Afghanistan: Why we should be there (or not), how to conduct the mission (or not) & when to leave

[MarkOttawa]

The beginning of a real end:

Canada hands over command of Provincial Reconstruction Team to Americans
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/canada-hands-over-command-provincial-reconstruction-team-americans-20110112-074416-260.html

Leadership of Kandahar's aid and development contingent passed Wednesday from Canadian to American hands, the first in a series of such handovers in the coming months as Canada winds down its combat mission in Afghanistan.

Senior American civilian official Ben Moeling replaced Canada's top diplomat in Kandahar, Tim Martin, as the head honcho of Kandahar's Provincial Reconstruction Team. Martin had held the post since last August, following stints as ambassador to Paraguay and Argentina.

The transfer marks the first time an American has assumed command of the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar since Canadian officials arrived in southern Afghanistan several years ago...

...when Canada's combat mission ends in July and some troops move north to the capital of Kabul, so too ends the civilian mission in southern Afghanistan. All Canadian civilians will be out of Kandahar by the summer, Martin said...

Canada took command of the provincial reconstruction team in 2005...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Foxhound]

The latest from Jack Layton.  An article in the Globe and Mail.

The Harper government’s plan to deploy 1,000 Canadian troops to build up Afghanistan’s army will end up training Taliban insurgents, Jack Layton says.

 

[Infanteer]

Note authors of report are quite conservative

Yes they are - but generally, I feel their report is accurate.  This comes from my reading on the insurgency along with my personal experience.  "Pop-Centric" COIN is great for dealing with subversion, but that's only half the equation.  There are American Brigades where we used to have a company.

As well, insurgencies thrive on strong leaders who can deliver more real, tangible things than the government.  Rural Pashtuns don't care about democracy and education nor do they care about Emirates and global jihad.  They want to be able to farm have a nice scooter.  The Taliban can't provide that better than the government if SOF continually takes thier mid/low level leadership.

Finally, the Pashtun Taliban couldn't even take some of the Northern areas through conventional invasion between 1995-2001.  To have them now all of the sudden subvert an area dominated by another ethnic group that has loyalty to other warlords and historical emnity against the Taliban seems to be a stretch.  Terrorist attacks are not generally a sign of an effective insurgency.

Update thought: It's perhaps telling that there appears to be no mention of the CF's work at Kandahar in the report.  There is this, p.29:

They say "almost", which is about accurate.  As another report on Kandahar from that institute states, Canada's force was so small and was essentially fixed in Zharei-Panjwayi that it couldn't do much about the end-run from the North in Arghandab District after Mullah Naqib died.

 

[MarkOttawa]

At the CDFAI's 3Ds Blog:

Jack Granatstein:

Layton’s Spurious Comparisons of Wars Past and Present
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=77

Me:

Layton’s Latest on Afghanistan
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=76

Mark
Ottawa

 

[nuclearzombies]

Thanks for those links Mark. Very interesting blog......
Good thread overall, I've learned more reading here than any 2 minute CNN mindwash. Most folks I know don't know much beyond what the media tells them.

:2c:- I had thought we had more troops overseas than what we do...wow.
:2c:- I not only hope we continue our involvment with ISAF, I wish we could do more. I actually do believe that we should participate in a longer term effort to rub out losers like the Taliban :gunner:
:2c:- Although I too am frustrated with *some* nations apparent lack of participation in regards to NATO, I say screw 'em and let's focus our contribution. If folks want to play Operation Head In The Sand, then that's their own silly fault. It's our fault too for being so damned reliable.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Good piece in NY Times' "At War" blog; if only our cheapskate media had that real "portfolio" (see end):

Embedistan: Outside the Wire, Off the Message
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/embedistan-outside-the-wire-off-the-message/?emc=eta1

AUSTIN, Tex. — At the end of his trip to Kabul in late March, President Obama declared after a high-profile military offensive that the Marines had pushed the Taliban out of the Afghan region of Marja, one of its major strongholds. But even as the president spoke those words, the Marines in Marja were telling a different story to an embedded reporter: The Taliban had retaken the momentum in much of Marja and stymied the troops’ strategy to win hearts and minds. Soon, high-ranking American officials began to acknowledge that Marja was not going nearly as well as hoped.

There are justified criticisms of embedding with the military, mainly that articles written from operations with Marines and soldiers cannot possibly include the perspective of the Afghans who bear the brunt of the fighting and sometimes wrongly become the targets of troops themselves. Even among the self-selected group of locals who are willing to talk to troops, and reporters accompanying them, those who have strong feelings against the occupation often won’t say that. In many cases the only way to get those perspectives in bloody war zones is from stringers – local reporters who speak the language and are paid a retainer by news organizations – but even they often will, understandably, not want to travel to areas of fighting and will do their reporting over the phone.

Yet, as the experience of Marja suggests, these legitimate qualms also ignore the highest utility of embeds: reporting the perspectives and emotions of the troops on the ground, who despite risk to their careers go well out of their way to describe, often bluntly, the failings and mistakes that have so often plagued the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their comments often impeach the official line from Washington and serve as an important check on the influential opinions of others – including politicians, politically appointed officials, and many commentators – who, taken as a group, have tended to be far more optimistic, and incorrectly so, than troops doing the actual fighting.

There are few problems that troops on the ground won’t discuss...

David Halberstam, who before becoming a best-selling author was a Vietnam correspondent for The Times who wrote so critically of the war that President John F. Kennedy lobbied the newspaper to remove him, explained to an interviewer from Powell’s, the Oregon bookseller, a few years before his death why he approved of embeds: “It was a good idea to get journalists out there. I had a lot of faith, because of Vietnam, in what happens when young American journalists are with young American fighters, that each will tell the truth and be respectful.”..

Embeds suffer significant limitations, as critics rightly point out, and for any news organization they should never be anything more than one sliver of a much larger portfolio of reporting...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Terry Glavin in the CDFAI's 3Ds Blog:

More on Jack Layton’s Speech on Afghanistan
http://www.cdfai.org/the3dsblog/?p=79

That Jack Layton’s trippy prescriptions for the ills that ail Afghanistan are less a persistence of noble left-wing internationalist traditions and more along the lines of black-leotard interpretive dance from a post-modern alternative universe will not be a surprise to anyone who has followed the NDP leader’s pronouncements on the matter. His most recent iteration of flower-child sanctimony and rubbish in the guise of foreign policy advice is a thing to behold.

An example: “You may have heard that seven million kids have now been vaccinated against polio. Well, this is happening because UNICEF and the World Health Organization are negotiating access to Taliban controlled areas. What these development workers on the ground are telling us is that the absence of troops helps account for their success. When they’re not tied to troops, they’re just not a target.”

That statement contains a bundle of untruths, or is, to put it as charitably as I can, a transparently silly and self-exculpating distortion of the truth.

The negotiated access deals Mr. Layton attributes to UNICEF/WHO account for such a miniscule fraction of the polio vaccination data that they barely register as background noise. “Development workers on the ground” are not saying what Mr. Layton would wish them to say. In the main, NGO and  aid-agency “success” in Afghanistan is not due to the absence of troops, but rather the opposite.

In fact you rarely need soldiers to provide security for vaccination projects or to build schools in Afghanistan, for instance - Afghans desperately want schools and teachers and healthy kids. But, the absence of troops and security is the very reason why foreign aid workers will tend to avoid, or altogether flee, volatile provinces. It is not, as Mr. Layton suggests, the other way around. To the Taliban, if you are a foreigner it doesn’t matter whether you are “tied to the troops” or not. They will “target” you and you will be killed for merely being an infidel.

The next time Mr. Layton feels the urge to engage in such a callous exercise in wishful thinking he might want to call to mind the memory of the murdered aid workers, Jackie Kirk of Montreal and Shirley Case of Williams Lake...

Read on.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[nuclearzombies]

"You may have heard that seven million kids have now been vaccinated against polio. Well, this is happening because UNICEF and the World Health Organization are negotiating access to Taliban controlled areas. What these development workers on the ground are telling us is that the absence of troops helps account for their success. When they’re not tied to troops, they’re just not a target"


Layton (?) is going to look pretty stupid when aid workers start disappearing & getting killed on youtube. How does one negotiate with a group of fundamentalists whose stated goals are imposing their peculiar brand of puritania on the globe? I'm sorry, I do not understand how that is logical.

 

[The Bread Guy]

This from Canadian Press, shared in accordance with the Fair Dealing provisions (§29) of the Copyright  Act:

A battle group of Canadian soldiers, originally intended to backstop the withdrawal from Kandahar, is expected to form the nucleus of the country's new training mission in Afghanistan.

The general commanding the transition says a battalion-sized force of soldiers from 3rd Battalion Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry had been set aside in case of emergency during the pullout, but military planners have determined it's no longer required.

Brig.-Gen. Charles Lamarre says the scope of the training mission, expected to include 700 troops and 250 support staff, has yet to be determined.

Whether the entire battalion or selected elements are used is still being debated.

A planning team of staff officers returned to Ottawa last week after meeting with NATO's Afghan training command; its recommendations will define the shape of the new mission, expected to run until 2014.

Lamarre says there are potential cost-savings on the withdrawal from Kandahar because some equipment and vehicles won't have to be shipped all the way back to Canada.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Just in case you had any doubts, from Lauryn Oates:

Taliban still evil and opposed to educating girls
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Taliban+still+evil+opposed+educating+girls/4160864/story.html

On Jan. 14, the U.K.'s Times Educational Supplement ran a story titled "Taliban backs girls' education," elatedly announcing the Taliban had a change of heart with regards to their long-standing ban on girls' education.

However, in the story itself, it turns out the announcement came not from the Taliban leadership, but rather from their sworn enemies: the Afghan government. The only person quoted in the story was Afghan Education Minister Farooq Wardak, who reported, "What I am hearing at the very upper policy level of the Taliban is that they are no more opposing education and also girls' education."

No confirmation from the Taliban itself was provided in the story, or since.

The same day, the BBC picked up the story, using the headline, "Afghan Taliban 'end' opposition to educating girls," while their counterparts at The Telegraph ran a story headlined, "Taliban 'abandons' opposition to girls' education."

The story quickly spread from the U.K. to around the world.

This is strange journalism to say the least. There is scant evidence besides Wardak's speculations that the Taliban have any notion of giving up the ban. More than half of the schools in some provinces are closed, mainly due to insecurity, such as in the southern province of Helmand, where 150 out of 282 schools remain closed.

Here in Kabul, I continue to hear regularly of attacks against schools, the poisoning of girls' schools, arson of schools and threats to educators, which are sometimes carried out, resulting in murdered teachers and terrified students and parents.

Afghanistan has made tremendous progress in the field of education, with the enrolment of some seven million students, nearly 40 per cent of them girls. Yet, millions more school-aged children, the majority of them girls, are not in school. The insurgency, including the Taliban's overt targeting of girls' schools, is one of the major culprits blocking further progress. This is the real news story, rather than a poorly sourced claim that the Taliban have been suddenly enlightened...

Lauryn Oates is a Canadian aid worker managing education projects in Afghanistan and has been advoc ating for women's rights in Afghanistan since 1996. She's a founding member of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee
http://afghanistan-canada-solidarity.org/
and projects director for Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan.
http://www.cw4wafghan.ca/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

More from Terry Glavin:

Fawzia Koofi: "The face of what Afghanistan could be."
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2011/01/fawzia-koofi-face-of-what-afghanistan.html

The Globe and Mail today has a refreshingly different kind of Afghanistan story - an interview with Fawzia Koofi.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/asia-pacific/fawzi-koofi-the-face-of-what-afghanistan-could-be/article1879540/page2/
For some reason she shows up in the Globe story as "Fawzi" but nevermind. The odd thing is that this morning I was going over my notes from an interview with Fawzia at her place in Kabul - she was happy and proud to show me the rabbbits her daughters are raising for food and for sale at the local market - and I came upon the Globe story...

In our conversation, the subject of the weird "troops out" view so fashionable in countries like Canada came up, as the subject almost always does when you talk to Afghan progressives and democrats.

"I don't think there is an 'Afghan war'," she said. "There is a global war. "We have lots of unfinished problems with Pakistan. Even Iran is appeasing the Taliban
http://propagandistmag.com/2010/11/01/afghan-mp-fawzia-koofi-negotiations-taliban
- they don't support the Taliban but they support Hamas. Also there are political games going on in your countries, and these games influence what happens in Afghanistan as well.

"There is a lack of proper communication in your country about Afghanistan...

...The problem is that they listen to Malalai Joya."
http://www.malalaijoya.com/dcmj/joya-in-media/537-malalai-joya-speaks-at-canadian-boat-to-gaza-fundraiser-in-vancouver.html

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

As for the military side (plus female education):

Afghanistan. A Soldier's [sic] Perspective
http://propagandistmag.com/2011/01/24/afghanistan-soldiers-perspective

The Propagandist Editor Jonathon Narvey had a quick Q & A with Canadian Lieutenant Commander Robert Watt,
[more:
http://blogs.ubc.ca/irsa/2011/01/24/lt-commander-rob-watt-speaking-this-thursday/ ]
head of training for ISAF forces in Afghanistan. We discussed progress of the training mission, overall mission objectives and the morale of the troops.

Lt. Commander Watt was part of the multinational ISAF headquarters unit in Kabul, involved in training Afghan Security Forces and coalition troops in bomb disposal  to “attack the network” initiatives and working with border police to reduce the IED network threat. He is giving a talk in Vancouver this week called "Canada's Security. A Changing Enemy".

JN. Training is obviously one area where Canada and ISAF generally wants to make a big difference going forward. What’s happening on that front?

LtCRW. There’s some good news stories and bad news stories on the training front. We dealt with training Afghans but also our coalition partners. The Canadians in all honesty are world class in terms of counter-IED efforts, in terms of bomb disposal but also in “attack the network and protect the force” sort of pieces of the puzzle…

There are 44 countries engaged in Afghanistan, some of whom don’t have the background, length of time and training facilities that we have. We were working with them, assessing some of the coalition staff and their ability to work in an IED environment. We were working with the Afghan Security Forces, Afghan National Police and other security forces like the border police.

We taught them how to set up a protective cordon, and how to use forensics data afterwards to go after the bombers. Of course, it’s no longer just about taking out the people involved, it’s actually getting the court involved and bringing the people responsible to justice, and to be seen bringing them to justice. That’s when you really achieve something is when the Afghan public actually sees these guys in court and sees justice being done. It’s promoting rule of law. So we’re also helping educate the judges and prosecutors on the bombings and the process.

JN. What kind of trends are we seeing?

LtCRW. Certainly, the trend in bombings is that they are increasing almost 100 percent a year. Pretty much for the last four years, we’ve seen the numbers of bombings doubling every year. They’ve realized that is a vulnerable point for Western forces.

But really, compared to previous wars, the numbers of casualties are really very small. The IED has an effect far out of proportion for its tactical use...

LtCRW. When people say we aren’t achieving anything over there and it’s worse than when the Taliban was there, I think back to one of my first patrols in Kabul outside the wire.

We’re driving downtown and as we’re going along the street, I see on the sidewalks beside us, along with all the shops, was a big line of schoolgirls. They were all in their school uniforms and in their scarves. Probably around the age of twelve. Some of them are walking with their mothers and some are walking hand in hand with their friends. They were all smiling and skipping their way to school.

That wouldn’t have happened under the Taliban. Those girls wouldn’t have been allowed to go to school.

I’ve got two daughters, a seven year old and a twelve-year old. That hit home to me. If nothing else, that is something we’ve managed to achieve over there.

Lots more.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

A creative CP headline:

Top general in Afghanistan lauds work of Canadians, others in Kandahar
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/breakingnews/top-general-in-afghanistan-lauds-work-of-canadians-others-in-kandahar-114569164.html

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canadian troops are among those getting a special pat on the back from the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan for helping to bring "hard-won progress" to the country's unruly south.

In a letter to his soldiers released Tuesday,
http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/29586-comisaf-assessment.html
U.S. Gen. David Petraeus singled out the coalition and Afghan troops [emphasis added] who have been fighting in two of Afghanistan's hairiest provinces.

"Hard-won progress was also achieved in Helmand and Kandahar provinces — a great credit to the coalition and Afghan forces [emphasis added]who fought so skillfully and courageously in those areas," Petraeus wrote.

Canadian troops are preparing to leave Kandahar this summer after several years of bloody combat. A smaller Canadian contingent is preparing to redeploy to Kabul to begin a new training mission.

Soldiers from another country — presumably the United States — will replace Canadian troops on the ground in Kandahar...

Of course the great majority of "coalition" forces in those areas are now American.

Story via:
http://twitter.com/nspector4

Mark
Ottawa

 

[The Bread Guy]

A creative CP headline:
Top general in Afghanistan lauds work of Canadians, others in Kandahar ....

An example (maybe a bit stretched) of seeking the "Canadian" angle.  Here's a link to the original letter in question (~870KB PDF) - be the judge re: how much of a stretch the story is.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Nice word usage:

Mission dubbed 'Kabul-ish'
Canadian trainers to avoid violent southern areas
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/1224525.html

OTTAWA — Within the Defence Department, the new mission is being called "Kabul-centric" or "Kabul-ish."

In the bureaucrat-speak of Ottawa, that means Canadian military trainers could give classroom instruction in regional centres beyond the embattled Afghan capital, though Defence Minister Peter MacKay ruled out Kandahar.

"We’re in negotiations right now with NATO, with our allies, our closest allies, including the United States, to determine specifically some of the more urgent types of training that are required," MacKay said Thursday after meeting with Robert Gates, the U.S. defence secretary.

"We have looked at a few locations in the nearby region, that is to say in the north, that is in close proximity to Kabul. That would also facilitate the type of training we’re undertaking."

The Conservative government since November has insisted the renewed military commitment in Afghanistan would unfold within the relatively safe confines of the war-wasted capital.

But there’s little room at the current NATO training centres and military schools that dot Kabul. Allies have requested help at the five regional army centres, among them Mazar-e-Sharif in the north, Herat in the west and Kandahar in the south.

MacKay made it clear Kandahar is not an option and the government will be "consistent with the parliamentary motion," requiring the army to end combat and withdraw from the province by the end of the year.

A team of Canadian army officers returned last week from Afghanistan, where they looked at the training centres Mazar-e-Sharif, including the police academy currently run by the Germans.

Defence sources said a clearer plan for the training mission is expected by mid-February...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Interesting post by C.J. Chivers at the NY Times "At War" blog:

What They Are Reading: Different Accounts of the Afghan War
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/27/what-theyre-reading-different-accounts-of-the-afghan-war/?ref=world

Today’s look at reading materials in circulation among those who work in Afghanistan covers two different accounts of the Afghan war.  One, “Winning in Afghanistan” [pdf],
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/world/atwar/winninginafghanistan1.pdf
is a semi-samizdat essay by a captain in the Maryland National Guard who served two recent tours in Afghanistan. The other, “How We Lost the War We Won,”
http://www.newamerica.net/publications/articles/2008/how_we_lost_war_we_won_8200
is a 2008 article from Rolling Stone magazine by an Arabic-speaking journalist and author, Nir Rosen, who briefly “embedded” with Taliban fighters in Ghazni Province. The two are matched here because they both have been influential and have managed to retain an enduring relevance. Both accounts are also, in a word, bleak.

As usual, At War does not endorse any of the particular views in these articles, but circulates them with an eye to presenting the war’s complexities and influences more fully.

“Winning in Afghanistan,” by Capt. Carl Thompson, is one officer’s frank chronicle of frustration from his time as a trainer assigned to work with Afghan National Army units.

It details official corruption and incompetence in Afghan military units, and excoriates the American military for not understanding the nature of the Afghan war and for often getting in the way of the soldiers who want to succeed.

Captain Thompson wrote his essay to help officers on the way to Afghanistan to understand some of the problems and situations they will face on their tours...

Read on.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Blunt talk across the pond about choppers (of course we're getting out of that business in Afstan):

Germay "failed to deliver" support in Afghanistan, Liam Fox
Liam Fox has launched a stinging public rebuke on Germany and Italy saying they have “failed to deliver” enough support for the Afghanistan campaign.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/8301345/Germay-failed-to-deliver-support-in-Afghanistan-Liam-Fox.html

The Defence Secretary accused the European countries of not coming up with the money, troops or equipment to help bolster the undermanned helicopter fleet.

The comments came after Dr Fox revealed that a British and French initiative to raise EUR 60 million for 10 helicopters for troops fighting in Afghanistan had only generated three aircraft with EUR 8 million from Britain and EUR 5 million from France.

“Some of Europe’s richest nations have failed to deliver on this project notably Germany and Italy,” he said.

While smaller countries such as Norway and Denmark had contributed the richer countries had not.

“What this does illustrate is that the same countries are doing the deploying and funding and the same countries are missing from the equation,” he told the House of Lords foreign affair committee.

His comments are likely to strain relations with Germany which has only recently begun reforming its armed forces after years of criticism that it has failed to deliver in Afghanistan despite having 5,000 troops there...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Trying to figure out end-games:

Karzai Seeks End to NATO Reconstruction Teams
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/world/asia/07munich.html

MUNICH — President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan called Sunday for the speedy dismantling of NATO-run provincial reconstruction teams, the first time he had made such a demand.

To an audience of foreign ministers and defense experts attending the annual Munich Security Conference, Mr. Karzai also repeated his call for allied governments to stop using private security companies, contending that they, along with the civilian-military reconstruction teams, are an impediment to the central government’s expanding its authority throughout the country...

Donor and coalition countries finance the reconstruction teams directly rather than through the Afghan government because of corruption concerns.

Mr. Karzai was asked several times whether he really wanted the teams to be wound up so quickly. “Yes,” he said...

Admiral Stavridis, who oversees the operations of the 143,000-strong NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, was quick to counter Mr. Karzai’s claims, saying the reconstruction teams posed no challenge to the central government. He said there was no doubt that they would be phased out as the United States looks to begin withdrawing its 98,000 troops this summer, and as the Afghan Army and security forces take control throughout the country...

At its summit meeting in Lisbon in November, NATO agreed to end its military presence in Afghanistan in 2014 but to keep military advisers and trainers there if necessary.

The German government agreed last month to begin the withdrawal of its 4,700 troops at the end of this year, depending on security conditions. The Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said Sunday that Poland would withdraw all of its 2,600 troops by 2014 [emphasis added].

But with Western governments still skeptical about Mr. Karzai’s determination and ability to crack down on corruption, they are reluctant to dismantle the provincial reconstruction teams or phase out private security firms...

   

N.Y.U. Report Casts Doubt on Taliban’s Ties With Al Qaeda
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/world/asia/07afghan.html

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan Taliban have been wrongly perceived as close ideological allies of Al Qaeda, and they could be persuaded to renounce the global terrorist group, according to a report to be published Monday by New York University.

The report goes on to say that there was substantial friction between the groups’ leaders before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that hostility has only intensified.

The authors, Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, have worked in Afghanistan for years and edited the autobiography of a Taliban diplomat, many of whose ideas are reflected in the report. The authors are among a small group of experts who say the only way to end the war in Afghanistan is to begin peace overtures to the Taliban.

The prevailing view in Washington, however, is “that the Taliban and Al Qaeda share the same ideology,” said Tom Gregg, a former United Nations official in Afghanistan and a fellow at the Center on International Cooperation at N.Y.U., which is publishing the report. “It is not an ideology they share; it is more a pragmatic political alliance. And therefore a political approach to the Taliban ultimately could deliver a more practical separation between the two groups.”

Some American officials have argued that the military surge in Afghanistan will weaken the Taliban and increase the incentive to negotiate. But the report cautions that the campaign may make it harder to reach a settlement.

The report, “Separating the Taliban from Al Qaeda: The Core of Success in Afghanistan,” says attacks on Taliban field commanders and provincial leaders will leave the movement open to younger, more radical fighters and will give Al Qaeda greater influence. The authors suggest that the United States should engage older Taliban leaders before they lose control of the movement.

The authors do not oppose NATO’s war, but suggest that negotiations should accompany the fighting. A political settlement is necessary to address the underlying reasons for the insurgency, they write. Otherwise, they warn, the conflict will escalate.

The report draws on the authors’ interviews with unnamed Taliban officials in Kabul, Kandahar and Khost, and on published statements by the Taliban leadership. The authors indicate that Taliban officials fear retribution if they make on-the-record statements opposing Al Qaeda.

Nevertheless, Taliban leaders have issued statements in the last two years that indicate they are distancing their movement from Al Qaeda. The report says the Taliban will not renounce Al Qaeda as a condition to negotiations, but will offer to do so in return for guarantees of security...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

BruceR. at Flit  post on the nature of the war:

Today's essential Afghan reading: Max Hastings
http://www.snappingturtle.net/flit/archives/2011_02_08.html#006821

A throwaway but thought-provoking conclusion to the NYRB review (not fully online: subscription link here)
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/feb/10/most-influential-weapon-our-time/
by Sir Max Hastings...of Afghan war correspondent and ex-soldier C.J. Chivers' The Gun, a history of the AK-47...

...In my view, our current purposes in Afghanistan are honorable not only from our own perspective, but with respect to the interests of the Afghan people. I nonetheless believe that we shall fail there, in some degree because the AK-47, which every fighting tribesman loves, is a true manifestation of his society, however uneducated and primitive, while the Hellfire missile, the Chinook helicopter, and the Drone are not...

Mark
Ottawa

 

[MarkOttawa]

Joshua Foust agrees with President Karzai:

Actually, Karzai is right about PRTs
http://afpak.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2011/02/08/actually_karzai_is_right_about_prts

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, everyone's favorite punching bag in Afghanistan, has decided provincial reconstruction teams -- PRTs -- are, in fact, bad for his country. "The Afghans want to have a government of their own. The Afghans don't want a government from abroad," Karzai told reporters in Kabul. "The transition means giving the whole thing to Afghan ownership and leadership. Naturally then the PRTs will have no place."

This didn't used to be controversial. When the first PRT was created in early 2003, it was actually called a provincial transition team because the idea was to transition control of an area from U.S. to Afghan control as capacity was built. Of course, that first PRT, in Gardez, Paktia, only had one civilian on it who was supposed to monitor all the reconstruction and governance activity in three provinces. Soon, the PRT program got a new name -- reconstruction this time, not transition -- and by 2007 there were 25 PRTs across the country.

Evaluations of PRT performance have been mixed at best. One researcher at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies found in 2008 that PRTs "lead to counter-productive results such as the strengthening of local Power Brokers and the weakening of the government in Kabul." This is because coalition forces "again and again form an alliance with local militias and supply them with weapons and money."

The idea of transitioning reconstruction and governance from PRTs to the Afghans was stillborn, as well...

...the Afghan government is how the United States will eventually withdraw from Afghanistan. Building a stable Afghan government that can defend itself is one of the main pillars of the Obama administration's strategy for the country, and when PRTs funnel hundreds of millions of dollars away from Afghan government control and oversight -- however troubled -- they are directly undermining the very government the United States is relying on for victory...

Joshua Foust is a fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. He blogs about Central Asia at www.registan.net.
http://www.registan.net/

Mark
Ottawa