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tx_ned · #61 Wednesday, February 17, 2010

As Obama bets on Asia, regional players hedge
India's unease with Obama

By Jim Hoagland
Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Asia forms the crossroads of success or failure for Barack Obama's grandest foreign policy designs. This impression has crystallized over a year in which the president has shown himself indifferent to Europe, sentimental and somewhat conflicted about Africa, perplexed by the Middle East and largely oblivious to Latin America.

Obama's choices about China, India, Japan and Pakistan loom at least as large as the urgent challenges of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The president has outlined the need for the United States to shed burdens abroad to help repair the badly damaged American economy. That means that Obama must settle discarded U.S. burdens -- and power -- across a range of international organizations in which Asian nations are becoming increasingly influential.

The president consigned the Group of Eight industrial countries to leadership oblivion in his recent State of the Union message, omitting any mention of it while singling out the G-20 forum of developed and developing nations. This was no oversight: His administration hopes to shift climate change negotiations out of the unmanageable U.N. format that doomed the Copenhagen summit in December and place these talks in the G-20 process, according to U.S. officials.

Asia's giants, India and China, present differing and opposed models of international cooperation. A G-20 world needs at its center a dynamic U.S.-Indian relationship to help bridge that organization's divides between haves and have-nots and their different political systems. But here in New Delhi, Indian officials increasingly fear that the Obama team does not see it that way.

Indians are flattered that the only state dinner Obama hosted last year was given for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, whose remarkable intelligence and gracious manner would make him a welcome guest anywhere. But they also detect an air of ambivalence blowing their way from Washington -- and are reacting by hedging against a quick U.S. pullout from Afghanistan that would bring greater U.S. reliance on China and Pakistan, at India's expense.

Romanced by the Bush administration to balance China's inexorable rise in military and economic power, India finds itself out of sync with the Obama administration on some key issues. There is no open conflict. But neither is there the air of excitement and innovation about the U.S. relationship that I found on my last trip here 18 months ago.

Since then, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has explicitly rejected balance-of-power politics as a relic of the past. Yet India, Japan and other Asian states fear that without a supportive U.S. hand on the scales, they will be swamped by China's growing military capabilities and its increasingly aggressive, and effective, diplomacy.

The somewhat fanciful notion of a G-2 directorate in which the United States and China collude to determine global economic and political direction is increasingly colliding with reality. Tensions over Taiwan, trade and Tibet make the G-2 unworkable, as recent events have again shown. But the specter lingers for Asians as well as Europeans that Obama will be tempted to try -- even though a failed G-2 would be the worst possible outcome for everyone.

"The G-2 carries the implication that the United States would leave Asia to China to run," says B.J. Panda, a rising young political star here. Adds another Indian strategist: "We have to balance the Chinese, irrespective of what the U.S. and others do."

Obama's emphasis on setting an initial date for withdrawal from Afghanistan in his Dec. 1 policy speech, even as he sent additional U.S. troops, stirred doubt here about U.S. strategic patience. So have the frequent U.S. military visits to and overblown praise for Pakistan's army leadership, despite credible evidence of high-level Pakistani involvement in cross-border terrorism directed at India.

The dominant impression from three days of informal conversations organized here by the Aspen Strategy Group with Indian officials and analysts is that Pakistan has become a second-tier problem for India, even as it increasingly preoccupies Washington. What one Indian analyst described as "Obama's nuclear alarmism" also gives Pakistan increased leverage over Washington.

India has recently moved troops away from the Pakistan frontier while increasing deployments into border areas that China is claiming in pugnacious and offensive rhetoric. In a break with its past opposition to foreign bases in the region, India has secured military transit and stationing rights at an airbase in Tajikistan. And Singh's government lavishly welcomed Japan's new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, on a recent three-day visit that included publicity about plans for joint military maneuvers in the Indian Ocean.

These are clear signs of Indian hedging: seeking allies for worst-case scenarios while accommodating China on economic matters. The Obama administration's failure to reaffirm clearly that India's rise is in U.S. strategic interests has contributed to this hedging. That is a mistake the president should quickly correct, in the interests of his own vision of a new world order centered on the Pacific and Indian oceans.

tx_ned · #62 Saturday, February 20, 2010

Editorials
Saturday, February 20, 2010

THE LATEST report about Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency contains a lot of bad news: Iran has already produced its first batch of more highly enriched uranium, and it did so without waiting for IAEA inspectors to arrive; it has produced 4,550 pounds of low-enriched uranium -- almost enough, if further processed, for two atomic bombs; and it has begun work on manufacturing uranium in metallic form, another key step in bomb production.

There are, however, two pieces of good news amid all the bad -- something the Obama administration and its allies are badly in need of at a time when the effort to stop Tehran's nuclear program is showing little progress. The first is that the number of working centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment plant is declining, though the overall output is still increasing. A recent study by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) showed that more than half of the Natanz plant's 8,700 centrifuges were not working in November; the new IAEA report records a further decline. Iran's enrichment of its stockpile is also proceeding at a snail's pace.

More significant, the report signals that under a new leader, Yukiya Amano, the United Nations' nuclear inspection agency will scrupulously carry out its technical mission and honestly report the facts. That would be a sea change from the politicized tenure of former chief Mohammed ElBaradei, who envisioned himself as an independent actor and openly declared his opposition to sanctions or military action against Iran. Mr. ElBaradei kept the IAEA from reporting all that it knew about Iran's pursuit of a bomb and refused to draw obvious conclusions.

No more, it seems: "The information . . . raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile," says the first report issued under Mr. Amano. Let's hope such frankness helps clarify the ongoing discussion at the U.N. Security Council about further sanctions. As the IAEA report makes clear, neither existing sanctions, nor technical problems, nor the Obama administration's offers of engagement have stopped Iran's drive for a weapon.

tx_ned · #63 Wednesday, March 03, 2010

By Karen DeYoung and Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's public invitation to the Taliban to attend a peace conference this spring has sparked disagreement and confusion among the many players in Afghanistan over the shape and speed of negotiations and what they should ultimately accomplish.

As U.S., NATO and Afghan forces continue a major operation in Helmand province in the south and prepare for another in neighboring Kandahar, the Obama administration has argued that substantive talks should wait until the military balance has shifted more sharply in favor of the coalition.

But the administration's British allies, facing strong domestic disapproval over the long-running war, appear eager to see negotiations begin sooner rather than later. That position is shared by a number of senior U.S. military officials, who predicted that negotiations with insurgents could gain traction as early as this year.

"I would not be surprised if we see Taliban from the south ending up in the parliament, and that's not necessarily a bad thing," said one military official, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Such remarks could be aimed at sowing suspicion and discord within enemy ranks, a priority on both sides of the war. There are few visible signs that senior Taliban members are open to negotiation, or that they might break from the head of the group, Mohammad Omar. The insurgents have publicly disclaimed any interest in discussions until the departure of "infidel" foreign troops.

But Karzai's effusive invitation, made in late January at an international conference on Afghanistan held in London, has unleashed widespread speculation that discussion of reconciliation -- previously seen as psychological warfare and political gamesmanship -- could lead to substantive talks, or perhaps already has. Kabul has been awash with rumors, with Afghan human rights organizations warning that Karzai plans to forgive countless Taliban atrocities and place insurgent leaders in high-level government positions.

"I think it's just legalizing impunity," said Sima Samar, who chairs the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. "Nobody is accountable, not for the past crimes and not for future ones. Anybody can come and join the government and they will be protected."

Some senior Pakistani officials have suggested that U.S. or Afghan officials were in touch with Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's No. 2 commander, before he was captured last month during a Pakistani-U.S. intelligence operation in the port city of Karachi. U.S. officials have denied any contact with the Taliban. If anyone had been talking to the group, the Americans say, it was the Pakistanis, who have been known to play both sides of the war.

These officials and others spoke on the condition of anonymity, to avoid the appearance that they were interfering in what the coalition has described as an internal Afghan issue.

London conference

Some coalition members, fearing that a rush to dialogue could critically destabilize Afghanistan's fragile government, said Britain pushed Karzai to move further than he had intended at the London conference, a charge a British official "categorically" denied.

"What we wanted was to use that [conference] to create political space for the conversation on reconciliation. That's true," the official said. The midwife role is easier for Britain to play than the United States, he said, because the British public is more eager to leave Afghanistan and is less concerned about "things like women's rights."

But the British, he said, were trying to hold the Afghan president from going too far with reconciliation.

"It's nonsense if Karzai says, 'Right, give me Omar's cell number and I'll call him up and invite him next week,' " the official said.

Just a week after the London conference, Karzai appeared to be heading in that direction. Asked in an interview with Germany's Spiegel magazine whether he could envision receiving the Taliban chief at the presidential palace, Karzai replied: "Mullah Omar is first and foremost an Afghan, and we want all Afghans to return. . . . We welcome all Afghans back to their country, with this little bracket of not being part of al-Qaeda or the terrorist networks."

Only a "small fraction" of the Taliban is in contact with al-Qaeda, Karzai said. "Even at the higher levels of their command structure, there are people . . . who have never seen Osama bin Laden and who don't even understand what al-Qaeda is up to."

A tangled web of ties

Like most guerrilla wars, the Afghanistan conflict is being fought among compatriots with ethnic and familial ties. Those ties inevitably mean that the sides have contact with one another.

"Every Pashtun family in the south has friends or relatives in the Taliban . . . including the leadership of this country," Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said during a visit to Kabul last month. "It's not a secret. And they're always in contact."

Holbrooke emphasized, however, that the communication doesn't mean substantive dialogue is taking place.

It's "like, you know, 'How's your cousin's brother-in-law doing? I wish I could kill him,' " he said.

A senior NATO official in Kabul agreed that Afghans "are on the horn every day talking across that border," but he suggested that recent conversations have taken a new tenor "because the notion of reintegration and reconciliation is on the table in a big way." Even the coalition military has channels of communication, he said.

"I can call up an individual who can call someone in Pakistan. And ask him a question. And get a truthful answer," the official said.

The Afghan government has begun laying the groundwork for more significant accommodation with at least some Taliban members. At Kabul's urging in January, Russia lifted its opposition to removing five former Taliban members from the U.N. Security Council sanctions list, ending restrictions on their assets and travel. "In terms of reconciliation, these five people will be useful," said Zahir Faqiri, a spokesman for the Foreign Ministry.

The government has also put into force a law granting amnesty to all those involved in fighting before and after the 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, provided they respect the Afghan constitution. The legislation, passed by parliament in 2007, had receded into the background after Karzai refused to sign it, only to suddenly emerge as law this year when it was printed in the official gazette without explanation.

Saudi involvement

Saudi Arabia has provided a venue for several rounds of talks between Karzai representatives and Taliban figures since late 2008, and Karzai has urged the Saudi king to become more directly involved. The meetings have been shepherded by Qayum Karzai, the president's brother and a Baltimore restaurateur, and have included former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Abdul Salam Zaeef, whose standing with Omar and other members of the Taliban leadership council, based in Quetta, Pakistan, is uncertain.

Although the Saudis have said they will not take an official role in the dialogue until the Taliban publicly severs all ties with al-Qaeda, they sit in on the informal discussions, held in Mecca, and brief interested parties, including the United States.

Although eager for the discussions to continue, the participants are concerned that interference from Afghanistan's foreign patrons may undercut the potential of the talks. "We need to be quiet about these things for a while," said a senior Afghan figure who has participated in the discussions. "That's probably the best way out of the situation."

"There are so many paranoid people," and all of them want a "major piece of the [Afghanistan] pie," he said, mentioning Pakistan, India, Iran and the United States. "The only way peace can come is for them to have hands off until the Afghans figure out what kind of peace is feasible and then work on it."

Partlow reported from Kabul.

tx_ned · #64 Thursday, March 04, 2010

By David Ignatius
Thursday, March 4, 2010

One of the problems with the U.S.-Pakistan relationship over the decades has been that the two sides tend to fall in and out of love like a tempestuous couple, rather than maintain a steady and dependable bond. So it's wise to approach recent talk about a new strategic breakthrough with some caution and skepticism.

In the upbeat White House version, the first big success for the Obama administration's new Afghanistan policy has come not in the battle of Marja in Helmand province but in Islamabad. Officials cite Pakistan's cooperation with the CIA in capturing and interrogating top leaders of the Afghan Taliban, and Pakistan's new dialogue with India.

Pakistani officials agree that there has been a positive change in mood. They say the Obama administration has taken quiet steps to reassure Islamabad that the United States doesn't want to grab Pakistan's nuclear weapons and that it isn't trying to smuggle in covert operators disguised as U.S. contractors. "It's about getting back to trusting each other," says one Pakistani official.

But military and intelligence officials on both sides appear wary of over-promising what this new partnership can deliver. There's greater confidence, they say, because officials know each other better. One U.S. official counts 25 high-level American visits to Pakistan since President Obama took office. Even so, "there is a fair amount of residual mistrust," says Shuja Nawaz of the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank.

One key administration official characterizes the relationship this way: "We have narrowed the gap in terms of strategic outlooks, and that has allowed a greater cooperation on the tactical level." But he cautions that it would overstate this rapprochement to call it a "strategic recalibration," as some White House officials have.

The up-and-down history of the relationship was examined by CIA analysts in a recent report. They noted that this ebb-and-flow was driven in part by the personalities on both sides but that the Pakistanis always retained a focus on their strategic interests -- starting with their historical rivalry with India.

Given the centrality of India in Pakistan's security calculus, U.S. officials are encouraged by the resumption last month of high-level dialogue between India and Pakistan. The Obama administration has been working behind the scenes to foster these contacts and to reassure both sides.

The X-factor in the contacts is Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been a strong advocate of better relations with his neighbor. U.S. officials have advised Pakistan that, in their view, Singh is an unusually farsighted leader who may be able to open doors in New Delhi that have been closed.

Indians, for their part, insist that no real progress in the relationship will be possible unless the Pakistani intelligence service curbs the Kashmiri militant groups, such as Lashkar-i-Taiba, that it helped create. "We get it," says one Pakistani. But little has happened yet on the ground that would reassure India.

To address Pakistani security anxieties, the Obama administration has taken several little-noticed steps. One is to implicitly accept Pakistan's status as a declared nuclear weapons state and thereby counter conspiracy theories that the United States is secretly plotting to seize Pakistani nukes.

Obama made an early move in that direction when he told Pakistan's Dawn newspaper last June, "I have confidence that the Pakistani government has safeguarded its nuclear arsenal. It's Pakistan's nuclear arsenal." There have been similar private assurances, officials say.

The United States is also trying to combat Pakistani fears about covert U.S. military or intelligence activities. Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani has been negotiating measures for greater transparency, such as clearer labeling of official cargo. And the administration has repeated Obama's assurance last June that "we have no intention of sending U.S. troops into Pakistan."

The trickiest issue remains Afghanistan. The Pakistanis provided important help last month by capturing Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar (which was partly an accident, given that neither the United States nor Pakistan knew at first that this was the No. 2 Taliban official). Because Baradar was the Taliban's chief of logistics and had notebooks and computer records, the operation proved to be a "gold mine," says one official.

But there's always something new to worry about in this relationship. The Pakistanis are concerned of late that the United States may negotiate a peace deal with the Afghan Taliban that cuts them out as an intermediary. "In reconciliation talks, Pakistan must have a seat at the table," insists one Pakistani. We should all be so lucky if this proves to be the biggest problem.

davidignatius@washpost.com

tx_ned · #65 Tuesday, March 09, 2010

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, March 9, 2010

The word "McCarthyism" is overused, but in this case it's mild. Liz Cheney, the former vice president's ambitious daughter, has in her hand a list of Justice Department lawyers whose "values" she has the gall to question. She ought to spend the time examining her own principles, if she can find them.

A group that Liz Cheney co-chairs, called Keep America Safe, has spent the past two weeks scurrilously attacking the Justice Department officials because they "represented or advocated for terrorist detainees" before joining the administration. In other words, they did what lawyers are supposed to do in this country: ensure that even the most unpopular defendants have adequate legal representation and that the government obeys the law.

Liz Cheney is not ignorant, and neither are the other co-chairs of her group, advocate Debra Burlingame and pundit William Kristol, who writes a monthly column for The Post. Presumably they know that "the American tradition of zealous representation of unpopular clients is at least as old as John Adams' representation of the British soldiers charged in the Boston Massacre" -- in other words, older than the nation itself.

That quote is from a letter by a group of conservative lawyers -- including several former high-ranking officials of the Bush-Cheney administration, legal scholars who have supported draconian detention and interrogation policies, and even Kenneth W. Starr -- that blasts the "shameful series of attacks" in which Liz Cheney has been the principal mouthpiece. Among the signers are Larry Thompson, who was deputy attorney general under John Ashcroft; Peter Keisler, who was acting attorney general for a time during George W. Bush's second term; and Bradford Berenson, who was an associate White House counsel during Bush's first term.

"To suggest that the Justice Department should not employ talented lawyers who have advocated on behalf of detainees maligns the patriotism of people who have taken honorable positions on contested questions," the letter states.

But maligning is apparently the whole point of the exercise. The smear campaign by Cheney, et al., has nothing to do with keeping America safe. It can only be an attempt to inflict political damage on the Obama administration by portraying the Justice Department as somehow "soft" on terrorism. Even by Washington's low standards, this is unbelievably dishonest and dishonorable.

"Whose values do they share?" a video on the group's Web site ominously asks. The answer is obvious: the values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

The most prominent of the nine Justice officials, Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, represented Osama bin Laden's driver, Salim Hamdan, in a case that went to the Supreme Court. In a 5-to-3 decision, the court sided with Hamdan and ruled that the Bush administration's military tribunals were unconstitutional. Are Liz Cheney and her pals angry that Katyal was right? Or do they also question the "values" and patriotism of the five justices who voted with the majority?

The letter from the conservative lawyers points out that "in terrorism detentions and trials alike, defense lawyers are playing, and will continue to play, a key role." It notes that whether terrorism suspects are tried in civilian or military courts, they will have access to counsel -- and that Guantanamo inmates, even if they do not face formal charges, have a right to habeas corpus review of their detention. It is the federal courts -- not defense lawyers -- that have made all of this crystal clear. If Cheney and her group object, they should prepare a blanket denunciation of the federal judiciary. Or maybe what they really don't like is that pesky old Constitution, with all its checks, balances and guarantees of due process. How inconvenient to live in a country that respects the rule of law.

But there I go again, taking the whole thing seriously. This is really part of a death-by-a-thousand-cuts strategy to wound President Obama politically. The charge of softness on terrorism -- or terrorist suspects -- is absurd; Obama has brought far more resources and focus to the war against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan than the Bush-Cheney administration cared to summon. Since Obama's opponents can't attack him on substance, they resort to atmospherics. They distort. They insinuate. They sully. They blow smoke.

This time, obviously, they went too far. But the next Big Lie is probably already in the works. Scorched-earth groups like Keep America Safe may just be pretending not to understand our most firmly established and cherished legal principles, but there is one thing they genuinely don't grasp: the concept of shame.

tx_ned · #66 Thursday, March 11, 2010

By David Ignatius
Thursday, March 11, 2010

The bubbly enthusiasm that many analysts express about the Chinese economy reminds me of the old-time variety show host Lawrence Welk, who banished worries each week with soothing sounds from his Champagne Music Makers.

China watchers should turn off the music and listen to Premier Wen Jiabao, who has been surprisingly frank in warning that overinvestment and lack of domestic demand are producing an economic bubble in his country.

"The biggest problem with China's economy is that the growth is unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable," Wen cautioned at a March 2007 news conference during the National People's Congress. That comment had about as much effect as then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan's 1996 concern about the stock market's "irrational exuberance."

Wen again voiced concern last week to the National People's Congress. "We still face a very complex situation," he said, given the twin dangers of overheating at home and the global recession abroad. He pointed to a "precipitous rise" in housing prices in some Chinese cities and said that because of the danger of overinvestment, "the launching of new projects must be strictly controlled."

The rise of China is one of the blessed miracles of modern economic history. But Chinese leaders know they cannot repeal the economic laws of gravity. As the economist Herbert Stein observed decades ago, "If something is 'unsustainable,' that means it won't be sustained." That is surely true with the unbalanced, export-led growth that has powered China's ascent.

"China's dependence on export-led growth . . . is unsustainable over time," Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, says in a forthcoming article in the journal the International Economy. He cites a recent International Monetary Fund analysis saying that for China to maintain its trend of 8 percent annual growth with the current pattern of trade, it would have to double its share of world exports by 2020. That isn't going to happen.

So the question isn't whether the Chinese economy will change, but how. The optimistic view is that Chinese leaders will slow their investment and credit boom, and at the same time transition to a consumer-led economy that doesn't depend so much on exports.

The scale of China's growth is so overwhelming it can make analysts giddy: A compilation of "15 facts about China that will blow your mind" by the Web site Business Insider enthuses: "By 2025, China will build TEN New York-sized cities." It's a vision of a perpetual cash machine.

The problem with these straight-line extrapolations is that they are notoriously unreliable in predicting the future. Recall the forecasts about the Soviet Union in the 1960s or Japan in 1990.

My favorite analyst of bubble economies is David M. Smick, who predicted the U.S. financial mess in his book "The World Is Curved." He notes some worrying statistics: Until the global financial crisis, Chinese exports represented 43 percent of its gross domestic product. To make up for collapsing foreign demand once the recession hit in 2009, China launched a $1.8 trillion stimulus and lending program -- amounting to about 38 percent of its GDP. This money was supposed to reach consumers, but Smick estimates that 85 percent of the subsidized loans went to state-run companies and banks -- pumping the investment bubble even larger.

Not to worry, say China enthusiasts: A country with more than $2 trillion in foreign reserves doesn't have to worry about debt problems. But those reserves (mostly in dollars) aren't quite the safety net some imagine, because China couldn't liquidate them without hurting itself badly, as economist Michael Pettis argues in his blog, China Financial Markets.

China has a larger problem of questionable loans on its domestic balance sheet. Smick notes that $1.2 trillion of the Chinese stimulus package last year came in soft, subsidized loans. And Victor Shih, a professor at Northwestern University, has been gathering information about murky, off-books borrowing by local investment companies that he reckons could amount to as much as $1.7 trillion, or about 34 percent of China's GDP.

The most reassuring fact about China is that the country's leaders see the problem and are trying to put on the brakes, ever so gently. For a reminder of the dimensions of the overcapacity problem they're facing, consider that China has enough steel-making capacity to meet the demands of the United States, Russia, Japan and Europe combined.

For a country addicted to export-led growth, transitioning to a sustainable economy won't be easy. People who assume that an ever-expanding China will inexorably replace America as the world economic superpower should take a close look at the numbers.

davidignatius@washpost.com

tx_ned · #67 Friday, March 12, 2010

By Gary Solis
Friday, March 12, 2010

In our current armed conflicts, there are two U.S. drone offensives. One is conducted by our armed forces, the other by the CIA. Every day, CIA agents and CIA contractors arm and pilot armed unmanned drones over combat zones in Afghanistan and Pakistan, including Pakistani tribal areas, to search out and kill Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters. In terms of international armed conflict, those CIA agents are, unlike their military counterparts but like the fighters they target, unlawful combatants. No less than their insurgent targets, they are fighters without uniforms or insignia, directly participating in hostilities, employing armed force contrary to the laws and customs of war. Even if they are sitting in Langley, the CIA pilots are civilians violating the requirement of distinction, a core concept of armed conflict, as they directly participate in hostilities.

Before the 1863 Lieber Code condemned civilian participation in combat, it was contrary to customary law. Today, civilian participation in combat is still prohibited by two 1977 protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. Although the United States has not ratified the protocols, we consider the prohibition to be customary law, binding on all nations. Whether in international or non-international armed conflict, we kill terrorists who take a direct part in hostilities because their doing so negates their protection as civilians and renders them lawful targets. If captured, the unlawful acts committed during their direct participation makes them subject to prosecution in civilian courts or military tribunals. They are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status.

If the CIA civilian personnel recently killed by a suicide bomber in Khost, Afghanistan, were directly involved in supplying targeting data, arming or flying drones in the combat zone, they were lawful targets of the enemy, although the enemy himself was not a lawful combatant. It makes no difference that CIA civilians are employed by, or in the service of, the U.S. government or its armed forces. They are civilians; they wear no distinguishing uniform or sign, and if they input target data or pilot armed drones in the combat zone, they directly participate in hostilities -- which means they may be lawfully targeted.

Moreover, CIA civilian personnel who repeatedly and directly participate in hostilities may have what recent guidance from the International Committee of the Red Cross terms "a continuous combat function." That status, the ICRC guidance says, makes them legitimate targets whenever and wherever they may be found, including Langley. While the guidance speaks in terms of non-state actors, there is no reason why the same is not true of civilian agents of state actors such as the United States.

It is, of course, hardly likely that a Taliban or al-Qaeda bomber or sniper could operate in Northern Virginia. (In 1993, a Pakistani citizen illegally in the United States shot and killed two CIA employees en route to the agency's headquarters. He was not, however, affiliated with any political or religious group.)

And while the prosecution of CIA personnel is certainly not suggested, one wonders whether CIA civilians who are associated with armed drones appreciate their position in the law of armed conflict. Their superiors surely do.

Gary Solis, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, is the author of "The Law of Armed Conflict."

tx_ned · #68 Monday, March 15, 2010

By Michael O'Hanlon and Hassina Sherjan
Sunday, March 14, 2010

The war in Afghanistan is in its ninth year, and even officials supportive of the U.S. presence there acknowledge the challenges that remain. "People still need to understand there is some very hard fighting and very hard days ahead," Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said during his trip to Afghanistan last week. But the conflict is not hopeless, nor it is eternal. If we want to develop realistic expectations about the war -- how it might unfold from here and when it could begin to wind down -- it would help to dispel some of the popular mythologies that have emerged about the Afghans, the enemy we're fighting and the U.S. commitment.

1. Afghans always hate and defeat their invaders.

The Afghans drove the British Empire out of their country in the 19th century and did the same to the Soviet Union in the 20th century. They do fight fiercely; many American troops who have been deployed both in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent years have asserted that the Afghans are stronger natural fighters.

Yet, the people of Afghanistan do not despise foreigners. Despite downward trends in recent years, Afghans are far more accepting of an international presence in their country than are Iraqis, for example, who typically gave the U.S. presence approval ratings of 15 to 30 percent in the early years of the war in that country. Average U.S. favorability ratings in recent surveys in Afghanistan are around 50 percent, and according to polls from ABC, the BBC and the International Republican Institute, about two-thirds of Afghans recognize that they still need foreign help.

And before we mythologize the Afghan insurgency, it is worth remembering some history. In the 1980s, the United States, Saudi Arabia and others gave enormous financial and military assistance to the Afghan resistance movement that eventually forced the Soviets out. That group grew to about 250,000 in strength in the mid-1980s. But today, the Taliban and other resistance groups receive substantial help only from some elements in Pakistan -- and diminishing help at that -- and collectively, they number about 25,000 fighters.

Finally, though U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, today's international presence there does not amount to an invasion. Foreign forces are present at the invitation of the host government, which two-thirds of Afghans consider legitimate, if somewhat corrupt.

2. The situation in Afghanistan is much more difficult than the one in Iraq.

The U.S. goals in both countries are similar -- establishing better security and governance and eventually passing total control to domestic authorities -- and there are certainly ways in which Afghanistan poses a tougher challenge than Iraq. There are more tribes to contend with, the drug problem is worse, literacy rates are lower, national institutions such as the security forces and the judiciary are weaker, and the economy is less advanced.

But Afghanistan's history of violence and its relative underdevelopment also make its people realistic about the future; they are grateful for even incremental progress, as polls show. And consider the following signs of improvement: Seven million children are now in school (compared with fewer than 1 million under the Taliban), and some 8 million cellphones are in use among a population of about 30 million -- compared with virtually zero before 2001. Health care is also getting better.

Also, the violence in Afghanistan today is far less severe than it was in Iraq. Before the troop surge in 2007, more Iraqi civilians were killed every month than have been killed from war-related violence in Afghanistan each year. In other words, Afghanistan is less than a tenth as violent as the Iraq of 2004-07. Communities were displaced and sectarian tensions were inflamed far more in Iraq than they have been in Afghanistan.

3. The U.S. military is for war-fighting, not nation-building.

This was a core philosophy for the incoming Bush administration in 2001 -- until the tide of history made George W. Bush the president most preoccupied with nation-building since Harry Truman.

The debate about whether the U.S. armed forces should be involved in nation-building was big in the 1990s, but the nation-builders have won the argument hands down. The terminology has shifted, to be sure, from "nation-building" to "stabilization and reconstruction" missions, but these include efforts to improve governance and the economy as well as security and stability.

Among top civilian and military leaders, there is no real disagreement about whether the armed forces should engage in these types of activities -- at least not in situations such as Afghanistan, where the weakness of a state threatens American security. While Gen. David Petraeus led the writing of the new counterinsurgency field manual, with its emphasis on protecting local populations and helping build up indigenous institutions, it was then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who, in a November 2005 directive, wrote that "stability operations are a core U.S. military mission that the Department of Defense shall be prepared to conduct and support." He added that such operations will receive a "priority comparable to combat operations." That remains U.S. policy.

4. We should negotiate with the Taliban.

There is nothing wrong with negotiating with elements of the Afghan resistance, especially at the local level. If they are willing to renounce violence and accept the authority of the central government as well as the temporary presence of international forces, we can allow them to rejoin society, obtain jobs and perhaps, in some cases, hold government positions. Many insurgents who are motivated less by ideology than by money, opposition to the government or tribal rivalries may fit this bill.

But a major compromise with the central Taliban leadership is not only unlikely -- it's a bad idea. The Taliban is not interested in negotiation and is not the sort of organization with which the Afghan government or the United Sates should ever compromise. Its extremist ideology is misogynous and intolerant, and its history in Afghanistan is barbaric. Most important, the Taliban is extremely unpopular among Afghans.

President Hamid Karzai has repeatedly stated his willingness to negotiate with Taliban leaders willing to renounce insurgency, while British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has called for some form of political settlement with the Taliban and other insurgent groups, provided that our core interests are protected. But in general, NATO and Afghan forces will have to establish more battlefield momentum before widespread negotiations become plausible. Any talks must be pursued from a position of strength, so that deals will involve convincing the Taliban to lay down arms rather than pretending that it could share power while clinging to its current ideology.

5. There is no exit strategy or exit schedule.

Some Afghans (and Pakistanis) listened to President Obama's Dec. 1 West Point speech, in which he promised that U.S. forces in Afghanistan would start to withdraw by July 2011, and worried that America's commitment is weak. Many Americans, though, have the opposite concern -- that this war is open-ended.

But if the new strategy being implemented by Gen. Stanley McChrystal is successful, we will see clear evidence of that by late 2010 or 2011. We should then be able to contemplate major reductions in the U.S. military presence starting in 2012.

There are two main reasons for large NATO and U.S. troop deployments in Afghanistan today. The first is to clear and hold key strategic areas, as with the current operation in Marja. This effort will largely culminate in 2010 and 2011. The second is to train Afghan forces. Given schedules for recruiting, training and forming Afghan units, this process will be most demanding through 2012 or so.

Put the pieces together and, while a rapid reduction in U.S. forces starting next summer is unlikely, the United States should be able to cut its presence by perhaps 20,000 troops per year thereafter. This is hardly a quick exit -- at least not as fast as Congress or Obama might want -- and such a time table implies that the United States will still have 60,000 or more troops in Afghanistan when Obama faces voters in 2012. But it is not unending, nor is it unrealistic.

Michael O'Hanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Hassina Sherjan is the president of Aid Afghanistan for Education, a nonprofit group in Kabul. They are the co-authors of "Toughing It Out in Afghanistan."

tx_ned · #69 Monday, March 15, 2010

By Fareed Zakaria
Monday, March 15, 2010

President Obama gets much credit for changing America's image in the world -- he was probably awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for doing so. But even devoted fans would probably say it is too soon to cite a specific foreign policy achievement. In fact, there is a place -- crucial to U.S. national security -- where Obama's foreign policy is working: Pakistan.

A spate of good news has been coming out of that complicated country, which has long promised to move against Islamic militants but has rarely done so. (The reason: Pakistan has used many of these same militants to destabilize its traditional foe, India, and to gain influence in neighboring Afghanistan.) Over the past few months, the Pakistani military has engaged in serious operations in the militant havens of Swat, Malakand, South Waziristan and Bajaur. Some of these areas are badlands where no Pakistani government has been able to establish its writ, so the achievement is all the more important. The Pakistanis have also ramped up their intelligence-sharing with Washington. This latter process led to the arrest last month of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the deputy leader of the Afghan Taliban, among other Taliban figures.

Some caveats: Most of the Taliban who have been captured are small fish, and the Pakistani military has a history of "catching and releasing" terrorists so that they can impress Americans but still maintain their ties with the militants. But there does seem to have been a shift in Pakistani behavior. Why it occurred and how it might continue are a case study in the nature and limits of foreign policy successes.

First, the Obama administration defined the problem correctly. Senior administration officials stopped referring to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan and instead spoke constantly of "AfPak," to emphasize the notion that success in Afghanistan depended on actions taken in Pakistan. This dismayed the Pakistanis, but they got the message. They were on notice to show they were part of the solution, not the problem.

Second, the administration used both sticks and carrots. For his first state dinner, Obama pointedly invited Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- clearly not Pakistan's first choice. Obama made clear that America would continue to pursue the special relationship forged with India under the Bush administration, including a far-reaching deal on nuclear cooperation. At the same time, the White House insisted it wanted a deep, long-term and positive relationship with Pakistan. Sens. John Kerry and Dick Lugar put together the largest-ever nonmilitary package of U.S. assistance for the country. Aid to the Pakistani military is also growing rapidly.

Third, it put in time and effort. The administration has adopted what Gen. David Petraeus calls a "whole of government" approach to Pakistan. All elements of U.S. power and diplomacy have been deployed. Senior administration officials have made more than 25 visits in the past year, all pushing the Pakistani military to deliver on commitments to fight the militants.

Finally, as always, luck and timing have played a key role. The militants in Pakistan, like those associated with al-Qaeda almost everywhere, went too far, brutally killing civilians, shutting down girls schools and creating an atmosphere of medievalism. Pakistan's public, which had tended to play down the problem of terrorism, came to see it as "Pakistan's war." The army, reading the street, felt it had to show results.

These results are still tentative. Pakistan's military retains its obsession with India -- how else to justify a vast budget in a poor nation? It has still not acted seriously against any of the major militant groups active against Afghanistan, India or the United States. The Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani group, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Lashkar-e-Taiba and many smaller groups operate with impunity in Pakistan. But the Pakistani military is doing more than it has before, and that counts as success in the world of foreign policy.

Such success will endure only if the Obama administration keeps at it. Some believe that Pakistan has changed its basic strategy and now understands that it should cut ties to these groups altogether. Strangely, this naive view is held by the U.S. military, whose top brass have spent so many hours with their counterparts in Islamabad that they've gone native. It's up to Obama and his team to remind the generals that pressing Pakistan is a lot like running on a treadmill. If you stop, you move backward -- and most likely fall down.

Fareed Zakaria is editor of Newsweek International. His e-mail address is comments@fareedzakaria.com

tx_ned · #70 Thursday, March 18, 2010

By David Ignatius
Thursday, March 18, 2010

The headline read like something you might see in the conspiracy-minded Pakistani press: "Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants." But the story appeared in Monday's New York Times, and it highlighted some big problems that have developed in the murky area between military and intelligence activities.

The starting point for understanding this covert intrigue is that the U.S. military has long been unhappy about the quality of CIA intelligence in Afghanistan. The frustration surfaced publicly in January in a report by the top military intelligence officer in Kabul, Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, that began: "Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy."

It's a complicated tale, but it has some simple lessons: Under the heading of "information operations" or "force protection," the military has launched intelligence activities that, were they conducted by the CIA, might require a presidential finding and notification of Congress. And by using contractors who operate "outside the wire" in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the military has gotten information that is sometimes better than what the CIA is offering.

A reconstruction of what happened, based on conversations with a half-dozen military and intelligence sources, raises two crucial issues: What new military procedures are needed to bring "information operations" and related activities under better control? And how can the CIA improve its own collection efforts so that private contractors aren't brought in to fill the gaps?

The outsourced intelligence operation described by the Times began in 2008 with a push from the Pentagon's Strategic Command, which oversees information operations. A Stratcom civilian named Michael D. Furlong began funding former journalists to provide "ground truth," with a planned budget of $22 million.

Another private intelligence effort was launched in November 2008, when a Boston firm called American International Security Corp. (AISC) was hired by the New York Times to free its reporter David Rohde, who had been kidnapped by the Taliban that month. The firm turned to Duane "Dewey" Clarridge, a former CIA officer who launched the agency's counterterrorism center in 1986 and was an important figure in the Iran-contra affair. He set about building a network of informants who could help free Rohde.

Rohde escaped in June 2009, but Clarridge's network continued to function. It currently has about 10 operatives who act as case officers, drawn from the United States, Britain, South Africa and other countries. These officers, in turn, run about 20 "principal agents" who are in contact with roughly 40 sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Clarridge had been in contact with U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa since March 2009 to share information and to make sure that his private network wouldn't clash with U.S. operatives. He is said to have briefed both Adm. Eric Olson, the head of SOCOM, and Lt. Gen. David Fridovich, the director of its center for special operations.

Clarridge's contacts with the military deepened last July after he provided detailed intelligence about an Army soldier, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, who had been captured by the Taliban in eastern Afghanistan.

The two outsourced operations linked up in mid-2009, after Furlong met one of Clarridge's operatives in Dubai. In October, the military awarded a contract for several million dollars to Clarridge and AISC through a series of subcontractors.

The CIA, meanwhile, was flummoxed by Clarridge's freelancing. The new chief of station in Kabul protested last summer, and lawyers drew up new rules. Clarridge's mission was described as "force protection," a normal military activity in a war zone. His unclassified reports were fed into the J-3 operations center in Kabul, and then often classified and disseminated though intelligence channels.

Clarridge's reports carried the rubric "Force Protection Atmospherics." His sources were described as "cooperators" and his effort was termed "commercially gathered" data, rather than intelligence collection.

But these semantics didn't resolve the tension between military activities, which fall under Title 10 of the U.S. Code, and CIA covert action, which is authorized under Title 50. This gray area has led Adm. Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, to argue privately that the country may need what could be described as a new "Title 60," that blends the two in a coherent framework with proper controls.

The case of the clandestine contractors should prompt a serious debate about creating such a Title 60, and about the military's rules for information operations. Meanwhile, Clarridge's private network continues to provide fresh intelligence. His latest report from Paktia province was disseminated on Monday, the same day the New York Times article appeared.

davidignatius@washpost.com

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