The Failed Presidency of Barack Obama, pt 2

 

The breaking wikileaks scandal has the possibility of becoming a true Katrina moment for Barack Obama, depending on how things shake out.

But as the early-viewing New York Times reports, WikiLeaks presents a new depth of detail about how the U.S. military has seen, for six years, the depths of ISI facilitation of the Afghan insurgency. For instance: a three-star Pakistani general active during the 80s-era U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi sponsorship of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Hamid Gul, allegedly met with insurgent leaders in South Waziristan in January 2009 to plot vengeance for the drone-inflicted death of an al-Qaeda operative. (Gul called it “absolute nonsense” to the Times reporters.)

Other reports, stretching back to 2004, offer chilling, granular detail about the Taliban’s return to potency after the U.S. and Afghan militias routed the religious-based movement in 2001. Some of them, as the Times notes, cast serious doubt on official U.S. and NATO accounts of how insurgents prosecute the war. Apparently, the insurgents have used “heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft,” eerily reminiscent of the famous Stinger missiles that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided to the mujahideen to down Soviet helicopters. One such missile downed a Chinook over Helmand in May 2007.

Typically, NATO accounts of copter downings are vague — and I’ve never seen one that cited the Taliban’s use of a guided missile. This clearly isn’t just Koran, Kalashnikov and laptop anymore. And someone is selling the insurgents these missiles, after all. That someone just might be slated to receive $7.5 billion of U.S. aid over the next five years.

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/wikileaks-drops-90000-secret-war-docs-fingers-pakistan-as-insurgent-ally/#more-28442#ixzz0un4c3UlL

If it comes out that the Obama administration has been a.) actively covering up Pakistani involvement or, b.) So incompetent as to have overlooked obvious Pakistani involvement, then these documents could have a real impact on the already weakened Obama administration.

Obama's post presidency is fast approaching, and the most important thing for him to do with that time is to plan to fail in Afghanistan. 

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 11: The "Fail" meme goes viral

Glad to see the NYT is now accurately reporting about our real enemy in Afghanistan - Pakistan:

Americans fighting the war in Afghanistan have long harbored strong suspicions that Pakistan’s military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency with a hidden hand, even as Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from Washington for its help combating the militants, according to a trove of secret military field reports to be made public Sunday.

The documents, to be made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.

Much of the information — raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan— cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place.

But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.

While current and former American officials interviewed could not corroborate individual reports, they said that the portrait of the spy agency’s collaboration with the Afghan insurgency was broadly consistent with other classified intelligence.

Some of the reports describe Pakistani intelligence working alongside Al Qaeda to plan attacks. Experts cautioned that although Pakistan’s militant groups and Al Qaeda work together, directly linking the Pakistani spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, with Al Qaeda is difficult.

The records also contain firsthand accounts of American anger at Pakistan’s unwillingness to confront insurgents who launched attacks near Pakistani border posts, moved openly by the truckload across the frontier, and retreated to Pakistani territory for safety.

The behind-the-scenes frustrations of soldiers on the ground and glimpses of what appear to be Pakistani skullduggery contrast sharply with the frequently rosy public pronouncements of Pakistan as an ally by American officials, looking to sustain a drone campaign over parts of Pakistani territory to strike at Qaeda havens. Administration officials also want to keep nuclear-armed Pakistan on their side to safeguard NATO supplies flowing on routes that cross Pakistan to Afghanistan.

Read the whole thing. 

Pakistan is not our friend. Pakistan is a rouge nation - the enemy of the both the United States and of Globalization's Rising Core-  and they will have to be dealt with, sooner or later. When something goes thump in the night - see the recent almost attack in Time Square - we will have to face the fact that Pakistan is not merely home to a loose nit collection of non-state actors but is actually actively supporting terrorists that kill American troops and undermine our foreign policy goals in South Asia and around the world.

The U.S. has not dealt with a situation like Pakistan since the end of the Cold War. Because not since the Soviet Union collapsed have we been forced to deal with a nuclear armed, heavily militarized nation that was actively supporting notoriously anti-America elements around the world. Since 1989 the U.S. has faced small powers - Iraq, Panama, Serbia - who did not posses nuclear arms. Meanwhile,  we dreamed of hypothetical wars with potential super powers, China, Japan, a resurgent Russia, while we engaged a series of non-state actors during peace building and counter insurgency operations. But Pakistan is a different story. Handling Pakistan might wind up looking a lot like handling the Soviet Union - we'll have to go back to containment (not of "Islamism", etc, but of Pakistan) by building a security alliance with like minded - or at least like interested - nations such as India and Iran. Over time, we'll have to hope that Pakistan's internal contradictions will rip it apart without allowing their nukes to fall into the wrong hands.

The good news is that Pakistan is a poor nation with little industry. Unlike the Soviet Union, Pakistan is not capable of global or even regional "Pakistani block" nor are they capable of building up a military with global reach. What they are capable of is ruining our plans for Afghanistan and triggering a regional war with India. And that is why we must plan to fail in Afghanistan while building a strong strategic relationship with India.

The Eventual, Inevitable, Security Alliance in South/Central Asia and the M.E.

The Iranian-Indian-American Security alliance will someday be the most important in central Asia and the Middle East. The only question is whether it come about in the near future, or after a disastrous Israeli-Iranian war followed by a Pakistani attack on Iran, India and the U.S. Don't believe me? Read the news:

Iran’s deputy police chief accused Pakistan on Saturday of providing a haven for members of an armed rebel group that has claimed responsibility for the deadly twin suicide bombings last week in front of a mosque in the southeastern city of Zahedan.

Chief Ahmadreza Radan also said the authorities had detained 40 people who were seeking to create a disturbance in the city after the bombings, the semiofficial ILNA news agency reported.

The arrests appeared to be part of a crackdown in the Sunni-dominated province of Sistan-Baluchistan, where the rebel group, Jundollah, has been operating.
Without naming Pakistan specifically, he issued a tough warning to “neighbors on the eastern borders” of Iran.

So Iran is being attack by insurgents based in Pakistan? Hmmm. I wonder if any other countries have that problem?

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton worries all the time about the possibility that an attack against the US could emanate from Pakistan and has called on Islamabad to take further, specific actions against militant networks.

Without entering into the details, she seemed to indicate in a BBC interview that the US wanted Pakistan to do more to tackle the Haqqani network, a branch of the Afghan

Taliban which operates in Pakistan and is widely suspected of having close ties to Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI.

During the interview at the US embassy compound in Islamabad, Mrs Clinton also said the state department was looking into the possibility of listing the Haqqani network as a terrorist organisation.

The violent and feared network operates along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan and is seen as the main threat to US and Nato troops in Afghanistan.

"We have designated a number of their leaders over the years as terrorists, and we're now looking at whether and how to describe the group and if it meets the legal criteria for naming it," she said.
 

Ok, let me get this straight; Iran is under attack, American troops are under attack in Afghanistan, the SECSTATE is worried that Pakistani based insurgents the ISI will attack America and yet....? We ramp up tensions with Iran? And this makes sense to people?

Lest we forget, India has also been attack by the world's second most dangerous rouge state (after the KFR):

NEW DELHI (AFP) – India has accused Pakistani intelligence services of overseeing the 2008 militant attacks on Mumbai, a report said Wednesday ahead of a major meeting between the rival nations.

Home Secretary G. K. Pillai told the Indian Express newspaper that the level of involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had become clear through recent questioning of David Headley, a suspect under arrest in the United States.

If a political scientist from Mars landed in South Asia and tried to study the situation he or she could be forgiven for quickly concluding that Pakistan was clearly a pariah state and that Iran, India and America must have an alliance to try to contain Pakistan. Of course he would be wrong, but he would not be illogical.  

Planning to Fail Win in Afghanistan, pt 10: 10 Days in, 10 Years Late

Introduction

When I heard about the changing of the guard in Afghanistan, I wrote that one metric that would be important in determining whether or not the situation could be turned around would be how General Petraeus handled Pakistani meddling in Afghan affairs:

Let's see, however, how Petraeus deals with Pakistan. The good general has a reputation of being a amiable guy and with a great sense for PR - I found him to be both a great public speaker and legitimately funny guy when I saw him speak last year - but he's also a stone cold soldier, and his surge in Iraq included both "soft" elements of population security and hard core kinetics, like tracking down and killing AQI and Iranian special groups operating inside Iraq. So it'll be interesting to see how Petraeus might handle Pakistani or Iranian assets he catches in country - I'd not want to cross the border if I were a soldier in either of those countries armies right now, BTW.

Now, about 10 days after taking command, a picture seems to be emerging. Petraeus is mad as hell and he's not going to take it anymore:

General Petraeus introduced the idea of blacklisting the group, known as the Haqqani network, late last week in discussions with President Obama’s senior advisers on Pakistan and Afghanistan, according to several administration officials, who said it was being seriously considered.

Such a move could risk antagonizing Pakistan, a critical partner in the war effort, but one that is closely tied to the Haqqani network. It could also frustrate the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who is pressing to reconcile with all the insurgent groups as a way to end the nine-year-old war and consolidate his own grip on power.

A Strategic Asset No More 

General Kayani apparently once referred to the Haqqani network as a "strategic asset"  and there is every indication that the ISI has an all-too-close relationship with Haqqani, so listing them as a terrorist organization, while somewhat symbolic, is still important when, in the years to come, we decide to start considering Pakistan a state-sponsor of terrorism - which they are.

Meanwhile, on the other side of that hundred miles of rocks and dirt that has been responsible for most of our problems for the last ten years, my nominee for the next permanent member of the U.N. security council is making some pretty serious allegations about the ISI:

India has accused Pakistani intelligence services of overseeing the 2008 militant attacks on Mumbai, a report said Wednesday ahead of a major meeting between the rival nations.
Home Secretary G. K. Pillai told the Indian Express newspaper that the level of involvement of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) had become clear through recent questioning of David Headley, a suspect under arrest in the United States.

"The real sense that has come out from Headley?s interrogation is that the ISI has had a much more significant role to play (than was earlier thought)," Pillai said.

Uh-Oh. Yeah, that whole Mumbai thing was sort, kind of an act of war, and I'm sure the U.S. has been trying to hold India back. Maybe no more. Hopefully this is all part of a broader strategy, with Petraeus traveling to Islamabad and playing good cop to India's bad cop and telling the Pakistanis that there is only so much America can do to hold the Indians back, so they better start dissolving their relationships with terrorists organizations, like the ISI.

On the ground in Afghanistan, Petraeus appears to be taking the advice offered in by numerous sources last year and standing up local security militias to augment the police and military:

KABUL, Afghanistan — After intensive discussions with NATO military commanders, the Afghan government on Wednesday approved a program to establish local defense forces around the country, with the potential to help remote areas thwart attacks by Taliban insurgents.

The NATO-backed program, which will be supervised by the Interior Ministry, will pay salaries to the members of these new forces, an inducement that could generate widespread recruitment, although Afghan aides have said they prefer to keep the program small.
 

A Fine Line Between Militias and Warlords 

 Johnson and Mason (2009) writing in military review last year were skeptical of the tribal militia idea (I referenced their work in Moral Warfare in Southwest Asia) and Malkasian and Meyerle (2009) point out that Afghanistan has a long history of warlordism whereas Iraq had almost no history of militias and warlords run a muck. It's worth considering that one of the QST's primary arguments when they were sweeping the country from 1994-96 was that the warlords and local militias (almost all old Mujihadeen commanders) were too corrupt and did not protect the people. Would these new militias be different? Will they be loyal to Kabul? Will they self finance with graft and drug dealing? Do we want them to be loyal to Kabul - given the corruption of Karzai and his band of merry men? Is this part of Bing West's "mushroom" (keep them in the dark and feed them shit) strategy WRT to Kabul?

I think all of these questions need to be answered if the ISAF is going to get in the business of supporting local militias. Ironically, critic of president Bush's Afghan policy, such as Ahmed Rashid, often suggest that is was the reliance on former Northern Alliance commanders - acting as warlords - that helped fuel the rise of the neo-Taliban throughout 2002-06.

The War After Next

Here is an excerpt from Seth G. Jones In the Graveyard of Empires, pg. 257:

[Setting; a military outpost near the Pakistani border; 2005]

At 1 a.m., approximately forty insurgents came over the mountain passes from Pakistan and assaulted the Afghan observation post. Pakistani military observation posts to the east and southeast, at distances of a quarter and half mile, provided supporting fire of heavy machine guns and rocket propelled grenades.  [EMPHASIS MINE]

Jones' book is rife with stories like the one above; stories of Afghan and American forces coming under attack from Pakistani army and Frontier Corps forces along the Af/Pak border. These stories are too common to ignore and are echoed by Amhed Rashid and David Killcullen. I think its time to begin to think about - not the next war, that one is apparently being scheduled with Iran - but the war after next. The war after we fail in Afghanistan and get attacked again. The war that will pit us directly against a nuclear armed south Asian state with 170 million citizens.

Pakistan is not America's ally. The sooner we deal with that reality the less painful the separation will be. 

Planning to Fail in Afghanistan, pt 5: Planning to Fail in Afghanistan the Movie

Here is my presentation from this year's "Capital University Symposium on Undergraduate Research". My presentation was entitled "Moral Warfare in Southwest Asia," and it was based on the paper I wrote this past winter by the same name.

In other news, I was also awarded the Kenneth J. Martin award for scholarship by a senior in political science. The award is a real honor because both the nominations and voting come from the department faculty, so I must have made a few fans in the last 4 years. I guess I can now call myself an award winning political scientist.

Obama Wants to Get Pakistan Right; Congressional Democrats Don't Care If American Soldiers Die

Tip of my hat to President Obama on Pakistan.


On one hand, he wants to get tougher WRT the allocation of American aid (he wants to see it isn't used to build a big war force to fight India).


On the other hand, the president wants to offer a quid pro quo with greater economic connectivity to the U.S. in form of special economic zones within both Pakistan and Afghanistan.


This is an extremely good idea that will save lives, create jobs and grow the Core.


Unfortunately, the Democrats care more about appeasing their union overlords then they do about American grand strategy:

A bill sought by Obama to boost trade by establishing special economic zones in Pakistan and Afghanistan has stalled in the U.S. Senate, partly over concerns about labor standards as well as worries within the U.S. textile industry.

I am forced to conclude that Democrats in the senate do not care about winning in Afghanistan. If they cared about winning they would care about shrinking the Gap and growing the Core. They do not. And since they don't want to win but also don't have the balls to cut off all funding for the war and order the troops home, I am left with the only remaining logical conclusion: senate Democrats do not care about American soldiers.

If senate Democrats cared about American soldiers they would either give them the resources they need to win the war or bring them home.

Americans of all political inclinations should support Obama's plan to use a carrot and stick to bring Pakistan into the Core. This plan shows real grand strategic thinking from the Obama administration and will make America safer and wealthier.

Americans of all political inclinations should oppose the senate Democrats who will throw the U.S. military and the Pakistani people under the bus at the behest of their Big Labor masters who seek to create a worldwide Soviet Comintern.

I hope the check from the AFL-CIO was worth it you bozos.