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US slaps sanctions on Afghan Taliban leaders
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration targeted key leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban with new sanctions, a move that could complicate Afghan efforts to reconcile with insurgents.
Petraeus Sharpens Afghan Strategy
Wall Street Journal By JULIAN E. BARNES JULY 22, 2010
WASHINGTON - Gen. David Petraeus plans to ramp up the U.S. military's troop-intensive strategy in Afghanistan, according to some senior military officials, who have concluded that setbacks in the war effort this year weren't the result of the strategy, but of flaws in how it has been implemented.
Admiral Mullen: Afghanistan Can 'Turn' by Obama Deadline
VOA News July 22, 2010 Al Pessin | New Delhi
The top U.S. military officer says critics who claim it will take years to even have a chance to defeat the Afghan insurgency ignore the fact that a similar counterinsurgency strategy turned around a similarly difficult situation in Iraq in 2007. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, spoke to reporters traveling with him to South and Central Asia Thursday.
Afghanistan war: Are Afghan forces loyal enough to take control by 2014?
The beheadings of six Afghan police have raised questions about the true loyalties of some Afghan forces during a crash program to recruit and train more locals in the Afghanistan war.
Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy, Staff Writer July 21, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that his country will be ready to take full control of Afghanistan's security by 2014, but recent attacks on Afghan security forces and problems with continuing literacy and Taliban infiltration in the ranks are showing how tough a task that will prove to be.
2 Americans killed in copter crash in Afghanistan
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – A helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing two U.S. service members, NATO forces said. The Taliban claimed it shot down the craft, but NATO said it was still investigating.
U.S. writes off $108 mln of Afghan gov't debt
KABUL, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan government and the Untied States on Thursday signed a debt relief agreement that cancels 108 million U.S. dollars which is 100 percent of Afghanistan's existing debt with the United States of America.
Obama Faces New Doubts on Pursuing Afghan War
New York Times By DAVID E. SANGER July 21, 2010
WASHINGTON - When President Obama announced a new strategy for Afghanistan in December, he argued that by setting a deadline of next summer to begin drawing down troops he would create a sense of urgency for the Afghan government to take the lead in the fight, while acknowledging the limits of America’s patience with the longest war in its history.
Conflict Resurfaces With Lessons on Nation-Building
New York Times By PETER BAKER July 21, 2010
WASHINGTON - President Obama’s team is busy these days managing a troop drawdown in Iraq and a troop escalation in Afghanistan, hoping in both cases to build governments that can manage their own countries. Virtually forgotten is the last such American project overseas, still incomplete but reaching a critical juncture this week.
America must give the south to the Taliban
Financial Times By Robert Blackwill July 21 2010
In spite of the commitments made at Tuesday’s conference on the future of Afghanistan in Kabul, the current US counter-insurgency strategy (Coin) is likely to fail. The Taliban cannot be sufficiently weakened in Pashtun Afghanistan to coerce it to the negotiating table. America cannot win over sufficient numbers
Pressure builds for firing of Afghan IG
The Washington Times - Family & Kids By Sean Lengell Wednesday, July 21, 2010
A call to fire the inspector general charged with sniffing out fraud and corruption in Afghanistan's reconstruction grew a little louder and became bipartisan Wednesday.
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US slaps sanctions on Afghan Taliban leaders
By Lolita C. Baldor, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration targeted key leaders of Afghanistan's Taliban with new sanctions, a move that could complicate Afghan efforts to reconcile with insurgents.
The action by the Treasury Department on Thursday will freeze the insurgents' assets, ban travel and trigger an arms embargo, and it comes just a week after a top military commander urged the sanctions.
Three financial kingpins were targeted, including a key member of the Haqqani network, which directs operations against U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan from safe havens in Pakistan.
U.S. officials have been pressing Pakistan to crack down on the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network, saying that Islamabad's reluctance to move into group's base in North Waziristan is hampering the Afghan war effort. But Afghanistan's government has also held talks recently with some insurgent factions.
Among those targeted with sanctions Thursday was Nasiruddin Haqqani, an emissary for the Haqqani Network and brother of Sirajuddin Haqqani who leads the group with his father, Jalaluddin. Others sanctioned included Gul Agha Ishakzai, the head of the Taliban's financial commission and Amir Abdullah, the former treasurer to captured Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Barader.
The designation of the three leaders as terrorists would deprive them of the assets they need to fund their terror operations, said Adam J. Szubin, director of Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control.
"We will continue to aggressively work to expose and dismantle the financial networks of terrorist groups in support of the president's goal of a stable Afghanistan," he said.
According to officials, Ishakzai is the head of the Taliban's financial commission, has collected money for suicide attacks in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and has been involved in the disbursement of funds for Taliban fighters. He has served as a main financial officer and close adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
Abdullah has reportedly traveled to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya and the United Arab Emirates to raise money for the Taliban and facilitate meetings and communications with key leaders.
Nasiruddin Haqqani has collected funds for the Haqqani group, including from al-Qaida.
Last week, Gen. David Petraeus, the top military commander in Afghanistan, urged officials to add commanders from the Haqqani network to the terrorist list.
At the time, administration officials said a review was under way, largely accelerated after the May 1 failed Times Square bombing.
The man who has pleaded guilty in the New York incident, Pakistani-born American Faisal Shahzad, said he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to build bombs, then returned to the U.S. to launch an attack that would avenge attacks on Muslims by U.S. forces overseas.
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Petraeus Sharpens Afghan Strategy
Wall Street Journal By JULIAN E. BARNES JULY 22, 2010
WASHINGTON - Gen. David Petraeus plans to ramp up the U.S. military's troop-intensive strategy in Afghanistan, according to some senior military officials, who have concluded that setbacks in the war effort this year weren't the result of the strategy, but of flaws in how it has been implemented.
The officials said Gen. Petraeus, who took over as allied commander in Afghanistan this month and is conducting a review of the war, intends to draw on many of the same tactics he implemented to turn around the war in Iraq—and which his predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, introduced in Afghanistan.
But the officials said Gen. McChrystal put too much attention on hunting down Taliban leaders, at the expense of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, which focuses on protecting civilians and bolstering popular support for the government. Supporters of Gen. McChrystal dispute that assessment, dismissing any notion there were flaws in how he fought the war.
Gen. Petraeus's determination to intensify a strategy focused on driving a wedge between the Taliban and the Afghan people could be tricky to pull off, given the mounting political pressure in the U.S. to show results in the nearly nine-year war, and to begin drawing down troops next year.
Gen. McChrystal was fired last month by President Barack Obama after the general and his staff made disparaging comments about senior civilian officials in a magazine article. When announcing the change in command, Mr. Obama praised Gen. McChrystal's work and said the appointment of Gen. Petraeus, who wrote the army manual on counterinsurgency, would guarantee that the strategy would continue uninterrupted.
Gen. Petraeus is expected to make several more moves to retool the strategy, according to people familiar with the situation. Such moves are expected to include a greater focus on how Afghanistan's security forces are being trained and how to make the Afghan people feel safe, they said, without offering details.
Under Gen. Petraeus, the coming offensive in the southern city of Kandahar will remain the primary effort for international forces, military officials said. But he is also expected to highlight other operations that are showing success, particularly the campaign against the Haqqani terror network in eastern Afghanistan.
Some in the White House advocate a pared-down approach that requires fewer troops and greater emphasis on drone attacks on insurgent leaders. These officials would like to see an accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops.
During the Iraq surge, Gen. Petraeus proved adept at parrying suggestions for a rapid withdrawal and won time to show his strategy could work.
He is again under pressure to show quick progress. When the Obama administration committed earlier this year to a 30,000-troop surge to underpin the counterinsurgency strategy, it said it would review the effort in December—a tight timeline that included a July 2011 date for the beginning of troop withdrawals.
Gen. Petraeus may have less time. Officials say he is under pressure to demonstrate results ahead of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization conference in Portugal in November. Gen. Petraeus declined to comment.
Gen. Petraeus has notched some early successes, including Afghan President Hamid Karzai's endorsement of a plan to establish local village defense forces—an initiative he had long opposed, fearing such initiatives would create militias outside of his control.
Supporters of Gen. McChrystal point out that the groundwork for the initiative was laid by Gen. McChrystal.
Gen. Petraeus has called on some of the outside advisers who helped him develop the surge strategy in Iraq to make recommendations on a renewed campaign in Afghanistan, according to military officials.
Those advisers include Stephen Biddle, a national-security expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and Kimberly Kagan, who heads the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
People close to Gen. Petraeus said he is unlikely to try to persuade the Obama administration to back off its promise to begin drawing down troops in July 2011. But they do expect him to privately push for troops to be removed slowly, along a timetable that keeps a large force in Afghanistan.
"I think Gen. Petraeus will talk again about putting more time on the Washington clock," said Peter Mansoor, who served as Gen. Petraeus's executive officer in Iraq and is now a professor at the Ohio State University. "I think we have more time than we think in Afghanistan."
An effective counterinsurgency strategy can take years, and it remains unclear whether Gen. Petraeus' approach will work in Afghanistan, where volatile tribal politics, a lack of infrastructure and rudimentary local security forces pose significant challenges.
Under Gen. McChrystal, much of the public attention this year was on the operation in Marjah, the first major offensive of the surge, where officials promised they would deliver a "government-in-a-box."
But months after American forces retook the center of Marjah, the U.S. has struggled to help the Afghan government deliver services because of problems with security and with the government's effectiveness.
Some government officials and military analysts view the emphasis placed on Marjah as a strategic mistake. Rather than demonstrating the reach of the Afghan government, it showed the limits, they say.
"Marjah is not critical terrain, it is not a key population center," said Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. "You had to clear Marjah out, but it was not the place to implement a district governance plan."
Supporters of Gen. McChrystal argue it is too early to judge the success of how he implemented the counterinsurgency strategy. They note he built a counterinsurgency plan in Afghanistan where none existed, and won widespread support among the Afghan public for his limits on the use of airpower to avoid civilian casualties.
"The hard work was done by Gen. McChrystal," said a senior military officer who has served in Afghanistan. "Let's give credit to the right people." A representative for Gen. McChrystal said he isn't giving interviews.
Gen. McChrystal was a fierce advocate of a robust counterinsurgency strategy, and dismissed the efficacy of a counterterrorism strategy focused solely on killing insurgent leaders.
Yet some senior military officials supportive of Gen. Petraeus's appointment say that under Gen. McChrystal, allied forces were too focused on killing insurgents and overestimated the effect such operations would have on the war effort.
Such missions were an expertise of Gen. McChrystal's, who honed his reputation in Iraq overseeing an effective group of "hunter-killer" teams Allied forces have had some successes this year with those operations.
Some officers said they thought eliminating insurgent leaders would weaken the Taliban and make them more willing to negotiate. That, so far, hasn't come to pass.
The senior military officer who served in Afghanistan said in support of Gen. McChrystal that the Special Operations command removed a host of important shadow governors and Taliban officials, and said the full benefits of those raids aren't yet public.
People close to Gen. Petraeus said Special Operations missions won't be pared back under his revised strategy.
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Admiral Mullen: Afghanistan Can 'Turn' by Obama Deadline
VOA News July 22, 2010 Al Pessin | New Delhi
The top U.S. military officer says critics who claim it will take years to even have a chance to defeat the Afghan insurgency ignore the fact that a similar counterinsurgency strategy turned around a similarly difficult situation in Iraq in 2007. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, spoke to reporters traveling with him to South and Central Asia Thursday.
Admiral Mullen acknowledges that it may take years to fully defeat the Afghan insurgency. But he says that is not what the United States expects to accomplish by this time next year, when President Barack Obama has said he will begin to withdraw U.S. troops. But Mullen says the year-and-a-half the president allowed for the new strategy to prove itself is adequate.
"Insurgencies last a long time," said Mullen. "But, as you look at how long it took to turn Iraq around, it was about 18 months. Now, we're about two-and-a-half years later, and we're still working in Iraq. But it was sort of that period of time where it really turned. Turning it doesn't end it, [but] you've got to turn it to get it moving in the right direction."
The admiral says the situation in Iraq seemed impossible to resolve a few years ago, and, although the two countries are very different, and progress in Iraq is not a guarantee of progress in Afghanistan, it does give him reason to be hopeful about Afghanistan - even during the current period of heavy violence and, at best, slow progress.
"There are similarities and differences between Iraq and Afghanistan, and I understand that," added Mullen. "But I don't accept the fact that, just because it takes insurgencies a long, long time [to be defeated], that we're not at a point where it can't be turned, because I think it can. It doesn't mean it's going to be easy. But, I think it can be [turned] over the period of time that we're talking about."
U.S. officials acknowledge that, even if the situation in Afghanistan begins to turn during the next 12 months, the U.S. withdrawal will likely be very gradual, and some number of international troops will be needed in Afghanistan for many years to come.
Admiral Mullen welcomed the statement by Afghan President Hamid Karzai this week that he wants his forces to be able to take responsibility for security in the country by 2014. Mullen said the goal sounds reasonable and that it is important for leaders to set such targets to focus the efforts of their governments.
The admiral spoke as he flew toward New Delhi, where Afghanistan will be among many issues he will discuss with Indian defense officials. It will be on the agenda again when he visits Pakistan later in the week, before heading into the war zone itself.
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Afghanistan war: Are Afghan forces loyal enough to take control by 2014?
The beheadings of six Afghan police have raised questions about the true loyalties of some Afghan forces during a crash program to recruit and train more locals in the Afghanistan war.
Christian Science Monitor By Dan Murphy, Staff Writer July 21, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that his country will be ready to take full control of Afghanistan's security by 2014, but recent attacks on Afghan security forces and problems with continuing literacy and Taliban infiltration in the ranks are showing how tough a task that will prove to be.
President Obama wants Afghan forces to take the reins – in at least some provinces – here by the middle of next year, and plans are currently being drawn up by the Afghan Defense and Interior Ministries to so.
But the $27 billion effort to train Afghan soldiers and police for most of the past eight years has been judged by outside observers to have churned out soldiers and police forces that aren’t ready to fight on their own. And with June the war's deadliest month for international forces, the fight is very much a hot one. Signs pointing to lack of commitment
Evidence of that came on Tuesday, as senior diplomats from dozens of countries gathered for the Kabul conference in a show of international donor support for the Karzai government. Also on Tuesday, in Baghlan Province, Taliban fighters overran a police post in a district capital and beheaded six Afghan policemen.
"This incident once again demonstrates the brutal, barbaric, and senseless acts committed by the Taliban," Col. Rafael Torres at the international forces headquarters in Kabul said in a statement. "We remain committed to serving alongside our Afghan partners to improve security and development.”
That sign of commitment is not being reciprocated by all Afghan troops.
In Mazar-e-Sharif, in the north, an Afghan sergeant opened fire on his trainers Tuesday, killing two American contractors and wounding a NATO soldier before being killed himself.
That was the second incident in a week of an Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier attacking foreigners he was working with. On June 13, an Afghan soldier attacked the British Royal Gurkha Rifles at a patrol base in Helmand Province, killing two Gurkha enlisted men and a British officer. The soldier made his escape, presumably to join the Taliban.
In a little-reported incident two weeks ago, an Afghan police post in Arghandab District in Kandahar Province, a Taliban stronghold, was overrun after most of the police there deserted. “One of the guys stayed behind and was killed,” says a Kandahar government official, who asked not to be identified. “We’re not sure what happened – if they went over to the Taliban or were just scared.”
Though fratricide happens in almost every army in the world, the incidents have raised questions about the true loyalties of some Afghan soldiers in the midst of a crash program to recruit and train more local forces that is ahead of schedule to reach a target of 134,000 Afghan soldiers and 109,000 Afghan police by September.
The quality of those forces is an open question
In a highly critical June report, the US inspector general for Afghan reconstruction found that NATO trainers here have consistently overstated the capabilities of Afghan forces, and pointed to high rates of desertion, corruption, and drug use among trainees and officers. The report found that even top-rated Afghan forces “have not indicated a capability to sustain independent operations.”
“There are people who will quite rightly say ‘what were you doing the past eight years?' ” says Col. Stewart Cowan, the spokesman for the NATO training mission here. “But performance has improved, training has improved, and I think 2011 will be a year of increased” ANA capacity.
Cowan says that most of the criticisms in the inspector general’s report had already been taken on board and addressed before it was published, making the document a reflection of the past, not the present. Aid and corruption
Rampant corruption here – a theme touched on at Tuesday’s Kabul conference, with international donors saying they will channel more aid through the Afghan government if it demonstrates it can limit theft – has also hampered force development.
NATO forces here have taken steps to stop officers taking part of their soldiers pay by setting up electronic transfers to individual accounts, and in some instances have added blue dye to the fuel at depots to limit pilfering. A NATO officer says another problem is that “provincial police chief posts come with a price tag” since they’re valued for the patronage opportunities they generate.
In a Tuesday report for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington Anthony Cordesman, a former head of intelligence assessment for the US secretary of Defense, wrote, “[T]here is a significant probability that [Afghan security forces] will not be ready for any significant transfer of responsibility until well after 2011.”
Dr. Cordesman writes that “bitter strategic mistakes” have been made in the past eight years, among them a failure to “see the need for Afghan forces that could be effective partners until at least mid-2009” and “treating the Afghan army as a low-grade auxiliary force that was effectively used up in ongoing operations, and leaving the police under-armed and under-trained.”
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2 Americans killed in copter crash in Afghanistan
Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan – A helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing two U.S. service members, NATO forces said. The Taliban claimed it shot down the craft, but NATO said it was still investigating.
Hostile fire has not been ruled out in the crash in Helmand province, said Lt. Commander Katie Kendrick, a spokeswoman for the military coalition.
Though helicopters more regularly go down because of mechanical issues in Afghanistan, some have been brought down by insurgent fire. In June, the Taliban shot down a helicopter in Helmand, killing four U.S. service members.
Taliban spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi claimed in a telephone call to The Associated Press that the insurgent group shot the chopper down.
Daoud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the Helmand provincial government, said the helicopter went down in the area of provincial capital Lashkar Gah.
The crash comes as violence is rising amid a surge of American troops into the south to try to squeeze the Taliban out of their strongholds in Helmand and neighboring Kandahar province. At least 50 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan so far this month, putting July on track to be one of the deadliest months of the war for the United States.
Sixty U.S. service members were killed in June — a record monthly death toll for the nearly nine-year war.
In the capital city, meanwhile, NATO and Afghan forces captured a suspected insurgent who had planned attacks against this week's international conference in Kabul.
The man was detained Wednesday night at a compound in the capital, the military coalition said in a statement. He is accused of involvement in plans to attack Tuesday's conference that was attended by delegates from 70 countries, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. NATO did not identify the detained man.
The plans were foiled by security forces and the conference passed without major incident, although rocket fire at Kabul airport forced the diversion of a plane carrying U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.
Afghan security forces virtually shut down Kabul for the conference, closing roads, setting up checkpoints and shuttering businesses and government offices.
Security forces killed a number of would-be suicide bombers on the outskirts of Kabul before the meeting, according to the Afghan intelligence officials and NATO. Then on Tuesday night, NATO forces said they detained another Taliban operative who had been in the final preparation stages for attacks against the conference.
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U.S. writes off $108 mln of Afghan gov't debt
KABUL, July 22 (Xinhua) -- The Afghan government and the Untied States on Thursday signed a debt relief agreement that cancels 108 million U.S. dollars which is 100 percent of Afghanistan's existing debt with the United States of America.
Afghan Finance Minister Omar Zakhilwal and U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry inked the agreement on behalf of their governments.
In his remarks after signing the agreement, the U.S. ambassador described the move as important for the war-shattered Afghanistan, saying "Debt relief is crucial to Afghanistan's broader poverty reduction program, it will allow the Afghan government to spend more of its resources in such sectors as health and education which improves the living condition of the Afghan people."
Hailing the initiative, the Afghan finance minister said that the agreement was part of a process that begun in 2007, when Afghanistan first begun its debt relief program under the International Monetary Fund (IFM) and the World Bank' Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPC). "Afghanistan's debt relief under HIPC is an important element of a broader international debt relief program that will ultimately forgive some 11 billion U.S. dollars approximately 96 percent of the war-battered country's external debt," Afghan finance minister said.
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Obama Faces New Doubts on Pursuing Afghan War
New York Times By DAVID E. SANGER July 21, 2010
WASHINGTON - When President Obama announced a new strategy for Afghanistan in December, he argued that by setting a deadline of next summer to begin drawing down troops he would create a sense of urgency for the Afghan government to take the lead in the fight, while acknowledging the limits of America’s patience with the longest war in its history.
But over the past two weeks — on Capitol Hill, in Kabul and even in conversations with foreign leaders — Mr. Obama has been reminded how the goal has become what one senior American military commander called a “double-edged sword,” one that hangs over the White House as surely as it hangs over President Hamid Karzai.
The absence of serious progress this year has sown new doubts, here and abroad, that Mr. Obama will be able to reach even the scaled-down goals he set for America’s mission in the time he laid out in his speech at West Point seven months ago. The result is that the fierce debate over whether the war is worth the cost — a debate that Mr. Obama did not want to join until the Taliban suffered some losses — is unwinding one summer earlier than he had hoped.
Mr. Obama has begun losing critical political figures and strategists who are increasingly vocal in arguing that the benefits of continuing on the current course for at least another year, and probably longer, are greatly outweighed by the escalating price.
For two months, Democrats in Congress have been holding up billions of dollars in additional financing for the war, longer than they ever delayed similar requests from President George W. Bush. Most Republican leaders have largely backed a continued commitment, but the White House was surprised the other day when one of Mr. Obama’s mentors on foreign policy issues in the Senate, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, argued that “the lack of clarity in Afghanistan does not end with the president’s timetable,” and that both the military and civilian missions were “proceeding without a clear definition of success.”
“We could make progress for decades on security, on employment, good governance, women’s rights,” he said, without ever reaching “a satisfying conclusion.”
The allies, voicing similar concerns, have abandoned most talk of a conditions-based withdrawal in favor of harder timetables. Britain’s new prime minister, David Cameron, did his best to sound as though he and Mr. Obama were on the same page during his first visit to the White House on Tuesday, but he also told a BBC interviewer while in Washington, “We’re not going to be there in five years’ time.”
The Dutch leave this fall, and the Canadians say they intend to follow suit by the end of 2011.
As one of Mr. Obama’s top strategists said this week, with some understatement, “There are signs that the durability of this mission has to be attended to.”
All this has made it harder than ever for Mr. Obama to convince the Afghans and the Pakistanis that the West’s commitment is enduring. “Politically, the support is absolutely crumbling,” said David Gordon, a former top official on the National Intelligence Council and at the State Department who is now at the Eurasia Group. “You can’t hide that from the players in the region, and when they see it, it makes them hedge even more, preparing for the post-American era.”
In public, White House officials continue to argue that Mr. Obama struck the right balance last December, and sent the right signals, when he called for a short-term troop increase followed by a drawdown. “America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan,” he said then, quoting President Eisenhower about the importance of balancing America’s foreign commitments with its domestic needs.
But when granted anonymity, some senior White House officials who a few months ago said that this would be “the year of Kandahar” — referring to plans to retake control of the city that was the spiritual center of the Taliban — now acknowledge that the chances of progress there are growing more remote.
From the start of Mr. Obama’s review of the war’s strategy last year, he and his advisers debated the debilitating effects of what one called “the weariness factor.” Their calculation was that the withdrawal from Iraq, combined with the 18-month limit on the troop increase established by Mr. Obama, would quiet critics in his own party. That assessment proved optimistic. Earlier this month, 153 Democrats, including the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, voted in favor of an amendment that would have required a clear timetable for withdrawal. Only 98 Democrats joined Republicans in defeating it.
But over the long term, what may be more damaging is the fact that members of the foreign policy establishment, even those who vigorously supported ousting the Taliban in 2001 after the 9/11 attacks, are gaining traction with arguments that the White House has simply failed to make the case that the rising cost is worth it.
“After nearly nine years of war,” Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a senior official in Mr. Bush’s State Department, wrote over the weekend in Newsweek, “continued or increased U.S. involvement in Afghanistan isn’t likely to yield lasting improvements that would be commensurate in any way with the investment of American blood and treasure. It is time to scale down our ambitions there and both reduce and redirect what we do.”
Mr. Haass is not recommending full withdrawal. Instead, he said in an interview, “I’m talking about reducing combat troops and operations and costs and casualties by more than half,” leaving mostly Special Forces, air power and trainers for Afghan troops in the region. In Kabul on Tuesday, President Karzai talked about having Afghan soldiers and the police taking responsibility for security by 2014. “Why should we be confident of that,” Mr. Haass asked, “given the history of Afghanistan?”
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Conflict Resurfaces With Lessons on Nation-Building
New York Times By PETER BAKER July 21, 2010
WASHINGTON - President Obama’s team is busy these days managing a troop drawdown in Iraq and a troop escalation in Afghanistan, hoping in both cases to build governments that can manage their own countries. Virtually forgotten is the last such American project overseas, still incomplete but reaching a critical juncture this week.
Before Afghanistan and Iraq, there was Kosovo, the preoccupation of Washington a decade ago but largely off the radar screen in recent times. Eleven years after NATO drove out Serbian forces and two years after Kosovo declared independence, the young nation is struggling to consolidate its position on the map and looking for American help.
Prime Minister Hashim Thaci came to town for perhaps Kosovo’s most important week since assuming statehood. On Wednesday, he met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and accepted an international loan package. But most important, he wanted to be in Washington on Thursday when the International Court of Justice ruled on whether the 2008 declaration of independence was valid, a decision fraught with divisive potential in Europe.
Kosovo, of course, is no Iraq or Afghanistan for all sorts of reasons. But the continuing tension in the Balkans serves as a reminder of just how challenging and long-lasting the American enterprise of nation-building really is. Even after the fighting is long over — and there are still about 1,480 American troops in Kosovo as part of a 9,900-member international force — the project is not really done.
“Peace-building is a complicated and difficult contextual business, one that takes a good deal of time and effort,” said Daniel P. Serwer, a vice president at the United States Institute of Peace who hosted Mr. Thaci for a speech. “We have enough experience to know that, but we always seem to forget it.”
A land of just 1.8 million people, Kosovo was the last of the breakaway republics to emerge from the collapse of Yugoslavia and carried early lessons for the United States before its interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq about managing volatile ethnic and religious differences.
Led by President Bill Clinton, NATO waged a 78-day bombing campaign in 1999 to stop ethnic violence, expelling Serbian forces and setting up a United Nations protectorate for the largely Albanian population. In February 2008, Kosovo declared independence and has been recognized by 69 countries, including the United States and most of Europe, but not Serbia or Russia. Serbia sought a judgment by the International Court of Justice about the validity of the move.
The much anticipated court decision will be advisory but could aggravate the situation regardless of its outcome. Analysts expect a murky middle-ground ruling but Obama administration officials said Wednesday that they were confident the court would ratify the legality of independence, and Mr. Biden made clear after meeting with Mr. Thaci that Washington remained behind Kosovo.
“The vice president reaffirmed the United States’ full support for an independent, democratic, whole, and multiethnic Kosovo whose future lies firmly within European and Euro-Atlantic institutions,” Mr. Biden’s office said in a statement. “The vice president also reiterated the United States’ firm support for Kosovo’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
In an interview, Mr. Thaci said, “We will respect the opinion,” but also made clear that he believed independence was irreversible. “Kosovo is a country of stability,” he said. “It’s a functional country. It’s a consolidated state. And the laws we are passing are based on international best standards.”
Much like any other leader of a country seeking to rebuild after war, he talked about highway construction and privatization of state utilities and luring international investors. The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday approved a loan package of $140 million, on top of about twice that on tap from the World Bank and the European Commission.
But amid tension over ethnic Serbs living in northern Kosovo, Mr. Thaci sought help from Washington in reconciling with Serbia. “Since the declaration of independence, Serbia has not shown any willingness to cooperate,” he said. “We have shown our good will to cooperate as two separate states. Serbia has played a destructive role during these two years by supporting the smuggling in the north side of Kosovo.”
The Serbian government blames Kosovo for being unwilling to compromise.
“We’ve been a very constructive player in the region and we’re going to continue to be that,” said Vladimir Petrovic, the Serbian ambassador in Washington. “I don’t see how blaming anyone is helpful in the process.”
He said Kosovo had not done enough to protect the Serb minority but added that he hoped the court ruling on Thursday would occasion new talks. “We would like the United States and other players to support bringing all the sides together for a mutually agreed upon solution,” he said.
All of which, of course, leaves the Obama administration in the middle, just as it already is elsewhere in the world, with no clear path to a final resolution.
“It’s going to reopen the can of worms and the question is, what do you do about it?” said Alan J. Kuperman, a Kosovo expert at the University of Texas at Austin. Mr. Kuperman said the Obama administration should press Kosovo to grant enhanced autonomy to Serbs in its north, but “I don’t think we’re willing to talk tough to the Albanians.”
Kosovo, at least, is largely free of the violence that tore it apart two presidents ago, and Mr. Obama can afford to leave it to his vice president or secretary of state, both of whom played a role in the 1999 war. But it remains unnerving to those in Washington with their eyes on larger problems that the impasse continues to defy efforts to move on.
“If the aim of intervention and state building is to bring order out of chaos, then we have succeeded in Bosnia and Kosovo and Macedonia,” said Christopher S. Chivvis, a Balkans specialist at the RAND Corporation. But if the aim is to build a Western-style democracy that lives in harmony with its neighbors, Mr. Chivvis added, then “we have not succeeded” and it shows that “we need to manage our expectations about the future in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
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America must give the south to the Taliban
Financial Times By Robert Blackwill July 21 2010
In spite of the commitments made at Tuesday’s conference on the future of Afghanistan in Kabul, the current US counter-insurgency strategy (Coin) is likely to fail. The Taliban cannot be sufficiently weakened in Pashtun Afghanistan to coerce it to the negotiating table. America cannot win over sufficient numbers of the Afghan Pashtun on whom Coin depends. President Hamid Karzai’s deeply corrupt government shows no signs of improvement. The Afghanistan army cannot stand up to the Taliban for many years, if ever. Pakistan’s military continues to support its Afghan Taliban proxies. And the long-term Coin strategy and the far shorter US political timeline are incompatible.
President Barack Obama has promised to review the administration’s Afghanistan policy in December. After this review the US should stop talking about exit strategies, and accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of the Pashtun south. Instead Washington should move to ensure that north and west Afghanistan do not fall too, using for many years to come US air power and special forces – some 40,000-50,000 troops – along with the Afghan army and the help of like-minded nations. Such a de facto partition would be a profoundly disappointing outcome to America’s 10 years in Afghanistan. But, regrettably, it is now the best that can realistically and responsibly be achieved.
This week media reports suggested another approach gaining favour: negotiation. But as CIA director Leon Panetta said recently about Taliban behaviour, why would they negotiate in good faith, if they think they are winning? Some instead think the US should withdraw all of its military forces over the next year. But that would be a major strategic defeat for the US and its partners, with negative global repercussions for many years to come.
Equally wrong-headed are those arguing the US should stay the course, no matter how long it takes. The CIA now thinks there are barely 50-100 al-Qaeda fighters left in Afghanistan, facing 100,000 US troops. The original Afghan objective was to destroy al-Qaeda, not fight the Taliban. That has largely been accomplished.
Even if the Afghan Taliban invited al-Qaeda to join them in greater numbers, the estimated 300 or so al-Qaeda fighters in Pakistan moving across the border would not substantially increase the threat. Is it worth an indefinite ground war, and thousands more US and allied casualties, to try to prevent that happening? The US can attack al-Qaeda on both sides of the border in any case.
Others worry the Taliban would not adhere to the rough boundaries of such a de facto partition, and would seek to reconquer the entire country. But US and allied military might and growing Afghan army capabilities could stop that from happening. Indeed, without such a long-term US military presence, a renewed civil war is probable. With such a commitment, it is unlikely. Small islands of non-Pashtuns in the south and east would be an unfortunate but unavoidable consequence, as would the comprehensive violation of women’s rights in Taliban territory. But the US could still assist those Pashtun tribal forces that wish to resist the Taliban.
Wider threats to the region should be taken seriously. An irredentist “Pashtunistan”, and perhaps the fracturing of Pakistan, could happen. Ironically, the Pakistan military is making such a development more likely through its support for the Afghan Taliban. But why should the US be more concerned about the territorial integrity of Pakistan than the country’s General Ashfaq Kayani and his colleagues? Indeed, the spectre of de facto partition in Afghanistan might even produce the change of heart in the Pakistani military’s attitude to the Afghan Taliban that successive US administration have failed to achieve.
Henry Kissinger has observed that: “For other nations, utopia is a blessed past never to be recovered; for Americans it is just beyond the horizon.” With its many flaws, de facto partition is hardly a utopian outcome in Afghanistan. The overriding virtue of this concept is only that it is better than all available alternatives.
The writer was US ambassador to India, and a deputy national security adviser under George W. Bush
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Pressure builds for firing of Afghan IG
The Washington Times - Family & Kids By Sean Lengell Wednesday, July 21, 2010
A call to fire the inspector general charged with sniffing out fraud and corruption in Afghanistan's reconstruction grew a little louder and became bipartisan Wednesday.
Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, asked President Obama to replace Arnold Fields, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), calling his work "appalling" and said there is "clearly a lack of competent senior leadership in his agency."
"Fraud, corruption and wasted resources are placing our soldiers and the mission in Afghanistan in danger," said Mr. Coburn, joining Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat, who last week demanded the firing of Mr. Fields.
"The president must take swift action and replace the inspector general and his top staff and immediately appoint an aggressive and independent watchdog who will oversee the billions of dollars the United States is sending there."
The United States has committed $51 billion to Afghanistan reconstruction since 2001, and plans to raise the amount to $71 billion over the next year.
A recent Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency report accused SIGAR of failing to meet professional standards for investigators and found deficiencies in the audit division -- a review that followed a story by The Washington Times on SIGAR's shortcomings.
The review also showed that Mr. Fields' office didn't train investigators in the use of firearms and deadly force, didn't have a policy on firearms and lacked an electronic filing system to collect important information - including data to measure investigators' performance.
Mr. Fields, in a letter last week to the review council, said he accepts the report's findings and will work to improve his agency, which the retired Marine major general has led since he was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2008.
"When I asked for this review, I anticipated that the CIGIE teams would identify a number of problem areas," he wrote. "But I believe that undergoing an extensive peer evaluation at this time was far preferable to waiting for several more years."
SIGAR spokeswoman Susan Phalen declined to comment Wednesday on the senators' call for action.
The White House referred questions to the Defense and State departments. A Pentagon spokeswoman, when contacted regarding the matter, said it would be inappropriate to comment because SIGAR is independent of the two departments.
The Times story in March 2009 found that investigators were reviewing why $5 billion in previously appropriated aid had not been fully spent, how money meant for short-term humanitarian projects was diverted to road building and why Afghan police received inadequate training.
Mrs. McCaskill last week called on Mr. Obama to replace Mr. Fields.
"This report proves that SIGAR's performance is inept," said Mrs. McCaskill, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on contracting oversight. "It is time for a housecleaning at SIGAR, including new leadership. For the sake of our soldiers and the American taxpayer, time is of the essence."
Both senators raised concerns about SIGAR late last year with the president.
Mr. Fields previously served as deputy director of the Africa Center for Strategic Studies with the Department of Defense, and also has worked in Iraq with the State Department.
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