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Save me from Mickey Mouse!

Mickey Mouse is what my generation calls something superfluous, silly or trite.  Morning Edition today brought me news of American efforts to revitalize tourism in Pakistan’s Swat Valley:

That’s the Mickey Mouse I’d like to be saved from, because it is the kind of international assistance that gives international assistance a bad name. I’m not against Pakistanis vacationing in nice hotels, but I can’t think of any reason at all why U.S. taxpayer money should be spent trying to make it happen.  And there are at least 137 million reasons why it should not (that’s the number of U.S. income tax returns).

This example raises broader questions about American assistance to Pakistan.  Christine Fair suggested in testimony yesterday:

U.S. efforts to elicit changes in Pakistani society through its USAID program are misguided. First USAID’s efficacy can be and should be questioned. The U.S. Congress has had numerous hearings about aid to Pakistan—and Afghanistan—and the objective results of these engagements have been less than satisfactory given the price tag. This does not mean that the United States should not continue to help Pakistan with its problems. However, it should do so with less publicity and with greater focus on projects that are executable such as power, roads and other infrastructure.

I don’t agree with Christine’s emphasis on infrastructure, as I’d rather see that done through competent multilateral organizations (she is sympathetic with that option as well).   U.S. assistance should be focused more on civil society and democracy support.   If that means we can’t spend the $1 billion and more appropriated for assistance to Pakistan, fine with me.

Christine’s broader point is that we should stop expecting Pakistan to forge a broad, strategic relationship with the United States when our strategic interests diverge.  Instead, she recommends a more transactional relationship–deals that involve  a well-defined quid pro quo in which what each side gives and gets is clear and verifiable.

I have my doubts that will work either.  But it is certainly a direction worth trying before we deep six the relationship with Pakistan altogether, which the Congress may be tempted to do (and has done several times in the past).  If we get even a 50 per cent return on our money, it would be better than we are doing today.

In the meanwhile, let’s get rid of Mickey Mouse projects, which put at risk the already minimal 1 per cent of the Federal budget devoted to foreign affairs.

PS,  also November 4:  a USAID friend says I am completely wrong about the tourism effort in Swat, which is important because of the recent history of the fight against extremism, so here is what I could find readily about it.  Certainly more informative than the NPR piece.  Judge for yourself.

Afghanistan is a Vietnam that matters

Expectations are low for this week’s “regional” meeting in Turkey on Afghanistan.  Until Pakistan is convinced to reign in the Taliban, regional cooperation doesn’t mean much.

I suppose the Istanbul meeting may, as the diplomats say, set in motion a process that will eventually produce some sort of regional security and economic arrangement, but that kind of goobledy gook is unlikely to save many Pakistani, Afghan or American lives anytime soon. Afghanistan’s very real importance to the “New Silk Road” cannot be realized under current conditions.

The U.S. military is anxious to reassure us that the overall number of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan is down this year, but the insurgents seem more capable of reaching into Kabul and other formerly safe areas.  Twelve or so Americans died in an improvised explosive device attack Saturday in the capital.  That’s not the kind of mass infantry attack on American outposts of which they were capable a few years ago, but it sure as hell makes people in the capital nervous.

The problem, as the Pentagon’s latest report to Congress makes strikingly clear, has as much to do with governance inside Afghanistan as cross-border infiltration.  Under the heading Weak Afghan Government Capacity Puts Progress At Risk, the Pentagon says:

However, the capacity of the Afghan Government has been limited by a number of issues, including the political dispute in the Lower House of the Afghan Parliament, the continued absence of an International Monetary Fund program, widespread corruption, and the lack of political progress in enacting key reforms announced at the July 2010 Kabul Conference. Setbacks in governance and development continue to slow the reinforcement of security gains and threaten the legitimacy and long-term viability of the Afghan Government. The United States and the international community continue to work closely with their Afghan partners to address these challenges.

This is the polite version.  What it means is that few have confidence in the Karzai government, which appears incapable of curbing corruption or reaching workable agreements with even its peaceful political opponents.

Hillary Clinton has stopped talking about “clear, hold, build” and has started talking “fight, talk, build.”   The new mantra has the virtue of necessity.  We’ve done pretty well at fighting and clearing insurgents from parts of Afghanistan, but we don’t have enough troops to hold and the Afghans aren’t proving good at it.  So we are looking for a negotiated solution (that’s the talk part), one that would presumably bring the Taliban in from the cold and give them a slice of the governing pie, especially in the south and east.

That’s the build part, but the questsion is what can be built on a foundation as weak as the Karzai government?  This could begin looking more and more like Vietnam, where all the metrics were favorable, an agreement was negotiated, but the incapacity and illegitimacy of the government in the South eventually opened the door to the north’s military superiority once the Americans had withdrawn.  Those like John Barry who drew the analogy almost two years ago are looking prescient.

The saving grace could be this:  the Taliban are even more unpopular with Afghans than Karzai.  If the Afghan army can improve enough between now and 2014, Afghans–even Pashtuns–may be willing to defy and reject people who didn’t have much to offer last time they took over.

The big difference between Afghanistan and Vietnam is that the United States really does have national security interests in Afghanistan and especially in nuclear-armed Pakistan.  It is hard to see how the we can protect those interests if withdrawal from Afghanistan ends the way withdrawal from Vietnam did.  Afghanistan is looking like a Vietnam that matters.