New York Times Book Review
The following are some of the highlights in two articles on the war.
-On August 5, Baitullah Mehsud, the all-powerful and utterly ruthless commander of the Pakistani Taliban, was killed in a US missile strike in South Waziristan. At the time of the strike, he was undergoing intravenous treatment for a kidney ailment, and was lying on the roof of his father-in-law's house with his young second wife. At about one o'clock that morning, a missile fired by an unmanned CIA drone tore through the house, splitting his body in two and killing his wife, her parents, and seven bodyguards.
-His death marked the first major breakthrough in the war against extremist leaders in Pakistan since 2003, when several top al-Qaeda members based in the country were arrested or killed. Over the last few years, Mehsud's estimated 20,000 fighters gained almost total control over the seven tribal agencies that make up the Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) bordering Afghanistan.
-Baitullah Mehsud became Pakistan's most-wanted leader after Taliban forces allied with him took control of the Swat valley in April.
-Mehsud was close to and trusted by Osama bin Laden; by Mullah Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban; and by Jalaluddin Haqqani.
-Among Mehsud's innovations were the extremely efficient new systems he set up to train suicide bombers, some as young as eleven, and to produce vast quantities of land mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs), which are being used in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. He also oversaw a criminal network of kidnapping for ransom, which netted him a war chest estimated in the tens of millions of dollars. Seventy prominent Pakistanis have been kidnapped this year throughout Pakistan, with ransoms—as high as one million dollars—handed over in FATA.
-US officials told me in April 2008 that President Bush had been warned by his military commanders that Afghanistan was going from bad to worse. More troops and money were needed; reconstruction was at a standstill; pressure had to be put on Pakistan; the elections in April 2009 should be indefinitely postponed. Bush ignored all the advice except for asking the Afghans to postpone the elections until August.
-He left everything else to his successor to sort out. When Obama took over in January, the crisis was much worse and Pakistan and Afghanistan immediately became his highest foreign policy priorities. Obama added 21,000 more troops, committed billions of dollars to rebuild Afghan security forces and speed up economic development, and sent hundreds of American civilian experts to help rebuild the country. He has attempted to make the anti-narcotics policy more effective and to involve neighboring countries in a regional settlement. It's an assertive and possibly productive new strategy, but the Obama administration has had neither the time nor the resources to implement it.
-The depth of the opium problem, for example, has recently been exposed by Gretchen Peters, who in her book Seeds of Terror describes how opium sales have ballooned since 2001, because of either a lack of a coherent strategy by the US or the constant bickering over a strategy between the US and its NATO partners, particularly Britain. Bush refused to use the US military—the only capable force on the ground—to interdict drug convoys in Afghanistan and arrest or kill drug lords, many of whom were easily identifiable. Only last year did the Department of Defense agree to use the military for these purposes. During the last six months there have been a series of raids by US Special Forces and Afghan commandos that have netted large amounts of opium, chemicals that turn it into heroin, and many of the drug traffickers. Afghanistan today provides 93 percent of the world's heroin. As Peters shows, from the poppy growers, to the Taliban and other local powers, to the drug lords and their allies in government, the influence of opium money pervades Afghan life.
In fact, most of this year has been taken up with preparing for the Afghan elections and trying to ensure sufficient security for them. Everything else has had to be put on hold. In private moments Holbrooke has regretted how the elections have distracted attention from putting into effect Obama's new strategy. At home Obama has not had the time to show that his policy is the right one to follow, and now the elections themselves are being exposed as riddled with fraud.
-The rigging defied expectations. There were hundreds of foreign observers from the US and other embassies. Both UN officials and a European Union delegation were assigned months ago to make sure this would be a credible election. Afghans and other experts were warning the embassies about possible rigging. Abdullah Abdullah painted a bleak future for the country if the West did not recognize the fraud. "The fact is that the foundations of this country have been damaged by this fraud, throwing it open to all kinds of consequences, including instability. It is true that the Taliban are the first threat but an illegitimate government would be the second," said Abdullah to reporters in Kabul on August 29. Yet the entire Western community in Afghanistan was caught napping by the widespread fraud. In fact, as I recently wrote elsewhere, the fraud was assured months ago when Karzai began to align himself with regional warlords, drug traffickers, and top officials in the provinces who were terrified of losing their lucrative sinecures.
The biggest mistake may have been made by the UN in not running the elections as it did in 2004 but instead handing them over to the Afghan-run "Independent Election Commission," which was beholden to Karzai, who appointed the members. On September 8, a UN-backed commission announced that it had found "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" and ordered a partial recount of returns that claimed Karzai had received 54 percent of the vote. If Karzai does not receive over 50 percent of the vote in the final count then there will be a runoff election in October. If Karzai wins over 50 percent his legitimacy will be doubted by many Afghans while the credibility of the US and the other nations involved in the elections will be even more damaged.
An October runoff between Karzai and Abdullah may win back the credibility of the democratic process if that election is more tightly run, but it will leave the country paralyzed for most of the next two months. During that time there could be severe ethnic tensions. Karzai is a Pashtun while Abdullah's mother is a Tajik. We can expect local conflicts, assassinations, and a breakdown in law and order—while the Taliban will further justify their condemnation of democracy as an infidel conspiracy. The best option would be for the US to pressure Karzai to accept a national government that would include Abdullah and other opposition candidates.
- With Obama's plan the US will be taking Afghanistan seriously for the first time since 2001; if it is to be successful it will need not only time but international and US support—both open to question.
After Obama's injection of 21,000 troops and trainers, total Western forces in Afghanistan now number 100,000, including 68,000 US troops. It is likely that General McChrystal will soon ask for more. Obama's overall plan has been to achieve security by doubling the Afghan army's strength to 240,000 men and the police to 160,000; but these are tasks that would take at least until 2014 to complete, if indeed they can be carried out. Meanwhile the military operation in Afghanistan is now costing cash-strapped US taxpayers $4 billion a month.=====
From the New Yorker
-Obama, meanwhile, had decided that Holbrooke should take on the hardest foreign-policy problem that the Administration faced: Afghanistan and Pakistan. Related insurgencies threatened both governments; Al Qaeda had regrouped in the mountains along the border between the countries; in Afghanistan, American troops were bogged down in a war that was rapidly deteriorating.
Holbrooke had made trips to Afghanistan as a private citizen, in 2006 and 2008, travelling around the country, talking to Afghans from different backgrounds. He had written op-eds in the Washington Post proposing changes in American policy. The eradication of poppy fields in southern Afghanistan had alienated Afghan farmers and barely reduced heroin trafficking; Holbrooke argued that the U.S. should focus instead on apprehending high-level drug dealers, including those with ties to the government of President Hamid Karzai. The Bush Administration had given nearly unconditional support to Karzai, under whom “officially sanctioned corruption and the drug trade” had revitalized the Taliban. Holbrooke also recommended more development aid for the new democratic government in Pakistan, especially in the tribal regions, which had turned into a sanctuary for jihadists while the Bush Administration accepted the assurances of Pervez Musharraf, the country’s President at the time, that he was fighting extremism. Afghanistan and Pakistan now constituted a single theatre of war, Holbrooke wrote, where America would have an unavoidable interest long after the war in Iraq was history. “The conflict in Afghanistan will be far more costly and much, much longer than Americans realize,” he wrote in March, 2008. “This war, already in its seventh year, will eventually become the longest in American history.”
-Other than an airplane of his own, Holbrooke got everything he wanted. He was in charge of “Af-Pak”—a phrase that he used to make the point that the two countries could not be dealt with separately, as the Bush Administration had done, and that the war in Afghanistan could be resolved only by addressing the complex problems of Pakistan. Obama had been elected, in part, on a commitment to get America out of Iraq, and on a promise to show the world a less pugnacious face. But he had also stated his intention to intensify the war effort in Afghanistan, because Al Qaeda and the Taliban had reconstituted themselves. “Af-Pak’s tricky for him,” a senior Administration official said of Obama. “He’s always prided himself on being aware of the limits of American power and on knowing how to use it pragmatically. But he’s also pragmatic enough to see that this is the main threat.” When asked if Af-Pak was the biggest foreign-policy gamble of Obama’s Presidency, the official said, “Oh, yes. And he’s aware of that.” So the odd problem out was also the most important one, and for guidance the youthful new President had turned to one of the last icons of an earlier era, in which American greatness was assumed, the country’s diplomacy had expansive ambitions, and its foreign policy was dominated by a few men—among them Clark Clifford, Maxwell Taylor, Averell Harriman, and Dean Rusk, all of whom had been Holbrooke’s patrons.
-While running for President, Obama promised to shift America’s focus from Iraq to the region where the September 11th attacks had actually been planned. This policy had enough merit to go almost uncontested during the campaign, but Obama’s position was also inflected with political calculations. Morton Abramowitz, a veteran of the foreign-policy establishment, put it bluntly: “Obama, in a fit of absent-mindedness, to show he was tough, made Afghanistan his signature issue because he wanted to get out of Iraq. And this is going to be God-damned difficult.” Within weeks of taking office, Obama decided to approve the deployment to Afghanistan of seventeen thousand additional troops and four thousand trainers. He did so without having time to come up with a strategy for how they should be used. Meanwhile, the Taliban had taken control of a dozen districts in Afghanistan.
FROM THE ISSUECARTOON BANKE-MAIL THIS
Bruce Riedel, a retired C.I.A. officer, told me that in January, on a trip to Afghanistan, Vice-President-elect Joe Biden discovered that U.S. policy was in disarray. When he asked why American troops were there, no two people gave him the same answer. Shortly after the Inauguration, Obama went to the Pentagon, where the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave a slide briefing; instead of delineating a clear goal, the briefing listed more than a dozen goals. Obama called Riedel and asked him to lead a two-month strategic review of the war. Holbrooke would work closely with him.
Riedel had studied the region for years, but the most recent intelligence gave new grounds for worry. “Al Qaeda is recruiting and training individuals with Western European passports in their camps in Pakistan,” he said. “There’s only one reason they’re doing that”—attacks on the West. “They don’t need guys with British and French passports to attack the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.” The Taliban leadership—the Quetta shura, led by Mullah Omar—not only still existed (though the Pakistanis denied it) but was meeting at the same time as Riedel’s group. “They were doing their strategic review, probably with a lot less bureaucracy,” Riedel said.
At the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, in Washington, the review group looked at an array of options, including an abandonment of counter-insurgency in Afghanistan and a very narrow focus on Al Qaeda. This “minimalist” view has been embraced by a diverse group of thinkers, including Rory Stewart, the British diplomat and writer, who runs a foundation in Kabul; the conservative columnist George F. Will; and Leslie Gelb, whose recent book, “Power Rules,” argues for a reduced American commitment in Afghanistan, and recommends, among other things, threatening air strikes in order to deter the Taliban from allowing Al Qaeda back into the country. In this view, it’s a dangerous illusion to think that America knows how to fight insurgents in the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan, and to believe that America can help build a viable Afghan state. Afghanistan is too tribal, too ancient, too recalcitrant to be shaped by foreigners; Americans, for their part, are ignorant of the complexities of foreign places and too entranced with their own ideas to understand whom they’re dealing with. Let Afghanistan follow its own destiny, the minimalists argue, and use American power—Predator drones, Special Forces units, spies—to contain Al Qaeda.
-
On March 18th, Obama flew to Los Angeles, for an appearance on the “Tonight Show,” and Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff, arranged for Riedel to travel with the President and summarize the review. Obama spent an hour talking with him. The senior Administration official said that, in the last phase of the strategy review, “the President asked by far the hardest questions: If this doesn’t work, then what?” Unlike Johnson, Obama wanted a serious internal debate about his policy, and he got one, with advisers considering whether the war was already lost. Yet the conclusion was, in a sense, foreordained by the President’s campaign promises. Intellectual honesty in the private councils of the White House told you something about the calibre of the officials involved, but in the realm of public policy it made little difference.FROM THE ISSUECARTOON BANKE-MAIL THIS
On March 27th, the Administration rolled out its new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama, in a speech, reminded the country that Al Qaeda was still trying to attack America. “I want the American people to understand that we have a clear and focussed goal: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan,” he said. This rationale represented a return to basics, a dispensing with illusions about transforming other people’s societies. It sounded tough-minded, and it offered Americans a simple and self-interested reason for their young people to risk death in remote places. But the implications were broad. By the end of his speech, Obama had promised to support women’s rights, to send lawyers and agricultural experts to Afghanistan to reform its government and economy, and to offer seven and a half billion dollars in new aid for schools, roads, and democracy in Pakistan. He also said that the Administration would establish benchmarks for measuring progress. Last week, around fifty of them were finally released to Congress.
-I asked Holbrooke about the conflicting thrusts of Obama’s speech. “Read it carefully,” he said.
“The President put the stress on Al Qaeda because that’s the reason we’re there, and that’s the core difference between Iraq and Vietnam, on the one hand, and Afghanistan, on the other. But he never said anything about leaving Afghanistan on a specified timetable. Our goal has got to be to get combat troops out eventually. There’s only one way to do that, and that’s to build up Afghan capability, and get the Pakistanis to coöperate more.
-Vikram Singh, a young counter-insurgency expert who accompanied Holbrooke on a trip to the region and ended up working for him, said, “He is a tough boss. I rarely go home before nine or ten. You’ve got to be there and available all the time, and you have hell to pay when you’re not. He can be a pain, but he promotes his people.”
Young officials who had heard stories about Holbrooke’s temper and ego were surprised to find that he welcomed critical views, as long as they were well considered. He went out of his way to bring opposing viewpoints into his office. Barnett Rubin, a part-time adviser, kept his position at New York University, which allows him more flexibility than Holbrooke’s other aides. In his role as an academic, he can explore the possibility of negotiations with Taliban leaders, although official American policy is to reconcile only with insurgents who have already laid down their arms and accepted political participation. Rubin has written that even the best counter-insurgency cannot win the war. Instead, he argues, there should be an international effort to give Pakistan security guarantees; then its military could be encouraged to push Taliban leaders to make a deal with the Afghan government, thus giving America a way out. If Rubin serves as a kind of in-house dissident, Holbrooke’s other Afghanistan expert, Amiri, regards any deal that would lead to power-sharing with hard-line elements in the Taliban leadership as a betrayal of the Afghan people. Holbrooke wants both points of view on his staff.
