No Rabbits Out of the Hat

Changing the top kick in charge of the Afghanistan theater and believing that this will have a material, long-term impact on the success of our effort there is delusional. There won't be any rabbits to pull out of the hat, like another surge, to turn things around quickly.

In the Spring of 2009, we spoke to a number of academic and international experts fresh from Central Asia; putting the current reports together with my own . In the post from a year ago, I wrote:

"Pakistan as a state, is near collapse and the policy choices here are not attractive, in the short run. The Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) is a shadow government in Pakistan, operating outside of the control of a moribund civilian government and of the divided, discouraged military."


That is hardly news to any knowledgeable observer of the India-Pakistan disputes since Independence. The Wikileaks undifferentiated trove of documents will make the discussion too diffuse. Like the shadow banking system in our own financial crisis, the ISI will defy attempts to characterize it or regulate it; it will operate freely and independently, unless a cataclysmic event intervenes, which I hope does not happen.

The material about the Haqqani network is old news also. United Nations reports from 2004-6, as well as Human Rights Watch reports from 2007 painted a picture of a very dangerous and effective military operations and training organization with ties to Al Qaeda. Jalauddin Haqqani was a CIA asset in the 2001 time frame when the US propped up the Afghan jihad against the former Soviet Union. His son, Sirajuddin, has been in charge of daily operations of the organization for the past several years, and he is said by knowledgeable observers to have extensive connections in the Pakistan tribal areas with all interested parties.


The foreign policy machinery of the current US Administration seems to be chasing its tail on this whole issue. Despite energetic and intensive personal diplomacy on the part of the Secretary of State, there doesn't appear to be any real consensus on what to do about the significant divergence in interests between the U.S., Pakistan and other external actors in Afghanistan.