Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Afghanistan

  • Bob Woodward’s Bombshell

    Robert Woodward may be one of the most astounding journalists that the United States has to offer. The man uncovered the biggest instance of presidential corruption in American history (the Watergate scandal), has authored numerous articles that have stoked debate in the public discourse, and has written books galore about the hot political topics of the day. His latest three books about the war in Iraq were particularly satisfying to the gossip hungry reader (In a span of three volumes, Woodward digs into the lower bowels of the Bush Administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. He engages in a great deal of political psychology, using President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell as his case studies.)

    His most recent project however has generated far more buzz. Obama’s Wars, a detailed account of President Barack Obama’s numerous battles both inside Afghanistan and inside his own administration, is due to be released next week. And while the piece is narrative in tone and easy for the average reader to follow (which is typical of Woodward), this account is anything but unsubstantiated. According to The Washington Post, Woodward bases all of his assertions on thousands of documents, interviews with key White House officials, internal conversations, as well as notes from confidential staff meetings that took place in the Oval Office. In other words, the book is both sourced to the brink and interesting to read.

    Similar to Woodward’s series about President Bush, this project is likely to hit Obama’s staff hard. Some of the revelations that are uncovered are none too flattering, and the work paints the Obama Administration as a bunch of egotistical personalities who cannot stand one another’s company. Take a look at these juicy pieces, courtesy of Blake Hounshell of Foreign Policy.

    1) The administration’s civilian point man in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, doesn’t think the current strategy makes much sense. Vice President Joe Biden evidently hates Holbrooke’s guts. According to Biden, Holbrooke is “the most egotistical bastard [he’s] ever met.” Not much of an endorsement by any stretch of the imagination.

    2) Throughout the administration’s three month-long Afghan strategy review, the president was deeply annoyed with his military commanders for recommending an increase in the ; a proposal that ran contrary to his own personal beliefs about the war.

    3) Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a manic depressive who is sporadic in taking his medication. It will be interesting to see whether this description ends up damaging the American counterinsurgency mission in Afghanistan. It may not, but a revelation of this kind won’t help bring Karzai closer into the American orbit — an essential ingredient for a successful counterinsurgency approach.

    4) President Obama tells Woodward that the United States will be able to “absorb a terrorist attack.” From a political standpoint, this is a remarkably stupid thing to say to a reporter. But from a strategic standpoint, the president is probably right. The threat of terrorism has been ingrained in the minds of Americans for close to a decade, so another hit on American soil will be less shocking than the 9/11 attacks were.

    5) General David Petraeus, the man now running American and NATO operations in Afghanistan, wants the White House to stay out of his way so he can run the war free of distraction.

    6) The CIA is bankrolling and training an elite Afghan paramilitary force with the purpose of capturing or killing senior Taliban and Al Qaeda members. There are around 3,000 members in this top secret team, and the intelligence agency has given them discretion to pursue militants into Pakistan if necessary. This, however, is not really an ulcer in the belly of Obama when comparing it to the rest of the list. The CIA is tasked to gather intelligence and protect American interests around the world. While human rights lawyers won’t like it, killing or arresting terrorists is an integral part of that job description.

    These are just a few of the bullets in Woodward’s book but readers will undoubtedly find more when they preorder it online. And in addition to being an entertaining read, the book may also strengthen the historical record and perhaps contribute to the Obama legacy. Much like life, politics is a frustrating game where arguments of policy can quickly turn personal.

    (I commend Obama’s advisors for not going into a self-defense mode. Rahm Emanuel in particular has played it smart so far. “Despite difficult circumstances, the president brings a consistently tough, determined and clear eyed strategic focus to these crises,” he said.)

  • World Watches As Afghanistan Votes

    After weeks of intense door-to-door campaigning, and after months of preparation, Afghan politicians hoping to enter into parliament are ready for the electoral competition. The question is whether Afghan themselves are ready to stand in line to cast their ballots.

    Electoral democracy in Afghanistan has always been a hard sell, even after Mullah Omar and Company were driven from power nine years ago. Yet the underpinnings of democracy itself have actually been present throughout the country’s history. Historically, Afghans would express their daily grievances to tribal leaders, who would then convene a small jirga (or conference) to address the problem and find a solution. That practice still goes on in villages across Afghanistan to this day. But risking one’s life just to vote for an official who will probably turn corrupt is a whole different story. And unfortunately, after last year’s fraud ridden presidential election, when close to one third of the votes were disqualified, electoral democracy only weakened as a concept.

    There is some bright news, however. This year, 2,500 candidates are squaring off against one another for just 249 seats in the lower house of parliament. That, in and of itself, is a great indication of electoral democracy. The fact that some Afghans would rather use the political system is a pretty good sign of how far Afghanistan has come from Taliban rule just a decade ago. In fact, there are reports of semi-independent Taliban commanders participating in the process as well.

    But all the candidates in the world won’t do any good if the Afghan people haven’t any faith in these elections. With the Taliban threatening voters and candidates alike, and with intimidation dominating the environment, millions of Afghans may choose to stay away for their own safety. Others, however, will undoubtedly march to the polls and weather the storm.

    All in all, the United States and its NATO coalition partners would be wise not to expect too much from today’s election. Ballot stuffing will occur in certain provinces; casted votes will be “lost” in transition to headquarters; violence will target Afghan civilians and election workers; volunteers will be kidnapped; and warlords will probably defeat legitimate candidates who truly want to make a difference. In other words, a lot of things will go wrong, even in the best of circumstances. But the election will have gone forward, and democracy will have played out despite a volatile climate.

    If all expectations are met, the United States may be able to use the momentum that the elections provide to the advantage of future coalition operations. But if the contest is less than desirable; if Afghans refuse to vote or if hundreds lose their lives, then it will be yet another dagger in the heart of Washington’s Afghan project.

  • Ditch Nation Building and Go After Al Qaeda

    You don’t need to be genius to recognize that the war in Afghanistan is going much worse than people would have predicted a year ago. At a time of immense economic trouble at home, more and more Americans are wondering whether the fight was even worth it in the first place. A remarkable question as we pass the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

    Afghans themselves aren’t particularly pleased with foreign troops on their soil either. A recent poll study shows that 68 percent of Afghans in Helmand and Kandahar provinces don’t think NATO is protecting the population. 70 percent in the Taliban heartland blame American and NATO armed forces for making the lives of Afghans worse. An astounding 99 percent in Marjah are equally convinced that the foreign military presence is contributing to instability. Those aren’t good numbers when the whole essence of NATO strategy is to gradually wean Afghans away from the Taliban.

    But if you don’t need to be a genius to figure this, you don’t necessarily need to be smart to recommend a change in US strategy either. Just ask any of the pundits on television and they will tell you that America is heading for failure in Afghanistan. But ask them what exactly the White House should do to change course, they get a little starry eyed and resort to the same “Obama doesn’t get it” argument.

    So it’s refreshing to see that some people are actually working hard to conduct an alternative strategy. A report (PDF) from the Afghanistan Study Group is a worthy illustration. Granted, the report is long and the content can get a bit overwhelming, but each recommendation is well founded and based on facts instead of mere assumptions. (If you don’t care to read the entire thing, do be sure to read the summary.)

    Without getting into the details of the report, the authors essentially make the argument that Washington can no longer afford to sustain a fully resourced counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. It costs $100 billion a year just to fund it; it claims the lives of dozens of American soldiers (66 in July alone), and it is increasingly transforming into a twenty-first version of Vietnam. Or, to put it in the words of the report itself, “Prospects for success are dim. The 2010 spring offensive in Marjah was inconclusive, and a supposedly ‘decisive’ summer offensive in Kandahar has been delayed and the expectations downgraded. American and allied casualties reached an all time high in July, and several NATO allies have announced plans to withdraw their own forces.” Doesn’t sound very good, does it?

    Instead, the authors believe that the president should reverse course and ditch the entire concept of counterinsurgency altogether. If defeating Al Qaeda is America’s central objective in Afghanistan, then why try to prop up a national government in a country that is predisposed to localized politics? Why try to “win the hearts and minds” of the Afghan people if eliminating terrorists is the priority? But more importantly, why continue to sacrifice American blood and why continue to overextend military resources when the enemy you are trying to crush is just a few hundred hardcore fighters?

    Counterterrorism should the overarching strategy for NATO, say the authors, not building schools or digging irrigation ditches. After nine years of war, the best that America and its allies can do is bring the stakeholders in Afghanistan together (Iran, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Central Asian states, etc.), hash out a political compromise between the main factions (the Pashtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras) and keep persistent pressure on Al Qaeda training facilities.

    Whether or not the strategy will work, of course, is anyone’s guess. Critics of the report cite that its authors are neglecting the symbolic importance of a American withdrawal, and how “cutting and running” would be celebrated as a victory by the insurgents. Advocates, on the other hand, are arguing that a counterinsurgency strategy would require a substantial American presence for at least another five to ten years (American troops are supposed to start withdrawing next summer). Others yet are on the fence, completely baffled with Afghanistan to begin with.

    In the end, the policy report may be just that — a report. The Obama Administration may not even pay attention to its findings when it reviews its war policy this December. Or, the report may generate media coverage and begin to sway public opinion. But whatever the final outcome, the Afghanistan Study Group’s research contributes to the debate. And at a time when the United States are themselves confused about where their grand strategy is going, anything that helps to shed light onto an increasingly puzzling subject may be a significant contribution.

  • CIA Versus the White House in Afghanistan

    The end of summer is fast approaching and by the beginning of next month, the full contingent of the surge that President Barack Obamas promised last winter will be arriving in Afghanistan. With violence at an all time high and Taliban insurgents expanding their area of operations in different parts of the country (like a recent attack on Afghanistan’s northern border with Tajikistan), American and NATO forces need all the boots they can get to turn the tide.

    Yet at this point, there seems to be little difference between success and failure. Whatever happens on the ground, critics and officials still resort to the same old questions about the mission. 1) Is it actually possible for the United States to stem the Taliban’s momentum? 2) Can NATO achieve its security objectives if Afghan government corruption continues to push the civilian population away? But more importantly: 3) Should the White House minimize its goals of rebuilding Afghan society to tracking down and killing international terrorists? (more…)

  • US Military: Give Us More Time

    There is a potential revolution in the making going on within America’s Afghanistan policy, and it’s not emanating from where you might think.

    Instead of the White House pushing the American military to change its approach and to change its tactics — which is something that Democratic presidents have traditionally embraced throughout American history — it’s the armed forces that are now starting to take that role. The issue in question is none other than Afghanistan, where whole squadrons of junior officers are lobbying the president hard on his July 2011 pullout date. “Too fast and too soon,” say these military leaders. “Don’t abandon Afghanistan like you did in the early 1990s.  Don’t withdraw American forces while the Afghan Security Services are still weak and ineffectual. But most of all Mr President, please refrain from terminating a war policy that has yet had the chance to prove itself.”

    In more ways than one, the marines and soldiers voicing this opinion are absolutely right. When President Barack Obama spoke at West Point last December and announced his decision to send an additional 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, most in the audience assumed that the current administration was unveiling a brand new strategy to curtail the Taliban and turn the situation around.

    The brand new strategy was called counterinsurgency, an approach that combines the traditional aspect of killing the enemy with the untraditional task of building local governance, promoting economic development, and showing the local population that the United States and the Afghan government were a better alternative to the Taliban. “Winning hearts and minds,” is the catchphrase that Washington has used to describe counterinsurgency, but the strategy is actually much more complicated than that. It’s more like “winning hearts and minds,” sustaining a relentless campaign of violence toward the insurgency, and swallowing your tongue when local residents frustrate your efforts.

    Yet seven months later, the situation in Afghanistan is still dire. Hundreds of insurgents have been killed by coalition forces, but the thousands more are still strong enough to coordinate attacks in every corner of the country. Afghan President Hamid Karzai remains an unreliable American partner at best, and large portions of his government are still occupied by corrupt figures. Little headway has been made with the training of Afghan police, despite Washington’s hope that there would be close to 130,000 cops on the beat by July 2011. And America just experienced its deadliest month in the nearly nine year-old war, with 66 American soldiers killed in action by small arms fire, roadside bombs, and suicide attacks.

    As a consequence, lawmakers in Congress are getting a little antsy. Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is demanding that the Obama Administration stick with its timetable of withdrawal, and an increasingly high number of House Democrats are questioning the very notion of funding the soldiers that are already in the warzone. As Eric Schmitt, Helene Cooper, and David Sanger wrote in The New York Times, more than a third of the Democratic caucus voted against financing the war, sending a clear signal to Obama that his own party is distancing itself from the entire effort. In other words, Afghanistan in 2010 looks a lot like Iraq did back in 2006: violent, desperate, and a place where hope is in short supply.

    Will Obama cave into pressure in order to appease his own party on the war? Or will he listen to a growing number of commanders that are asking the president to give the military more time to make the counterinsurgency strategy work? These are the important questions that will not only determine the course of the war, but also America’s credibility in South Asia well into the future. Afghans and Pakistanis still distinctly remember how the United States packed up and left after its covert intervention against the Soviet Union ended in 1989. The result of that departure was nothing short of a long and brutal civil war in Afghanistan, culminating in the rise of a Sunni fundamentalist movement that drove the United States back into the country twelve years later.

    American generals want to get Afghanistan right. But they cannot kill Taliban, beef up a central Afghan government, pave roads, and build schools all before the summer of next year. The mission should be given more time to fulfill these objectives. Otherwise, the United States should either ditch counterinsurgency for a more limited counterterrorism plan, or get troops out altogether.

  • General Petraeus on Winning in Afghanistan

    In his first interview since taking over as commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus talked about his strategy on NBC’s Meet the Press Sunday with less than a year before the withdrawal of the first American troops is scheduled to commence.

    Asked what was needed to win the war in Afghanistan, one of the things Petraeus mentioned was the need of reintegrating Taliban fighters in Afghan society. This is possible, he believes, especially with the “five dollar a day Taliban,” men fighting for the Taliban for a price, as well as with insurgents who are beginning to realize that the Taliban’s leadership appear to be leading from the rear.

    According to General Petraeus, the Taliban’s leaders largely send messages and leave everyone else at the broken end of the bottle, inflicting the most civilian casualties in this war. He added that the mission is still to win over the hearts and minds of the people in order to bring an end to the conflict.

    When asked what failure or success would mean to Afghanistan the general stated that while success means economic and national growth for the country, failure could affect the entire region, with civil war breaking out in Afghanistan and surrounding nations picking their sides, aiding the efforts of those prolonging the fighting and suffering.

    Interestingly, Petraeus said that while Iran has no desire to see Americans gaining an easy victory in Afghanistan, they don’t like the Taliban emerging victorious either, despite the small amounts of funding and training which Tehran has offered them. The Iranians see the Taliban as too conservative in their views while a victory for them could undermine the stability of their own regime.

    On the rather tricky subject of meeting with Taliban leaders in order to broker a peace agreement, Petraeus said that it was a lot like it was back in Iraq. They asked, “Were we willing to meet with people who had our blood on their hands?” The answer, said Petraeus, was yes. This may come as a somewhat disheartening response to many after the recent Time magazine article about Afghan women and their suffering under what’s left of the Taliban. But meeting with the Taliban is a reality of the war, and it may well be the price of peace.

  • Five Hundred Is Not Enough?

    As we’ve been recently been informed by the various media, Gordon Brown, the prime minister, has pledged five hundred new (presumably) combat-role servicemen to Operation Herrick — the British mission in Afghanistan. Five hundred would boost the British presence to a total of 9,500 service personnel from all the services including the Royal Air Force and the large Royal Navy training body. Within your humble correspondent’s lifetime, Britain deployed whole divisions to operational theatres such as Northern Ireland, where three brigades numbering several thousand kept the police in support of the Royal Ulster Constabulary. A task force of 9,500 does little to compare to the 68,000 American service personnel in “Afghan.”

    American defense spending is a staggering 41 percent of the global total. Its armed forces population is so large that the United States Marine Corps is bigger than the entire British Army and due to its all-arms nature, considerably more effective. At a time when American military expenditure dwarfs the whole of the British economy, it is hardly surprising that there is some difference in capability here.

    Therefore it is curious that the British media remain shocked that British forces get little mention in American strategic and military dialogue about the region. What is more surprising is that American commentators and possibly even politicos expect a greater contribution from the British Armed Forces.

    The briefest of glances at the history of the services from 1945 onward will provide anyone with the knowledge that defense cuts by both parties across all successive governments have neutered the operational capabilities of state. The possibility of fighting the Falklands War in 1982 was small enough, now it would be next to impossible. With the end of the Cold War and the subduing of the Troubles in the Province, further cuts and reductions seem not only economic but dare I say it sensible, certainly in the Army. That this hasn’t been taken on board by our erstwhile journalists is probably due to the myth of the special relationship, on which I have spoken on in the (scarcely) public domain before.

    What is certain is that until required reforms in the British Armed Forces are implemented, five hundred troops is about as much as can be deployed with political constraints, and without them there wouldn’t be that much more.