Balkanizing Afghanistan

In the coming weeks, President Barak Obama will announce exactly what shape the termination of his Afghan surge will take.  In light of this, and in the aftermath of bin Laden's death, pundits have been falling over themselves to voice just what all this means for the future of the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Gates has called for a gradual withdrawal while Democrats in Congress are eager for a more hasty departure.  The White House itself has said that the July drawdown will be "real" and the final decision will be based on "conditions on the ground" lining up with the president's stated objectives of defeating al-Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan, according to CFR.org.

Part of the calculus behind any drawdown schedule will be the progress of peace negotiations with the Taliban.  Yesterday, The Express Tribune, a Pakistani newspaper affiliated with The International Tribune, ran a story alleging that, according to an unnamed source, the United States had made direct contact with Taliban leader Mullah Omar via an intermediary, a former Taliban spokesman known as Mohammad Hanif who was arrested by U.S. forces in 2007.

Rumors on high-level secret negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban have been swirling around Kabul for at least a year.  Some of this hearsay could be credible, such as talks in Germany, the Persian Gulf and Turkey, while in others instances the U.S. has been outright hoodwinked by Taliban impostors.

According to the Express article, the U.S. had offered the Taliban control over the south of Afghanistan, while leaving the north for the other political forces under American influence. However, this was rejected by the Taliban.

Should this turn out to be true, it would seem the U.S. has taken a page from a recent Foreign Affairs article penned by Robert D. Blackwill, former U.S. ambassador to India and former deputy national security adviser for strategic planning. 

In the article Blackwill writes:

Current U.S. policy toward Afghanistan involves spending scores of billions of dollars and suffering several hundred allied deaths annually to prevent the Afghan Taliban from controlling the Afghan Pashtun homeland -- with little end in sight. Those who ask for more time for the existing strategy to succeed often fail to spell out what they think the odds are that it will work in the next few years, what amount of casualties and resources they think the attempt is worth, and why. That calculus suggests that it is time to shift to Plan B....The time has come, therefore, to switch to the least bad alternative -- acceptance of a de facto partition of the country.

Blackwill proposes a long term combat role for as many as 50,000 U.S. troops in the north half of the country, ceding the rest of the country to the Taliban.  "...Washington should accept that the Taliban will inevitably control most of the Pashtun south and east and that the price of forestalling that outcome is far too high for the United States to continue paying," argues Blackwill.  The former ambassador's proposal amounts to a decade of nation-building in the north and counterterrorism in the south.

If the U.S. is indeed offering to barter half of Afghanistan for a peace treaty, perhaps the Obama administration has reluctantly arrived at the same conclusion as Blackwill: "Accepting a de facto partition of Afghanistan has enough downsides that choosing it makes sense only if the other options available are even worse. They are."

Alim

Kabul Hustle

Kabul is a hustle.  But with a little scratch, a little nerve, a little luck and, yes, perhaps a little graft, all things are possible.

The economy grew by a blistering 22.5 percent last year, agriculture alone by 53 percent thanks to ample wet weather.  The service sector bounded by double digits and mining, the purported panacea the country’s been longing for, jumped by a third.

Security, however, is at its worst since 2001, Afghanistan continues to provide 90 percent of the world’s heroin, the country ranks as second most corrupt and relies more heavily on foreign aid than any other.

It’s in front of such a backdrop that everyday Afghans have been eking out an existence through the nearly 10-year war.

A recent Guardian article illustrates how this drama is playing out in the capital of Kabul:

The 10-year international effort has seen Kabul change from being a moribund city of fewer than 400,000 to a bustling metropolis of 4.5 million flush with cash. The last two years have seen an explosion in conspicuous consumption. There are blocks of luxury apartments under construction, giant video hoardings advertising energy drinks, BMWs and Hummers blasting their way through the traffic with overpowered horns. Miralam Hosseini, 56, sells at least two $140,000 4x4s every week. Across the street from his showroom, an electronics shops stocks the latest 52in flat screen.

To read the rest of this article, visit Forbes.com, where it was originally published.

Smurf Propaganda

A French academic has published "The Little Blue Book" which argues that Smurf society, intentionally or not, preaches the false virtue of a totalitarian utopia grounded in fascism, communism, colonialism, anti-Semitism and, to add a few non-ism, misogyny and autarky.  Whether Papa Smurf is the more cuddly embodiment of Uncle Joe or not, the movie still looks smurfing terrible. 

Alim

Hello Time Bomb

Matthew Good—whose Underdogs and Beautiful Midnight albums served as the soundtrack to the teenage years of suburban Toronto youth who spent the late-90s shoulder-tapping outside The Beer Store and shotgunning beer in dorm bathrooms—oddly enough popped back onto the radar this week in an unexpected way.

Borrowing from The Atlantic Wire:

China is at work on its first aircraft carrier which, Canadian musician and Guardian contributor Matthew Good notes, "has some defence analysts concerned, but they'd be the sort that view any alteration in the current global status quo discomforting." Not only is "a single U.S. carrier strike group, at present, the most powerful military asset in the world," but we have 11 of them. That's "two more active carriers than the rest of the world combined." The power a single one of these holds, Good explains, "could--if fully unleashed--devastate most nations on earth." Still, he acknowledges, the Chinese do have at least one sub "capable of launching nuclear weapons" and suspected to be working on two more. But this artillery hardly holds a candle to the U.S.'s "288 nuclear warheads per boat, each possessing a maximum yield of 475 kilotonnes." Good muses, "What an amazing technological age we live in. We can't feed the world, but by God we can blow it up."

What struck me first, judging from his picture byline, was that I'm not the only one who's put on a few pounds since the summer of '99.  Sipping wine would come later in life, but in retrospect many of us ought to have at least been chugging lite beer while Mr. Good's rock anthems cranked from the five-disc CD stereo.

But on to the substance of the article which, if nothing else, is very informative.  It's full of dry facts about how both China and the U.S. can destroy the world a couple times over.  Apparently a deft touch in songwriting doesn't necessarily translate to op-ed pieces (and, yes, the fact that this is being written for a personal, unpaid blog does not go unnoticed, but, seriously, the man could write a tune).

Good appears confounded by concerns over China's naval development, when, in his view, we should actually be worried about America's already formidable forces and how the resources to build and maintain such deadly arsenals could be put to more humanitarian purposes.

In my younger days, Good could do no wrong in my eyes.  But, today, I must disagree with the erstwhile Canadian rocker.

China's rise is indeed inevitable.  On track to be the world's largest economy it's understandable that, in an age of Somali pirates and other rogue actors with out-sized abilities, China's national security interests would extend in lockstep with it's economic reach around the world.  The Middle Kingdom must protect the trade routes and supply of raw material that have become absolutely vital to the Politburo as it seeks to maintain social harmony at home.

The concern of defense analysts, however, stems from the opaque nature of the People's Liberation Army (PLA).  Even to the closest Asia-watchers, it remains unclear if China intends for its ascension to be one of benevolent and enlightened self-interest or aggressive and rancorous nationalism.  Just last week Vietnam accused China of destroying a seismic survey boat in the South China Sea, while China said that Vietnam had "gravely violated" its sovereignty and warned its neighbor to stop looking for oil in the ocean without Chinese permission, said CFR.org.

Until it's clear which path the Chinese have embarked on, the U.S. along with China's increasingly insecure neighbors will have no choice but to brace for the worst while being mindful not to push the PLA into a corner and onto the defensive.

Otherwise the world could have a real time bomb on its hands.  Hit it, Matt!

Alim

Dueling Blogs

I've started a new blog over at Forbes covering Afghanistan's wartime economy.  This one actually pays cash, so visit often and tell your friends.  Not to worry though, non-economic ruminations can still be found here and over at RealClearWorld.com

He Said, She Said

Sarah Palin dipped into the Afghan fray on Tuesday, posting a Facebook comment in response to President Karzai’s NATO ultimatum on civilian casualties after at least nine civilians were killed in their home in Helmand province.

What President Karzai is saying is that if we don’t severely limit our air campaign he will take “unilateral action.”  And he further says that if the airstrikes continue we will be seen as an “occupying” power. This is an indirect way of saying that American and NATO forces will be fair game, which is obviously an unacceptable situation that threatens our troops […] Let us be clear: we are in Afghanistan fighting for the Afghan people and for the security of our country and our allies. If President Karzai continues with these public ultimatums, we must consider our options about the immediate future of U.S. troops in his country.  If he actually follows through on his claim that Afghan forces will take “unilateral action” against NATO forces who conduct such air raids to take out terrorists and terrorist positions, that should result in the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and the suspension of U.S. aid.

The public statements of politicians are made to serve myriad audiences and their rhetoric should not be taken literally.  Karzai is attempting to crest the wave of war fatigue and anti-foreigner sentiment rising through Afghanistan.  Palin is trying to prove that the view from her Alaskan home extends beyond Russia, right into the heart of Asia.  At most, their comments demarcate the extreme positions of the much more nuanced debate taking place behind closed doors and between cooler heads.  At the very least they should be dismissed as posturing and brinkmanship.

However, the former governor gets a few things wrong.  At no point did Karzai make the threat that “Afghan forces will take ‘unilateral action’ against NATO forces.”  It’s his government that will take action, militarily, diplomatically or by other political means.  And, in the wake of bin Laden’s death, Palin’s labeling of the Taliban as terrorists is subject to some debate.

Karzai, currently the only one of the two who is an elected official and representing a presidency, must be held to a higher standard of accountability than a private citizen on a non-campaign family bus tour.  But with millions of “friends” comes great responsibility.  The cyber-phenom that is Sarah Palin has so far stirred almost 4,000 responses to her Afghanistan Facebook post; likely far more than Karzai could ever hope to elicit, and dwarfing a lifetime of responses for this humble blogger.

Alim

Religious Rants

As a proud Canadian and a three-day-a-year Muslim, I was gobsmacked by an Op-Ed in the National Post, one of our two Canadian national newspapers. Jonathan Kay, managing editor of the paper, highlights Dutch Politician Geert Wilders and his controversial views on Islam.

Out of haste (I’m on deadline) I’m lifting from The Atlantic Wire’s summary:

Wilders insists that he doesn't hate Muslims but considers them "victims of bad ideas," describing Islam not as a religion, "but rather a retrograde political ideology with religious trappings." Kay understands why Wilders's opinions have branded him "a hatemonger" in the eyes of many Europeans. Still, "His insistence on the proper distinction between faith and ideology deserve to be taken seriously," he argues. "For it invites the question: If we permit the excoriation of totalitarian cults created by modern dictators, why do we stigmatize (and even criminalize) the excoriation of arguably similar notions when they happen to be attributed to a 7th-century prophet?"

Being in no position to challenge Wilders on what is and isn’t in the Koran, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.  And from the little I’d previously read about Wilders, I wasn’t left aghast by his comments.

But it’s Kay’s closing thought that irks. It singles out without context or perspective.  There’s little question that Christopher Hitchens might have issues with Islam but at least when he strikes a match he burns down the whole pantheon:

[…] I will not be told I can't eat pork, and I will not respect those who burn books on a regular basis. I, too, have strong convictions and beliefs and value the Enlightenment above any priesthood or any sacred fetish-object. It is revolting to me to breathe the same air as wafts from the exhalations of the madrasahs, or the reeking fumes of the suicide-murderers, or the sermons of Billy Graham and Joseph Ratzinger.

Granted, it would be irresponsible not to discuss the role of Islam in a study of today’s geopolitical landscape and there’s room for only so many words in an Op-Ed piece, but to confound religion and ideology is mistaken—even in the case of Islam, whose current convulsions through it’s own Enlightenment are creating a branding challenge, to put it lightly.

Challenging and questioning the diktats of prophets, 7th-century or otherwise, can never be a bad thing.  But if Islam is to be judged ideology rather than religion on the basis of its most literal interpretation then there can be no halfway.  The yardstick must stretch across the religious (er,  ideological?) spectrum before it can find any moral force.

In crises of faith I often turn to a trusted friend to help light the way—television.

I leave you with The West Wing, season two, episode three:

Alim