the military is going to ask for more troops there, and a long commitment, since it’s always been obvious that really doing COIN in Afghanistan would require vastly more troops than are currently deployed.  And then, at each step of the way, there will be a strong tactical argument for expansion and a very difficult sell for any attempt to argue for restraint. Once that iron logic has been accepted, all else follows — and it becomes extremely difficult to reverse course. 

But I remain far from convinced that COIN is the right approach, especially when compared not to total U.S. withdrawal but to a more minimalist strategy.  The attraction of COIN seems to derive from learning only partial lessons from Iraq — conveniently forgetting that the “surge” and COIN were only one of a number of factors contributing to the changing conditions there, along with the Sunni turn against al-Qaeda which long predated the “surge” and the near-completion of sectarian cleansing in many urban areas, and that its long-term success in Iraq is far from guaranteed. And Afghanistan, as should be obvious, is very different from Iraq.   Its advocates argue that this simply means that the approach needs to be adapted to the local conditions and the mission adequately resourced.  I’m not at all convinced. 

No, neither am I.  This is something to think about given a couple other pertinent news items of the day.  First, Anthony Cordesman (who is acting as one of McChrystal’s advisors) is recommending a substantial escalation:

Anthony Cordesman, an influential American academic who is a member of a team that has been advising General Stanley McChrystal, now in charge of Nato forces in Afghanistan, also said that to deal with the threat from the Taleban the size of the Afghan National Army might have to increase to 240,000.

If Mr Cordesman’s recommendation reflects the view of General McChrystal, who recently presented the findings of a 60-day review of Afghanistan strategy to Washington, it would mean sending another nine combat brigades, comprising 45,000 American troops, in addition to the 21,000 already approved by President Obama. This would bring the total American military presence in Afghanistan to about 100,000, considerably closer to the force that was deployed for the counter-insurgency campaign in Iraq.

Here’s Steve Hynd on another:

Forty more years of occupation – that’s what the next head of the British Army, General Sir David Richards, is predicting. And he also predicts that US and British troops will be actively fighting there for “the medium term”, i.e. about 15-20 years…

Before American readers dismiss Richards’ prediction as “not invented here”, I’ll remind them that back in 2004 everyone in the U.S. was talking about a possible pullout from Iraq after elections in 2005 – but that the British Army said it was planning to be there until at least late 2008. They turned out to be more honest about prospects then than any American politician, pundit or general. The British Army finally left Iraq in mid-2009.

I expect the same on current timelines for Afghanistan, where American officials have been notoriously averse to estimates of how long the “long war” will actually take. Even now, they’re hedging their bets – but the estimate of David Kilcullen…that the U.S. will be enmired for at least a decade at a cost that will eventually eclipse even the trillion-plus spent on Iraq has become one they cannot ignore.

Imagine how much more incredibly costly in both blood and treasure FORTY years will be. And for what?

And then imagine what it will cost when we have to do it all over again in Somalia, Yemen, deeper into Pakistan, into the Caucasas, other parts of Africa, etc.  This is not an efficient or effective way to fight terrorism.  But it is what Osama bin Laden had in mind when he set out a strategy to bleed America dry and induce our decline.  Maybe we should consider an alternative to Osama’s playbook?

Related posts:

1. Start Another Fire and Watch It Slowly Die
2. We Chiseled and We Switched
3. In Tatters, Shattered

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, [Stewart]has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s [...]]]> Quote of the day material from Rory Stewart who cleverly sums up the mindset of our "strategic class" – an echelon of "experts" that establish a disturbing level of continuity in outlook from one administration to the next, Republican or Democratic:

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, [Stewart]has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s administration, including Hillary Clinton, and is a member of Richard Holbrooke’s special committee for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. “I do a lot of work with policymakers, but how much effect am I having?” he asks…

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says …’”

Well, that and we’ve got a better driver for the plummet.  Stewart continues:

On the day we meet, the New York Times reports that it looks as if Obama’s policy of increasing troops in Afghanistan will work. Stewart has a different take. “The policy of troop increases will look ridiculous in 30 years,” he says. “They’re not going to make America safer from al-Qaeda. The theory of state-building is suspect. I’m not sure that the state they aim for is conceivable, let alone achievable. We should be pursuing a much more conventional development strategy in Afghanistan. And, if you want to combine that with a Special Forces unit that would make things uncomfortable for Osama bin Laden, then so be it.” He sighs. “But you can’t say that sort of thing to the policymakers. They’re grand, intelligent, busy people who have no interest in this kind of abstraction. They’re not interested in values, virtue, outlook …

Or "Very Serious People," to use the parlance of our times. 

Related posts:

1. We Chiseled and We Switched
2. Premature Evacuation?
3. Can’t Write Them Out of the Script Entirely

As suggested, Biddle is [...]]]> Stephen Biddle’s recent piece on Afghanistan seeks to probe the question asked in the title, Is It Worth It? Biddle’s answer is a tepid, tentative "yes." In his words, our ongoing military campaign in Afghanistan represents "a war effort that is costly, risky and worth waging—but only barely so."

As suggested, Biddle is certainly no optimist about our prospects for "victory" in Afghanistan – although, to his credit, he narrows down the criteria to two modest goals when compared to some of the other more grandiose designs associated with the mission since its inception.

The United States has two primary national interests in this conflict: that Afghanistan never again become a haven for terrorism against the United States, and that chaos in Afghanistan not destabilize its neighbors, especially Pakistan. Neither interest can be dismissed, but both have limits as casus belli.

Biddle quickly abandons the first rationale, however, describing it as the "weakest" reason to wage a war considering the fact that: (a) there is no guarantee that the Taliban would welcome al-Qaeda back if the US departs and the Taliban dominates; (b) we can disrupt so-called safe-havens by taking measures far short of all out war; and (c) there are more attractive safe havens available in several other settings, and waging war to shut them down as they crop up is unrealistic in the extreme (also: a key part of Osama Bin Laden’s strategy of bleeding our resources by goading us into costly campaigns across the globe) – arguments that this site has been making with some frequency.

Which leaves us with the second rationale alone, about which Biddle has this to say:

Pakistani state collapse, moreover, is a danger over which the United States has only limited influence. We have uneven and historically fraught relations with the Pakistani military and intelligence services, and our ties with the civilian government of the moment can be no more efficacious than that government’s own sway over the country. The United States is too unpopular with the Pakistani public to have any meaningful prospect of deploying major ground forces there to assist the government in counterinsurgency. U.S. air strikes can harass insurgents and terrorists within Pakistan, but the inevitable collateral damage arouses harsh public opposition that could itself threaten the weak government’s stability. U.S. aid is easily (and routinely) diverted to purposes other than countering Islamist insurgents, such as the maintenance of military counterweights to India, graft and patronage, or even support for Islamist groups seen by Pakistani authorities as potential allies against India. U.S. assistance to Pakistan can—and should—be made conditional on progress in countering insurgents, but if these conditions are too harsh, Pakistan might reject the terms, thus removing our leverage in the process. Demanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only sets the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding.

If we cannot reliably influence Pakistan for the better, we should at least heed the Hippocratic Oath: Do no harm. With so little actual leverage, we cannot afford to make the problem any worse than it already is.

That is a very accurate, objective analysis of the situation: our influence in Pakistan is limited; we are extremely unpopular; the use of our military assets engenders resistance and radicalization; Pakistan is more pre-occupied with India; and the Pakistani government is not fully committed to combating those Taliban elements and radicals that it has used, and continues to use, as anti-Indian proxies in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Given those factors, one could easily see that, since our primary mission should be to "do no harm" in terms of destabilizing Pakistan, we should cease our US-centric (which runs counter to Pakistan’s focus), heavy-handed, military interference in the region. After all, our influence is limited, and due to our lack of popularity, and the radicalizing effects of our presence and military campaign, we aren’t furthering our goals but undermining them. Biddle, however, comes to the opposite conclusion:

If the Taliban regained control of the Afghan state, their ability to use the state’s resources to destabilize the secular government in Pakistan would increase the risk of state collapse there. Analysts have made much of the threat that Pakistani Taliban base camps pose to the stability of the government in Kabul, but the danger works both ways: Instability in Afghanistan also poses a serious threat to the secular civilian government in Pakistan. This is the single greatest U.S. interest in Afghanistan: to prevent it from aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems and magnifying the danger of an al-Qaeda nuclear-armed sanctuary there.

But Biddle overstates the quality of the threat posed by Afghan Talibs in terms of destabilizing the Pakistani state. The Taliban have long been on the receiving end of Pakistani government largess. They have been cultivated as a proxy and ally useful in terms of creating a strategic redoubt in case of conflict with India, and in further establishing an anti-Indian front in the region. In fact, much of their tenacity and success in Afghanistan today (and previously) is attributable to the ongoing support of their Pakistani patrons.

That is the nature of the Afghan Taliban: a local phenomenon benefiting from the generosity of foreign benefactors. As such, the Afghan Taliban enjoys limited reach and power – especially if it were to actually turn on those same foreign benefactors. Along those lines, what exactly are the Afghan "state’s resources" that are supposed to threaten Pakistan (whose military and security forces are far more numerous, vastly better equipped, well trained, etc)? The Afghan state (and various militant factions) have limited economic and military resources – and much of what they have comes from…Pakistan.

This tail is just not capable of wagging the dog, and the Pakistani government knows it. That is why that government continues to support those same Afghan Taliban factions that we are, according to Biddle, supposed to be protecting Pakistan from. Maybe they know something we don’t?

Further, Biddle takes it as a given that our ongoing military operations in Afghanistan serve to stabilize the situation in Pakistan without even acknowledging – let alone discussing – the obvious counterpoint: what if our seven+ year military campaign in neighboring Afghanistan (targeting Pakistan’s longtime ally), with US forces frequently striking Pakistani territory itself, was actually "aggravating Pakistan’s internal problems."

What if, in asking the Pakistanis to cooperate in the neutralizing of their proxies and in the empowerment of a new regime friendly to India, we were "[d]emanding conditions that the Pakistani government ultimately accepts but cannot reasonably fulfill only set[ting] the stage for recrimination and misunderstanding." Is there any chance that bending the Pakistani government to our agenda – which cuts against its own interests – could cause political problems for that same government?

Shouldn’t we at least acknowledge the possibility that wars and occupations often have a radicalizing, destabilizing effect with myriad unintended consequences throughout the war zones? The Pakistani government is certainly sounding the alarm: [more after the jump]

Pakistan is objecting to expanded American combat operations in neighboring Afghanistan, creating new fissures in the alliance with Washington at a critical juncture when thousands of new American forces are arriving in the region.

Pakistani officials have told the Obama administration that the Marines fighting the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will force militants across the border into Pakistan, with the potential to further inflame the troubled province of Baluchistan, according to Pakistani intelligence officials. [...]

The country’s perspective was given in a nearly two-hour briefing on Friday for The New York Times by senior analysts and officials of Pakistan’s main spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence…The main themes of the briefing were echoed in conversations with several military officers over the past few days.

One of the first briefing slides read, in part: “The surge in Afghanistan will further reinforce the perception of a foreign occupation of Afghanistan. It will result in more civilian casualties; further alienate local population. Thus more local resistance to foreign troops.”

One obvious rebuttal is that the Pakistani government is exaggerating these threats because it is trying to cut short US operations against the Pakistan-friendly Afghan Taliban, and it is wary of an India-friendly Karzai government consolidating power in Kabul. But the implications of that possibility should offer no comfort: it would mean that the Pakistani government is more intent on protecting the Taliban, and preserving its influence via the Taliban in Afghanistan, than it is in advancing US interests (which are diametrically opposed). If that’s the case (and it seems likely), and our success in terms of stabilizing Afghanistan is dependent on the Pakistani government’s cooperation with our agenda instead, then we are pursuing a lost cause.

The Pakistani account made clear that even as the United States recommits troops and other resources to take on a growing Taliban threat, Pakistani officials still consider India their top priority and the Taliban militants a problem that can be negotiated. In the long term, the Taliban in Afghanistan may even remain potential allies for Pakistan, as they were in the past, once the United States leaves.

The Pakistani officials gave views starkly different from those of American officials regarding the threat presented by top Taliban commanders, some of whom the Americans say have long taken refuge on the Pakistani side of the border.

Recent Pakistani military operations against Taliban in the Swat Valley and parts of the tribal areas have done little to close the gap in perceptions.

Even as Obama administration officials praise the operations, they express frustration that Pakistan is failing to act against the full array of Islamic militants using the country as a base.

Instead, they say, Pakistani authorities have chosen to fight Pakistani Taliban who threaten their government, while ignoring Taliban and other militants fighting Americans in Afghanistan or terrorizing India.

Right. And that’s not going to change any time in the near future, or thereafter.

Related posts:

1. You Probably Think this War is About You
2. Engaging the Muslim World: Pakistan and Afghanistan
3. Well, One Out of Three Ain’t Bad

The entire first half [...]]]> Peter Bergen penned a piece in the Washington Monthly in which he argues that, with a substantial dedication of time and resources by the United States and the international community, Afghanistan could, eventually, become a "relatively stable and prosperous Central Asian state." In short, Afghanistan is a "winnable" war.

The entire first half of Bergen’s piece is dedicated to shooting down "facile" historical comparisons between Afghanistan and Vietnam and between the Soviet experience in Afghanistan and ours (Bergen contrasts the tactics and professionalism of the respective armies), as well as correcting the history of other imperial efforts in the region. But Bergen’s is an unnecessary and, ultimately, irrelevant exercise.

Clearly, Afghanistan is not the same as Vietnam, and the argument that they are parallel episodes is as misguided as any prior argument that the Iraq war was a replication of our Vietnam campaign. But so what? The Iraq war wasn’t the Vietnam war, and it didn’t have to be Vietnam in order for it to be a grievous foreign policy debacle whose costs (in terms of human suffering and US interests) are almost immeasurable. Proving Iraq and Vietnam were different did little to inform us of the wisdom of invading or perpetuating the occupation of Iraq.

In fact, the same metrics that Bergen uses to show why our Afghan effort has a better chance of succeeding than our prolonged Vietnam mission (less costly as a percentage of GDP, fewer casualties, no support for insurgents from a powerful foreign benefactor, insurgent force relatively small and lightly armed) could have just as easily been used by those arguing that Iraq wasn’t Vietnam, going on to suggest our prospects in Iraq were thus brighter. They wouldn’t have been correct, of course.

Further, there is little comfort to be had from acknowledging that the US military is more professional than, and tactically superior to, the Soviet version that suffered a crushing blow in Afghanistan decades ago. While this is true, it was the US military, not the Soviet military, that was dropped in the middle of Iraq and asked to do the near impossible to little avail. So a superior military is not exactly a sufficient condition to success as there are just certain obstacles that even the most professional army, employing optimal tactics and rules of engagement, cannot overcome. Pacifying foreign populations is like eating soup with a knife, even if the knives come in different shapes and sizes, and no two soup recipes are the same.

So, points conceded to Bergen: facile historical comparisons distract from the more germane analysis of the scenario at hand, and in general lead to sloppy reasoning by analogy. Oddly enough, after scoring these points rather deftly, Bergen goes on to make a couple of…equally facile historical comparisons!

Skeptics of Obama’s Afghanistan policy say that the right approach is to either reduce American commitments there or just get out entirely. The short explanation of why this won’t work is that the United States has tried this already—twice. In 1989, after the most successful covert program in the history of the CIA helped to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan, the George H. W. Bush administration closed the U.S. embassy in Kabul. The Clinton administration subsequently effectively zeroed out aid to the country, one of the poorest in the world. Out of the chaos of the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s emerged the Taliban, who then gave sanctuary to al Qaeda. In 2001, the next Bush administration returned to topple the Taliban, but because of its ideological aversion to nation building it ensured that Afghanistan was the least-resourced per capita reconstruction effort the United States has engaged in since World War II.

But the US has not, in fact, tried this twice. In Bergen’s first example of the US having previously withdrawn tens of thousands of troops from Afghanistan after a 7 year military campaign, the US didn’t actually have any troops in Afghanistan at all to withdraw – just funding for insurgent groups squaring off against the Soviets. So it’s hard to see how this is analogous in even the most strained sense. And withdrawal (or reduction) of military forces does not necessitate shutting off all forms of aid (far from it). In fact, Bergen is using this as a rebuttal to those that merely want to "reduce American commitments" (to quote him), not eliminate them.

In Bergen’s second prior example of the US ending a prolonged military campaign in Afghanistan, the US actually invaded Afghanistan and kept tens of thousands of troops in that country for over 7 years (and counting). Somehow that counts as a military withdrawal? Only in a world in which US military intervention is the norm, and the only question is to what extent and how deep the military commitment should manifest.

In another segment, Bergen seemingly continues under the rhetorical framework of "military intervention as the norm":

Another possible objection to the introduction of more U.S. soldiers into Afghanistan is that, inevitably, they will kill more civilians, the main issue that angers Afghans about the foreign military presence. In fact, the presence of more boots on the ground is likely to reducecivilian casualties, because historically it has been the overreliance on American air strikes—as a result of too few ground forces—which has been the key cause of civilian deaths. According to the U.S. Air Force, between January and August 2008 there were almost 2,400 air strikes in Afghanistan, fully three times as many as in Iraq. And the United Nations concluded that it was air strikes, rather than action on the ground, which were responsible for the largest percentage—64 percent—of civilian deaths attributed to pro-government forces in 2008.

While Bergen might be right that more boots on the ground will lead to fewer civilian casualties from coalition forces because of the reduction in the reliance on air strikes (at least in as much as the increase in overall military operations don’t negate those reductions), there is a third way that is guaranteed to reduce civilian casualties from coalition forces: withdraw coalition forces from Afghanistan. That option, and its impact on deaths by coalition forces, is ignored, however.

Regardless, it is unclear to what extent those same airstrikes will, in fact, be scaled back on an appreciable scale. There has long been talk about the negative impact of these tactics, especially from senior commanders such as General Petraeus who has been overseeing CENTCOM for several months now. And yet the airstrikes have persisted. Not that it’s Petraues’ fault – there are internal divisions, institutional biases and other complicating factors that lead to resistance from various military actors. Yet it is this inconsistent application of counterinsurgency doctrine, as blended with counterterrorism and conventional tactics (which often work at cross purposes), which calls into question the overall likelihood of success.

Cognizant of the importance of the issue of civilian casualties, in his Senate confirmation hearing in June the new commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, testified that their avoidance "may be the critical point" of American military operations, adding, "I cannot overstate my commitment to the importance of this concept." McChrystal, generally regarded as one of the most effective officers of his generation, has now put the avoidance of civilian casualties at the core of his military strategy in Afghanistan, and that message will undoubtedly filter down the chain of command.

Let’s see if it does.

While Bergen does raise some reasons to be encouraged about the game plan (the switch from poppy eradication to targeting the drug lords themselves for one), he saves the biggest obstacle for the very end – the one that renders much of his prior optimism arguably moot.

This brings us to the one skunk at this garden party, and it is a rather large one: Afghanistan’s nuclear-armed, al-Qaeda- and Taliban-headquartering neighbor to the east. The Pakistani dimension of Obama’s Af-Pak strategy is his critics’ most reasonable objection to his plans for the region. It is difficult for the United States to have an effective strategy for Pakistan when Pakistan doesn’t have an effective strategy for Pakistan. There is a set of interwoven problems that the country must face if it is to effectively confront the militants in its own territory. If it fails to do this, the regional insurgency that encompasses both sides of the Afghanistan/Pakistan border will continue to gather strength.

So, in a nutshell, everything that we are trying to achieve is dependent on Pakistan getting its house in order. In order to do so, it must tackle a series of long-standing, fundamental, interwoven and fraught problems that call into question the nature of Pakistani society/government structure, that have withstood myriad prior efforts to address, that have proven resistant to outside pressure from the US (its chief benefactor) and that threaten to plummet the nation into civil war. What could possibly go wrong?

The nuclear-armed unstable Pakistani specter looming right across the border is another way in which our present Afghan war is different than Vietnam. But does that make you feel any better about our chances?

Related posts:

1. Our Midas Guns
2. You Probably Think this War is About You
3. Well, One Out of Three Ain’t Bad