I recently finished David Ignatius' new novel, Bloodmoney, which is set mainly in Pakistan, the U.S., and London. I think anyone who reads this blog would enjoy it.

I think fiction must use a different part of the brain. I wouldn't read an academic analysis of CIA-ISI relations til past midnight, but after a long day of travel, I stayed up hours to finish reading this book.

As it happens, the other day I ran into an American diplomat who is an expert in the Middle East and strongly recommended Ignatius' previous novel, The Increment, about Iran.

So what should foreign policy wonks read on the beach this summer? I'd say the complete works of Ignatius, which amount to a grand tour of the Middle East -- start with Agents of Innocence (Lebanon, and worth the price of admission just for the stomach-churning chapter in the middle about being an Israeli agent in Syria) and work your way with him through the region. 

Here are some other takes on beach reading for wonks.

Paula Broadwell asked Lt. Col. David Flynn, star of a guest column earlier this week, to respond to Registani Josh Foust. (And here is an XM/Foust discussion of Paula's files.)

Ms. Broadwell corresponds, "I thought I'd ask LTC David Flynn, the commander of the Combined Joint Task Force 1-320th in Kandahar Provence, Afghanistan to clarify the Afghan Local Police initiative skepticism and punditry on one blogger's mind. Here's what Flynn had to say in response to Joshua Foust's blog.":

Tom comment: No matter where you come down on this, I am impressed to see Lt. Col. Flynn respond in real time -- very unusual for an Army that still likes to move 2.5 MPH in media engagements.

So, duck and cover, and here goes:

Flynn: It has been with great pleasure that I've had the opportunity to read the orator Joshua Faust report from his desk in the U.S. via Registan.net. It seems, unfortunately, Mr. Faust lacks the context to editorialize in a way that enables his readers to ascertain an objective view. My name is LTC David Flynn and have been operating in the Arghandab District since June 2010. This is my second deployment to Kandahar and have over 20 months of experience in the Arghandab. Allow me to explain the nascent ALP in one of 4 villages that we have stood up in my Area of Operations in response to Foust's punditry.

Foust: LTC Flynn decided to give one elder in a district the power to build his own militia, which that elder liked. The men he chose for that militia could not be vetted by the Ministry of the Interior quickly enough, so the LTC decided to abandon General Petraeus' orders and the legal restrictions on arming militias and give them weapons and training anyway. LTC Flynn's trainers are having a hard time convincing these men not to beat people in the street, but are hopeful they can be "smarter than the TB."  

Flynn: The men chosen for this particular ALP were vetted by senior Afghan Police Officials, who are subordinate to the MOI, and vectored my way to begin a training process that is led by some of my finest infantry NCOs and mentored by an ODA Team operating in my AO. The ALP members have been approved also by the village Shura and are led to training by their Malik. We will issue them weapons to operate on their own after they have completed background checks, biometric screening, medical checks, District Chief of Police and District Governor vetting and final approval by the MOI. I expect this process to take a few more weeks before we are ready to issue weapons. The weapons are issued by MOI officials and at that time the District government will issue identification cards with the serial numbers matching the weapon issued. 

Read on

I remember how I used to listen to various NATO officials complain about how member nations were not sending enough helicopters to Afghanistan. Now it appears that the chickens have come home to roost: The Canadian media is reporting that the Canadian Ministry of Defence has quietly leased a bunch of Russian helicopters to use in southern Afghanistan.

My first thought was this was to fool the locals. But I don't think it would fool the Taliban, who know their Russian helicopters. Canadian Navy Lt. Kelly Rozenberg-Payne said that Canadian forces in Afghanistan simply needed some additional vertical lift: "The (operational) tempo within the air wing became very great and it was just assessed by commanders on the ground that they needed additional platforms to help move troops around," she said.

My guess is that because both the Afghan and Pakistani militaries use the Mi-17, this makes it more convenient to fly NATO forces across the border and into the FATA as necessary, with lots of plausible deniability, especially if they are flown at night and no one gets around to painting a lot of markings on the aircraft. That would explain why, as the Canadian report puts it, "details were kept off the MERX web-site, which formally lists government procurement competitions, and no news release was issued about the new choppers, which have been in use since the spring."

By Rebecca Frankel
Best Defense Chief Canine Correspondent

Target, one of three stray dogs who battled a suicide bomber, keeping him from entering an Army barracks in Afghanistan and ultimately saving the lives of the 50 soldiers inside, met an unjust and sad end this week.

The heroic Target, who got her name because, according to one soldier, local Afghans made sport of trying to "off her" (she was shot in the shoulder and even run over by a car), was picked up last week by animal control and brought to the Pinal County Animal Care and Control Shelter in Arizona where she was euthanized by mistake.

Ironically, Target was hardly a stray when she was brought to the shelter. This summer, Target had been safely delivered from Afghanistan to her adoptive family, that of Sgt. Terry Young, one of the soldiers she'd saved.

The outpouring of response to the news about Target has been tremendous. (A quick Google search shows over 400 articles in only three days time.) As has the outcry of support for the Youngs and anger toward the shelter. The employee responsible who failed to follow standard procedure and snuffed the dog too quickly has been suspended. A full investigation is expected.

Sgt. Young and his family are devastated. He told the New York Times:

"My 4-year-old keeps saying: ‘Daddy, bring Target home. Daddy, get the poison out,' " Sergeant Young, a father of three, said in a telephone interview, his voice choking with emotion. "Obviously, at first there was extreme anger and horror. Now that a couple of days have passed, the anger has been replaced by sorrow."

Perhaps it's little consolation at the heartbreaking end of an otherwise happy story, but here's one detail that doesn't appear to have been widely reported:

Target was pregnant when she helped thwart the suicide bomber by attacking him. She had her litter of puppies in Afghanistan [and they've] since been brought to the United States.

A candlelight vigil in Target's honor is scheduled for Dec. 3.

Here is a note from my CNAS colleague Ethan Kapstein, who has been hanging out in Kabul lately:

The firing of General Stanley McChrystal following his remarks to a Rolling Stone reporter risk overwhelming the real progress that is now being made in Afghanistan. In particular, Afghanistan is enjoying strong economic growth in several parts of the country.

What explains these regional booms? The answer is clear: It's security.

For that reason, a premature withdrawal of American forces -- now slated by the Obama Administration to begin in July 2011 -- could undermine all that is being achieved. The data show that when Afghans feel secure, they invest in their economy. The United States and its coalition partners should not depart before they are confident that this economic momentum can be maintained, since it is growth which provides the surest foundations for a more peaceful future.

It's not really surprising that Afghanistan is ready for an economic take-off; after so many decades of conflict, there's pent-up demand for almost every good and service imaginable. As a result, many different sectors of the economy are booming, including construction, finance, and transportation.

Read on

The New York Times's breathless coverage of minerals in Afghanistan was greeted with chuckles not only by FP's Blake Hounshell but by old Afghan hands. Here John Stuart Blackton, who has shaken more Helmand River sand out of his shorts than most Americans in Afghanistan have walked on, provides some background. By the way, before running USAID in Afghanistan, John attended Stephens College of Delhi-as did Pakistan's Gen. Zia.

By John Stuart Blackton
Best Defense Afghan natural resources editor

The " discovery" of Afghanistan's minerals will sound pretty silly to old timers.  When I was living in Kabul in the early 1970's the USG,  the Russians, the World Bank, the UN and others were all  highly focused on the wide range of Afghan mineral deposts.  The Russian geological service was all over the North in the 60's and 70's. 

Cheap ways of moving the ore to ocean ports has always been the limiting factor.  The Russians were looking at a northern rail corridor.

Take a look at this little bibliography of Afghan mineral assessments.  This one is mostly Russian, but pre-dates the DoD/USG "discovery" period by 30 years.  In my day we did a joint USG/Iranian study of a potential rail line from Afghanistan to several of the Iranian rail hubs.  This was predicated on mineral exploitation in a way that would thwart the Russian's northern rail corridor plans. 

In the early 70's the USG had an old FDR New-Deal planner/economist/brains-truster   - Bob Nathan - working with the Afghan Ministry of Plan to work out a fifty year mineral exploitation program.  When the Russians took over they picked up Bob's plans and extended them.  So this is anything but a "new discovery".  

Low cost, long haul transport infrastructure remains the constraint.  The Louis Berger "four inches of asphalt  on the old Ring Road" doesn't do it.

Read on

Here Army Maj. Nathan Murphy, who toils on AfPak counterterrorism issues in the SO/LIC salt mines of the Pentagon, suggests that more collection platforms and more computer databases are not the answer to the problems that plague the American intelligence community. 

We now live in a time where a simple order of any item is just not good enough. It has to be faster, bigger, and the very best ever seen by mankind to this point. It's not good enough to have a burger and fries; we have to make them enormous providing enough calories for a long day toiling on a construction site which very few of us do. Our quest for portion dominance on the world's culinary table pours over into other aspects of American culture as is evident from our oversized SUVs to our 42 roll packs of toilet paper. Am I against such luxuries afforded to us as arguably the world's last super power? Of course not. The 72 oz. big gulp sitting in the cup holder of your Hummer is a part of modern Americana but is unfortunately an indictment on our society as a whole.

Read on

Here's a response from my old hood to the item the other day about Zalmay Khalilzad, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, calling on U.S. military spending in that country to be re-directed in such a way as to stimulate the Afghan economy. He says some of the things Khalilzad mentioned already are being done:

Greetings from Kabul. To introduce myself, I'm Colonel (Canadian Army, Retired) Mike Capstick, the Country Director, Peace Dividend Trust -- Afghanistan. We're an International not-for-profit NGO, see: http://www.peacedividendtrust.org/

One of our major projects is Peace Dividend Marketplace -- Afghanistan. The mission of this project is to advocate and facilitate local procurement by the entire international community. The concept is simple, keep more of the money being spent on Afghanistan in Afghanistan. On this point I couldn't agree more with the spirit and intent of the comments attributed to Ambassador Khalilzad in your post dated 16 December.

Ambassador Khalilzad is on target when he advocates an "Afghan First" approach that leverages the impressive spending power of the US military and other international entities to stimulate the economy. He is, however, a bit out of date when he implies that the US Mission is still importing everything that it consumes.

In recent months Ambassador Eikenberry and General McChrystal (as CG USFOR-A) have issued a formal Afghan First policy that applies to the entire mission -- the military, USAID, State and their contractors. This policy formalizes the Afghan First effort that the DOD contracting system has been pursuing since 2006. Khalilzad is entirely correct in his assessment of the enormous potential impact of US military spending on the Afghan economy. The Ambassador understands this as does the military -- in the last FY, the DOD contracting system awarded over $1 Billion in contracts to Afghan businesses. This represents around 70% of their total expenditures, and we estimate that this will exceed the $2 Billion mark this year.

Read on

My CNAS colleague Iranga Kahangama went to see former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad speak at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. This is his report:

While the intended purpose was to discuss what is at stake for the U.S. in Afghanistan, I found myself more intrigued by the discussion of internal economic development in Afghanistan that actually dominated the night.

Ambassador Khalilzad raised two key economic points worth examining. First, with all the talk of investing in small Afghan businesses and building the economy through local entrepreneurs, we seem to have forgotten the behemoth investment firm in Afghanistan that is the United States Military. Khalilzad stressed the importance of using the military's purchasing power, and how procurement with an "Afghan first" mentality could help build up an Afghan economy. He mentioned having to drink bottled water from Dubai and eat German fruit while serving in Afghanistan, but these goods were available in Afghanistan too, just not institutionalized.  With over 30,000 more troops headed into the country, the military can create not only major demand, but a demand significantly financed through DOD's budget to stimulate the economy.

(Read on)

I'd asked Col. Gian Gentile if he cared to respond to Col. McCuen's critique, and boy did he. Here it is:

I appreciate Colonel (retired) McCuen's thoughtful and forceful reply to my recent Parameters article.  I also respect and appreciate his longstanding, hard service to the nation as a combat commander in Vietnam and his ongoing engagement with issues as a defense intellectual, and his current involvement as a senior-level advisor in our current conflicts. 

Where to begin with his critique? 

Let's start with the Sorley thesis about the Vietnam War. McCuen says that Sorley was "right;" I disagree and believe Sorley's thesis is wrong. More importantly Sorley's methodology in the use of sources is open to criticism. Go to his book, "A Better War," and view the chapter toward the end of the book that he labels as "Victory" which essentially argues that the Abrams "pacification" approach had won the war for the US and the South Vietnamese.  Then go to the end of the book and view the citations of evidence to this chapter and see how many of them are Vietnamese sources: none. In a chapter that argues the United States had won the war under Abrams-think about that for a minute, "won" the war and its sweep as a breathtaking assertion--there are a paltry 8 endnote citations, and none of them from the side of the Vietnamese enemy. Interestingly this is the very same problem that plagues so many Iraq Surge triumph stories-the idea that the Surge was the primary cause for "victory" in Iraq yet with little sources or evidence from the side of the Iraqi people and more importantly the enemy. A close reading of the operational record of the history of the Vietnam War along with the majority of secondary literature confirms that there was much more continuity than discontinuity between Abrams and Westmoreland. As far as McCuen's statement that by 1972 "90" percent of the South Vietnamese population had been pacified or returned to "our control" is simply not true. Current scholarship by historians such as Eric Bergerud, Richard Hunt, and Kyle Boylan, Andrew Birtle, and Dale Andrade either flatly reject this assertion or question it deeply. In my view we should always keep in mind when thinking about the Vietnam War the profound conclusion by one of the leading scholars on the history of the Vietnam War for the last 30 years, George Herring. His conclusion still holds that "the war could [not] have been 'won' in any meaningful sense at a moral or material cost most American's deemed acceptable." 

(Read on)

Richard Armitage is an unusual guy in Washington -- both candid and well-spoken. He also has a talent for making the right enemies. Now he of thick neck and broad shoulders has given an interesting interview to Prism, which is some sort of new publication at the National Defense University. 

Some highlights:

• At first, the U.S. government was able to keep Pakistani intelligence from meddling in Afghanistan. "The second surprise was frankly how successful we were for the first 4 years-almost 5 years-at keeping the ISI [Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence] relatively out of it. They were so shocked with the speed at which we invaded Afghanistan that I think the ISI felt it was only a matter of time until we prevailed." Armitage's timeline here suggests to me that Afghanistan started really falling apart when the ISI went back in. That's an interesting conclusion

• He says Bush and his war cabinet never formally considered whether to invade Iraq. "Never to my knowledge, and I'm pretty sure I'm right on this, did the President ever sit around with his advisors and say, 'Should we do this or not?' He never did it."

• The Bush administration didn't understand democracy and how to encourage it. "The Bush administration's push for votes as though voting equals democracy was wrong-headed because a vote is something that happens inside a democracy, but is not necessary for a democracy. You can have a democratic system without having people raise their hands and have a secret ballot. Loya jirgas to some extent are these."

• He believes Bush administration actions undercut the American position abroad. "It's harder and made more complex when we abuse the writ of habeas corpus here or when we torture people."

• Reading  he recommends, and why:  "Have you read the novels of Naguib Mahfouz? They're great, and through them all you get a couple of things, I think. First, the good humor of Egyptians; they have enormous good humor. Second, patience and long suffering, but you realize that at some point in time you can't joke something away. You can't outwait it. I would be afraid the tipping point is going to come, and particularly now that the strategic center of gravity in the Middle East has shifted to Riyadh and away from Cairo."

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Here my CNAS colleague Michael McCarthy reports on an unusual book party he attended at Fort McNair, here in Washington, D.C.:

Last night I went down to Fort McNair, home of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (NESA). The occasion was a book launch event for Enduring Voices: Oral Histories of the U.S. Army Experience in Afghanistan 2003-2005. The book, edited by Army historian Christopher Koontz, is textbook-heavy and filled with maps, charts, and long interviews with veterans of those two years of the conflict. The interview subjects range from commanding officer LTG David Barno all the way to a civilian political advisor on one of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams.

In the conference room at McNair, uniformed officers from most of the services filed in while I sat wondering how to pronounce the acronym "NESA" (turns out it's Nee-Suh). Barno-now retired from active duty and the director of NESA-introduced the panel, which was composed of soldiers he'd worked with closely in Afghanistan. Not being a historian of the Afghanistan conflict, I was struck by the relatively rosy picture these men painted of that period in the war: the Taliban resistance was disorganized and ineffective, with little predilection for IEDs; Afghan officers were starting to be embedded with NATO forces and serving as a vital cultural link; and governance was improving. All the panelists were also in agreement about the close and effective working relationship between LTG Barno and Ambassador Khalilzad, holding this up as a model of civil-military cooperation in a warzone.

Of course, all was not well, as even people with obvious vested interests were able to admit. For one, cooperation was poor between the military and most civilian agencies (including those of the three-letter variety). In addition, British MG Peter Gilchrist (ret.) discussed the futility of the U.K.'s counternarcotics portfolio in Afghanistan. This effort ultimately became an attempt to keep order at meetings where some 40 civilian agencies squabbled amongst themselves while refusing to share intelligence. And the Secretary of Defense's micromanaging didn't help either, once he suddenly began holding weekly videoconferences (which "brought us to our knees" in terms of productivity, according to Barno).

Before the event, I thought I would hear plenty about the fate of Afghanistan going forward. But this was a purely history-minded crowd, and aside from a mention of the book's timeliness, none of the participants offered assessments of the war effort today. The words "McChrystal" and "30,000" were deafening in their absence. Doubtless, every person in the room had his or her own well-defined views on what to do next and had probably watched the president's West Point speech three or four times. But it was as if, for just a few hours, everybody wanted to harken back to a different time, when things seemed to be looking up in Afghanistan.

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Last night I went to see David Kilcullen, the most quotable Australian since the Brothers Gibb, report on his most recent tour of Afghanistan. This is a great way to begin a speech:

One afternoon about six weeks ago I got ambushed in a valley in Dora Nur, in Nangarhar province...

Kilcullen, who is now a consultant to NATO and the U.S. government spent much of his time explaining how the war effort in Afghanistan is being crippled by the debilitating corruption of the Kabul government. (I'd bet this is similar to the straight talk Secretary Clinton is delivering today on her visit to Afghanistan.) He said a Western diplomat in Kabul told him that the government there reminds him of the Nationalist Chinese government in 1949, with an urban elite trying to scrape together as much wealth as they can before time runs out and they have to scoot.

Kilcullen described a "cycle of corruption" that is destroying Afghanistan:

Corruption

Leads to

Rapacious behavior of government officials

Leads to

Rage and alienation of the people

Leads to

Operating space for the Taliban

Leads to

Growing Taliban strength

Leads to

Taliban encouragement of poppy cultivation

Leads to

Poppies producing funds that corrupt government officials

Leads to

More corruption

And so on

"Poppy is the Taliban CERP," he said, a chilling phrase to anyone who knows the major role that that U.S. military acronym refers to money that American commanders used to win friends and influence people. The farmers who grow the dope only make about $800 million total annually, he said, with the vast majority of revenue, more than $3 billion, being split between drug lords, the Taliban, and government officials.

His bottom line is that there are two real options in Afghanistan: Either tell the Kabul government we are pulling out, or put in enough troops to actually break the cycle of corruption, which he said would be a minimum of about 40,000. "We either put in enough to control, or we get out." The worst thing we could do, he added, is put in enough troops to get more people killed but not enough to do anything to break change the behavior of corrupt officials. Also, he said, it is more about what you do than the actual number of troops -- "If you do it wrong, you could put it a million troops and it wouldn't make any difference."

Without quite saying so, he also indicated that time is a factor right now. "We're seeing a lot of money leaving the country. We're seeing tribes associated with the Northern Alliance re-arming. ... A lot of people are getting nervous." He talked about how attuned local Afghan leaders in remote areas are to American politics, being familiar with the various stances of President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Carl Levin. "Right now we're sending kind of a message of indecision."

One surprise to me was that he isn't particularly worried about the possibility of al Qaeda moving back into Afghanistan. "I hope so," he said, explaining that it would be a strategic gain for us to see the terrorist group leave Pakistan and move into parts of Afghanistan that essentially are "the moon with gravity."   

John Moore/Getty Images      

Remember yesterday I mentioned David Wood as a good defense reporter? He has a terrific column today about what is going wrong in Afghanistan. I'll summarize it here, but only if you promise to click on this link and read the whole thing.

Wood begins with a good strong "lede" that manages to combine action and policy:

When a warning crackled over the radio of a suspected ambush ahead, Lt. Col. Rob Campbell swore softly and ordered his three armored trucks to a halt. What happened next illustrates why the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan is failing, why commanders here are asking for more manpower -- and why they are pleading for more time.

Then his main character strides into the picture, along with a succinct statement of the problem:

Leaping out with his M-4 carbine, Campbell, a tall cavalry officer with sandy hair and freckles, strode through the empty, sun-baked fields flanking the road while his men fanned out, checking the ground for IEDs, sweeping the fields for snipers. The Afghan police assigned to patrol this stretch of road? Nowhere in sight.

Campbell comes off as a good, thoughtful officer doing well, but conscious that time is running out. Anyway, read the whole thing -- one of the best things I've read on Afghanistan in awhile.

Meanwhile, NATO aircraft hit some hijacked fuel tankers in northern Afghanistan, killing a bunch of people. Some of them were insurgents, some of them children and other civilians trying to get the fuel the Taliban was distributing from the trucks for free. The total is somewhere between 50 and 90, it appears. My question: Does this air strike  pass the Petraeus test, which I saw him apply in Mosul back in 2003-2004: Before taking any action, consider whether it will create more opponents than it stops. Anyway, this makes me wonder if NATO forces got snookered into the attack.

Paula Bronstein/Getty Images