Day: May 1, 2012
Red lines drawn
The audience for the President’s speech last night on the Strategic Partnership agreement with Afghanistan was the American electorate, but the agreement itself is more interesting for the messages it sends to President Karzai, the Taliban and the Afghan people. In part it sets out American red lines, that is limits beyond which the Washington is not prepared to go. There are also some Afghan red lines, drawn to hem in the Americans. What are they?
Here’s a sample extracted from the text:
Afghanistan reaffirms its strong commitment to inclusive and pluralistic democratic governance, including free, fair and transparent elections in which all of the people of Afghanistan participate freely and without internal or external interference….Afghanistan reaffirms its commitment to protecting human and political rights…Afghanistan reaffirms its commitment to ensuring that any kind of discrimination and distinction between citizens of Afghanistan shall be forbidden…Afghanistan shall ensure and advance the essential role of women in society, so that they may fully enjoy their economic, social, political, civil and cultural rights.
These clauses are clearly intended to limit what can be agreed in the talks with the Taliban, as well as to fence in Karzai. No selling out women and minorities.
Contrary to what some have claimed, the agreement does not cover the status of U.S. forces, which continues under existing agreements until a new one is negotiated, with a goal of doing so within a year. The existing agreements are to remain in force until the new one is negotiated, which is good since the one-year goal may not hold.
The agreement also sets out some Afghan red lines. The United States
…reaffirms that it does not seek permanent military facilities in Afghanistan, or a presence that is a threat to Afghanistan’s neighbors. The United States further pledges not to use Afghan territory or facilities as a launching point for attacks against other countries.
The “permanent military facilities” is a bit of a sop, since the U.S. claims none of its overseas bases are permanent. They just tend to stay around for a long time. Afghanistan will have sought the pledge about launching attacks to reassure Pakistan and Iran, but “pledges” are less than complete commitments, and of course Afghanistan can always agree (overtly or covertly) to such operations.
The U.S. says it will try to get money for the Afghan security forces year by year. No amount is specified, but it is likely to be a few billion. The U.S. also says
…it shall regard with grave concern any external aggression against Afghanistan.
If someone attacks, the Afghans get consultations to decide on an appropriate response. This is pretty thin gruel, far short of a mutual defense pact.
There is some handwaving about regional cooperation, but the language is aspirational and the proof can only come with the pudding. Ditto the stuff on economic cooperation, including the fight against corruption, drugs, money laundering and organized crime.
The U.S. pledges to put 50% of its aid through the government and to align 80% with Afghan priorities. Those would have been decent goals years ago: a lot of our aid goes directly to U.S. contractors and grantees and never enters the government’s field of vision. Try running a country without knowing what your biggest donors are up to.
The agreement sets up a bilateral commission, which is standard operating procedure.
If this is all it takes to get us out of the longest war in our history, we’re lucky. It will likely be enough to get us through the NATO Summit in Chicago next month, which was one of the purposes of getting it signed now. Beyond that, there are a lot of uncertainties, but at least we’ve got some red lines drawn, on both sides.
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All deliberate speed
President Obama flew in secret today to Kabul, where he signed with President Karzai the strategic partnership agreement that will govern the bilateral relationship with the United States after security responsibility is turned over to the Afghans by the end of 2014. At best, this agreement marks the final, peacebuilding phase after the longest war in American history.
The President’s speech will be given at 4 am local time, which means it isn’t intended for Afghans. The target is the American electorate, tired of the war and focused on domestic problems. It will be hard to make Afghanistan resonate with his fellow countrymen, but he will try.
The agreement, I imagine he will say, is the responsible way to end a war that America undertook in self defense against Al Qaeda and the Taliban authorities who sheltered it. We have succeeded. But Afghanistan will need our help and support for long into the future: it is a poor country that has sacrificed a great deal and will need our continued help to keep extremists at bay even after its security forces take on the primary responsibility.
I am an Obamista, but even to me this is not the full story. The price tag for the help we provide Afghanistan will be billions per year for the foreseeable future. Leaving aside the questions of how many U.S. troops will stay and the capacity (or lack thereof) of the Afghan security forces, there are still has a lot of wrinkles that need ironing out: Pakistan’s refusal to deal Al Qaeda a death blow or to rein in the Taliban, the so far inconclusive negotiations with them, growing Taliban influence in some areas, the corruption that is rife in Karzai’s government, the failure to create anything like decent governance in most of Afghanistan, the shaky economic foundations on which the Afghan government sits, the role of Iran in Afghanistan, and whether some U.S. troops will stay longer than currently planned.
We are not so much getting out of Afghanistan victoriously as getting out before it all flies apart. Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t want us to stay, and I’ve said it is time to go, without however destabilizing the situation. We cannot and should not stay to iron out all the wrinkles, but we should at least be aware that they are there and may cause difficulty in the future.
Mitt Romney, John McCain and others will complain that we are not doing enough–that we should stay in Afghanistan until we’ve ensured that things will not come apart, or the Taliban back to power. But if they think that is likely to be a view popular with the American electorate, they are fooling themselves. By a wide margin, Americans want out of Afghanistan to take care of priorities at home.
I’ll be happily surprised if ten years from now we’ll be proud of what Afghanistan has become. But move we must, with what the Supreme Court famously called “all deliberate speed.”
PS: I haven’t seen the agreement yet, but here is a White House fact sheet.
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Danger, anxiety, fear
Mona Makram-Ebeid, a determined human and women’s rights advocate and Egyptian politician, returned to the Middle East Institute today, just a few days more than a year since her last appearance there. A year ago she was upbeat about the Egyptian revolution, sure that the arc of history might be long but in the end bends towards justice. To be fair, she also noted the weakness of Egypt’s institutions, the strength of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the need to keep the army in line with the demands of the revolution.
This year, she is much less confident about where the arc bends. The atmosphere in Cairo is one of “danger, anxiety, fear.” She has resigned from the parliament, along with many of the other “liberals.” Egypt is in constitutional limbo, with the work of its constitution-drafting body frozen by a court judgment and elections still scheduled for May 23-24. Far from being “de-mystified,” as she anticipated last year, the Muslim Brotherhood won decisively in elections against fragmented liberals and is seeking a monopoly of power. She seemed uncertain that their current candidate would remain in the presidential race; he might withdraw still in favor of Adel Abol Fotouh, who already has gained Salafist and more moderate Islamist backing.
Hope lies in several odd directions. It may be possible, she thought, to restore at least part of the 1971 Egyptian constitution before the election, so that the new president will have limited powers rather than those that existed under the Mubarak regime. Al Azhar, the Egyptian mosque/university that is authoritative in much of the Islamic world, has issued good statements on human rights and is working on another on women’s rights. Amr Moussa, the veteran Egyptian politician and former Arab League leader, offers the best hope in the elections, building on a base Makram-Ebeid described as the tourist industry, Coptic Christians, women, liberals, leftists and Sufis.
Still, counter-revolution looms and stability is threatened. Military support is vital to keep things moving in the right direction and avoid internal strife. The choice Egypt faces is between a civil and a theocratic state, which is what the Muslim Brotherhood really wants.
The U.S. should not let Egypt’s mistreatment of American nongovernmental organizations and their democracy-promoting staffs determine its reaction to the situation in Egypt. It needs to take a more hands-off approach, letting things evolve in accordance with Egypt’s own internal dynamics. American support for free trade and investment would make a big difference in a country facing a severe economic crisis.
Presentations of this sort from Egypt’s liberal democrats elicit in me two contradictory emotions: sympathy for their unenviable plight and disdain for their all too obvious inability to set things right without resorting to military intervention. The notion that Amr Moussa, a fossil of the Mubarak era, Al Azhar and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces are going to be the saviors of democracy strikes me as less than likely. But in a bleak landscape, Makram-Ebeid is saying they represent the best hope for countering a sharp turn in the theocratic direction. Egypt needs saving, from itself.
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