Posts Tagged ‘
Taliban ’
Monday, December 20th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Look, I realize that Tom Friedman gets a lot of guff from the liberal intelligensia. Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone has practically made a second career out of eviscerating Friedman’s sometimes tortured contortions of the Queen’s Tongue. Certainly, Taibbi scores the odd point: “It’s OK to throw out your steering wheel,” Friedman once wrote about George Bush’s Middle East policy, “as long as you remember you’re driving without one.” What?
Fair enough. But Tom, a long-time friend of PPI no less, is an insightful writer who, more often than not, is on the right side of history. Take his column this weekend on the “U.S.S. Prius“:
Spearheaded by Ray Mabus, President Obama’s secretary of the Navy and the former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia, the Navy and Marines are building a strategy for “out-greening” Al Qaeda, “out-greening” the Taliban and “out-greening” the world’s petro-dictators. Their efforts are based in part on a recent study from 2007 data that found that the U.S. military loses one person, killed or wounded, for every 24 fuel convoys it runs in Afghanistan. Today, there are hundreds and hundreds of these convoys needed to truck fuel — to run air-conditioners and power diesel generators — to remote bases all over Afghanistan.
Mabus’s argument is that if the U.S. Navy and Marines could replace those generators with renewable power and more energy efficient buildings, and run its ships on nuclear energy, biofuels and hybrid engines, and fly its jets with bio-fuels, then it could out-green the Taliban — the best way to avoid a roadside bomb is to not have vehicles on the roads — and out-green all the petro-dictators now telling the world what to do.
Let’s just say I’m happy Tom’s reading my stuff. Yep, on October 12, I wrote the following piece in the Los Angeles Times on the same topic to mark the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the U.S.S Cole in Aden harbor:
America forgets Oct. 12 as seamlessly as it remembers Sept. 11. Ten years ago today, 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and 39 injured in an Al Qaeda attack against the U.S. destroyer Cole in the harbor of Aden, Yemen. The Cole was relatively defenseless during a 24-hour refueling stop when suicide operatives pulled alongside in a small, explosive-laden boat and detonated a charge, ripping a 40-foot hole in the hull.
Though the lessons from 9/11 will be debated for years, Oct. 12′s message is succinct. It is best summed up by Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James T. Conway: “Energy choices can save lives on the battlefield.” The armed forces are searching for next-generation green energy technologies because they provide power at the point of its consumption, which decreases the military’s need to resupply with carbon-based fuels.
…
Mabus is setting big goals for an energy-independent military. He wants to sail a “Great Green Fleet” by 2016 — a full carrier strike group composed of nuclear and hybrid electric ships, as well as biofueled aircraft. By 2020, Mabus wants half of the Navy’s energy to come from alternative sources.
That’s why the Obama administration should consider a Pentagon innovation fund. A few well-spent dollars would help companies tackle the technological learning curve and reduce costs.
To get to where Mabus wants to go, ideas need cash. The Pentagon may have a truly out-of-control budget, but consider this: Radar, GPS and the Internet all started as military-funded projects. The next green technology could be sitting in a lab somewhere, begging for a few dollars to help produce it on a bigger scale.
With conservatives pushing this climate change denial nonsense, it’s an important point that the military is innovating on green-tech because it can’t wait for the political “debate”. So much the better as more-and-more mainstream writers pick up on this narrative.
Tags: Aden harbor, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, Climate change, Commandant Gen. James T. Conway, conservatives, energy-independent, George Bush, Great Green Fleet, green energy, gren-tech, Innovation, liberal intelligensia, Los Angeles Time, Marines, Matt Taibbi, Middle East policy, Military, Pentagon, petro-dictators, PPI, Ray Mabus, Rolling Stone, Saudi Arabia, Secretary of the Navy, Taliban, Tech, the Navy, tom friedman, truck fuel, U.S.S Cole, U.S.S. Prius, Yemen
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Thursday, December 16th, 2010
Jordan Michael Smith
Jordan Michael Smith is writing a book on U.S.-Israeli relations. He’s written for The Atlantic, The Boston Globe and Foreign Policy
by Jordan Michael Smith
The Obama administration released its Afghanistan review this morning, and while everyone will be digging through it for truths and obfuscations, it’s worth simply comparing the review’s conclusions to President Obama’s “Terms Sheet” he dictated at the outset of his Afghanistan surge. Obama’s six-page terms sheet, first revealed and released in Bob Woodward’s book Obama’s Wars, calls for measuring progress in Afghanistan by answering questions in related to governance, Pakistan, training of Afghan forces, and international support. Let’s look at the new review and compare it to some parts of the old one, shall we?
- The new review concludes that “the momentum achieved by the Taliban in recent years has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in some key areas, although these gains remain fragile and reversible.”
The initial review, however, called for “reversing the Taliban’s momentum” everywhere, not merely arresting it in some places (my italics). Small word change, big difference.
- The new review says that “We are also supporting Afghanistan’s efforts to better improve national and sub-national governance, and to build institutions with increased transparency and accountability to reduce corruption – key steps in sustaining the Afghan government.”
The initial review had specific benchmarks to measure governance progress: Has President Karzai made merit-based appointments in the areas most essential to our mission? Has the Afghan government begun to implement an effective reintegration/reconciliation program? The new review is silent on these critical matters.
- The new review holds that Afghanistan forces “have exceeded ANSF growth targets, implemented an expanded array of programs to improve the quality and institutional capacity of the ANSF, and sharply improved their training effectiveness.”
The initial review called for “accelerated ANSF growth while improving quality.” On this score, the U.S. is doing quite well, according to what was released today.
- The new review argues that “Emphasis must continue to be placed on the development of Afghan-led security and governance within areas that have been a focus of military operations.”
The initial review insisted that we needed to establish “a program to transfer responsibility from ISAF to ANSF province by province.” No mention in the new document of what has been achieved, only on what must still be done.
Despite the negative balance sheet, on these and other scores, today’s review is cautiously optimistic. We are making progress, however fragile and recent. “Most important, al-Qa’ida’s senior leadership in Pakistan is weaker and under more sustained pressure than at any other point since it fled Afghanistan in 2001,” Obama’s new review argues. Reviewing the first assessment, however, reminds us that weakening al-Qaeda’s senior leadership in Pakistan was not the primary goal. Perhaps it should have been.
Photo Credit: Truthout
Tags: Afghanistan, al-Qa’ida, ANSF, Bob Woodward, ISAF, Military, Obama Administration, Obama’s Wars, Pakistan, President Karzai, Taliban, Terms Sheet
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Friday, December 10th, 2010
Jordan Michael Smith
Jordan Michael Smith is writing a book on U.S.-Israeli relations. He’s written for The Atlantic, The Boston Globe and Foreign Policy
by Jordan Michael Smith
The Center for New American Security (CNAS) just released a new report on the way forward in Afghanistan. As the report’s title indicates, “Responsible Transition” calls for the United States to hand over responsibility for security to the Afghans over the next few years. The plan involves leaving 25-35,000 U.S. troops behind to defeat Afghanistan, with the rest withdrawn by 2014. “Responsible Transition” also calls for America to put more pressure on Pakistan to crack down on extremists.
CNAS’s plan to scale down the U.S. presence in Afghanistan is a wise one, recognizing as it does that “all options are likely to be suboptimal” but a long-term nation-building project is particularly suboptimal. But it seems wishful thinking that more pressure on Pakistan coming from the Obama administration will do what nine years of pressure haven’t already: convince Pakistan to expel the Taliban and any other troublemakers from its territory. As long as Pakistan knows we need it more than it needs us, it can take U.S. money while doing little.
Moreover, as Michael Cohen points out, CNAS’s report entirely sidesteps the thorny issue of talking with the Taliban. This is a key issue, since the Taliban have deep roots in the Pashtun community. Any long-term peace is going to have to include elements of the Taliban, as the administration sometimes seems to realize.
A more realistic plan would be something along the lines of what the Afghanistan Study Group and the Center for American Progress have recommended. Encouraging political reconciliation must be at the forefront of U.S.’s strategy going forward, not simply an afterthought. Military operations will have to take a backseat to diplomacy and politics if long-term progress is going to be made. Deal-making will have to include bargains with the Taliban, unsavoury though that prospect is. There simply is no other way to bring a modicum of stability to the troubled region unless the Taliban are made a part of some power-sharing agreement.
It’s a positive sign that the gang at CNAS recognizes that a sizable U.S. footprint in Afghanistan is unsustainable. As the strongest boosters of large-scale counterinsurgency approaches, CNAS has an important role to play in forming a strategy that focuses primarily–and eventually, exclusively–on preventing terrorist attacks against the U.S. homeland. That should always be the top priority. When the Obama administration releases its Afghanistan review next week, let’s hope it agrees.
Tags: Afghanistan, Center for New American Security, CNAS, extremists, Michael Cohen, Pakistan, Pashtun, Responsible Transition, Taliban
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Wednesday, October 27th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
At last, some good news from Afghanistan: The New York Times reported last week that U.S. and Afghan forces are “routing” the Taliban in Kandahar province. In the northwest, Special Operations forces and air strikes have taken a heavy toll on insurgent commanders and “shadow governors,” according to The Washington Post.
These tactical gains are impressive. But they also spotlight the weakest link in our strategic chain, and no, it’s not Afghanistan’s mercurial leader, Hamid Karzai, or the corrupt and feckless central government. It’s Pakistan.
President Obama’s surge seems to be taking hold, but coalition forces can’t break the insurgency’s back as long as Pakistan continues to provide a sanctuary for the Taliban and allied terrorist groups.
Aided by better intelligence and a highly accurate new mobile rocket, in addition to more troops, coalition forces have successfully targeted Taliban leaders and driven insurgents from strongholds they have long held in Kandahar. The onslaught apparently has demoralized some Taliban foot soldiers, who are said to resent their high command for urging them to stand and fight from the relative safety of Pakistan.
U.S. officials say they are under no illusion of crushing the insurgency altogether, but they hope that, by inflicting heavy losses, they can turn the tide and induce top Taliban leaders to enter into peace negotiations with the Afghan government.
But there’s a problem: insurgent leaders are slipping over the border to Pakistan, where they can regroup for new attacks, or simply wait for NATO forces to leave. Says Gen. David Petraeus, “There is quite relentless pressure. It forces them on the run. But again, if you don’t take away the safe haven, it doesn’t have a lasting effect.”
And the Quetta Shura, whose leader, Mullah Omar, was so hospitable to al Qaeda when the Taliban ran Afghanistation, continues to orchestrate and finance the insurgency from Pakistan with impunity. If the United States and NATO are to permanently weaken the Taliban and force them to the negotiating table, that has to change.
Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, argues that Pakistan’s double game threatens to prolong America’s costly intervention. On the one hand, Pakistan is an indispensible partner: it supplies the main supply routes for coalition forces, and tacitly colludes with drone strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban targets. On the other, Pakistan gives sanctuary not only to the Quetta Shura and but also the notorious Haqqani terrorist network, whose ties with Pakistani intelligence go back to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s military leaders, he says, “believe that our current surge will be the last push before we begin a face-saving troop drawdown next July. They are confident that if they continue to frustrate our military and political strategy – even actively impede reconciliation between Kabul and Taliban groups willing to make peace – pro-Pakistani forces will have the upper hand in Afghanistan after the United States departs.”
Khalilzad is right: the United States can’t allow our supposed ally to subvert our strategic goals in Afghanistan. Yet just last week, the administration announced a new $2 billion military aid package to Pakistan. This comes on top of a five-year, $7.5 billion civilian aid package for Pakistan approved last year.
This is the kind of thing that gives engagement a bad name. We need a more challenging approach: The United States should demand that Pakistan break decisively with Islamist terrorist groups and not allow its territory to be used as a staging point for attacks on its neighbor. If Pakistan refuses, we should target insurgent havens anyway and freeze aid. If it complies, we should make a long-term commitment to strengthening Pakistan’s economic and governing institutions, and to mediating regional conflicts.
U.S. officials have been reluctant to put too much pressure on Pakistan to act against the Haqqani network and the Afghan Taliban leadership. They don’t want to undermine the democratically elected government of President Asi Ali Zardari, or risk alienating Pakistan’s military and intelligence services, which are cooperating in the U.S. campaign against al Qaeda. But Pakistan already has demonstrated the military ability to reclaim tribal areas when it suited its purpose. Up until now, Pakistan has tried to have it both ways: help America fight al Qaeda, while retaining ties to terrorist groups to influence future events in Afghanistan (and to keep the pot boiling in Kashmir). Such ambivalence collides with America’s strategic interest, and it’s time for Pakistan to choose.
Tags: Afghan forces, Afghanistan, Afghanistation, Al Qaeda, anti-Soviet jihad, Asi Ali Zardari, coalition forces, David Petraeus, Hamid Karzai, Haqqani, insurgents, intelligence, Islamist terrorist, Kabul, Kandahar, military strategy, more troops, Mullah Omar, NATO, new mobile rocket, New York Times, Pakistan, political strategy, President Obama, Quetta Shura, regional conflicts, shadow governor, Special Operations, Taliban, terrorist groups, The Washington Post, U.S. forces, Zalmay Khalilzad
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Tuesday, October 26th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Let’s say you’re jonesing for a smoothie at your favorite hipster juice bar. Not content with the strawberry, papaya, and kiwi in your standard Mangosteen Madness™, you pony up for a little something extra. Let’s go crazy – say you drop the extra 78 cents on the counter and tell the Smoothie King to throw in a “Caffeine Charge” just to make sure the day keeps on sailing by.
That’s kind of what’s happening in Afghanistan these days. The “clear, hold, and build” of counterinsurgency doctrine may be the Mangosteen strategy, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that General Petraeus is doubling down with a “Caffeine Charge” of his own. He’s trying to hit the Taliban leadership hard, driving it to the negotiating table from a position of weakness.
As Dexter Filkins detailed in the NYT a few weeks ago, NATO military operations in Afghanistan have aggressively targeted Taliban militants with airstrikes and Special Forces operations. Well-reputed columnists like David Ignatius, Joe Klein, and Fred Kaplan all write that this marks a shift away from the counterinsurgency strategy that Petraeus literally wrote the book on. However, Paula Broadwell, a guest-author on Tom Ricks’ blog, disagrees, noting that the recent increase in counter-terrorism operations is an important subset of an across-the-board op-tempo increase in all COIN disciplines.
Despite disagreements over the shift, the important point is that it might be speeding up a potential resolution to the conflict. General Petraeus has long said that we’re not going to kill or capture our way out of Aghanistan, and he told Katie Couric over the summer that negotiations are “historically the way counterinsurgency efforts ultimately have been concluded.”
The issue is ensuring that negotiations, quietly underway, take place on the most favorable grounds possible to America. And if that goal is achieved, then semantics about COIN vs. CT won’t matter in the end.
Photo credit: terriseesthings
Tags: Afghanistan, airstrikes, Caffeine Charge, clear hold and build, COIN, counter-terrorism, David Ignatius, Dexter Filkins, Fred Kaplan, General Petraeus, Homeland security, Joe Klein, Katie Couric, Mangosteen strategy, NATO, negotiating table, NYT, ounterinsurgency, Paula Broadwell, Smoothie King, Special Forces operations, Taliban, Tom Ricks
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Friday, October 8th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
Some Democrats tune out Tony Blair not only because he backed the invasion of Iraq, but because he committed the unpardonable sin of articulating the case for war far more convincingly than George W. Bush.
That’s too bad, because Britain’s ex-prime minister has some important things to say about the conflict formerly known as the “war on terror.” On this issue, in fact, the Obama administration could use a dose of Blairite clarity and candor.
Blair was in New York this week to accept the “Scholar-Statesman” award from The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. In his acceptance speech, he argued that the United States and the “civilized world” must combat not just al Qaeda, but also the extremist ideology that inspired the 9/11 attacks:
“I do not think it is possible to defeat the extremism without defeating the narrative that nurtures it. And there’s the rub. The practitioners of the extremism are small in number. The adherents of the narrative stretch far broader into parts of mainstream thinking.”
This inconvenient truth highlights a critical vacuum in U.S. counterterrorism policy. While the Obama administration has ramped up the military campaign to oust al Qaeda from Afghanistan (and pound its sanctuaries in Pakistan), it has been less successful in checking the spread of the Islamist doctrine, which casts Muslims as victims of western oppression and disrespect.
Blair believes western efforts to blunt the force of the extremist narrative by apologizing for policies, such as support for Israel, are counterproductive. They undercut rather than fortify the position of Muslim moderates, and they provoke a backlash from western publics against what’s seen as pandering to extremists.
Although he was too diplomatic to say so, Blair’s call for confronting the extremist narrative head-on challenges current U.S. policy.
President Obama has wisely retired the “war on terror” language he inherited from his predecessor. As Reza Aslan has noted, Bush’s relentlessly martial rhetoric lent credence to the idea that the United States was locked in a “cosmic war” with Islam. By narrowing the focus to al Qaeda (and its Taliban protectors in Afghanistan), Obama has sought to reassure both foreign and domestic audiences that the United States is drawing careful distinctions and not making unnecessary enemies.
So far, so good. But even if we demolished what’s left of al Qaeda tomorrow, our problems wouldn’t be over. Its ideology already has migrated to affiliates in Iraq, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere, which have adopted the same gruesome tactics of suicide bombers and mass casualty attack. And while their victims are mostly Muslims, as Blair noted, too many in the Muslim world seem sympathetic to their narrative of victimhood, if not their methods.
This ambivalence was captured perfectly by one of a group of Somalians from Virginia captured in Pakistan. He said, in effect, we’re not terrorists, we’re jihadists come to help our fellow Muslims defend themselves against western aggression.
So Tony Blair is, as the Brits say, spot on. To reduce the threat of terrorist attacks, the United States must wage a two-track fight. One is the military campaign to disrupt and destroy al Qaeda. The other should be a “whole of government” effort to counter the extremist narrative. I’ll have more to say in future posts about its key elements, but it starts by engaging directly with Muslim publics and by firmly rejecting the false premises of the extremist story.
Photo credit: Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Tags: Al Qaeda, counterterrorism, George W. Bush, Iraq, Israel, moderate Islam, Muslims, Obama, Pakistan, Reza Aslan, Taliban, Tony Blair, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
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Friday, October 8th, 2010
Mike Signer
Mike Signer is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Mike Signer
On the heels of the controversy about this week’s perhaps terror alerts in Europe, I reflected on a recent experience with the very real costs of what you might call the terrorist-hysteria complex.
Two weeks ago, I was in Afghanistan on a U.S. government-sponsored mission to observe the Parliamentary elections on Saturday, September 18th. The day before, I sat on the balcony of our guesthouse and watched a dangerous drama unfold just outside. Our security guards strung a black curtain along our balcony rail to block prying eyes. Through two of the panels, I watched as a member of the Afghan National Police crouched behind a wall of olive-green sandbags about a hundred feet away and aimed his automatic rifle at a curve in the road to the right.
We were in Panjshir, a valley about two and a half hours north of Kabul. At that moment, a mullah up the road was leading a protest at an elementary school in response to the burning of a Koran by by two men in Tennessee named Bob Old and Danny Allen. (This was different from Terry Jones, the Florida preacher who canceled his burning.)
You probably never heard about the Tennessee story. When you watch the video, it’s mind-blowing that these two characters somehow animated events oceans away. But seven thousand miles away, amped up both by a local hair-trigger media and Afghan opportunists looking to stir up trouble, Bob Old and Danny Allen — names we will almost certainly never hear again — created real danger and real expense.
On the mission with me were two security professionals from the UK and the U.S., two Afghan security men, a translator, and my partner, all funded by a U.S. aid agency and U.S. taxpayer dollars. We were supposed to be out in the field, interviewing government officials, asking probing questions about the quality of the election, the depth of the rule of law. I should have been helping to determine whether the billions of dollars and gallons of blood our warfighters have poured into Afghanistan is worth it.
But we instead spent the day stuck in our guest house, pawns in the mad world of stunt-driven politics. There was a striking parallel between the stunts back in America and the Taliban’s efforts in Afghanistan. Both were aimed at controlling the actions of millions through discrete acts of violence. Both take advantage of the nexus of blogs, a 24-hour news cycle, and political opportunism. And both have real consequences not only on our perception of reality, but on policy.
Read the entire article in the Huffington Post.
Tags: Afghan National Police, Afghanistan, Bob Old, Danny Allen, Europe, Florida, Homeland security, Kabul, Panjshir, parliamentary elections, rule of law, Taliban, Tennessee, terror alerts, terrorist-hysteria, Terry Jones, U.S. aid agency, U.S. taxpayer dollars
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Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Two good essays in the last few days reflect on America’s overreaction to terrorism. Ted Koppel, who in addition to having amazing hair, is one of this country’s most under-appreciated journalists. He writes:
Perhaps bin Laden foresaw some of these outcomes when he launched his 9/11 operation from Taliban-secured bases in Afghanistan. Since nations targeted by terrorist groups routinely abandon some of their cherished principles, he may also have foreseen something along the lines of Abu Ghraib, “black sites,” extraordinary rendition and even the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But in these and many other developments, bin Laden needed our unwitting collaboration, and we have provided it — more than $1 trillion spent on two wars, more than 5,000 of our troops killed, tens of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans dead. Our military is so overstretched that defense contracting — for everything from interrogation to security to the gathering of intelligence — is one of our few growth industries. …
If bin Laden did not foresee all this, then he quickly came to understand it. In a 2004 video message, he boasted about leading America on the path to self-destruction. “All we have to do is send two mujaheddin . . . to raise a small piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’ in order to make the generals race there, to cause America to suffer human, economic and political losses.”
Fareed Zakaria, whose hair is less awesome but still pretty good, brings up the same issue:
This campaign to spread a sense of imminent danger has fueled a climate of fear and anger. It has created suspicions about U.S. Muslims — who are more assimilated than in any other country in the world. Ironically, this is precisely the intent of terrorism. Bin Laden knew he could never weaken America directly, even if he blew up a dozen buildings or ships. But he could provoke an overreaction by which America weakened itself.
Both are spot on and quickly shift the question to how to avoid overreacting. Since much of the overreaction is born from political posturing (witness Pete Hoekstra’s bizarre comments in the wake of the Christmas Day attempt), it’s going to be tough. How is any leader supposed to dismiss a charge that he’s not doing enough to keep the country safe?
Part of the solution is understanding the terrorist threat, and how successful our defensive measures will realistically be. Zakaria’s column again hits the mark: “[We] are not 100 percent safe, nor will we ever be. Open societies and modern technology combine to create a permanent danger.”
And while it is possible to contain the threat, permanently eliminating it is a long term project that must address terrorism’s root causes. Beginning that national dialogue is a key to promote this understanding, which in turn, will calibrate more measured responses to terrorism.
Tags: "black sites", 9/11, Abu Ghraib, Afghans, Al Qaeda, bin Laden, defense contracting, Fareed Zakaria, Guantanamo, Iraqis, mujaheddin, national dialogue, Overreactions, Pete Hoekstra, self-destruction, Taliban, Ted Koppel, Terrorism, troops, U.S. Muslims
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Friday, September 10th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
On the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, many Americans continue to question the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan. It is now America’s longest, and perhaps most frustrating, war. Shouldn’t we be done with this by now?
Though Bin Laden remains alive, his core al Qaeda followers remain pinned down in Pakistan and could not likely muster a 9/11-style attack today. While Al Qaeda affiliates in Yemen and elsewhere continue to launch ill-conceived, amateurish attempts to kill us, the most Americans probably don’t feel like they’re about to die in a horrific act of terror.
As much as Americans would like to put Afghanistan behind us, patience is needed. It’s a tough argument to make, but—moral obligation aside—there remains a compelling national security reason for America’s continued military presence in Afghanistan.
Nine years removed from that tragic day, Americans feel generally safe. Though time certainly, and thankfully, heals all wounds, we cannot allow it to cloud this reality: if America withdraws from Afghanistan tomorrow, there is an unacceptably high risk that the Taliban would return to power. And under the Taliban’s umbrella, Osama Bin Laden’s clique would slowly rebuild its capability to launch a massive attack against the United States.
The Taliban will only be assured a permanent spot on the ash-heap of history when Afghanistan’s civil and security institutions are strong enough to fill the power vacuum the Taliban would dearly like to occupy. We’re simply not there yet, and that’s why Americans have to summon a dose of strategic patience.
It is a logic President Obama has understood since he was a state senator in Illinois. His most liberal supporters would like to believe he was a proto-typical anti-war liberal, but the president has been strikingly consistent in his rhetoric and support for America’s military presence in Afghanistan since first speaking out in October 2002.
Whether America succeeds in eventually leaving behind a stable Afghanistan capable of self-governance free of Taliban influence remains an open question. At the very least, America is better equipped to do so now than during the past nine years, having pivoted to adopt a properly resourced counter-insurgency strategy that prioritizes protecting the Afghan population and holding land over killing bad guys. Had George Bush not diverted critical resources like manpower, money, and presidential-focus to an ill-conceived war in Iraq, one can only guess how much further along America’s efforts would stand today.
This month, Afghans will vote again in parliamentary elections. Their success is hardly assured— elections are certainly important pillars of an emerging democracy, but they are not ends in and of themselves. There will likely be violence and accusations of vote-rigging and financial corruption. Hamid Karzai may well appear more of a dictator-in-waiting than he did even one year ago. Does that mean we should throw in the towel?
No. Nation building, a dirty-yet-accurate description of America’s role in Afghanistan, is a torturously slow and difficult process whose effectiveness cannot be judged by the latest headlines, but only under the long arc of history. America’s efforts in Afghanistan may not prove a shining success, but there is sufficient evidence that additional American effort will improve America’s chances for long term safety.
If we are to ensure that a massive threat from al Qaeda is permanently vanquished, this September 11th, President Obama should ask for patience.
Tags: 9/11, Afghan population, Al Qaeda, anniversary, anti-war liberal, bin Laden, civil and security institutions, counter-insurgency, emerging democracy, financial corruption, first speaking out in October 2002, frustrating war, George Bush, Hamid Karzai, Iraq, military presence, nation-building, national security, Pakistan, parliamentary elections, President Obama, self-governance, September 11, Taliban, United States’ involvement in Afghanistan, vote-rigging, withdraws, Yemen
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Monday, July 26th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
The story leading the day in the New York Times and Washington Post details the release of some 90,000 U.S. military documents by Wikileaks. Many of which detail the level of coordination between elements within Pakistan’s intelligence service, the ISI, and the Taliban operating in Afghanistan. In fact, the Taliban and ranking officers within the ISI have worked together is not “news.” Pick up a copy of Steve Coll’s brilliant Ghost Wars, which ably details the relationship. Here’s an excerpt from a PBS Frontline interview with Coll on the topic:
Frontline: You describe [the Taliban] as a client of the ISI.
Coll: They received guns; they received money; they received fuel; they received infrastructure support. They also, we know, had direct on-the-ground support from undercover Pakistani officers in civilian clothes who would participate in particular military battles.
Frontline: Is it a fair characterization to say that the Taliban were an asset of the ISI?
Coll: They were an asset of the ISI. I think it’s impossible to understand the Taliban’s military triumph in Afghanistan, culminating in their takeover of Kabul in 1996, without understanding that they were a proxy force, a client of the Pakistan army, and benefited from all of the materiel support that the Pakistan army could provide them, given its own constrained resources.
The Taliban were important to the ISI in the late 1990s for another reason. The ISI also promoted a rebellion against what it regarded as Indian occupation in Kashmir. The Taliban in Afghanistan provided logistical support, training and other bases that the ISI could use to train and develop its Kashmir rebellion as well.
To sum it up: The ISI has used the Taliban for more than 15 years as a proxy force in Afghanistan. First, they served as a bulwark against the spread of Soviet communism. Old habits die hard, so when the Americans arrived, the ISI viewed collaboration with the Taliban as a natural point of influence that could be used to suit its interest — namely, keeping Afghanistan weak and unstable and impossible to dominate its neighbor.
Some in the blogosphere have treated Wikileaks’ revelation with a yawn. Check out Andrew Exum’s dripping-with-sarcasm post comparing the shock-value of the story to news that Liberace likes dudes. So sure, if you’re in the expert community, it’s easy to brush off as a non-story.
However, getting these stories out to major news outlets has relevance. Spencer Ackerman points out that the Wikileaks information provides a “new depth of detail” about the long-held ties.
More importantly, it raises the issue to a level that people controlling the purse strings can’t ignore. I’ll bet you a crisp dollar bill that John Kerry has read Ghost Wars. I’ll double down on the fact that Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, soon moves lickity-split to convene an oversight hearing that reexamines the $500 million that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton just promised to the Pakistanis last week for two hydroelectric projects, a pledge that comes on the heels of a massive $7.5 billion Pakistan aid package. Keep in mind that this assistance was essentially conditioned on strengthening the Pakistani civilian government at the expense of its military and intelligence services and was accepted by the Pakistanis after some rather significant heartburn in Islamabad.
The bottom line is that widespread public disclosure of the depth of the Taliban-ISI contacts ultimately creates leverage for the Americans, and that’s a good thing.
UPDATE: It occurred to me last night that by saying leverage created by the release of classified information was “a good thing” may have tacitly endorsed the idea that I favor future leaks of classified information. Nothing could be farther from the truth. As a veteran of five years inside the intelligence committee, I deplore leaks of all kinds — they harm sources and methods, which in turn jeopardizes the IC and military’s abilities to collect information germane to America’s national security. That leverage was created by the release of information is a fortunate byproduct of the leak. My preference would been to have none at all.
Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB’s Photostream
Tags: Andrew Exum, Ghost Wars, Hillary Clinton, ISI, John Kerry, national security, Pakistan's intelligence service, Spencer Ackerman, Steve Coll, Taliban, War in Afghanistan, Wikileaks
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Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
After digesting three days’ worth of the Washington Post’s TopSecretAmerica series, consider me unimpressed.
As I said in my initial post, I do generally support the series’ aim — to demonstrate that we’ve had a massive intelligence community bureaucracy sprout up since 9/11, and that oversight and public accountability seem to be lacking. That point is well-taken, and one that I support.
My critiques are simple: TopSecretAmerica is neither even-handed nor nuanced. It paints the intelligence community in a broad-brush negative light while ignoring many of its achievements in the last decade.
The series’ point of departure seems to be that the intelligence community is a secretive monster. The articles lean too heavily on the notion that big, expensive and secretive mean scary and, by implication, counter-productive: Companies put the bottom line before country, no one knows what happens at Ft. Meade, and the super-nerds of the NSA are too affluent … and … what? The country is weaker for it? We don’t know for sure, but that’s the impression I get.
Rarely do the authors acknowledge that much of the money spent in the IC actually, you know, helped keep Americans safe. KSM’s capture? Al-Zarqawi’s death? Catching the Times Square bomber in 53 hours? The Russian spy ring? The recent slate of high-level Taliban takedowns in Afghanistan and Pakistan? All these, and more, were left conspicuously off the final draft. Of course, this is the IC’s inherent PR nightmare: its shortcomings are publicly scrutinized; its successes often remain hidden.
Instead of striking a proper balance that tells a measured story of waste, overlap and needless spending mixed with strategic intelligence successes, “TopSecretAmerica” is too quick to throw the baby out with the bath water.
The lack of nuance is equally disappointing. As intelligence analysts, the contractors I worked with couldn’t have been more conscientious, patriotic employees. They were crucial components of our analytic team. Should they have been replaced by civilian employees on a purely cost basis (for purely economic reasons)? Probably, and the government is working to facilitate that transition (a point mentioned in the text). But that’s only part of the charge the Post levels against them — did my colleagues value their shareholders more than their country? No way.
And should my colleagues be lumped in with the protective service contractors who did irreparable harm to America’s mission by murdering Iraqi citizens? No, but to the intelligence novice, it’s easy to lump all contractors under one umbrella. A distinction should have been made.
Take the issue of overlap. In instances the Post highlights, yes, analytic overlap, most egregiously in the form of the “soccer ball syndrome“, creates inefficiencies that should be sussed out in better oversight.
However, overlap can provide necessary perspective to individual customers. In my old job, I was once the U.S. government’s foremost expert on maritime terrorism in the Strait of Gibraltar. That’s quite a niche, huh? I focused on all the major terrorist groups in Spain, Morocco, and Gibraltar (amongst other responsibilities) just like every other CIA or DIA analyst charged with those countries. But I did so with an eye towards my Department of the Navy customer as a maritime and regional specialist. If a group’s activity suddenly indicated a maritime inclination in that area, I took over as the lead because I was the subject expert.
Overlap makes contributions elsewhere, too. In another personal example, I worked with my agency’s team in Spain to determine, based solely on random, personal connections between my colleagues and their Spanish intelligence contacts, that Islamic extremists, not ETA as the Spanish first decreed, were responsible for the Madrid bombings of March 2004. Once we — the Navy — issued our initial report stating this possibility, other more appropriate agencies took over.
The lack of oversight in intelligence spending must be addressed, but let’s not forget the IC’s valuable successes, either.
Photo Credit: Marcin Wichary’s Photostream
Tags: Al-Zarqawi, Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, Intelligence Community, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, national security, Taliban, TopSecretAmerica
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Thursday, June 24th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Now that Gen. McChrystal is about to add “(ret.)” after his name, let’s examine the implications of the transition to Gen. Petraeus.
The Washington Post story quotes an unnamed White House official saying of the transition: “It’s as seamless as it could be, not only in terms of operations but also because you put someone in who’s widely respected. No one is going to doubt that he’s the right guy for the job.”
A relatively smooth transition, to be sure, but with an emphasis on the relatively. Here’s a look at five areas where the change in command might create a bit of unease.
Political expectations: Petraeus is God, at least if you ask most elected officials on the Hill. Yes, he was the architect of the “surge” in Iraq, and the “surge” was part of the reason that violence decreased in that country. The massive increase in troops helped, but the strategy change, the Sons of Iraq’s change of allegiance and a six-month cease-fire called by Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr were all critical.
If you’re really interested in learning the entire story of how Iraq’s civil war was tamed, read The Gamble by Tom Ricks. In it, Ricks quotes a Petraeus colleague (and I’m paraphrasing from memory) as saying, “David is the best general in the United States military. But he’s not as good as he thinks he is.” It’s like Favre to the Vikings. He’s still really, really good. But he’ll never be as good as in Green Bay.
Keep this in mind because, as Ricks says on his blog this morning, “Afghanistan 2010 may be an even tougher nut than Iraq 2007. … Our biggest problem in Afghanistan is the government we are supporting there, and it isn’t clear to me what Petraeus can do about that.”
Mission: Counterinsurgency theory and practice is Petraeus’ bag, so don’t expect that to change. Bear in mind that COIN is a strategy, not an outcome. It ends with some sort of negotiated peace, and it’s unclear if Petraeus has the same threshold for potential discussions with the Taliban as McChrystal. There has been American resistance to the idea (as there should be) of reconciling with any of the Taliban’s upper eschelon, but would Petraeus draw the line slightly differently than McChrystal?
Relations with Eikenberry: It became clear that the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, was playing second fiddle to McChrystal, who had established a clear working relationship with Karzai. During Petraeus’ time in Iraq, he may have held more sway than then-Ambassador Ryan Crocker, but they were an inseparable team that appeared together constantly. Petraeus, who is as much of a diplomat as a solider, will work to forge a better relationship with Eikenberry and turn this operation into a true civilian-military effort.
Relations with Karzai: Karzai very publicly lobbied for McChrystal to stay, and by many accounts, the two were on the same page (at least professionally). Is it possible that they were too close? Will Petraeus do a better job using America’s isolated points of leverage to extract more from the Afghan government?
Relations with Pakistan: This quote says it all:
McChrystal also played a key role in improving Kabul’s rocky relationship with Islamabad.
Yet Petraeus probably has as much, if not more, clout in Islamabad. He was an early proponent of a regional strategy that prioritized improving relations with Pakistan in hopes of persuading it to target the Afghan Taliban fighters who use Pakistani hideouts to plot attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Petraeus has visited Pakistan numerous times, delivering assurances that the U.S. troop buildup in Afghanistan would not spill over into Pakistan, visiting Pakistani paramilitary forces in the northwestern city of Peshawar and regularly praising Pakistan’s fight against its domestic Taliban.
“There’s a complete understanding of each other’s situation,” a senior Pakistani military official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “He’s not a stranger.”
Troops on the ground: There’s been no shortage of troops in Afghanistan who voiced their displeasure with McChrystal’s restrictions on the use of force. Think of it this way: you’re an 18-year-old Marine, –and you’ve become a trained killer and sent to a war zone. But your commanding general seems like he’s telling you not to do the job you’ve been trained for. Many of the troops’ quotes imply a certain amount of lost respect for McChrystal. Petraeus will have to work to explain the mission and win them over to a “mission first” mentality. Training stateside should also be adjusted accordingly.
Petraeus is the consummate pro, and he’ll no doubt do his best in an incredibly challenging environment with far-from-certain results. My take is that this transition will be as smooth as one could hope.
Photo credit: Jon-Phillip Sheridan’s Photostream
Tags: Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Hamid Karzai, Iraq, Islamabad, Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, Military, Moqtada al-Sadr, Politics and politicians, Ryan Crocker, Sons of Iraq, Taliban, Terrorism, The Gamble, Tom Ricks, Washington Post, White House
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