Several stories today focus on Afghanistan, with differing offerings all coming to the same conclusion. President Obama does not have grandiose dreams for the outcome in Afghanistan, where empires go to die, as the saying goes, with everyone understanding that security is plummeting in that country. With a new plan forward coming from all sides soon.
From the Guardian:
The Obama team and Nato leaders are due to finalise a “comprehensive” review of the Afghan strategy by April when the US president arrives in Europe for a Nato summit in France and Germany.
“Barack Obama is a pragmatist. He knows we must deal with the world as it is,” said Jones. He added that there had been a “failure to harmonise” the various strands of the campaign in Afghanistan. The new policy would place greater emphasis on “going beyond military capacity” to dealing with good governance, judicial reform, a focus on the police, and the “war on drugs”.
As an aside, NSC adviser Jones is getting expanded turf and more power as expected from Obama through a directive, which was mentioned yesterday in the Post, an important read. In the piece Jones makes a point of saying that part of his job is making sure that Obama hears the minority view on issues, which didn’t happen during Bush-Cheney, while making sure the president also gets Jones’ view when needed.
John Hutton, the British defense secretary, may have been one of the only European voices calling for more action, but he got the attention of General Petraeus, who took it as “a terrific message,” according to the Guardian reporting. Hutton:
“This is not an aberration. This is the pattern of future conflicts. I do not believe we are properly preparing for it,” he said.
Nato should show a “wartime mentality” over the campaign in Afghanistan, but instead it possessed a “peacetime culture obsessed with process”, he added.
Secretary Gates and Jim Jones have both complained about NATO in Afghanistan. If the organization doesn’t find some way to address the reality of non state actors causing mayhem, NATO’s April confab will be depressing, the prognosis for Afghanistan grim.
From the Washington Post today:
“NATO’s future is on the line here,” Richard C. Holbrooke, the State Department’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, told attendees at an international security conference here. “It’s going to be a long, difficult struggle. . . . In my view, it’s going to be much tougher than Iraq.”
Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of the U.S. Central Command, said the war in Afghanistan “has deteriorated markedly in the past two years” and warned of a “downward spiral of security.”
Petraeus is also aware of the risks: “Afghanistan has been known over the years as the graveyard of empires. “We cannot take that history lightly.”
Post reporting confirms the Guardian report on European involvement needing to increase, which offers a very small glimmer of hope for President Obama, even as Biden’s trip didn’t actually yield any new movement on the issue of NATO.
The debate over troops has led to a split within NATO. Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, NATO’s secretary general, told conference attendees on Saturday that European members of the alliance needed to do more of the “heavy lifting” in Afghanistan.
British Defense Secretary John Hutton openly disagreed with his German counterpart, saying the need for more combat troops was the highest priority in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, as far as I can tell, President Karzai remains part of the problem, someone who is seemingly unwilling to take responsibility for anything.
“Yes, we produce poppies. Yes, we are insecure because of that,” he said. “Are we a ‘narco-state,’ as we’ve been called the past few years? No, we are not.”
Ego meets denial.
State’s special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke, summed up what we’re facing in a nutshell:
“I’ve never seen anything remotely resembling the mess we’ve inherited.” – Richard Holbrooke
But it’s ours now, regardless of what Bush-Cheney dumped in our laps, and President Obama cannot afford to have a failed state heavily dependent on narcotics trade next to nuclear Pakistan.
Oh, and speaking of Pakistan, two stories that are sobering in the extreme. One from Dawn, which is yet another tale of Pakistani army incompetence when juxtaposed with the Taliban. The second from the AP, which reports of receiving a gruesome video that appears to show the killing of a Polish engineer held hostage, the first since Daniel Pearl.
