Tag: Afghanistan
OK Santa Claus, here’s what I want
I’m hoping it’s true Yemen’s President Saleh is coming to the U.S. As that eagle-eyed young journalist Adam Serwer tweeted: “not to prosecute him…would be, u know, awkward.” That set me thinking about other good fortune that might come our way this Christmas eve:
1. Syria’s president Bashar al Assad decides he really wants to practice opthamology in London.
2. North Korea’s “supreme commander” Kim Jong Un wants to see professional American basketball so much he decides to give up the nuclear nonsense and buy an NBA team for Pyongyang instead. Lots more prestige and very lucrative.
3. Iran follows suit, abandoning its pan-Islamist pretensions, separating mosque and state and restoring close relations with Israel. It also buys an NBA team for Tehran.
4. Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki declares peace on earth and good will towards Sunnis and Kurds, steps down from power and invites Iraqiyya to name a replacement.
5. The new Islamist-run governments in Tunisia, Egypt (and yes, eventually) Libya follow the Iranian example, which convinces them separation of mosque and state are the best protection for religious freedom and will encourage religious devotion, as it seems to do in the U.S.
6. The Saudis rise to the occasion and do likewise, making the king a constitutional monarch to boot.
7. Bahrain does the same. Yemen gets not only a democratic government but lots of water.
8. Without implacable enemies, Prime Minister Netanyahu reaches a quick agreement with the Palestinians, whose state is admitted to the UN with no opposition.
9. The Taliban see that their Islamist counterparts in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya are on to a good thing and reach a power sharing agreement with the Northern Alliance, jettisoning President Karzai and precipitating an early American withdrawal.
10. Pakistan follows up American withdrawal and the new government in Kabul by reaching a broad-ranging agreement with India, including self-determination for Kashmir.
11. Al Qaeda opens a resort on the Somali coast called “The Caliphate.”
12. I retire to observe the peaceful competition between China and the United States, who compete in ping pong but do everything else collaboratively.
If Santa Claus really does exist, children, he’ll bring me those things for the 12 days of Christmas. If he doesn’t, then…
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That was a signal, not a Biden gaffe
If you’ve been wondering whether there are really secret talks going on with the Taliban, Vice President Biden’s “gaffe” yesterday is confirmation: “the Taliban, per se, is not the enemy,” he said.
This is not a change in policy, but it is certainly a shift in emphasis. When President Obama announced the surge of troops into Afghanistan two years ago, he made it clear we were targeting not only Al Qaeda but also the Taliban. We sought, he said, to reverse the Taliban’s momentum and deny it the ability to overthrow the government, on our way to disrupting, defeating and dismantling Al Qaeda. He added that “We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens.”
The lyrics have changed, if not the tune. Now we are talking with the Taliban, with help from the Germans, whether the Afghan government likes it or not. I am not hearing a lot of talk about respect for human rights or even the requirement to abandon violence. It would appear to be sufficient for the Taliban to foreswear support to Al Qaeda and give up on toppling the Karzai government. Here is the fuller context of what Biden said:
…we are in a position where if Afghanistan ceased and desisted from being a haven for people who do damage and have as a target the United States of America and their allies, that’s good enough. That’s good enough. We’re not there yet.
Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That’s critical. There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us. So there’s a dual track here:
One, continue to keep the pressure on al Qaeda and continue to diminish them. Two, put the government in a position where they can be strong enough that they can negotiate with and not be overthrown by the Taliban. And at the same time try to get the Taliban to move in the direction to see to it that they, through reconciliation, commit not to be engaged with al Qaeda or any other organization that they would harbor to do damage to us and our allies.
Note that the White House backed him up. This was a signal to the Taliban that there is a door to a deal with the Americans that did not previously exist. If, as is rumored, Afghan detainees at Guantanamo are transferred to Kabul’s control, that will be a clear indication that we think the Taliban ready to walk through. Confidence building measures of this sort are an important part of the diplomatic game. A prisoner transfer would help the Taliban to sell the idea of a deal to their cadres and supporters.
The road ahead is still not an easy one. The options for a real deal with the Taliban are not appetizing. And the reaction to Biden’s trial balloon suggest it will be hard to sell to many people in the U.S. What if those prisoners are transferred and then released, or they escape? That’s not something the Obama administration will want to see happen in the lead-up to a presidential election.
So there is still a lot of uncertainty and risk on the path to a negotiated exit from Afghanistan. But that was a signal, not a Biden gaffe.
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You won’t find any of this on Amazon
Hanukkah, an apocryphal festival if there ever was one, starts this evening. In my family, we expected gifts each night. Here’s my wish list:
1. Release of those arrested post-election in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
2. A serious civilian government in Egypt ready to restrain the security forces and fulfill the ideals of the revolution.
3. International Criminal Court indictment of President Saleh of Yemen.
4. Turnover of power in Damascus to the Syrian National Council.
5. A transition in North Korea that opens the door to peaceful reform.
6. An end to military action in the Nuba Mountains and resolution of Sudan’s disputes with the South.
7. Quick and peaceful formation of a new government in Baghdad.
8. Success in negotiations with the Taliban that allows accelerated withdrawal of U.S. troops.
If you think this is grand, just wait until you see what I ask for the twelve days of Christmas!
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Half the world
The goal of this National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security is as simple as it is profound: to empower half the world’s population as equal partners in preventing conflict and building peace in countries threatened and affected by war, violence, and insecurity. Achieving this goal is critical to our national and global security.
Those are the opening lines of the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security unveiled yesterday at Georgetown University by Secretary of State Clinton. My friends at Inclusive Security asked me if I would blog on it–I hope they won’t be too disappointed in the results.
The plan is impeccably right-minded: it makes engagement and protection of women central to U.S. policy, complements existing efforts, establishes inclusion as the norm, emphasizes coordination and declares U.S. agencies accountable for implementing the plan. Nothing wrong with any of that.
The problem is that women are not often the problem. Only in rare instances do they join armed groups, chase civilians from their homes, rape and pillage or commit other war crimes. Men do most of these things, and men generally order these things done. When the time comes to make peace, the people you need at the negotiating table are the ones who control the ones with the guns.
The people you should want at the negotiating table are the ones without guns: victims, male or female, who have a stake in ending war and building peace. But only rarely are they brought in, mainly because the guys with guns don’t want them there. In my time working on the Bosnian Federation in the 1990s, I can’t recall an occasion on which a woman was in the room during a negotiation as a representative of one of the “formerly warring parties.” But neither was there ever a man in the room who hadn’t been a belligerent, who just wanted a normal life, who thought the safety and security of his family was more important than ethnic identity. Constituents for peace are a threat to belligerents, who want all the cards in their own hands, not in someone else’s.
This does not explain why women aren’t used as mediators. Of the current State Department special envoys and representatives who report directly to Hillary Clinton, only four of twenty-one are women, if I am counting correctly. Seven of the ten who do not report directly to the Secretary are women. Certainly these are higher numbers of women than at times in the past, but that 4/21 is not exactly smashing the glass ceiling. The UN, which naturally reflects not only American values, has never used a woman as a chief mediator, according to the report.
While I would be the last to quarrel with the need to protect women from sexual and gender-based violence during and after conflict, as well as their right to resources during recovery from violence, it is in the conflict prevention section that I think the report says some really interesting things. Let me quote at some length:
…gender-specific migration patterns or precipitous changes in the status or treatment of women and girls may serve as signals of broader vulnerability to the onset or escalation of conflict or atrocities. This focus will help to ensure that conflict prevention efforts are responsive to sexual and gender-based violence and other forms of violence affecting women and girls, and that our approaches are informed by differences in the experiences of men and women, girls and boys. Further, we will seek to better leverage women’s networks and organizations in activities aimed at arresting armed conflict or preventing spirals of violence.
Finally, the United States understands that successful conflict prevention efforts must rest on key investments in women’s economic empowerment, education, and health. A growing body of evidence shows that empowering women and reducing gender gaps in health, education, labor markets, and other areas is associated with lower poverty, higher economic growth, greater agricultural productivity, better nutrition and education of children, and other outcomes vital to the success of communities.
I’m not sure I am completely comfortable with the notion that women and girls are the canaries in the coal mine, but the notion that women’s employment, health and education, often viewed as the softer side of peacebuilding, are in fact central to the enterprise is one that I think has real validity. If Afghanistan has any chance at all of coming out all right from the last decade of hellish conflict, it is because of what has been done on health and education, two of the relative success stories in an otherwise bleak picture. Education is one of the failed sectors in Bosnia, where its segregation has helped to sustain ethnic nationalists in power. The role of women in North Korea, where they are increasingly responsible for providing livelihoods from small gardens, is likely to be fundamental.
We won’t really know if this “action plan” is effective for another year, or perhaps two or three. It is probably too much to hope that the forcefulness and clarity of purpose with which it was prepared will blow away the barriers that have stood for so long. But if it enables America to tap more of its own talent as well as draw on constituencies for peace in conflict-prone countries, it will have served a useful purpose.
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What threatens the United States?
The Council on Foreign Relations published its Preventive Priorities Survey for 2012 last week. What does it tell us about the threats the United States faces in this second decade of the 21st century?
Looking at the ten Tier 1 contingencies “that directly threaten the U.S. homeland, are likely to trigger U.S. military involvement because of treaty commitments, or threaten the supplies of critical U.S. strategic resources,” only three are defined as military threats:
- a major military incident with China involving U.S. or allied forces
- an Iranian nuclear crisis (e.g., surprise advances in nuclear weapons/delivery capability, Israeli response)
- a U.S.-Pakistan military confrontation, triggered by a terror attack or U.S. counterterror operations
Two others might also involve a military threat, though the first is more likely from a terrorist source:
- a mass casualty attack on the U.S. homeland or on a treaty ally
- a severe North Korean crisis (e.g., armed provocations, internal political instability, advances in nuclear weapons/ICBM capability)
The remaining five involve mainly non-military contingencies:
- a highly disruptive cyberattack on U.S. critical infrastructure (e.g., telecommunications, electrical power, gas and oil, water supply, banking and finance, transportation, and emergency services)
- a significant increase in drug trafficking violence in Mexico that spills over into the United States
- severe internal instability in Pakistan, triggered by a civil-military crisis or terror attacks
- political instability in Saudi Arabia that endangers global oil supplies
- intensification of the European sovereign debt crisis that leads to the collapse of the euro, triggering a double-dip U.S. recession and further limiting budgetary resources
Five of the Tier 2 contingencies “that affect countries of strategic importance to the United States but that do not involve a mutual-defense treaty commitment” are also at least partly military in character, though they don’t necessarily involve U.S. forces:
- a severe Indo-Pak crisis that carries risk of military escalation, triggered by major terror attack
- rising tension/naval incident in the eastern Mediterranean Sea between Turkey and Israel
- a major erosion of security and governance gains in Afghanistan with intensification of insurgency or terror attacks
- a South China Sea armed confrontation over competing territorial claims
- a mass casualty attack on Israel
But Tier 2 also involves predominantly non-military threats to U.S. interests, albeit with potential for military consequences:
- political instability in Egypt with wider regional implications
- an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Syria, with potential outside intervention
- an outbreak of widespread civil violence in Yemen
- rising sectarian tensions and renewed violence in Iraq
- growing instability in Bahrain that spurs further Saudi and/or Iranian military action
Likewise Tier 3 contingencies “that could have severe/widespread humanitarian consequences but in countries of limited strategic importance to the United States” include military threats to U.S. interests:
- military conflict between Sudan and South Sudan
- increased conflict in Somalia, with continued outside intervention
- renewed military conflict between Russia and Georgia
- an outbreak of military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, possibly over Nagorno Karabakh
And some non-military threats:
- heightened political instability and sectarian violence in Nigeria
- political instability in Venezuela surrounding the October 2012 elections or post-Chavez succession
- political instability in Kenya surrounding the August 2012 elections
- an intensification of political instability and violence in Libya
- violent election-related instability in the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- political instability/resurgent ethnic violence in Kyrgyzstan
I don’t mean to suggest in any way that the military is irrelevant to these “non-military” threats. But it is not the only tool needed to meet these contingencies, or even to meet the military ones. And if you begin thinking about preventive action, which is what the CFR unit that publishes this material does, there are clearly major non-military dimensions to what is needed to meet even the threats that take primarily military form.
And for those who read this blog because it publishes sometimes on the Balkans, please note: the region are nowhere to be seen on this list of 30 priorities for the United States.
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Diplomacy imitates confused reality
Yesterday’s Bonn conference on Afghanistan reflected all too starkly the war. Lots of countries showed up, but Pakistan–certainly among the most important–did not. The Taliban weren’t there either. Iran was, but sounding out of tune with both the Americans and Afghans, who emphasized the need for continuing assistance and foreign military presence. Tehran blames the whole mess on foreign intervention. Afghanistan was looking for long-term commitment, not specific pledges. There was no progress on the country’s confusing current reality.
The best I can say for the event is that Hillary Clinton knows what is important: she emphasized rule of law, including the fight against corruption, and underlined the importance of being realistic about what can be achieved. Some might claim that these two points are mutually contradictory, but that’s the confusing reality.
I am surprised that the pressures for withdrawal from Afghanistan are not stronger than they are. I guess having an opposition devoted to “winning” gives a Democratic president a free hand to remain longer, if he wants to do so and can keep his own party in line. But it is hard to see how we’ll make it to 2014, when most of the U.S. troops are supposed to be on their way home, unless there is progress in negotiating with the Taliban.
No one seems to think that is happening, but I admit it would be hard to tell from outside. Negotiations of this sort go slowly and badly until suddenly they go well. It is worth trying, if only because success in is so important to rescuing the overall effort from failure.
Today’s sectarian attacks on Shia targets, which are unusual in Afghanistan, can be interpreted at least two ways: either there is a Taliban splinter group (or Al Qaeda) that is trying to wreck ongoing negotiations, or the Taliban have decided to widen their war in a sectarian direction, hoping to bring more chaos to Kabul and Afghanistan generally (one of the attacks took place in the usually quiet northern town Mazar-i-Sharif). More confused reality.
PS: The Taliban have joined in condemnation of the attacks. A Pakistani group with ties to al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Alami, has now claimed responsibility.
PPS: Those asking for the U.S. to complete the job in Afghanistan seem to me to be asking for more than we are likely to give.
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