Middle East

Wow. Here it is November 6 and we still have no idea where the Obama Administration is going on Afghanistan. All I want for Christmas is a decision!

No matter what the president decides, I'll come away worried by his handling of the process. What can you do in 10 weeks than you can't do in four? I don't think he and the people around him understand the costs of the Big Dither of 2009 -- in the trust of Afghans, in the support of Americans, in the confidence of other nations. Spencer Ackerman has just offered up a good, if CNAS-centric, analysis of the state of the debate.

I am still an Obama fan, though less than I was 90 days ago. I am still glad he is president, and I'll take him over Bush any day. Biden may be a wanker, but he isn't Cheney. I just hope Obama gives a great speech explaining his approach and brings along the American people with him.  

Photo: PETE SOUZA/The White House via Getty Images

Get this: Iran's Revolutionary Guards are angry at Pakistan for arresting and then quickly releasing a leader of the anti-Tehran Sunni rebels, Dawn of Pakistan reports. 

Some 42 people died last month in a bombing the rebel group claimed to have perpetrated. "How is it possible that this guy can move freely [unless he is] under the protection of the intelligence services?" righteously inquires the  most honorable Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the no. 2 guy in the Guards. (What's the no. 3 guy, Col. Pepperoni?)

It is a little odd to see both the United States and Iran cranky with Pakistan over related issues of harboring bad actors. Maybe Washington, Tehran and Delhi can form an anti-ISI alliance? I admit to just sitting back and enjoying this. OK, I feel a twinge of guilt. But just a twinge. 

upturnedface/Flickr

John McCreary of NightWatch fame answers my question of yesterday about what the Saudi bombing in Yemen (and the Israeli arms interception near Cyprus) might mean:

The significance is that Saudi Arabia is now engaged in counter-insurgency operations.  Tallying the score in the Middle East-south Asian region during the past five years, a Shiite government is in Baghdad, replacing a secular government, but violence is down for now. 

The Taliban in Afghanistan now operate in more than 220 of the 400 districts in Afghanistan, compared to fewer than 30 five years ago. A new Pakistani Taliban movement has sustained insurgency in the Pakistan border regions and spread terror east of the Indus River boundary and threatened to carry it to India.

Iran and North Korea have continued to proliferate weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems. Lebanon has no government. Most Central Asian states have returned to the Russian fold. Western China has become less stable and more unpredictable. Yemen is fighting a low level civil war that has now required Saudi Arabian air force assistance. Iran continues to send arms to its proxies in Lebanon, Gaza, Sudan, Eritrea and Somalia. New Iranian made rockets now held by Hamas in Gaza can reach Tel Aviv, and maybe Dimona. Iran's nuclear program continues to expand.

The tally does not look like progress towards stability."

garlandcannon/Flickr

A French official who conducted investigations in Pakistan adds more weight to charges that Pakistani intelligence officers are in bed with the Taliban and even with al Qaeda.

In a new book, What I Could Not Say, to be published next week in France,  Jean-Louis Bruguiere says that he came away with the impression that some Pakistani officials don't even consider al Qaeda to be a terrorist organization, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times. He is quoted as writing, "The central government has lost control of certain elements of the army and the ISI, an intelligence service that no longer has the trust of its foreign partners." French investigators in Pakistan also were physically intimidated, he charges.

Bruguiere now works in Washington on terrorism financing issues, the newspaper said.

(HT to Barnett Rubin)

Kash if/Flickr

My CNAS homie retired Army Col. Bob Killebrew has a good piece in Small Wars Journal on crime and terrorism. As you might expect, the news isn't good. Bob, a longtime mentor of mine, is especially worried by the nexus of drugs, crime and insurgency, and their effect on the way we live: "the explosion of the illicit economy, the merger of crime and terrorism, and their reach inside our borders, have added a new and possibly more imminent challenge to our safety -- not only at the national level, but on our streets."

Rich Man/Flickr

Two small military actions in recent days intrigue me. First, the Israelis intercepted in the Mediterranean what they described as a shipload of weapons headed to Hezbollah. Then the Saudis bombed Yemeni rebels. I don't know quite what it all means...

DrJimiGlide/Flickr

In the new issue of the New York Review of Books, Joost Hilterman of the International Crisis Group offers a good summary of why he thinks the coming year will be a turbulent one in Iraq. I think he is right -- and that 2010 will stand alongside 2003 and 2007 as a turning point. In short,

...just as Odierno will be pulling out his first combat brigades, starting in March, Iraq will be entering into a period of fractious wrangling over the formation of a new government. If Iraqi national forces fail to impose their control, an absence of political leadership could thus coincide with a collapse in security; if politicians and their allied militias resort to violence, the state, including its intelligence apparatus so critical for maintaining internal stability, could fracture along political, ethnic, and sectarian lines."

Fasten your seat belts. Meanwhile, here is a bunch of headlines from this morning:

• Bomb wounds 4 civilians in Baghdad
  November 4, 2009 - 10:37:30

• 4 wounded in 3rd explosion in Baghdad
  November 4, 2009 - 09:03:50

• 2nd sticky bomb in Baghdad wounds 5 people
  November 4, 2009 - 08:22:02

• 3 wanted men nabbed in Wassit
  November 4, 2009 - 08:07:17

• Sticky bomb injures 7 people in western Baghdad
  November 4, 2009 - 07:33:56

Bfelice/flickr

And that means you start chewing on your fingernails, too:

... the U.S. strategy rests on an undemocratic, corrupt and weak central government, a president who cheated his way into office in an election held under American supervision, an election that even the government of Afghanistan concedes was stolen. The script couldn't have been improved if Taliban chieftain Mullah Omar had put himself to the task.

Can this get any worse?

What I'm hearing today from some of the U.S. troops in Afghanistan is: uh-oh. . . . For the Taliban, Karzai's assumption of a second presidential term validates their argument that the U.S.-backed government in Kabul is terminally corrupt and must be overthrown; re-energized, they will recruit and fight harder."

Majid Saeedi/Getty Images