On ‘Finishing the Job’ in Afghanistan

Reuters:

U.S. President Barack Obama vowed on Tuesday to ‘finish the job’ of an unpopular and costly eight-year war in Afghanistan, and officials said he could announce an increase of around 30,000 troops next week.

Okay. If by “finishing the job” he means achieving the core goals he set in his March White Paper — “disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and Pakistan”, “promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan” etc. — I think it’s safe to say that’s not gonna happen. He simply won’t have enough time on his clock. According to David Kilcullen’s recent estimate, even failing counterinsurgency campaigns usually take 9-11 years. By my count, that would put us way past the end of Obama’s second term.

To realise just how hard this stuff is, look at the massive international efforts in Bosnia and DR Congo. Fourteen years after the war, Bosnia is still beset by ethnic divisions and hatred, according to The Washington Post:

In June, the international envoy who oversees the rebuilding of Bosnia invoked emergency powers that he said were necessary to hold the country together. Although U.S. and European officials have been trying to get Bosnia to stand on its own feet for years, many Bosnian leaders say the only thing that can permanently fix their gridlocked government is for Washington to intervene — again — and rewrite the treaty that ended the war in 1995.

In the DRC, more than 4 million people have died since 1996, yet by its own admission the United Nations has failed miserably in its efforts to bring about peace:

The massive U.N. peacekeeping effort in eastern Congo has failed to deliver a knockout blow to Rwandan rebels while local insurgents have seized new territory under its nose, United Nations experts said Wednesday.

Far from resolving the root causes of the violence, the presence of the world’s biggest peacekeeping mission has aggravated the conflict in North and South Kivu provinces, the report seen by Reuters Wednesday said.

Just sayin’.

The Best Blog About Iraq

Many of you probably already know this, but just in case you don’t, Reidar Visser now has a blog. What was supposed to be “an occasional supplement” to his excellent website Historiae.org has quickly become the place to visit for deep and up-to-date information on Iraq. There’s a lot to absorb there, but if you have at least one scholarly bone in your body, it’s hugely rewarding. Commenters include heavyweights like Sam Parker and Michael Hanna.

Afghanistan: Recommended Reading

I’m going to recommend a couple of things that y’all should read, ay-sap. One you can download for free; the other you need to pay for. One you can digest pretty quickly; the other is academic and requires a little effort.

The first one is the new Oxfam Afghan poll (sort of), titled The Cost of War. You can download it here. It is important because it represents a good cross-section of rarely heard Afghan public opinion. The paper notes, among other things, that Afghans don’t see the presence of foreign troops as one of the major causes of the current war:

Seven in ten (70%) individuals saw unemployment and poverty as a major cause of the conflict, while almost half (48%) pointed to the corruption and ineffectiveness of the Afghan government. Other factors that individuals identified as major drivers of the conflict were: the Taliban (36%); interference by other countries (25%); Al Qaeda (18%); the presence of international forces (18%); lack of support from the international community (17%); warlords (15%); and criminal groups (14%).

My second recommendation is Decoding the New Taliban, a collection of scholarly articles edited by Antonio Giustozzi. It’s not this blog’s policy to link to commercial outlets, but I’m sure you’ll find a place to buy it online in no time. When you get it, start from Thomas Ruttig’s piece on Haqqani — a real eye-opener even for us who have met the old man.

Iraq: When Violence Becomes Banal

There is much to recommend in Joost Hiltermann’s article in The New York Review of Books about the daunting challenges that may yet lead to Iraq’s unraveling. Money quote from a Western aid worker living in Baghdad’s “red zone”:

Some four hundred to five hundred people are killed per month. Compared to other countries, this is extremely high, but here, that’s quite good. There is a feeling things are almost normal. Bombs are going off all the time, but we could call it a ‘banalization’ of violence: people sitting in one room no longer pay attention to the bomb going off next door, so to speak.

I’ve heard it called “residual violence” and “the irreducible minimum”, but never banal. The brutalising impact, of course, remains just as deadly as ever. As long as the madness continues, the nation will not heal. Hence, it’s not so much a question of why the Arabs and the Kurds would go to war as it is of why the hell not.

[h/t Ricks.]

Afghan Elections: The Untold Story

They may have looked like a farce, but at the local level the Afghan elections actually did change the balance of power, and in a relatively peaceful manner, Noah Coburn and Anna Larson write in an excellent new AREU briefing paper. Their conclusions:

Local elections matter and need to be prioritised by both national and international actors.

Elections in 2009 were not a complete failure: people did vote and power balances did change at the local level; but

There is an urgent need to reassess (especially international) expectations of what an ‘electoral success’ might look like. In a context in which an ongoing insurgency meant that much of the country was not represented at the polls, and with a flawed voter registration process that has been a poor substitute for a valid census, it was misguided to expect elections this year to be a test of ‘democracy’ in Afghanistan

Preparations for 2010 parliamentary elections must begin now if the polls are to be seen by the voting public—and the international community—as worthwhile and credible.

Obama’s Options Dwindle as Abdullah Bows Out

So he quits.

I’ll be very interested to hear what Obama has to say about Afghanistan when he finally lays out his strategy, presumably next week. How does he explain a troop increase to bolster a COIN campaign when the host government clearly has lost its legitimacy? Or will he use this as an opportunity for a face-saving exit instead? Has Abdullah just handed Obama the ticket out?

Afghanistan: Karzai + Karzai = 0

Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, has been on the CIA payroll for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reports, citing current and former American officials:

The relationship between Mr. Karzai and the C.I.A. is wide ranging, several American officials said. He helps the C.I.A. operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists. On at least one occasion, the strike force has been accused of mounting an unauthorized operation against an official of the Afghan government, the officials said.

Mr. Karzai is also paid for allowing the C.I.A. and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city — the former home of Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban’s founder. The same compound is also the base of the Kandahar Strike Force. ‘He’s our landlord,’ a senior American official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Mr. Karzai also helps the C.I.A. communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban. Mr. Karzai’s role as a go-between between the Americans and the Taliban is now regarded as valuable by those who support working with Mr. Karzai, as the Obama administration is placing a greater focus on encouraging Taliban leaders to change sides.

A few things are immediately evident:

1. The American military and the American intelligence apparatus appear to be waging two different wars in the region. On the one hand, there is the resource-hogging, politically unpalatable and oft-ridiculed “population-centric” counterinsurgency fight ISAF is currently engaged in (however imperfectly); on the other hand, there is the shadowy, violent and so very sexy counterterrorism mission headed by an agency which famously owes no explanations and isn’t accountable to anyone. By their nature, these missions are not mutually exclusive. But there is mounting evidence that Mr. COIN and Mr. CT aren’t exactly cross-pissing in brotherly bliss.
2. There are two Karzais: one is a liability; the other, an asset. You cannot get rid of one without losing the other. Hence, from the point of view of the war effort, their combined usefulness is nil.
3. In August, a report by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee revealed that the Pentagon’s Joint Integrated Prioritized Target List — a roster of 367 approved terrorist targets — had been expanded to include 50 “nexus targets”, or Afghan drug lords with links to the insurgency. Since Mr. Karzai, a “suspected” drug boss, obviously isn’t on the list, the only conclusion one can draw is that the United States is wiping out his competitors for him.

Of Predators and Suicide Bombers

There is a remarkable statistic in Jane Mayer’s superb piece [abstract] on the Predator war in The New Yorker:

It appears to have taken sixteen missile strikes, and fourteen months, before the C.I.A. succeeded in killing [Baitullah Mehsud]. During this hunt, between two hundred and seven and three hundred and twenty-one additional people were killed, depending on which news accounts you rely upon.

Remember, this took place under the best of circumstances, with friendly governments in both Islamabad and Kabul, a steady flow of human intelligence from the ground, and 100,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan. With all the talk of a classic COIN campaign in Afghanistan not being worth the cost, and of resorting to a cheaper off-shore CT option instead, it’s easy to forget what it actually takes to kill a guy with a flying robot. And it’s not only the man-hours and the innocents incinerated — it’s also the inevitable moral damage to a war-fighting nation’s psyche. What else is a suicide bomber who targets an army patrol and kills 10 bystanders but a drone sent from afar by a deft operator¹ to carry out an assassination? Scott Horton sums up the dilemma:

Saying ‘no’ to predator drones would not serve the nation’s security interests. But reconsidering the troubling deviations from American traditions of civilian-military control over weapons systems and accountability for their use is an imperative.

See also:

Revenge of the Drones (appendix 1) — New America Foundation
Analysis: A look at US airstrikes in Pakistan through September 2009 — The Long War Journal
Suicide Attacks in Afghanistan (2001-2007) — United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

¹Amir is a fifteen-year old boy who was born in Pakistan to a family from Gardez. He has spent half of his life in Pakistan and the other half in Gardez. He is uneducated and spent only two days in a madrassah when his father asked him to leave and start working with him. He was greatly influenced by a local mullah (religious leader) who told him to go to Kabul to kill the ‘Angrez’. [...] He claims that the Gardez mullah gave him 200 Afghanis and told him that he is in fact giving him heaven. The mullah told the boy that jihad is farz, required against the foreigners that have come to occupy Afghanistan and if he manages to kill a foreigner, he would go to heaven.

Iraq: 155 Dead, Maliki Spotted

At least 155 people are dead in the latest bout of residual violence in Baghdad. Merely an expected minor hiccup, of course, and nothing to be worried about, but apparently loud enough for the prime minister himself to put on his wellingtons and hazard a day trip:

In a rare personal appearance at a bombing site, Prime Minister Maliki arrived at the provincial council building about an hour after the explosion, his face ashen as he surveyed the carnage.

Around Mr. Maliki, paramedics carried the wounded to Red Crescent ambulances, workers wearing plastic gloves scooped body parts into plastic bags, and rescue teams pried open scorched cars in a desperate search for signs of life.

Surrounding streets had been blocked off and were under more than a foot of water because the blast had apparently also damaged a water main. Pools of water were red with blood.

Mr. Maliki did not venture far from his armored sport utility vehicle. He made no public comment before being driven away.

A new report from the Fund for Peace offers food for thought:

A commonly used metric for a ‘civil war’ used by scholars and the UN is one thousand victims per year killed in political violence. If the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count civilian death figures are taken as a basis, violence in Iraq surpassed the ‘civil war’ criterion in the first six months of 2009. Whether characterized as a ‘civil war,’ ‘low intensity conflict,’ or the remnants of radical forces trying to resurrect sectarian antagonism, the nomenclature is not important. What is significant is that sectarian violence remains a fact of daily life in Iraq, despite the military achievements of the 2007 ’surge.’

No doubt Obama’s left-wing supporters* will be quick to point out that horrific though the bombings may have been, in the larger scheme of things they will be but a bump in the road to everlasting peace. I just wish you guys would apply the same carefree logic to Afghanistan.

[* Full disclosure: I once thought I was one of them.]

‘American Departure Would Seal the Region’s Fate’

Ahmed Rashid:

[...] Pakistan is far less resilient than it was a few years ago. Even as Pakistani officials bluntly criticize Holbrooke for linking Afghanistan and Pakistan in his ‘AfPak’ strategy, some Pakistanis already see a chronic ‘Afghanization’ of their nation. Current realities include a collapse of law and order in parts of the country, state institutions riddled with corruption and ineffectiveness, a justice system that cannot deliver, a crashing economy with severe joblessness, increasing ethnic tensions and a strong separatist movement in Baluchistan province.

However, the real fear is that under such enormous external and internal pressures, there are no guarantees that the army will stay committed to a democratic system. More so, the military may not remain as united as it has been for the past six decades. What many Pakistanis fear and constantly talk about is not a traditional generals’ coup that may end democracy, but a colonels’ coup that could bring in a pro-Islamist and anti-Western coterie of officers linked to Islamic groups that would then negotiate a compromise with the Pakistan Taliban. That could put Pakistan’s nuclear weapons into the wrong hands. Neither a partial U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan nor a strategy of only using drones to target al-Qaeda could hope to handle such a regional catastrophe.

And a complete American departure would seal the region’s fate.

There it is. I have yet to hear of anyone with more than superficial knowledge of Central and South Asia who doesn’t have the same nightmares. A change of course is urgently needed, yet so bad — so meaningless and nasty — has the debate over Afghanistan become that I’m seriously considering shutting off comments for this post simply because the mere thought of the inevitable, ill-informed and America-centric blather about COIN this and CT that and the safe haven myth and yadda yadda yadda makes my stomach turn.

Then again, fuck it — fire away, what do I care.