WPR's The New Rules: Nation-Building, not Naval Threats, Key to South Asian Security

It is hard for most Americans to fathom why the U.S. military should be involved in either Afghanistan or northwest Pakistan for anything other than the targeting of terrorist networks. And since drones can do most of that dirty work, few feel it is vital to engage in the long and difficult task of nation-building in that part of the world. These are distant, backward places whose sheer disconnectedness relegates them to the dustbin of globalization, and nothing more.

If only that were true. 

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.

The book reviewed in the piece is Monsoon:  The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power.

Esquire's Politics Blog: 5 Reasons Ahmadinejad Might Just Be Good for the World

Ah, U.N. Week — that time of year when Fox News sounds the alarm bells and The National Review starts making musical-theater references to impending speeches from Dictators with an Important Audience. And when the rest of us realize that Thursday's session with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be quite the opposite: another round of comic relief sure to sabotage his own attempts to be taken seriously, followed by another round of (mostly) effective sanctions. The Obama administration already rolled one eye on Monday by refusing a detainee swap, so let's see just how far one man's stubbornness can be leveraged, shall we?

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

Obama to Petraeus: I cede your win--pre-emptively--on Afghanistan

Karen DeYoung preview piece in WAPO that says Obama has already decided the Petraeus strategy in Afghanistan is solid enough that no major changes are expected in the end-of-year White House review.

This resolve arises amid a flurry of reports from outside experts and former officials who are convinced that the administration's path in Afghanistan is unsustainable and its objectives are unclear. Lawmakers from both parties are insisting that they be given a bigger say in assessing the war's trajectory.

The White House calculus is that the strategy retains enough public and political support to weather any near-term objections. Officials do not expect real pressure for progress and a more precise definition of goals to build until next year, with the approach of a July deadline President Obama has set for decisions on troop withdrawals and the beginning of the 2012 electoral season.

I would say that Petraeus won that round a bit too easily, suggesting Team Obama is keen to avoid a profile-enhancing--for the general, that is--fight.

And I must admit, I consider that a bit of an abdication of responsibility for civilian oversight, not on the level of Bush-Cheney's damn near complete outsourcing of the Iraq effort to the generals in 2007--but same zip code.

It speaks to Petraeus' enormous standing--a national asset in the Long War.  But I see a great risk in this for the US military: Obama does nothing more than Bush did to regionalize the solution set and that lack of progress, more so than defects in the COIN approach, dooms the project to an outcome just bad enough for Obama to wash his hands just before the 2012 election cycle gets serious.

Good instinct, bad linkage on Iran-Afghanistan

Ignatius piece in WAPO that starts out promisingly:

Iran is signaling that it wants to join regional efforts to stabilize Afghanistan -- presenting President Obama with an interesting diplomatic opportunity. He had solicited just such help from Tehran last month, but the administration has not yet responded to the Iranian feelers.

And then replays past mistakes:

U.S. policy is still in flux, but the administration appears ready for a limited dialogue with Iran about Afghanistan, perhaps conducted through the two countries' embassies in Kabul. This position has not been communicated to the Iranians, in part because Washington is waiting to see whether Iran will return soon to negotiations about its nuclear program with the "P-5 plus 1" group.

Thus we see yet again what our mania with nukes costs us in the Long War.  Sadder still, but telegraphing our conditions in such a rote fashion, we cede all initiative and put Tehran in the driver's seat on both scores.

Unimpressive.

Obama to Russia: Bring it on! . . . to Afghanistan

Putin and Karzai in 2002, so why did it take so long?

NYT story on Russians coming back to Afghanistan, economic connectivity in tow.

Twenty years after the last Russian soldier walked out ofAfghanistan, Moscow is gingerly pushing its way back into the country with business deals and diplomacy, and promises of closer ties to come.

Russia is eager to cooperate on economic matters in part by reviving Soviet-era public works, its president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, said Wednesday during a summit meeting with the leaders of Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Pakistan, the second such four-way meeting organized by Russia in the past year.

In fact, Russia has already begun a broad push into Afghan deal-making, negotiating to refurbish more than 140 Soviet-era installations, like hydroelectric stations, bridges, wells and irrigation systems, in deals that could be worth more than $1 billion. A Russian helicopter company, Vertikal-T, has contracts with NATO and the Afghan government to fly Mi-26 heavy-lift helicopters throughout the country.

The Kremlin is also looking to blunt Islamic extremism in Central Asia, which poses a threat to Russia’s security, particularly in the Caucasus, and to exploit opportunities in the promising Afghan mining and energy industries.

The Kremlin’s return to Afghanistan comes with the support of the Obama administration, which in retooling its war strategy has asked Afghanistan’s neighbors — including Russia, whose forces the United States helped oust — to carry a greater share of the burden of stabilizing the country.

As someone who's complained about the lack of this in our foreign policy, credit must be given to Team Obama. All I can say is, we need a whole lot more of the same, to include the encouragement of efforts by India, China, Turkey and Iran.  Otherwise we get the bed (Pakistan) we made for ourselves.

Why negotiating with the Taliban will backfire

Images of the stoning of a woman found here

NYT story on why we won't be able to stomach the prospective deal:

The Taliban on Sunday ordered their first public executions by stoning since their fall from power nine years ago, killing a young couple who had eloped, according to Afghan officials and a witness.

The punishment was carried out by hundreds of the victims’ neighbors in a village in northern Kunduz Province, according to Nadir Khan, 40, a local farmer and Taliban sympathizer, who was interviewed by telephone. Even family members were involved, both in the stoning and in tricking the couple into returning after they had fled.

Mr. Khan said that as a Taliban mullah prepared to read the judgment of a religious court, the lovers, a 25-year-old man named Khayyam and a 19-year-old woman named Siddiqa, defiantly confessed in public to their relationship. “They said, ‘We love each other no matter what happens,’ ” Mr. Khan said.

The executions were the latest in a series of cases where the Taliban have imposed their harsh version of Shariah law for social crimes, reminiscent of their behavior during their decade of ruling the country. In recent years, Taliban officials have sought to play down their bloody punishments of the past, as they concentrated on building up popular support.

“We see it as a sign of a new confidence on the part of the Taliban in the application of their rules, like they did in the ’90s,” said Nader Nadery, a senior commissioner on the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission. “We do see it as a trend. They’re showing more strength in recent months, not just in attacks, but including their own way of implementing laws, arbitrary and extrajudicial killings.”

The stoning deaths, along with similarly brazen attacks in northern Afghanistan, were also a sign of growing Taliban strength in parts of the country where, until recently, they had been weak or absent. In their home regions in southern Afghanistan, Mr. Nadery said, the Taliban have already been cracking down.

“We’ve seen a big increase in intimidation of women and more strict rules on women,” he said.

Perhaps most worrisome were signs of support for the action from mainstream religious authorities in Afghanistan.

The Taliban are not going to change, not when they think time is on their side.  The only way to prevent an outcome we cannot abide--even if just on humanitarian grounds--is to convince them otherwise, and that means creating permanent connectivity between Afghanistan and the outside world that keeps the spotlight on such activity and penalizes for it in a way that makes it cost prohibitive to pursue.

And the ones who will never abide by such change?  Inevitably you hunt these men down and kill them all, with your justification being their sheer evolutionary backwardness.  They want no future in our globalized world and they deserve none.

There are graceful exits out of Afghanistan in the short run, just no shameless ones.

What India is getting wrong on the Kashmir

Guardian column says India's policies in the Kashmir account for the recent unrest, despite New Dehli's claims to the contrary:

In an echo of Iran's lost "green revolution", the youthful protesters organised using text messaging and social media such as Facebook and YouTube. Their wrath focused in particular on the so-called "black laws", otherwise known as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, that authorises Indian security forces to stop, search, arrest and shoot suspects with impunity. As the beatings, detentions and curfews made matters worse, chief minister, Omar Abdullah, elected in 2008 as Kashmir's bright new hope, fell back on an old expedient – requesting army reinforcements from Delhi.

Despite plenty of evidence that the unrest was both spontaneous and rooted in decades of neglect, discrimination and repression of Jammu and Kashmir's Muslim majority, the Indian government has also stuck to an old story: blaming Pakistan. Delhi has repeatedly accused Islamabad of covertly backing efforts by militant Islamist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba, held responsible for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, to destabilise Kashmir. Now it says that Pakistan, switching tack, is at it again.

The longer-term indictment is that India works the political disconnect too much and the economic reconnect too little:

But Delhi's blinkered Kashmir policy since partition in 1947 – ignoring UN demands for a self-determination plebiscite, rigging elections, manipulating or overthrowing elected governments, and neglecting economic development – lies at the heart of the problem, according to Barbara Crossette, writing in the Nation.

The violence "is a reminder that many Kashmiris still do not consider themselves part of India and profess that they never will," she said. "India maintains a force of several hundred thousand troops and paramilitaries in Kashmir, turning the summer capital, Srinagar, into an armed camp frequently under curfew and always under the gun. The media is labouring under severe restrictions. Torture and human rights violations have been well documented." Comparisons with Israel's treatment of Palestinians were not inappropriate.

India's failure to win "hearts and minds" was highlighted by a recent study by Robert Bradnock of Chatham House. It found that 43% of the total adult population of Kashmir, on both sides of the line of control (the unrecognised boundary between Indian and Pakistan-administered Azad Kashmir), supported independence for Kashmir while only 21%, nearly all of whom live on the Indian side, wanted to be part of India. Hardly anyone in Jammu and Kashmir wanted to join Pakistan.

The problem with this path, of course, is that proud India is strong enough to prevent any such splitting.  Fine and dandy, as the economic viability of any such breakaway state is likely very low.  But that reality doesn't obviate making the locals happy, and India has failed at this for reasons unrelated to Pakistan's meddling.

Petraeus: we surge and Taliban do the same

photo here

Pair of WSJ stories.

In the first, Petraeus says the uptick in Taliban violence is directly related to the uptick in engagement pursued by the US military in the surge--as in, we fight more and they reply.  He also says that as the US military seeks to expand its "security bubbles," the fight will naturally grow as the White House conducts its policy review near the end of the year.

His focus now:  tracking the size of the individual bubbles and looking for ways to cross-link them.

One good sign:  fewer IEDs because those nets are under more stress from US operations.

Big difference with Iraq:  the surge is not coinciding with a reduction in inter-ethnic strife but with an increase, primarily, the WSJ opines, because of Karzai's offer to negotiate with the Taliban (see my other post below).

Bottom line:  Petraeus seems to be prepping the bureaucratic battlespace by reminding people that the surge doesn't equate to less violence in the short run but a whole lot more--part of the delicate dance he's pursuing with a White House eager to find early progress so as to justify the beginning of the drawdown slated for the summer of 2011.

As such, Petraeus doesn't need any additional triggers for violence in-country, hence his unusual intervention into the whole Quran-burning threat from Florida.

Negotiating with the Taliban naturally displeases Afghanistan's non-Pashtun minorities

WSJ front-pager on how Karzai is losing support from Afghanistan's minorities due to his desire to reach out and co-opt the Taliban.  This is seen as the equivalent of reaching out to the Sunnis in Iraq during the similar surge.

Naturally, the non-Pashtun fear any accommodation will allow the Taliban a long-term path for returning to power.

A rep of the Hazara (the Shiia in this equation; a similarly sized Hazara popultion exists in Iran) puts it this way:

We feel betrayed by the president . . . It seems that what President Karzai pursues now is the Talibanization of Afghanistan. The only difference between him and the Taliban is that he sits in the presidential palace and the Taliban sit in the mountains.

This is part of why I think the fracturing of Afghanistan is inevitable: to bring the Taliban back into the fold is to admit they own the south, and once you do that, the rest of the minorities will either want the same or will seek to do battle at some point in the future.  But with damn near everybody saying the military defeat of the Taliban is impossible, it's hard to see how you get any peace without co-opting them.

In the end, the minorities fear that the endgame as currently imagined leads to a resumed fight that the Taliban has a good chance of winning seems far from hyperbolic.

So a divided Afghanistan (however we maintain the fiction of unity) seems in the works.  The only question is who is the external guarantor.  We seem to be choosing Pakistan, ignoring the alternative of India-Iran-Russia, and I don't see how that doesn't buy us a return visit, because we've been down this path before.

So it feels like a catch-22:  don't include the Taliban and you have a truncated state, but include them and you get a divided state with the most likely unifier being the Taliban--again.

An India-Iran-Russia package on Afghanistan stability: sounds smarter to me than relying on NATO's staying power

WSJ op-ed via WPR's Media Roundup.  Shanthie Mariet D'Souza is an Indian academic.

The gist of the tripartite vision, as seen from India:

At the moment it's tough to discern what the details of this tripartite cooperation might look like. The overarching goal is to prevent the return of the Taliban to any position of influence in Afghanistan. India would of course welcome any initiative to inhibit the political legitimization of the Taliban and, by extension, Pakistan's influence in Afghanistan. One example is the Indian government's construction of the Zaranj Delaram road, which connects landlocked Afghanistan to Central Asia and Iran, reducing the country's dependence on Pakistan for trade.

India's vision shouldn't be surprising. The country has historically been allied with Iran and Russia, so in some respects Delhi is simply reverting to form. But since the Clinton administration, India has drawn closer to the U.S., both economically and militarily, as a response to the rise of China. Given the Obama administration's strained relationship with Russia and Iran, Delhi will have to proceed cautiously to avoid a rift with its U.S. partner.

This isn't an impossible mission. Even Washington must agree that in the long run, Afghanistan will be better off if all of its neighbors have a stake in the country's stability. When President Obama visits Delhi in November, India should present its roadmap for how it can contribute to this vision, either as a direct participant or as a bridge between the U.S., Russia and Iran.

For years, India pursued a "soft power" approach to Afghanistan that focused on economic aid and development. Its reinvigorated regional diplomacy shows how its role in the region is changing. Unlike in the past, India is a key power that needs to be involved, consulted and heard in discussions on Afghanistan. Washington should take note.

I couldn't agree more.  The lack of this sort of wider regional involvement to date in Obama Administration efforts is very frustrating.

I know, I know.  Admin officials will say, "We've broached this subject with the X's!"  But I would like a bit more than the usual box checking.  Didn't we get enough of that empty gesture from Condi "talking-points" Rice?

Is Afghanistan worth it?

Bret Stephens column in WSJ by way of WPR's Media Roundup.

Solid piece that made me covetous of its argument the moment I read it.  Nicely done.

The guy navigates some dicey terrain:

It's never easy to point out that, in the scale of American military sacrifice, Afghanistan does not figure large. But acknowledging a historical fact does nothing to belittle the cost the war has exacted on America's soldiers and their families: It merely offers some mental ballast to offset the swelling panic. What does belittle the sacrifice—both for those who have fallen and those who fight—is to suggest that the war is nothing but a misbegotten errand in a godforsaken land.

And then lays down the conservative case with great intelligence:

For conservatives in particular, the answer ought to entail notions of consistency and responsibility. Consistency, in the sense of supporting a counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan similar to the one conservatives urged (and that worked) for Iraq after the abject failure of the "light footprint" approach advocated by Joe Biden. Responsibility, in the sense of keeping faith with those to whom we make commitments.

This is not just a moral argument: The U.S. cannot remain a superpower if the suspicion takes root that we are a feckless nation that can be stampeded into surrender by a domestic caucus of defeatists. Allies or would-be allies will make their own calculations and hedge their bets. Why should we be surprised that this is precisely what Pakistan has done vis-a-vis the Taliban? It's not as if the U.S. hasn't abandoned that corner of the world before to its furies.

How a feckless America is perceived by its friends is equally material to how we are perceived by our enemies. In his 1996 fatwa declaring war on the U.S., Osama bin Laden took note of American withdrawals from Beirut in 1983 and Mogadishu a decade later. "When tens of your soldiers were killed in minor battles and one American pilot was dragged through the streets . . . you withdrew, the extent of your impotence and weakness became very clear." Is it the new conservative wisdom to prove bin Laden's point (one that the hard men in Tehran undoubtedly share), only on a vastly greater scale?

Nor does it seem especially conservative to subscribe to the non sequitur that because Hamid Karzai is not George Washington our efforts in Afghanistan will be of no avail. Utopia is a liberal temptation; conservatism is comfortable with the good enough. In Afghanistan that would mean a run-of-the-mill Third World country that can fend for itself, menaces nobody and is an updated version of what the country was in the 1960s. That's a reminder that Afghan history does not ineluctably condemn it to chaos or fanaticism. It's also a reminder that the measure of success in Afghanistan isn't whether we create a new Switzerland, but whether we avoid another South Vietnam.

Nothing to add, save that I admire the logic and the writing.

Experts on civilian surge in Afghanistan: dial down the fire hose of money

Christian Science Monitor op-ed via WPR's Media Roundup.  Makes basic argument that we're spending too much too fast in order to show too many results, instead of thinking in terms of sustainability.

You know that USAID isn't given to such splurge spending, so it's the political masters on top who want their election-defining results pronto.

Yet another example of the bureaucratic dangers of assigning a deadline.

Great piece with solid reportage.

When Petraeus's push comes to Obama's shove

Ahmed Rashid piece in FT.  Naturally, he argues for a negotiated endgame that includes the Taliban.  So Petraeus is seen as a dangerous man:

For weeks there has been a spectre haunting European corridors of power.  That spectre is David Petraeus.  Since he stepped in last month as head of combined US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, many European governments have feared the US general would try and extend the time and scope of the military surge to give US forces a better chance of winning over the Pashtun population in the south and delivering a knock-out blow to the Taliban.

This is exactly what he is signalling . . .

What I hear again and again in many circles:  the realist Petraeus is prepping the political battlefield with the idealist Obama, with the hard news to be delivered after the November election. Suitably chastened by a new GOP House, Petraeus will be a hard man to turn down--without empowering him as a possible 2012 opponent.

I still consider Petraeus more of a 2016 possibility, but I would drop my support for Obama in a heartbeat if this scenario came to pass. 

Don't get me wrong:  I see Obama as the avatar of a slew of philosopher-kings we're likely to elect over the next couple of decades.  I just Petraeus being a more full-up package, with my dream ticket complete with Bloomberg as Veep.

Do I expect Petraeus would do anything to serve his own political interests before that of his command? Absolutely not.  He's not that dumb.

But the Obama White House?  

Hmmm.  It's one thing to seek such power; quite another to lose it.

The Af-Pak trade pact--45 years in the negotiating!

Score two for Hillary in July: the proposed internationalization of a legal process to resolve South China Sea claims and then this Pakistan-Afghanistan trade deal.

The United States had prodded the two countries to sign the accord, calculating that it would bolster the Afghan economy by expanding its trade routes and curbing rampant smuggling. The pact could cover a multitude of trade and transit issues, ranging from import duties to port access. Example of progress: killing the requirement to reload all Afghan exports at Pakistan’s border instead of at some downstream port.

The two countries have been working on the deal since . . . oh, when did it start?  Oh right, 1965!

I’m happy to say I lived long enough (born 1962) to see this day come.

Toward a muddling-out option on Afghanistan

Show me the exitHaas piece in Newsweek is intelligent enough.  In effect, he argues that a nation-building effort designed to make Afghanistan whole will not succeed and will cost too much, so accept that this fake state will feature a Taliban-heavy south a la Blackwill and then make your choices on how you want to manage the situation, his big choice being either you seek “reintegration” with the Taliban or you acquiesce to their enclave in the south and spend your time and money building up the north and competing enclaves in the south (Tajik, Baluchi, Hazara) that would otherwise be trapped in an achieved rump Pashtunistan.

Haas argues that Pakistan would never accept a true Pashtunistan because it would threaten the integrity of its own fake state, which is probably true in terms of initial reaction, but I suspect that Islamabad would ultimately see such a soft border solution as to its advantage—legitimizing its “strategic depth” argument.  The question would be, would that be enough for Islamabad or would it pursue its historical habit of wanting Pashtun control to extend all the way to Kabul.

As I’ve argued earlier here, I see real promise in soft border solutions both north (Pashtunistan) and south (Kashmir) of Islamabad, not in the sense that I see them as easy outs, but rather that I don’t see any other long-term solution that will work better.

I honestly see the Pashtun southern enclave solution in Afghanistan to be not that much unlike the Kurdistan Regional Gov in Iraq.  Yes, the sheer existence raises the possibility of a “greater X” ambition on the part of co-ethnics “trapped” in neighboring states, but it’s an elegant solution compared to any drive to re-unify the fake state through force or even soft-power nation-building.  Plus, it creates the breathing space opportunity to work economic solutions on the enclave itself, which, in the case of the Taliban-controlled south, will admittedly be far harder to pursue than in the welcoming-if-corrupt KRG.

Nagl’s countering analysis on Petraeus’s approach:  that same strategy that stabilized Iraq can work in Afghanistan—the effective building up of Afghan’s security forces to defend themselves against the Taliban.  Frankly, if Petraeus and Caldwell (working the issue directly as a subordinate) can’t make it work, I don’t know who can.

The golden lining to date:  Petraeus convincing Karzai to allow him to pursue McChrystal’s plan to create community-based security forces.  To the extent that Petraeus succeeds, his contribution could dovetail with the Haas/Blackwill notion of  reintegrating the Taliban to the extent of recognizing their enclave in the south while building up the capacity of competing enclaves there to defend themselves.  What you end up with X months/years down the road is a Lebanon-like situation where the Taliban are forced to compete with outside-financed nation-building efforts in a reasonably stable country.  The expectation would be that the Taliban are no Hezbollah, and that Pakistan wouldn’t extend itself to compete via the Taliban in such nation-building, given that the south of Afghanistan was implicitly recognized as constituting a sphere of its influence.

Left hand, right hand on Afghanistan

WAPO piece about Petraeus butting heads early on with Karzai about creating local militias to battle Taliban:

As he takes charge of the war effort in Afghanistan, Gen. David H. Petraeus has met sharp resistance from President Hamid Karzai to an American plan to assist Afghan villagers in fighting the Taliban on their own.

A first meeting last week between the new commander and the Afghan president turned tense after Karzai renewed his objections to the plan, according to U.S. officials. The idea of recruiting villagers into local defense programs is a key part of the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan, and Karzai's stance poses an early challenge to Petraeus as he tries to fashion a collaborative relationship with the Afghan leader.

Senior U.S. officials say that the United States would like to expand the program to about two dozen sites across Afghanistan, double the current number, and are hoping to overcome Karzai's concerns. But the issue is delicate to many who fear that such experiments could lead Afghanistan further into warlordism and out-of-control militias.

You have to wonder if the "fear of warlordism" is just a clever rationale for a Karzai eager to get his desired deal with his fellow tribesmen Taliban, because if the deal is cut with Taliban, doesn't that present the same problem--just with preferred winners as far as Karzai is concerned?

Makes you wonder about a disconnect between an Obama administration thinking about deals with the Taliban and a US military pursuing the local defense path.  Of course, the two can also work together nicely, under the right conditions, but again, once you make peace with the Taliban, you arguably are forced down the path of leaving the locals defenseless against their encroachments.

Eventually, the Afghan government approved the program.  The deal puts the forces under the Ministry of Interior, assuaging Karzai's fears of a loss of central control.

Fair enough, but you see the underlying tension between a US military strategy that accepts or promotes local empowerment and a government approach that fears that outcome.

Why Iran meddles in Afghanistan

 

Very sensible stuff from Hilary Mann Leverett at ForeignPolicy.com by way of Our Man in Kabul.

The first question covers the gist of her logic.

1. In late May, then-top commander General Stanley McChrystal said there is "clear evidence of Iranian activity" in training and providing weaponry to the Taliban in Afghanistan. What are Iran's core interests in Afghanistan, and how have they evolved in the last nine years? How do those complement or work against what the U.S. and NATO are trying to achieve there?

Iran has a strategic stake in Afghanistan that has not changed in the last nine years. Tehran's overriding interest is to prevent Afghanistan (with its long and lawless border with Iran) from being used as a platform from which to attack or undermine the Islamic Republic or to weaken Iran's standing as a regional power. 

To prevent Afghanistan from being used as an anti-Iranian platform, the Islamic Republic has worked, over many years, to form relationships with Afghan players who could keep Iran's Afghan enemies (principally the Taliban but also other anti-Shiite and anti-Persian groups) and their external supporters (principally Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two of Iran's most important regional antagonists) in check. To this end, Iran has worked to strengthen and unite Afghanistan's Shiite Hazara and other Dari/Persian-speaking communities (which together comprise about 45 percent of the population) as a counterweight to anti-Iranian, pro-Saudi, and pro-Pakistani elements among Afghan Pashtuns (roughly 42 percent of the population). The Hazara and other Dari/Persian-speaking communities were, of course, the core of the Northern Alliance that fought the Taliban during the 1990s, and were supported by India and Russia as well as Iran.[[BREAK]]

In contrast to Iraq, where Shia are a clear majority of the population and Shiite groups linked to Tehran are the most important political forces in the country, Iran knows from bitter experience that the Hazara and the other Dari/Persian-speaking communities provide, at best, inadequate protection for Iranian interests in Afghanistan, because they cannot govern the country in a way that keeps it relatively stable and minimizes Pakistani and Saudi influence. So, alongside its alliances with the Hazara and the other Dari/Persian-speaking groups, Iran has also cultivated ties to some Pashtun elements in Afghanistan and supported the country's Pashtun President, Hamid Karzai.

As part of its cultivation of ties to Pashtun elements, Iran has almost certainly reached out to some Taliban factions. But I would wager a substantial sum that America's "ally" Pakistan is providing vastly more support to the Afghan Taliban than anything the Islamic Republic might be doing. And Tehran remains strongly opposed to the Taliban's resurgence as a major force in Afghan politics, for two reasons. First, the Taliban have traditionally persecuted Iran's Afghan allies -- especially the Shia Hazara -- and have even murdered Iranian diplomats. Second, Tehran sees the Taliban as a pawn for the expansion of Pakistani and Saudi influence in Afghanistan.   

As Tehran pursues this strategy of multiple alliances within Afghanistan, it must also assess the evolving role of the United States there and the implications of the U.S. posture toward Iran for Iran's Afghanistan policy. If the United States and NATO could convince Iran that they want an independent and stable Afghanistan that would be friendly to Iran, then U.S./NATO and Iranian strategies and tactics could complement each other very constructively. (This was very much the case in the months following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States, when I was one of a small number of U.S. officials engaged in ongoing discussions with Iranian counterparts about how to deal with Afghanistan and al-Qaeda, and U.S. and Iranian policies regarding these issues were rather closely coordinated.)

But, if Tehran perceives Washington as hostile to its interests -- which, unfortunately, is currently the case, given the Obama administration's drive to impose sanctions and continued use of covert operations to undermine the Islamic Republic -- then Iranian policymakers will regard the United States, along with America's Pakistani and Saudi allies, as part of the complex of anti-Iranian external players that Iran needs to balance against in Afghanistan. In this context, Iran has a strong interest in preventing U.S. troops in Afghanistan from being used to attack Iran directly, used as covert operatives to undermine the Iranian government, or used to strengthen Iran's regional rivals.

So often I'm sent stuff that says Iran is meddling in Afghanistan and therefore we shouldn't consider cooperating with them. But as I like to note, Af-Pak is Iran's front yard, so meddling is a given.  When you understand how the Iranians are meddling, you see the potential for collaboration. But as Mann Leverett points out, when you chose Pakistan, you un-choose others--and not just India.

Blackwill, recalling the Iraq debate on same, predicts partitioning of Afghanistan

map here

Per my Esquire Politics Blog post of yesterday, former ambassador to India Robert Blackwill argues in Politico:

The US polity should stop talking about timelines and exit strategies and accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of its historic stronghold in the Pashtun south . . . But Washington could ensure that north and west Afghanistan do not succumb to jihadi extremism, using US air power and special forces along with the Afghan army and like-minded nations.

Blackwill admits nobody much would like this, meaning both Karzai and Pakistan would resist for obvious reasons (Karzai wants the pretense of ruling over the entirety of Afghanistan and Pakistan wants the Pashtun to recapture the whole and not just the south), but at least it would make explicit the reality that we'll be spending years pounding the south with military strikes in order to keep the al-Qaeda-Taliban nexus in their box.

The value?  Nation-building in the north can work and this way we admit that doing the same in the south cannot, so long as Pakistan seeks "strategic depth" via the Pashtun. In short, we admit Afghanistan is a fake state, but, by doing so, we suggest the same about Pakistan.

Down with the Durand Line!  Long live Pashtunistan!  

The Politics Blog: Seven Things to Remember When We Talk to the Taliban

 

Is your stomach churning yet? The occasionally salacious but usually accurate Guardian is reporting that Team Obama is signaling that it's ready to negotiate with the Taliban. Through "trusted" intermediaries like the Pakistanis and Saudis, naturally, and via plausibly denied channels, of course, but... really? Is this what a peace-in-your-first-term, Nobel Prize-winning president looks like? If we're going to reconcile ourselves to this kind of indecent proposal — the last one led to the bloody Swat Valley offensive — the U.S. had better not lose site of reality. Here's how. If it's not too late.

Read the entire post at Esquire's The Politics Blog.

WPR's The New Rules: U.S. Must Expand its Pool of Allies in Afghanistan

 

With his recent selections of Gens. David Petraeus and James Mattis for command in Afghanistan and Central Command respectively, President Barack Obama signals his understanding that his previously established deadline of mid-2011 to begin drawing down combat troops in the “good war” cannot be met.  The two were co-architects of the military’s renewed embrace of both counterinsurgency operations and the associated nation-building project that by necessity goes along with it. Neither flag officer can be expected to preside over a Vietnam-like exit that once again puts troubled and untrustworthy Pakistan in charge of Afghanistan’s fate.

Read the rest of the column at World Politics Review.