US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave an official interview this weekend where she largely discussed American policy in Afghanistan.  Here are some of the highlights:

Regarding the Afghanistan’s Electoral Commission coming report about a possible runoff in the presidential election:

“…we’re not positive what the election commission will recommend. But clearly, whatever their recommendation is, I believe should be followed. And if that requires a second round, that is what should happen. I think that the President is well aware of all the permutations of what can happen in the election. It is likely that they will find that President Karzai got very close to the 50+1 percent. So I think one can conclude that the likelihood of him winning a second round is probably pretty high. But I think the ballots have been printed, and certainly the military, through NATO and through our own troops, is looking at how you would secure such a second round.”

What about Hillary’s role in the ongoing strategy debate?

QUESTION: And yet, you said in an interview this week that you haven’t given him your – offered your best advice to the President. Why not? Why not yet? When are you going to do it and what are you going to tell him?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, the process that we’ve pursued, which I really believe has been not only useful but quite informative to all of us, is leading up to where we will give our best advice. But it would have been premature because we wanted to examine every assumption. There were no questions or topics off limits. Everybody came to the table with all of their concerns that were laid out. I think we’ve done a thorough job of analysis, and now we’re moving into the decision phase, and I’m sure that the President’s going to be asking all of us what is our advice to him, and then when he makes a decision, what is it we are all going to contribute to actually executing his decision.

Sounds like Mrs. Clinton has not had a big say in the decision making so far.

Clinton also brought focus on the importance of Pakistan in the future of peaceful and secure Afghanistan.  After arguing that the relationship between the security of Afghanistan and Pakistan were under appreciated under the Bush administration (a somewhat dubious claim), the Secretary of State gives her views of the Pakistani military’s recent offensive in Swat Valley and itself being a victim of several terrorist attacks:

QUESTION: Just a few months ago in Pakistan, just a few months ago, you said that Pakistan is in danger of falling to the terrorists. Now we’re having attacks every single day. Are you sure that that government is able to really keep control over the country?

SECRETARY CLINTON: Well, I’m very impressed with the commitment that the Pakistani Government – both the civilian leadership and the military – have made. When I said what I said some months ago, there was not the full commitment of going after those who were threatening territory and authority inside Pakistan. There is now. And I think the military in Pakistan has proven its effectiveness in going into Swat.

From what I read in the paper, they’re very much focused on also going into the heartland of where the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida are located and where these plots and these attacks are planned and directed. So I think that they understand that there is a direct threat to them, which they are addressing, which I think is all to the good.

Read the whole interview here.

If you have some more time also check out Steve Coll’s ‘The Case for Humility in Afghanistan‘ piece at Foreign Policy.

Here layeth a great group of Afghan-related works that you should check out:

• Scott Shane of the New York Times does a quick, yet informative profile of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.  Unfortunately, he’s as influential as ever.
• Staying with the New York Times, Jame Traub has one of the better pieces analyzing Afghanistan’s future and whether or not it is a ‘we must’ or ‘we can’ or ’should we’ for the United States to shape.
• Sticking with the debate on whether the US should go ‘all in’ or ‘fall back’ in terms of troops and strategy in Afghanistan, Bruce Riedel, who chaired Obama’s first Afghan strategy review, and Michael O’Hanlon make a strong argument that the war should be fought with all resources necessary to win.  In short, going ’short’ will only lead to failure.  Countering this argument, Malou Innocent and Christopher Preble from the CATO Institute assert that a massive force is the wrong choice in the conflict, which itself may not even be a national security priority.
• Here’s one example of the military’s side of the Afghan strategy debate from military.com.
• Eurasia.net, which always has worthwhile stuff, has an article by Aunohita Mojumdar tackling the viability of the current Afghan constitution, focusing on the issue of devolving the central government even more.
• And in the end….there’s an interview with Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, who gives his take on all the recent Afghan-Pakistan going-ons.  No real amazing insights, but still worth checking out, it’s short!

Just making sure we’re all up-to-date on the latest ‘President Obama Afghan Decision 09′ process.  Yesterday, the President met with a large bipartisan group of Congressmen and Senators with the major news coming out that he will not implement a major evacuation of American troops from Afghanistan nor fall back on orchestrating a strictly anti-Al Qaeda campaign.  In other words, a decision had yet to be made, but a serious withdrawal was off the table.  This news story probably doesn’t make those who feel that McChrystal’s recommendation for a large troop build up to implement a counterinsurgency campaign is the right way to go, feel too positive as the goal posts seem to have shifted a bit.  Today, Obama met with his NSC team to go over Afghan strategy, but I have not heard any links about what was said or decided.

Also of note was a fine analysis by Robert D. Kaplan on some of the geopolitical ramifications of the US presence in Afghanistan and what an American withdrawal or defeat might mean.  The analysis specifically focuses on China’ and India’s position in and on Afghanistan’s present and future.  Check it out.

Peter W. Galbraith, who was fired last week from his position with the UN as deputy special representative in Afghanistan, has come out swinging with a hard hitting piece in the Washington Post deriding the United Nation’s work in securing a free and fair Afghan Presidential Election.  Galbraith, who was basically fired by UN special representative to Afghanistan Kai Eide, scathingly denounces the August Presidential election as fraught with fraud that secured another term for President Hamid Karzai and blames the United Nations for failing to publicly support such a conclusion.  Well, now free from his UN post, Galbraith has decided to take his story and claim that the election was tainted beyond the pale to the American public.  Here’s a powerful segment:

Afghanistan’s presidential election, held Aug. 20, should have been a milestone in the country’s transition from 30 years of war to stability and democracy. Instead, it was just the opposite. As many as 30 percent of Karzai’s votes were fraudulent, and lesser fraud was committed on behalf of other candidates. In several provinces, including Kandahar, four to 10 times as many votes were recorded as voters actually cast. The fraud has handed the Taliban its greatest strategic victory in eight years of fighting the United States and its Afghan partners.

Galbraith claims that Eide refused to denounce the election results and numerous cases of fraud because he feared it would inflame ethnic tensions.  Galbraith of course has a different take and that is that an election seen as illegitimate by many in the country, especially Tajiks in the north, would undermine the Karzai government and as was stated ‘hand the Taliban its greatest victory.’  I personally sympathize with both arguments, but the accusations of voter fraud that Galbraith describes in the rest of his piece push one toward his position.  He showcases these occurrences below as examples of serious voter fraud in the August election:

- Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission (IEC), which was in charge of verifying the legitimacy of every vote and the election as a whole, was subservient to Karzai.

- At least 1,500 polling centers (out of 7,000) were to be located in places so insecure that no one from the IEC, the Afghan National Army or the Afghan National Police had ever visited them.

- Local commission staff members, who had access to many ballots and control over voting centers, were inexperienced, unchecked, and likely to be ’simply agents of the local power brokers, usually aligned with Karzai.’

I sympathize with Eide’s position of trying to keep things calm and under control in a nascent government’s second attempt at a major election, but blatant voter fraud, leading many of the populace feeling the election was illegitimate, can hamper greatly the government’s ability to effectively lead.

It is no surprise that reports like Galbraith’s cause the Obama administration pause in deciding how deeply involved we should be in Afghanistan.  It’s been widely known that Obama disapproves of Karzai and was widely shaken by the weakness of the August election and it is likely that these issues are causing the administration to delay making a decision on American strategy and resource deployment.  The under reported fact that Al Qaeda as a group has been remarkably diminished in recent years also plays a part in the administration’s calculus, no doubt.  However, a decision needs to be made on how the US is going to continue its mission in Afghanistan soon.  The deaths of 8 American soldiers yesterday sadly exemplifies the stakes at play.  Those soldiers were at a far flung base close to the Pakistan border,  significant because it’s these types of bases that will become less common as the US concentrates on protecting civilian areas, when they were massively attacked.  The Galbraith report brings to life a bit more how complicated this foreign policy decision is for the US, but decisions need to be decided sometime.

The Obama Administration is undertaking an intense, high-profile deliberation over what to do next in Afghanistan.  Accounts of this week’s White House meetings indicate a lively, open debate, punctuated by General Stanley McChrystal’s calls for increased troop levels, answered by skeptical questioning from Vice President Biden.

Some of this debate is being carried out in public.  McChrystal repeated his points in a speech in London on Thursday, the day after the Washington Post ran a front-page story indicating that U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism operations had “significantly reduced” al Qaeda’s effectiveness.  On Friday, McChrystal met with Obama briefly while the President was in Copenhagen.

If al Qaeda has indeed been weakened, the argument goes, why do we need to deploy more troops in Afghanistan?  Can the U.S. devise a new strategy that would concede some role for some Taliban forces in Afghanistan, provided that they not frustrate our efforts to incapacitate al Qaeda?

By the same token, if the existing Karzai government in Kabul is so strongly called into question as a result of  its corruption and the fraudulent conduct of recent elections, does the United States have a local partner in Afghanistan worthy of support?  According to Peter Galbraith, former U.S. diplomat and until this week the second-ranking UN official in Afghanistan, the answer is no.  Speaking today on CNN, Galbraith said McChrystal’s plan was “highly questionable” given the election fraud.  “There is going to be a segment of the [Afghan] population that is not going to accept the authority of the government,” he told Wolf Blitzer.

Changing course now would have implications for U.S. policy throughout the region, including Pakistan and Iran, countries that have by turns aided or frustrated U.S. and NATO interventions in Afghanistan.

Neither Galbraith nor other experts on Southwest Asia, such as ex-US Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy Chamberlin, are criticizing Obama for stopping to take stock before making additional commitments.  In fact, they welcome it as perhaps the last opportunity for the White House to get the policy right, faced with the prospect that further troop commitments could lead to a Vietnam-like quaqmire.

“Pakistan is still a feudal society,” Chamberlin told a group of bloggers in Washington last week.  “The Taliban is very cleverly exploiting the current situation in Pakistan.  The promises made in Swat have not been kept.”

Across the border, in Afghanistan, the situation is even worse.  Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to the region, who witnessed first-hand the quicksand of America’s military engagement in Vietnam, must realize that the parallels are not comforting.

As the Obama administration deliberates on what strategy and how many resources to commit or implement in Afghanistan, there has been growing comparisons between Obama’s dilemma and Bush’s prior to the Iraqi surge.  Though the comparison has several important leaks, there is much to discern in both President’s leadership styles and decision making methods.  The best piece on this subject I have read is this article by The New Republic’s Michael Crowley.  I highly recommend reading the whole thing, but here’s an excerpt:

Then there is the overriding question of just what the U.S. mission in Afghanistan really is. In Iraq, the Bushies offered vague talk of driving out Al Qaeda and setting up a stable government that could defend its own borders. Obama’s March address about the Afghanistan war was even cloudier, with a rhetorical emphasis on rooting out Al Qaeda–but also a call for a civilian surge to “advance security, opportunity and justice” for the Afghan people. (Bushian references to freedom and democracy have largely been retired, however.) Asked at a recent press event to describe success in Afghanistan, meanwhile, Holbrooke found a clear answer elusive. “We’ll know it when we see it,” he said.

But, if the definition of success isn’t clear to the Obama team, the definition of defeat may be. Bush argued unabashedly that Iraq had become “the central front in the war on terror” and that withdrawing before the country had stabilized would hand Al Qaeda not only a strategic but a moral victory. Current administration officials don’t publicly articulate the same rationale when discussing Afghanistan. But former CIA official Bruce Riedel, a regional expert who led the White House’s Afghanistan-Pakistan review earlier this year, cited it at the Brookings panel held in August. “The triumph of jihadism or the jihadism of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in driving NATO out of Afghanistan would resonate throughout the Islamic World. This would be a victory on par with the destruction of the Soviet Union in the 1990s,” Riedel said. “[T]he stakes are enormous.”

It appears that journalist Bob Woodward has the scoop again on the Obama administration’s next moves in Afghanistan. Well, I guess that’s not really accurate, as Woodward really has just broken the story of the Obama administration’s ‘plans’ for how they are going to decide their next moves in the war in Afghanistan. All of Woodward’s information comes from a phone interview with the administration’s National Security Advisor James Jones. Like I said, the interview and article do not divulge any real policy changes or decisions, but we do find out a set of 5 or so national security meetings debating the McChrystal report are scheduled in the next few weeks and few other nuggets that shed some light on the administration’s thinking and possible policy outcomes. Let’s see what Woodward and Jones had to say:

The upcoming meetings will begin with the assumption that the McChrystal strategy is correct, Jones said, adding that the president will “encourage free-wheeling discussion” and that “nothing is off the table.”

Overall, this sounds sound to me. Obama put McChrystal in charge of the war effort and therefore it is not surprising that he would put great weight into the General’s report and recommendations, however, if McChrystal’s report is indeed ‘correct’ and the said report recommended a strong counterinsurgency strategy that mandates thousands of more troops, than why the two following quotes, especially ‘nothing is off the table.’ I find much to be encouraging by President Obama’s willingness to see contrasting angles and hear varying views on important national security matters, but this smells a little too much like buying time because of indecisiveness within the administration. I mean Obama was ready to send 21,000 men and women to ‘protect the Afghan people’ from the moment he became President, but now appears to be wavering in support of a similar strategy. There is no doubt that growing public discontent, dissenting voices of influential folks (Biden, Will, Congressional Democrats), and the faltering legitimacy of the afghan presidential election have given ample reason to rethink US policy in Afghanistan, but the Obama administration should have been more prepared for these occurrences when it sent in the original troop surge in spring.

Moving on…

“The bumper sticker here is strategy before resources,” said Jones, adding: “This isn’t just about more troops.”

This has been a consistent line by the Obama administration since they took office and of course it sounds (sorry) sound, but right now, it just sounds like dodging making a decision. I mean troops, aka ‘resources’, are a central part of the McChrystal counterinsurgency strategy. To talk about one without the other does not really make sense right now. Of course we all want to see a well thought out strategy in place before we put our soldiers’ and the Afghan civilians’ lives at stake, but statements like this are really just buying time right now.

Lastly…..

Jones said the challenges Obama faces in the Afghan war are more “complex” and “bigger than the surge” decision President George W. Bush faced in Iraq three years ago.

I’m pretty sure the Iraq surge came up because Woodward brought it up otherwise I don’t really get why Jones would say this. Though Jones’ thoughts on this comparison are not really that important, I find him to wrong. An Iraq, already holding over 120,000 American troops, on the verge of possibly destabilizing one of most volatile regions of the world in 2006 was a grave threat. The number of surge troops, around 30,000-40,000 for Iraq and possibly the same number in Afghanistan, are close and with the recognition of the myriad of challenges facing the US in Afghanistan today, I don’t see how they can be
called more ‘complex’ than the geopolitics of Mesopotamia and the relationship between Iraqi Shia, Sunni, and Kurds.

It’s Out.  The Cat and Gen. McChrystal’s Afghan Strategy and Resource Recommendations to President Obama.  While I safely got my cat Chuck back into the house, the Obama administration cannot put McChrystal’s report, which calls for thousands of more troops or the US mission in Afghanistan “will likely result in failure”, back in its envelope.  Here’s where you can find a link to the report.

The manner in which the officially classified report was leaked is of interest as the Washington Post (whose legendary reporter Bob Woodward got the scoop) had an accompanying article discussing the topic.  In that report was some interesting quotes from an unnamed Pentagon official.  Here is the money quote:

“But Obama’s deliberative pace — he has held only one meeting of his top national security advisers to discuss McChrystal’s report so far — is a source of growing consternation within the military. “Either accept the assessment or correct it, or let’s have a discussion,” one Pentagon official said. “Will you read it and tell us what you think?” Within the military, this official said, “there is a frustration. A significant frustration. A serious frustration.”

First off, it’s unfortunate that yet another classified intelligence or military report was leaked, as it seems harder and harder to keep anything secret nowadays in our American democracy, even things (I’m thinking mainly about the CIA here) that may really come back to hurt our national security.  Though the contents of McChrystal’s report have been circulating through various sources (JCS Mullen, editorials by the report’s authors, etc.) and it seemed that everyone was already getting ready for a request for more troops, this very public outing puts tremendous pressure on the Obama administration to choose a strategy and then start resourcing it accordingly.  Obama was consistent in discussing his views on the subject during his Sunday media blitz; He wants to get the right Strategy chosen before deciding on sending more troops.

While I definitely agree with this assessment and hope the US Commander in Chief is pragmatically evaluating many views and policy possibilities on this important and complicated national security issue, it must be said that the President has had McChrystal’s report before him since August 30th.  This report by McChrystal is a Strategy, one that calls for an increase in resources quickly or else failure may be imminent.  If the McChrystal assessment is correct, time is indeed of the essence, and the Obama administration will need to come up with a plan to follow sooner rather than later.

The Obama administration has been hard at work denoting qualitative and quantitative metrics for progress in the war and a high Pentagon official and Obama appointee has already fought back stating that McChrystal’s report is just one input, an important one at that for sure, but just one, in a series of inputs in the President’s decision making apparatus.  But critical decisions need to be made and the President is going to need to explain these decisions to an anxious public.

• Lastly, I would like recommend a thoughtful piece by FPA’s own Marco Vicenzino regarding the recent deaths of several Italian soldiers and subsequent calls for withdrawal by Italy’s government.  Marco rightly criticizes this development stating: “This only embolden the determination and radical agenda of the insurgents who seek to remove the international presence in Afghanistan and restore their tyranny and oppression which lasted from 1996 to 2001.”

A few items of note to discuss:

• Just as I was applauding the seemingly positive news of the fact that Spain was planning to commit a few hundred more troops to the NATO effort in Afghanistan, President Stephen Harper of Canada’s spokesman Dimitri Soudas reiterated in a briefing Monday that Canada will withdraw its troops in 2011, affirmatively stating that this policy will not be swayed by Obama or anyone else.  “Canada’s position is clear,” Soudas said. “The military component of the mission ends in 2011.”  Canada has fought valiantly ever since NATO joined the fight and the war effort will lose much with their departure.  Alas, 2011 is a ways a way (like that?) and much can change between then and now.  Maybe, Mongolia can pick up some of the slack?

• Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Chair of Select Committee on Intelligence, had an interesting response to a question about whether the US had a clear strategy in Afghanistan:

FEINSTEIN: I believe it is not now. I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan. I believe it will remain a tribal entity.

I do believe that clearing out Al Qaida, clearing out the Taliban is a bona fide part one of the mission. I do agree that training Afghan troops, Afghan — Afghan police is an important piece of the mission.

I believe the mission should be time limited, that there should be no, well, we’ll let you know in a year and a half, depending on how we do. I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan.

First off, she makes a very blunt claim that one should not expect Afghanistan to be a democracy now or in any future as she deems it a ‘tribal entity’.  This point definitely has some accuracy, but it of course contradicts US, NATO, and UN objectives to build up the state government.  The latter part of the passage connects leaving Iraq with leaving Afghanistan, and this is very troublesome to me.  In this interview, Feinstein seems to have ‘when are getting out’ mentality, and this is coming from a very powerful Senator and Chairwoman.

• If one read and believed this report from the Associated Press, they might be inclined to be more sympathetic to Sen. Feinstein’s pessimism towards the US objective of state building and bringing stability to Afghanistan.  The AP report on Monday stated that 9 of every 10 members of the Afghan National Army was illiterate.  This one discouraging statistic shows too clearly the challenges facing the US/NATO build up of the Afghan government, police, and army.  One often hears scholars, columnists, politicians say ‘build up the Afghan army quick and let them do the dirty work’, but this report portrays just how challenging that goal can be.

• Let’s end on a positive note: This story is now a couple months old, but I wanted to get it in here.  Last June, the Afghan people officially dedicated Band-e-Amir its first National Park.  Though I’ve never been there, the park is located in Bamian province, central Afghanistan, and has six linked lakes that surrounded by majestic cliffs.  There is hope that if the park is well taken care of it could bring back much needed tourists, and the money in their pockets, back to Central Asia.  However, with the Taliban extending their presence deeper into the Afghan state, this seems far from realization any time soon.  Here’s a video showing the beauty of Band-e-Amir: