Reaction to Obama’s speech…

On Tuesday night, for the first time since President Obama’s election, we sat down in a college TV room and watched him give a speech in real time, from beginning to end. Before an audience of cadets at West Point, Obama outlined his plans for Afghanistan: 30,000 more troops sent over, starting within weeks, and a troop drawdown beginning in July 2011. CNN pulled out its countdown timers and color-coded map backdrops for the occasion, recycling the paraphernalia from “Decision 2008.” This time, though, the red and blue maps showed degree of Taliban control rather than vote percentages. And this time, the students watching with us didn’t break into swing-dancing and victory cheers when time ran out.

The Yale Afghanistan Forum wasn’t exactly Obama’s intended audience. We expected a speech about Afghanistan — and instead, heard a speech about America. It was a solid and somber speech, reminding Americans of our role in history as the underwriters of global security and emphasizing the threat posed by violent extremism. We learned our troops will start to return in 18 months; we didn’t hear much about what Obama expects Afghanistan to look like when they do.

It’s easy to understand why Obama took this approach. A nationally televised speech is not the place to detail counterinsurgency and development strategy. But that strategy had better exist. On balance, we think Obama is taking the right approach by sending more troops and setting a drawdown date — but these decisions alone do not amount to a comprehensive plan.

To evaluate Obama’s plan, we need him to explain it in greater detail.

First, how will the United States deal with the Afghan government? Obama’s speech skirted the issue of Hamid Karzai’s fraud-plagued reelection and spoke of corruption as a problem the government faces, rather than one of its faults. At the same time, Obama said the days of “blank checks” for Karzai’s government are over. So how will Karzai’s government be held accountable? If Afghanistan’s security is critical for our own, can we really afford to punish Karzai — by withdrawing, say — if he behaves badly? Some officials, like Secretary of State Clinton, have floated the idea of bypassing the worst parts of the central government by channeling aid to local governments or by aiding only high-performing ministries. Can this be accomplished without undermining Kabul’s authority in the eyes of Afghan citizens?

Second, what form will our expanded civilian effort take? The concept of a “civilian surge” isn’t new — it was a component of General McChrystal’s report earlier this year — but the surge hasn’t materialized. Aid workers are not forcibly deployed into a hostile environment like soldiers, and the recent attack on the United Nations headquarters in Kabul further weakened the Western civilian corps in Afghanistan. Does the administration have a plan to turn this situation around?

Finally, and most importantly, what chain of events does the administration see leading to a reasonably stable Afghanistan? Supporters of the troop increase emphasize the cascade of positive effects it might bring: if security improves, development becomes possible, swaying Afghans who hadn’t seen an alternative to the Taliban’s destructive shadow government. Critics of the buildup, however, would counter that our presence could distort local power dynamics, creating more disgruntled elites with an incentive to undermine the U.S.-backed regime.

For the 18-month timeframe to be more than a convenient sound bite, the administration must have a plan for the way these dominoes will fall. They need to have a clear idea about how our actions will shape the strategic decisions of Pakistani generals, Kandahari tribal elders and warlords in Jalalabad.

Next week, Obama’s announcement will be old news and the cable networks will have moved on. But troop levels are only one component of a strategy, and we’ve yet to hear the rest. Obama’s speech on Tuesday was about America; we’re still waiting for the part about Afghanistan.

Andrew Mayersohn and Mari Oye are juniors in Pierson and Timothy Dwight colleges, respectively. They are members of the Yale Afghanistan Forum.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/opinion/guest-columns/2009/12/04/mayersohn-and-oye-devil-details/

Thanks to Anna for her help on this too! And thanks to Parwiz, Eric, and Brian for their commentary.

and the LA Times printed Pashtoon’s op-ed

“Afghans want Obama to hold Karzai’s feet to the fire”

Additional troops and resources should be conditional on the cleaning up of Afghanistan’s government

By Pashtoon Atif

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-atif19-2009nov19,0,3839166.story

Ahmed Wali Karzai

As you know if you read our recent Yale Daily News column, the New York Times reported this week that Ahmed Wali Karzai–younger brother of Hamid, member of Kandahar’s provincial council–has been on the CIA’s payroll for the last eight years. Specifically, the article claims that Karzai:

-Helps the CIA operate a Kandahar paramiltary group

-Allows American special forces to rent a compound outside of Kandahar

-Serves as a go-between when the CIA wants to communicate with the Taliban

Karzai claims that he helps the Americans whenever possible but has “never received any money from any organization”. And of course Karzai continues to respond angrily to allegations that he’s involved in the drug trade. The Times article also cites DEA notes in which informants claim that Karzai has benefited from American operations against Afghan drug lords to take over their business. A “former Afghan Interior Ministry official” also adds that Karzai charges traffickers for the use of bridges over the Helmand River which he controls.

Gerald Posner of the Daily Beast contacts the Karzai brothers and finds them indignant and accusatory: Mahmoud Karzai claims that the report is the doing of the ISI and “far-left” lobbyists. Ahmed says he isn’t worried because no Pashtuns believe the Times anyway, and adds that he thinks this is the Times’ way of trying to influence the election.

The reaction from lawmakers has been cautious but concerned. John Kerry was placed in an awkward spot because he’d just defended Karzai in a speech on Monday, but he now says he has “serious questions” about the information the CIA’s been giving to Congress. John McCain is also angry and says that Ahmed Wali Karzai “should not be in the country”. The White House hasn’t commented.

Of course, as Andrew Exum points out, even if Ahmed Wali Karzai turns out to be completely innocent of drug trafficking and receiving money from the CIA, the fact that “we think that AWK is the CIA’s guy” means that “the Afghans most certainly believe that to be the case”. Joanna Nathan of IWPR adds that this should probably serve as a wakeup call to Americans who like to chastize Hamid Karzai’s government for corruption without realizing that many of our actions–like letting government officials get rich off of our contractors–feed the problem and add to the mistrust among ordinary Afghans. For example, this report from NYU’s Center on International Cooperation catalogues the millions of dollars ISAF has lavished on warlords like Nangarhar governor Gul Agha Sherzai in return for security services. The report lists Hashmat Karzai (another brother) and Defense Minister Hamid Wardak “as powerful figures who control private security firms that have gotten security contracts without registering with the government.”

Karzai re-elected

Should have waited a little longer to post the news summary: the Independent Electoral Commission has declared Hamid Karzai the winner of the presidential election. The November 7th runoff won’t be held after all.

Week in Review, 10/25-11/1

I waited until Sunday night to post this week’s summary for a reason: it was widely reported on Friday and Saturday that Dr. Abdullah was waiting until today to announce his plans not to participate in next week’s runoff election. He didn’t disappoint. Abdullah withdrew from the election without specifically calling for his supporters to boycott the second round–in fact, he said that the mere fact that the runoff had been scheduled had “helped restore the faith of the people in the process”. So it’s not necessarily the case that the runoff will be a complete farce; the Kabul Council of Scholars, for example, is calling on Afghans to vote in the runoff. Whether the runoff will even be held at all, though, is up to the Independent Electoral Commission.

Abdullah and Karzai had been wrangling all week over the details of the second poll, and it’s hard to tell now how much of that was theatrical. Abdullah, for example, wanted the head of the IEC replaced, which Karzai refused to do. (Abdullah’s complaints are not unfounded: as EurasiaNet reports, the IEC still hasn’t explained its failure to fully follow the recommendations of the Electoral Complaints Commission, as it is required to do by law.) That was just one of several signs that the second election won’t be much cleaner than the first; more polling stations will be open, contrary to the UN’s recommendations, for far fewer poll workers, which may add up to even more fraud.

Both Karzai and Abdullah continue to be very clear on their lack of interest in a coalition government. On the other hand, Abdullah didn’t condemn Karzai with as much vitriol as he could have, suggesting to some analysts that “these guys are ready to negotiate”–but we still have no idea what form those negotiations would take.

The fact that Abdullah’s announcement wasn’t unexpected meant that American officials had a head start on doing damage control. Hillary Clinton put a brave face on the news yesterday, claiming that a boycott wouldn’t delegitimize the runoff–a proposition that Juan Cole, among many others, find laughable. (Across the ocean, Gordon Brown had an even cheerier take, saying that Abdullah had pulled out in the interest of national unity.) John Kerry, whose statements on Afghanistan are always parsed as though he were part of the administration, made positive noises about Karzai’s good intentions. Hawks like Joe Lieberman and John Boehner (who don’t want the election fiasco to dissuade Obama from sending more troops) were quick to note (correctly) that Abdullah’s decision probably reflected the fact that he had almost no chance of winning the runoff. For Duncan Hunter (R-CA), this just means that Karzai can now get down to business: “We need a Karzai who isn’t worried about tribal stuff, or infighting, who is not paying anybody off, who is holding people accountable, fighting corruption, putting the right people in the right jobs.” Sounds easy enough…

Many news outlets paired reports on the dispiriting state of the elections with the story of the first prominent resignation over the war. Says the Washington Post:

A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.

Hoh is very clear about the nature of his protest: it’s about the war’s ends, not its means. He also goes out of way to deny that he’s a “peacenik”, and he agrees that “we have some obligation for [Afghanistan] not to be a bloodbath, so he’s not calling for a precipitous pullout. His main concerns are that our presence in Afghanistan is fueling resentment among Pashtuns, and therefore driving the insurgency, and that the Karzai government isn’t an adequate partner. It sounds like the August elections reinforced his opinions; his resignation came before Abdullah’s announcement.

Hoh’s higher-ups didn’t take his resignation sitting down. Hoh had face-to-face meetings with both Richard Holbrooke and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, both of whom apparently offered him jobs in an attempt to dissuade him from resigning. A meeting with Biden is apparently also in Hoh’s future. No doubt Holbrooke and Eikenberry realized that skeptics of the war would seize on Hoh’s resignation as proof of the futility of counterinsurgency. The Carnegie Endowment’s Gilles Dorronsoro, for example has a few quibbles with Hoh’s broader strategic points but thinks he’s raising the right questions about the situation on the ground. Spencer Ackerman (not necessarily a war skeptic) also adds that Robert Gates, among others, have previously voiced Hoh’s concern that resentment at our presence is a major driver of the insurgency.

Naturally, counterinsurgency enthusiasts are frustrated that the views of one officer, even a well-respected one, are getting the public attention denied to thousands who disagree. Which is a fair point, but the flip side of this phenomenon, I think, is that–except when they make a splash like Hoh did–skeptics of the war are routinely ignored and marginalized. More gravely, Andrew Exum notes that Hoh was NOT actually a “foreign service officer” as the Post reported. Instead, as a WaPo commenter explains, Hoh was a “3161″ State Department employee, “a special category of temporary appointments brought on for 12 month assignments in certain areas of expertise”. That’s not the same as being a career diplomat. It doesn’t invalidate Hoh’s critique, of course, but the magnitude of the resignation should be kept in perspective. At the very least, though, Hoh should shatter the complacency of people like Duncan Hunter, who said this in the same interview I quoted above: “Everybody seems very confident, very excited. Everybody thinks that they can win it, we can win it, we can hand it over to the Afghans, and we can get out of there.” I hope Hoh’s message gives him at least a little pause.

Even if we’re actually close to “handing it over to the Afghans”, in the mean time Western forces are still in Afghanistan and still under assault. Eight U.S. troops died in attacks on armored vehicles in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday; combined with the deaths of eleven servicemen (and several civilians) in two unlinked helicopter crashes on Monday, this made October the deadliest month for American troops in Afghanistan, with 55 fatalities. The violence was felt even outside of the insurgent-riddled South this week, when a two-hour siege at a guesthouse in Kabul left eight dead, five of whom were UN employees. The perpetrators were apparently members of the Haqqani network from Pakistan’s Swat Valley, in cooperation with an Al Qaeda operative, and the attack is widely being interpreted as the Taliban’s first attempt to make good on their promise to disrupt the runoff elections. The attack was accompanied by rocket attacks on the presidential palace and a nearby luxury hotel popular among Western journalists. Afghanistan’s intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, said that the “ringleader” of the attack was arrested by Saudi officials on Saturday. Meanwhile, the UN is unhappy with the slow response of the Afghan Police, who only arrived on the scene after the fighting (with UN security guards) was over.

ECC ruling leaves Karzai under 50%

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8314613.stm

Everyone will see this soon enough, but I thought I’d post it anyway.

The Discussion Keeps Going…

Global21, one of our co-sponsors for last weeks’ “Afghanistan: Eight Years On” panel, has posted a summary of the event. They will be soliciting responses to the panel topics from the Globalist chapters at universities around the world.
Global21 blog

YAF in the Herald

http://yaleherald.com/news/students-raise-awareness-of-afghanistan/

More on Our Op-Ed

Two links that elaborate on points Mari and I made in our column.

First, Josh Foust has a piece in the Columbia Journalism Review that takes the American commentariat to task for its failings on Afghanistan. In particular, he examines the “bribe the tribes” idea that circulated a couple weeks ago and finds it historically ignorant and logically inconsistent.

Second, I see that the Cato Institute has an Afghanistan discussion on YouTube titled…”Eight Years in Afghanistan, the ‘Graveyard of Empires’”. Hrm.

Yale Daily News Op-Ed Today

http://www.yaledailynews.com/opinion/guest-columns/2009/10/08/oye-and-mayersohn-addressing-afghanistan/

What they wouldn’t let us say in the paper was – one way to improve campus dialogue is to COME TO THE EVENT TODAY AT 8, Branford College Common Room, for a discussion of CIVILIAN AND MILITARY PERSPECTIVES on Afghanistan.

There’s more information on the calendar tab of the blog.