12/8/08

On Sunday the New York Times reported that the outgoing Bush Administration is preparing a review of its Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy for the incoming Obama Administration. The report’s three conclusions – making assistance to Pakistan conditional, adopting a broader regional approach, and elevating the importance of non-military efforts toward the region – constitute a rejection of the Bush Administration’s approach and embrace an alternative that progressive leaders and institutions have advocated for years. Vice President-elect Biden has led the way in crafting legislation that would make assistance conditional. President-elect Obama and former 2004 Presidential candidate John Kerry – as well as a bipartisan range of our top diplomats, military strategists and regional experts – called for refocusing on the region and for utilizing all aspects of national power, not just our military forces. The situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated to the point where coalition forces are now needed to protect the capitol in Kabul and the northwest of Pakistan remains a terrorist safe haven, seeding instability throughout the region. The admission by the Bush administration that the incoming Obama administration should change course and pursue a progressive approach is an indication of how much the current policy has failed.

White House Afghanistan–Pakistan Review: Reverse 8 Years of Bush Administration Policy. In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration’s record of dealing with the perilous situations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a forthcoming White House Strategic Review is expected to conclude that the policies of the last eight years should be reversed.  As reported in the New York Times, the study “headed by the White House war czar, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, took a far broader view. The drafts prepared for the incoming Obama administration suggest that the United States has never focused sufficiently on nation-building, jobs creation, construction of schools and roads, and, most important, pushing the Pakistani government to focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.” According to the Times, “As recently as 2006, Mr. Bush would speak regularly of eventual ‘victory’ in Afghanistan, as he did in Iraq,” but for years now, “the fighting has worsened, and the strategy review was premised on intelligence assessments that said that the United States was not losing the war, but was in danger of losing ground.”  In addition, “the tone of the new report, officials familiar with it say, is in line with arguments made over the past year by Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, who has agreed to remain in his post under Mr. Obama” and has made clear that Bush’s way of characterizing evens there “is not the way to think about the future of the conflict.” [NY Times, 12/07/08]

Bush administration review says progressives were right – aid to Pakistan should be conditional.  “The review contains an array of options, including telling Pakistan’s military that billions of dollars in American aid will depend on the military’s being reconfigured to effectively fight militants. That proposal amounts to a tacit acknowledgment that roughly $10 billion in military aid provided to Pakistan as ‘reimbursements’ for its efforts to root out militant groups has largely been wasted.  The payments have been the source of increasing criticism on Capitol Hill and from independent review groups, which have concluded that Pakistan diverted much of the money to build up its forces against India.”  Progressives have long been critical of the Bush administration’s one-dimensional policy in Pakistan that focused on General Musharraf and poured billions of unaccountable, unmonitored military assistance into the country.  A Center for American Progress report in November said, “U.S. funding to Pakistan’s military should be targeted toward specific shared objectives, and tied to performance, such as good faith efforts by the Pakistani military to crack down on militant groups in Pakistan, and to stop cross-border attacks into Afghanistan.”  Senator Biden last year said the U.S. should “condition security aid on performance. We should base our security aid on clear results. We're now spending well over $1 billion annually, and it's not clear we're getting our money's worth. I'd spend more if we get better returns -- and less if we don't.” [NY Times, 12/7/08. Center for American Progress, 11/17/08. Huffington Post, Joe Biden, 11/8/07]

Bush administration review says progressives were right – we need a regional approach.  “Revamping the aid to the military was part of a three-month study of what has gone wrong in the seven-year war along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The study calls for a new and broadly regional approach to insurgencies that move freely across the mountainous border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.”  As the November CAP report says, “Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan are inextricably linked, and U.S. policy must be formulated accordingly. The situation in Afghanistan is directly affected by instability along Pakistan’s western borders, and longstanding Pakistan-India tensions have affected the Pakistani military’s strategic calculus in curtailing militancy within Pakistan. For too long, the United States has pursued disconnected Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India policies, rather than create a coordinated regional strategy. Any regional approach must address Pakistan’s security concerns with India, specifically related to Kashmir and Afghanistan. These regional challenges will require a fundamentally different U.S. approach that eliminates the bureaucratic separation in Washington between diplomacy, development, intelligence, and military activities in Islamabad, Kabul, and New Delhi.” Senator Biden also said noted last year, “This new Pakistan policy cannot succeed in isolation. Conditions in the region and in the broader Muslim world -- conditions that the United States can affect -- will make a huge difference, for good or for bad. We've got to connect the dots -- to be, as I suggested at the outset, smart as well as strong.” [NY Times, 12/7/08. Center for American Progress, 11/17/08. Huffington Post, Joe Biden, 11/8/07. Washington Post, 11/11/08]

Bush administration review says progressives were right – U.S. must broaden strategy to include development and governance, after years of just focusing on military solutions.  In another blow to the Bush Administration’s policy toward the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, the White House Review concluded that its focus on purely military solutions has been insufficient for addressing the region’s many difficulties.  The drafts of the report, “suggest that the United States has never focused sufficiently on nation-building, jobs creation, construction of schools and roads, and, most important, pushing the Pakistani government to focus on counterterrorism and counterinsurgency.” Progressives on the other hand, have long called for the U.S. to broaden its assistance to both Pakistan and Afghanistan beyond military assistance.  In 2007, a report from the Center for American Progress recommended that in Afghanistan “an additional $1 billion should be provided in non-military aid, contingent on greater transparency and accountability in U.S. assistance.”  CAP expanded on the thrust of those recommendations in a report focused on Pakistan, saying “long-term stability in Pakistan depends not only on curtailing extremism and militancy in Pakistan, but on strengthening Pakistan’s economy and democracy and on reducing tensions between Pakistan and its neighbors.”  In addition, “In the Senate, former Chairman Joseph Biden (D-DE) (now vice president elect) and Ranking Member Richard Lugar (R-IN) of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee introduced the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2008, legislation that aims to broaden the U.S. – Pakistan relationship beyond military relations and to authorize $7.5 billion to Pakistan over five years for projects ‘intended to benefit the people of Pakistan.’” [NY Times, 12/07/08. Center for American Progress, 11/07. Center for American Progress, 11/08]

Quick Hits

Pakistan purportedly arrested a top suspect in the Mumbai attacks in a raid.  Lashkar-e-Taiba, suspected in the attacks, had ties to the ISI in the past.  The LA Times alleges that LeT has recruited Western suspects who have gone on to carry out attacks for al Qaeda.

Pakistani militants near Peshawar destroyed 145 U.S. and NATO supply trucks bound for Afghanistan on Sunday, and another 50 today.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Indian National Congress Party is set to win three out of five state elections, despite criticism in the wake of the Mumbai attacks.

General David McKiernan, top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said that next year will be a “tough fight” in Afghanistan and that the U.S. may need twice as many troops for up to four years.  Senator John McCain traveled to Helmand province, Afghanistan, also calling for more troops.  

Mullah Omar vows a violent response to a U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan.  A new report finds that the Taliban are expanding in Afghanistan and maintain a “permanent presence” in three-quarters of the country.

A U.S. prosecutor arrived in Iraq to work on the 2007 Blackwater shootings case.  He will interview the families of victims.  The five guards charged will surrender as early as today to U.S. federal authorities.

Widespread riots continue in Greece, sparked by the police shooting a 15-year old boy in Athens.

North Korea vows to ignore Japan in nuclear talks.

A pre-trial hearing held for Khalid Sheik Mohammed at Guantanamo Bay will be watched by families of 9/11 victims.  A New York Times editorial looks at the Bush administration’s legal legacy.

Iran said that it would not give up its nuclear program and encouraged President-elect Barack Obama to change the U.S. approach to Iran.

The European Union joined calls for Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe to resign. The EU also began patrols for pirates in the Gulf of Aden and its foreign ministers met to discuss sending troops to the DR Congo.