Registan.net

It was bad news when the Pentagon announced it was making Major General Jay Hood the senior DOD official in Pakistan—because he was commander of the Guantanamo prison facility. I couldn’t offer any opinion on what role he played in the abuses, or what he did about it, because I just don’t know. But his title as commander as one of the most notorious American geopolitical missteps in the Muslim world, choosing him to represent us in a country like Pakistan seemed particularly tone deaf.

In the face of massive protests from the new civilian government and Pakistani media, his appointment has been dropped. So maybe they aren’t as tone deaf as they pretend to be. Still, given the way Pakistani-American relations have deteriorated in recent months, his appointment soured things unnecessarily. Like it or not, the U.S. military is as much a PR agent as a war fighting organ—and they know it, if the way they treat the American public is any indication. Why they don’t think public opinion in other countries matters as well is a mystery.

Selig S. Harrison has a curious relationship with reality—that is to say, not much of one. Three years ago, he wrote in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. was to blame for North Korea’s violation of the Agreed Framework he helped to negotiate with Jimmy Carter in 1994. While the tone of the piece was obviously self-serving, it also contained numerous factual errors that were detailed by those involved in the implementation of the Agreed Framework. Harrison, in a reply, dismissed them by saying the Bush administration was just hyping the issue. While I reserve few good feelings for this administration, so far there is little evidence they’ve exaggerated or invented such claims—something that cannot be said for their policies in the Middle East.

This matters because Harrison, who claims expertise on South and East Asia, has written a rather surprising analysis of the concept of Pashtunistan.

Summary: The alarming growth of al-Qaeda and the Taliban in the Pashtun tribal region of north-western Pakistan and southern Afghanistan is usually attributed to the popularity of their messianic brand of Islam and to covert help from Pakistani intelligence agencies. But another, more ominous, reason also explains their success: their symbiotic relationship with a simmering Pashtun separatist movement that could lead to the unification of the estimated 41 million Pashtuns on both sides of the border, the break-up of Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the emergence of a new national entity, an ‘Islamic Pashtunistan’.

Hrm. That alone raised some red flags. Al-Qaeda is all about creating Pashtunistan (or Pukhtunkhwa)? This warrants further exploration.

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Remember that terrible Laura King piece in the LA Times, where she proclaims the wonder of realizing Afghans like their cellphones, too? (Kayumars found much else to mock at the LA Times as well, over their relentless exotification of brown-skinned people.) Beyond her silly argument, there was the issue of the Taliban strategy to destroy cell towers.

I never focused on the cellphone story because it was so clearly a bluff—the Taliban would see its own operations seriously curtailed if a significant number of cell towers were destroyed. So they would just take down one or two here and there, creating just enough of a ruckus to gain a great deal of attention and create enough fuss without putting in danger the very same infrastructure on which they rely. Meanwhile, the threat of blowing up a tower serves as a handy extortion tool as opium prices drop.

Now we see a second-order effect: the locals got pissed at the insurgents for going too far. This is inevitable as the Taliban, just like NATO, searches for its “happy center” where the ops tempo accomplishes the mission without jeopardizing it.

Why bring up Barnett? He linked glowingly to this piece, explaining it is, “about as emblematic as you can get in this war of Connectors v. Disconnectors.”

This doesn’t make any sense—rather than “this war” (I don’t think he was limiting it to Afghanistan) being between blood thirsty Orcs who hate telephones and noble Inmarsat users with lilly-white skin, it is a war of ideologies with an asymmetric use of technology. Frankly, seeing the Taliban groups hesitate to demolish either most of Afghanistan’s cell network, which is easily within their capability given the numbers of bombs they plant, or even a regionally-limited node, which is possible given the high centrality of Afghan’s communications networks, is a much more interesting story. The key piece missing here is that the Taliban are as reliant on those cell towers as civilians are, and destroying them all would be deeply counterproductive.

I tried to leave this point as a comment on Barnett’s blog earlier this morning. I didn’t even link back here to hype Registan.net. But, as with many other attempts to engage him in a skeptical discussion of his theories of endless war, it was never approved by his moderator (or Barnett himself).

The David Ignatius follow-up to his first government press release disguised as a newspaper column:

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The most interesting discovery during a visit to this city where Osama bin Laden planted his flag in 1996 is that al-Qaeda seems to have all but disappeared. The group is on the run, too, in Iraq, and that raises some interesting questions about how to pursue this terrorist enemy.

“Al-Qaeda is not a topic of conversation here,” says Col. Mark Johnstone, the deputy commander of Task Force Bayonet, which oversees four provinces surrounding Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. Lt. Col. Pete Benchoff agrees: “We’re not seeing a lot of al-Qaeda fighters. They’ve shifted here to facilitation and support.”

Well duh. Actually, Ignatius is being disingenuous here: Osama bin Laden picked up shop, not “planted his flag,” in Jalalabad in 1996 and moved to Kandahar. Then after the U.S. invaded to Khost, then FATA, probably Waziristan. What does that have to do with anything? And it is rare that anyone anywhere in the country actually talks about fighting “al Qaeda”—they’re fighting various Taliban and other militia groups. Just like in Iraq, where the Defense Intelligence Agency says “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” had its maximum reach at 15% of the insurgency. There is far more to Afghanistan than al Qaeda, and to pretend the presence of foot soldiers means anything is folly.

Ignatius eventually contradicts himself by getting the facts of the insurgency mostly-sort-of-right, but then makes an even weirder point:

These anti-terrorist operations require special skills — but they shouldn’t require a big, semi-permanent U.S. military presence in Iraq or Afghanistan. Local security forces can handle a growing share of responsibility — perhaps ineptly, as in Basra a few weeks ago or in Kabul last weekend, but that’s their problem.

Second, the essential mission in combating al-Qaeda now is to adopt in Pakistan the tactics that are working in Iraq and Afghanistan. This means alliances with tribal warlords to bring economic development to the isolated mountain valleys of the FATA region in exchange for their help in security. And it means joint operations involving U.S. and Pakistani special forces to chase al-Qaeda militants as they retreat deeper into the mountains.

What? Events like the attack on Karzai last week are not only “their” problem, it is our, and it will remain so as long as we are the security guarantor of the Karzai regime. So long as we run the country, which honest people will admit we do, we have to take on responsibility. And if the security forces are so riddled with infiltrators that insurgents can launch a mortar attack in the capital on the most securitized day of the year, then the problems are not just theirs, but ours.

And who is saying we need to go invade Pakistan and replicate Anbar? Well, besides Barrack Obama and an untrustworthy smattering of flappy-jawed policy wonks who don’t know jack about the region? Barnett Rubin is right—the man lives in la la land. Which is probably why I almost never read him.

Remember that DOD-approved strategic communications plan for Afghanistan? I’d say it’s working if they are engineering this kind of coverage, no matter how ham-fisted it appears to be.

Abkhazia is claiming to have shot down yet another drone, this time by a surprisingly advanced anti-aircraft system.

While Abkhaz officials claim they are just defending their sovereign territory, Georgian officials are claiming Russia is trying to bait them into a war. It is a very serious charge: shooting down aircraft is an act of war.

But the big stumbling block here is the timing. This is right as Dmitri “the bear” Medvedev is taking the reigns of Russia gingerly handed off by Vladimir Putin. Much like Putin’s campaign in Chechnya, which was meant to demonstrate his strength and power as much as “solving” the separatist movement (though mass killings do the trick too), this smacks of Russia creating a spectacle just to prove that it can.

Like it or not on their end, Abkhazia is utterly reliant on Moscow for direction, funding, and support. Now that Russia has significantly increased its military presence in the region, there is even more reason to assume they chose right now because of Russia’s concerns, and not their own (they could have been shooting down drones at any time).

So even if this is not some sabre-rattling by a new President keenly aware of his initial public image, it looks like it is. So it might as well be, considering the superiority of perception over reality in the public. And that’s a dangerous situation that can quickly spiral out of control.

President Karimov has asserted greater control over the Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Works (NGMK), the company that runs Uzbekistan’s largest gold and uranium mines.

… Karimov has appointed a Supervisory Council to manage the mine. Its members will serve one-year terms.

Preparations for the Presidential take-over began in April when a special resolution of the cabinet proclaimed the Uzbek government the owner of the mining colossus. The resolution, entitled, “On the Charter of the State Enterprise Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Works”, became law when signed by President Karimov at the end of April.

Information in the report suggests that Karimov began preparing the way for this move since January, placing this part and parcel in Karimov’s post-election power consolidation moves which themselves are probably a preparation for, well, something or other. I would say an eventual transition to a new president, but it’s far from clear that someone is eagerly waiting in the wings for Karimov’s job.

What makes this move particularly interesting and kind of an outlier from the string of removals from office is that Navoi is kind of a region apart in Uzbekistan. I can’t recall citations off the top of my head, but I’ve read articles noting it as having a very different relationship with Tashkent than any other regions. And that is certainly because NGMK is Navoi. The company generates quite a bit of money and, at least when I lived there, NGMK owned everything in Navoi worth owning. Also during my time in Navoi, I found that NGMK had a lot more power than the local government. It took a while to figure out, but once we eventually learned that NGMK had the ability to get things done at incredible speed. Most of the reason why, from what I’ve been told, is that the central government mostly kept its distance so as not to screw up a very large, fairly well-run business venture.

The takeover is significant for at least one reason. It is a reminder that in spite of a handful of well-publicized gestures designed to give the appearance that Islom Karimov is willing to let the pendulum slowly swing back toward reform, the executive has very much been consolidating power since the latest presidential election. I think it is debatable whether or not a tighter grip on elite politics really means that opportunities will further narrow for civil society. (It’s not as if elites have wanted open space for political debate even if they oppose Karimov.) But, it is worth keeping in mind that the subsurface trend in Uzbek politics is one of executive consolidation of power, likely, were I to wager, in preparation for an eventual hand-off of the presidency.

First off, here are two excellent segments from Al Jazeera English on the issues facing the NWFP and FATA in Pakistan.

Oh look, there’s Bill Roggio arguing with Pakistanis about the issues facing the tribal areas. It is interesting to hear Jalil Afridi, the editor of the Frontier Post, lend his perspective. He cops to being a “tribal,” meaning a member of the Afridi tribe, one of the few Pashtun tribes not split in some way by the Durand Line. They are also, in a totally unrelated tidbit, renown arms dealers—the largest of which is featured in this amusingly amateurish video on VBS, hosted by a man named Naeem Afridi… of the exact same tribe. Mr. Afridi (the editor, mind you) sees the main problem facing the FATA’s relationship with the outside world to be the century-old Frontier Crime Regulation law, which governed the area’s relationship with British India and later influenced its turbulent history with Islamabad (see my thoughts on this matter here, which contains many of the same points raised by Mr. Afridi and Mr. Nawaz).

The regional history is very important. So important, in fact, that I think Roggio is discounting it needlessly as Afridi hypes it too much—the traditional relationship between tribes and the central power is a relatively unchanging thing, and has been for a long time. This is a perfect segue into discussing a paper written by Thomas Johnson and M. Chris Mason of the Naval Post Graduate School, written for the journal International Security: “No Sign Until the Burst of Fire: Understanding the Pakistan-Afghanistan Frontier.”

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Richard Boucher, Assistant SecState for Central and South Asia, is making funny noises:

“They (Iran) interfere in a variety of different ways, perhaps not as violently as they do sometimes in Iraq,” Richard Boucher, assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia, told reporters at a press conference.

“But what we see is Iranian interference politically, Iranian interference in terms of the money that they channel into the political process, Iranian interference in terms of playing off local officials against central government, trying to undermine the state in that way.”

Boucher was speaking in Paris as part of preparations for a major international donors’ conference for Afghanistan, due to take place in the French capital on June 12.

“In many ways they (Tehran) do support the work of the government, but they also work with the political opposition, they work with the local opposition,” Boucher added.

“They have funnelled some weapons to the Taliban, they seem kind of working with everybody to be hedging their bets, or just looking… like they want weakness or instability in Afghanistan more than anything else.”

Boucher told reporters that “several shipments” of weapons from Iran to the Taliban had been intercepted.

“I’m not sure they (Tehran) want to see the Taliban win, but I don’t think they want the government to establish good control either. I think they are just trying to hedge their bets and keep everything fluid.”

Clearly, the one thing Iran wants is for Afghanistan to remain unstable so refugees can stream across the border. Since when is Iran is working with the Taliban to do this? I’m afraid the days of the U.S. government making credible blanket statements is long over. Without evidence, all Boucher is saying is that Iran is meddling in Afghanistan’s politics to tweak the situation in its favor… exactly as the U.S. does.

Frankly, we should want Afghanistan and Iran to be on good terms. They are, after all, neighbors. And Iranian investment has been put to excellent use in Herat, and to a lesser extent elsewhere. Why would they also fund its destruction? Boucher’s comments are incoherent. Kind of like U.S. policy in the region.

The Marines are talking sense:

The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser [Helmand], derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees — money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the poppies won’t be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans’ only source of income.

Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.

“It’s kind of weird. We’re coming over here to fight the Taliban. We see this. We know it’s bad. But at the same time we know it’s the only way locals can make money,” said 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, of Barnstable, Mass.

The Marines’ battalion commander, Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson, said in an interview Tuesday that the poppy crop “will come and go” and that his troops can’t focus on it when Taliban fighters around Garmser are “terrorizing the people.”

“I think by focusing on the Taliban, the poppies will go away,” said Henderson, a 41-year-old from Washington, D.C. He said once the militant fighters are forced out, the Afghan government can move in and offer alternatives.

That’s the clearest thinking on opium I’ve read this year. Opium is a second order problem; focusing on it to the exclusion of more fundamental problems, like security or infrastructure, leads to badly distorted policies and a perpetuation of bad security.

Meanwhile, the Australians are doing something USAID can’t, thanks to the farm lobby: planting wheat. Of course, they’re spending only $1.5 million on alternative crops… which pales in comparison to the $800 million spent on insurgency-fueling eradication.

Still, boffo to the Marines for waking up to the reality of the situation. Maybe there’s hope for Helmand after all.

Posted without comment.

India not to take up new road projects in Afghanistan

New Delhi, May 6 (IANS) After the latest killings of its personnel by Taliban militants in Afghanistan, India’s Border Roads Organisation (BRO) Tuesday said it is unlikely to take up any more projects in the insurgency-plagued country. “In Afghanistan, we unfortunately had casualties. We have 300 men working in the country, and about 400 personnel of ITBP (Indo-Tibetan Border Police) are there for the inner security cordon,” BRO Director General Lt. Gen. A.K. Nanda told reporters here.

“For the outer cordon of security, we have recruited around 1,400 Afghan gunmen. But one is not very sure of their loyalty,” Nanda said on the eve of the 48th raising day of the BRO.

On April 12, two personnel of the BRO were killed and five injured in a suicide attack in southwest Afghanistan’s Nimroz province. Two other BRO personnel were killed earlier in the year.

BRO sources told IANS that the organisation has been paying around 4,000-5,000 Afghanis (Afghanistan currency) to the local gunmen, but their loyalties are a major cause of concern for the Indian authorities.

“The threat is there and we have to live with that. Because of the threat, we would like to finish the work as early as possible,” Nanda added.

The BRO has completed about 80 percent of the work on the 219-km road from Zaranj to Delaram on the Iran-Afghanistan border and construction of the last 30 km is going on. The road will link the highways of the land-locked country to Iranian ports and open the Afghan market to Indian goods as currently there are no transit facilities through Pakistan.

It’s too bad those roads India is building aren’t improving security in the supposedly peaceful western part of Afghanistan. Maybe they’re just bad, unAmerican roads?

This Topic Continues:
Thinking Critically About Road Construction
Roads, Roads, Roads
Of PR Campaigns and the Utility of Area Knowledge
War Is Peace, and Other Orwells at the Journal
A Practical Look at the Value of Roads
Learning from PRTs
The Strange Benefits of Paving Afghanistan
Ann Marlowe Thinks Afghanistan Is Doing Awesome