Taliban

Pakistan's top female squash player hails from Waziristan. She has had to defy the Taliban to play.

Photo: Defense.Pk

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."

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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)

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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."

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I think we all tend to criticize too much and praise too little, especially with public officials. So I was impressed today to see proven provider John McCreary, who has forgotten more about intelligence than I will ever know, commend Hillary Clinton for her sharp comments in Pakistan yesterday:

"The US secretary of state questioned Pakistan's commitment to the fight against al-Qaida, saying she found it hard to believe that no-one in the Pakistan government knows where senior figures are hiding.

"I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," she told a group of newspaper editors during a meeting in the city of Lahore on Thursday.

Bravo for Secretary Clinton.  Either the Pakistani security services contain senior officers who know where bin Laden is and are lying or they are incompetent and ought to be dismissed. There are no other explanations for Pakistan having become the headquarters for al Qaida and the base area for international Islamic terrorism.

‘Nuff said.

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A veteran infantryman with much time in the Middle East, and other wars, writes in with the following suggestions.

Life is getting rough. He begins with how to target Karzai's relatives: 

Putting and adequate number of troops into Afghanistan is only a start. Listed below are some proposed adjustments ...

STRATEGIC ADJUSTMENTS

A Day of the Long Knives. We have a tremendous amount of leverage left in Afghanistan; there is no doubt in anyone's mind that the Karzai family will be to back running a chain of kabob joints in suburban Maryland without the support of the US government. What disappoints the Afghan people is that we have not used this leverage to insist on better governance. We can, and must, do better by them if we hope for a successful outcome against the Taliban and their criminal enablers.

We, not the Karzai government, should pick out the fifty most corrupt members of the Afghan government and insist on their replacement. The people who replace them should have a U.S. or NATO nation advisor assigned to spend the first three months with the new appointee cleaning up the mess. At least ten of the fifty should be members of the extended Karzai family in order to show that no-one is beyond the reach of the government clean up. The message behind this should be clear to the rest of the government; "you could be next!"

Where would we get the fifty advisors given the slow ability of the civilian arms of the U.S. government to provide the "civilian surge" long called for in Afghanistan? There are several options. We could use American civil affairs officers; there are plenty of them in Iraq and Afghanistan manning increasingly bloated staffs. Another source of manpower could come from cleaning out the attaché offices at the Embassy and sending them out to field until the civilian surge catches up in recruiting qualified civilians. A third source might be Iraq where there are Provincial Reconstruction Teams that are wrapping up their missions. The State Department could transfer them on a voluntary basis if it puts its mind to it. The bottom line is to send the message that we are prepared make heads roll in the Kabul government, and to do this on a three month rotating basis until we see results.

Until the kleptocrats in Kabul and the provinces have the fear of Allah put in them, there will be no reason for the Afghan people to assume that a reformed Taliban is not a viable alternative. That brings us to the provinces.

Reform in the Provinces. As a start, the top levels of the governments of the five worst governed provinces in Iraq should be replaced. Again, this should be our call, not Karzai's. For at least a month, the replacement officials on the provincial governance team should be paired with their advisors from the Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) at an offsite location and receive solid governance training. It is hard to train people under fire. The loss of what passes for current governance in the target provinces for a month or so can be more than offset by the enhancements of bringing a trained and functional governance team on line after offsite training. This approach should be repeated province by province as new PRTs become available. Again, the American and NATO training cadre should have absolute power to replace those trainees who fail to grasp the concept. This calls for the extreme in tough love.

(Read on)

While we're all wanking away waiting for the White House to get off the dime on Afghanistan, some of the smart money stays focused on the real issue: the future of Pakistan. This is the real center of gravity in this mess. What does it profit a man if Pakistan falls apart while Afghanistan is stabilized?

David Rohde's fascinating series on being kidnapped by the Taliban concludes today with his escape. Good to read especially for how the Taliban has evolved in recent years. Or devolved.

Another David, Mr. Ignatius, continues his good reporting out of Pakistan, giving the strategic overview. This guy is so good, he should have his own blog!

I've been struck recently by the relative optimism about Pakistan from Iggie and another smart guy, Peter Bergen.

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For a long time I've thought that the key to economic reconstruction in Afghanistan would be restoring its traditional role of carrying goods from South Asia (full of nice cheap consumer goods) to Central Asia (now featuring oil and gas revenues). To do this, the "ring road" that connects the country's major cities and the spur roads to the borders need to be made relatively safe from bandits, Talibani, and thieving officials. But every time I've raised this, I've been greeted with eye-rolling and such.

So I was pleased to see a genuine Central Asian expert,  S. Frederick Starr of Johns Hopkins, make a similar, more considered proposal:

Both General Mc Chrystal and President Obama have affirmed the need for "economic" and "governance" measures in Afghanistan.  They're right, of course. Without them the U.S.'s stated goals -- to destroy Al Queda and cripple the Taliban-remain purely negative and not compelling to most Afghans, to the countries neighboring Afghanistan, and even to our own NATO allies. But what are these "economic" and "governance" measures? Neither Mc Chrystal nor Obama has spelled these out. It's time to do so.

To succeed, any such measures must meet four criteria. First, they must directly and positively affect the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis, and people in those Central Asian states that have become key to this region-wide project. If ordinary people across the region are convinced that they will benefit from America's effort they will support it. If not, they will stand aside.  Second, the economic measures must leave the Afghan government with an income stream. Today the U.S. is paying the salaries of all Afghan soldiers and civil servants. This can't go on forever. Third, it must be possible to pursue the economic measures simultaneously with the military effort, and in a way that enhances the military campaign. And, fourth, these initiatives must work fast, and begin to show results within the next 18-24 months.

Since 2001 the U.S. and other countries have done much good in Afghanistan, far more than is generally known. Progress in major health indicators and education are only part of an impressive record. But late in 2009 these do not suffice. To meet our four criteria a more powerful engine is needed.

Fortunately, such a force exists. The U.S. should immediately focus its energies on opening continental transport and trade across Afghanistan and the region. This will immediately open large markets to Afghan and Pakistani producers in scores of legal areas. Ordinary Afghans will be able to get their goods to markets now closed to them. The yield on truck tariffs will provide a steady income for the government in Kabul. Such trade can start immediately, for it involves removing bureaucratic impediments at borders, not vast infrastructure projects.

Some argue that this cannot happen until the stability situation improves. They may be confusing cause and effect. If only a few trucks traverse a road it is easy for bandits to interdict them. If hundreds of trucks do so, some may still be hit. But most will bore their way through. Soon locals will be providing the truckers with food, gas, storage, and repair services, as well as good for shipment. As this happens, the local population gains an interest in keeping the road open.

But can this really happen quickly? The Asian Development Bank has shown convincingly that the goods and truckers are there, waiting for a green flag. These are not just local haulers but transcontinental shippers running from Hamburg to Hanoi, Damascus to Delhi, the Urals to Hydarabad. Surveys show that the truckers themselves see the main impediments not as bad roads or the absence of physical security.  These are tough guys, used to getting through under the worst conditions. But they are stopped dead by corrupt and inefficient practices at borders, especially in Afghanistan. Remove these and the dam will break, releasing a vast force of trade that existed across Eurasia for 2,500 years but which has been blocked in recent centuries. The International Union of Roads and Transport in Geneva reports that large numbers of its members are poised to move, once the impediments are removed. And since the key to removing these impediments at borders is to improve governance and remove corruption at these points, the project provides a perfect laboratory for improving governance elsewhere in Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army's network for delivering supplies to our forces in Afghanistan provides a skeleton for the emerging network of routes crossing Afghanistan. The U.S. needs only to open the same routes to civilian traffic to get the ball rolling. Soon truckers will want to cross Pakistan as well, passing on into India and beyond. Is this a fantasy?

In spite of the Pakistan-India conflict over Kashmir, some $3 billion of goods cross the India-Pakistan land border each year legally, and another $15 billion illegally. Both are products like refrigerators and stoves, not narcotics. Given this enormous economic pressure, it is quite conceivable that Indians and Pakistani could choose to open selective routes, even as they continue to spar over Kashmir.

The biggest surge in Afghanistan will fail if it is not intimately linked with an economic program, and one that pushes Kabul to improve governance. By releasing the engine of continental trade, the U.S. can achieve this. Such a project is not against anyone, and will enable the U.S. to engage constructively with every power in Eurasia, including China, India, Pakistan, Russia, Europe, the Middle East and even Iran, for which participation in such trade could be an important carrot. 

However, Washington has yet to embrace this as a top strategic priority, let alone to organize its mission in Afghanistan and the region in such a way as to achieve it. This last is particularly important, for it requires a degree of civil-military coordination that has not existed in the U.S.'s Afghan effort since 2005. The good news is that it is not yet too late to do this.  Once such a strategy and tactics are in place, the U.S. will have unleashed a force that generated wealth across Eurasia, and especially in Afghanistan and its neighbors, over several millennia. It's time to act.

To this, I would add that a little help from the U.S. military could go a long way here. Initially, at least, I would have Afghan forces organize large convoys of perhaps 200 to 300 trucks. Also, remove most of the checkpoints and have American troops over-watching those that remains. Meanwhile, other American forces could do some route clearing. Then assign a few Strykers to every convoy and have Apaches on tap in case there is trouble. Finally, perhaps organize caravanserais every 40 miles or for overnight stays, meals, and maintenance, and also to drop off broken-down trucks. (And hire locals to work at those places, giving them a huge incentive to cooperate against local Talibani.)

Bonus fact: I just learned also that Professor Starr is a world-class jazz clarinetist.

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