Seth Jones thinks we need to think about al Qaeda in Iran.

Virtually unnoticed, since late 2001, Iran has held some of al Qaeda’s most senior leaders. Several of these operatives, such as Yasin al-Suri, an al Qaeda facilitator, have moved recruits and money from the Middle East to central al Qaeda in Pakistan. Others, such as Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian that served as head of al Qaeda’s security committee, and Abu Muhammad al-Masri, one of the masterminds of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in East Africa, have provided strategic and operational assistance to central al Qaeda. The Iranian government has held most of them under house arrest, limited their freedom of movement, and closely monitored their activities. Yet the organization’s presence in Iran means that, contrary to optimistic assessments that have become the norm in Washington, al Qaeda’s demise is not imminent.

Hooo boy. While Seth lays out where he looked for information (i.e. his methodology) very few of his claims are sourced to anything, not even in the normal citation-free format Foreign Affairs prefers (“according to…”). Some of his claims, like how Iran’s “sheltering” of al Qaeda figures (which he also describes “imprisonment and occasional torture”) have gone “unnoticed,” are really difficult to square with the constant coverage of said figures in places like the Long War Journal, the New York Times, and endless public official statements about Iran’s perfidy both in Afghanistan and the larger war on terror. Jones’ claim is made doubly laughable when considering the essay on Iranian-residing figures like al-Masri by Leah Farrell, which was published in none other than Foreign Affairs (she also published an extensive catalogue of her dialogue with al-Masri on her blog, which was also picked up by Steve Coll at the New Yorker).

Anyway, Seth Jones is exaggerating just a bit when he says this stuff has gone “Virtually unnoticed,” as he does in the very first sentence (and it’s hardly the first time he’s falsely accused everyone else of ignoring something). Here is a brief list of Jones’ other assertions that lack even casual inferences to data or sources:

• “Iran is likely holding al Qaeda leaders on its territory first as an act of defense. So long as Tehran has several leaders under its control, the group will likely refrain from attacking Iran.”
• “If the United States or Israel undertook a bombing campaign against Iran, Tehran could employ al Qaeda in a response. Tehran has long used proxies to pursue its foreign policy interests, especially Hezbollah in Lebanon, and it has a history of reaching out to Sunni groups.”
• “Al Qaeda is probably making similar calculations. To be sure, some revile the Ayatollahs.”
• “The regime might increase its logistical support to al Qaeda by providing money, weapons, housing, travel documents, and transit to operatives — some of which it is already doing. In a worse scenario, Tehran might even allow al Qaeda officials in Iran to go to Pakistan to replenish the group’s depleted leadership there, or else open its borders to additional al Qaeda higher-ups.”
• “In an even more extreme scenario, Iran could support an al Qaeda attack against the United States or one of its allies, although the regime would surely attempt to hide its role in any plotting.”
• “It would be unwise to overestimate the leverage Tehran has over al Qaeda’s leadership. The terrorist organization would almost certainly refuse Iranian direction.”

And so on. My only reaction to such wild speculation is, “based on what???”

Jones never says.

He also follows up several of these assertions with speculation that Iran will probably do the opposite or nothing at all, which makes me question just what point, exactly, he was trying to prove with this thing. Even when he starts by noting that the U.S. has only used sanctions and diplomacy (ineffectively!) against Iran, but then suggests… more diplomacy and sanctions to counter the threat of AQ figures residing there.

I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed this is the kind of thing that’s accepted as scholarship in such a prestigious magazine. Especially considering yesterday’s signature of that new-fangled economic cooperation pact between the Afghan and Iranian governments. Is our sourcing & thinking really that thin for a country right next to one of our biggest intelligence operations?

Update: I feel I should point out, too, that in all fairness Jones ultimately argues against military intervention in Iran. “Finally,” he writes, “the United States should think twice about actions that would push Iran and al Qaeda closer together — especially a preemptive attack on the country’s nuclear program.”

While I normally cringe at a high powered analyst spending 2,000 empty words to say “we shouldn’t do bad things that will hurt us,” I am choosing optimism to take comfort that it’s being said at all with regard to Iran. Carry on.

On Tuesday, I had the unexpected pleasure of sitting on a panel with Michael O’Hanlon and former Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul McHale to talk about the future of American strategy in Afghanistan.

That’s the video of the event. In case you don’t want to sit through 90 minutes of jabbering, I’m pasting my comments below, because I think they get at something very important: politics. Specifically, our failure to understand politics.

This image has been making the rounds today. I don’t know who that woman is, what unit she works for, or in what part of the country that image was taken. So this isn’t personal to her and it’s not directed at her; rather, this is representative of the military’s broad (and broken) approach to culture.

What is so striking about this image are the visual clues that are meant to signify a respect for culture: specifically, that pink head scarf. It is meant, I suppose, to show that this woman really cares about social norms of modesty in Afghanistan. It is also meant, I suppose, to distract otherwise pious men and women from noticing her combat uniform, AK-47, boots, and sun glasses — none of which an actually “modest” Afghan women would really wear. I don’t really have any other comments beyond noting how jarringly, amusingly out of place that image is.

Anyway, my notes from the talk:

Negotiations are not really how insurgencies end

Insurgencies end through the creation of a political framework for settling conflicts

I suggest we must be willing to scrap the entire Afghan government and state we’ve spent the last ten years building. This is an enormous step, hugely costly, and possibly ruinous, but it’s the only way we have a chance of ever ending the war.

While some point to foreign troops, it is really the current Afghan government and state that are driving the insurgency.

Break out of the Kabul bubble, away from the military, and speak with normal, non-Americanized Afghans. You find that they think the Taliban is only like 20% of the problem. The rest is the government’s inability to cope with local politics. (C.F., Kapisa, Khost, Marjah, etc.)

We can get some tactical successes but there isn’t strategic & political vision for an endgame.

Politics is the U.S.’s achilles heel in Afghanistan. We, as a country, never put in the hard work to understand them at a local, regional, national, and international level. As a result we are crippled by our reliance on Pakistan, badly overspending on our Central Asian NDN alternative, and left with almost no options beyond attempting a massive do-over.

The current government cannot and will not be an effective partner in negotiations – there is too much bad blood, too many competing interests, and too little willingness to address the political goals of the Taliban.

“Stop fighting and accept the constitution,” often stated as the preconditions for talks to begin, is really a call for surrender. The Taliban are fighting to change the government; demanding they accept it is pointless. The Taliban are a political reality in the country that we have proven incapable of changing.

We need to start looking at how the state of Afghanistan can be re-ordered to accommodate the Taliban demands, so that they can seek their preferences non-violently instead of violently. Our current strategy doesn’t allow for that.

As a result we should keep our expectations for the negotiations VERY LOW.

My favorite ABD Professor of Afghanistan things of all time — seen here making things up, comparing the Taliban to Irish people or maybe Native Americans, and talking very ignorantly about Vietnam — is back.

The Vietnam thing continues in his latest article, co-written with eternal collaborator M Chris Mason, for the AfPak Channel. “Our enemy in North Vietnam was not fighting a war for communism,” he helpfully tells us, just so we’re absolutely clear about what the North Vietnamese were not doing (which is totally right if we ignore everything about North Vietnam, including its communism). If you were looking for information on what the North Vietnamese actually were fighting for, you won’t find it because he never really gets around to talking about it. But they weren’t fighting for communism!

Anyway, for reasons unknown he chooses to continue digging: “in Afghanistan our enemies are not fighting an insurgency.” Gulp. Let’s read the whole context, and see if that gets any better.

However, our enemy in North Vietnam was not fighting a war for communism, and in Afghanistan our enemies are not fighting an insurgency. They are fighting a jihad, and no South Asian jihad in history has ever ended in a negotiated settlement. And this one will not either. There is no overlap between the way insurgencies and charismatic religious movements of this archetype in the Pashtun belt end. Insurgencies by definition have both political and military arms. Regardless of what they have learned to say, the Taliban does not. One hundred percent of the movement’s leaders are Muslim clerics. After fighting a second war in Asia the wrong way for almost a decade, the United States is now again desperately seeking a way out of the quagmire from within the wrong set of potential outcomes.

Okay, so this… is all wrong. All of it. For starters, South Asian jihads (what a curiously artificial delimitation!) most certainly HAVE ended through negotiation. Sir Edward Wharburton describes one such negotiated jihad in his memoirs (the so-called “Mad Mullah” of the 1897 insurrection in northwest British India) — they end after a period of often-brutal fighting, but they end by agreement.

For another, the Taliban most certainly DO have political and military goals. They’re not particularly shy about them on their website. But also, I participated in a very small way with the Century Foundation Task Force on this very topic, and their principals (including Thomas Pickering, a distinguished ambassador, and Lakhdar Brahimi, the former UN envoy to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan) actually spoke with representatives from the Taliban—who endorsed the idea of negotiations. Oh, and more and more lower-level Taliban commanders are endorsing negotiations as well. It’s almost like they have political ambitions or something! Oh, and remember when they ran Afghanistan? With a military and a government? Yeah it sucked for everyone and wasn’t run well, but to say they have no political or military goals is just ignorant.

So the Taliban actually do have political and military goals, making them an insurgency, whatever the religious trappings around them (which don’t matter, since other Pashtun-dominated insurgencies in South Asia have ended through negotiations and settlement). It’s just wrong, so horribly wrong I’m really surprised that even made it into a draft. What else is in there?

First, the best way to understand the “Taliban” is not as a political entity that can carry out negotiations, but as an event in time analogous to the First Crusade.

And this is where I stopped reading. They actually expand on this a paragraph later, but I didn’t read it. After getting literally everything about the Taliban’s make up, goals, history, and motivations wrong, Thomas Johnson and M Chris Mason then proceed with yet another ridiculous and ahistorical analogy, sourced to nothing beyond their own, crappy, unsourced previous work that didn’t withstand scrutiny. First the Taliban were like Apaches, then the VietCong, then the Irish, then everyone is wrong and they’re really just like the Knights Templar.

This is not the reasoned argument of a master of the subject; it is the insane ramblings of an empty suit, so incapable of describing reality on its own terms it must reach into the hazy mists of history for analogies that don’t work and history it can’t be bothered to get right.

“The Taliban of 1996-2001, which was infinitely more centralized and controllable than it is today, never kept a single such agreement for more than a week,” they write. That’s such a ridiculous hyperbole — Ahmed Rashid’s eponymous book “Taliban” records many accords they struck with both local power brokers and the international community that lasted weeks, months, and years (including with the United States) — that it’s hard to think they’re not just ignorant but actively misleading about the history of how the Taliban behave and act.

However, history, fact, and logic have never stood in the way of Thomas Johnson’s awful Afghan snake oil. For years he has peddled such a lazy, false historicity dressed up like clever allusion and smothered liberally with factually incorrect trivia that have nothing to do with the topic he’s arguing, that it’s not even interesting that he can’t be bothered to keep his arguments similar from article to article. It’s more worrying that he keeps thinking it is okay to peddle such sloppy back alley analytic filth and expect to be taken seriously.

Yet mysteriously, he is — his perch at the Naval Postgraduate School more or less guarantees it (as well as a generous operating fund and lots of staff). So in the meantime, all one can do is pick away at this lazy crap and hope smarter people just ignore it.

P.S. Tom, M Chris, the Vietnam War ended in 1975, not 1976. The U.S. withdrew the vast bulk of its armed forces in 1973, and the South Vietnamese government held on for two years, not three weeks. I know Wikipedia was down recently, but these are very basic, easily Googled facts you should probably get right if you’re going to draw a historical analogy. Love, Josh

This is the last in a four-part series where I hate on Big Bird. Not really, but see Part 1 here if you’re just now joining us. Sesame Street has made its way to Afghanistan, it’s called Bagch-e-SimSim, and it’s the perfect example to illustrate at a micro level what’s wrong with the reconstruction and development effort as a whole. The following is the last of four reasons explaining how even Grover gets it wrong here. 

Reason #4: This is not an Afghan solution.  

It’s more of a hyphenated Afghan solution. As in Afghan-American. More on that later.

Bringing Sesame Street to Afghanistan can be tough: trying to put a Western TV program on the air is going to present some challenges. Color my observations obvious. Some of the challenges the show ran into were objections from the Sesame Workshop, which distributes Sesame Street.

“We had some amazing footage of children flying kites on rooftops,” Farzana said. “This happens all over Afghanistan. But Sesame Street said we could not use it because it was against their safety rules.”

Sesame Street sets great store by teaching children how to protect themselves, and did not want young Afghans encouraged to take up such a dangerous activity.

The compromise: Farzana’s team added a graphic fence to the film.

Thereby rendering the footage completely unrecognizable to an Afghan kid. There were other objections as well.

One segment recorded in Afghanistan involving a family car ride had to be dropped because, as with nearly all local motorists, no one was wearing a seatbelt.

Which isn’t terribly surprising to anyone who’s been in Afghanistan for more than five minutes. Seatbelts are about as plentiful as bacon kebabs, and Afghans, if they know you well enough, will laugh at you when they see you putting one on. It’s not a good thing – this kind of thing leads to some pretty horrific traffic fatality numbers here, but somehow seatbelt safety in a country fairly riddled with the IED threat might get bumped way down on their list of priorities. There were some other issues and cultural differences that also had to be addressed in order to present an Afghan-friendly Sesame Street.

“We tested a scene where Ernie is barking like a dog and getting Bert to copy him, but we found that parents were dead set against it,” says Tania Farzana the Afghan-American executive producer of the show. “A dog is considered to be unclean, so the parents didn’t understand it.”

“Oscar the Grouch I had to minimise because his passion for trash did not translate well culturally here,” said the show’s Afghan-American producer, Tania Farzana.

As for The Count, she added that his fangs and fondness for bats would have proved problematic in a conservative, Islamic society like Afghanistan.

She also had to contend with cultural taboos like dancing.

And unlike the US version of Sesame Street, dancing was not encouraged on the Afghan version.

Such activity in front of the opposite sex is seen as overtly sexual in Afghanistan, so Afghan children watching the show are encouraged to exercise to music instead of dancing.

“That way I don’t get reprimanded by the parents because it’s exercise and who can disagree with that?” Farzana said.

Since, apparently, Afghan parents are going to be too dumb to see that the “exercising” being encouraged looks a whole lot like dancing. Beyond these kinds of creative differences, she also had to deal with trying push things a little too far for the comfort of either the executives in the United States or her colleagues in Afghanistan.

More problematic is the season’s final show, in which Farzana wants to show a father taking his 6-year-old daughter to Friday prayer. But Sesame Street in New York, with its resolutely secular message, balked.

“I told them this is not about religion,” she said. “It is about community. In Afghanistan, social life revolves around the mosque; you go there to meet old friends and make new ones; you go to feel that you are never alone.”

She got a tentative go-ahead from New York, but then ran into trouble on the Afghan side.

“So many people did not want me to show a father taking his daughter to the mosque. ‘She’s a girl!’ they said. But I answered, ‘she’s a child!’”

The issue is still not resolved, but Farzana, a woman of prodigious energy and enthusiasm, vows that the segment will be shown.

“I will have a film on Friday prayer,” she said firmly.

This is where Ms. Farzan lost me. No matter how much we want to spin the mosque as a “community center,” it is primarily a place of worship. Which, as an Afghan native obviously well-versed in the nuances of interacting with a rural, poorly educated population, Ms. Farzan would know quite well. Unless she’s not really any of those things.

In first reading through the different articles for this piece, at first I was fairly impressed that an Afghan woman (in Kabul or anywhere) would be bold enough to push the boundaries of what’s acceptable in this, her native country. It’s not unprecedented, and some truly brave women are forging genuinely new paths for future Afghan women to follow (provided the wheels don’t come completely off circa 2014).

Then I read further: let me introduce you to my current nominee for Team America’s All Stars (previous nominee was Senator Lieberman and an honorary nominee would be the cultural advisor for Regional Command Southwest): Tanya Farzan. She regales us with her glorious childhood in Kabul:

“I was the luckiest child in the world,” said Farzana, who was born in Kabul in the 1970s, before leaving for the United States at the age of nine. “There was so much comfort and warmth, a sense of security. Children now cannot even imagine a Kabul like that.”

Coming back after close to 30 years was a shock. “The first three months broke my heart,” she confessed. “Nothing was the way I remembered it.”

I get that it’s Kabul, and it certainly doesn’t look like it did 30 years ago, but neither does my old neighborhood. Mainly because of all the gangs. And the pawn shops. But enough about me.

Farzana recalls a Kabul where her mother rode a bike to university, where women were free to do what they liked.

“My mother never even wore one of these,” she said, flicking at the white headscarf that covered her dark hair.

Yes, Ms. Farzan and the wearers of headscarves certainly suffer in a country where “opium brides” are still far too common. The horrors of silk, indeed.

Having spent her formative years far from Afghanistan, even Kabul, Ms. Farzan got here as fast she could, arriving 30 years later on her nearly-sacred mission:

“I am hoping we can give them the right to use their imaginations,” she said. “This instills empathy, the ability to identify with others.”

This is phenomenal…childrens’ rights. Wait…what? I mean, yeah, it’s a crapshoot here whether or not this country’s going turn out all right, but it’s not exactly the Orwellian nightmare she’s portraying. But wait, there’s more. Much more.

“I was struggling trying to get kids to smile for the clips I was making,” Farzan says. “So this show, actually, there are a couple of scenes specifically trying to get kids to know, to recognize these kinds of emotions, and also the fact that it’s OK to express those emotions, you know? It’s all right to…distinguish between ‘happy,’ ‘sad,’ ‘angry,’ and all the different things that here [are] not really encouraged.”

It’s not at all possible the reason they weren’t smiling was because she was freaking the kids out. No… it’s because of how Afghanistan…well…let her explain it.

She suggests that Afghanistan can feel like “you’re supposed to subdue yourself at all times, and usually anger is the one that’s expressed so easily and comfortably.”

 “So I’m pretty excited about getting the young generation of kids to become familiar with the different kinds of emotions,” Farzan says.

I don’t know where Afghan kids would be unless Ms. Farzan was here to import these different emotions. Granted, there are some traumatized kids in this country. You can’t live in a place that’s torn apart by war for over 30 years and not get beaten down by it. But I’m not sure what automatons she’s hanging out with that have her convinced that she’s going to be the Good Fairy of all Things Emotional. As far as being subdued at all times, apparently Ms. Farzan isn’t familiar with things like The Ministry, an Afghan television program that many in the Western media described as a take on The Office. Or the comedic stylings of this Afghan in Khowst. Or with actual Afghan kids, who have this really weird tendency to act like… kids.

I know I’ve spent some time laughing with Afghan colleagues, and most of the time it wasn’t even at gunpoint. Although I’ve found you get a much better reaction to your jokes if your audience is threatened with violence. Seriously: learning “Laugh, or I’ll shoot,” in several languages has worked wonders for my budding comedic career.

Besides being nearly completely disconnected from the fact that Afghans have emotions, just like real humans, Ms. Farzan’s still not done dishing out the cultural insight. Not by a long shot.

Farzan is optimistic that the show will find success the old-fashioned way: word of mouth.

“In [even] the most rural areas, there’s always this big satellite dish. Now chances are that in that little town there’s one extreme, fundamentalist side that might not put his children to watch [the show]. But then there’s two families that do. And then the word of mouth hits,” Farzan says. “Word of mouth is the most powerful thing in Afghanistan, because that causes waves more than anything else.”

She envisages a scenario in which just a small number of families might initially watch but quickly be joined by others.

“Let’s say a family — even if it’s just the two families that see it and their kids play the next day — those two kids that watched it, they’ll tell that kid what was there [on television],” Farzan says. “So I know it’s not possible to reach everyone 100 percent of the time — just like it is in the [United] States or England. You can’t reach everyone all of the time. But at the same time, there’s [such] a power behind this show that I can say with all certainty that if one kid in the whole block sees it, the other kids will hear about it.”

I’m not sure which Afghanistan Ms. Farzan is in, but having been in some those “most rural areas,” I haven’t seen too many examples of that there “big satellite dish.” These are many areas where if there is any electricity it’s going to some lights. Or to charge their cell phones. Oddest thing to see a guy on a donkey cart trucking down a rural road with his cellphone out.

As for the “peer pressure,” she grossly underestimates the power of Western-style democracy and peer pressure in getting those “extreme, fundamentalist” types to let something like Western TV programs into their home. Assuming there’s a TV there at all. And there’s the issue of airing a Western style program on a channel like TOLO, which isn’t known for embracing conservative ways.

“Earlier, there was a TV series for Afghan youth, a very Western-type of a program,” the teacher tells Radio Free Afghanistan, “and it exposed kids to negative things. Now they [the West] want to influence the minds of our children.”

Others question whether the show will reach its target audience — most importantly, girls. Just 12 percent of women over 15 are literate, largely a legacy of the Taliban regime’s strict policies, and the education of girls continues to be controversial for religious and societal reasons in much of the country.

But Tolo TV is known for airing racier shows, such as Turkish and Indian soap operas, that are often criticized by the country’s religious establishment. Considering that religious families are more likely to prevent their daughters from attending school, the question arises whether they are willing to tune in.

Ms. Farzan is doing what I see a great many well-meaning aid and development workers doing: assuming some sort of non-human behavior that must, by all means, be addressed through the auspices of the “Whites in Shining Armor” vehicle, or they will never truly be able to get anything done.

It’s this kind of “mile wide, inch deep” sweeping generalization and the application of the “magic bullet” approach to work in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) that ensures that whatever is being done will fail. Probably miserably. The RAND corporation actually addressed this kind of ex-pat involvement in some of its “lessons learned” from its own experiences in Afghanistan with the DVD series.

First, with regard to her theory that the children just need to be taught how to feel again:

Afghan classrooms were traditional, with strong authority granted to teachers and other adults. However, this did not mean that the behavior of the children was repressed.

Having spent some time as an educator, I too had to suffer through the educational psychology classes where we learned to develop “cooperative learning activities.” That works just fine, so long as you’re not actually trying to “learn” anything. Children do best in an environment where there are rules and those rules are enforced. It’s called structure. Weird, I know.

As to her groundbreaking “ex-pat” approach, this is what RAND learned:

Expatriates (who had assisted in developing the project) did not prove to be good predictors of in-country attitudes. Direct involvement of the target population is preferred.

I’m the first to argue that one needs the “big brains” that do nothing but think about things. But you also desperately need individuals who’ve spent time on the ground, developing the product and working with the target audience in order to determine how effective it may be.

So, I hate on Big Bird. Not really, just on the way he’s being introduced in this country.

But so much of what’s gone wrong in this country is tied to these things: a lack of infrastructure to support projects lead to a lack of sustainability. Too much money is spent on things that make for a great photo op rather than being actually effective. Far too many “well meaning” ex pats with no concept of what might actually work here keep hammering Western pegs into Eastern holes, and it all ends…poorly.

This last one is the most frustrating, because the money always goes to the groups with the shiniest presentations, the most people with letters after their last name, with little or no consideration for whether or not they actually know anything about the country they’re trying to “help.” It is my sincere hope that the children of Afghanistan someday will get to experience Bagch-e-SimSim. But not now. Not like this.

This is the third in a four-part series where I hate on Big Bird. Not really, but see Part 1 here if you’re just now joining us. Sesame Street has made its way to Afghanistan, it’s called Bagch-e-SimSim, and it’s the perfect example to illustrate at a micro level what’s wrong with the reconstruction and development effort as a whole. The following is the third of four reasons why this is just another bad idea in Afghanistan.  

Reason#3: The program is not cost-effective.

It’s expensive. Like silly expensive. Not Bugatti Veyron silly. More like Ulysse Nardin’s “Chairman” cellphone silly. It’s chump change by comparison to what’s normally spent here, but still:

The aim is to produce 26 episodes at a cost of $1 million, underwritten by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul.

For those of you who normally work in TV land, I do realize that this is nothing. Production costs on a program like that can be much higher.

But given that it won’t reach a majority of the children in Afghanistan, it might be better just to fly over the countryside and push a million dollars out the back of the plane.

One other less-expensive way to go about this might be Sesame Street DVDs, adapted for use in Afghanistan, for example. Which was done, back in 2004:

A specially adapted version of Sesame Street, the television program that has helped educate millions of children around the world, will be shown in schools and other settings in Afghanistan. Sesame Workshop (the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street) and the RAND Corporation announced the initiative today, as Afghan government officials accepted the first of more than 400 multi-media educational outreach kits prepared by Sesame Workshop and RAND.

Here’s a poster. Cute, no?

RAND (the company responsible for the program in partnership with the Sesame Workshop) had this to say in 2004:

The Afghan educational scene remains, in spring 2004, in a state of “hopeful disarray” – hopeful, because 3 million children have returned to school, a third of them girls; disarray, because the task of setting up an education system under the prevailing conditions is so inordinately challenging. These challenges include:

• Devastated physical infrastructure.
• Lack of facilities.
• Highly uneven levels of teacher qualification.
• No regular student body. After decades of disruption, there is little correlation between age and grade level.

I like the phrasing: “hopeful disarray.” Someday I hope I’m smart enough to describe chaos like that. For further reference, I give you RAND’s implementation plan for this program. I’m only going to point out that on page 5, I’m pretty sure that’s not a “picnic area,” but one of the many places in Kabul that out-of-work men gather because, well, there’s nothing else to do. I could be wrong, it’s happened before. Just not a lot.

So Sesame Street’s been done… surely, though, this is the first time that puppets have been tried here in Afghanistan as a means of education. It’s such an innovative approach that no one else except the folks at Sesame Workshop could have devised such a plan. (I know: my sarcasm can be subtle at times.)

I give you “No Strings International,” a non-profit that uses puppets to teach children, and a story from Christian Science Monitor on their efforts to use puppets to educate kids about land mines in Afghanistan.

Now in Afghanistan the creators of Muppet stars Miss Piggy and Fozzy Bear have teamed up with two charities to teach children a lesson in survival: how not to get killed or maimed by the millions of land mines still buried in the Afghan soil.

“The Story of the Little Carpet Boy,” loosely based on Pinocchio, is the brainchild of No Strings International, a British charity set up to reach children in war-torn areas and teach them vital life lessons through puppetry.

“It’s hard to get a crowd of children to listen to an adult, but the minute you bring a puppet out, kids just light up,” says Johnie McGlade, founder of No Strings.

Fortunately, the “puppets at teachers” is something the ANSF has embraced.

By using a simple motorcycle-based projector, the No Strings team puts together films, and shows them to children in villages.

The mobile cinemas are motorcycles fitted with a generator and projector screen on their sidecar, and can reach far-flung mountain villages to deliver their lesson.

“These bikes are really a dream come true for us,” says Haji Fazel Karimi, OMAR’s director, “because we will be able to reach areas that are very remote and teach children with a film they can remember.”

And apparently the kids are listening:

“I liked the film,” says Masiha, an 11-year-old girl who watched the film’s first screening in Kabul, “and I learned that you should stay away from fields that have red stones. There are mines there. I didn’t know that before.” She also liked the film’s happy ending in which Chuche is granted his wish to become a real boy and gets his limbs back.

Now granted, this is in Kabul, and that’s always been a challenge in these places that so much of what people do here is Kabul-centric. But at least in theory purchasing motorcycles (which can cost around $600 here) and projection equipment would cost a lot less and potentially reach a lot more children.

So we’ve tried Sesame Street, we’ve tried puppets, and now we’re trying Sesame Street puppets on TV.

The Count: “I give up. This is too much. Ha ha ha.”

What’d we learn today, kids?

In any development situation, you have to develop the macro (national/provincial/district) level processes, while simultaneously developing the processes on the ground.

If both are missing, and you have to pick one, always work from the bottom up, particularly in a place like Afghanistan. Historically, this is not a place that responds well (read: at all) to direction from a centralized capital. Something like Bagch-e-SimSim is destined to fail because it wasn’t developed and distributed at a local level.

The value of a program like “No Strings” or distributing the DVDs is that it affords you the opportunity to put a person in the mix: someone screening the film or DVDs. That person is able to put the lesson into a context that’s locally-focused. With something like Bagch-e-SimSim, in a place as fractured culturally and politically as Afghanistan, you’re relying on a mass approach to work with a population that’s still coming to grips with what it means to be Afghan.

Unfortunately, DVDs and puppet films aren’t nearly as shiny as Grover hugging on your ambassador. And I’m more than willing to concede the fact that as time goes on, that something like Bagch-e-SimSim is going to be effective in a more stable environment with greater levels of developed infrastructure. However, spending $1 million on a project like this, in a country where that $1 million could buy a lot of DVDs, motorbikes, or, insane thought – train teachers, it seems like another sad waste of money that’s ultimately not going to reach its audience.

Next: Reason #4 – It’s not an Afghan solution. 

By Grey Maggiano

Much has been made of the recent announcement that the U.S. and the Taliban may begin negotiations through a Taliban proxy office in Qatar, but one question raised by the Taliban’s public statement has gone largely unaddressed: Was the exclusion of the Afghan Government from any potential negotiations intentional? And if so why?

The Washington Post makes more of this distinction than NYT or Foreign Policy, though multiple sources have pointed out that the intention is for talks to be between the U.S. and the Taliban.  Since, other than nasty ISAF tweets, the Taliban isn’t particularly responsive – let’s assume this IS intentional.

Then why?  Could this be strategic on the Taliban’s part?  It’s no secret that tensions have increased between the U.S. and Afghanistan in the last year.  U.S. officials have frequently expressed frustration at President Karzai’s public statements and his policy decisions, so perhaps the Taliban are trying to cast themselves as a reasonable, or at least even, counterweight to the current erratic leadership?   This is an appealing argument, but the Taliban are well aware of how they are thought of by the international coalition (not to mention their previous record on human rights) and they also know their reputation can’t be undone just by setting up an office in Qatar.

Then maybe this is an effort to force Karzai’s hand? Challenge him into negotiating?  Unlikely, given Karzai’s (and the Government of Afghanistan’s) efforts to reach out to the Taliban privately, not to mention Karzai’s frequent public statements offering reconciliation to his “long lost brothers and friends” and blaming outside elements for instigating violence and driving a wedge between the Afghan Taliban and the Government.  True, recent attacks on the Karzai family and more direct assaults on Afghan Government (vs. ANA or ISAF) elements on the part of the Taliban have strained relations; but even in these instances Karzai has blamed Pakistan for propping up certain elements of the insurgency.  This bending over backward has led to multiple missteps in negotiations, from faulty payments, to embarrassing leaks, and assassinations.

So what then?  Maybe this is a public relations move on the Taliban’s part.  One can question the Asia Foundation Survey’s methodology, accuracy, and political motivations –but like it or not- it is some of the best data we have on Afghan public opinion. One thing it unquestionably has established is that every year, better than half of those surveyed think that corruption is worse than the year before (nationwide) and that corruption in people’s daily life has increased from 2006 – 2011 (in fact it is one of the few negative indicators in the survey that have increased over time). Perhaps the Taliban is saying, not to the U.S. but to Afghans, that they are the only credible partner to negotiate with right now?  That this troublesome, corrupt government can no more be trusted to end the war than they can be trusted to protect people’s money or pay their bills?  That they, and only they, can speak for the Afghan people?

Presumptuous? Yes. Preposterous? Definitely not.  ABC news does a much better job of polling attitudes about the Taliban than Asia foundation does, and their 2010 survey showed a dramatic increase in the approval for attacks on coalition forces, as well as continued decreases in support for U.S. efforts and the Government of Afghanistan.  This doesn’t mean Afghans are willing to return to pre-2001 Afghanistan, but the Taliban have been working on an image campaign of sorts in the country – voicing support for women’s education, engaging in an aggressive anti-corruption campaign, including setting up their own justice system, and embracing some aspects of the modern world including, apparently, Twitter.

For too long, the international community has blindly ignored the growing support for an alternative government in Afghanistan – one that would be less corrupt, more independent, more responsive to the Afghan public – which is exactly what the more polished elements of the Taliban movement are offering.  Most importantly, only the Taliban leadership can offer the ability to demilitarize the thousands of small militias and criminal enterprises flying their flag all over Afghanistan.   The concern for the U.S. should be that we might get blindsided.  If WE are seen as holding up the peace process because we try and force Karzai’s involvement in the discussions, and in the process get blamed for prolonging the conflict in the Afghan Public, we stand to lose even more.

Grey Maggiano spent four years working for the U.S. government on Afghanistan reconstruction efforts and is now seeking ordination in the Episcopal Church

I was on WNYC’s The Takeaway this morning talking about the politics of the Taliban opening a political office in Qatar.

On Tuesday, after months of denying it was interested in participating in formal talks to end the war in Afghanistan, the Taliban indicated it would consider opening a political office in Qatar. A political office would give mediators from the U.S. a legitimate contact for Taliban members. No details have been given about when these negotiations would begin, or what would be bargained for. This step also implies that there will continue to be some kind of Taliban presence inside Afghanistan.

Joshua Foust, correspondent for The Atlantic and a fellow at the American Security Project, explains what this could mean for U.S.-Afghan relations.

Listen here

I Blame Foust

So I’ve been on vacation for a little while, and the urge to do anything rather than document another lap around the drain that is 2014 was pretty much overpowering. And I do mean anything. You should see my socks. They have never been so organized.

This also means I’ve been avoiding things like news, blogs, etc., and this blog in particular. Mainly because the folks that usually post here make sense, and just reinforce what I’m seeing here. Which, is likely going to drive me to drink. So in all of that I missed this excellent post by Joshua Foust. Why is it excellent? Because of his excellent choice in references. That’s right, I’m that good. And humble. And not one to toot my own horn. Ever.

I’m going to reserve my commentary specifically for the Asia Foundation survey he references, which I referenced in a comment on a blog post, which he then posted in his post. (See “excellent choice in references” above). So there’s a lot referencing and posting going on here. Here’s what I had to say on this post in reference (see? lots of referencing) to the Asia Foundation survey completed in 2010. Well, sorta. The italicized portions are what I said re: the 2010 survey. Below that are the comparisons to the 2011 survey, along with the occasional rabbit trail and pursuit of something shiny.

Caveat: Here’s the link to the 2011 survey. It’s bigger…better…shinier! Seriously, it’s an infographics surge of Santorum proportions this time around. Obviously, someone at USAID coughed up some serious dough for the website.  And here’s the links to all of the Asian Foundation surveys dating back to 2006 via Scribd. Just in case you want some fun of your own. Personally, I’d recommend smashing your own fingers with a hammer first, then if that doesn’t hurt enough, get your survey read on:

For the first time, as part of the survey, we are unveiling an online data mapping tool,Visualizing Afghanistan and a photo slideshow.

Who doesn’t live a good slideshow? I know I can’t say no.

Back to the back and forth. Again, this is me referencing the 2010 survey.

So a survey that interviewed 6,467 people in a country of 28 million, conducted 23% of its surveys in the Central/Kabul region, and 14% of its surveys in Kabul province itself (the next nearest closest percentage was 7% in Herat), should be classified as “one of the broadest public opinion polls in the country?”

Here’s where I thought I’d been talking about the 2011 survey in my original comment, simply because the numbers are so close. As in freakishly close. This time around Asia Foundation conducted 22% of its 6,348  surveys in the Central/Kabul region, and 14% of its surveys in Kabul province itself (the next closest once again being Herat). Again, not exactly “broad.”

The survey reportedly asked 70 questions. In a single survey. The issue with this is that it’s too broad, covers too much ground, and takes too much time to complete per person being surveyed. As a means to collect information, a 70 question survey is a deeply flawed instrument, as it covers too many topics to adequately demonstrate a specific set of data.

Yup, they did this in 2011, too. And I still stand by this statement.

Additional notes on methodology: they indicate they would use a Kish grid in order to determine who would be asked the questions. This works well in an environment where both men and women are allowed to speak equally. This is not the case in many areas in Afghanistan, and conducting a survey using Western methodologies without taking into consideration the realities on the ground would cause the results to be suspect.

The “Kish grid” is one of those red herrings that survey organizations toss out to show that no kidding, they really do know what they’re doing. It’s a word they use in proposals a lot. Especially really thick proposals. I read a proposal that laid out how they were going to use the “Kish grid” in the “qadas of Afghanistan.” Neat trick, since that’s an Iraqi government district structure, but whatever…either way, successfully implementing a Kish grid is a messy proposition in any area that’s fairly village-centric. Like, I dunno, Afghanistan.

Um…Do You Know Where Your Village Is?

One of the things that usually jumps out about the Asia Foundation surveys is how many sample points had to be moved for one reason or the other, mainly security. Once again, they do explain the adjustment of interview points. First, from 2010 (in italics) followed by the 2011 statements (in not-italics):

In 2010, the situation continues to deteriorate. One hundred and thirty eight of the 885 random sampling points were inaccessible to survey researchers due to security problems (16% of all sampling points).

In 2011, the situation has improved somewhat. Ninety-five of the 876 sampling points had to be replaced due to security reasons (11% of all sampling points).

So that’s a plus, yes? Well, except for what they term the Kabul/Central region: in 2010 only 10 points had to be changed due to security. This year? 17 points, a 70% increase. It’s also the most number of sampling points that have ever had to be moved in the Kabul area. As in Kabul, theoretically the most secure area in Afghanistan. The capital. Yeah, that Kabul.

Also what that means is that  the survey, rather than being done in an area that might not be as secure, is focused in an area that’s safer. Therefore more secure. And consequently more likely to be just plain happier with ISAF and GIRoA overall.

For example, in looking at Ghazni province, which promises to be one of the key areas of focus for ISAF in the coming year or so (as it’s been for a couple of minutes already), every single sample point had to be changed due to “the district is controlled by the Taliban.”

Not the town…the entire district. Which was also true in 2010. In 2009, the changes are done in the same province due to what’s termed “security problem” without being specific. The reasons for changes in Ghazni get less specific in 2008.

Sidebar: Point of interest — 18% of the survey point changes were made due to the fact that they couldn’t find the village. One would think they’d go back to the same places to see what kind of progress was being made, but instead of tracking the progress over time in a particular area, they move to another village, like one they can find, and ask the same questions in a different place. They do explain their methodology as being random based on population, but the value of a survey over time is that you keep asking the same questions of the same people to better gauge their responses.  Of course, I’m not a smart researcher who knows how to “Kish” stuff, so I’ll leave that for those with brains larger than my own.

I did find something interesting. Well, interesting to me…keep in mind I sort my socks: in further reference to how the sampling was done:

However, in 2011, in two provinces, Paktika and Zabul, the deteriorated security situation restricted the freedom of movement, making it unsafe to employ female interviewers. This meant that no women were included in the sample in these provinces.

Samangan, Farah, Zabul, Panjshir and Uruzgan were the only provinces where sampling points did not have to be replaced.

Maybe it’s a different Zabul, but in the one paragraph the security situation was bad enough that they couldn’t interview any women, but then later they state that they didn’t need to replace any sampling points. Which means they knew the situation was bad to begin with, and didn’t actually select random sampling points, but rather selected sample points in areas where it was safe to travel (just not for women). I might be reading too much into it, but the contrast in statements is intriguing.

Sidebar: In the 2008 survey, apparently the universe was the focal point of the survey…seriously. In two different places:

The universe is divided into eight geographical regions consisting of 34 provinces.

Due to the local cultural traditions, the universe at the outset was divided into male and female sub-samples.

But I Don’t Want to Talk About the Survey

I figured that would be enough, that I could just copy and paste some additions to my original comment on my own post (narcissistic…is that still a thing?), and be done with it. But today, Admiral James Stavridis, SACEUR posted this courtesy of NTM-A and…we’re off:

The third key is simple: pressuring the insurgents. We’ve made a lot of progress, and it is reflected in the attitudes of the Afghan people. For example, the recent Asia Society annual poll of the people of Afghanistan concluded that over 85% of Afghans approve of their Army and over 75% of their Police forces — strong improvements over the past five years.

Most of my comments are going to focus on the ANP, since, well, the Asia Foundation has been surveying that particular set of questions consistently, and it’s the arm of the ANSF that the average citizen is more likely to see and have any kind of interaction with on a regular basis.

Sure, they approve of the ANP overall, but  according to the survey, 48% of respondents were afraid when encountering ANP officers, which is down… from 52%. On average, since 2007, 49.8% of respondents stated that they had (some/a lot of) fear when encountering the ANP. So they approve, but they’re afraid of them. And as for the “strong improvements” he mentions, well:

It’s not the greatest graphic ever, but…with all due respect to SACEUR, just taking a look at the top line…five years ago 86% of the people surveyed felt that the ANP is honest and fair. And while it’s now better than it was, it’s still not as high as it was before NTM-A took over training all the ANSF forces.

Another point with regard to this confidence in the ANP: in the Central/Kabul area, in 2010 56% of respondents said that they were confident that the government would punish the guilty party if the respondent was the victim of a crime. In 2011, that number is actually down…to 49%.

Unfortunately, SACEUR isn’t alone in trumpeting this survey, as Mr. Foust pointed out. Even a publication with the usual gravitas of The Economist jumps on the bandwagon:

According to the Asia Foundation, satisfaction with the government’s performance is at 73%.

Which really, is incredible. Except that it’s the exact same percentage as it was last year. And it’s actually down 7% from the 2007 survey, when 80% of respondents felt that the central government was doing a “very good or somewhat good job.” Seriously. Here’s the graph:

I apologize for the quality, but um, yeah…it’s like in colors and stuff. And, here’s some more tables.

The one below is from the 2010 survey:

This is from the 2011 survey.

ANP is unprofessional and poorly trained? (20% vs. 20%) Oh…ouch. Unchanged. This is one of the key metrics that LTG Caldwell kept hammering out (see my post referenced above), and was often fond of pronouncements like this one:

“People’s perception of the Afghan forces is two years old,” he said.

After over two years of the best efforts of the NTM-A, whose sole purpose for existence is training the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to include the Afghan National Police (ANP), existence, 20% of respondents still believe that the ANP are unprofessional and poorly trained. In and of itself that seems fairly minor, until one realizes that the largest respondent pool was in the Central/Kabul area, theoretically the area with the greatest police presence, consequently with the greatest level of police exposure, and opinions are still unchanged.

But, Everybody’s Feeling Good. Right? Please Say Yes

I wish that I could write something different. Like Agent Mulder, I want to believe. Desperately. But, thank you, Asia Foundation, for making this part really easy.

Overall, 35% of Afghan citizens in 2011 say the country is moving in the wrong direction – an increase of 8% from 2010. The main reason cited for pessimism is insecurity, reported by 45% of the respondents who say that the country is moving in the wrong direction. This is followed by corruption (16%), bad government (15%), and unemployment (13%)

And it’s the highest this metric has been since 2007 when they started doing this particular survey. In other words, more people than ever before actually feel the entire country is moving in the wrong direction.

More from the survey:

This year, despite economic, political, and security challenges facing Afghanistan, nearly half of the respondents (46%) say that things in the country are moving in the right direction, a slight decline but still higher than previous years.

Insecurity (attacks, violence, and terrorism) is identified as the biggest problem in Afghanistan by over a third of respondents (38%), followed by unemployment (23%), and corruption (21%).

I’m Worth Repeating

And, in conclusion, I say again:

So the survey focused too many questions across an extremely small sample for a national-level survey, focusing that sample even further into the Central/Kabul area of Afghanistan, which is generally more secure than the rest of Afghanistan. With apologies to the Asia Foundation and the really shiny report they put together, the methodology for this survey is so deeply flawed that any conclusions drawn from the survey should be suspect.

The message from ISAF is clear: as sure as the Chicago Cubs never have to worry about playing baseball in October, the great Afghanistan experiment will be drastically altered from its current iteration by 2014. In fact, in the last few days, the security responsibility for Marjah district, Helmand province, was handing over to the Afghans without a single release from ISAF. In case you’re thinking Marjah wasn’t of any real interest to ISAF, I submit this, and this, and finally this review of the HBO documentary for those of us for whom “reading” sounds a lot like “work” and might involve “words.”

So the good word must go forward, even if that means quoting from survey instruments so intellectually dishonest they wouldn’t pass muster in support of a good Kim Jong Il propaganda film. It’s the kind of survey even Assad would look at and say, “Yeah, that’s not really accurate.”

In a war that’s light on metrics and long on message, it’s critical to the political endgame being played here that ISAF appears to be  turning over this country as soon as possible. And doing so successfully. And it’s making Afghans happy. Here’s to you, 2014: when you get here, I hope you’re way better than I’m afraid you’ll be.

Charles Kenny thinks Afghanistan has never been better:

Nonetheless, the answer to “was it worth it” is yes. For all the waste, corruption, and death, Afghanistan is a much better place to live than it was 10 years ago, and the international community can take a considerable part of the credit for that.

This is an interesting take, with some interesting assumptions behind it: has Afghanistan improved all that much since 2001, and has that improvement been because of the international community or despite the international community? This is worth digging into systematically.

First, the country remains considerably more peaceful and united than it has been for most of the past 40 years. The 1990s saw battle deaths in Afghanistan average around 9,000 a year, according to World Bank data. From 2003 to 2008, though, despite an uptick of violence in the last few years, that average was down to below 3,000 deaths.

This is pretty clever (and arbirary!) time span delimiting. He is including the worst period of fighting in the 1990s — basically the 1994-1997 timeframe — to assemble an average fatality. This is unreliable anyway because we have no idea how many people really died, though most estimates have the battle for Kabul in the mid-90s killing around 50,000 people, which would surely spike that number higher. Against this backdrop, Kenny chooses to build a post-2001 average out ofthe least active period of fighting, excluding the last three years which have seen the worst combat of the last ten years. It is a fundamentally unfair comparison.

Despite that, if battle fatalities were the same in a limited intervention as a civil war, then something would be seriously wrong. Looking at the World Bank Data Kenny cites reveals just how dishonest this formulation really is:

By Kenny’s own logical construct, the 1990s were better for Afghanistan than every before, because fewer people died than during the war with the Soviet Union. See that dip in the late 90s? As the Taliban conquered new swaths of territory, battle deaths actually dropped, because there was little or no fighting there. Or, we could say that current data (the World Bank does not include anything post-2008) is still just as bad, violence-wise, as the late 1990s. To say this means things are better for the country is fundamentally dishonest.

But let’s look at other data, as well. The Brookings Index, for example, shows on page 10 that over the past year, insurgent deaths are way way way up, as are assassinations in and around Kandahar. NATO troop deaths are up. ANSF deaths are up over the last year. And civilian deaths are way higher than in 2007. You just cannot overemphasize how dishonest it is to rely on data from before 2008. Sigh, what else does Kenny say?

Still, militant attacks were down by more than a quarter in the three months to September this year over the same period last year. Asia Foundation polling suggests people feel more secure, support for the government is up, and more than two-thirds of the country reports no sympathy for the Taliban.

Kenny links to a story about NATO’s own assessment of violence to justify this. The problem is, we know NATO uses dishonest accounting methods to give the impression that violence is lower, whereas independent assessments have indicated that violence is in fact much higher. Kenny has to at least account for the vast difference in accounting methods if he’s to make the case that violence is lower (and this ignores the ridiculous crutch of using the Asia Foundation surveys, as if they have every captured Afghan opinion accurately—that is, unless you really do believe the Afghan National Police really do have like a 75% approval rating).

The economy is also in better shape than it was 10 years ago. According to World Bank data, GDP per capita climbed from $569 to $879 between 2002 and 2008, a rate of growth that suggests average incomes might have doubled over the course of the decade since the fall of the Taliban. The World Bank suggests that as the troops leave and aid flows diminish, GDP growth rates may slow from around 9 percent to 5 or 6 percent. Nonetheless, rising average incomes suggest at least some Afghans are living life a little further away from absolute destitution. One positive sign: 71 percent of Afghan households have a mobile phone.

The growth in mobile phone ownership is remarkable. But again, Kenny is relying on data that is three years old. Afghanistan is a different place in 2011 than it was in 2008, and the amount of foreign expenditure is an order of magnitude different. A recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee report estimated that Afghanistan’s GDP is 97% dependent on foreign aid, which implies a much more substantial crash than three-year old World Bank data would suggest. To repeat: relying on old data to make an argument for optimism is just dishonest. Kenny is making the case for being optimistic about Afghanistan in 2008 (which, granted, I was), but not in 2011. He needs to use data from today, not from three years ago.

Anyway, this is turning long in the tooth. You all know what I mean with this criticism. You can select data that shows anything; but without context, understanding, and above all else honesty about the limitations of said data, all you wind up doing is breathless cheerleading. Kenny admits the cost for all this progress he cites has been “high,” but doesn’t actually follow through that line of thought to its logical conclusion: would Afghanistan have been better off with less international community-funded corruption, less invasive troop presence, and less heavy-handed foreign meddling in Afghan politics?

That, ultimately, is the question. Things in much of the country really are not good, and leaving the internet data archives (and even Kabul!) can show that to anyone brave enough to look for it. If the international community had spent $100 billion on development over ten years and accomplished nothing, that would be shocking. So it’s no surprise that some things have improved. What Kenny should be asking isn’t, did we get anything for our vast expenditure, but have the improvements been worth the cost? And could another policy have achieved the same or more at less cost?

Those are the kinds of questions aid and development boosters don’t like to answer. I wish they would.

I wrote a piece for The Atlantic about why Pakistan’s boycott has turned an already iffy conference at Bonn into a complete farce:

But the Bonn II conference has met with significant hurdles. Besides Pakistan, Afghanistan’s largest neighbor, no one seems to know if Afghanistan’s other major neighbor, Iran, will participate (I spoke with officials in the State Department, who would neither confirm nor deny Iran’s attendance). U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has told the Taliban they are not welcome to participate either, though German representatives have expressed interest in hosting some Taliban representatives. And Uzbekistan, which the U.S. is counting on as a transit corridor for its withdrawal plans, has been coy about its participation in any international conferences.

So a conference about the future of Afghanistan that is meant to leave a lasting, workable regional framework in place to manage the many diplomatic, economic, and security consequences of an American withdrawal might not include four of the most important participants: Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, or the Taliban. And yet, the other 90 countries that participate hope to accomplish something.

Not exactly earth-shattering, but it needs to be said.