Obama’s Afghan drop-in

 don’t watch much televised news — there’s just not a lot of content per unit of time and I get bored too quickly — but I did happen to catch a report on President Obama’s whirlwind trip to Afghanistan yesterday. (As a sign of my indifference to the major networks, I couldn’t even tell you which channel I was watching). But I did see a film clip of the president giving a speech to the troops at Bagram air base, where he thanked them for their efforts, said the country was grateful, and told the troops “the American armed services does not quit, we keep at it, we persevere, and together with our partners we will prevail.”

As always, Obama looked comfortable and sounded good. And it’s possible that he meant every word of his pep talk. But I kept wondering what he meant by “prevail?” What is his definition of victory? Is it the surrender and capture of Mullah Omar and the Quetta Shura, or the military defeat of the Taliban itself? Is victory defined as the establishment of a unified Afghan central government (something that hasn’t existed for decades) in command of native security forces that can take over the battle themselves, with little or no foreign support? If special representative Richard Holbrooke thinks we’ll “know success when we see it,” what exactly are we looking for?” 

Here’s how Obama defined the strategy in his remarks:

Our broad mission is clear: We are going to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies. That is our mission. And to accomplish that goal, our objectives here in Afghanistan are also clear: We’re going to deny al Qaeda safe haven. We’re going to reverse the Taliban’s momentum. We’re going to strengthen the capacity of Afghan security forces and the Afghan government so that they can begin taking responsibility and gain confidence of the Afghan people.

And our strategy includes a military effort that takes the fight to the Taliban while creating the conditions for greater security and a transition to the Afghans; but also a civilian effort that improves the daily lives of the Afghan people, and combats corruption; and a partnership with Pakistan and its people, because we can’t uproot extremists and advance security and opportunity unless we succeed on both sides of the border. Most of you understand that.”

If that’s what the President really thinks, we are going to be there for a long, long time.  So I found myself hoping (perhaps naively) that this was all a bit of blue-smoke-and-mirrors, and that he’s actually planning to follow the same script in Afghanistan that Bush followed in Iraq.  It won’t be identical in every detail, but the basic logic would be similar.  Here’s how it goes:

First, announce an escalation of the U.S. effort (aka a “surge”), but set a rough deadline for it and quietly put new emphasis on “political reconciliation.” (Done).  Next, bombard the media with lots of evidence of progress, such as Taliban “strongholds” seized, al Qaeda leaders killed or captured, Taliban leaders arrested in Pakistan, etc., so that people think the surge is working.  (Now underway). Third, arrange a diplomatic settlement that requires the phased withdrawal of U.S./ISAF troops, even if their departure is on a rather lengthy timetable. The Iraqi equivalent was the Status of Forces agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in the fall of 2008; in Afghanistan, it would probably entail some sort of negotiation between the Karzai government, the Taliban, and various other warlords (whether by a loya jirga) or some other device (Maybe underway too?). Finally, start removing the “surged” forces more-or-less on schedule-and ahead of the 2012 election cycle-so that you can claim to have avoided the quagmire that critics warned about back in 2009 (Remains to be seen).

I have no idea if this is what Obama or his team are actually planning — or maybe just hoping for — but at this stage it is offers the best chance of avoiding an open-ended commitment there.  Part of the trick is to keep sounding resolute and determined even while you’re (quietly) looking for an exit, and as someone who remains unconvinced that the Afghan campaign is worth the costs, I’ll continue to hope that this is what is really going on.

Credit: Stephen M. Walt

The cult of counterinsurgency

On the night of December 1, shortly after Barack Obama announced plans to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, retired Lt. Colonel John Nagl appeared on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Maddow was dismayed by Obama’s new plan, which she called “massive escalation,” but, when she introduced Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert who has long called for a greater U.S. commitment to Afghanistan–even if it means raising taxes and expanding the military–she was surprisingly friendly. And, after Nagl spent the segment praising Obama’s plan, which he said would throw back the Taliban and enable more civil and economic development, Maddow may have remained skeptical–but she was also admiring. “It’s a real pleasure to have you on the show, John,” she said.

Had someone like Bill Kristol given that same assessment of Obama’s speech, Maddow might have tarred him as a bloodthirsty proponent of endless war. Which is why Nagl is one of the administration’s most important allies as it tries to sell the United States on a renewed commitment to Afghanistan. A former tank commander in Iraq and co-author of the Army’s landmark 2006 counterinsurgency manual, Nagl has become a fixture on television and in news articles about Afghanistan; he’s even made an appearance on “The Daily Show.” With the authority of a man who has worn a uniform in combat, and the intellectual heft of a Rhodes Scholar, he has helped to persuade many liberals that pursuing a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is the only viable path to success.

Certainly, that’s what Obama and his staff are hoping. During Obama’s Afghanistan review process this fall, top White House aides like Rahm Emanuel were immersed in Lewis Sorley’s A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, which argues that counterinsurgency techniques were turning around the Vietnam war until Washington pulled the plug in exhaustion. And, by committing 30,000 troops, plus winning almost 10,000 more from nato allies, Obama has effectively endorsed General Stanley McChrystal’s written assessment of the war, the first page of which calls for “an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency campaign.” “I would say that the decision the president reached is an acknowledgement that counterinsurgency is the least bad of the options available,” Nagl says.

Another reason Nagl has sway with the left and the Obama administration–he was recently named to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board–has to do with where he hangs his hat. Nagl is currently president of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington think tank established in February 2007 by a group of former Clintonites who wanted to reassert the voice of centrist Democrats on military and foreign affairs. Since then, a full 14 former CNAShands have landed jobs inside Obama’s Pentagon and State Department. Those who remain work on a variety of issues, from China to climate change. But these days, CNAS is most visible for its policy papers and commentary on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its Democratic roots have given CNAS cred from Capitol Hill to the White House to places like Maddow’s set. And its prominence, in turn, has effectively hitched the Democratic wagon to the ambitious ideals of counterinsurgency, with some liberals even arguing that the doctrine–with its emphasis on protecting and improving the lives of civilians–is thoughtful, humane, and, therefore, inherently progressive.

But there is risk in this approach. Washington’s current enthusiasm for counterinsurgency is based largely on its apparent success in stabilizing Iraq–even though it’s not clear that the doctrine’s sophisticated tenets deserve all or even most of the credit. Indeed, an argument is brewing in military circles about whether the doctrine’s potential has been oversold. What happens next in Afghanistan could settle it.

In early 2007, defense analyst Michèle Flournoy and Asia expert Kurt Campbell co-foundedCNAS with what they described as a mission of reclaiming the “pragmatic,” non-ideological center of the foreign policy debate. Supported with money from left-leaning foundations and defense contractors, including Boeing and Northrop Grumman, they hired a team of mostly Democratic foreign policy hands and produced policy papers with a generally hawkish bent, including one in 2008 that opposed a fixed timeline for withdrawal from Iraq.

CNAS wasn’t intended to be counterinsurgency central. After Obama was elected, however, he raided the think tank to staff the State and Defense departments. (Flournoy took a job as the Pentagon’s senior policy official, and Campbell became Foggy Bottom’s top Asia hand.) Filling the void has been Nagl, who joined CNAS in January 2008 and became its president in February 2009, along with several counterinsurgency-centric colleagues who have joined since its founding. One is Andrew Exum, a former Army Ranger who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Exum, in his early thirties, is a bearded and wry native of East Tennessee who advised McChrystal’s review team this summer. Then there’s CNAS’s 32-year-old CEO, Nate Fick, who was a Marine captain in Baghdad and has served as a civilian instructor at a counterinsurgency academy in Kabul. Last year, CNAS also signed up the ultimate counterinsurgency guru in David Kilcullen, an Australian who served as a top adviser to General David Petraeus in Iraq. Together, this quartet has churned out a raft of policy papers, opinion pieces, and quotes about counterinsurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, ranging from the best way to set benchmarks for progress to warnings about the use of aerial drone strikes. (Exum, Fick, and Kilcullen oppose heavy reliance on the tactic for fear that civilian casualties will cause blowback.)

Though CNAS is loath to be known as a one-trick pony–it recently completed a report encouraging U.S. cooperation with China and runs an energy and climate-based “natural security” program–it is effectively cornering the market on counterinsurgency thought. In addition to its staff hires, CNAS has provided fellowships to book-writing journalists like Tom Ricks, David Cloud, and Greg Jaffe, who have advanced the pro-counterinsurgency narrative. But perhaps the clearest indication of bothCNAS’s clout and its current focus came when the think tank held its third annual conference at Washington’s posh Willard Hotel. The keynote speaker was none other than Petraeus himself.

The stakes for the United States in Afghanistan are enormous. But, in a more parochial sense, so are the stakes for CNAS and what you might call the cult of counterinsurgency. Washington is already planning for a more counterinsurgency-oriented future–witness the latest Pentagon budget, which shifts billions of dollars away from high-tech weapons systems designed for fighting a great power like China, toward equipment like aerial drones and armored personnel carriers. Meanwhile, the liberal national security establishment has come to embrace a doctrine that went into vogue under the dreaded Bush regime. In an essay titled “Petraeus the Progressive” published in the journal Democracy last winter, Rachel Kleinfeld, president of the center-left Truman National Security Project, celebrated Petraeus for emphasizing the battle for Iraqi hearts and minds over “outgunning and outmanning the enemy.” Other liberals warm to the doctrine’s intellectual sheen. “Counterinsurgency is not just thinking man’s warfare–it is the graduate level of war,” states an epigraph in the Army’s counterinsurgency manual.

But some thoughtful skeptics warn that the months ahead in Afghanistan may expose the promise of counterinsurgency as a mirage. One of them is Colonel Gian Gentile, a former cavalry squadron commander in Iraq with a Stanford University Ph.D. in history. Since his 2007 return from Iraq, Gentile, who now teaches at West Point, has relentlessly challenged the arguments of counterinsurgency proponents. Advocates of the doctrine say that it has been repeatedly tested and proved in conflicts ranging from Vietnam to Iraq. Through several articles in military journals, Gentile has been fighting this “narrative,” which he says has various historical flaws. He warns, for instance, that counterinsurgency campaigns are more violent than people understand. The British victory in Malaya involved brute force and mass resettlement programs, for example, while the more recent defeat of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka involved a heavy military campaign that caused widespread civilian misery. Even the Iraq surge caused a dramatic increase in civilian casualties from airstrikes and led to a spike in the number of Iraqi detainees held by the United States, notes Michael Cohen of the New America Foundation.

Gentile is especially skeptical of the claim that counterinsurgency saved Iraq. To hear the likes of Nagl tell it, Petraeus implemented a new strategy in 2006 under which U.S. troops left the isolation of fortress-like bases and integrated themselves with Iraqi forces and the Iraqi people, improving training of the Iraqi army, winning the population’s trust, and helping to turn Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province against Al Qaeda. But some contrarian military thinkers warn that the story is far more complicated. It’s not clear that the Sunnis needed our encouragement to turn on Al Qaeda, for instance, and ethnic cleansing may have burned itself out. Celeste Ward, a Bush Pentagon official who advised Army Lt. General Peter W. Chiarelli in Iraq, says that some military units had been practicing counterinsurgency in Iraq, to little avail, before Petraeus overhauled the American strategy there. “To think that the reduction of violence was primarily the result of American military action is hubris run amuck [sic],” Gentile writes in the fall edition of the military journal Parameters.

Gentile is convinced that Obama’s “surge” in Afghanistan can’t work–at least not in a time frame that Obama or his country will accept. “I think history shows that if a nation is going to try this kind of military method–population-centric counterinsurgency, which is also nation building–it doesn’t happen in a couple of years. It’s a generational commitment.” And, if Afghanistan doesn’t turn around soon, the Democrats who founded and support CNAS, and who have come to embrace the Petraeus-Nagl view of modern warfare, may find themselves wondering whether it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

Michael Crowley is a senior editor of The New Republic

Credit: The New Republic

Agenda: With George Friedman

Al Qaeda’s Yemen Connection, America and the Global Islamic Jihad

The attempt to destroy Northwest Airlines flight 253 en route from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day underscores the growing ambition of al Qaeda’s Yemen franchise, which has grown from a largely Yemeni agenda to become a player in the global Islamic jihad in the last year. Since merging with the al Qaeda franchise in Saudi Arabia last January and renaming itself Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it has stepped up operations in Yemen itself, struck into Saudi Arabia, and now operates on the global stage. The weak Yemeni government of President Ali Abdallah Salih, which has never fully controlled the country and now faces a host of growing problems, will need significant American support to defeat AQAP.

Al Qaeda has long been active in Yemen, the original homeland of Osama bin Laden’s family, and one of its first major terror attacks was conducted in Aden in 2000, when an al Qaeda cell nearly sank the USS Cole. A year ago, the al Qaeda franchises in Saudi Arabia and Yemen merged after the Saudi branch had been effectively repressed by the Saudi authorities under the leadership of Deputy Interior Minister Prince Muhammad bin Nayif. The new AQAP showed its claws last August, when it almost assassinated the prince with a suicide bomber who had passed through at least two airports on the way to his attempt on Nayif.

The same bombmakers who produced that device probably also manufactured the bomb that Omar al Farooq Abdulmutallab used on Flight 253. In claiming credit for the Detroit attack, AQAP highlighted how they had built a bomb that “all the advanced, new machines and technologies and the security boundaries of the world’s airports” had failed to detect. They praised their “mujahedin brothers in the manufacturing sector” for building such a “highly advanced device,” and promised that more such attacks will follow.

Yemen has sought to repress al Qaeda off and on for the last decade, with little success. The Saleh government has other more immediate problems on its plate, in particular a rebellion among Shia Zaydi tribes known as Houthis in the north that has escalated in the last two months with attacks by the rebels into Saudi territory. The southern part of the country, which only merged with the north in 1990 and fought a bitter civil war in 1994 when it tried to break away, is hostile to the Saleh government and is looking for a chance to split off again. The economy is weak and heavily dependent on dwindling oil reserves, and the majority of the 23 million Yemenis are illiterate and poor.

The Obama administration has offered Saleh additional military assistance, and has encouraged the government to strike hard at al Qaeda hideouts in the last few weeks. The attacks have killed some AQAP leaders, but it is unclear exactly how serious a blow these attacks have inflicted on the group as a whole. AQAP has vowed revenge for the strikes, which it blames on an alliance between America, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Saleh government.

AQAP has also provided refuge for the Yemeni-American cleric Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki was in contact with U.S. Army Major Nidal Hassan, who killed 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in Texas on November 5, 2009. In an interview with Al Jazeera released on December 23, Awlaki said he had encouraged Nidal to kill his fellow soldiers because they were preparing to go to Afghanistan and were part of the Zionist-Crusader alliance that al Qaeda says it is fighting. The next day, December 24, Awlaki was reported to be among those killed in a Yemeni-American strike on the AQAP leadership, but that is still unconfirmed. In claiming credit for the Christmas Day airline attack, AQAP also lauded the Fort Hood massacre and urged other American Muslims to emulate Nidal Hassan.

Al Qaeda has always found weak and failing states like Yemen to be its best staging bases and sanctuaries. Along with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Somalia, Yemen offers an ideal location to operate with little outside interference. The president has been right to focus additional resources on combating AQAP, but the battle has just begun. If the Yemeni state becomes further destabilized, bin Laden’s cadre in the Arabian Peninsula will have more room to operate.

The attack on the Amsterdam-Detroit flight also shows that al Qaeda remains obsessed with striking the American airline industry, a target it has gone after repeatedly since 1999. If AQAP has now been told by the al Qaeda core leadership to take on the job, we can probably assume that other al Qaeda franchises in North Africa, Iraq, Southeast Asia and elsewhere have also been pressed to attack.

Credit: Brookings Institution

Obama must not rush into retaliation

American officials are still unravelling the failed terrorist bombing of a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines flight on Christmas Day by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. While details remain unclear, it appears that Abdulmutallab received operational guidance and training in Yemen from al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

The revelation of the Yemeni-based group’s involvement has predictably brought pressure from congressional leaders and policy analysts to “do something” in response, including what is described by one administration official as “visible retaliatory military action“.

An overt and immediate US military strike in Yemen in response to the failed bomb plot may look increasingly likely, but it would be a bad short-term solution. As recent history demonstrates, counterterrorist strikes in retaliation for specific terrorist plots or operations have often proven to be militarily ineffective, and unsuccessful in deterring the targeted group from pursuing additional terrorist attacks. Consider three well-known examples:

• In April 1986, the US president Ronald Reagan decided to retaliate against Libya for its involvement in the bombing of a Berlin disco that killed two American servicemen. US aircraft bombed a range of targets associated with the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, including the Aziziyah Barracks compound in Tripoli, where it was believed the Libyan leader lived.

The results of the attacks were meagre: Libya’s infrastructure was not significantly damaged and Gaddafi survived, becoming more defiant than ever. Moreover, Libya’s support for international terrorism increased in direct response, with British and American hostages in Lebanon assassinated by Libyan-controlled terrorist groups, and most significantly, the explosion of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed 270 people.

• In June 1993, after Iraqi intelligence agents allegedly plotted anassassination attempt on the former US president George HW Bush during a trip to Kuwait, President Clinton ordered the launching of 23 cruise missiles against one wing of the Iraqi intelligence agency headquarters in Baghdad.

The results of this retaliatory strike were a success, though it remains unclear if the cruise missiles played any role. The leadership wing of the Iraqi intelligence headquarters was destroyed, and according to Richard Clarke, counterterrorism tsar to presidents Clinton and Bush: “Subsequent to that June 1993 retaliation, the US intelligence and law enforcement communities never developed any evidence of further Iraqi support for terrorism directed against Americans.”

• In August 1998, in retaliation for the bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the US launched 13 Tomahawk cruise missiles against a pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, Sudan, suspected of producing nerve gas, and 60-70 Tomahawks against three al-Qaida training camps in southern Afghanistan with the intention of killing Osama Bin Laden and other terrorist leaders.

While the pharmaceutical plant was destroyed during Operation Infinite Reach, the evidence supporting its connections to either al-Qaida or nerve gas production quickly evaporated. In addition, the attacks against the al-Qaida leadership killed a few dozen people, including Pakistani intelligence officers training militants to fight in Kashmir. Bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mohammed Atta – ringleader of the 9/11 attacks – and other key al-Qaida leaders survived, and were certainly not deterred.

These examples show that a more prudent immediate response to terrorist plots or operations is to understand why the existing counterterrorism plans and programmes failed, and how they should be adjusted and enhanced. While military force is undoubtedly an essential tool against individuals directly responsible for terrorist plots and operations, responding too quickly allows US adversaries to dictate the terms of US policy, and elevates and emboldens them in the eyes of the world.

In October 2000, the USS Cole was bombed while refuelling in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 others. Four months later, the intelligence community provided conclusive evidence to the Bush White House of al-Qaida’s direct involvement. Twenty-one months after that, after significantly increasing US counterterrorism co-operation with Yemen and methodically developing sources within the country, in November 2002, a CIA-controlled Predator drone killed Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, the al-Qaida operative responsible with overseeing the Cole bombing.

In this instance, military retaliation succeeded. But as the Northwest Airlines plot demonstrates, without a long-term and comprehensive programme to enhance Yemeni security and governance capacity, there is little that the US can do to prevent terrorists from operating there.

Credit: The Guardian (UK)