The short of it

Copyright © Chris Riddell.

The above cartoon by Chris Riddell from Sunday’s issue of The Observer was picked out by Flesh is Grass. She writes, Abandoning Afghans doesn’t mean ‘peace’, and points to a post at Harry’s Place, Abandoning Afghans: Not in my name.

She also mentions watching for what I have to say.

The short of it: I agree. Some fighting is necessary. Failure is not an acceptable option. A more terrible war awaits if this one ends badly.

The last couple of Afghanistan posts here have been links to rather long videos of discussions on how to work towards political progress and reconciliation. I’ve been doing more listening than writing on this, partly because of work pressure, but also because the complexities are such that it seems more interesting to point to people with direct knowledge.

That said, it should still possible to form a view on basic principles despite not having personally grown a beard and walked the length of Afghanistan drinking tea with the tribes.

There is an old chestnut that never goes away about there being no military solution in a conflict like this, only a political one. And it’s half true.

The problem is with the other half, the half made up of an enemy which believes very much in a military solution, or a terror solution. Before anyone can negotiate with them, this enemy has to actually recognise that there is no military solution available to them, and to reach that point they will have to be fought. Fighting them isn’t the solution in itself, but it’s a necessary part of creating the conditions for a political solution, or as may be more likely, the multiple political solutions necessary in a conflict this complex.

There are many things that can go wrong, but the worst would be for leaders of the 42 countries contributing to ISAF in Afghanistan to lose heart. Some of those leaders are of course more vital than others. Many are facing a hostile press and a doubtful public. The response by UK and US leaders has been to emphasise the terrorist threat. But as Steve Coll of The New Yorker spells out, a repeat of past terrorism isn’t the half of what we may face if we fail.

Now more links:

First, here’s another long video, David Kilcullen and Andrew Wilder speaking at the United States Institute of Peace on Theory Meets Practice: Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, from the beginning of August. There is particular detail on problems in the aid effort, problems in political structures, and of course corruption, corruption, and complexity. More recently David Kilcullen appeared on BBC World Service Radio’s The Forum. (Via AM.)

And finally The Canada-Afghanistan Blog on Malalai Joya, and Ghosts of Alexander on Biden Plan in inaction in Nuristan. Speaking of which, may I suggest the Biden Plan be renamed the Gaza Plan for Afghanistan? Y’know, abandon the ground and the population to the enemy and then try to contain them with air strikes and hit and run operations. No fence though, so no tunnels. And a much bigger territory. Oh boy.

A talk by David Kilcullen

Part of the Authors@Google series, this is an hour long, so too much to summarise, but to encourage you to listen here’s some of what he covers:

He gives a clear explanation of the main theme of his book, The Accidental Guerilla, on how the wrong war-fighting strategies make insurgencies worse. He talks about recent American and British mistakes in counter-insurgency, at one point paying particular attention to the British experience in Basra. He praises the Danish military in Afghanistan, which is nice to hear. He also talks of how aid projects need to be informed by counter-insurgency thinking in order to be effective. And he talks about Pakistan, and the insurgency there that scares him much more than Iraq or Afghanistan.

Now your essay topic for this week: what would a proper counter-insurgency approach to Gaza look like? Hint: containing the population together with the enemy, thus allowing the enemy to consolidate its control of the population, that is not it.

Via Abu Muqawama. Also at Abu Muqawama, Sleepwalking into Helmand, on recent British experience in Afghanistan.

Spring Place

Kentish Town, London, yesterday lunchtime. Like the previous painting, this was on paper I’d coated with colour before leaving home, green this time obviously.

When I saw this photo of soldiers in a poppy field on the front page of the International Herald Tribune a couple of days ago, I was tempted to have a go at copying it in paint. But instead you get the street sweeper vehicle and a car tail-light. See Abu Muqawama here and here for doubts on a poppylationcentric strategy in Afghanistan.

Also at Abu Muqawama: Bad Days for the British Army, which links to this FT editorial. The FT writes:

In an epic week of cack-handed decisions, tin-eared judgment and political misery for the government of Gordon Brown, by no means the least damaging move – for the country rather than the Labour party – was choosing to duck out of sending more UK troops to Afghanistan.

Let us be clear. There are huge problems with strategy towards Afghanistan. Local political development is warped by corruption and warlordism, but also by most economic development being in the hands of NGOs and foreign aid agencies. It is hard to see how the fight against the Taliban and its al-Qaeda allies can be combined successfully with a losing war on drugs. In geo-strategic terms, Pakistan’s soldiers and spies will not cease supporting jihadis as proxy warriors in Afghanistan (and Kashmir) until détente with archrival India is resumed. Clearly, there are also well-rehearsed differences between Nato allies about what fighting an insurgency means.

Nonetheless, if the UK is committed to the war in Afghanistan – and it is – it must will the means. Grand strategy aside, if the British government sends an expeditionary force to perform a difficult and dangerous job, it is an elementary political obligation to provide it with adequate resources. Unlike Iraq, this was not a war of choice.

The rest here. (If you have difficulties registering for FT articles it’s possible to view the whole thing by replacing the word ‘false’ with ‘true’ in the address displayed on your browser.) 

The one argument neglected by the FT is one raised by a commenter at Abu Muqawama earlier  in the year, that while fighting the Taliban in Pakistan may be essential in defending Afghanistan, holding Afghanistan could equally be essential if there is to be any chance of defending Pakistan from the Taliban. Extremism in Pakistan is a direct threat to Britain as well as to Britain’s allies. To help counter that threat the British government must be prepared to do everything possible in Afghanistan. Sending 700 temporary troops when the army wanted a long-term deployment of 2,000 more is not doing everything possible.

More on Afghanistan from Ghosts of Alexander, “thanks for the money, I’ll use it to kill you later,” and watching Rambo III. Earlier in the week from AM on  Pakistan, Kilcullen on the Pakistani Army, and also via AM,  Nicholas Scmidle suggests saving Pakistan by drawing a line along the Indus River. This suggestion in itself graphically shows how bad things are.

And via the SWJ, today’s Telegraph has a headline saying “US general says Pakistan could be just two weeks from collapse” though the article says something different, that General Petraeus is giving Pakistan’s military two weeks to act before coming to a decision on how the US should respond to Taliban gains. Newspaper editors, don’t you just love ’em?

Also today, in the Washington Post, Moment of truth in Pakistan, again via the SWJ:

“My experience is that knocking them [the Pakistani government and military] hard isn’t going to work,” said Mullen. “The harder we push, the further away they get.” For the crackdown on the Taliban to be successful, he said, “it has to be their will, not ours.” 

That’s Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

One more via the SWJ, US Takes Dutch Military as Role Model in Afghan Operation.

A conversation with David Kilcullen

In yesterday’s Washington Post. Short and well worth reading.

Related discussion at AM here.

Tea and bacon

In A Canterbury Tale, Powell and Pressburger pointed out that the tea drinkers were winning the war. Now in Afghanistan, the bacon eaters stand tall. Following the links back from that post will lead to something more substantial.

Update: related, Crunch time in Afghanistan-Pakistan by David Kilcullen.

The language of victory

There has been more than a little reaction to the comments a week ago by Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, senior British commander in Afghanistan, where he was quoted as saying  that we must “lower our expectations,” and that “we’re not going to win this war. It’s about reducing it to a manageable level of insurgency that’s not a strategic threat and can be managed by the Afghan army.”

“We want to change the nature of the debate from one where disputes are settled through the barrel of the gun to one where it is done through negotiations,” Carleton-Smith said.

“If the Taliban were prepared to sit on the other side of the table and talk about a political settlement, then that’s precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this. That shouldn’t make people uncomfortable.”

This interview between a British officer and a British journalist was not a private conversation, and his words went far beyond Britain. They were heard in the US, in Canada, and in Australia. Who doubts they were also heard in Afghanistan, and across the border in Pakistan?

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates used the word defeatist in rejecting some of what was said, while endorsing the idea that negotiation had a role to play: “Part of the solution is reconciliation with people who are willing to work with the Afghan government.” He compared this to the successful strategy of supporting the Sunni Awakening in Iraq.

The point is not to negotiate with irreconcilable enemies of democracy in Afghanistan, rather it is where possible to facilitate those ready to turn from supporting the insurgency to supporting a democratic future for the country instead. Not to capitulate to the enemy, but to reduce support for the enemy.

A clear and detailed view of the practical limitations of negotiation with the Taleban has been provided by Martin Patience of BBC News, while Massoumeh Torfeh gives a more forceful view.

It has long been clear that all serious people involved in the West’s current counter-insurgency wars understand that the choice between political and military solutions is a false one. Political, military and economic solutions are interdependent. Of course some less serious commentators have had difficulty understanding this:

“We hear a lot about how violence is down in parts of Anbar province. But this has little to do with the surge - it’s because Sunni tribal leaders made a political decision to turn against al Qaeda in Iraq. This only underscores the point - the solution in Iraq is political, it is not military.”

But as one of that candidate’s supporters acknowledged:

“The surge came just in time to salvage a remnant of Sunni presence in Baghdad, which is one major reason why Americans suddenly found new allies among former insurgents who not long before had been blowing up our convoys.”

Back to Afghanistan. In writing on Canadian reaction to Brigadier Carleton-Smith’s words, Terry Glavin pointed out that strategically there was nothing new in what he said. And in terms of the detail that was to some extent true, but there remains a problem in Carleton-Smith’s choice of language, and that was why Gates used the word defeatist.

The main error was in saying “we’re not going to win this war,” and yet the aim Carleton-Smith described of reaching a point where Afghanistan’s security forces would be able to manage the insurgency, that aim looked a lot like victory, or at least like a stage on the way there. So why did he not see it as such? Was the clue in the word ‘we’? If by ‘we’ he meant the British army, or even NATO, he was making a big mistake. A victory by the army of a democratic Afghanistan would be a victory for NATO and for the UN.

The West’s interest in Afghanistan is identical with the interest of the majority of the people of Afghanistan. The anti-war movement in the west refuses to understand that. If those charged with leading Western efforts in Afghanistan do not fully understand it, then we have a problem.

There is no reliable alternative to security through democracy. The fantasy of a quick-fix acceptable dictator has been shown again and again to be disastrous. Our enemies were raised under such dictatorships. And that leads to Carleton-Smith’s second mistake: the vague phrase “political settlement”. It has to be made clear that the only acceptable political settlement is one which respects the will of the people of Afghanistan. Perhaps he did say that. Perhaps those words were left out of the report. If so the fault is with the journalist. Those words need to be said every time there is talk of negotiation. They need to be repeated and repeated, and repeated again.

“The people will win,” Terry Glavin writes, and I believe he’s right. It’s in the West’s interest to hasten that victory. The way to do that is to commit totally to that victory in word as well as deed, to victory by the people of Afghanistan, victory for democracy and the rule of law in Afghanistan, not victory just for the current party in government but victory for the system of government that best serves the people.

Victory is not served by allowing even the smallest doubt to form about our commitment. Ambivalence leads to war, it prolongs war, it allows defeat.

Victory in the cold war came when the people of Eastern Europe  no longer believed in the power of their oppressors, when they were convinced their own power was stronger. Part of building that belief in Afghanistan’s population will be direct military action by NATO, part will be economic development, but at the centre must be the idea, and the belief in the idea, of the strong and free Afghanistan that will come with victory.

Earlier: ‘Realists’ go home.

Follow up posts: Punchline, and Loose lips.

Related: Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words? from the International Crisis Group July 24 2008.

Also, linked to earlier, but here it is again: Knowing the Enemy by George Packer, The New Yorker, December 18 2006, on David Kilcullen, on Al Qaeda’s information strategy, and on how victory must come through giving security to the population.

And from Your Friend in the North: F.A.O. Brigadier Carleton-Smith.

Image from the Archives of Ontario. Copyright © Queen’s Printer for Ontario.

David Kilcullen

From Dave Kilcullen, My Views on Iraq,  yesterday on the Small Wars Journal blog. An excerpt:

Anyone who knows me has been well aware of my position on Iraq for years. When I went to Iraq in 2007 (and on both previous occasions) it was to end the war, by suppressing the violence and defeating the insurgency. (Note: I said END the war, not abandon it half-way through, leaving the Iraqis to be slaughtered. When we invaded Iraq, we took on a moral and legal responsibility for its people’s wellbeing. Regardless of anyone’s position on the decision to invade, those obligations still stand and cannot be wished away merely because they have proven inconvenient).

Like every other counterinsurgency professional, I warned against the war in 2002-3 on the grounds that it was likely to be extremely difficult, demand far more resources than our leaders seemed willing to commit, inflame world Muslim opinion making our counterterrorism tasks harder, and entail a significant opportunity cost in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This was hardly an original or brilliant insight. Nor was it particularly newsworthy: it was a view shared with the rest of my community, and you would be hard-pressed to find any professional counterinsurgent who thought the 2003/4 strategy was sensible.

The question of whether we were right to invade Iraq is a fascinating debate for historians and politicians, and a valid issue for the American people to consider in an election year. As it happens, I think it was a mistake. But that is not my key concern. The issue for practitioners in the field is not to second-guess a decision from six years ago, but to get on with the job at hand which, I believe, is what both Americans and Iraqis expect of us. In that respect, the new strategy and tactics implemented in 2007, and which relied for their effectiveness on the extra troop numbers of the Surge, ARE succeeding and need to be supported. In 2006, a normal night in Baghdad involved 120 to 150 dead Iraqi civilians, and each month we lost dozens of Americans killed or maimed. This year, a bad night involves one or two dead civilians, U.S. losses are dramatically down, and security is restored. Therefore, even on the most conservative estimate, in the eighteen months of the surge to date we have saved 12 to 16 thousand Iraqis and hundreds of American lives. And we are now in a position to pursue a political strategy that will ultimately see Iraq stable, our forces withdrawn, and this whole sorry adventure tidied up to the maximum extent possible so that we can get on with the fight in other theaters – most pressingly, Afghanistan. [more]

See also George Packer’s 2006 New Yorker article on David Kilcullen, which I linked to in this post. BBC Radio 4’s Analysis broadcast an interesting programme about him last year. The audio version of it isn’t online anymore, but you can find a transcript here.

Obama’s Iraq Problem

From the current issue of The New Yorker, an opinion piece by George Packer: Obama’s Iraq Problem.

The problem of the title is that when Barack Obama declared his candidacy in February 2007, he had made a big bet on failure in Iraq. He had argued for all US troops to be pulled out by March 2008. But with the surge the opposite policy was pursued and, as reported in the New York Times, violence in Iraq is now at its lowest level since March 2004. Though the war is not over, change and hope in Iraq have come to threaten Obama's credibility.

Obama increased his stake on failure in his Iraq policy speech in September 2007. Just two days after General Petraeus reported to Congress on progress due to the surge, and warned of the dangers of more rapid troop reductions, Senator Obama reasserted his point of view that “we need to immediately begin the responsible removal of our troops from Iraq's civil war,” and cast doubt on evidence that the surge was working, saying “the Administration points to selective statistics to make the case for staying the course,” and “the bar for success is so low that it is almost buried in the sand.”

In parts of Obama’s speech, and in the accompanying plan to end the war (PDF), he appeared to model this projected failure in Iraq on the Clinton administration’s failure to prevent ethnic cleansing and partition in Bosnia. Note this part of the speech:

“Iraq needs a new Constitutional convention that would include representatives from all levels of Iraqi society - in and out of government. The United Nations should play a central role in convening and participating in this convention, which should not adjourn until a new accord on national reconciliation is reached. To reconcile, the Iraqis must also meet key political benchmarks outside of the Constitutional process, including new local elections and revising debaathification.

“Now the Iraqis may come out of this process choosing some kind of soft partition into three regions - one Sunni, one Shia, one Kurd. But it must be their choice. America should not impose the division of Iraq.”

There is an odd mix here. Pressure is implied, in benchmarks which Iraqis must meet, a convention which shouldn't adjourn without an accord. Only one possible form of settlement is described, soft partition. And yet he concludes the passage with “America should not impose the division of Iraq.” How should Iraqis read this? As the words of someone with an open mind? Or as a message from someone who wants them to get on with it and choose answer one out of a choice of one, so that he can pack up and go home?

For a taste of Iraqi political opinion on partition, see here. And a February 2008 poll gave details of Iraqi public opinion on partition: a central Government in Baghdad, ruling a unified nation, was still what most Iraqis want, 66% saying it was their preferred choice, with 95% of Sunnis selecting it, 67% of Shias, but only 10% of Kurds. As the Kurdish north has been the most peaceful portion of Iraq since the invasion, their doubts about being ruled by Baghdad are perhaps understandable. This means however that the only part of the country possibly happy with such a proposal would be the one not engaged in civil strife.

A darker aspect of Obama’s expectation of failure emerged in the accompanying plan, which said that Obama “would work to create safe-havens for Iraqis who remain in Iraq, but are displaced from their homes by violence.” Shades of Srebrenica. It also said that “Obama would supply armed escorts to civilians who voluntarily choose to move from religiously heterogeneous areas to communities where they feel they will be more secure.”

This policy was re-stated in March of this year by Obama’s then-adviser Samantha Power who said on BBC radio that his plan for withdrawal involved “moving potentially people from mixed neighborhoods to homogenous neighborhoods, tragic that it's the equivalent of facilitating ethnic cleansing, which is terrible but if that is the choice of people there...” To talk of people fleeing violence as exercising choice is perverse. Samantha Power of all people should have known better.

The fact that Iraqis moving into ‘homogenous neighborhoods’ were not exercising choice was underlined by a New York Times report published a few days after Power’s remarks, describing how young Iraqis were reacting to living in more religiously segregated cities, with religious figures exerting increased control. In short, it was not their choice, and they were turning away from religion as a result. Obama’s plan envisaged delivering more people into such situations, rather than working to ensure they could feel secure in their own homes.

The portions of Obama’s speech and plan to do with diplomacy descended into wishful thinking. The plan said “Barack Obama would work with Kurdish leaders to come to an accommodation with Turkish leaders who see the Kurdish ascendance as a threat. He would press Sunni Arab states like Saudi Arabia to use their influence to encourage Iraqi Sunnis to reconcile. To combat terrorism, Obama would press Iran, Syria, and Saudi Arabia to stem the flow of foreign fighters, arms, and financial resources into Iraq. Obama also would be a tough negotiator with Syria and Iran, sending a clear message that they need to stop meddling in Iraq’s affairs,” and “to prevent spillover - in particular, Turkish or Iranian adventurism - the Obama plan would promote a regional compact that would ensure commitments by Iraq's neighbors to non-intervention and to Iraq's territorial integrity.”

This pressure and tough negotiation was imagined as occurring concurrently with the US withdrawing troops from Iraq as fast as possible. How could any of the parties take seriously US efforts at exerting pressure in tough negotiations as they watched Obama's speedy exit? This part of the plan was frankly incredible.

* * *

So what does George Packer say in Obama’s Iraq Problem? He writes “Obama’s rhetoric on the topic now seems outdated and out of touch, and the nominee-apparent may have a political problem concerning the very issue that did so much to bring him this far.”

But Packer wants to go easy on the candidate, continuing “in hindsight, it was a mistake - an understandable one, given the nature of the media and of Presidential politics today - for Obama to offer such a specific timetable.” But this wasn’t seen as a mistake only in hindsight, Obama and his fellow senators were warned by General Petraeus prior to the September 2007 speech that this was a bad idea. To say that the mistake was understandable “given the nature of the media and of Presidential politics today” is to give as an excuse that the candidate prioritised popular media information over military information, prioritised election politics over military strategy. It’s a poor excuse.

Packer’s account of the change in Iraq which now threatens Obama’s position seems politically loaded. He writes “the improved conditions can be attributed, in increasing order of importance, to President Bush’s surge, the change in military strategy under General David Petraeus, the turning of Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda, the Sadr militia’s unilateral ceasefire, and the great historical luck that brought them all together at the same moment.”

This analysis is surprising coming from a journalist who has written in-depth articles on David Kilcullen and pre-surge counterinsurgency operations in Tal Afar, Iraq.  The turning of the Sunni tribes couldn’t have happened until they had confidence that the Americans would stay and support them. The Sadr militia’s ceasefire followed a massive reduction in car bombings and other ethnic violence in Baghdad as a consequence of the surge strategy, which led to the Sadr militia losing much of their raison d’etre in the eyes of a Shia population who no longer needed their protection. The later moves by Iraqi security forces against militias in Basra and Sadr City were facilitated by security improvements elsewhere which freed up troops for those actions. So it was not ‘great historical luck’ that brought these events together, rather they supported each other in a virtuous spiral, and the surge was a key part of that.

More from Packer: “Obama, whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers, has turned out to be a cold-eyed, shrewd politician. The same pragmatism that prompted him last month to forgo public financing of his campaign will surely lead him, if he becomes President, to recalibrate his stance on Iraq. He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, reënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse.”

If Obama is indeed shrewd enough to realise what the effect of his plan would be in current circumstances, can he also imagine what the likely consequences would have been had it been implemented when he first proposed it in January 2007, or in September 2007 when he rolled it out in greater detail, despite the clear contrary advice of General Petraeus?

George Packer sees the problem, then, but tries to soften it, to blur it to an unrecognisable degree. He goes on to try to imagine how Obama might shift policy and stay looking good, but after all that has gone before, his conclusion seems excessively generous to his preferred candidate. 

He closes: “If Obama truly wants to be seen as a figure of change, he needs to talk less about the past and more about the future: not the war that should never have been fought but the war that he, alone of the two candidates, can find an honorable way to end.”

‘He alone’? Why him at all?

UPDATE: Here’s Jeff Weintraub commenting on George Packer’s article, via Martin in the Margins.

UPDATE 2: Added a missing link in the paragraph referring to a New York Times story on the experiences of young Iraqis in ‘homogenous neighborhoods’.

UPDATE 3: Another response to Packer’s article from The New Centrist.

UPDATE 4: Here’s ABC News today, July 11th: Obama’s Iraq Withdrawal Plan May Prove Difficult. The sub-head: US commanders in Iraq warn of security dangers, see logistical nightmare. Full text and video here.

UPDATE 5: It continues, so here’s a follow up post.

This is not a rolling news service

David Thompson reads The Guardian so that I don't have to.

I used to read it, in the days when they were a bit clearer on the need to stop murderous dictators. In those times however, the story was of the West's failure, a tale that fitted very well with the paper's world view.

I still read The New Yorker, but not every issue. This story I'm glad I saw, Lawrence Wright on dissent within the radical Islamist movement. He's written a lot of other good pieces for the magazine in recent years. An interesting one in connection with the most recent article is a short item from 2006 on the relationship between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, founder of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and the main Al Qaeda leadership. Longer articles by Lawrence Wright that stand out in my memory are a profile of Al Qaeda second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri from 2002, and an article about how Islamic terrorists use the Internet from 2004. 

The debate within Islamism on the use of violence, described in his most recent piece, takes place in part via the internet as well as in books, pamphlets and newspapers. Another old New Yorker article underlines the centrality of media networks for Al Qaeda, a 2006 article by George Packer on David Kilcullen. The centrality of media networks to Islamist terrorism suggest that dissent within the movement may be highly significant, in that it can spread via the same means.

Also written by George Packer in 2006 was The Lesson of Tal Afar, about a successful US counterinsurgency operation in one town in Iraq in 2005. That operation served as one of the models for the surge of 2007, and the officer in charge of it, Colonel HR McMaster, is interviewed in a clip available here. Highly recommended viewing.