Cancun Outcome a Modest Step Forward



Author: Michael A. Levi, David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change




The climate agreement reached in Cancun is modest but important. It builds on the political compromise embodied in the unreasonably maligned Copenhagen Accord in two important ways. First, substantively, it begins to flesh out many of the details of the accord. Second, politically, it takes what was a toxic agreement and obtains much more solid buy-in from the most important parties.
The agreement moves forward in a fairly balanced way on each pillar of the Copenhagen accord. It brings the emissions pledges made by all countries into the formal UN process, while maintaining the same legal form for all countries, including both the United States and China. It establishes many of the parameters of a new Green Climate Fund, including many sought by U.S. negotiators, including strong governance and a central role for the World Bank; at the same time, it avoids requiring new financial pledges from the United States, something that will eventually be necessary, but is near-impossible right now. It cements some basic features of a scheme (known as "international consultation and analysis") for ensuring transparency in developing-country emissions cutting efforts, while creating a technical group that will flesh out details, making it much more difficult for China to back out. The parameters of the process are certainly not ideal, but given how reticent China was to accept anything substantive in this area, they constitute real progress. The agreement also makes some advances in several important areas that were not core to Copenhagen, including deforestation and technology, which is to be applauded.
As important to the outcome as this substance, though, is the process through which it was reached. By all accounts, the Mexican diplomatic team displayed great skill, giving all parties a voice while taking the reality of international power politics seriously. As a result, they eliminated silly procedural excuses for rejecting an agreed outcome, and in doing so appear to have established a much firmer foundation that the Copenhagen accord ever came close to enjoying.
None of this, of course, is world changing. The Cancun agreement, like the Copenhagen accord, is a relatively weak one, not because negotiators lack skill or because leaders lack will, but because the structure of the climate problem conspires against big bang solutions. The Cancun agreement should be applauded not because it solves everything, but because it chooses not to: it focuses on those areas where the UN process has the most potential to be useful, and avoids other areas where the UN process is a dead end. The outcome does not change the fact that most of the important work of cutting emissions will be driven outside the UN process.
That said, there is one big hole in the Cancun agreement that many observers, in their excitement, appear to have quickly forgotten: its treatment of the Kyoto Protocol. Many developing countries had insisted that rich countries adopt a new set of emissions targets under the Protocol, but Japan, Russia, Canada, and Australia were adamantly opposed. The Cancun result punts the dispute to next year's talks. But that solution will not be available again: the current Kyoto commitments expire at the end of 2012, making the next UN conference the last practical opportunity to seal a new set of Kyoto pledges. Realistically, though, such commitments are highly unlikely. The big challenge for next year's talks will be to protect Cancun's progress and momentum from the inevitable acrimony over Kyoto.

U.S. Strategy for Pakistan and Afghanistan


Speakers: James Dobbins, Director, International Security and Defense Policy Center, National Security Research Division, Rand Corporation, and Independent Task Force Member
Robert Grenier, Chairman, Erg Partners, and Independent Task Force Member;
Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan and South Asia, Council on Foreign Relations, and Independent Task Force Director
Moderator: Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus and Board Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations




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DANIEL S. MARKEY: Thank you. Are we ready? Have a seat, please. If I could have your attention, we'd like to get started. Thank you.
My name is Dan Markey. I'm a senior fellow here at the Council on Foreign Relations. I just wanted to take a quick opportunity because Anya Schmemann, who is the task force director, was delayed -- yes, that's well deserved -- was delayed in her travel here today so she couldn't do the initial introduction, so I'll try to fill in for her.
I just wanted to very quickly explain what a task force is, first of all, how this process was conducted, and also say a couple of words of thanks to individuals who were involved in it but were unable to join us here on this occasion. This task force took us -- I hate to say it, but roughly 18 months of work by a group of about 25 individuals, whose names you can find on the task force document itself. Over this period of time we conducted numerous meetings in person, as well as a number of conference calls, side interactions by e-mail and so on, to try and arrive at a consensus opinion about the document that you now have.
The process also included two trips to the region that I took, as well -- one of those trips with our two co-chairs, who are both deserving of thanks: Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser in the Clinton administration, and Rich Armitage, the former deputy secretary of State in the Bush administration. So both of them, we traveled together to Afghanistan and Pakistan in February of last year as a part of this process.
You'll see that this is a consensus document, which imposes, obviously, some constraints on the nature of what can be said, but I think also gives the document a weight and a heft to it that it might lack had it been a single author piece. But you'll also see, and I think many readers very quickly flip right to the back, where you find the dissenting views, because members of the task force are always given the opportunity to sign on to the general thrust of the report, but then to provide dissenting opinion on specific issues, and some of those can be, I think, some of the most interesting pieces of the debate and provide you a window into the nature of the conversations that took place throughout this process.
I think we'll be able to get into that unless it gets into our questions, and it will also handle the main introductions. But I do just want to take that opportunity to both thank our co-chairs in particular, and also give you some sense as to how the process works. Thank you.
LESLIE H. GELB: Excuse me. Permit me to stand just for a moment. We lost Dick Holbrooke the other day. Dick was a member of the Council, on the board of the Council two different occasions, very active in this place. Frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs magazine. Dick was a phenomenal public servant of the rarest kind, as you can tell from the public reaction to his death. It's the kind of reaction reserved for a great secretary of State, which those of us who were his close friends and those of us who were his admirers always hoped he would be. And I miss him personally because he was such a dear close friend of mine. So just think about him.
We're going to have a panel discussion on the issue that Dick Holbrooke had been working on so ferociously these last couple of years. Dan Markey has just told you what the task force is, and these people laboring for 18 months shows you what kind of a problem it is. Let me give you a brief introduction of those on the stage who will be talking with you, with me first. All on the record, by the way, and they're hoping you will tell everybody about what they say. No Council ground rules whatsoever. Use their names. Even misstate what they say, as long as you get their names right. (Laughter.)
I'll be very brief in introducing them because you can find their full biographies in the dating section of Facebook. (Laughter.) That's a joke, Jim. (Laughter.)
JAMES F. DOBBINS: Hope springs eternal. (Laughter.)
GELB: On my immediate right is James P. Dobbins, diplomat extraordinaire. Had an incredible career in Foreign Service and now runs the national security program at RAND. On Jim's right is Robert Grenier, and Robert Grenier is a spook extraordinaire, an incredible career of running the counterterrorism operation in our government, being the station -- CIA station chief in Islamabad. Incredible career there. And our own Dan Markey, who Richard Haass, I think, grabbed on the State Department policy planning staff, and then grabbed here, and we're all lucky for it. He is one of the best in this awful business.
We're going to talk, as I said, among ourselves for a half hour at most, then open it up to you and to a few questions from our national members. Jim, why don't you take the lead and give us a two- to three-minute rendition of what you say, how it basically agrees with the administration and where you think it disagrees with the administration.
DOBBINS: Me personally, as opposed to the task force or are you --
GELB: No, no. For the task force. We're not interested in your personal view. (Laughter.)
DOBBINS: I mean, this task force, I think, gave a qualified support for the president's program, but indicated, I'd say, a low level of tolerance for a sustained commitment at current levels. The task force did examine alternatives to the current approach and found that all of the alternatives brought along heightened risks, that moving to lower levels of commitment, counterterrorism rather than counterinsurgency, would increase the risk to the United States, including ultimately the risks of terrorist attacks conducted or guided out of Afghanistan.
On the other hand, it also found that the prospects for the current strategy succeeding rapidly and allowing us to de-escalate our commitment in conditions of success were also distant and not very good.
GELB: Sorry. Does that mean you think they could not be achieved in the more or less four-year time frame that the administration has now established with our NATO partners?
DOBBINS: I don't know that -- I don't think the task force came to a judgment on that, although I think there was some skepticism in that regard. Essentially I think what it set up was a risk-cost calculation, with the bulk of the task force members feeling that the costs involved in the current effort were too high, and that one would probably be better off accepting a somewhat higher degree of risk in order to reduce those costs, $100 billion a year, or 500, 600 American casualties, dead in action every year. I'd say that was the majority view.
There was a minority -- a not insubstantial minority -- who had essentially a different risk-cost calculation. They didn't contest that you could reduce the commitment and accept greater risk, but I think some of us felt that that might not be a good tradeoff. And in particular the report -- and I think this is its most controversial point -- says that if our current strategy is found to be succeeding next summer, we should begin withdrawing our troops. And if the strategy is found not to be succeeding next summer, we should begin withdrawing our troops even more quickly.
And some of us felt that it was premature to make that judgment, and that one would have to examine the strategy rather than simply abandon it next summer if it was found to be inadequate.
GELB: Very good. Thank you, Jim. Bob, anything you would like to add or subtract from that?
ROBERT L. GRENIER: Well, I guess I would say that --
GELB: The opinion of the task force.
GRENIER: Yes. My reading of the report, as Jim said, provided qualified support for the current administration policy. I would say that that's what was highly qualified. And in fact, reading it with as much objectivity as I hope I can manage, it certainly did not make me very hopeful of success.
The alternative that we -- the main alternative for Afghanistan that we posited was what we refer to in the report as a light footprint posture, something along the lines of what I suppose the vice president means when he talks about counterterrorism plus. And there too there's a very heavy emphasis placed on the potential downsides of a light footprint approach, such that on my reading of the report it doesn't make me very hopeful of success there either. So perhaps I should just leave things there.
GELB: Bob, just add a few words to explain what counterterrorism plus means.
GRENIER: As we all know, right now we are engaged in a broad, comprehensive counterinsurgency effort, which is an exercise in effecting nation-building. A light footprint approach would scale back substantially our aspirations in Afghanistan and we'd be focusing on the most clear and proximate threats to the United States. That is, the use of Afghanistan, and by extension the tribal areas in Pakistan as a safe haven by terrorists who pose a direct threat to us and to our allies.
A light footprint approach would be focusing on those -- that set of tasks much more narrowly defined and would at the best take a much slower, smaller and more qualified approach to nation-building and counterinsurgency as more broadly defined.
GELB: Thank you. And Dan, when you go on Chris Matthews tonight, and he lets you say three words about the task force report, maybe two words -- (laughter) -- what are you going to tell people this report adds to the sum total of human knowledge?
MARKEY: Very difficult, would be my two words. And that's it. (Laughter.) If I could get a few more words, I would say only that the exchange that you just heard reflects a fairly wide spectrum of views about the nature both of the objectives, the ambition that we should have in Afghanistan. So on the one hand you have -- and we had in our group those who suggest that a far longer or potentially longer, even more costly effort is worth the United States' time and energy, and those who suggest that what in fact we need to do is scale back, and perhaps even scale back soon rather than waiting to see if this project works.
And the report did come down somewhere in between, reflecting it being a consensus view.
GELB: Yes, I commend this report to you. I think it's among the best the Council has done in the more than 16 years we've been doing these task force reports. It's very thoughtful, very comprehensive. Let me tell you my reaction as I was reading through it, in addition to it's being quite good and informative.
There are three ways of looking at the Afghan-Pakistan situation, to me. One is to look at the situation out there, which is where you concentrate almost all your guns. And that's where the administration seems to be concentrating all its guns. The second is to look at it in the context of the broader terrorist threat and the broader proliferation threat that the United States faces. Is what we're doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan justified, given the broader nature of those threats? Is it much more than Afghanistan and Pakistan? Are they the center of that universe?
And finally, in terms of our own interests writ large. You don't get into that and the administration doesn't get into that. How does this rack up against the need, the real need we have now, given the economic deterioration that we're in? How does this stack up against our need to begin cutting back on commitments like that and focusing on building up the basis of our diplomatic and military power, namely our own economy? Jim, why don't you take the first crack.
DOBBINS: No, I mean, I think those are absolutely legitimate observations. I think that you've seen support for the effort in Afghanistan plummet over the last six or eight months in Washington, at least inside the Beltway, and I think in public opinion more generally. And I think it says a lot more about what's going on here than what's going on there.
I think there is a legitimate risk-benefit tradeoff. The current effort in Afghanistan gives us a near 100 percent certainty that terrorist attacks on New York are not going to be mounted from Afghanistan, but it costs us $100 billion a year. Is that worth it? Do you accept a slightly greater risk and adopt a lower profile, a lower cost profile?
I think no politician, of course, is going to say, I'm cutting our forces and accepting a greater risk. So they'll always argue they're cutting their forces, but that the new posture will be just as successful as the old one, and I think that's disingenuous. But I do think that it's a legitimate tradeoff if you put it in the terms that you've put it in.
I do think that counterterrorism versus counterinsurgency dichotomy is somewhat false. If you're faced with an insurgency, you either counter the insurgency or you accept defeat. If we adopt a posture that focuses purely on counterterrorism, it means that we're just counting on Karzai or his successor to counter the insurgency because we won't have any posture in the country if the insurgency succeeds. So we're taking a gamble that if we get off the front lines, the Afghan army is going to preserve control over enough of the country so that our drones and our intelligence agencies and our Special Forces will still have a place to operate.
GELB: Bob, how do you react to the tripartite analytical framework I suggested? Why didn't you all look at it that way? (Laughter.)
GRENIER: I think to a large extent we did all look at it that way, but largely on our own time. I think that the report, as you say, was very much focused on what's happening there in theater. So let me just kind of start with the part that I'm least qualified to speak on, and that's the domestic political part. It's hard for me to imagine that the American public and Congress are going to be willing to expend $100 billion a year, to say nothing of the loss in deaths and combat-related casualties, that we are going to have to sustain for essentially an open-ended basis. This is hard for me to imagine. Others can speak, I think, with a great deal more authority on that than I can.
With regard to the effort in Afghanistan itself, the issue that I have, I guess, can be summed up in one word, and that's sustainability. I don't think -- at the end of the day -- if it were our intent, if we were like the French in Algeria and it were our intent to stay indefinitely in Afghanistan then I would be more inclined to agree with some of the points that Jim has just made. However, I don't know of anyone who is suggesting that the U.S. should stay there indefinitely.
At the end of the day, if we are to keep Afghanistan from becoming once again a terrorist safe haven, that is a task that is going to have to be taken up by Afghans. And the approach, I believe, that we are taking and the way that we are doing it, trying to build up central institutions of a highly centralized Afghan government, with particular focus on building up a large -- I would say unsustainably large -- Afghan army simply is not going to be sustainable.
And so quite apart from the issue of the expense that we have incurred, the losses that we will continue to suffer, I am very concerned that the strategy that we are pursuing itself is inappropriate and will not succeed. And I hold out a greater hope for long-term success, although it may seem counterintuitive, with a much smaller footprint effort and with commensurately limited objectives.
GELB: Thank you. That's very, very interesting. Dan, you know better than I the split now between the military judgment about the situation in Afghanistan and the agency judgment, CIA judgment. CIA being pretty damn pessimistic, probably much along the lines Bob just expressed, as usual, and the military being, you know, cautiously optimistic at least. Did Bob say as usual? He always says as usual. They're usually more optimistic.
And the president is looking at all this and he knows that's what it's going to be a year from now, going to be the same breakdown. How is he going to disentangle faster, as you guys open the door (to ?), if he has General Petraeus, who is for all intents and purposes president of the United States for Afghanistan, and the judgment that things are deteriorating and aren't worth staying? How do you think your way through that?
MARKEY: I would say that of course, today is a day of the administration unveiling its latest review. And what we're hearing is essentially a confirmation that we will continue along essentially the same trajectory as we've been on and a non-answer to the question you just posed. My expectation is that that non-answer will have to shift in June, July of this coming year or could shift in June, July of this coming year, where there will be, I think, a more significant, even more significant internal debate within the administration based on what they see in the spring fighting season in Afghanistan.
I mean, I think we need to understand that in part, the timing of assessment of military success in Afghanistan is dependent upon the cyclical nature of fighting. Usually Afghans tend to fight more in the spring and summer, less in the winter. Violence goes up and down. And so we will only really be able to judge progress on the military front after about a year of this. And I think that and I've read that individuals within the administration who are opposed to the current approach are biding their time or holding their fire until then to reassess. And then I think we'll get a really full-fledged debate again if, in fact, things don't look good.
Now, of course, if things look better, if things look better, then we'll continue on.
DOBBINS: Let me comment on the dichotomy you set up between the intelligence and military views because I think it's not that. I mean, there probably is a dichotomy, and that's normal between intelligence analysts and policymakers on any issue. But if you read Bob Woodward's excellent book on the Obama administration's last much larger and more hardly fought review, it wasn't a dichotomy between the military and the civilians, because Gates and Clinton ended up on the side of the military in support of the counterinsurgency policy and so did Holbrooke as far as I know.
The division was between those people who had been on the Obama presidential campaign and everyone else. So if you look at everybody who wounded up on the counterterrorism side, the scale-back-now side, it was Vice President Biden, Tom Donilon, Denis McDonough, people who came out of the campaign.
Now, it may break down differently next time. But that's how the division largely broke down last time. And it's perfectly legitimate going back to your view, which is if you assemble a bunch of Afghan experts, they're going to focus on Afghanistan. If you assemble a bunch of political experts who are focused on our domestic politics, you're going to have a wider and different view. And it may be a view that's a lot closer to yours as a result.
GELB: Yeah, but it's interesting to me. I went back and looked at the Woodward book after I heard you on NPR yesterday, Jim. And to see what they had said in that second review about U.S. interests worldwide and terrorism and proliferation, large U.S. interests here at home. And in that book, Woodward has them saying nothing about it. And frankly, that's my recollection of it, too. And that's generally my experience with foreign policy discussions in the government. You just discuss the situation rather than putting it into the context you need to make decent foreign policy.
Let me ask you one more question before -- we can pursue any of these later on. One more question before we open it up. Let's talk about the other side of the war. We are fighting, as Bob said, a counterinsurgency war. But the military effort -- and nobody's going to beat our military. Our military sets up in a place, they're more or less going to control that place. They're that good.
But there's the other war, the institution building, the building of security forces. The three of you comment on that war, which involves government and development.
MARKEY: I can start, sure. Let me make two points. First, with respect to the Afghanistan side of the border, and I've written recently, if I were to try and assess the overall progress even over the past several months, on the military side, again, I would say it's too soon to say. It's mixed. On the political front, it's been, and I've written this, a failure. And it will continue to be a failure as long as the United States and others are stuck with the current configuration of institutions and power sharing that is centered on President Karzai in Kabul.
That's not going to work. It's not a sustainable relationship. It's not working well for us now. And it's not likely to shift, I think, in a very constructive way unless we force it to shift in the near term. So my assessment is politically, and that relates to governance, corruption and so on in Afghanistan, failure.
One last point before I go. This report, I think it should be clear, spent a considerable amount of time on the Pakistan side of the border and not just in relationship to the Afghanistan problem, but as a challenge in and of itself. And I think that one of the contributions that sometimes gets lost because so much of the American debate really is consumed by the war that we are fighting in Afghanistan. But the scale, the complexity of the challenge that we face in Pakistan was not neglected by this report.
And I think on that front, including the challenge of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is only partially related to the war in Afghanistan, this report also makes a useful contribution.
GELB: Bob or Jim to follow?
GRENIER: Yeah, we have huge problems in governance and security in Afghanistan. And one of the things that attracts a disproportionate amounts of attention is corruption. And people wring their hands and they say, oh my god, there's such a high level of corruption that it has been ever thus in Afghanistan. Well, in fact, current levels of corruption in Afghanistan are much greater than traditional levels of corruption in that country.
And, in fact, what we have done, what we are doing is making it far worse and making governance, good governance that much more difficult to achieve. By having centralized power in Kabul, we have set up a situation where you essentially have a government which is a criminal enterprise. It is officials in Kabul, primarily President Hamid Karzai, who are able to make appointments at the provincial and all the way down to the district level.
Those appointments are essentially licenses to steal, whether it's local tax collectors, whether it's local police chiefs. They abuse their power in order to get money at the local level and then they pass it up to their patrons up the line back in Kabul. So essentially, you have a very complex, vertically integrated system of corruption.
And that would be bad enough, but it's actually worse than that because by allowing the government in Kabul to appoint these officials at the local level, what they have done, in effect, has been to set up a system where they support their friends and they harm their enemies. And we don't have enough influence with them at the local level that we are able to counteract their more malign tendencies. And as a result, the people who are disadvantaged at the local level are driven into the arms of the Taliban.
So if we're to turn a corner on this, I think we have to have a radical decentralization of power and a great deal more local engagement with officials to make sure that the warlords that we're supporting -- I think we ought to be supporting warlords, but that we make them the best warlords that they can be.
DOBBINS: I wouldn't go quite that far, but I agree that there ought to be a greater bottom-up grassroots effort at building capacity as well as top-down. I do think, however, that we sometimes lose perspective on what, in fact, has been achieved in Afghanistan since 2001. Since 2001, Afghanistan's GDP has tripled. It's grown at the same rate as China over the last nine years. Its illicit exports have gone up 600 percent. Half of the population have telephones. Eighty percent of the population have at least some limited access to health-care facilities.
Most Afghan children are in school and nearly half of the girls in the country are in school. Afghanistan's literacy rate will triple over the next 10 years as a result of that. Access to electricity, to water, to sanitation, to schooling and education are all up. Infant mortality is down. Longevity is going up.
Afghan people are very concerned that their government is corrupt and incompetent and yet, A, a majority of them believe the country's going in the right direction. B, they support Karzai. He has much higher popularity ratings than President Obama at the moment. And they support their government.
Now, how can that be? And the answer is they're not comparing Afghanistan to Switzerland. They're comparing Afghanistan to Turkmenistan and Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and Iran. And they're comparing Afghanistan today to Afghanistan in the '80s or Afghanistan in the '90s. And by all of those comparisons, it doesn't look so bad.
Yes, security situation has deteriorated. But for the average Afghan, that country is much safer than Mexico is for the average Mexican or Colombia for the average Colombian or South Africa for the average South African, where the rate of death, violent deaths are all much, much higher. So, you know, I think we -- we think we're in the ninth year of a war. The insurgency didn't start until 2006 and the counterinsurgency didn't start until 2008. And we've just, I think, largely lost perspective because we're focused, naturally enough, on our own problems and they're getting worse here at home.
GELB: Well, even with all the caveats you made, Jim, the conclusion I draw from what you say is that we ought to ask the Afghans over to the United States to help us with our economic development. (Laughter.) Is it that good?
DOBBINS: They started with a low base. (Laughter.)
GELB: Okay. It's your turn now. And if we could pick up with this economic development theme in point. We're lucky to have George Rupp with us who knows a lot about this business. Could I impose on you, George -- he's right over here to make a comment or ask a question? And please, the usual drill. Stand, identify yourself, which means name, rank, serial number, et cetera.
QUESTIONER: George Rupp from the International Rescue Committee. Maybe I can make a comment that picks up on the heavy footprint versus the light footprint issue, which I think has come into focus here. I can report we have 400 people on the ground in Afghanistan. Ninety-eight percent of them are Afghan. And we monitor very closely what's happening over time.
And I think it's accurate to say the consensus among our people on the ground -- and we're in areas that have been unstable, inaccessible to Americans for a long time, in the quadrant southeast of Kabul down to the border -- the consensus is although there is marginally better security in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, in focused places where the U.S. has invested troops -- and so that's a plus for the surge -- there is hugely increased instability in the rest of the country, including lots of other places where we're involved.
And while we have made progress -- we, the U.S. ISAF, the NATO coalition has made progress in killing senior and mid-level Taliban leaders, they are regrettably being replaced by much more radical Taliban or insurgency leaders on the ground who, in fact, don't have the level of constraint and willingness to negotiate and make arrangements that was the case with the people who were assassinated, some of whom, of course, were the fathers and uncles of the new leaders.
So I think my own judgment is the heavy footprint that the surge represents is creating at least as many problems as it's solving. And they will be very long-term problems because of the radical disenchantment of the new insurgents who are being generated. I mentioned one -- this is will -- I will only make a few more comments. Then I'll stop.
But one factoid that's of interest. When the Germans first agreed to be part of ISAF, they wanted to --
GELB: Tell people what ISAF is.
QUESTIONER: ISAF is the International Security Assistance Force, the NATO force that now is providing security in Afghanistan. They wanted to go to Kunduz because they didn't want to go anywhere where there's any chance there would be any fighting. It was a very secure area and so they were happily ensconced there for a while. Now Kunduz is completely insecure. I mean, you have to be very careful about getting from Kabul up to Kunduz.
So let me -- that's comment about the heavy footprint. Light footprint, it does seem to me really important that we work in the direction of what Rory Stewart initially, but now lots of others including you have talked about as a light footprint, which would be a longer-term investment over a long period of time in which development assistance is not provided through the military and I think a fundamental mistake.
And as an example of that, I will briefly refer to the National Solidarity Program, which our collective good friend, Richard Holbrooke, always cited as one development program that works. The International Rescue Committee is now in 1,400 villages, almost all in so-called insecure parts of Afghanistan. And we have worked there over seven years. And the way we work is to go into a village with Pashtun -- with Afghan staff who know the village elders, work out arrangements so there's a village-based development or community council.
They decide what their priorities are for development. They monitor the expense of the funds, so there's accountability in all directions here. And they then provide the sweat equity to make those projects work. They're usually infrastructure projects, water and sanitation projects, schools. I understand, Les, I'll --
GELB: George, I'm going to hold you here, if I may, because I think this would be really good for a particular follow-on on this subject. But I think we do have to move on. That was tremendously helpful.
QUESTIONER: Okay. So the light footprint as the prospect of long-term impact in Afghanistan in a way that the heavy footprint doesn't. Thank you.
GELB: Thank you so much. Dan, will you want to comment for the group on that because I know you guys talked about that?
MARKEY: Yeah, I can briefly. The report recognizes a lot of the negative security trends that we've seen in recent past. It does not pronounce on whether the negative security trends are a result of a change in U.S. strategy. And here I think we would see a considerable difference of views over whether it was because the United States introduced more forces or because it failed to do so sooner that we've seen this uptick in the kind of violence that you've described. But it certainly recognizes that violence.
With respect to its assessment of a potential light footprint, it identifies a variety of areas which would be more difficult to operate for U.S. forces had they far fewer in country. And so with respect to hunting down terrorists and so on, the report makes the observation that it'll be far more difficult for, say, 10 (thousand) to 20,000 U.S. forces to gain intelligence, to move around the country, to operate effectively than a far larger contingent of what we see right now.
So the report doesn't accept that, but recognizes that those may be risks we'd have to run, as was said earlier, if the current approach doesn't work.
GELB: Dan, while we're with you, why don't you read one of the national --
MARKEY: Yeah, absolutely. And if I could first just make one very other short comment. Your observation about the changing nature of the Taliban or of the insurgency, the report also puts its finger on the challenge that that represents because I think what we're seeing both in Pakistan and Afghanistan is a changing insurgency. In many ways, it's becoming more global in its outlook, more violent, more ruthless, younger in age and potentially even more dangerous. And what implications you draw from that will vary.
So we have a question here from Thomas D. McNeice, Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. This is from the national member. And he writes the taskforce report quotes that quote, "Left unchecked, Lashkar-e-Taiba and its affiliates could eventually rival al Qaeda as the world's most sophisticated, dangerous terrorist organization," end quote. Given LET, Lashkar-e-Taiba links to the Pakistani intelligence community and their popular support in Pakistan, what can the United States do to isolate this threat?
GELB: Bob, why don't you --
QUESTIONER: Yeah, Bob is the natural on --
GELB: Why don't you take this one?
GRENIER: Well, I think that efforts to isolate LET so that it can be found, fixed and eliminated are going to be difficult at best. It doesn't mean that we shouldn't try.
If you look at this from the Pakistani perspective, the Pakistanis have many enemies, they have many threats. Lashkar-e-Taiba was originally supported by the Pakistan army and the Pakistan intelligence service as an insurgency weapon -- a terrorist weapon, if you will -- against the Indians in Kashmir. And they retain a great deal of ambivalence, at best in terms of their attitude toward that organization and others like it, given the fact that they don't want to throw away a potential tool in this continuing struggle with India.
But it goes beyond that. The LET is often described as the Hezbollah of Pakistan in that Hezbollah has a great deal of grassroots political support in Lebanon because of the humanitarian work that they do and the political support therefore that they have engendered.
An analogous situation is true of Lashkar-e-Taiba and its political umbrella organization in Pakistan, and therefore makes the Pakistanis -- to the extent that they would be otherwise inclined to take action against LET, makes it much more difficult for them to do so.
What should we do in order to further isolate them? I think that that is largely an intelligence issue. To the extent that we find -- as we are finding -- links of Lashkar-e-Taiba outside of Pakistan, which posed a clear and present danger to ourselves and to our allies, we need to draw those links back into Pakistan and hold the Pakistanis to account in taking action against those individuals who are affiliated with clear, bone fide terrorists.
It makes it very, very difficult for the Pakistanis to say no under those circumstances, whereas, conversely, if we're simply saying Lashkar-e-Taiba, very bad organization, you must do something about it, they're going to find reasons on any given day why they should not, or at least why they should put off such --
GELB: Very good answer; thank you. All the way in the back.
QUESTIONER: I'm Ishaq Nadiri. I'm a professor of economics at NYU and am an Afghan-American. And I've spent quite a bit of time in Afghanistan so I just wanted to reflect some of the issues from an Afghan point of view so people could understand.
GELB: But please let me beg you to do it very briefly.
QUESTIONER: Very brief. Very brief.
First of all, the issue of all these expenses that you are talking about, this is military expenses. And the issue of efficacy of the military's important plans -- we have 150,000 well educated, well equipped soldiers of the world in Afghanistan, and they are chasing about 10,000 to 20,000 Taliban, and they have difficulty. The question that most Afghans ask -- why?
Second, there is a parallel development in Afghanistan that the international community has a different government there. They spend most of their money; they do all these things. Their corruption is there as well as here, both sides.
The third thing is that this is a -- the Afghan Project is a project between the two societies, like the U.S. population as well as the Afghan population. One wants to be helped and not attacked from all those other things, and the other one wants to have -- to recoup by millions and millions and millions of the Afghans that all got killed in the process of the American and Russian situation. So, it is just sort of simply outlining this thing, you know, as another foreign policy problem, and it's not.
And, finally, the things that Les was talking about; we need to know what are the plan B and plan C. It is not something to just get out and then that will terminate there. What will happen next? And that consequences has to be considered and then we can talk about whether the Afghans can help the development of the United States or not.
So, one of the things which I've noticed, that all these discussions that goes on from all the European countries as well as Americans, they don't talk to the Afghans. For example, seven years or eight years that we have been talking about that Pakistan is the place to concentrate. Up to now, the United States is bribing Pakistan.
GELB: Professor, let me hold you there because I think we've got -- very helpful. Jim, why don't you respond?
DOBBINS: I think those are good comments. I don't have any -- I don't have any --
GELB: Anyone else? You've overwhelmed the panel. (Laughter.)
Winston Lord?
QUESTIONER: Winston Lord, International Rescue Committee. I've only read a brief summary of the report so I don't know the detailed recommendations -- and this has to do with Pakistan.
I'll betray my bias -- and I'll be extremely brief here -- namely that all that we've talked about is irrelevant if we don't solve the sanctuary problem in Pakistan. At least four or five administrations have been totally hoodwinked by Pakistan, and it's an obscenity that American young people are getting killed with Pakistan's help.
So I'd like to know what specifically are you saying in your report to turn them around, which five administrations, including this one, have failed to do. The summary suggests that you're impatient and we can't let this go on, but we've heard that for 25 years.
GELB: Winston used to be much more restrained when he was president of the council. (Laughter.) Why don't I give you each a quick whack at that? It's a very important question.
DOBBINS: I can begin. I mean, the report does say that the fundamental of the U.S.-Pakistan partnership is in jeopardy because of precisely the problem that you've put your finger on. And of course communicating that and communicating that privately and publicly is a first step, but it's not enough.
Bob has put his finger on the challenge of going after some of these groups in a very direct way, that some of them enjoy sanctuary because they are, to some degree, popular inside of Pakistan. And that's the balancing act that we're confronted with because the Pakistani state continues to provide refuge to them, both in part because of their popularity and also because it continues to see a strategic utility in maintaining its links to these groups, playing this double game.
And it's only -- and now this is me speaking, not so much the report, but it's only if we are able to convince the Pakistanis that that game will not pay dividends. That is, they cannot use these groups effectively to project their influence in Afghanistan or India that will begin to see a change. They don't see that. They don't see that their strategic calculation has to shift.
They're unlikely, I think, to see that unless they see things in Afghanistan fundamentally changing, I think for the better, and they see a potential for their relationship with India changing too. That may lead them to change. But the report suggests that we can take somewhat more harsh intelligence efforts, military efforts, against these groups, including the targeted use of drones along the border, but it doesn't suggest that these things, in themselves, will necessarily ultimately be effective.
QUESTIONER: In other words, no pressure on Afghanistan, just -- (audio break) -- analysis --
DOBBINS: You mean Pakistan. No. I think no; quite the opposite. Centrality of this issue in the relationship is what the report clearly states, that this -- this is the central question that keeps us from being able to have a better relationship with Pakistan over the long term. And then the chickens will come home to roost.
GELB: Yeah, the report really does say that, Win.
QUESTIONER: No, it doesn't say how to do it.
GELB: No, it doesn't say how to do it, but Bob and Jim are going to tell you how to do it. (Laughter.)
GRENIER: Good. I really like that lead-in. (Laughter.)
No, I think you're absolutely right that the exhortation is not going to do it. Simply beating up on the Pakistanis continually and saying, you must do this differently -- at the end of the day, the Pakistanis will do what they perceive to be in their interest, and it's only until we get to place where their interests and their view align with ours that we're really going to make progress on this. And, mind you, there's a context, and that is that the destabilization of Pakistan would be a very, very bad thing for us, given the fact that it's a nuclear weapons state, et cetera, et cetera.
So, how do we bring that about? Well, let me just mention two broad factors. One really has to do with the Pakistani calculus of its interests in Afghanistan. One thing that we can do is to demonstrate to the Pakistanis, not just by our words but by our actions, by putting our posture there on a fundamentally and transparently sustainable basis -- which I would argue is not now.
They will then realize that, oh, they're going to have to deal with us over the longer term, and in fact you are not going to have an Afghanistan in which there is no substantial U.S. or Western presence, where they will see an interest, a compelling national interest, in maintaining influence with those Pashtun groups -- currently insurgents -- who are their sole hope of affecting the future of Afghanistan, which is of extreme national importance to them.
So, A, we need to demonstrate to them that we are there for the long term. Secondly, we need to demonstrate to them -- and this is the government of Afghanistan needs to demonstrate to them that their country will not be used by India as a means of gaining strategic advantage over Pakistan. Not nearly enough has been done along those lines, and we could spend a lot of time talking about that.
The third thing that's extremely important to understand is that from a Pakistani perspective -- again, Pakistanis have many enemies. We talk about the Taliban in very broad terms. Well, there are at least two Talibans. There are three elements of an Afghan insurgency. There are also elements of the so-called Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban -- Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan -- which is aiming at the Pakistanis.
The Pakistanis, on any given day, are much more concerned with the people who pose a direct threat to them rather than the groups that pose a threat to the Americans and the Afghans and the international forces in Afghanistan.
One of the things that they are deathly afraid of is that by taking action against the people who are of primary concern to us, they will drive their domestic militants and these Afghan militants together and induce them to cooperate against the Pakistani government. They don't want to do that and I think it's entirely understandable that they would try to avoid that.
DOBBINS: Well, the report does, after noting all the problems in Pakistan, it does somewhat anonymously -- anomalously -- (laughter) -- you know, recommend that we embrace them even more closely, give them some additional trade preferences, increase our assistance, et cetera
What I don't think it does quite adequately -- although it does make reference to it -- is indicate that we're only one successful car bomb away from a breach in our relations with Pakistan, an erratically different approach.
You know, if we have an attack in the United States that can be traced to Pakistan and to groups that have traditionally enjoyed ISI support, you know, the kinds of policies that we've been following for the last eight or nine years are not going to be sustainable, and it doesn't really -- and nobody has really explored what the alternatives are. Everybody knows the alternatives could be more dangerous and more difficult and so -- but they've never really explored them.
I do think, however, that there is one slight glimmer of hope. Obama's promise to begin drawing down American troops next summer, while it may have been unhelpful in a number of respects, has had one beneficial effect: Everybody -- Pakistan, the Afghans and everyone else -- have begun thinking about something beyond the current conflict, of an endgame, and positioning themselves for an endgame and talking about negotiations because most people believe that this conflict isn't going to end with a clear-cut victory by one side or the other.
Karzai has embraced the concept. Karzai has built a national constituency for the concept. Eighty percent of the Afghan people support a negotiated settlement, and most of them believe the Taliban should be brought into the government, although not in a dominant position. And Pakistan has begun to try to maneuver itself into a mediating position.
They have come to the United States and they said, we're prepared to help you with the Taliban. We're prepared to broker a settlement. We don't want the Taliban -- the Afghan Taliban to stay in Pakistan where they are now. We'd like to get them out. We would like to get them back into Afghanistan but we don't want them running the government in Kabul. We want them to have enough influence that they'll get out of our hair but we don't want them running the government. We've had that. We don't like it. We won't want it again. And so that's one glimmer of hope.
GELB: Critical question -- very, very good answers on this, whether they'll work or not.
Our brilliant vice president for national affairs will harass me if we don't get another question in from one of our national members. Dan?
MARKEY: Okay. We have Gustav Ranis of Yale University, who writes, "Since, as the report concludes, 'time and patience are understandably short,' how can you assume that militants in both countries won't simply wait us out while we continue to commit billions of dollars and hundreds of casualties en route to 2014?
GELB: Dan, why don't you take a crack at that yourself?
MARKEY: Well, I would simply observe that, as Secretary Gates has, that if the Taliban are willing to wait us out, so to speak, then we're willing to accept it, meaning if they are going to sit off to the side and allow us to try to create more enduring structures of security and stability in Afghanistan, then that's okay; we'll let them sit it out, build those things, and when they try to come back, it will be that much harder for them.
So far, though, we don't see that. So far we see the opposite. They're not sitting out. They're actually raising the ante in terms of violence. So, I would dispute the assumptions that are built into the question.
GELB: I see one hand out there somewhere on this side for our last question, please.
QUESTIONER: Thank you very much. Dana Freyer from the Global Partnership for Afghanistan, working in Afghanistan with farmers, helping them restore their livelihoods. A question for the panel: Ambassador Holbrooke and many in the administration and elsewhere have acknowledged that agriculture development is the most important non-military strategy in Afghanistan for stabilizing the country.
Those of us working on the ground through and with Afghans know that as much as we hear that billions of dollars of aid is going to Afghanistan, we know that the reality is a mere pittance of it is actually getting on the ground. And that's in part -- it's an issue of Afghan capacity but it's also an issue of the U.S.'s ability, and other countries, to deliver that aid and to have their staff and their people reach local communities.
So I question the panel: Why wasn't that addressed? I mean, that's such a -- well, not easily fixable problem but we see the result in communities where there is economic development, rural development in Afghanistan, how they have bee stabilized, they have resisted the Taliban and insurgents. Why wasn't that an issue that was addressed in the report?
GELB: Thank you very much.
GRENIER: If I could just make a quick stab at it. The report does speak to the question of assistance programming in Afghanistan, and I think what we found was there was a spectrum of views within the group on the efficacy, so far, of those efforts, ranging from what you've described to some who are more optimistic about it.
Where the report chooses to then focus its attention because of that is on using U.S. assistance funding to promote private-sector engagement in Afghanistan; that is, using U.S. assistance money rather than directly helping Afghans, trying to create the environment that will encourage outside foreign investors to come in.
It identifies a couple of areas. Now, agriculture is one, but we've heard about the opportunities for mineral wealth and so on. These are others that it, I think, places a greater emphasis on than strictly the agriculture problem.
GELB: I addition to reading this useful and learned report, I would remind you that the council has a bevy of military fellows, State Department fellow, intelligence fellow, press fellow, almost all of whom have had considerable direct experience in this area and I would urge you to seek them out. We're lucky to have had these gentlemen prepare this kind of quality report. Join me in thanking them. (Applause.)
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paesh

Review Won't Alter Pakistan's Behavior December 16, 2010
Author: Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia

Daniel Markey, Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia
The Obama administration's latest Afghan strategy review correctly finds that to achieve sustainable success in the war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates and to quell the Afghan insurgency, more must be done to eliminate safe havens in Pakistan's tribal areas along the Afghan border. It concludes that progress toward this goal has been "uneven," at best.
The review goes on to suggest that the challenge of Pakistan's border areas must be addressed through better strategic balance and integration, including greater cooperation with Pakistan, more effective development strategies, and improved dialogue between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
All this is fine, but it won't be nearly enough to change Pakistani behavior. Neither U.S. dialogue nor U.S. assistance will convince Pakistan's defense and intelligence leaders that they should finally take up arms against the Afghan Taliban groups (especially the Haqqani Network and Quetta Shura) that have long enjoyed passive or active support from Islamabad. Nor will unilateral U.S. tools--drone strikes on compounds along the Afghan border and limited military incursions--do what is necessary to defeat the Taliban based inside Pakistan. The United States needs Pakistan's cooperation.
But the only way to convince Pakistani leaders to change course would be to demonstrate that the United States is serious about bringing enduring stability to Afghanistan, and that Washington's definition of Afghan stability does not leave a place for the leaders of extremist and terrorist groups now waging war from Pakistani soil. Only then might Pakistani leaders decide that a better way to protect their enduring interests in Afghanistan would be through the support of legitimate, nonviolent political actors.
The review states that the United States is clearly communicating a "commitment to a long-term relationship that is supportive of Pakistan's interests." I disagree. In fact, the review sends mixed messages to Pakistan about U.S. plans for Afghanistan and obscures the areas in which U.S. and Pakistani interests collide.
Pakistani military and intelligence leaders will see that U.S. military progress is so far "fragile and reversible," that Washington is open to some sort of "Afghan-led reconciliation" (negotiations with the Taliban), and that July 2011 will mark the beginning of a "responsible reduction" of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. They will easily interpret these findings as they have in the past: the U.S. is not yet establishing enduring security conditions in Afghanistan, Washington is looking for quick political way out of its quagmire, and Pakistan will have to face a messy post-NATO Afghanistan armed primarily with the influence of its proxy militants.
And that is not yet a recipe for the sort of timely, significant change Washington needs from Islamabad. To some extent, Pakistan will only be convinced of U.S. commitment to Afghan stability if it is a witness to unmistakable signs on the ground. That will take at least through the early summer--the Afghan fighting season--to sink in. So the declared pace of Washington's "responsible reduction" in forces will matter a great deal. Emphasizing plans to remain active in Afghanistan until 2014 and beyond--rather than 2011--is a useful but incomplete shift.
Until then, clarifying what Washington means by "Afghan-led reconciliation"--in particular by answering the question of which Taliban are reconcilable and which are not--could also send a compelling, and constructive, message to Islamabad. Finally, Washington should use opportunities like this review to make it clear that Pakistani inaction against terrorists based along the Afghan border is fundamentally at odds with enduring U.S.-Pakistani partnership

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paesh

Winning in Afghanistan


Authors: Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies
Colonel Peter R. Mansoor, Former Council Military Fellow, 2005-2006
December 16, 2010
Los Angeles Times



The Obama administration's Afghanistan assessment, due out Thursday, reportedly indicates uneven but real progress. Fed a steady diet of gloom and doom, including Wednesday's headlines about negative intelligence assessments, many Americans will be surprised at this finding.

But in any far-off guerrilla war, perception back home often lags battlefield reality by several months. It certainly did in Iraq during the "surge" in 2007. So too in Afghanistan, where the buildup of U.S. forces, completed only this fall, is already having a considerable impact, although public opinion hasn't caught on yet.

Even with the recent increase in U.S. troops, bringing the NATO force to 140,000, there are not enough forces to conduct a comprehensive campaign across the entire country. Heavy-lift helicopters to ferry soldiers into the high mountains are in especially short supply. Therefore Army Gen. David H. Petraeus has focused efforts on two southern provinces, Helmand and Kandahar, where the Taliban has been strongest.

During a recent 10-day visit at his invitation, we found a classic, and successful, counterinsurgency campaign being conducted in the south. We drove around Kandahar city and saw markets flourishing. Children who once threw stones at American vehicles now wave at our soldiers. As we went north into the Arghandab River Valley — a Taliban stronghold until a few months ago — we found numerous American and Afghan outposts and soldiers patrolling on foot between them.

We spoke with one company commander who had just returned from a nighttime air assault to secure a village. But Arghandab is growing more secure, and officers are spending more time on governance. Everywhere we went, the message was the same: The Taliban was surprised by the capabilities and ferocity of U.S. forces, and it has largely retreated to regroup.

To be sure, fighting normally slackens in the winter; the extent of recent gains won't be clear until the spring. But when the Taliban returns, it will find many of its old stomping grounds fortified to resist incursions.

Coalition operations have cleared most insurgents not only from Arghandab but also from the nearby districts of Panjwai and Zheray. Similar progress is evident in the central Helmand River Valley in districts such as Nawa, Garmsir and Marja. They are now entering the "hold and build" phase of Petraeus' plan. Next year, the intention is to join the cleared "oil spots" — territory taken from insurgents — in Kandahar and Helmand, creating a broad swath of liberated territory in the Taliban heartland.

In these operations, U.S. troops are increasingly supported by Afghan forces. The Afghan army is fighting hard and earning the respect of the people. The Afghan police force isn't as far along. Many officers are still corrupt and ineffectual; others are on the right track, with the help of coalition mentors. One of the most promising developments is the Afghan Local Police — armed neighborhood watch organizations that are monitored by Afghan officials and mentored by U.S. troops. This program has the potential to significantly accelerate the growth of the security forces and to spread them to areas where coalition forces are thin.

All of these efforts have been helped by the decision at NATO's Lisbon summit last month to set the end of 2014 as the deadline for the transition of security responsibility to Afghan control. Afghan officials who only a few months ago were fretting that President Obama would pull out in 2011 are now optimistic that we'll stick around. The new timeline has even made President Hamid Karzai more accommodating, as evidenced by his restraint over the WikiLeaks revelations.

Two Achilles' heels could still hamper coalition attempts to translate tactical accomplishments into lasting strategic success: lack of good governance in Afghanistan and the presence of Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan.

To address the former problem, Petraeus has created a task force, Shafafiat ("Transparency")under the capable leadership of Army Brig. Gen. H.R. McMaster to ferret out corruption. The recent decision to bar a trucking firm partly owned by Ahmad Wali Karzai, the president's allegedly corrupt brother, from bidding on coalition contracts signals the seriousness of this effort.

Even greater strides are being made at the local level. We found that wherever a strong governor, police chief and intelligence chief are present in a district, progress is being made. In Kabul, two state organizations, the Independent Directorate of Local Governance and the Civil Service Institute, are working to seed more competent officials across the country.

The existence of insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan is harder to address. We will be unable to persuade Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, which sponsors the Taliban and the Haqqani network, to break ranks with the insurgents in the near term. Instead, we should strive to make the sanctuaries less relevant by solidifying security and governance in Afghanistan. Stabilizing Afghanistan may very well prod Pakistan to cut loose its proxies as a bad bet. In this regard, too, the 2014 deadline is crucial because it shows our staying power to Islamabad.

Whatever the gains in Kandahar and Helmand, there will be no immediate lessening of the violence. Tough fighting is virtually assured next summer as the Taliban tries to claw its way back into these provinces. If it is repulsed, NATO forces will be able to extend the "oil spot" north and east.

But though overall statistics for violence are likely to remain high, we should see a drop-off in key districts containing the majority of the Afghan population. Eventually, once the Taliban is convinced it can't win, expect to see significant defections from its ranks.

It will require continued patience and sacrifice, but this is a war that we must, and can, win.

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paesh

Plan B in Afghanistan

Current U.S. policy toward Afghanistan involves spending scores of billions of dollars and suffering several hundred allied deaths annually to prevent the Afghan Taliban from controlling the Afghan Pashtun homeland -- with little end in sight. Those who ask for more time for the existing strategy to succeed often fail to spell out what they think the odds are that it will work in the next few years, what amount of casualties and resources they think the attempt is worth, and why. That calculus suggests that it is time to shift to Plan B.

The United States and its allies are not on course to defeating the Taliban militarily. There are now about 150,000 U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops in Afghanistan. This is 30,000 more troops than the Soviet Union deployed in the 1980s, but less than half the number required to have some chance of pacifying the country, according to standard counterinsurgency doctrine.

Nor, with an occupying army largely ignorant of local history, tribal structures, languages, customs, politics, and values, will the alliance win over large numbers of the Afghan Pashtuns, as counterinsurgency doctrine demands. In Sebastian Junger's phrase, the United States will not capture the "human terrain" of southern and eastern Afghanistan. In November, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told The Washington Post that he wanted U.S. troops off the roads and out of Afghan homes and that the long-term presence of so many foreign soldiers would only worsen the war. "The time has come to reduce military operations," Karzai said. "The time has come to reduce the presence of, you know, boots in Afghanistan . . . to reduce the intrusiveness into the daily Afghan life." Such attitudes are common -- and profoundly inconsistent with the counterinsurgency strategy of deploying soldiers in local communities.

The quality of governance emanating from Karzai's deeply corrupt government will not significantly improve, and without a comprehensive reform of the Afghan government, U.S. success is virtually impossible. As the counterinsurgency expert David Kilcullen stresses, "You are only as good as the government you are supporting." In that context, Dexter Filkins noted in The New York Times that "Afghanistan is now widely recognized as one of the world's premier gangster-states. Out of 180 countries, Transparency International ranks it, in terms of corruption, 179th, better only than Somalia."

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paesh

The Hindu: Foreign Secretary on India-China Relations


This is the full text of the speech given by Indian Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, at the Observer Research Foundation ahead of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao's visit to India.
1. This year saw India and China celebrating the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. A couple of weeks from now Premier Wen Jiabao will be India and will participate in the closing ceremony of the Festival of China in India which will bring to a close the calendar of activities organized in both China and India to commemorate this occasion. Sixty years is a short period of time in the relations of two countries whose ties date back many millennia. Ours has always been a broader engagement that took place between our peoples. Throughout history, scholars and pilgrims, traders and travellers, who “mortgaged their lives for pilgrimage” in the words of the renowned Chinese Indologist Ji Xianlin, engaged in a traffic of ideas between the two countries. The Buddhism that travelled from India to China was successfully Sinicised and survived in China as it found a place in the heart and soul of the people. It is in the context of our historical and popular relationship that we must always view and evaluate our contemporary relationship. Indeed, this was the vision that inspired Rabindranath Tagore during his sojourns in China in the early decades of the 20th Century.
2. The six decades of the India-China relationship behind us have record that is chequered. We became arbiters of our national destinies from the date of India's independence and China's liberation in the late forties of the last century, inspiring many others in Asia and Africa to independence and the fruition of national goals to end colonialism and foreign domination. This was the time when India and China in a sense, rediscovered each other, understanding the potential of the synergy between two of the largest populated nations in the world on the global stage. The vision of our founding fathers is in many ways within our reach today as we regain our place in Asia and the world as leading global economies. The awareness and the “muffled footsteps” (to use Tagore's phrase) of historical contact between the two peoples of India and China created the basis for our well intentioned attempt in the fifties to build a new type of relationship based on Panchasheela or the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. It was an attempt which however faltered, telescoping into the troubled phase that enveloped our relationship in the sixties up until the mid seventies. The leadership in both our countries understood the untenability of any sustained estrangement between us. The last three decades have been marked by well-intentioned efforts of exploration towards establishing the framework of a stable, peaceful, productive, and multi-sectoral relationship between India and China. Contradictions are sought to be managed, and our differences have not prevented an expanding bilateral engagement and building on congruence. There are elements of cooperation and competition that form the warp and weft of our relationship. I propose to speak to you in some detail about the specifics of this engagement

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paesh

Understanding Tunisia's Tremors



Tunisia's government is struggling to contain weeks of violent demonstrations (NYT) that began when an unemployed twenty-six-year-old university graduate set himself on fire in December in the central-western city of Sidi-Bouzid. His act triggered protests stemming from widespread frustration with high unemployment, repression, and government corruption. The U.S. State Department has advised U.S. citizens to put off non-essential travel (Reuters) to Tunisia, citing "intensifying political and social" unrest, which has spread from the impoverished interior of the country to the relatively affluent capital in Tunis.
Dozens of people (NYT) have reportedly died in the protests, which many say have been fanned by social media (BBC) through networks on Facebook and Twitter. President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose government has held power since 1987, promised not to run for office (WSJ) again when his term expires in 2014 and ordered the government to cut prices on sugar, milk, and bread, but his pledge hasn't satisfied protesters in Tunis, who are calling for him to quit now.
Earlier, Ben Ali fired Interior Minister Rafik Belhaj Kacem (WashPost), the governor of Sidi-Bouzid province, and the communications minister. He also tried tightening control over social and other media and has put Tunis under curfew (CSMonitor). At the same time, the government promised to investigate corruption allegations (Bloomberg), to create three hundred thousand jobs, and to guarantee that by the end of 2012 the government will provide jobs to all graduates who have been unemployed for more than two years.
Tunisia's unemployment rate (Economist) is around 13 percent, though it's double that for young people and higher still for recent college graduates. This is largely attributed to the economic policies of the authoritarian Ben Ali, who seized control from Habib Bourguiba twenty-four years ago. Ben Ali's government has fostered higher education but has encouraged an economy largely based on tourism (ForeignPolicy) and low-skilled jobs, creating a mismatch between skills and opportunities. Tunisia's growth has also focused on the country's coastal areas, with little job generation in the interior, where the protests began.
Repression and corruption are the two other major issues fueling anger. Reporters Without Borders calls Ben Ali a "predator" who has kept Tunisia and its reporters under tight control despite periodic pledges to promote greater press freedom and diversity. There's also anger at what is seen as the extravagant lifestyle of Ben Ali's second wife, Leila Trabelsi (NYT), and their extended family. U.S. concerns about the family's behavior and official corruption emerged in WikiLeaks documents released last year, and have reportedly added to public outrage.
Even before Ben Ali's speech January 13 promising to step down, some commentators speculated as to whether Ben Ali's long run as a president (France24) is over and whether he's facing "an Eastern European-style velvet revolution" (Economist). Arab regimes are reportedly watching carefully as protests spread not only in Tunisia, but in Algeria as well, where there were riots last week over soaring sugar and cooking oil prices. "In Egypt and Saudi Arabia, young people have been showing solidarity with Tunisians and Algerians, spreading their message of discontent across the Internet," writes Roula Khalaf in the Financial Times.
In a speech in Doha on January 13, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Arab governments (NYT) that they risk unrest if they fail to improve their economies and address corruption and political repression. "In too many places, in too many ways, the region's foundations are sinking into the sand," Clinton said.
Analysis
Tunisia's protests suggest Ben Ali's regime has no future, writes CFR's Elliot Abrams in this blog post.
The days of "gendarme" states like Tunisia's could be numbered in the Middle East, writes CFR's Steven Cook.
Protests in Tunisia and Algeria are part of a rising tide of popular dissatisfaction with illiberal, unreformed Arab rule, writes Simon Tisdall in the Guardia

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paesh

Tunisia after Ben Ali


After twenty-seven years in power, Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali left the country, apparently for Dubai. The month-long protests that led the Tunisian military to push the president from power underscored the political alienation, limited economic opportunity, and corruption rife in Ben Ali's Tunisia. With Prime Minister Mohamed Ghannouchi temporarily in charge of the country, the question is: Now what? It's hard to say at this early stage, but here are a few conclusions:

There is no indication that the Tunisian armed forces are interested in military rule. Rather, the military's decision to end Ben Ali's rule reflects their desire to save Tunisia from consuming itself in the convulsions of demonstrations, protests, and violence that were sure to continue had the president stayed on. Throughout the last few days, there were indications that the military would not shoot Tunisians for the sake of saving Ben Ali from an enormous mess entirely of his own making.
The military's decision to side with the people will likely put pressure on Tunisia's interim leaders and those who eventually come to power to heed society's demands for reform and change. Whether the military's leaders are democrats is not the issue; rather, their concerns seem to be that that graft, corruption, and the practices of one of the worst police states in the Middle East proved to be a threat to social cohesion and stability. Now both the officers and citizens have an expectation that new leaders will make a commitment to mitigate these problems.
The Tunisian uprising against Ben Ali was devoid of Islamist agitation. This should put to rest the notion that Islamism is the only robust social force in the region. Opposition to regimes in the region is actually broad-based.
Tunisia is an important but largely secondary ally of the United Sates in North Africa. With few, if any, strategic interests engaged, it makes it easier for Washington to make a strong statement about "applaud[ing] the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people," as President Barack Obama said in response to Ben Ali's departure. It's an open question whether the Obama administration will continue to be as forthright when it comes to political ferment in Egypt, Algeria, and Jordan, where Washington's primary interests are engaged. With the exception of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's speech in Doha this weekend and Obama's statement today, the administration has preferred to speak softly on reform and change. Perhaps now they will see value in being more vocal.
Understandably, there has been considerable talk about a democratic wave sweeping the Middle East. Egyptians, Algerians, Jordanians, and others have been watching events in Tunisia carefully and seeking inspiration in "Tunisian people power." At the same time, the defenders of Middle Eastern regimes have also been watching and drawing their own conclusions about how events in Tunisia affect them and the durability of their political systems. Precedent would suggest that instead of getting out in front of demands for change with genuine reform, these leaders will likely make some concessions to their people while shoring up their regimes through coercion.

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paesh

The Wrong Side of History


Author: Joel D. Hirst, International Affairs Fellow in Residence


"Dictatorships are stable," I have often been told by friends who object to my unwavering commitment to democracy promotion, "In a dangerous world we need stability more than freedom." My answer to them has always been, "dictatorships are stable, until they aren't." Their argument continues, "But not all cultures are the same," they say, "they don't all value individual freedom as much as we do, we should stop pushing on them our western ideals," and with their words serving as judge, jury and executioner for the world's oppressed.
This month, all those arguments seem finally to have fallen by the wayside. The planet's greatest bastion of authoritarianism - the Arab world - is trembling. Starting with the ouster of Tunisia's dictator on January 14th, the "Arab street" has been emboldened to challenge their own authoritarians. The revolts have spread quickly. From Yemen to Jordan young people have emerged from their houses to protest against generations of oppression. Perhaps most significantly, the government of Egypt appears to be on the brink. This is significant for several reasons. Egypt is the Arab world's most populous state. It is important politically, being the host nation of the Arab League; and Cairo University is arguably the Arab world's most respected academic institution. For the west, Egypt has been an important partner in the ongoing peace process with Israel. For all these reasons, we could be witnessing the most important moment in Arab political history in our lifetimes.
Unfortunately this news comes as a mixed blessing for the United States. For too long, our policy on the Arab peninsula has been fraught with inconsistencies. We claim to be the guarantors of freedom in the world, and yet we make our places in the beds of some of the world's most brutal tyrants. We claim to support freedom of religion and watch converts to Christianity executed. We claim to defend woman's rights and sit idly by while women are stoned to death. We do this because we are afraid of the alternative. We follow daily the unending results of President Carter's attempt to push democracy in Iran (not an Arab country for sure but an important Islamic Republic) and administration after administration decides "better the devil we know."
Vice President Biden summed up our misguided policy in an interview with PBS last night, "Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things. And he's been very responsible on, relative to geopolitical interest in the region, the Middle East peace efforts; the actions Egypt has taken relative to normalizing relationship with - with Israel... I would not refer to him as a dictator. I think the time has come for President Mubarak to begin to move in the direction that - to be more responsive to some... of the needs of the people out there."
This policy has caused a significant credibility problem with the "Arab street." The United States is viewed as hypocritical, willing to push democratic freedoms that affect the daily lives of millions only when it does not interrupt, as Vice-President Biden puts it, our "geopolitical interest." To be sure, this crisis of credibility is not the responsibility of the Obama administration alone. An unending line of Republican and Democratic administrations have come and gone without improving our dictator problems. In the aftermath of September 11, when then-President Bush realized that the attackers that fateful day came from important countries that ally themselves with the U.S.'s "geopolitical interests," he began to formulate the policy that would become known as the "freedom agenda." Leaning heavily on former Gulag "refusenik" and Israeli Minister Natan Sharansky's book, A Case for Democracy, Bush outlined three central principles which he believed should guide American foreign policy: that the desire for freedom is universal, that democracy is essential for security and that free nations should hinge their policy toward unfree nations to the gradual expansion of domestic liberties. This book became the bible for democracy promoters worldwide, eloquently outlining what we inherently knew to be true.
Unfortunately, in the daily Presidential dance of crisis management the reforms that the Bush Administration wanted from especially our Arab allies did not come fast enough. Even the tepid demands by the Bush administration, in 2005 calling on Egypt to lead democratic reforms across the region, fell on deaf ears. The "freedom agenda" began to resemble an attempt to topple anti-American dictators instead of the universal promotion of individual freedoms - among friend and foe alike. The agenda also brought un-intended but important complications to our global relationships such as the Hamas victory in Gaza and paving the groundwork for the eventual takeover by Hezbollah of the newly independent Lebanese government.
The Obama administration, perhaps mindful of these setbacks, has been even more timid in the promotion of the "truths we hold self-evident." During the now-defunct Iranian "green revolution," President Obama famously refused to wade into the fray. His support to Tunisian democracy during the State of the Union this year was facile, considering the dictator had already been ousted. Seeing President Bush's "freedom agenda" as too aggressive, the current administration's reticence to push democracy even among backsliding anti-American countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Zimbabwe, Russia, and others has allowed the consolidation of dictatorships across the world.
Returning to Egypt, decades of bad policies have left the Obama administration in a difficult situation. As the Council on Foreign Relations' President Emeritus Leslie Gelb stated, "In rotten regimes that fall to street mobs, the historical pattern has been moderates followed by new dictators. Just remember the model of the Bolsheviks, a tiny group of extremely well-organized communists, wresting control away from the great majority of discontented and disorganized Russians in 1917." Complicating the situation is the mercurial nature of the Muslim Brotherhood itself, Egypt's primary opposition movement. Especially important to the United States is Egypt's diplomatic recognition of Israel, seen as a fundamental component of any peace process. The Obama administration is walking a fine line - but is most likely negatively perceived by the Brotherhood due to the United States' thirty year support of the Mubarak regime. Nobody knows what a Brotherhood-led government would look like, or how it would behave.
However the complications of the current situation in the Arab world play out, the Obama administration should take this as an opportunity to once and for all revise the U.S. policy of support for dictators of any stripe. He should set in place an agenda, as former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias said, " which makes possible the construction of societies gradually more just, without extremes and in peace." Otherwise, the Obama administration will be seen as continuing to lead the United States on the wrong side of history.

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paesh

Understanding Egypt’s Historic Moment

Author: Steven A. Cook, Hasib J. Sabbagh Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies





The uprising in Egypt against President Hosni Mubarak and the military-dominated political system he inherited is shaping up to be a seminal event in the region's history, ranking with the establishment of Israel, Egypt's Free Officers' coup of 1952, and the June 1967 Six Days War. Like these events, the revolution-in-the making has the potential to remake Egyptian and regional politics. Although Mubarak seems to be on the ropes, the outcome of the crisis remains unclear. Mubarak continues to control the coercive apparatus of the state—the military, intelligence services, and what is left of the Ministry of Interior and its forces. It is entirely possible that a stalemate between the large cross section of Egyptian society that has come out into the streets and the state will ensue.
To understand the unfolding events, it is important to take note of the following actors:
•The armed forces. Much has been said about the military, especially since troops were deployed to Egyptian streets on Friday evening. The senior commanders are critical actors, but it is worth emphasizing that the military establishment is not necessarily a progressive force. Egypt's military leaders are the descendants of the Free Officers who built the political system over which Hosni Mubarak now presides and as such are committed to its defense. In addition, Egypt's officers have benefited materially during Hosni Mubarak's rule, enjoying everything from the procurement of advanced weapons systems to personal enrichment. It is possible that the officers could dump Mubarak to save the regime under new leadership rather than to set the stage for a democratic transition.
•The Muslim Brotherhood. The Brothers have been Mubarak's bogeyman for three decades. The regime has played on the ghosts of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran to stoke the fears of successive American administrations and, in turn, secure Washington's generous diplomatic, political, and financial support. Yet the Brotherhood has played a largely secondary role in the current uprising, which is broad-based, encompassing virtually all of Egypt's political tendencies. Indeed, it is the left and liberals who have been driving current events. And while the Brotherhood remains influential and will likely be a factor if Mubarak goes and there are efforts to establish a civilian coalition government, the Islamists are in some ways compromised. They came late to the demonstrations and have a long history of compromise and accommodation with the Mubarak regime, if only to ensure their survival.
•Mohamed ElBaradei. The former head of the IAEA and Nobel prize winner, who returned to Cairo on Wednesday night, is trying to give the disparate opposition a leader and a focal. So far, he seems to have had success with the Muslim Brotherhood and other smaller groups consenting to his leadership. He has struck all the right notes and is media savy, making it hard for the regime to keep him down. Still, ElBaradei is not known to have a broad constituency outside liberal elite opposition circles and should the demonstrations topple the regime, he is likely to confront competitors in the effort to lead Egypt into a new era.
•Egypt's silent majority. There have been all kinds of estimates of how many Egyptians have poured into the streets this past week. Although the demonstrations belie the conventional wisdom-inspired canard that Egyptians are, by their character, passive, the people in the streets still represent only a small fraction of Egypt's approximately 80 million citizens. Anecdotal evidence suggests that even those who are not out on the streets support the protestors, but the longer the police and internal security services sow chaos on the streets, the more likely it is that this silent majority will want social peace no matter who is president. Mubarak's statement on Friday night seemed in part designed to cultivate this constituency.
•The Obama Administration. This is a tough call for the United States. Mubarak has been a loyal ally and has aligned himself to U.S. interests in the region at his own political cost. Some observers rightly point out that the impact of dumping Mubarak on other regional allies could be profound. Yet the costs of ignoring the will of Egyptians who want Mubarak to go and to develop a more open and democratic system would likely be more damaging for Washington in the long run. The Obama administration has thus sought to split the difference and seek a graceful transition from Mubarak. That is why after 30 years without a vice president Lt. Gen. Omar Soleiman, the country's intelligence chief, was suddenly sworn into the position on Friday evening. Soleiman is clearly intended to be the bridge to the next leadership, though there is no guarantee that he will give up the presidential chair should he acquire it. At this point, there is very little Washington can do to shape events in a decisive way. Egyptians are now writing their own narrative and any effort on the part of the United States short of a public declaration disassociating Washington from the Mubarak will be interpreted as a sign of support for the discredited dictator.
Egypt – and indeed the entire Middle East -- is on the cusp of fundamental change. Although Egyptian influence and prestige has waned in recent years, the country still has the capacity to affect regional politics and trends. As a result, the Egyptian uprising will shake the region. Even if Arab dominoes do not fall, the demise of Mubarak will encourage Arab leaders to engage in either more repression or open their political systems tactically to relieve the pressure building from below. Either way, it is likely to produce significant turbulence in Washington's relations with the region

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paesh