Afghanistan: Our future front page headline
Let’s return to Afghanistan. We might as well, because no matter who wins the election we are going to be hearing lots more about events there.
There has not been a lot to cheer about lately. Consider that on Wednesday Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that the mission to stabilize Afghanistan had shown significant gaps in the ability of the United States and NATO to integrate their civilian and military efforts, and he warned that it “remains to be seen” whether the allies could better coordinate their work.
“These efforts today – however well intentioned and even heroic – add up to less than the sum of the parts,” he said.
In a speech at the U.S. Institute of Peace, Gates said the security of the American people will depend increasingly on an ability to head off the next insurgency or stop the collapse of another failing state. He focused specifically on Afghanistan.
Meanwhile Superman, known to us mere Earthlings as Gen. David Petraeus, now head of the U.S. Central Command, has warned that the lack of development and the spiraling violence in Afghanistan will likely make it “the longest campaign of the long war.”
Thus next month he is launching a 100-day assessment of U.S. strategy for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and the surrounding region. Reportedly he will focus on government-led reconciliation of Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the leveraging of diplomatic and economic initiatives with nearby countries that are influential in the war.
It does make you wonder, should Sen. MCain win election, if Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai or Gen. Petraeus can expect to be rebuked by President McCain for talking to the enemy without preconditions.
As Fred Kaplan of Slate pointed out, when asked about a British officer’s recent statement that at some point, we’ll have to strike a deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, Petraeus said, matter-of-factly, “You have to talk to enemies.”
Ironically, considering how closely the Bush administration as well as Sen. McCain have wrapped themselves in the aura of Gen. Petraeus, some senior administration officials have expressed concern that Petraeus is casting his net too widely in a regional review at a time when Afghanistan and western Pakistan desperately need rescuing.
Meanwhile Petraeus, knowing what a buzzsaw Afghanistan is, has sought to manage expectations of any repeat of the Iraq performance in Afghanistan, stressing that Afghanistan is not Iraq, and that while some concepts are “transplantable,” Afghanistan has daunting challenges likely to require a far lengthier effort.
Parts of Afghanistan have “actually been spiraling downward throughout the course of this year,” Petraeus said last week at the Heritage Foundation. “The biggest lesson of counterinsurgency is that every situation is unique. You have to be very careful to have that nuanced understanding . . . of the circumstances on the ground,” he said.
To give just one example of how surreal Afghanistan can be consider the report from last weekend’s London Sunday Times that British officials covered up evidence that a Taliban commander killed by special forces in Helmand last year was in fact a Pakistani military officer, according to highly placed Afghan officials.
Better yet, was the announcement that under pressure from the United States and its coalition partners to shake up his government and curb high-level corruption, President Karzai named as his interior minister last weekend a former official of Afghanistan’s Communist-era secret police. The appointment of Muhammad Hanif Atmar was part of a cabinet reshuffle that a spokesman for Mr. Karzai described as aimed at bringing “positive changes in good governance.” Yes, of course, good governance. Let’s hear it for democratic values.
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[...] Isenberg at Across the Aisle has an interesting summary of recent developments on Afghanistan we’ve touched on all week, while The New York Times [...]
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