Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan

[jd in .hu]

Obama is saying the wrong things about Afghanistan

He hit the right notes during his swing through Iraq, but his plans
for that other war could mean trouble.
By Juan Cole
http://juancole.com

article from
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/07/23/obama/index.html

Jul. 23, 2008 | Barack Obama's Afghanistan and Iraq policies are
mirror images of each other. Obama wants to send 10,000 extra U.S.
troops to Afghanistan, but wants to withdraw all American soldiers and
Marines from Iraq on a short timetable. In contrast to the kid gloves
with which he treated the Iraqi government, Obama repeated his threat
to hit at al-Qaida in neighboring Pakistan unilaterally, drawing howls
of outrage from Islamabad.

But Obama's pledge to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan will not be
easy to fulfill. While coalition troop deaths have declined
significantly in Iraq, NATO casualties in Afghanistan are way up. By
shifting emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan, would a President Obama be
jumping from the frying pan into the fire?

During the Baghdad stop of his ongoing overseas tour, the convergence
between the worldview of the presumptive Democratic nominee and that
of his Iraqi hosts provided some embarrassing moments for the Bush
administration. Obama and his traveling companions, Senate colleagues
Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Jack Reed, D-R.I., issued a statement Tuesday
after a day of consultations with Iraqi politicians and U.S. military
commanders, affirming the need to respect Iraqi aspirations for a
"timeline, with a clear date, for the redeployment of American combat
forces." By then, in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel, Iraqi
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had already expressed support for
Obama's proposal to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq within 16 months of
his inauguration next January.

Although al-Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, attempted to soothe
ruffled GOP feathers by suggesting the Der Spiegel interview was
mistranslated, al-Dabbagh came clean while Obama was in Baghdad on
Monday. He confirmed that the Iraqi government hoped U.S. troops would
be withdrawn within two years. Obama was thus able, in his joint
statement with Reed and Hagel, to cite Iraqi attitudes for his own
stance: "The prime minister ... stated his hope that U.S. combat
forces could be out of Iraq in 2010."

In general, Obama's policies toward Iraq synchronize neatly with the
aspirations of the Shiite-dominated elected Iraqi government, with an
affirmation of the need to gain the consent of the Iraqis for any
status-of-forces agreement with the U.S., and with a far greater
emphasis on addressing the humanitarian crisis provoked by the U.S.
invasion. On leaving al-Maliki's office, Obama was able to call his
consultations with the prime minister "very constructive."

By comparison, Obama's criticisms of Bush administration policy toward
Afghanistan and Pakistan, and his determination to make those
countries the centerpiece of his foreign policy, are more problematic.
Obama's determination to put down the tribal insurgencies in
northwestern Pakistan and in southern Afghanistan reveals basic
contradictions in his announced policies. His plans certainly have the
potential to ruffle Afghan and Pakistani feathers, and have already
done so in Pakistan.

On July 13, Obama criticized Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai on
CNN, saying, "I think the Karzai government has not gotten out of the
bunker and helped organize Afghanistan and [the] government, the
judiciary, police forces, in ways that would give people confidence."
Although the remark had the potential to make for awkward moments
between Karzai and Obama during their meeting Sunday, it was welcomed
by the independent Afghan press, which applauded the senator for
bucking the "self-centered" policies of Bush and his knee-jerk support
of Karzai.

After Obama met with Karzai, reporters asked his aide, Humayun
Hamidzada, if the criticism had come up. He tried to put the best face
on issue, saying the Afghan government did not see the comment as
critical, but as a fair observation, since it had in fact been tied
down fighting terrorism.

Less forgiving were the politicians in Pakistan, who reacted angrily
to Obama's comments on unilaterally attacking targets inside that
country. The Democratic presidential hopeful told CBS on Sunday, "What
I've said is that if we had actionable intelligence against high-value
al-Qaida targets, and the Pakistani government was unwilling to go
after those targets, that we should." He added that he would put
pressure on Islamabad to move aggressively against terrorist training
camps in the country's northwestern tribal areas.

Pakistan, a country of 165 million people, is composed of six major
ethnic groups, one of them the Pashtuns of the northwest. The
Pakistani Taliban are largely drawn from this group. The more settled
Pashtun population is centered in the North-West Frontier province,
with its capital at Peshawar. Between the NWFP and Afghanistan are
badlands administered rather as Native American reservations are in
the U.S., called the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, with a
population of some 3 million. These areas abut Pashtun provinces of
Afghanistan, also a multiethnic society, but one in which Pashtuns are
a plurality.

The tribal Pashtuns of the FATA no man's land, a third of which is
classified as "inaccessible" by the Pakistani government, have
sometimes given shelter to al-Qaida or Afghan Taliban militants. Some
of the Pashtun tribesmen themselves have turned militant, and have
been responsible for suicide bombings at police checkpoints inside
Pakistan. They are also accused of attacking targets across the border
in Afghanistan and of giving refuge to Afghan Taliban who conduct
cross-border raids.

The governor of the North-West Frontier province, Owais Ghani,
immediately spoke out against Obama, saying that the senator's remarks
had the effect of undermining the new civilian government elected last
February. Ghani warned that a U.S. incursion into the northwestern
tribal areas would have "disastrous" consequences for the globe.

The governor underlined that a "war on terrorism" policy depended on
popular support for it, and that such support was being leeched away
by U.S. strikes on the Pakistan side of the border and by statements
such as Obama's. A recent American attack mistakenly killed Pakistani
troops who had been sent to fight the Pakistani Taliban at American
insistence. The Pakistani public was furious. Ghani complained,
"Candidate Obama gave these statements; I come out openly and say such
statements undermine support, don't do it."

The NWFP governor is responsible for Pakistani counterinsurgency
efforts in his province and in the neighboring tribal regions. He is
well thought of in Pakistan because of his successes in Baluchistan
province, which he governed for five years prior to January of this
year, where he combined political negotiations with militants and
targeted military action when he felt it necessary. He firmly
subordinated the military strategy to civilian politics and
negotiations. That is, Ghani is a politician with long experience in
dealing with tribal insurgencies.

Obama's aggressive stance, on the other hand, could be
counterproductive. The Illinois senator had praised the Pakistani
elections of last February, issuing a statement the next day saying,
"Yesterday, a moderate majority of the Pakistani people made their
voices heard, and chose a new direction." He criticized the Bush
administration, saying U.S. interests would be better served by
"advancing the interests of the Pakistani people, not just Pakistan's
president."

Yet the parties elected in February in Pakistan are precisely the ones
demanding negotiations with the tribes and militants of the northwest,
rather than frontal military assaults. Indeed, it is the Bush
administration that has pushed for military strikes in the FATA areas.
Obama will have to decide whether he wants to risk undermining the
elected government and perhaps increasing the power of the military by
continuing to insist loudly and publicly on unilateral U.S. attacks on
Pakistani territory.

Nor is it at all clear that sending more U.S. troops to southern
Afghanistan can resolve the problem of the resurgence of the Taliban
there. American and NATO search-and-destroy missions alienate the
local population and fuel, rather than quench, the insurgency.
Resentment over U.S. airstrikes on innocent civilians and wedding
parties is growing. Brazen attacks on U.S. forward bases and on
institutions such as the prison in the southern city of Kandahar are
becoming more frequent. To be sure, Obama advocates combining
counterinsurgency military operations with development aid and
attention to resolving the problem of poppy cultivation. (Afghan
poppies are turned into heroin for the European market, and the
profits have fueled some of the Taliban's resurgence.) Stepped-up
military action, however, is still the central component of his plan.

Before he jumps into Afghanistan with both feet, Obama would be well
advised to consult with another group of officers. They are the
veterans of the Russian campaign in Afghanistan. Russian officers
caution that Afghans cannot be conquered, as the Soviets attempted to
do in the 1980s with nearly twice as many troops as NATO and the U.S.
now have in the country, and with three times the number of Afghan
troops as Karzai can deploy. Afghanistan never fell to the British or
Russian empires at the height of the age of colonialism. Conquering
the tribal forces of a vast, rugged, thinly populated country proved
beyond their powers. It may also well prove beyond the powers even of
the energetic and charismatic Obama. In Iraq, he is listening to what
the Iraqis want. In Pakistan, he is simply dictating policy in a
somewhat bellicose fashion, and ignoring the wishes of those moderate
parties whose election he lauded last February.

-- By Juan Cole
http://juancole.com