Tag: United States
Long war, long peace
The United States and Afghanistan today initialed a strategic partnership agreement that reportedly commits Washington to support Kabul for ten years after the U.S. turnover of security responsibility by the end of 2014. The New York Times says the text was not released, and it hasn’t yet crossed my computer screen, but it apparently includes a substantial financial commitment to the Afghan security forces of at least several billion dollars per year.
This is the good news out of Afghanistan, where things have not been going well on many fronts. But I attended a relatively upbeat meeting last week. The ground rules prevent me from quoting or identifying anyone. Here is what I heard some well-informed people say.
The counter-insurgency campaign in Afghanistan is relatively recent, dating officially only from 2009 though it had started in some places earlier. Before that, Afghanistan was shorted in order to fund and staff Iraq. And military action focused on persistent, targeted attacks rather than protecting the people. Only in 2011 did we get maximum pressure exerted on insurgents with use of the American surge forces and the Afghan army and police, who responded well to recent coordinated attacks in Kabul and other places. Finally we are now able not only to clear but also to hold. We need to keep the remaining surge troops in place through 2013 for maximum effect, but this should be considered only after the 2012 “fighting year” has ended in the fall (when of course there is also an American election). It won’t cost much, only a pencil-dust few billion. Build wasn’t mentioned.
The political part of the strategy seems to consist of not much more than the 2014 national election (possibly to be moved up to 2013). There is no plan for provincial elections, despite the Afghan constitution and the importance of local governance. A peaceful transfer of power at the national level would be a first for Afghanistan and an important precedent. State Department has little capacity to do more than help ensure that. Expectations for governance should be minimal. The best we can do is leave behind Afghan security forces capable of maintaining a relatively stable environment in which governance can gradually improve.
Tony Cordesman has detailed the uncertainties of a sad economy, another vital ingredient to overall success in Afghanistan.
The strategy now is basically one of Afghanization of security responsibilities over the remaining two years and six months or so. Even for this narrow objective to succeed, much more responsibility will have to be shifted to the Afghan security forces more rapidly than is currently the practice. Embedding a handful with American troops is far from sufficient to develop the kind of independent operational capability that they will need soon, but American troops have been reluctant to sacrifice operational effectiveness for a longer-term training objective. Also critical, but still rudimentary, are Afghan logistical capabilities.
What is the cost of failure in Afghanistan? Extremists will return there and may provide Al Qaeda with safe haven. The international community will lose confidence in American leadership. It could become far more difficult to organize coalitions needed in the future in other parts of the world.
The war has been a long one. If there is to be peace, it will take time to consolidate and continue to cost the American tax payer for at least another decade.
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Youtube peace?
I guess this is worth the try:
Of course it won’t work without other efforts. ICG suggests that what is needed is a commitment to comprehensive reform in Khartoum:
To encourage reforms in Khartoum, a united international community, particularly the African Union (AU), Arab League and UN, should put pressure on the NCP to accept a free and unhindered national dialogue aimed at creating a national stabilisation program that includes defined principles for establishing an inclusive constitutional arrangement accepted by all. A national reform agenda should include a program that accommodates all the people of Sudan and supports inclusive governance. The NCP must make genuine efforts to end impunity in Darfur, Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile and allow humanitarian agencies unhindered access, as well as support the efforts of the AU-UN Hybrid Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and UNISFA to protect civilians.
Wishing won’t make it so, and it is unlikely to happen any time soon.
American Special Envoy Princeton Lyman claims all concerned want to avoid all out war, but in the meanwhile Khartoum is celebrating the supposed reconquest of the Heglig oil field, which South Sudan had captured but also agreed to vacate.
At this point, President Obama should be satisfied if Khartoum and Juba come to the table to resolve their differences on oil, which is the issue that has caused the recent dustup and the one both sides think most worth fighting about. ICG’s comprehensive reform may have to wait.
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The 90 day ultimatum
United States Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice used today’s passage of UNSC Security Council resolution 2043 authorizing deployment of 300 UN observers to Syria to issue an ultimatum: the Syrian government needs to fully comply with the six-point Annan plan or else.
Or else what? The explicit threat was not to renew the observer mission. But Rice was trying to imply more than that:
…let there be no doubt: we, our allies and others in this body are planning and preparing for those actions that will be required of us all, if the Asad regime persists in the slaughter of the Syrian people.
There are not a lot of good options out there. A Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday revealed few. Tightening sanctions is one, but the Russians resisted including that in the resolution. Maybe they will be willing to do it if Damascus continues to defy the Security Council for another 90 days. An arms embargo is another. But arms embargoes are normally enforced against a country, not only a government. The Russians are unlikely to allow one to pass that applies to Damascus but not the Free Syria Army. While I am not in favor of a violent uprising, it would be profoundly unjust to deny Syrians the means to defend themselves.
Then there is the option Rice was presumably trying to imply: military action, by NATO and/or a coalition of the willing. I still see little prospect of this happening, though three more months of Syrian government defiance could change the picture.
Unfortunately what the 90-day ultimatum does in the meanwhile is to give Bashar al Assad a three-month hunting license. It is now in his interest to get the observers in as quickly as possible, since no military action can be taken while they are deployed in Syria. He’ll try to use the 90 days to bag as many protesters as possible. It would have been far better to deploy them with no fixed time limit, or with a shorter one requiring re-authorization by the Security Council. The reports the Secretary General is required to make every 15 days are a useful mechanism to keep international attention focused on implementation of the Annan plan, but they don’t provide the same leverage that a shorter authorization would have done.
That said, the key is to get the Syrian army out of artillery range of population centers. Randa Slim wisely reminds us that local leaders in Syria have the capacity to put hundreds of thousands–maybe millions–into the streets if peace protests are permitted, as required by the Annan plan. This she suggests would be a game changer.
I agree. Syria needs no more than a couple of days of relative peace for the people to show unequivocally and peacefully their preference for Bashar al Assad’s departure. If the observers can help to give them those days, their deployment will be worthwhile. If not, withdrawal in 90 days will be the right move. But then it will be incumbent on the Obama Administration to have a plan for what comes next.
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A deal not to make a deal?
Eric Shu, jack of all trades around peacefare.net, offers another write-up, this time of Monday’s Carnegie Endowment event on Negotiating with Iran: Istanbul and Its Aftermath. Eric becomes available next month when his Middle East Institute internship expires. Anyone out there need a fine Mandarin-speaking assistant with an excellent Brown education?
Over the weekend of April 14-15, Istanbul hosted negotiations between the P5+1 (United States, China, Russia, France, Britain, and Germany) and Iran, the first official meeting since the talks broke down in January 2011. Catherine Ashton, EU foreign policy chief and lead representative of the P5+1, stated afterwards that the talks were “constructive and useful.” No concrete agreements were reached other than to schedule another meeting on May 23 in Baghdad.
What does this mean for the players involved? Is this a success or another ploy by Iran to drag out the negotiations, giving itself more time to enrich uranium?
At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on Monday, April 16, Karim Sadjadpour, associate at Carnegie and author of Reading Khamenei, moderated a discussion that focused on the nuclear negotiations with Iran and the political ramifications of the meeting.
Vali Nasr, newly appointed Dean of JHU-SAIS and former senior advisor in the State Department, began the discussion with an argument for “maintaining the status quo.” He viewed negotiations with Iran as an issue that the Obama Administration should not deal with until after the November elections. Obama’s supposedly off-mic comment to Medvedev last month regarding missiles is also relevant here: “This is my last election. After my election, I have more flexibility.” Nasr then pointed out that it would be difficult to justify a war with Iran, especially during this election season. He closed his opening remarks with a question: can they make a deal about not making a deal?
Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow at the Council of Foreign Relations and former State Department official, provided a similar evaluation of the recent negotiations. Takeyh argued that inconclusive diplomacy is beneficial as it provides space for diplomatic conversations to continue. In this case, the talks led to a scheduled meeting at the end of May for more serious negotiations. Takeyh also pointed to the difficulty Iran has in giving up its nuclear weapons aspirations. As a country with multiple adversaries in the region, it is in its own strategic interests to acquire these nuclear weapons capabilities.
As the director of the Nuclear Policy Program at Carnegie, George Perkovich focused his statements on Iran’s nuclear program. He opened with a description of how Iran pursued multiple pathways to developing the capacities needed for a nuclear program, rather than committing at the start for a weapons program. Perkovich also pointed out that Ayatollah Khamenei recently stated that “the Iranian nation has never pursued and will never pursue nuclear weapons” and considers it a “big sin.” Regardless of how much truth is in the statement, it provides space for a negotiated compromise.
At the end of the discussion, the panelists were asked for historical templates that might be applicable to Iran. The speakers all mentioned North Vietnam and the Soviet Union, but agreed that historical frameworks were unlikely to work. The context, leaders, and factors of each situation are different. Deals and negotiations are “living organisms.”
The Istanbul meeting was essentially a talk about talks. The speakers expect the status quo to hold through November, but the Baghdad meeting in May provides some possibility for positive developments.
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Syria can get worse
NATO preparations for military intervention in Syria are again in the news. The Obama Administration is looking for Plan B. Even my former colleagues at US Institute of Peace are calling for suppression of Syrian air defenses. That’s spelled W-A-R.
I am feeling the need to repeat what I’ve said before: half measures won’t work and could make things worse. If removal of Bashar al Assad from power is your objective, and you propose to achieve it by military means, don’t trick yourself into thinking it will necessarily be easy or quick. Certainly a humanitarian corridor is not an obvious or direct means of getting rid of Bashar. It is a target-rich environment that is only safe if military force makes it so.
It would be folly for NATO to waste its resources on such a half-baked non-solution. That is certainly one of the lessons of the Libya experience, when a humanitarian intervention had to refocus on Qaddafi in order to bring about the desired, but not stated, result.
If you want Bashar al Assad out, the thing to do is take him out. A massive attack on Syria’s command and control facilities would force him underground–as a lesser effort eventually did to Qaddafi–and all but guarantee that the regime changes, though in which direction is unpredictable. To control that, you’ve got to put boots on the ground. But you will also need to write off any prospect of Russian or Chinese support for action against Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are certainly a greater threat to U.S. national security than Bashar al Assad.
Arming the opposition is another option. There is lots of mumbling from Senators McCain and Lieberman about how the Free Syria Army (FSA) hasn’t gotten any help from anyone and are running out of ammo. The French call that de la blague. The Turkish and Iraqi borders have seen lots of arms flowing. Others want to manage the process despite the chaotic conditions. The FSA is not a threat to the Syrian regime in the short-term. It is an insurgency that will be difficult to defeat entirely but offers little immediate prospect of displacing Bashar al Assad, whose army is stronger than the Libyan one and notably more loyal.
A long, violent, drawn-out and increasingly sectarian conflict in Syria is not a good outcome for the United States. I am second to none in wishing Bashar al Assad gone from a country in which I studied Arabic and enjoyed remarkable hospitality from people who have suffered a half century of privation, economic and political. Yes, we should certainly support the on-the-ground opposition and do everything possible to protect their right to protest and determine their own political future.
But the best bet for now is to play out Annan plan and the UN observer scenario for what it is worth: either it will lead to a serious reduction in violence, and I hope a corresponding increase in peaceful protest, or the observers will give up like the Arab League observers before them and abandon the field. If the former, we’ll all be able to celebrate, as nonviolent protest will provide by far the best foundation for a successful transition to something like democracy. If the latter, we should not be surprised to find that things get worse, much worse, as they did after the Arab League observers withdrew.
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Droning on
The Washington Post reports today that the CIA wants to expand drone attacks in Yemen:
Securing permission to use these “signature strikes” would allow the agency to hit targets based solely on intelligence indicating patterns of suspicious behavior, such as imagery showing militants gathering at known al-Qaeda compounds or unloading explosives.
The United States has long used this less discriminating approach in Pakistan, where I am told we killed a lot of tall guys in long white robes before finding Osama bin Ladin holed up in his Abbottabad villa.
This is not an easy policy choice, but the right course is to err on the side of caution. The Post article emphasizes the risk of drone strikes putting the U.S. on the government side in Yemen’s wars with several groups of insurgents. I don’t see that as the main issue. After all, we recognize and support the government in Sanaa, even if we don’t intend to get involved in Yemen’s internecine battles. None of the insurgents are going to think we are not on the government’s side.
The Post also emphasizes that the drone strikes have killed a lot of the “right” people, more than are killed in strikes based on specific intelligence about their whereabouts. That, too, is not pertinent to the decision-making. We’d kill a lot of the “right” people by mowing down whole villages too, but it wouldn’t be morally correct or wise.
The issue is the impact of the strikes. Do they work, or do they not? Do they reduce risks to the United States or American forces? A recent quantitative analysis of the drone strikes in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan suggests that they have reduced militant violence, BUT:
Finally, it is important to reiterate that any reduction in terrorist activity associated with the drone campaign appears modest in scope. Although a decline in violence in FATA in 2010 coincided with the peak of the drone campaign, FATA militants remain active and violence remains high. To the extent drone strikes ”work,” their effectiveness is more likely to lie in disrupting militant operations at the tactical level than as a silver bullet that will reverse the course of the war and singlehandedly defeat al Qaeda.
Others find more ambiguous results.
The bigger question is the impact on the population in areas where drones strike, and on the broader political context . This is where things get dicey, in particular if you hit the wrong people (no matter how many “right” ones you kill). Joshua Foust warned about these consequences earlier in the year. While some Pakistanis and Yemenis may celebrate the deaths of particular militants, there will always be collateral damage, the more so if the “rules of engagement” are loosened. It is difficult to imagine that most Pakistanis and Yemenis will welcome the deaths of innocent countrymen in U.S. drone attacks intended to protect Americans. How long will their governments put up with us? We’ve seen in President Karzai the negative consequences of too many mistaken strikes (not only by drones) and night raids.
General Petraeus, whom I know and respect, needs to repeat the question he asked himself about detention facilities when he took over in Iraq and later in Afghanistan: are we creating more terrorists than we are taking out of circulation? No RAND study will likely answer this question. We’ll have to rely on good judgment, which is in short supply as Washington gears up for its quadrennial blood-letting between Democrats and Republicans. There isn’t much mileage for an American politician in not doing the max to get the terrorists in Yemen, but restraint might in the end save more American lives.
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