AfPak — It’s his baby now
On a day when the most powerful people in Washington were discussing Afghanistan and Pakistan, there was one man who might be excused for looking a little shell-shocked.
Frank Ruggiero, who stepped in as acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan (SRAP) following the sudden death of his boss Richard Holbrooke on Monday, had little time to prepare for his first big outing as President Barack Obama’s pointman for the biggest foreign policy headache facing the administration.
Ruggiero spoke to the press after Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates formally unveiled their official review of the year-old Afghan strategy, which said enough progress was being made to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in July despite fragile and uneven gains against the Taliban insurgents.
Clinton — accompanied by virtually Holbrooke’s entire office — joined Ruggiero at the press conference in an orchestrated display of continuity and solidarity.
“I have complete confidence in this SRAP team,” Clinton said, adding that Ruggiero had hit the ground running as he took over the duties of the office.
Ruggiero certainly brings a different style to the job than Holbrooke, whose outsized personality and unbridled enthusiasms had made him for decades one of the United States’ most outspoken and recognizable diplomats.
Washington Extra – Analyze This
A confusing labyrinth. That is how the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) described the American development effort in Afghanistan, in a damning report on how $17.7 billion in aid and reconstruction money was doled out to 7,000 contractors between 2007 and 2009 with little or no coordination.
With all the criticism that surrounds the Afghan government and the tactics employed by the U.S. military, the major shortcomings in the West’s development effort in Afghanistan sometimes seem to get too little attention. The U.S. Special Representative to the region Richard Holbrooke once said he had “never seen anything remotely resembling the mess” he inherited in terms of the development effort, while former Afghan Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani once described the aid effort to me as “dysfunctional and lacking accountability.” It is a view shared by many experts, who see it as a major reason why the West has failed to win more Afghan hearts and minds, and why things are now not going as well as President Barack Obama would have hoped.
Incredibly, SIGAR had tried to analyze contracting in Afghanistan for the years 2002-7, but found much of the data the government agencies had compiled prior to 2007 was “too poor to be analyzed.”
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For more of this special report by Murray Waas, read here.
Holbrooke: No “dysfunction” on U.S. Afghan Team
Barack Obama’s team running the Afghan war has its issues — but is it dysfunctional? No, sir, according to Richard Holbrooke.
” I have worked in every Democratic administration since the Kennedy administration, and I know dysfunctionality when I see it,” Holbrooke, the administration’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told the PBS NewsHour program.
” There are always personal differences and ambitions, but this is just not true. It’s not a dysfunctional relationship.”
Holbrooke’s interview with anchor Gwen Ifill came after a rough couple of weeks for Washington’s Afghan policy planners. Obama sacked his top commander in the region, General Stanley McChrystal, after the bombshell Rolling Stone article which included disparaging comments from McChrystal’s team about civilian directors of the war effort — Holbrooke included. And McChrystal’s replacement, General David Petraeus, took over with a warning that there would be no swift turnaround after nine years of war.
Holbrooke said he was appalled by the McChrystal fiasco, but didn’t take it personally. He also said he wasn’t holding any grudges against the general, who “went out of his way” to offer a personal apology. “In fact, he woke me in the middle of the night to apologize,” Holbrooke said.
As for Petraeus, Holbrooke had only good things to say, calling him one of the most outstanding military officers the United States had ever produced.
“And I have known them all back to General Westmoreland in Vietnam. So, I’m very pleased with where we are,” Holbrooke said.
Holbrooke hits the airwaves in new push
When President Barack Obama snuck into Afghanistan unannounced last month, a notable omission on Air Force One was his special representative for the region, veteran diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
Leaving out the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan on Obama’s very first trip to Kabul as president raised a few eyebrows.
Was Holbrooke’s star fading? Were frictions between his office at the State Department and the White House coming to a head? Would tensions with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has made a string of anti-Western comments over recent weeks, cause further problems for the Obama administration as it seeks to turn around the 8-year war?
But several U.S. officials say it is premature to write off Holbrooke’s fortunes.
In fact, the veteran diplomat’s profile has been raised in recent days, including his own trip to Kabul last weekend with U.S. General David Petraeus when they met up with Karzai.
Holbrooke appeared on MSNBC on Wednesday, declaring that tensions with the Afghan leader were over and that reports of friction were overblown.
In the coming days, Holbrooke will appear on several other news outlets. On Friday night, Holbrooke is giving an hour-long interview with broadcaster Charlie Rose on whose show he has appeared at least three times over the past year.
General Kayani steals the spotlight at Pakistani embassy party
Pakistan’s foreign minister heads his country’s delegation to Washington this week for high-level talks, but there was no mistaking who was the star at a reception at the Pakistani Embassy on Tuesday night: Army General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.
Guests crowded around Kayani at the annual Pakistani National Day party at the embassy, posing for photos and jostling for the military leader’s ear. Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, also drew those eager for photographic souvenirs of the occasion, but not such a feeding frenzy as that around Kayani.
U.S. senators and Obama administration officials lined up to speak to the slim and dapper general, who Pakistani media say rules the roost back home but is also central to U.S. relations with Islamabad.
Pakistani Ambassador Husain Haqqani, who has had his own tensions with the military in the past, heaped praise on Kayani during his introductory remarks for Qureshi.
“He (Kayani) embodies the conviction of the Pakistani armed forces, not just to defend the frontiers of Pakistan but also to ensure the continuity of constitutional democratic rule in accordance with the aspirations of our people of Pakistan,” said Haqqani before Qureshi took the podium.
Since he has been in the United States, Kayani has had a busy schedule, meeting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army General David Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, and other senior U.S. military officials.
To All indies,
Let me clear you all fools specially “khuidude” (so called paid indian scholar) whose poisonous lecture is the same as we are listening from day 1 since the birth of pakistan. For God sake stop this bloody propaganda that “I am Muslim or I m Pakistani and believe that india is far superior than Pakistan……. and India is peace loving…. blah blah blah”; every one knows the bloody hindu mentality and condition of Muslims in India and how they are treated there. As far as democracy is concerened “Why the hell you dont give democratic right to Kashmir? (so called democracy)”, Now lets see your 7 times Army, In 1948 Pak Army defeated you and occupied major areas of Kashmir, when nehru had to run for help to UN and promised that he will give right of self decision to Kashmiris; then in 1965 when hindu “soormas” attaceked Pakistan they were beaten back by a far less equipped and far less in number Pak Army and Indian PM had to beg Ayub Khan to end the war; Yes in 1971 indian Army was able to defeat Pak Army but the only reason for it was the unstable internal conditions of bangladesh where people refused to support Pak Army and thats why Pak Army had to surrender in Bengal, had the bengalis been more supportive in 1971, Miss Gandhi must be the next to beg “War End”
Is Holbrooke’s “bulldozer” style working?
Dubbed the “bulldozer” for his tough guy tactics in Balkan negotiations, U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke has been making waves in South Asia recently.
U.S. embassies in New Delhi and Kabul have been scrambling over the past week to deal with local fallout from statements made by Washington’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Statements that often go by unnoticed in Washington are parsed word for word in a region where there are deeply-held suspicions over U.S. intentions.
One such example is Holbrooke’s comments at a forum at Harvard last week where he was asked about re-integration efforts with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Holbrooke made clear — as he has many times before — that the United States was not in talks with the Taliban but offered up that almost every family of the southern Pashtun tribes had someone involved with the Taliban.
“There are plenty of indirect contacts between Pashtun on both sides – almost every Pashtun family in the south has family or friends who are involved with the Taliban – it’s in the fabric of society,” said Holbrooke in remarks released by his office.
Almost immediately, that comment went viral in Afghanistan and was seen by many as a slight to President Hamid Karzai, himself a Pashtun.
@ajeek
correction is in order. The Taliban is now the name for the Pashtoon resistance group with very strong tribal leadership. The LeT is made up of individual kashmiris from the indian occupied kashmir. Call them insurgent indians or kashmiris but do not make them Pakistanis. Israel has been following the same strategy with the palastinians.
Holbrooke: my relationship with Karzai is good, really
Absolutely they are on good terms…
Richard Holbrooke, special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, once again declared his respect for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
In fact, he feels so strongly about reports that the two don’t get along he wrote a letter to The Washington Post.
“I did not, and never have, spoken harshly to Mr. Karzai, ” said Holbrooke in the letter to the editor, which was published on Thursday. He was responding to a story earlier this week in the newspaper which said he had spoken harshly to the re-elected Afghan leader.
“As for my relations with President Karzai, whom I have known for more than five years, they remain cordial, correct and respectful,” added Holbrooke, who is known for his combative style. He said the same last month when he was pressed about his relations with Karzai.
Holbrooke wrote in the letter that he had been in direct contact with Karzai since he was declared the winner of the fraud-plagued Afghan election this week.
Holbrooke is expected to travel to Afghanistan soon. No date yet. Stay tuned.
Protest resignation over Afghan plans puts Obama team on edge
On Monday, the State Department sent out its no. 2 official to tout how it was managing to get U.S. civilians out into the field in Afghanistan, with nearly 1,000 expected to be in place by year-end.
A day later, it was in damage control mode after the resignation of one of its star employees was plastered on the front page of The Washington Post and on the Internet.
In an emotionally-charged four-page letter dated September 10, Matthew Hoh said he was quitting because he had lost confidence in the war effort and whether it was worth the blood spilled there.
Hoh’s letter is notable because he was seen as just the kind of person the State Department wants in Afghanistan. A former Marine and then Department of Defense civilian, he served in Iraq from 2004 to 2007. On a one-year contract with the State Department, he was serving as the senior civilian representative in Afghanistan’s Zabul province.
Just as President Barack Obama is reviewing his approach in Afghanistan, Hoh said he had “doubts and reservations” not only about the current but also future strategy in the eight-year war.
“I fail to see the value or the worth in continued U.S. casualties or expenditures of resources in support of the Afghan government in what is, truly, a 35-year old civil war,” said Hoh in his resignation letter to the State Department’s human resources director.
In language that must make the State Department cringe, Hoh said the United States was no more than a “supporting actor” in a tragedy and that the U.S. presence had only served to further destabilize the country as well as its neighbor Pakistan.
S.R. Henry
Its spelled troops.
I think the United States needs to take care of their own business at home before nosing in on problems abroad. Sure the situation in Afghanistan is unfortunate, but I agree with Matt Hoh, the U.S. does not know what it is doing there anymore. It was originally about Al-Qaeda, but lately, has anyone heard anything about advancements on finding Osama bin Laden or any important arrests? Nope. I think the way things are going, U.S. occupation is going continue to drag on for years with the result of little or no improvement. This is with more, or with less troops there. I think to make some good progress, the United States needs to pressure Afghan leaders to clean up their governmental system and dismiss corrupt officials. Only then will policies and reform for the people of Afghanistan will become more transparent, and as a result, Afghanistan will be able to build a structure of democratic government that is free of corruption and is able to serve its people.
Holbrooke jokes about Kerry’s Karzai eclipse
Power plays are always a tricky business in Washington and sometimes it’s better to make a joke out of it. Or not.
Special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, used that tactic on Friday when asked about reports that veteran Senator John Kerry is stealing his limelight.
“I’d like to make a joke and say, ‘I’m always happy to be eclipsed by John Kerry.’ But then you’ll take it seriously and then I’ll cause more problems,” Holbrooke told reporters.
Kerry was in Kabul earlier this week with a mission to convince incumbent President Hamid Karzai to agree to a run-off election after the flawed first round in August. Apparently Holbrooke was also working the phones as was U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
But it was Kerry who grabbed the headlines, prompting journalists to question whether he was the de facto secretary of state and key player when it came to dealing with Karzai.
While Kerry was prodding Karzai in Kabul, Holbrooke said he was in Washington helping Clinton prepare for meetings with President Barack Obama as he reviews U.S. strategy on Afghanistan. Holbrooke’s last visit to Kabul was in August when he met several times with Karzai. Some of those meetings were said to be heated.
But on Friday, Holbrooke brushed aside talk of strained relations with Karzai, saying they got along just “fine,” he had “respect” for the Afghan leader and looked forward to seeing him soon.
Mia Farrow’s son working for Holbrooke on Pakistan
The sons of actors and presidents have been in the news a lot lately.
Take Mia Farrow’s 21-year-old son Ronan, who was all over the blogosphere today for his role as liaison between the office of star “Afpak” diplomat Richard Holbrooke and nongovernmental groups working in Pakistan.
Several NGO officials said they were taken aback when Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, introduced his protege at a meeting in Washington this week as a “special liaison” on Pakistan.
“It was a surprise but we don’t see this really as a big deal. He’s not the only point of contact for us,” said one NGO of Farrow’s appointment.
Ronan Farrow, whose father is famous director Woody Allen, has known Holbrooke for years apparently, and helped the veteran diplomat before.
What experience does the recent Yale Law School graduate bring to the job?
He has worked with the United Nations Children’s Fund and also helped his mother in her well-publicized advocacy work for Sudan’s Darfur region.
You missed another son. Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi’s son Zain was reported interning at the the office of Senator John Kerry, author of the Kerry-Lugar bill that parceled out $ 7.5 billion U.S tax-payer money to Pakistan.
