10/19/09

The political situation in Afghanistan is in disarray after Hamid Karzai’s take of the national vote in the August presidential election was reduced to below 50 percent.  The new result, which was determined by the U.N.-backed election investigators, found extensive fraud and called for the dismissal of thousands of ballots, which should trigger a run-off election.  However, the Karzai government appears to have rejected this next step, creating uncertainty about the way forward.   The investigation has also cast a long shadow over Karzai’s legitimacy as Afghan President and American partner.  It is crucial that the Afghan legitimacy crisis be resolved for American strategy in Afghanistan to be on solid footing.

Needless to say, this situation severely complicates the counterinsurgency strategy advocated by General McChrystal. A successful counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan will not only focus on fighting the Taliban militarily, but will also depend upon building up a legitimate and capable Afghan partner that is able to govern the country effectively.  Yet while the chaos caused by the electoral fraud casts severe doubts on this possibility, conservatives continue to press aggressively for a military solution. They mistakenly argue that the President should rush to a decision and irresponsibly send tens of thousands of more American troops to Afghanistan while the political situation there is in chaos.  Fortunately cooler heads are speaking up, as Senator John Kerry (D-MA) said this past weekend from Afghanistan that “It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country when we don't even have an election finished.”

Amidst electoral crisis in Afghanistan, Obama administration continues to refine its strategy. The Associated Press reported this morning that “The Afghan electoral crisis intensified Monday as officials in Kabul responsible for declaring final results from the August presidential ballot refused to accept findings of a U.N.-backed investigative panel that would force a runoff, those involved in the process said.” According to the BBC, “[p]reliminary results from August's first round had placed Mr Karzai comfortably over the 50% plus one vote threshold needed to avoid a run-off,” but officials familiar with the process had revealed that “Mr Karzai's vote share had fallen below half after a number of votes were ruled invalid,” which could force Mr. Karzai into a runoff with rival Abdullah Abdullah.  However, the AP also reported that “the separate Independent Election Commission — which is dominated by Karzai allies — has rejected the data, the officials said. Karzai spokesman Waheed Omar said the president will not commit to accepting the findings until they are publicly released.”  The AP added, “That has raised fears that Karzai may refuse to go along with a runoff even after the figures are announced — further delaying formation of a government that the U.S. believes is needed to help combat the growing Taliban insurgency.” The Wall Street Journal explained that “[a] second round could pose tremendous challenges,” in part because “[m]ost of the election workers will be the same -- including those who helped engineer the fraud in the first round.”  According to the Journal, because of anxiety over the potential complications arising from a runoff, “Mr. Karzai and Dr. Abdullah have been under international pressure to come to a deal. The two sides stepped up talks this week, exploring the possibility of reserving some key ministries and governorships for Dr. Abdullah's backers. ‘A deal might be the only way out of this mess,’ said one Western official in Kabul.” [AP, 10/19/09. BBC, 10/19/09. WSJ, 10/19/09]

Without a strategy that takes issues of governance and legitimacy into account, no amount of troops can reverse the course in Afghanistan. Afghanistan’s history, as well as America’s past failures to understand the politics of the countries where we were engaged in military action,  makes it clear that military force alone is not enough and that our strategy must be focused on clear political objectives.  

• Discussing the lessons of Vietnam in an op-ed for the New York Times, Gordon Goldstein cautioned the Administration to “[n]ever deploy military means in pursuit of indeterminate ends.”  According to Goldstein, “[m]ilitary force is the wrong instrument for achieving imprecise objectives based on unrealistic goals.” [Gordon Goldstein via the NY Times, 10/18/09]
• New America President and Afghanistan expert, Steve Coll, urged that “[p]olitical reform and Afghan-led negotiations of this type must be seen as fundamental to American policy in Afghanistan no matter what choices are made about troop levels and deployments.” He continued, arguing that “emphasis on political stability through continuous Afghan-led negotiation and national reintegration, as opposed to grandiose state-building or policies premised on the pursuit of military victory by external forces, should not be seen as an adjunct wing of U.S. policy in Afghanistan, but as fundamental.” [Steve Coll via Foreign Policy, 10/16/09]
• On CBS, NATO-ISAF Commander General Stanley McChystal made clear that the government’s legitimacy was paramount: “The most important [thing] (is to) get a government that is seen as legitimate to the people and has the credibility to be a partner in the effort to secure Afghanistan” [General McChrystal, via Reuters, 10/18/09]
• In a recent piece for Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria located the source of Afghanistan’s security deteriorating in political grievances: “Why has security gotten worse? Largely because Hamid Karzai's government is ineffective and corrupt and has alienated large numbers of Pashtuns, who have migrated to the Taliban. It is not clear that this problem can be solved by force, even using a smart counterinsurgency strategy. In fact, more troops injected into the current climate could provoke an antigovernment or nationalist backlash.” [Fareed Zakaria via Newsweek, 10/10/09]

Meanwhile, conservatives “recklessly” and “irresponsibly” push for full-bore military escalation in the midst of electoral chaos. Yesterday, in an exchange with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol – of the newly formed neoconservative advocacy organization “Keep America Safe” – recklessly insisted on a massive troop increase, incredibly using the example of Iraq, while admittedly not knowing what the government will look like.  Here is the exchange: “WALLACE: Isn't it awfully hard for the president to commit 10, or 20, or 40 or 60,000 more troops when he doesn't know what the government of Afghanistan is going to look like and whether it's legitimate? KRISTOL: No. President Bush committed 30,000 troops to Iraq in an equally messy political situation with a government that had been elected in an election that the Sunnis had boycotted and that had questionable legitimacy.” Conservatives have been arguing against deliberation and carefully considering conditions on the ground for some time – continually pushing for a full-bore military presence without knowing what kind of partner we have in Afghanistan.  Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Meet the Press last weekend that “[i]f he [President Obama] does a half measure, putting just a few troops in that won’t turn around the momentum of the battle, that will be weakness.”

On CNN’s State of the Union, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel rebuffed conservative critics who are calling for a massive increase in troops in the midst of this electoral crisis: “It would be reckless to make a decision on U.S. troop level if, in fact, you haven't done a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there's an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that the U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing the Afghan country.” Senator John Kerry made a similar point on the same program, saying from Afghanistan that, “It would be entirely irresponsible for the president of the United States to commit more troops to this country when we don't even have an election finished.”  [Bill Kristol, FOX News, 10/18/09. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – SC), via NBC, 10/11/09. Sen. John McCain (R – AZ), via CNN, 10/11/09. CNN, 10/19/09]

What We’re Reading

American officials admit they are struggling to stem prolific Taliban fundraising, which comes from a variety of sources, including the drug trade, kidnapping, extortion and foreign donations.

Pakistan troops traveled farther into South Waziristan, pounding suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda positions with bombing runs. There are conflicting accounts on the effectiveness of Pakistan’s counteroffensive.

American and Western intelligence officials are concerned that the flow of recruits to terrorist training camps has not abated.

Members of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq have yet to be officially absorbed into Iraq’s security forces. Meanwhile, insurgents blew up two bridges in the Anbar province.

Low level sectarian unrest has erupted in southeastern Iran, where Sunni suicide bombers killed five senior commanders of the Revolutionary Guard.

Iran has freed a Newsweek journalist held since the electoral dispute following their June presidential election.

Russia is looking to China’s one-party political system to find lessons in weathering the financial crisis

Growing tension between opposing political parties in Zimbabwe threatens to topple the fragile national-unity government.

American officials are investigating a possible link between charity fundraising and the Tamil terrorist group in Sri Lanka.

Critics of Obama’s Sudan policy review are relieved that the President has maintained a firm stance towards the only sitting head of state in the world indicted in war crimes, Omar al-Bashir.

Commentary of the Day

Joe Cirincione makes clear that the various myths about Iran’s nuclear weapons complex don’t hold much water, and therefore should not impact diplomatic negotiations on their nuclear issue.

NSN board member Gordon Goldstein penned two op-eds, one with the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, explaining how President Obama can draw instructive lessons from Vietnam by structuring his policy review to achieve maximum policy results in Afghanistan.

The Los Angeles Times applauds Mexican President Felipe Calderon for breaking up an inefficient union controlling Mexico City’s electricity, but hopes that he’ll continue his reform campaign against interests and unions which backed him politically instead of simply targeting his political opposition.