A Moderate Leader in Iran?

A "landslide" victory for a "moderate leader" as President of Iran means nothing in terms of American fantasies that democracy is just waiting to bust out in the Middle East and Central Asia.  The election of incoming President Hassan Rowhani is more a matter of style over substance.

However, a quote attributed to Mr. Rowhani seems like a clear public, diplomatic signal,

"The Iranian nation has done nothing to deserve sanctions. The works it has done has been within international frameworks. If sanctions have any benefits, it will only benefit Israel. It has no benefits for others," he said."

Leave aside that the first two statements are probably not true, and they merely represent the consistent Iranian position articulated in a more bellicose way, during the tenure of outgoing President Ahmadinejad.   What is important in this signal is that the issue of sanctions is of pre-eminent interest to Iran and they are back on the table for negotiation.

Sanctions have hamstrung the ambitions of clerical leaders and their civilian appointees.  They have also negatively impacted the general population, being a blunt instrument.  Having proven the point and taken their toll, any rational Iranian government would like to see sanctions loosened or abolished.

America, as some knowledgeable observers have noted, needs to sit down at the table for a long, protracted, frustrating, back and forth discussion about what we would trade for the removal of specific sanctions.  What exactly do are we willing to give in exchange for what from the Iranians?  An end to the enrichment program is really and truly off the table, from the Iranian perspective.  Can we live with this?

Thinking back to the Israeli Prime Minister's presenting of a comic poster of a ticking Wile E. Coyote bomb to the United Nations, it would seem unlikely that Israel would support any change to the current position that Iran's nuclear enrichment program must unilaterally end.  Are we still going to bind ourselves to this argument?

Something has been put on the table, and the incoming President doesn't take office until August.  There's plenty of time for some real hard, pragmatic thinking among America and its allies of how to perhaps begin meaningful negotiations with a new "moderate leader."

Late to the Party on Syria

This quote from British Prime Minister Cameron best sums up the reasons for the U.S. needing to take a leading role in Syria,

"If we leave Syria to be fought over by a murderous dictator and violent extremists, we will all pay the price," Mr. Cameron said, referring again to "evidence" that Mr. Assad's forces have been using chemical weapons, notably poison gas, against the opposition."

Vali Nasr of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins added a very good point on an interview with Charlie Rose, namely that the United States must articulate, for the benefit of all the actors, why the U.S. has a strategic interest in a peaceful, prosperous and more open Syria.

A "no fly" zone may have benefits in giving some protection to the large out migration of refugees into neighboring countries and even into Western Europe.  As we saw in Bosnia, the argument for "no fly" zones is that they may hasten then end to armed conflict faster than without them; by themselves, "no fly" zones cannot be shown to have prevented atrocities on the ground, as in Bosnia and Serbia.  If indeed chemical weapons have been used, the "evidence" needs to be amplified and widely broadcast.  If not, beating our breasts over this issue is not helpful now that Russian President Putin has dismissed the claims.

Dean Nasr of Johns Hopkins also points out that there is now a bitterly divisive battle between Saudi Arabia and Quatr over which country will lead the support to the Syrian rebels.  To the extent that we can take a leadership role, we could end this unproductive division.  I just don't think that our diplomatic and intelligence apparatus are up to the task.

The active leadership role for the U.S. efforts in Syria cannot rest with the personal efforts of the President, as good as he believes it could be for his polling numbers.  Yet, with the internal NSA and foreign policy staff Berlin Wall around the President, there is no candidate who has the full faith and currency of the President to take the lead beyond a G8 meeting.  Has anyone even seen Secretary of State Kerry?

Vali Nasr and Our Foreign Policy Failures

Vali Nasr's book, "The Dispensable Nation," is informative and thought provoking reading for anyone with a serious interest in how our country has come to the current situation, where we have minimal diplomatic credibility and influence, aside from projecting our military power.  Dr. Nasr is Dean of the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies and a senior fellow at the Brooking Institution.

The front part of the narrative is an encomium for his late mentor Richard Holbrooke, an advisor to President Clinton, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Senator John Kerry.  Holbrooke's last role in public service was as Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP).  Holbrooke persuaded Dr. Nasr to join him and his team in forging a personal diplomatic web of communication with his counterparts which would serve to open doors for meaningful policy engagement by his bosses, Secretary of State Clinton and President Obama.

Referring to the foreign policy environment surrounding the SRAP, Holbrooke tells the newly recruited Nasr,
"This place is dead intellectually.  It does not produce any ideas; it is all about turf battles and checking the box."  Of course, to some extent, this is the permanent structure of our foreign policy apparatus: a White House hierarchy that changes every 4-8 years, inexperienced staffers looking to make names for themselves, and a permanent bureaucracy in both the State Department and the military high command.  The latter groups wearily put up with the changes, knowing that they will outlast every administration; their influence is pervasive and out of the public eye.

The best example of how Ambassador Holbrooke did his work and what it produced is the story of the 2010 trade agreement between Afghanistan and Pakistan.  A seemingly innocuous, photo opportunity in our press, it represented a significant breakthrough which meaningfully increased Afghan exports, increased trade between the two countries and represented a thaw in relations frozen since the mid-Sixties.  Holbrooke had the trust and respect of Secretary of State Clinton, who pushed the Holbrooke initiative over the finish line.  Clinton was able to have her voice heard in the Obama White House, but as Nasr recounts, it was never without major battles, particularly with White House staffers who distrusted her motives!

Holbrooke, unfortunately, didn't succeed in getting his voice heard, although when his risky initiatives bore fruit, they were played as good political theater.

Nasr writes, '...my time in the Obama administration turned out to be a deeply disillusioning experience."  Where Candidate Obama promised to bring fresh thinking, better relations with foreign leaders and a high level of foreign policy expertise with his new administration, President Obama brought nothing new.

Fresh ideas, tactics and diplomatic initiatives met "a Berlin Wall of staffers."  Nasr concludes that the fundamental characteristics of our current foreign policy were profoundly influenced by the decision to funnel "major foreign policy decisions through a small cabal of relatively inexperienced White House advisors whose turf as strictly political."

Notions like "leading from behind" played well as a slogan in the domestic press, but they left our friends confused and our enemies emboldened.  Nasr writes that the Taliban were ready for talks with the U.S. in April 2009; after a two year initiative to bring them to the table, the initiative failed.  Part of the reason was the decision to accede to our military leaders for fear of being seen as soft on foreign policy.  The military had no truck with talking to our enemies.

Soon after our decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, all opportunity was lost.  Whereas our prior position had been "to fight and talk," it became "we're leaving" and not interested in talking.  Both the Afghans and Pakistanis were confused by our foreign policy maneuvering, driven by domestic political objectives.  Ironically, the U.S. warmed to a policy of negotiation and reconciliation with enemy forces after announcing the withdrawal.  Of course, our enemies have since launched their own initiatives of boldly attacking our forces in open, public places, which also serves to send a message to the remaining Afghan security forces.

The most interesting of the book for me is the series of chapters about the individual trouble spots around the world, from Pakistan to Afghanistan and the Middle East, Southeast Asia and China.   The depth and complexity of the Shia-Sunni enmity is something which Nasr has written about extensively, in another book. Here one sees that it makes for different sets of allies in each regional trouble spot.

Our woeful diplomatic effort and serial missteps will leave a difficult path for the U.S. to navigate in the future.  Foolish ideas like leading from behind and a foreign policy based on apologies and climate change will continue to weigh down our ability to influence events on the world stage.

The end to Nasr's book is extremely disappointing, as are the policy prescriptions by academics who understand the complexities and can articulate them, but who feel the need to come up with the magic policy bullet.  The Big Idea: a Marshall Plan for the Middle East.

The international community, working together can't implement a meaningful reconstruction effort in a small island like Haiti.  Billions are spent and little accomplished.  Imagine what would happen in the Middle East, fraught with Shia-Sunni tensions, an unstable situation in Syria, and a volatile face-off between Israel and Iran.  The kind of extended, in the trenches, consistent diplomacy exemplified by Holbrooke needs to rekindled.  It's not about a foreign policy savior, but about a consistent process which has the backing of our entire foreign policy apparatus.  It's always good to be hopeful.

CIA Delivers Bags of Cash to Karzai

In a 2011 post we wrote,

"In President Karzai, the West is funding a presidency which is thought by the population and by international observers to not be legitimate.  It is also deeply corrupt."

A year ago, we wrote,

 Here is an excerpt from a current story from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:
"The Taliban and criminal gangs, old and new warlords, and tribal leaders rule vast parts of the country. The authority of the government, many of whose ministers are considered corrupt, barely extends beyond its offices in Kabul. In order to survive, the Karzai government has to ignore or accommodate all those forces working to undermine it, from the Taliban to the warlords. "

Now, suddenly, our lapdog press reports that the CIA has been delivering bags or backpacks of cash monthly to President Karzai,

 "The C.I.A. payments open a window to an element of the war that has often gone unnoticed: the agency’s use of cash to clandestinely buy the loyalty of Afghans. The agency paid powerful warlords to fight against the Taliban during the 2001 invasion. /...
But the cash deliveries to Mr. Karzai’s office are of a different magnitude with a far wider impact, helping the palace finance the vast patronage networks that Mr. Karzai has used to build his power base. The payments appear to run directly counter to American efforts to clean up endemic corruption and encourage the Afghan government to be more responsive to the needs of its constituents." 

We stand by what we wrote in March,

"The only currency that will work with Mr. Karzai is money, not more of our money, but less of his accessible from his numbered bank accounts or other hidden assets.  Relationships are fine, but this one is dysfunctional and manipulative; we are on the wrong end of the manipulation.  The sooner this gets put on the right footing, the safer our troops, personnel and allies will be as we withdraw."

Afghan Commander Issues Threat Advisory

What we earlier termed Karzai's Afghan madness endangering our troops has been confirmed by one of our top generals in Afghanistan, according to the New York Times.

"Frustration with Mr. Karzai was clear in the alert, known as a command threat advisory, sent on Wednesday by Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr. to his top commanders. “His remarks could be a catalyst for some to lash out against our forces — he may also issue orders that put our forces at risk,” the advisory read....While threat advisories are circulated routinely, one directly from the commanding general is unusual, one Western official said.The threat advisory specifically mentioned Mr. Karzai’s comments about Bagram Prison, calling it an “inflammatory speech,” and warning commanders to be on guard against heightened insider attacks by Afghan forces against Westerners, as well as opportunistic Taliban violence. The order came after a recent rise in violence, including an insider attackthat killed two American service members and a bombing that struck the capital just after Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel arrived for a visit last week."

Going back to Jake Tapper's "The Outpost," the collapse of COP Keating could not have forced without members of the ANA cooperating with the Taliban.  Even members of the local village council were co-opted by the threat of violent reprisals against their family members by Taliban insurgents.  This event came against the background of a cooperative spirit engendered by the Keating commanders at the time.  Little of that spirit exists today, and the risks will be greater as the specifics of our planned withdrawal plan become known by our enemies.

Karzai's Madness: Real or Feigned, It's Dangerous

Here's the latest from the WSJ about our untrustworthy ally:

"We have indicated to him in private that public criticism is unhelpful to the partnership, especially when there is no basis in fact for some of the claims he makes," said one senior U.S. official. "We understand that there are issues, but every close relationship has issues and we need to work through them in a constructive manner."This isn't the first time that Mr. Karzai accused the U.S. of conniving with the Taliban. In 2009, he alleged that the U.S. was secretly flying insurgents into northern Afghanistan in helicopters, as part of a plan to destabilize the country.Related Coverage

• Large Explosion Hits Kabul as Hagel Visits

The U.S., other Western allies and Mr. Karzai's administration are engaged in discussions over what foreign military presence, if any, will remain in Afghanistan after 2014.
The U.S. has also been negotiating with the Taliban, but these talks have stalled over several issues, such as a possible swap of Taliban prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for a U.S. soldier in Taliban captivity, and the Taliban's refusal to talk with Mr. Karzai's representatives.
U.S. officials have envisaged that North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies would make up a large part of the residual force after 2014. Mr. Karzai, however, on Sunday reiterated his opposition to any deal with NATO as a whole, saying countries willing to keep troops here would need to negotiate individual deals with Kabul.
"If you want to stay beyond 2014, all of you separately need to sign agreements with the Afghan people," Mr. Karzai said Sunday. "Limited numbers, in a location we chose and under our conditions and framework, with respect for our laws, our sovereignty, our traditions and culture."
Few if any Western allies would agree to contribute troops to an Afghan mission that is not within the NATO framework, Western diplomats say. "They want us out, that is for sure," a Western official said. "They feel that we are part of the problem."

The only currency that will work with Mr. Karzai is money, not more of our money, but less of his accessible from his numbered bank accounts or other hidden assets.  Relationships are fine, but this one is dysfunctional and manipulative; we are on the wrong end of the manipulation.  The sooner this gets put on the right footing, the safer our troops, personnel and allies will be as we withdraw.

How could we expose our troops to agreements about fixed locations under Afghan jurisdiction? How would any Western allies agree to this foolishness?  Karzai is exposing the Pillsbury Doughboy core of our inept foreign policy and exploiting it to this advantage.

Karzai Endangers Our Troops

Afghan President Karzai's office is reported by the Wall Street Journal as putting out this statement in a press release,

"U.S. Special Forces stationed in Wardak province engage in harassing, annoying, torturing and even murdering innocent people," read a statement from the president's press office."

For all the billions in aid and support we've poured into Afghanistan, not to mention the lives sacrificed and ravaged among our troops, President Obama should send a special envoy to President Karzai to express our profound displeasure with this reckless and inflammatory statement.

Ann Marlowe's blog posts information today from the latest UN report on Afghan civilian casualties,

"For the first year since 2008, civilian casualties are down. Twelve percent down over 2011. At 2,754, civilian deaths in 2012—the equivalent in our population of 300 million would be 27,540—are still horrifyingly high. But contrary to lefty doctrine, 81 percent of the casualties were caused by the insurgents and just 8 percent by foreign and Afghan security forces. Air attacks by our forces caused just 126 deaths in 2012, as opposed to 235 in 2011 and 171 in 2010."

 We should also begin lining up the numbered foreign bank accounts where President Karzai, his family and friends have been expropriating our development funds and freeze the assets immediately. Failing something out of the normal, our draw down in Afghanistan will be hard on the ANA, civilians, and on our troops.

To think of our maintaining elite special forces within Afghanistan after our "pull out" in 2014 is madness.  They will be sitting ducks in a "no win" situation.   Let's not "lead from the back" on this predictable scenario.

Jake Tapper's "The Outpost" : A Must Read

Jake Tapper graduated from Dartmouth College with an A.B. in History.  This grounding in history and his story telling skills serve the reader well in his meticulously researched, compelling book, "The Outpost." At its core, the book is about scores of brave, disciplined, creative, resourceful, and committed soldiers whose lives were ended or irrevocably changed by their experiences in Afghanistan.  The fulcrum of the story is the creation, defense and ultimate destruction of Combat Outpost Keating in the remote Kamdesh district of Afghanistan.

Several American administrations have fostered continuing illusions about Afghanistan. Academics have similarly fallen under the same spell, and they still talk about defining "success" in Afghanistan.
The last paragraph of Tapper's 673 page book sums it up perfectly,

"All that I can tell you with certitude is the the men and women of 3-71 Cav, the 1-91 Cav, 6-4 Cav, and especially 3-61 Cav deserved better.  They are heroes, and they have my appreciation and eternal gratitude.  I wish they had a command structure and a civilian leadership that were always worthy of their efforts." 

The story begins with the sentence, "It was madness."  Somehow, undefined levels of the U.S. military command structure decide that they want to build outposts in the province of Nuristan in order to stem the flow of insurgents crossing over the Pakistan border.  The previous brigade commander in the region didn't think Nuristan was of any strategic value, and nothing was known about the ethnic Nuristanis, who stood removed from even the ethnic power structure in Kabul. The command decision was to place the outpost at the bottom of a bowl, surrounded by 10-12,000 foot mountain peaks.  When the sentry post was designed for the outpost, it didn't have a clear, full view of the outpost itself.

Soldiers described the experience of COP Keating as hunting deer from a deer stand---except that our soldiers were the deer.  Supplying the outpost was problematical, except by helicopter transport and even then the landing pad was dangerous.  "Sir, this is a really bad idea. A. Really. Bad. Idea. Anyone we drop off here is going to die."  (Jacob Whittaker, intelligence analyst to his superior officer in the summer of 2006)  Slowly and inexorably, the small contingent at COP Keating was overrun some five years later. 

The command structure in Vietnam and in Afghanistan proved to be remote, uniformed, capricious, subject to political whims on the part of the General staff, and their ideas were not vetted by senior officers who had some first-hand knowledge of the territory.  The Generals are supported by a foreign policy apparatus which is itself out-of-touch and dominated by NGO-types, State Department lifers and consultants. Thus, the role of Pakistan's ISI in supplying men and materiel, including sheltering them over the winter, was ignored until it was too late.  This command structure learned nothing from our war in Vietnam.  As Tapper says, our soldiers deserve better.

Our celebrity Generals like Petraeus and McChrystal are really politicians, except they wear uniforms rather than suits.  Like egomaniacal CEOs, they eventually believe their own press releases. They are too remote from their troops, and they spend their time using the media and trying to manage a President, his National Security Council, and Senators on Capitol Hill.  Seeing people with acres of medals on their chests makes the American public feel....confident that our conflicts are in good hands.  They are not. 

Even when it became clear that COP Keating should be closed, it remained open for political reasons and for the conclusion of the Afghan Presidential election.  

At some point, the Afghanistan strategy changed over to "counterinsurgency," which meant that our troops were to win hearts and minds over to the notion that an American presence was more in the economic and cultural interest of the local population.  The carrots included local development projects which were approved by the Karzai government in Kabul, like bringing mountain waters down to the villages for cooking and drinking.  Local councils, or shura, would guide and oversee the projects.  This all sounds good and is straight out of the NGO and academic playbooks.  Unfortunately, the real specifics of how counterinsurgency was to be carried out were not obvious.

In the case of Kamdesh certain commanders figured out, through their own awareness, emotional intelligence and moxie, how to make counterinsurgency work.  The stories of Lt. Col. Chris Kolenda, Captain Joey Hutto and 1-91 Cav are inspiring. They were succeeded by Captain Rob Yllescas who created the "Hundred Man Shura," and convinced his superiors that spending money to support this organization would provide returns in goodwill and safety for the locals and our soldiers. Yllescas forged great relationships with the locals. As a result, he was targeted for assassination by Taliban insurgents and their foreign sponsors. Why?  Because the opposition knew if an American soldier was succeeding in breaking down the propaganda walls about American motives and methods in Afghanistan, then the village elders would become effective partners in an alliance against outside Taliban interests.  

After the death of Captain Yllescas, both the Afghan National Army and the shuras were co-opted and compromised by insurgent infiltration.  The Taliban proposals were simple.  "The Americans will be gone soon.  After their departure, when we return we will remember those who cooperated with them and we will exact a price from you and from your families."  The way out for the locals was to look the other way when strangers infiltrated the village and when insurgents took up new positions on the mountainsides.  The book captures the fact that the fifty odd soldiers assigned to the outpost were intuitively aware of these developments.  As much as they tried to ferret out the truth directly from the ANA and the shura, they were inevitably told lies.  

After the collapse of  COP Keating, the Army inevitably called for an investigation in which it totally absolved its own highest leadership, who were not in the terms of reference of the report.  Instead, several soldiers were to be publicly reprimanded for not taking adequate measures to shore up the outpost's defenses as the threats increased.  Never mind that they didn't have the soldiers, material or time to do this, as they were under steadily increasing attacks.  The bureaucracy always moves to cover itself in its Kafkaesque world.  

In 2006, at the beginning of the book, when soldiers are entering villages introducing themselves as working in partnership with the Karzai government in Kabul, the villagers ask, "Who is Karzai?"  Time in the remote provinces of Afghanistan has stood still.  Villagers were unaware of World War II. They had never seen or felt any influence of a central government in Kabul, except around the time of the Presidential election, in which both sides wantonly stuffed ballot boxes.  

Jake Tapper has recently been elevated into the pantheon of emerging media pundits, taking a high position at CNN as Chief Washington correspondent and taking the time slot of the insufferable Wolf Blitzer's Situation Room.  It's good for Mr. Tapper and his professional career, and well deserved.  However, in this situation, it's not likely that he will be able to do the independent, in-depth work produced in this fine book.  

Continuing Illusions About Afghanistan

The recent White House meetings with Afghan Prime Minister Karzai generated photo ops and a joint statement, but the road from here through the end of 2014 should be filled with lots of twists and turns.

Some of President Obama's key points:

• By year-end 2014, Afghans will have full responsibility for their own security;
• The war will come to a "responsible end;"
• al-Qaeda can never again use Afghanistan as a launch pad for attacks against the U.S.
• Our troops will continue "to fight along side Afghan troops, as needed;
• More than 2,000 U.S. soldiers have lost their lives in the war;
• Our remaining troop presence after 2014 will be involved in training, advising and assisting Afghan security forces.

We really don't appear to have any clear and credible vision of how our interests are going to be served by the laundry list of soft commitments we have made to the lame duck Karzai government.  For future economic commitments, the U.S. has promised to align 80 percent of the funds to Afghan priorities and to channel at least 50 percent of the funds through Afghan budgets. Since the system of taxation and government revenue collection in the country is already massively corrupt, it doesn't bode well for a future in which more funds are available for redirection into the hands of corrupt officials at all levels.

Although both Presidents agreed with the concept of a Taliban representative office in Qatar, the Taliban has not yet agreed to the concept of dealing directly with the government of Afghanistan. 

India and Pakistan's recent news bulletins about the killing of soldiers and agents at Kashmiri check points is the beginning of positioning the two nations for exerting their influence at the multinational talks on the future of Afghanistan.  The U.S. position on what it expects from both India and Pakistan in relation to the future of Afghanistan is murkier than ever.

The workhorse diplomatic effort have been carried out during the past four years primarily by Secretary of State Clinton, but her role is already diminishing because of health issues.  Secretary of Defense Panetta has occasionally spoken up to defend the U.S. against President Karzai's outrageous accusations, but given the diminished future role of the military, it's not clear how strong his voice will be. The Obama foreign policy apparatus, apart from Secretary Clinton's personal efforts, has not been effective.  

It is really in nobody's interest for there to be an Afghan civil war as the U.S. draw down nears. Ann Marlowe has a non-consensus perspective,

"What will happen after we leave Afghanistan? A lot less than we think. More like entropy, or a regression to the mean, than like a civil war. A slow drift to regionalism, with the increasing irrelevance of the Karzai kleptocracy we have empowered. On the plus side, IED attacks and other terrorist violence will decrease dramatically. So will corruption; without US backing, corrupt officials will be removed by local consensus or the time-tested remedy of assassination. Afghans are natural capitalists and they will continue to create businesses and try to improve the lot of their families."

Let's hope she is right.

As we are committed to direct future economic aid to Afghan priorities, it is well to remember that education of young women is still not a widely accepted goal, except through the network of village elders.  The Taliban's position is not something consonant with our values.  The good news is that work is being done through well-regarded, private groups like the Central Asia Institute.




Greg Mortenson and star students at the Sitara School.

The continuation of private social and humanitarian aid, under the umbrella of a strong, economically rational and principled foreign policy, will be the best medicine for the citizens of Afghanistan

Our Foreign Policy Future in Central Asia

The following statement is as close as I can come to a succinct formulation of our foreign policy vision.  The interested reader can find the full exposition in a White House document on national security strategy from 2010.

"The starting point for that collective action will be our engagement with other countries. The cornerstone of this engagement is the relationship between the United States and our close friends and allies in Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East—ties which are rooted in shared interests and shared values, and which serve our mutual security and the broader security and prosperity of the world. We are working to build deeper and more effective partnerships with other key centers of influence—including China, India, and Russia, as well as increasingly influential nations such as Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia—so that we can cooperate on issues of bilateral and global concern, with the recognition that power, in an interconnected world, is no longer a zero sum game."

A problem with this paragraph is that one could substitute the name of any other country for that of the United States, and the statement reflects a bland sameness.  As we lurch from one international crisis to another, reacting to unanticipated events, I began thinking about Central Asia beyond 2012.  This will likely be a theater where none of the policy desiderata in the above paragraph may be achievable.

Turkey, a country of some 68 million people, has not been a focus of media attention in Central Asia, compared to Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, for example.  Yet, within its geopolitical ambit sits the Balkans, the Caucusus, and the Middle East. Turkey falls under the Western security apparatus, although at a distance. It has had second class citizen ties to the EU since joining the Council of Europe in 1949.  My thinking about this issue was inspired by the research of Svante Cornell, Director of the Central Asia - Caucusus Institute, and the Silk Road Program at Johns Hopkins University, my graduate alma mater.

Turkey's economy has been experiencing GDP growth in the 7 percent range, and it has tapped a long standing wellspring of entrepreneurship and Western-style capitalism.  Prime Minister Erdoğan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party ("AKP"), has a goal for Turkey to be among the top ten leading economic powers by 2023. 

As Cornell points out, since 1990, Turkey's GDP has grown four-fold, its exports five-fold, and foreign direct investment in Turkey has grown to twenty-five times the 1990 level.  France and Germany have long opposed Turkey's joining the EU as a full member, and Germany's unending rhetroic about Turkish guest workers, together with the opposition to membership has had a psychic impact on Turkey's foreign policy tilt, according to Cornell.

Whereas Turkish foreign policy from Ataturk's time was built on a pragmatic reticence, Prime Minister

Erdoğan's policy focus has been vocal and sometimes strident.  It has also clearly shifted eastward, away from Europe. He has also made public overtures to Iran, Syria and the Sudan.

For all our talk of isolating Iran, the Turkish PM has become a vocal supporter of Tehran's nuclear ambitions.  A long, cordial relationship with Israel deteriorated to the point of the 2009 shouting match with Shimon Peres at the Davos economic summit.

Given, Israel's choreographed saber-rattling at Iran, we should be very concerned about how the Turkish tilt towards rogue states may play out in the next few years.

Turkey sees itself as an "honest broker" among the Central Asian states and the West.  Referring to the Obama administration's paragraph above, we probably don't have the same "shared interests and values."  Turkey envisions an important role for itself at the Afghan peace talks scheduled for 2014, after the putative U.S. exit. 

The Erdoğan government in Turkey has begun a direct energy trade with the Regional Authority of Kurdistan, and there have been lots of announcements of expanded trade in oil and gas through pipelines to Turkey.  None of this sits very well with the Shia-dominated government of Iraqi President Maliki.  Turkey is also concerned about Iraq being overly influenced by Tehran, despite Turkey lending its verbal support to Iran's nuclear program.  So, will Turkey and Iran be rivals for center stage or allies?  It is not clear at all.

It is clear that Turkey will have a visible and important role to play in Central Asia post-2014 Afghan peace talks.  Russia and Pakistan will have their own interests.  Unfortunately, our "partnerships" with the latter two nations are threadbare.  Our 2014 exit and its aftermath will not be a quiet period for U.S. diplomacy.

Karzai Calls The Shots in U.S. Security Deal

Instead of pulling out of Afghanistan, Karzai has successfully played the Obama administration, which is totally focused on re-election, into a preposterous security deal which perpetuates his regime and lines his pockets with U.S. taxpayer money.

In the months leading up to this desperate deal, we had to listen to President Karzai demand the end to drone flights, allowing prosecution of U.S. military personnel in Afghan courts for crimes against civilians, and prior notice of military actions against Taliban targets.  It was a well laid out plan which took the PR initiative and put the U.S. on the defensive.  Karzai understood his Presidential counterpart's re-election needs all too well.  Now, billions more in taxpayer dollars will flow to a regime of a failed state which no amount of foreign nation building can resuscitate. Meanwhile, there is no agenda for Pakistan, without which there can be no long run solution for Afghanistan anyway.

A Christian Science Monitor poll shows Americans disapprove of this deal by 66% compared to a 33% approval rating.

Here is an excerpt from a current story from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty:

"The Taliban and criminal gangs, old and new warlords, and tribal leaders rule vast parts of the country. The authority of the government, many of whose ministers are considered corrupt, barely extends beyond its offices in Kabul. In order to survive, the Karzai government has to ignore or accommodate all those forces working to undermine it, from the Taliban to the warlords. This has even empowered them, occasionally forcing Karzai to appoint them as governors or to acknowledge their local authority.


Based on these criteria, Afghanistan is a failed state. For years, it has been, and still is, one of the world's top 10 failed states, along with Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Zimbabwe, and others.In an effort to secure his government's survival, Karzai invited "non terrorist Taliban" to participate in the government. He even proposed negotiations to Taliban leader Mullah Omar, saying he would guarantee Omar's safety if he would accept the authority of the government. Omar's group rejected that proposal, saying that it is Karzai himself, and not the Taliban leader, who should be concerned about his safety.

Longing for security and an improvement in their lives, Afghans have been increasingly turning their backs on a government that has failed to deliver either. A recent ABC/BBC/ARD poll indicated that support among Afghans for the Karzai government and U.S. efforts has dropped by half since 2005. The biggest danger is that, as in 1996 after four years of chaotic mujahedin rule, people will have no choice but to turn to the Taliban to impose countrywide "security" within the framework of an archaic and totally repressive system.

Reports that Karzai's brother Ahmad Wali, head of the Kandahar Provincial Council, has been involved in drug trafficking have caused widespread public disappointment. A second Karzai brother has taken over Afghanistan's only concrete factory in Pul-i Khumri and acquired by dubious means ownership rights to vast state lands. A third brother, Jalil Karzai, is said to have simply driven away after a recent car crash in Kabul involving his car and a taxi that killed five people.

Escalating violence and widespread corruption fueled a surge in opium poppy cultivation in 2006 and 2007, pushing opium output to an all-time high. Despite efforts by the Afghan government and their U.S.partners, Afghanistan is now the source of more than 90 percent of the world's illegal opium."

The writers of this story strive to be optimistic, saying that forty percent of the population believe that the country is moving in the "right direction."  The math isn't complicated: sixty percent of the population do not believe it. 

There's no doubt that we have to stay engaged with the Afghan people, but a military vanguard with no winnable mission isn't the answer.  Funding a cynical, self-serving government that is beholden to militant extremists like the Haqqani Network for survival, is not the answer either.

Our Troops Continue to Pay the Price in Afghanstan

Credit: Gul Elham for the Associated Press



This photo appeared on the front page of the print edition of the New York Times, but for some reason didn't appear in the Web edition.  It's 10:30 am, on a bright, sunny day in the northern Afghan city of Maimana. The scene shows the outskirts of a public park where a video was being made of an outdoor vegetable market, perhaps symbolizing the return to normalcy in this war-torn region of Afghanistan. 

As American soldiers and Afghan police were involved in filming interviews, a motorcyclist turned his bike into the soldiers and police, killing three G.I.'s  and six Afghans as the Times reports.  I can't get the image of these two soliders, contorted in pain, out of my mind.  The soldier on the left is holding his head, probably concussed from the exlplosion, while the soldier on the right has had his helmet torn from his head completely.  Neither can stand up, even as one of the soldiers looks with concern at what's happening with civilians and the Afghan police. These two soliders are paying the price for our continuing presence in a conflict zone where we appear to have lost our purpose and resolve.

As Christian Holy Week moves towards Easter, let's remember and pray for all those caught in this web of violence, especially our troops and their families.



Pulling Out of Afghanistan

                                                                    Source: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

An Afghani mother brings her child to a village distribution center for drinking water.

Alexander Star's thoughtful New York Times Book Review article on recent books about Afghanistan quotes an observer who characterizes the situation as "a perpetually escalating stalemate."  This is a perfectly apt description of the situation. 

It's hard to think of a modern theater where our military leadership and the men and women under their command have done a better job of trying to understand and work within indigenous cultural and leadership norms.  Our model uses "Human Terrain Teams," working with embedded academics, who are often anthropologists or ethnographers.  The good news is that had we not pursued such an approach, we would have had to beat a Soviet-style retreat, licking our wounds.  The bad news is that for all the bravery and sacrifice of our troops, and for the billions in expenditures, the best we can hope for is a stalemate after the defanging of the Taliban.  It is time for a withdrawal.

Professor Noah Coburn spent two years in the Tajik village of Istalif working on what would become his Ph.D. dissertation at Boston University and his 2011 book, "Bazaar Politics."  Here's a link to an earlier 2009 presentation of Professor Coburn's at the American Institute of Afghanistan Studies.

Coburn found the village of Istalif to be relatively stable because no one was really in charge.  Westerners are captivated by stories of Afghanistan's maliks (elders).  Coborn characterizes the maliks as being the public faces of a village, which means that they meet with NGO representatives, for example. Their actual power and ability to command resources is extremely limited.  The mullahs exert influence which is restricted to within the walls of mosques in Afghanistan.  The merchants who form the Afghan business sector, often live in Kabul and are not respected because of the local caste system.  The merchants come from the caste of weavers, who are not of high caste.  Even government officials are generally not powerful, as the actual disbursement of funds is left to local councils. 

As long as no one set of actors tries to extend its influence at the expense of another, the system of leadership maintains a sort of "knife edge" equilibrium. 

NATO attempts to establish a centralized government in Kabul have clearly failed.  In President Karzai, the West is funding a presidency which is thought by the population and by international observers to not be legitimate.  It is also deeply corrupt.  President Karzai's public rhetoric about jumping directly into the arms of the Taliban are incomprehensible. The normal behavior would be to offer olive branches when funding is being discussed, but surely we have no reason to put any faith in the President's remarks now. 

The problem with Pakistan is something we have written about in this blog for a few years.  Their interests in Afghanistan have never been aligned with ours, and this will never change with the current Pakistani state.  Withdrawing from Afghanistan can reduce the amount of "aid" we need to pump in which is solely to buy support for our Afghan operations. 

One of the sadder comments Coburn makes is to say that no group is held in lower esteem in Afghan society than the cadre of publicity-seeking NGO's. I believe that the Central Asia Institute is an exception to this characterization.  Minnesota native Greg Mortenson's organization has had a tangible effect on helping to educate young women, at the invitation and with the support of local elders.  This kind of grass roots effort, which doesn't aim at reforming cultural norms about gender, religion or criminal punishment, has a chance of succeeding, though it is certainly not without its challenges. 

Let's see what happens with the upcoming international conference on the future of Afghanistan.  We shouldn't expect to hear anything that would undermine the benefits of a withdrawal from Afghanistan.