The Great Debate UK

from The Great Debate:

Awlaki and the Arab autumn

By David Rohde The opinions expressed are his own.

The death of Anwar al-Awlaki this morning is welcome news, but Washington policymakers should not delude themselves into thinking the drone that killed him is a supernatural antidote to militancy. Yes, drone strikes should continue, but the real playing field continues to be the aftermath of the Arab spring; namely vital elections scheduled for October in Tunisia and November in Egypt.

A series of outstanding stories by reporters from Reuters, The Washington Post, The New York Review of Books and The New York Times, have aptly laid out the stakes. Islamists are on the rise in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, but an extraordinary battle is unfolding over the nature of Islam itself.

“At the center of the debates is a new breed of politician who has risen from an Islamist milieu but accepts an essentially secular state,” Anthony Shadid and David Kirkpatrick wrote in today’s New York Times. Common values, in other words, are emerging between the West and the Islamic world. These “post-Islamist” politicians argue that individual rights, democracy and economic prosperity are elements of an “Islamic state.”

Whether these politicians represent the most potent weapon ever fielded against militant Islam or a Trojan horse will emerge in the months and years ahead. More than any other figure, the new breed’s standard-bearer is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Pledging that conservative Islam is compatible with individual liberties, Erdogan holds the rise of his culturally conservative but economically liberal political party as a beacon for a new Middle East. Turkish critics, though, accuse Erdogan of a creeping authoritarianism masked by rapid economic growth.

For now, the “post-Islamists” should be taken at their word. The false Pax Americana of dictatorial regimes that once dominated the region is no longer viable. And the “post-Islamists” are a vast improvement over Awlaki and his ilk. For Awlaki and hard line Salafists, the only true “Islamic state” is one led by self-appointed clerics who rule by force and brutally regulate the minutia of everyday life.

At an astonishing rate across the Middle East, an internet-fueled communications revolution has implanted the ideals that the United States publicly espoused for decades, but privately failed to back. Washington is reaping a cultural amalgam that its rhetoric has slowly sown.

from The Great Debate:

Don’t overestimate Afghanistan pessimism

This is a response to Rory Stewart’s book excerpt “My uphill battle against the Afghanistan intervention.” David Rohde’s response can be read here and Anne-Marie Slaughter's response can be read here.

By James Dobbins The views expressed are his own.

Rory Stewart maintains that it is “not simply difficult, but impossible” to build an Afghan state. Presumably, this is meant hyperbolically, since Afghanistan has been recognized as an independent state far longer than any of its northern or southern neighbors.

It is true that the Afghan state had almost no capacity a decade ago, after twenty years of civil war, and that it still struggles to deliver basic public services. Nevertheless, nothing in Stewart’s pessimistic assessment would lead one to realize that since 2001 Afghanistan’s licit GDP has risen by 300 percent, that tax collection as a percentage of GDP now exceeds that of Pakistan, that school attendance has risen eightfold, that the country’s literacy rate will triple in 10 years if these children are permitted to stay in school, that 80 percent of the population has access to basic health care faculties (albeit often distant and intermittent), that child mortality has dropped by one third as a result, and that despite the ongoing conflict longevity is increasing. Yet another striking statistic is that today almost half of Afghan households have telephones.

Multiple polls commissioned by independent news and other organizations consistently reveal an Afghan population that sees improvement in its well-being, has a favorable view of its government and is optimistic about its future. Indeed for the past couple of years the Afghans have rated their government and its leadership higher than Americans do theirs.

Stewart seems surprised at his failure to convince American and European officials, academic colleagues and even his own students of the fruitlessness of international efforts to help modernize and develop Afghanistan. His deeply pessimistic view rests on his own very considerable personal experience and that of others he knows. This is important information, to be taken seriously coming from someone as well traveled and perceptive as Stewart. Yet when anecdotal and empirical data diverge so widely, as they do in this instance, most observers will conclude that the truth lies somewhere in between.

from The Great Debate:

My uphill battle against the Afghanistan intervention

By Rory Stewart The views expressed are his own.

I returned to Afghanistan (after spending a short time at Harvard) in 2005. And when I heard that the British government was about to send three thousand soldiers into Helmand, I was confident that there would soon be a widespread insurgency. I also predicted that the military would demand more troops, and would get dragged ever deeper.

It wasn’t that I had any particular skill in predicting the future. I failed to predict that Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak would fall. I was wrong about Iraq. And my prediction for Helmand wasn’t based on any knowledge of Helmand. It was simply that I recognized the mindset and the actions of the NATO governments from Iraq. And I wasn’t alone in warning against the deployment. Many others predicted the same thing in Helmand. A military friend of mine had returned from a reconnaissance trip saying, “There isn’t an insurgency, but you can have one if you want one.” The Helmand surge continued regardless. The British government seemed to have a momentum, quite distinct from any individual politician or policy-maker. Troops were increased from two hundred U.S. Special Forces in 2005 to three thousand British soldiers in 2006.

At the time, senior officials reassured me that they understood the danger of being dragged in too deep. Two offered to sign a document saying that if the three thousand troops didn’t “establish governance, economic development, and security” within six months, they would admit the policy was a mistake, rather than claim that the problem had simply been strategy and resources. But I did not force them to sign. And when six months passed and the situation had worsened, the same officials supported the call to increase the number of troops to five thousand, and a few months later to seven thousand. I began writing and speaking publicly against the policy. I argued that what was needed was not a surge but a reduction to a light long-term footprint.

This put me in a difficult position because the policy-makers were my friends and I lived in Kabul, where I had just started an NGO, restoring part of the historic city and establishing an institute for traditional crafts. My personal life and work indebted me to many of the people whose policies and governments I was criticizing. I found myself writing op-eds against generals who had been my hosts; giving academic lectures mocking the books and theories written by friends; and publicly debating an ambassador whom I admired. I was calling on the governments that were giving money to my NGO to send less money to Afghanistan. I was arguing against fighting the Taliban while many of the philanthropists who supported my work did so out of hatred of the Taliban. Many of my upper-class Afghan friends who had returned from the West to Kabul and were relying on the international community to build a state were particularly confused and hurt by my arguments. In retrospect and in the circumstances, I am astonished how forgiving they all were. Only one ambassador gently asked whether I could stop criticizing his country, in return for the millions his nation’s taxpayers were giving to our NGO. But when I wouldn’t make the commitment, the money still came.

Most of the internationals I knew in Kabul disagreed with me strongly. They said that I didn’t know what I was talking about. And in many ways they were right. I was certainly not an expert on Afghanistan. Academics such as Tom Barfield and Barnett Rubin are truly scholars of Afghanistan. Afghan statesman such as Ashraf Ghani and the Afghan-American Zalmay Khalilzad have a much more detailed sense and understanding of Afghan history and politics. Journalists such as Ahmed Rashid have a much better sense of the language, the recent past, and the regional context. People who have run projects on the ground, from Andrew Wilder and Antony Fitzherbert to Michael Semple and Martine van Biljert, have a much more detailed sense of the reality of international assistance in Afghanistan. Generals and ambassadors and development directors know far more about military tactics, practical diplomacy, and development theory. There are, most importantly, thirty million Afghans who intuitively understand far more about Afghanistan than any foreigner. And, as the British pointed out gleefully, I had traveled only in the north and center of Afghanistan—I had been to Helmand only once.

Nevertheless, I was confident that I was right. I tried to explain that this was not based on any special insights about Afghanistan, but instead on a sense of ourselves: the international community. I felt I had learned in the Balkans and particularly in Iraq that we—the foreign government organizations and their partners—know much less and can do much less than we pretend. I knew the international community underestimated the reality of Afghan rural life: they did not grasp just how poor, fragile, and traumatized Afghanistan was; just how conservative and resistant to foreigners, villages could be. Our institutions were too inherently optimistic, too ad hoc, too isolated from the concerns and realities of Afghan life, too caught up in metaphysical abstractions of “governance” and “the rule of law” ever to succeed—or to notice that we were not succeeding.

from The Great Debate:

The 9/11 generation

By David Rohde The opinions expressed are his own.

In a speech last week at the American Legion convention in Minneapolis, President Obama rightly hailed what he called “the 9/11 generation,” the five million Americans who served in the military over the last decade.

“They’re a generation of innovators,” he declared. “And they’ve changed the way America fights and wins at wars.”

The following day, at a ceremony marking his retirement from the military, Gen. David Petraeus affirmed Tom Brokaw’s similar praise as the two men toured Iraq in 2003.

“He shouted to me over the noise of a helicopter before heading back to Baghdad: ‘Surely, General, this is America’s new greatest generation'," Petraeus recalled. “I agreed with him then, and I agree with him now.”

I agree as well. There is a kernel of truth – and hope – in both statements. There is a 9/11 generation, one that extends beyond the valiant military members both men correctly hailed. Instead, it includes all Americans who experienced the attacks and responded to them over the last decade.

Its members include the tens of thousands of civilians who worked as diplomats, aid workers and contractors in Afghanistan and Iraq; the millions of police, firemen and teachers who stabilized American society in the fall of 2001 and subsequent years; and the tens of millions of innovative businesspeople and workers who brought the American economy roaring back after the attacks.

from Afghan Journal:

Drone strikes are police work, not an act of war?

Launching an air strike in another nation would normally be considered an act of aggression. But advocates of America's rapidly expanding unmanned drone programme don't see it that way.

They are arguing, as Tom Ricks writes on his blog The Best Defense over at Foreign Policy, that the campaign to kill militants with missile strikes from these unmanned aircraft, is more like police action in a tough neighbourhood than a military conflict.

These raids conducted by sinister-looking Predator or Reaper aircraft in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen - and since last month in Somalia - should not be seen as a challenge to states and their authority. Instead they are meant to supplement the power of governments that are either unable to or unwilling to fight the militants operating from their territories.

They are precise, limited, strikes aimed at taking down specific individuals, and in that sense are more like the police going after criminals, rather than a full-on military assault. Ricks writes: 

"Police work involves small arms used precisely. Drones aren't pistols, but firing one Hellfire at a Land Rover is more like a police action than it is like a large-scale military offensive with artillery barrages, armored columns, and infantry assaults."

It is a bit of a stretch, though, to compare a police action in a rough part of town with the kind of devastation that the laser-guided Hellfire missile can rain down when fired from unmanned aircraft as scores of Pakistani civilians in the troubled northwest region  discovered in the initial days of the programme launched by the Bush administration.

from FaithWorld:

How will Afghan women fare if Kabul and the Taliban reconcile?

(Schoolgirls listen to a speech by Afghan President Hamid Karzai during a ceremony marking the start of the school year at Amani High School in Kabul March 23, 2011/Omar Sobhani)

The gaggles of giggling schoolgirls in their black uniforms and flowing white hijabs seen across Afghanistan's cities have become symbolic of how far women's rights have come since the austere rule of the Taliban was toppled a decade ago. While women have gained back basic rights in education, voting and work, considered un-Islamic by the Taliban, their plight remains severe and future uncertain as Afghan leaders seek to negotiate with the Taliban as part of their peace talks.

The United States and NATO, who have been fighting Taliban insurgents for 10 years in an increasingly unpopular war, have repeatedly stressed that any peace talks must abide by Afghanistan's constitution, which says the two sexes are equal. But President Hamid Karzai's reticence on the matter, constant opposition by the Taliban, and setbacks even at the government level cast a shadow on the prospects of equality for the 15 million women who make up about half the population.

"I am not optimistic at all," said Suraya Parlika, 66, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and member of the upper house of the Afghan parliament. "We do not know the agenda of the talks and this worries all women in Afghanistan."

"Women are at risk of losing everything they have regained," she told Reuters in her office at the All Afghan Women's Union, the country's most prominent women's rights group that she set up 20 years ago.

The dangerous business of fighting for women's rights in Afghanistan highlights just how precarious their situation is. Parlika said Taliban militants have tried to kill her eight times. In the latest attempt, gunmen tried to shoot her through a window at her home but missed and blew a hole in the wall.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Taliban talks – a necessary but not sufficient condition for peace

We have known for months that the United States has begun direct talks with representatives of the Taliban. And as I wrote in this story, the death of Osama bin Laden in a U.S. raid on May 2 should make it easier for the Taliban to break with al Qaeda, a fundamental requirement for including them in any eventual political settlement in Afghanistan. But lest anyone should think these talks, combined with bin Laden's death, would somehow produce an early end to the Afghan war,  it is important to remember that engaging with the Taliban is only a necessary but far from sufficient condition for a political settlement.

As Thomas Ruttig  writes at the Afghanistan Analysts Network,  any deal between the Taliban and Afghan President Hamid Karzai that was simply meant to open the exit door for foreign troops would not serve the interests of Afghans.  "... they need an end of the bloodshed that will also physically reopen spaces for economic and political activities, a debate about where their country is going. A deal which does not address the main causes of the conflict (namely the monopoly over power of resources concentrated in the hands of a small elite, then possibly with some additional Taleban players) will not bring peace.

 "Therefore, the ‘political process’ ... needs to involve a representative cross-section of Afghan society, including former anti-Taleban mujahedin, the ethnic minorities ... and what usually is called civil society ... They need to hammer out a much broader political compromise that will guarantee, finally, the political stabilisation of Afghanistan where everyone has to concede something but finally everyone gains."

The Taliban led by Mullah Mohammed Omar, described by Washington as the Quetta shura Taliban (QST), are not comparable to a national liberation movement with whom a peace deal can be struck and the war ended. Even among the Pashtun community, their support is patchy; and they are regarded with deep suspicion by other groups, Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, with bad memories of Taliban rule from 1996 - 2001. Already there are signs that some of the Taliban's most bitter opponents are mobilising to scupper any peace talks - among them Amrullah Saleh, former head of Afghanistan's intelligence agency.

The insurgency itself is also fragmented - even within the so-called Quetta shura Taliban, no one is sure how far Mullah Omar can deliver some of the younger fighters into a peace settlement.  Then there are other major groups including the Haqqani network and the Hizb-e-Islami-Gulbuddin (HiG) led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. So far, according to official sources from several countries, the United States is talking only with representatives of the Quetta shura Taliban.  (The Taliban themselves deny being involved in talks, while Washington has made no official comment.)

Yet the Haqqani network in particular is one of the most active insurgent groups in Afghanistan and blamed among other things for involvement in a suicide attack which killed CIA agents in eastern Afghanistan in 2009.  It is based on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan's tribal areas, along with the remnants of al Qaeda, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), and various other militants from groups with their roots in Pakistan's Punjab province. What happens to them in the event of a political settlement in Afghanistan which draws in the Quetta shura Taliban?

This is where it gets even more complicated.  The professed objective of the United States and its allies has always been to bring stability to both Afghanistan and Pakistan.  Yet as Shuja Nawaz writes here,  the Pakistani Taliban have declared war on the Pakistani state,  claiming responsibility for a string of bombings inside Pakistan.

from FaithWorld:

Bin Laden ‘eased’ into sea in contentious burial

(Aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, from which Osama bin Laden was buried at sea somewhere in the north Arabian Sea/U.S. Navy)

He may have been America's enemy number one, but after U.S. forces killed him, Osama bin Laden was afforded Islamic religious rites by the U.S. military as part of his surprise at-sea burial on Monday.

The U.S. military said preparations for the al-Qaida leader's burial lasted nearly an hour. His body was washed before being covered in a white sheet and religious remarks translated into Arabic by a native speaker were read over bin Laden's corpse.

"The burial of bin Laden's remains was done in strict conformance with Islamist precepts and practices," said John Brennan, U.S. President Barack Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser.

Washington said bin Laden was buried at sea after U.S. forces killed him at a compound near the Pakistani capital Islamabad because it was the best option, given tight time constraints.

Under Islamic tradition Muslims need to be buried within 24 hours. Transferring the body to another country for interment could have taken too long, officials said.

from Afghan Journal:

United States begins a new war, what happens to Afghanistan?

The United States has said the scope of its military intervention in Libya is limited, but it nevertheless raises questions about what happens to the two other wars that it is waging, especially in Afghanistan. The last time Washington took the eye off the ball in Afghanistan was in 2003 when it launched the Iraq war and then got so bogged down there that a low level and sporadic Taliban resistance in southern Afghanistan grew into a full blown insurgency from which it is still trying to extricate itself.

The question then is will the U.S. attention again shift away from Afghanistan and to Libya  and indeed other African and Middle East countries where revolts  against decades of authoritarian rule are gaining ground, and unsettling every strategic calculation.   Already U.S. Republicans are saying they are concerned that U.S. forces may be getting drawn into a costly, long-running operation in Libya that lacks clear goals.  If it ends in a stalemate - a possibility recognized by Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen - how focused can America be on Afghanistan where you can argue that the stakes are arguably less now that al Qaeda has largely been pushed out, and the fight is almost entirely with the Taliban.

Just by way of recap, here's broadly what happened to Afghanistan when America's attention and money were drained toward Iraq.  Militant groups reconstituted themselves, more safe havens sprung up, and they were financed by a resurgent opium economy .  Post-war reconstruction was curtailed as blood and treasure was invested in the war in Iraq. In some ways, it was a throwback to another U.S withdrawal from the region when  it almost overnight lost interest following the Soviet withdrawal in 1989 after a decade of arming and financing the insurgents against its former Cold War foe

The other unintended consequence of the U.S. military action in Libya is the anger it will stoke in countries such as Afghanistan where many see it as an attack on an Islamic nation, the latest of a string of nations so targeted.  Regardless of its good intentions, the intervention will be depicted as aggressive, predatory and anti-Muslim, as Edward N. Luttwak, a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote in  the Los Angeles Times.-

Indeed the war may have just become hotter for the troops in Afghanistan, with the Taliban seizing on the intervention in Libya as the latest onslaught in a broader war on Islam. The Taliban in a statement said  the Western intervention was aimed at weakening the Islamic nation and seizing its oil reserves through a full scale invasion. For good measure, the Taliban scolded the Libyans for fighting among themselves and thereby giving an excuse to the West to intervene.

(Photograph of scene at an Afghan army recruitment centre in Kunduz after a suicide attack this month.Reuters/Wahdat.)

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

The “sound and fury” of U.S.-Pakistan ties

With the release of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, the United States and Pakistan have put behind them one of the more public rows of their up-and-down relationship.  It was probably not the worst row -- remember the furore over a raid by U.S. ground troops in Angor Adda in Waziristan in 2008, itself preceded  by a deluge of leaks to the U.S. media about the alleged duplicity of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency in its dealings on Afghanistan.

But it was certainly one which by its very nature was guaranteed to get the most attention - an American who shot dead two Pakistanis in what he said was an act of self-defence, denied diplomatic immunity and ultimately released only after the payment of blood money. Adding to the drama were two intelligence agencies battling behind the scenes.

It was also the first serious row since the Obama administration began to build what it promised would be a new strategic relationship with Pakistan.

As I wrote earlier this month, overall relations between the United States and Pakistan were rather better than they looked (or at least than they appeared at the height of the Davis row).  Compared to two years ago, Pakistan is more likely to talk now about the need for stability in Afghanistan than strategic depth (the extent of this shift is open to debate). The United States has also moved closer towards meeting Pakistan's calls for a political settlement in Afghanistan by holding direct talks with representatives of the Taliban, according to several official sources with knowledge of those contacts.

On the subject of Taliban talks, the New York Times noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during a speech to the Asia Society last month, "appeared to recast longstanding preconditions for talks: that the insurgents lay down their arms, accept the Afghan Constitution and separate from Al Qaeda. Instead, she described them as 'necessary outcomes'. "

According to the NYT, "officially, the State Department played down the change in language, but a senior Western diplomat in Washington, who was familiar with the strategy behind Mrs. Clinton’s speech, said: 'It was not intentional to explicitly make preconditions into outcomes. But the text now leaves room for interpretation, which opens doors.'”

The other half of that story is to look at who first suggested that the United States focus on outcomes rather than preconditions for talks  -- Pakistan Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, who wrote a detailed letter to President Barack Obama last year outlining how he saw the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.