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  #51  
Old Tuesday, May 22, 2012
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Beyond Afghanistan, a weakened NATO can still write its own future
May 22, 2012
By Kurt Volker

When the dust settles from this week’s NATO summit in Chicago, and in the quiet of our own thoughts, we need to ask ourselves what NATO, or the United States and Europe more broadly, should actually do from here. To be sure, NATO is managing the best it can in bad circumstances. It has grown fatigued in Afghanistan far sooner than needed to achieve success – and so it will embark on an inevitable but tenuous transition there.

Europe is consumed by a financial crisis and nearly everyone is slashing defense budgets – hence the focus on “smart defense” projects. Many allies lack the means or the will (or both) to take on hard military operations, so it’s good that partners such as Sweden and Qatar fill the gap.

And no one in Europe is enthusiastic about missile defenses to ward off potential strikes from Iran. But alliance members will go along if the Russians remain calm and the US pays – which it will, at least initially.

But the NATO that so dramatically transformed itself after the cold war is running out of gas. Since the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, NATO began conducting “out-of-area” military operations as opposed to concentrating on deterrence. Now we’ve lost public support and are closing down operations. The alliance added new members from Central Europe – but that’s no longer on the table as Russian assertiveness and the prolonged euro crisis have taken away all appetite for open doors.

In the last two decades, NATO has transformed its defense forces from heavy and static to more nimble and deployable, but now those capabilities are being slashed. The only post-cold-war trend still at work in the alliance is partnering with other countries. Even that’s a bitter-sweet development, as partners are now doing what some allies refuse to do – fight.

Back in 2010, NATO’s Lisbon summit set out a “strategic concept” for the future. This, however, turned out to be a compendium of all the things NATO should do, without real priorities and commitment of resources. By prioritizing everything, we prioritized nothing.

So what to do?

One of NATO’s great secretary generals, Lord Robertson, said that “NATO’s credibility is its capability.” Today, when NATO’s capability is rapidly being reduced, we increasingly face a credibility gap. We have high ambitions, but don’t back them up with resources, leadership, and commitment. Restoring NATO’s credibility is arguably the most important task for the alliance at the moment.

One approach is for NATO to look closer to home. If publics are skeptical about far-off engagements such as Afghanistan – and if allies are slashing their capabilities to conduct such operations anyway – we should perhaps look at what we can accomplish with great credibility, and what our citizens will agree are high priorities.

This might include a renewed emphasis on planning and exercises for our collective defense – the core mission of NATO as summed up in Article 5 of its treaty. We should couple that with a broad understanding of what can actually threaten allied territory today: not just conventional militaries or nuclear weapons, but terrorism, infrastructure attacks, energy disruptions, and cyber attacks.

Tackling these issues with real resources and commitment is something NATO is capable of achieving if it wishes, and is more directly tied to the immediate well-being of citizens in the alliance.

Another approach is to look at successes within Europe, rather than failings. Here, the prospering Nordic-Baltic region of Europe offers lessons for the wider transatlantic community, shows a recent study from the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Most of these countries belong to NATO or the European Union, or both. They show that by managing their own issues well – economic growth, deficit reduction, energy security, closer integration, neighborly relations with Russia – the region is able to contribute disproportionately to common endeavors, whether Libya, Afghanistan, or an inclusive, free Europe.

Turning our attention more toward home – cleaning it up and defending it – helps set a forward agenda for NATO and the European Union. Fixing our deficit and debt crises is actually a security measure, as is genuine energy diversification. Supporting freedom and security in Eastern Europe strengthens our defense, as does finding a consensus on how to deal with Russia. And deepening European integration will provide a more reliable partner for the United States.

In today’s shrinking world, we see the rise of new powers, resource competition, and the threat of authoritarian capitalism and Islamist extremism. Without a strong transatlantic community, those are the forces that will shape the 21st century, while those of us who shaped the 20th century merely muddle through.

But with a realistic agenda and steady determination, the transatlantic community can still write its own future.

Kurt Volker, a former US ambassador to NATO, is a professor of practice at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.

Source: Christian Science Monitor
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Old Wednesday, May 23, 2012
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Nato summit: what next?
May 23, 2012
Najmuddin A Shaikh

THE hoopla is over. President Obama can congratulate himself on having presided successfully over the largest Nato gathering ever arranged and on having won an endorsement for the ‘irreversible’ departure of all Nato troops from Afghanistan by Dec 31, 2014 and for the cessation of active combat operations by Nato forces after July 2013. Beyond this what was achieved?

No firm commitments or pledges were made by the Nato members for funding the $4.1bn that the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will need annually for a decade. It was said that this was not a pledging conference but for the last few months American diplomats have been doing the rounds of Nato and non-Nato countries to get these pledges.

Only Germany ($190m), UK ($110m) and non-Nato Australia ($100m) have made firm annual pledges and even these are not for the entire decade. The American hope was that it would pick up half the tab, the Afghans themselves would contribute $500m and the balance would come from Nato and non-Nato allies.

This has not happened in Chicago and will probably not happen in the next few weeks before the Tokyo conference in July where pledges are expected for funding Afghan reconstruction and development. There too it is hard to visualise that the donors will come up with the approximately $6bn a year the Afghans believe they need.

Much of the burden will fall on the Americans. First, they have to finance the additional $2bn to $2.5bn annually that the ANSF will need during the 2014 to 2017 period while the drawdown of the ANSF is under way. Second, they will willy-nilly have to make up the shortfall in the Nato contribution — possibly $750m annually. Third, they will have to give $3bn to $4bn annually for Afghan reconstruction if a collapse of the Afghan economy is to be avoided and if the shortfall in contributions from others is to be made up.

One can argue that this is a small price given the $120bn annually that the Americans are now spending on the military presence in Afghanistan. But the mood in America now is such that very few in Congress will be prepared to take on this burden.

One can anticipate that funding both for the ANSF and for reconstruction will fall far short and that such a shortfall will be justified by the inability of the Afghan government to live up to the pledges it has made to curb corruption and to institute reforms. The already serious economic problems of Afghanistan will be exacerbated and give fresh impetus to ethnic rivalries relating to the division of a shrinking foreign-aid pie.

The Nato statement talks of “a new post-2014 mission of a different nature in Afghanistan, to train, advise and assist the ANSF, including the Afghan Special Operations Forces”. It emphasises that “this will not be a combat mission”. This does not mean that American forces in Afghanistan post 2014 will not continue their counterterrorism operations within and outside Afghanistan.

The target will be the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan where the Americans are convinced Al Qaeda and its local allies who endorse its global agenda are located. The American intervention in Vietnam was justified by the ‘domino theory’ — if the communists won in Vietnam then all of East Asia would go ‘red’. When public opinion so dictated, this theory was discarded and American allies in South Vietnam were abandoned but only after millions of bombs had devastated neighbouring Laos and Cambodia to destroy the Ho Chi Minh trail.

For Pakistan it would be prudent to assume that this pattern could be repeated in Afghanistan where it can be argued that what remained of the terrorism threat could be controlled through other means.

This is one facet of the continued American presence. The other is the pressure it will bring to bear on the Taliban to engage seriously in reconciliation talks with the Karzai administration.

The Pakistan Defence Council argues that when all foreign forces are withdrawn the Afghans will work out a solution amongst themselves. The record of past efforts at reconciliation between 1989 and 2001 when there were no foreign forces seems to suggest otherwise. These were the years in which the Afghans waged a civil war that wreaked greater havoc than the decade-long Soviet occupation. Will there be patience in Washington, if the Afghan Taliban remain obdurate and retain safe sanctuaries, to stay the course? The prudent assumption should be that reconciliation, acceptable to all Afghans, must come by 2017 or the Americans will abandon this path.

The third facet of a continued presence is that it may guarantee the flow of a measure of economic assistance that prevents the collapse of the Afghan economy and a consequent flow of Afghan economic refugees to Pakistan. Again, prudence would support the assumption that with the mounting number of ‘green on blue’ incidents the Americans may find it difficult to sustain a presence even on joint bases with joint training programmes for very long after 2017.

To me, the summit suggested that America and its Nato partners, despite the hoopla and the brave words, are quite prepared to cut their losses in Afghanistan and treat it as a lost cause. It is quite conceivable, even in today’s world, that they will in the process wreak the same havoc that impoverished not just Vietnam but also Cambodia and Laos. The equivalent of the Khmer Rouge and the killing fields could easily emerge in this disturbed region. This may be an exaggeration. The global consequences of the creation of such chaos in this region would be horrendous but let us not dismiss the possibility out of hand.

So what is the solution? It lies in the words of our president who in his speech at the summit said, “We firmly believe that only an inclusive intra-Afghan dialogue can lead to sustainable peace in Afghanistan”. He also recalled that parliament had said that “foreign fighters and non-state actors seeking to destabilise Afghanistan and the region, if found on our soil, must be expelled”.

If we work sincerely using the levers we have to promote this intra-Afghan dialogue — one lever being the expulsion of those seeking to destabilise Afghanistan — we can succeed. This will not be a panacea for all the ills of the region but it will be an indispensable first step. Let our mantra now be ‘reconciliation, reconciliation, reconciliation’. This, more than the transit route issue, should be our principal preoccupation.

The writer is a former foreign secretary.
-Dawn
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Old Wednesday, May 23, 2012
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Pakistan’s Afghan dilemma

May 23, 2012
S P Seth

Pakistan’s relations with the US and its allies seem to be on the mend with reports that the suspended NATO supply route to Afghanistan might be reopened. The route was closed by Pakistan after 24 of its soldiers were killed last November by the US forces on the Pakistan-Afghan border. Whether it will mean any real improvement in their relationship remains problematic because both remain hostage to developments in Afghanistan. While the Hamid Karzai government might feel reassured about the US commitment to a post-2014 Afghanistan after the US military withdrawal, following the strategic partnership between the two countries for ten years; Pakistan might not be all that happy. With the US involvement, of sorts, likely to continue, Pakistan’s capacity to shape developments to its strategic advantage will be severely constrained. Therefore, Afghanistan will remain a difficult issue affecting US-Pakistan relations for quite some time even after 2014.

It would appear that there is considerable confusion in the higher echelons of the Pakistan military about how best to achieve their strategic objectives in Afghanistan. There is, of course, the clearly understood goal of creating strategic depth in Afghanistan under Pakistani influence. But to imagine that an independent Afghan regime, presumably run by the Taliban, will follow Pakistan’s strategic dictates is a wild assumption. According to some reports, even at this point of time when the Taliban leadership is said to be sheltering in Pakistan, the relationship between some of Pakistan’s top generals and the Taliban leaders in residence is quite testy, bordering on deep distrust. It, therefore, does not bode well for Pakistan’s presumed confidence that the Taliban leadership, if and when in power again, will play Pakistan’s cards.

In a recent review article in the New York Review of Books on a bunch of books on Afghanistan, Anatol Lieven has written, “…sensible Pakistani [military officers] do not want the Taliban to conquer the whole of Afghanistan, because they would then be free to turn on Pakistan by giving their support to their Pashtun brothers who are in revolt against Pakistan as part of the Pakistani Taliban…”

Since Professor Lieven is considered an expert on Pakistan and Afghanistan (his latest book: Pakistan: A Hard Country), it is worth quoting him at some length. He writes: “Just what the Pakistani security establishment is really aiming at [in Afghanistan] is extremely difficult to work out. Quite apart from the levels of opacity and deceit in which Pakistani policy is wrapped, the Pakistani state is weak and soft. Even in the military, the lines of command have become blurred.”

Highlighting the role of the ISI in Afghan affairs, he comments, “Indeed, so close is the identification of some ISI officers with the Taliban that there is some doubt whether the Taliban is acting as Pakistan’s proxy or the ISI is acting as the Taliban’s proxy.”

Such confusion of policy and implementation, when the state is soft and weak, portends danger for Pakistan. And the danger clearly is that Pakistan is becoming hostage to a set of assumptions that do not hang together. They need a policy where the Taliban ceases to be its centrepiece, because it is actually weakening the foundations of the Pakistani state. The meteoric rise of the Pakistani Taliban (an offshoot of the Afghan Taliban), and the deadly violence it is inflicting on Pakistani society (with their fraternal linkages with other extremist and terrorist groups), is an existential threat for Pakistan.

Unless and until this realisation dawns on the Pakistani state, particularly its military, Pakistan is likely to lurch from one tragedy to another. In this context, whether its relations with the US are on the mend or not is immaterial. Pakistan’s own contradictions and conflicts are so overwhelming that the state has no time to work out an alternative strategy to save Pakistan. Let us face it, Pakistan is in danger of imploding from within.

In the midst of all this, some of the Afghans living in Australia were mulling over their country’s fate after the US withdrawal in 2014 at a national TV forum here. Most of them were against the US withdrawal in 2014 for fear that it would put in jeopardy the limited gains in education facilities for girls in the cities and other benefits of relative openness of Afghan society, at least in the cities.

There was also concern about Pakistan’s role as a safe haven for terrorists and extremists to destabilise Afghanistan. And it was feared that the return of the Taliban, if it were to eventuate, would be disastrous for minorities such as the Hazaras.

The Afghan diaspora generally shares these fears, many of whom fled Afghanistan to escape the country’s mayhem, and they fear the worst in terms of a possible civil war in the country and/or the return of the Taliban into power in parts of the country. The Taliban are unlikely to be the sole political actor in the country, because they will be resisted by the warlords in the north and by other ethnic groups like the Tajiks. The Afghan diaspora, therefore, by and large, favour the US troop presence beyond 2014, believing that this was would somehow be tantamount to stability of sorts. In some way, though, foreign troops in Afghanistan are part of the problem, and not its solution.

However, there is one issue that is somehow skirted in all this talk of the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2014: what sort of political order is envisaged in the post-2014 period when the withdrawal of foreign troops would coincide with the end of Karzai’s constitutional term as Afghanistan’s president? Karzai probably would like to continue. But that would be unconstitutional. This might be fixed, though, with a managed constitutional amendment, followed by a managed/manipulated election. If that happens, it would further delegitimise the system and the regime. And how would the US and its NATO allies respond to it? As it is, Karzai might appear to be the only dependable ally for the US, notwithstanding his quirkiness and tendency to play all the cards at the same time.

In other words, apart from the Taliban danger, there are other imponderables in the Afghan situation as well. Therefore, the post-2014 situation, following NATO withdrawal, could turn out to be even more messy and lethal than what has happened so far.

And Pakistan will be in the middle of it all. It is imperative that it should work out a strategic vision and not go for tactical gains that have a habit of turning into greater disasters.

The writer is a senior journalist and academic based in Sydney, Australia. He can be reached at sushilpseth@yahoo.co.au
-Daily Times
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Chicago’s message
May 23, 2012
By Tariq Fatemi

As details of the Nato summit in Chicago still emerge, Nato has agreed to hand over control of Afghanistan to its own security forces by the middle of next year. Though called primarily to discuss the post-2014 strategy for Afghanistan, the Chicago summit spent no less time during its informal sessions discussing Pakistan, whose ties with the US and Nato have been in a free fall since the Salala attack. The summit declaration included Pakistan among the countries having “an important role in ensuring enduring peace, stability and security in Afghanistan and in facilitating the completion of the transition process”. Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen also made it clear that Nato was “counting on Pakistan’s commitment to support ISAF and Nato efforts in Afghanistan”, while demanding “reopening of the land routes very soon, because we need these”.

While diplomatic niceties protected President Asif Ali Zardari from public criticism, US and Nato officials made known their frustration with Pakistan for failing to act on its promise to reopen the critically-needed Nato supply routes and continuing to support the Haqqani network.

The White House annoyance with Pakistan was also evident from the kind of briefing given to the media, which claimed that President Barack Obama would not receive President Zardari. The two leaders did, however, have a brief chat, which was used by Obama to inform the press that he had emphasised the “need to work through tensions that have arisen”, adding that President Zardari had assured him of “his belief that these issues can be worked through”. But in a thinly veiled warning, President Obama declared that he did “not want to paper over real challenges”, while pointing out that “it was in Pakistan’s interest to see that they were not consumed by extremism in their midst”.

Regarding Afghanistan, President Obama has admittedly lowered American expectations, no longer viewing it as the “war of necessity”. Nor is he willing to buy the argument advocated by his generals that a troop ‘surge’ was likely to turn the tide in Afghanistan, though he was smart enough to let them try out this option earlier. President Obama has no interest in ‘remaking’ Afghanistan but remains deeply concerned about Pakistan. As his National Security Council Chief, Tom Donilon, confirmed prior to the summit, the US “goal is to have an Afghanistan that has a degree of stability such that forces like al Qaeda and associated groups cannot have safe havens unimpeded, which would threaten the region and threaten US and other interests in the world”. In other words, the US will focus, henceforth, on Afghan security and much less on its social sector.

This would not, however, mean any diminution of concern with Pakistan, as confirmed by President Obama in his post-summit comments. In fact, White House sources have confirmed that he has come around to what Bruce Riedel — a counterterrorism adviser and confidant — had warned him about, namely, that it is Pakistan more than Afghanistan that the US should be worried about. Moreover, with US problems likely to worsen in Afghanistan, the refrain to ‘do more’ would surely intensify, along with threats and warnings.

At the summit, President Zardari sought to shield himself behind the parliament’s resolutions but there were no takers for this. The government should have recognised the nation’s inherent limitations and its inability to stand up to US pressure before engaging in rhetorical flourishes that have placed it in a bind. With American patience wearing thin, further dithering and lack of clarity that has at present characterised our policy would be disastrous for the short term as well as long term future. Nato can congratulate itself for having agreed on an ‘irreversible’ path out of a decade-long, unpopular war. Now, it is time for us to opt for similar rational thinking and ‘hard’ decisions on what ails us at home, along with skilful diplomacy to enhance our options.

The Express Tribune
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Afghanistan’s future format
May 23, 2012
Harsh V. Pant

President Barack Obama’s dramatic arrival in Kabul aboard Air Force One under the cover of darkness was fitting finale to the cloak-and-dagger operation that eliminated Osama bin Laden a year earlier.

The trip also marked a symbolic beginning of the end of American intervention in Afghanistan that was occasioned by bin Laden’s daring 2001 assault on the US. Obama offered clarification of the US aim in coming years as troops withdraw, opening the door to regional powers playing a role.

During the brief visit the US and Afghanistan signed the much-awaited strategic partnership agreement, which stipulates that the Afghan security forces take the lead in combat operations by the end of next year and US troops withdraw by the end of 2014. The pact underscores America’s commitment to Afghanistan for a decade as American trainers would continue to assist Afghan forces. A contingent of troops tasked with combating Al Qaeda through counterterrorism operations, too, will remain. Though specific details are yet to be finalised, the agreement provides needed clarity about America’s intended footprint in Afghanistan over the next decade. There’s been growing concern in sections of the policy communities in Washington, Kabul and New Delhi about an abrupt end to American security commitment in Afghanistan.

The US has made it clear that it seeks “an enduring partnership with Afghanistan that strengthens Afghan sovereignty, stability and prosperity and that contributes to our shared goal of defeating Al Qaeda and its extremist affiliates.” It’s towards that end that the latest pact underscores the ongoing American role in bolstering Afghan democracy and civil society and pledges US financial support to Afghanistan through 2024. Though it’s not evident how vague US reassurances will get translated into operational policy, Washington has sent a clear signal that it won’t abandon Afghanistan and will retain a presence in the region’s evolving strategic realities.

Afghanistan’s national security adviser Rangin Dadfar Spanta described the pact as “providing a strong foundation for the security of Afghanistan, the region and the world, and is a document for the development of the region.” Of course, he’s right in so far as this pact removes the ambiguity surrounding America’s post-2014 posture in Afghanistan, not only for Kabul but also for New Delhi where there’s been growing concern about implications for regional stability after American withdrawal.

This is also a signal to the Taleban and other extremist groups that waiting out American forces might no longer be as credible an option as it may have once seemed. Washington’s new message will have particular resonance in India and Pakistan as ties between the two South Asian neighbours remain the most important fault line in shaping Afghanistan’s future.

As Washington and Kabul turn a new page in the Afghanistan saga, New Delhi should be keen to take this opportunity to become a more credible actor in its neighbourhood. Washington has played its hand. It’s up to New Delhi to respond adequately.
Harsh V. Pant teaches in King’s College, London

© 2012 Yale Center for the Study of Globalisation
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The Afghanistan endgame
May 24, 2012
Ikram Sehgal

Trying to muddle way out of another unpopular war and loath to concede defeat, US and NATO have been racing against time to build an Afghan army able to fend for itself after 130,000 US and ISAF troops pull out in 2014. The final transition phase, involving the handing over of responsibility for provinces and districts to Afghan authorities, will start from “mid-2013,” Nato secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said. A number of areas and towns have already been handed over since the transition started a year ago. Incidents of Afghan soldiers turning on Nato troops cause apprehension of increased Taliban infiltration of the Afghan police and army.

Nato initially planned to expand Afghan Security Forces to over 350,000. Defining the 2014 exit strategy the Chicago summit set the size and scope after 2014 to be much smaller, roughly 230,000 troops. Without scaling down the future security needs, it simply reflected prevailing economic realities in an era of austerity budgets and defence cutbacks. The US and Nato require $4.1 billion a year to maintain the Afghan military, far less than the cost of maintaining foreign forces in Afghanistan and also, and more importantly, easier for the economically suffering and war-weary US and European publics to sustain.

In keeping with his campaign pledge, incoming French president Francois Hollande said France will withdraw its own forces by the end of 2012. Along with Britain, Germany and Italy, France is among the top five troop-contributing nations with about 3,600 soldiers, dwarfed by the 90,000-strong US force. The 9,500 British forces in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001 will be reduced by 500 soldiers this year. Two hundred members of Britain’s Special Forces will stay on after 2014 to help combat terrorism in Afghanistan.

As Afghanistan’s largest patron, the US is supposed to share about 25 percent of the cost after 2014 in support of the present Afghan regime for at least a decade (or more), but could well conceivably bear more than half the cost. The recent Obama-Karzai strategic partnership covers everything from security to economic development, to building a functional Afghan government. US special operations forces will have to stay to “mentor the Afghan National Security Force,” says Marine Corps Maj Gen John Toolan, who commanded Nato forces in Afghanistan’s volatile southwest. US gunships and air-to-ground assault planes will continue supporting ground forces. The fledgling Afghan air force which in 2015 will still be unable to do so. The US will also continue maintaining a fleet of intelligence-gathering and surveillance aircraft, Heritage Foundation’s Lisa Curtis claims that “it spells out an important US red line to the Taliban, who have long called for expelling all foreign forces from the country.”

All said and done, will the Afghan Army fight? With a track record over centuries of deserting on masse to whosoever controls Kabul and the treasury, it did not fight for the Soviets against the Mujhahideen, nor for the US and Nato against the Taliban.

President Zardari faced studied but polite cold-shouldering in Chicago. On the one hand are the economic and geo-political considerations of far-reaching consequences for the destiny of the nation, on the other an enraged populace burning with anger against the drone strikes and the US failure to render an apology over Salala. A predator nation that has lived off the Indus Valley for centuries, Afghanistan will continue to live off Pakistan for centuries more.

Commenting on Abid Latif Sindhu’s article “Necessary Roughness – endgame in Afghanistan,” Brig Usman Khalid concludes: (1) The endgame will effect the world balance of power because Pakistan has a crucial role to play. It borders China, is a gateway to Central Asia and is situated on the Western part of the Arabian Sea. This part controls a chokepoint – the Strait of Hormuz, which joins the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf-and not too far to the south is the Gulf of Aden, which leads to the Red Sea via the still narrower Bab el-Mandeb Strait; (2) Pakistan has shown “necessary roughness,” which is a prerequisite for playing its role in the new narrative that would unfold after the exit of NATO from Afghanistan in 2014. Brig Usman Khalid further notes: “It is in Pakistan’s interest to facilitate the withdrawal of Nato forces by the end of 2014 and logistical support until then. The reopening of the supply line to Afghanistan is no longer an issue. Pakistan does not and cannot support the overall design of the US which is now being made in consultation with India. Pakistan-US relations will move along a rough and bumpy road. If Pakistan maintains its strategic cooperation with Saudi Arabia and its warm relations with China, the cost of travelling this bumpy road would be bearable and diplomatic isolation avoided.” The Nato supply line through Pakistan needs resolution but will have emotional ramifications among a populace no longer patient with putting issues on the backburner.

The presence of American “experts” after 2014 with US bases operational at Bagram, Kandahar and Kabul has made the endgame more complex. According to Sindhu, “Pakistan has just shown necessary roughness while dealing with the USA in retaliation for its bashing; it was never an act of defiance. It is precisely what is required in any relationship, may it be one between husband and wife or Hillary’s favourite mother-in-law analogy. So it should be taken in the right context. Pakistan is not a rentier state; the state policy could be lopsided but it does exist. It is both a victim and the player of the new great game with a status of the regional middle kingdom. Afghanistan endgame is being played by increasing the numbers of players in its final hour; this has made the phenomenon global in nature and multidimensional in its texture.”

Sindhu asks whether Pakistan can be ignored with its unique connectivity matrix when Pakistan is fighting an extended insurgency in all of the tribal areas? In essence, he says, “globalism has come face to face with tribalism, one using technology as the main driver and later using the simplicity as the sine qua non for its existence and survival. International conferences, moots and summits without reality checks would be a futile exercise perpetuating the Afghan ordeal. Pakistan, Afghanistan and the USA have to reach an operational consensus respecting each other’s sensitivities.” Sindhu left out an inconvenient truth which the West well knows, the best bet against future conflict is not going to be the well-funded ceremonials of the Afghan army but the motivated, battle-hardened disciplined soldiers of the Pakistan Army.

The Chicago Summit recognised the home truth about Pakistan’s being not only critical but central to an Afghan solution. To quote Rasmussen, “there can be no large drawdown of troops from Afghanistan without Pakistan’s help.” President Obama said: “It is in our interest to see a successful, stable Pakistan and it is in Pakistan’s interest to have stable relationship with us.” Meeting Zardari briefly, he expressed the desire to stay engaged despite differences. “The US did not want Pakistan to be consumed by its own extremism.”

Beyond Chicago, Pakistan can only hope it will not be consumed by extreme views from the West which fail to recognise the relevance of the Taliban ground reality.

The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: isehgal@pathfinder9. com

-The News
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Lost war
May 26, 2012
Dave Lindorff

John Kerry, back before he was a pompous windsurfing Senate apologist for American empire, back when he was part of a movement of returned US military veterans speaking out against the continuation of the Vietnam War, famously asked the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at a hearing, “How do you ask a man to be the last one to die for a mistake?”

That was 1971, and the Vietnam War continued to drag on for two more years, with more Americans dying, and with many more Vietnamese being killed, until finally the last US combat troops were gone. But even then the fighting continued, with the army of South Vietnam armed and financed by the United States, until April 30, 1975, when the last resistance ended and Vietnam was liberated and reunified and finally at peace.

During those two terrible years between Kerry’s statement and the end of US combat operations, American soldiers stationed in Vietnam knew that the war was lost, and knew they were there for no reason other than keeping President Nixon from looking like he had lost a war, particularly as he faced re-election during the campaign year of 1972.

Once again a war has been lost by the US. Once again American troops are being asked to keep fighting for a mistake – this time the 2001 fantasy of the Bush/Cheney administration that it could make a client state out of Afghanistan, a mistake that President Obama doubled down on after taking over the White House, when he called Afghanistan the “good war” and committed another 30,000 troops there, plus ordering up an aggressive kill campaign of night raids, assassinations and the heavy use of pilotless armed drone aircraft.

The difference this time is that these troops are hearing their commander in chief tell the American public that he is going to end the whole thing at the end of 2014. He is saying that the war, now opposed by almost three-fourths of the American people according to recent polls, will be ended in two and a half more years no matter what the situation is on the ground in Afghanistan.

The American forces in Afghanistan know they have already lost the war there. And they also know that as the drawdown of troops begins from that war-torn country, they will be hit harder and harder by the Taliban and other forces trying to take back the country from the US. They know too that as soon as the last of them has boarded the last plane out, or perhaps even earlier, the current corrupt Afghan leadership will be hopping a commercial flight out too, to join their money in Switzerland or Abu Dhabi, and the Taliban will come marching into Kabul to take over from them.

How much worse must those soldiers feel than the US soldiers in Vietnam, who at least didn’t have an end-point held out in front of them to taunt them. Today’s American soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan fight staring at a surrender date at which point all their fighting and killing and dying and being will be acknowledged as having been in vain. The American soldiers in Vietnam in 1971 or 1972 could at least pretend that after they left, the South Vietnamese government might at least try to fight on and establish itself.

Soldiers in the Afghan army and police, whom US forcers are training, supposedly to be able to take over from them, are turning their guns on the Americans with alarming frequency.

The question is why on earth would we in America allow this disaster to drag on for another two and a half years, just to provide cover for our current failed crop of political and military leaders?

Courtesy: www.counterpunch.org
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Revitalising Afghan economy is critical
May 26, 2012
By Farhan Bokhari

The mood engulfing much of the western world involved in the Afghanistan conflict was all too evident at the two-day Nato summit that concluded in Chicago on Monday. US President Barack Obama hosted the event as one of his last foreign policy gatherings before this year’s presidential election.

While members of Nato, or the North Alliance Treaty Organisation, discussed ways to conclude their involvement in the Afghan conflict, groups of protesters gathered outside the summit venue highlighted the growing unpopularity of the war.

Seated too at the table was Francois Hollande, whose opposition to keeping French troops deployed in the Afghan war, earned him the French presidency. More importantly, his threat of withdrawing French troops from Afghanistan earlier than expected, may have given an impetus to the global push for ending the western world’s involvement in a conflict where an outright victory seems increasingly uncertain.

Driven by significant economic woes which have badly sapped in to their ability to sustain the war in Afghanistan, members of the Nato alliance drew a final timeline to withdraw their troops by 2014, following a planned transfer of lead duties to Afghan troops next year.

To some, the plan seems like an emerging success story. Just over a decade after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks forced out the fundamentalist Taliban regime from power, the ability of the hardline movement to take charge of the country seems increasingly unlikely. And yet, that may be just part of the story.

The global community is once again faced with the risk of abandoning Afghanistan just as it did after the withdrawal of the former Soviet Union in the late 1980s. Perhaps a shade of difference between the two situations may well be that following the upcoming withdrawal of western troops, the US will likely retain a smaller number of military advisers and special forces to support the newly established Afghan army and the Afghan security force. But that alone will just not help to begin rebuilding Afghanistan in a way that the danger of recurring conflict will end permanently.

Rethink strategy

For the moment, the gap in supporting Afghanistan to a qualitatively new and better future lies not only around the need to generously fund its emerging military infrastructure. More vitally is the need to build up a robust civil society through a large scale global effort to provide substantial resources of the kind not done before.

Eventually, the hope for the future of a new Afghanistan will come from the country’s younger generation who appear to have been neglected for years.

Afghanistan’s three decades of conflict which began with the 1979 invasion by the former Soviet Union has displaced not just vast numbers of people.

More vital to the future of Afghanistan has been the displacement of large numbers of younger people who now find themselves just unable to contribute to the future of their country.

At the Nato summit, a point of disappointment for Afghanistan was indeed the failure of the global community to commit more than $4 billion required annually to sustain the upcoming Afghan army and related security infrastructure.

Indeed, Afghanistan needs vast amounts of global financial assistance to keep up the military pressure against Taliban militants — a necessary prerequisite to prevent the country from slipping back into the hands of hardliners.

However, more troubling is indeed a virtual absence of what should have been a robust global dialogue to discuss and debate ways of reviving Afghanistan’s future economic prospects.

Lessons from Afghanistan’s past serve well to illustrate the country’s journey from becoming ravaged under the war unleashed by the former Soviet Union, to become an eventual facilitator of the global terrorist framework brought to Afghanistan by Al Qaida.

Any future endeavour which misses the all too vital need for Afghanistan’s economic rehabilitation will simply miss out on a fundamentally vital element in the country’s overall stabilisation. This is all the more essential at a time when Afghanistan will be put through a significant transition in the next two years, following the decisions made at the Nato summit in Chicago.

While the Afghan war remains increasingly unpopular across the western world, the global community must also rise to an important obligation in danger of being forgotten — the need to revitalise Afghanistan economically so that its people can rid themselves of a long-running conflict, once and for all.

Farhan Bokhari is a Pakistan-based commentator who writes on political ?and economic matters.

Source: Gulf News
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Nato’s endgame in Afghanistan
May 26, 2012
By Rahimullah Yusufzai

The 28-member North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) during its recent Chicago summit confirmed plans to withdraw combat troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014 and to leave behind a training mission.

Plans for handing over command of all combat missions to Afghan security forces by the middle of 2013 were also ratified as Nato leaders declared that the transition process was irreversible.

This roadmap was initially agreed upon in an earlier Nato summit in 2010 and, according to its leadership, was on course. It essentially means putting Afghan forces in charge by mid-2013 for conducting all combat operations and ensuring security in the war-torn country. This would allow the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to gradually shift its focus from combat to support until the complete drawdown by December 2014.

For the weak Afghan government led by President Hamid Karzai, the assurance given by the Nato leadership that it would not abandon Afghanistan even after the 130,000 foreign combat troops have pulled out was far more important.

The leaders of the 61 nations, including non-Nato members, at the two-day summit also began taking practical steps to show their commitment towards Afghanistan by pledging money for the training and upkeep of the Afghan security forces.

Though the Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it wasn’t a pledging conference, some of the countries made public their funding commitments in response to the demand by Karzai for $4.1 billion a year to fund his forces.

However, France under its new socialist President Francois Hollande not only refused to back down from its recent decision to pull its 3,300 troops out of Afghanistan this year, a year ahead of schedule, but also showed reluctance to provide $200 million for the Afghan security forces.

There was concern that France’s unilateral move could prompt other countries to prematurely withdraw their forces from Afghanistan and jeopardise Nato’s transition plans.

Another important Nato decision that the Afghan government will find reassuring was to mutually work out the establishment of a new post-2014 mission of a different nature to train, advise and assist the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), including the elite special operations troops. Though the Nato leadership termed it as one of its non-combat missions, it was obvious that the western military alliance would be able to maintain physical presence in Afghanistan by undertaking this task beyond 2014 as the planning, trainers and resources for the mission would be provided by the US and its allies.

It is obvious that most of the Nato calculations post-2014 for Afghanistan are centred on the ANSF, whose strength has gradually increased to more than 300,000 and was recently praised by the Nato military commanders for performing well in tackling the Taliban suicide bombers who launched coordinated attacks in Kabul.

Conflicting views

The eventual ANSF strength has been a matter of conflicting views as the US wants it to be curtailed to 230,000 while the Afghan government reluctantly agreed to this figure after arguing that the force needed to be expanded in view of the challenge posed by the armed opponents backed by certain neighbouring countries.

One frequent observation about the ANSF has been that its strength has increased quantitatively but not qualitatively. There have been claims that the ANSF is now a more ethnically balanced, professionally led force and its rate of desertions has been cut down.

However, the real challenge for the force would be to operate independently and tackle the resurgent Taliban and the smaller militant group of former mujahideen leader Gulbaddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami once the Nato forces are gone.

Another challenge would be to curb the political ambitions of the ANSF generals because in the past Afghan military officers carried out coups in 1973 and 1978 or joined hands with scheming politicians and non-state armed groups to capture power.

With the focus of attention on the military aspects of the situation in Afghanistan, the political dimensions of the Afghan conflict have been generally neglected.

Though US President Barack Obama didn’t talk of victory in Afghanistan at the Chicago summit as the Nato no longer expected to defeat the Taliban after having failed to do so in the past 10 years, there wasn’t any mention of a political roadmap except the usual reference to engaging with the reconcilable sections of the armed opposition in peace talks.

The Nato goal now is to prevent the Taliban from capturing power and the Afghan government from collapsing. A long-term commitment by the US towards Afghanistan through its recent bilateral strategic partnership agreement with Kabul and also from the Nato platform were intended to send a message to the Taliban that they shouldn’t hope of waiting out the foreign forces and recapturing power.

Unfortunately for Afghanistan, the nascent peace process is going nowhere following the collapse of the Taliban talks with the US in Qatar and that of Hezb-i-Islami with the Afghan government. One of the major reasons for the armed opposition ending peace talks was the US-Afghan strategic peace agreement, which is believed to pave the way for permanent American military presence in Afghanistan.

The Nato summit reiterated faith in the West’s plans for Afghanistan, but there was no real input from its two most important neighbours, Pakistan and Iran, in shaping the Afghan endgame. Without their help, it won’t be easy to stabilise Afghanistan.

Rahimullah Yusufzai is a senior journalist based in Peshawar.
Source: Gulf News
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End the Afghan war now…
May 28, 2012
Eric S. Margolis

One of my favourite artists was the superb Victorian painter Lady Jane Butler who captured in oil the triumphs and tragedies of the British Empire.

Her haunting painting, “The Retreat from Kabul, ” shows the sole survivor of a British army of 16,500, Dr. William Brydon, struggling out of Afghanistan in January, 1842. All the rest were killed by Afghan tribesmen after a futile attempt to garrison Kabul.

This gripping painting should have hung over the Nato summit meeting last week in Chicago to remind the US and its allies that Afghanistan remains “the graveyard of empires.”

The latest empire to try to conquer Afghanistan has failed, and is now sounding the retreat.

All the hot air in Chicago about “transition,” Afghan self-reliance, and growing security could not conceal the truth that the mighty US and its Western allies have been beaten in Afghanistan by a bunch of mountain warriors from the 12th Century. The objective of war is to achieve political goals, not kill people. The US goal was to turn Afghanistan into a protectorate providing bases close to Caspian Basin oil, and to block China. After an eleven-year war costing $1 trillion, this effort failed – meaning a military and political defeat.

The US dragged Nato into a war in which it had no business and lacked any popular support. The result: a serious weakening of the NATO alliance, raising questions about whose interests it really serves. The defeat in Afghanistan will undermine US domination of Western Europe.

Claims made in Chicago that the US-installed Afghan regime will stand on its own with $4 billion of aid from the West were pie in the sky. Once US support ends, the Karzai regime is unlikely to survive much longer than did Najibullah’s Afghan Communist regime in Kabul after its Soviet sponsor withdrew in 1989. Or the US-run South Vietnamese regime that fell in 1975.

The current 350,000-man Afghan government army and police are mercenaries fighting for money supplied by the US and NATO. Many are ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, blood foes of the majority Pashtun. Taleban and its allies are fighting for nationalism and faith. History tells us who will prevail.

All Afghans know the Western powers have been defeated. Those with sense are already making deals with Taleban. Vengeance being a cherished Afghan custom, those who collaborated closely with the foreign forces can expect little mercy. Already there are worries about getting US and Nato troops out of Afghanistan. France’s new President, Francois Hollande, wisely reaffirmed his pledge to withdraw all French troops this year. Other Nato members are wishing they could do the same. To wage and sustain the Afghan War, the US has been forced to virtually occupy Pakistan, bribe its high officials, and force Islamabad to follow policies hated by 95 per cent of its people, generating virulent anti-Americanism. The Afghan War must be ended before it tears apart Pakistan and plunges South Asia into crisis into which nuclear-armed India is likely to become involved.

Washington intends to leave garrisons in Afghanistan after the 2014 announced pullout date, rebranding them ‘trainers’ instead of combat troops. Their mission will be to keep the pro-US Afghan regime in power. But neither the US nor NATO will come up with the $4 billion promised in Chicago.

Washington is encouraging India to get ever more deeply involved in Afghanistan – even to become its new colonial power. India would be wise to keep its hands off.

In a second “Retreat from Kabul,” remaining US garrisons in Afghanistan may face the fate of the 1842 British invaders, cut off, ambushed, and hacked to pieces by the ferocious ?Pashtun tribesmen.

Eric Margolis is a veteran US journalist
Source: Khaleej Times
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