While Central Asia’s international political profile has risen considerably since 2001, it has primarily been seen in the West through the prism of Afghanistan. The policies of Western governments towards Central Asia as a whole and as individual states have widely fluctuated, but in almost every case, been heavily shaped by policies toward Afghanistan. US and ISAF Afghanistan policy has been short-sighted and messy enough, making policy toward Central Asia even moreso.

In recent years, Central Asia’s governments have backslid, becoming more authoritarian and less able to provide services to all of society. This contributes to greater risks for instability in the future.

How much responsibility do Western countries, particularly the United States, have for this situation?

According to Alexander Cooley, who writes, “…the West has left a trail of repression, graft and unfulfilled commitments to Central Asia’s fledgling civil society,” a lot.

Cooley makes two big claims about how the US and ISAF campaign in Afghanistan has affected Central Asia:

1. Security assistance has made Central Asian states more authoritarian and corrupt
2. The drawdown from Afghanistan will magnify these effects

I acknowledge the possibility that Cooley is referring to a very small, slightly more than trivial, increase when using the adjective “more” to describe the changes in authoritarianism and corruption in Central Asia caused by western security assistance. However, it seems unlikely that he means “slightly more than trivial” for a few reasons. First, why bother writing about it in anything other than a theoretical way if that is indeed the case? Second, he does not write about these changes in the way one might expect were he describing small changes; the language suggests a qualitative and quantitative levels of authoritarianism and corruption rather than describing, for example, how western assistance creates new opportunities for the pre-existing corruption. Third, the tone suggests he means something big.

Perhaps the strong evidence is in his forthcoming book, because the case made in the article linked above is extraordinarily thin.

Before even looking at the evidence, this case should be approached with extreme skepticism. As a thought experiment, imagine there had been no war in Afghanistan. Would we expect any of the Central Asian governments to be qualitatively different in any perceivable way? Would corruption or authoritarianism be significantly less pronounced? To say they would be dramatically understates the agency these governments have.

Similarly, even with the war in Afghanistan, if western security assistance is a noteworthy contributor to increased corruption and authoritarianism, we should expect the effects to be more pronounced where that assistance is and has been greatest. It is hard to measure these things objectively, but looking at Freedom House and Transparency International scores or purely qualitative assessments of corruption and freedom as levels of US security assistance over the last decade shows no clear patterns. Uzbekistan was a little better in the early part of the decade when US security assistance was greatest and did most of its slide during the period of poor relations with the US. Kyrgyzstan has slid on corruption rankings and fallen and bounced back on freedom rankings. There is a lot more economy in explaining these changes by referring to the features of the particular governments than there is by pointing to US security assistance as the cause.¹

So, Cooley has big evidentiary hurdles — ones he sets up himself by writing at the outset that, “Western security assistance has made the Central Asian states more authoritarian and more corrupt” — to clear to show a causal relationship between security assistance and increased corruption and authoritarianism. He simply does not clear them.

On promotion of political and civil rights, he writes,

The K2 eviction prompted Western officials to accept the Central Asian governments’ insistence that engagement on security issues was now antithetical with promoting political freedoms.

To support this claim, he points out that the US toned down criticism of President Bakiev in 2007 to prevent the eviction of Manas, that human rights organizations complain that the US will not raise rights issues with certain Central Asian governments because of security relationships, and that the EU addresses human rights issues in EU-Central Asia dialogues. This simply does not cut it. Yes, the US has toned down criticism at times, and some agencies are particularly prone to downplaying concerns over rights. However, it is incorrect to say that the US does not raise these issues, as some human rights organizations claim (though this argument is hard to refute without details). Whether or not this engagement makes any difference, especially in a systematic way, is an entirely different question, as is whether or not US officials are eager to bring these issues up. But the mountain of rights related reports and certifications required for security assistance required by Congress make it impossible not to bring these issues up. Is it really that hard to find people in government with knowledge of these negotiations or who can describe the far more complicated story on trying to promote rights and maintain security assistance agreements?

On corruption, Cooley describes the rent-seeking around the Northern Distribution Network and the massive corruption in fuel sales for the Transit Center at Manas. He is entirely right that western, mostly US, engagement on transit into Afghanistan has created opportunities for corruption for local elites. And he is right that the payments are likely to increase as equipment is moved out of Afghanistan on the NDN. Yes, this is “more” corruption quantitatively, but is it qualitatively? One’s mileage may vary, but any and all resources coming into the region from outside are likely to have a chunk taken out due to corruption.²

Cooley never directly supports his claim that western security assistance has made Central Asia more authoritarian. The closest he comes is when he writes,

…the Obama Administration in January of this year lifted a ban on providing military assistance and its financing to the Uzbek government, opening the way to transfers of material that is as likely to be used to target domestic opponents as it is for its publicly stated purpose of guarding these supply lines.

Cooley, like other analysts of US security assistance, would be better served by taking a look at what security assistance has been given and what is on offer. Vague reference to “material” muddies the water. Uzbekistan wants all kinds of military equipment, but what is actually being offered does not include weapons and ammunition. Specific items include night-vision goggles, thermal imaging sensors for border posts, and body armor, and it will probably also include things like computers, desks, certain kinds of vehicles, and similar equipment being moved back out of Afghanistan. It explicitly does not include expansion of training. I guess all of these things could be used against domestic opponents or the public, but is that really such a significant risk? These are not the tools of repression currently used, and to claim that this increases authoritarianism is making a mountain out of a molehill. Again, is it really that hard to find people, especially at State or on Congressional staffs, who have worked these issues and can provide another perspective to add something to the story?

I agree that US policy has been lacking in Central Asia over the last decade. There have been strategic missteps and missed opportunities. Western governments, particularly the US and German, have too often let themselves lose sight of the importance of human rights to the long-term security and stability of Central Asia in the pursuit of short-term goals in Afghanistan. Human rights organizations play an important role in reminding western governments that Central Asian governments are headed the wrong direction, and academics play an important role in providing inputs to orient policy in better directions. However, in either of these cases, that role is undermined by making thinly-supported arguments that overstate the effects of security assistance on Central Asian governments.

Earlier this month, The Asia Foundation (TAF) released a large survey on voter behavior in Afghanistan’s last parliamentary election. With two years until the next major Afghan election (excluding for a moment the important but widely-ignored Provincial Council elections, due in mid-2013 but unlikely to be on-schedule), it might seem like an odd time to be releasing this kind of work. However, with talk of pushing the presidential poll forward by a year and—if the Kabul rumor mill is to be believed—what seems like a genuine appetite among Afghan actors for reform of the country’s electoral system, there has perhaps never been a better time to talk about how the country votes, with an eye to managing the process better the next time round. Conducted country-wide TAF’s study is packed with authoritative-sounding, extensively disaggregated numbers on everything from how and why people voted, to perceptions on how free and fair the polls were. But reading through it, there’s an awful lot that isn’t covered and—more problematic, in many ways—no acknowledgement of its absence.

It is, of course, all too easy to criticize from the sidelines. In Afghanistan’s desperately data-poor environment, research with this level of coverage is gold dust, not to mention being a major logistical and financial undertaking. However, TAF’s institutional credibility combined with the fact that they’re one of the very few shops out there conducting country-level surveys also means that their work is ascribed a huge amount of weight—sometimes blindly so. Figures from its annual “Survey of the Afghan People” can be found quoted as fact again and again and again in anything from op-eds to donor project documents, usually presented with little in the way of background or analysis of its sometimes serious limitations. Given their very real potential to drive debate, it’s therefore critical to work out just what studies like this one can—and can’t—tell us. What follows isn’t a play-by-play analysis of the entire survey; there are many areas that are pretty straightforward, while others I’m simply not qualified enough to comment on. Instead, I’ll just try to highlight a few examples of how numbers taken in isolation—authoritative though the sample size might seem—can obscure or miss the wider story.

To begin with, TAF’s respondents did an awful lot of…well, voting:

Sixty-five percent of respondents report voting in the elections, while 34% say they did not.

Great. The only problem is that (admittedly notoriously unreliable) estimates for 2010 put turnout somewhere in the 40% range, with less votes being cast than in any other previous election. Having voters disproportionately represented in the data might make sense given that it’s a voter behavior survey, but is likely to have a significant impact on results obtained, especially when it comes people’s perceptions of the legitimacy of elections or electoral institutions. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if this discrepancy was referenced in the study (it’s not). As it stands anyone not doing their homework (i.e. most people) is more likely than not refer to this data as representative of “Afghans,” rather than “mostly voters.”

Then there’s this:

Despite a decade of support dedicated to awareness raising on elections, a large proportion of our survey respondents report not knowing enough about the elections and electoral principles. (p. 1)

The survey attempted to measure how much information respondents had about the last parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, which were the elections for the Wolesi Jirga (lower house) held in 2010. Around one third (35%) of respondents say they had a lot of information, half (50%) say they had some information, and 8% say they had no information at all. (p. 11)

What does “information” mean here? Knowing when the poll was? Knowing how to vote? Knowing what to expect of an MP? The ins and outs of single non-transferrable vote (SNTV)? The presence of a women’s quota…? In studies we’ve conducted, people have generally had much better information about the first couple of questions than the remainder. Indeed, people’s expectations of their MPs (along with MP’s perceptions of their own roles) have been shown to differ dramatically from their statutory responsibilities, with major consequences for how representative governance in general is both practiced and perceived.

Again, extra context is needed. As it happens, the “decade of support dedicated to awareness raising” has been overwhelmingly and, given limited resources, deliberately skewed in favor of teaching people how to vote, rather than the political system that vote is helping to uphold. In fact, there hasn’t even really been a “decade” of support in this regard. Civic education has tended to take place in bursts of intense activity in the immediate run-up to elections, with few programs sustained in the interim. Meanwhile, the country’s school curriculum is also, two electoral cycles in, still devoid of civics classes (why this is the case is a mystery. It’s possible that teaching civics is viewed as politically thorny and hence best avoided; see the Ministry of Education’s “don’t mention the war” approach to history teaching).

But if some of the responses are vague without context, there are others that are perhaps misleadingly clear. This is especially true when it comes to people’s motivation to vote. Going by TAF’s data, the Afghan electorate are paragons of civic virtue, a plurality voting to “serve the country” (43%, p. 23) and a majority doing so to elect “educated, experienced…servant[s] of the people” (68%, p. 28). These are sentiments which have also cropped up repeatedly in many of our election-related interviews and are in many cases heartfelt—indeed, it seems that despite the ugliness of the last round of polls a reasonable number of Afghans have remained strikingly positive about the essential idea of selecting their leaders by popular vote.

But it’s also highly likely that there’s an element of social desirability bias in play—i.e. people telling interviewers what they think they want to hear. At their root, elections—in Afghanistan as with anywhere else—are about distributing power and resources (hence all that fraud). The “good citizen” picture TAF’s numbers presents may have an important grain of truth to it, but without context it also masks the essential messiness of what’s going on: the posturing, the wheeling and dealing, the bloc voting, the mobilization along ethnic or solidarity group lines… The large, multi-member, provincial-level constituencies that Afghanistan’s SNTV system has created means that in many instances, “representation” de facto boils down to MPs serving the interests of whichever communities or groups they happen to be personally linked to—and not any broader ideological or geographical area. Significantly, the seemingly widespread importance of “familiarity”—the importance of a community electing a candidate to which it has strong links to a community so that they can bring in resources and be held accountable—as a driver of voter behavior is notably absent from TAF’s numbers.

I’d go on, but you get the general picture. The real problem is perhaps not so much the survey’s lack of depth—it’s a survey, after all—but with the way the data is presented. As with other TAF outputs, the report seems to exist in its own hermetically sealed universe. Along with fairly minimal background information, there are only three references in all of its 133 pages—all to other TAF surveys. While still a drop in the ocean, a lot of other research has been done on Afghanistan’s elections, all of which could usefully have been linked to here. There’s the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU)’s eight or so years of ethnographic work on the subject; the Afghanistan Analysts Network’s extensive examinations of local electoral politics; political analysis from the International Crisis Group; observation reports from Democracy International, the country’s own monitoring body the Free and Fair Elections Foundation of Afghanistan (with by far the most observers on the ground in 2010), and the National Democratic Institute (the latter particularly exhaustive); studies specifically documenting women’s experiences at the polls…the list goes on. While there could be an argument for letting the numbers speak for themselves, unfettered by nitpicking academic baggage, this is undermined when what they actually say becomes deeply misleading without the necessary context.

Anyway. If you have even a passing interest in elections in Afghanistan, TAF’s study definitely makes for important and timely reading. Just make sure to keep in mind, as you leaf through all of those pleasing percentages, of the seething, multi-faceted mess that lies beneath.

The author was a researcher on AREU’s women and elections project; his views are his own and not necessarily representative of those of AREU.

Photo by IMTFI

I have a piece up at the Atlantic, discussing why chickens sometimes factor heavily into national politics.

Chickens are a surprising bellwether for international economic and political issues. Sounding for all the world like some modern-day Khrushchevian Red Plenty economic master plan, the Uzbek government has demanded that not only agriculture do more, but that industry reduce costs and increase production — just like that. More more more for less less less. So why the chicken handouts? …

But Uzbekistan is hardly the only country to react to a changing political climate through chickens. In the early 1990s, a collapsing Gorbachev-era Russia was experiencing food shortages and hunger. President George H.W. Bush came up with a win-win solution: give surplus U.S. chicken meat to Russia. The U.S. has an insatiable appetite for white chicken breast meat, but in the process produces far more dark chicken leg meat than it could possibly consume. President Bush took that excess and sent it to Russia. The Russians devoured it, proclaiming the beauty of such enormous drumsticks, and to this day chicken hindquarters in Russian are often called “Bush’s Legs.”

I continue, discussing the many ways chickens exemplify and, in some ways, help to explain certain political changes. Enjoy.

Jund al-Khilafah (JaK), a Kazakh-led terrorist group based in Pakistan, issued its second statement on the Ansar al-Mujahideen online forum on April 1 claiming affiliation to Mohammed Merah. JaK’s first statement was released on March 22.

On the day after Mohammed Merah was killed in Toulouse on March 22 JaK issued the following the statement (excerpted):

“On Tuesday, March 19, one of the Islamic knights, brother ‘Yousef al-Faransi’ – we ask Allah to accept him – took off in an operation that shook the pillars of the Zionist- Crusade in the entire world and filled the hearts of Allah’s enemies with terror…. We hereby claim responsibility for these blessed operations, and we say that what Israel is committing of crimes against our people on the blessed land of Palestine, and in Gaza specifically, will not pass without punishment. The Mujahideen everywhere intend on avenging every drop of blood that was unjustly and aggressively shed in Palestine, Afghanistan and other Muslim homelands.”

One week later, on April 1, JaK showed deeper knowledge about Merah in a second statement (excerpted):

“And since I got to know the brother closely and sat with him in many occasions, and for a short period I was one of his mentors, I see that it is my duty to defend the honor of the brother…and seek to remove the fiction from the truth of what was going on in his mind, and the motives that pushed him to carry out the operations in France…. From Egypt to Ash-Sham, and from there to Palestine…. where he visited Jerusalem and prayed there, and thereafter to Kurdistan, Iraq, and then to Tajikistan, where he was able to get a visa to Afghanistan, and entered and searched for who would help him join the Taliban…. From Afghanistan he returned to France when he prepared a visa to Pakistan with the excuse of trade and went there. Allah graced him this time, as in Islamabad he met people who took him to the Taliban, who in turn facilitated his arrival in the tribal regions, when he ended up joining our brigade…. Brother, Yusef is not a reckless man as the media in the Western countries wants to view him. He was a serious young man…who was intelligent and mastered the use of a Linux computer and an Apple Mac in his possession and prepped it with many software programs for film production because he was fond of photography and always carried a Panasonic Full HD 14.2 Megapixels camera.

Neither of these statements has gathered much attention in the mainstream media probably because most analysts see JaK’s claims as false, but the claims were good enough for the administrators of Ansar al-Mujahideen online forum to post them. One of the major surprises about JaK claiming an attack in France is that in 2011 all of JaK’s attacks were carried out in Kazakhstan and all of JaK’s statements were directed against the Kazakh government.

Yet, one reason to believe that JaK’s claims are legitimate is its track record. In 2011, the three claims JaK made about three attacks in Atyrau, Taraz, and Boraldai (a village outside of Almaty) were consistent with the facts on the ground and were released within three to four days of the attacks, so they showed some degree of inside information.

For instance, on October 31, 2011 in Atyrau, a terrorist blew himself up next to an apartment building near the Prosecutor-General’s office and another bomb detonated in a garbage can blocks away. A claim of credit by JaK following the attack showed inside knowledge, especially since the statement was released the day after the explosions, which would not have given JaK much time to see the media’s depiction of the event. JaK said:

“We refute that the last attack was carried out as a martyrdom-operation. It seems that the bomb exploded accidently, which led to the martyrdom of its carrier. We ask Allah to accept him among the martyrs.”

A similar claim with a degree of inside knowledge was released three days after Maksat Kariyev went on a several hour noontime rampage in November 2011 in Taraz, Southeastern Kazakhstan killing five security officers, one gun shop guard, and himself in a suicide bombing that he detonated when a police commander approached him. JaK claimed responsibility and said:

“In Taraz, you saw with your own eyes what one soldier did to you, and God willing you will see horrors by the hands of men who don’t fear death and give their souls easily to support the religion of Islam and defend the honor of the Muslims.”

In Boraldai Village outside of Alamaty, five JaK fighters were killed on December 3, 2011 when Kazakhstan security forces surrounded them inside their safehouse. Four days later Jak came out with a claim that said:

“We are ready to be killed in the thousands in order to support [Islam]… losing our lives is a cheap price that we pay for this cause… God give glory to the fighters who were killed by the apostate forces of the Nazarbayev regime at a base where the five lions of the al-Zahir Baybars Battalion of Jund al Khilafa were gathered.”

Sure, JaK may be bluffing about Mohammed Merah. But what may have happened is that Merah passed through a JaK training camp in Pakistan’s tribal areas with the approval or guidance of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. This is not such a far stretch considering that the IMU, JaK, TIP, and other Central Asian groups all have camps supported by the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. To Merah, JaK could have been a typical al-Qaeda outfit, but to JaK Merah could have been perceived as one of theirs— hence the claims.

Going after President Karzai is something I’ve so far (more or less) avoided, but recently he stated “Sometimes I hear that some businessmen are fleeing and moving their businesses to outside Afghanistan… Curses be upon such businessmen that made tons of money here and now that the Americans are leaving they flee. They can leave right now. We don’t need them” (NYT).

Oh yeah? Never mind that Karzai’s government has done little to nothing to counter corruption within itself, fostering a corruption-perception rating of 180 out of 182 nations (take that, Mogadishu!), or that the banking system is so horribly inept  that locals prefer the unregulated hawala system and accounts in the Gulf. Never mind that Karzai’s own family is hedging its bets (Guardian/Kabul Press). Never mind that the government needs business and the tax revenue it generates (however little reaches the government coffers) in order to supplement a drastic reduction in aid, because the government can’t (and won’t be able to for a very long time) support itself (h/t NYT). President Karzai wants Afghans and the world to know that fleeing a faltering government and financial sector is cowardly. He doesn’t  assuage the business community, nor put forward security and good governance plans that would ease their minds, but curses them.

There are a million things I could write about how that’s funny coming from a man who spent some time in exile himself, who keeps part of his family safely in the West, who heads a government staffed by the most dual-citizens this side of… actually, probably anywhere. Or why arguably more cash per GDP dollar leaves Afghanistan (often in government hands) than anywhere else. But what chafes is that for all the shady businessmen who may very well be trying to take the money and run, there are many, many more Afghans who simply want a better life for themselves and their families, and know that in no small part thanks to Karzai, Afghanistan faces a very bleak time ahead. Doing business in Afghanistan has never been easy; private security has now been effectively banned, and the government alternative is more expensive and of questionable quality. Even the poorest Afghans often pay five to tens times the nationally regulated fee in order to obtain a national ID, without which registering for school, receiving benefits, registering legal cases, or travelling is virtually impossible. To mock those who are leaving for something better is callous, even for him.

I suspect things in Kabul will still function over the next year or two as they have done for the last year or two;  the end of  2014, however, looks set to go down like the New Year’s Eve scene from the Godfather II. No one I’ve spoken with, Afghan or foreign, expects Karzai to stay past then. It’s possible he may survive, in Afghanistan, past 2014. But not likely. Therefore, perhaps he should ease up on the curses (or save them for his “misguided brothers“), and address the underlying issues.

The massacre on Sunday of 16 innocent Afghans — 9 of them children — is appalling. It is impossible to imagine, even as we see images floating over the TV and newspapers. But what does it mean? I tried to answer this a bit on Sunday and over the last two days. On Aljazeera English, there was a definite sense of frustration about “yet another” civilian casualty incident in Afghanistan. While this was rare, I tried to say, the war has other issues to deal with that are probably more important.

For the BBC Newshour (minute 6), we discussed what sort of legal action would be available for this psychopath. Sadly, there aren’t many options, since the U.S. will not allow any American working for the government to be tried in Afghanistan (Jack Idema only claimed to be working for the government — he wasn’t when he ran that horrid torture prison in Afghanistan). For CNN, I tried to explain why this horrible act is not actually going to change the war:

So where does the war go from here? A huge challenge facing President Obama is that the U.S. is fighting one war while the insurgency is fighting a very different one.

The U.S. war is obsessed with the traditional metrics of warfare: holding territory, killing or capturing bad guys, exacting details of building roads, schools, and hospitals. The insurgency, on the other hand, is obsessed with influence, undermining confidence in the government, and creating the perception that the U.S. is at war with Islam.

Put simply, the U.S. never put in place the strategic and political framework to make much headway in Afghanistan. Despite the renewed push for negotiations with the Taliban, there is no political strategy for the country. There is no end state for the war, either — right now, the plan is to drawdown to about 20,000 troops or so — similar to troop levels in 2008 — and stay that way for the indefinite future. That’s not a strategy, and it’s not a plan.

It was already directionless and pointless, in other words. This massacre doesn’t change any of the ground truths of what’s happening. But still, there’s a big groundswell of support for accelerating the withdrawal — especially on the Right. For Salon, I tried to explain why that, too, is a terrible idea:

But a more rapid withdrawal would be the worst possible outcome for Afghanistan right now. The desire to cut losses is understandable, even justified, but it would plunge Afghanistan into madness and anarchy.

That’s because there remains no political process at work in Afghanistan than can address the fundamental conflict driving the war: a political contest between the current, corrupt government and the insurgency that rejects that government. The current line about so-called reconciliation – the negotiations process, which demands the Taliban accept the very Afghan constitution they’re fighting to upend – doesn’t account for any of Afghanistan’s politics. It is merely a call to surrender.

President Obama missed a critical opportunity in 2009 to reorient the war away from a military-led battle with some political trappings, to a political strategy with a military component. It’s not too late to make that shift in perspective and outlook – not yet, at least. While Sunday’s mass murder is shocking, it does provide some space in Washington for a pivot point to reorient the war where it needs to be: on the politics of Afghanistan, and not on the insurgency of Afghanistan.

Sadly, I just don’t see any reason to think that such a change in thinking is around the corner. President Obama is determined to drawdown to that infinite training mission and ride out the rest of his term. None of the problems of the war are being addressed, and we’re going to leave a horrible mess when we finally give up and come home.

It’s utterly depressing. All of it.

On February 28, a 40-year old Chinese female was shot dead in Peshawar, Pakistan along with her male interpreter. According to various news sources, she was a “tourist,” which is surprising considering that the Chinese are famous for group tours and that even the boldest of female travelers is unlikely to engage in tourism in Pakistan’s most Talibanized city. Nonetheless, Pakistan’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Operations, Tahir Ayub, confirmed that she entered Pakistan on a tourist visa and that she was taking pictures in the bazaar when she was killed.  She was a student of Beijing University, so her bold travel plans may have been related to her studies.

The murder of this lady and her interpreter is unique because the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was in retaliation for “atrocities” by Chinese security forces in Xinjiang. While this not the first time Chinese nationals have been murdered in Pakistan, this is the first time the Taliban has claimed responsibility for murdering a Chinese national.

This murder in Peshawar occurred within 24 hours after a group of around ten Uyghurs armed with knives and axes attacked a market in Yecheng County in Xinjiang, near Kashgar, killing as many as 20 people. The Chinese security forces responded by arresting more than 80 Uyghurs. There is no proof that the Taliban actually carried out the murder in Peshawar or that the murder was related to the events in Yecheng, but it is possible given the claim of responsibility and the timing.

Why might the Taliban have an interest in killing this woman and claiming credit for it, regardless of the possible relationship to the Yecheng incident? One possibility is that members of the Pakistani Taliban have been influenced by Uyghur militants from Xinjiang who are based in the tribal regions on Pakistan. A jihadi group claiming to be called the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has released more than a dozen videos of Uyghurs in the tribal regions of Pakistan engaging in military training with other Central Asian militants. One video featured Chinese Uyghur Memtieli Tiliwaldi, who was later killed by Chinese security forces in Kashgar after he participated in attacks on Chinese civilians in Kashgar on July 30 and 31, 2011.

A set videos called “Tourism of the Believers” has featured a preacher speaking in Uyghur to approximately 30 listeners about jihad and other Islamic issues. It can be assumed that the videos were shot in Pakistan because of the mountainous terrain in the background and the listeners’ traditional Islamic clothing which is commonly worn by men in Pakistan. It can also be assumed that the listeners actually understand the preacher and are not just props for the video since they respond in unison to the speaker’s cues. These videos give good cause to believe that there are at least a few dozen Uyghur militants in Pakistan.

Although Xinjiang and China are not a top priority for the Taliban on par with the U.S. and NATO, some Taliban and Central Asian militants may have been influenced by their Uyghur brethren in Pakistan and taken up the TIP’s cause. This unfortunate lady may have been the victim of a revenge act by such members of the Taliban. Since the attackers have not been caught, they may even have been Uyghurs or Central Asians in Peshawar themselves.

Another motive for the Taliban in killing Chinese nationals in Pakistan is related to China’s developing infrastructure, such as roads, tunnels and bridges in Pakistan which facilitate trade and commerce between the two countries. The Taliban may feel threatened by China as a positive development actor in the country, which is helping to spur Pakistan’s economic development. It serves no benefit to the Taliban if people have more jobs and trade opportunities, especially with an “infidel” country like China. If anything, a better economic condition as a result of trade with China could deter people from joining the Taliban.

By killing Chinese nationals the Taliban may hope to deter Chinese nationals from working in Pakistan and therefore stunt Chinese influence in Pakistan and add friction to the China-Pakistan relationship. The Taliban may also be trying to provoke a response from China through an aggressive reaction or rhetoric to portray China as an enemy since the U.S. is soon leaving Afghanistan and terrorist groups always benefit from having new enemies to justify their existence.

China and Pakistan have been quick to affirm their mutual interest in finding the murderers and respecting each others’ sovereignty, but the overarching issue is whether this incident will become part a larger trend of attacks against Chinese nationals in Pakistan. Thousands of Chinese nationals are working to develop Pakistan’s infrastructure and their projects could get sidelined if the Taliban and other allied extremists succeed in carrying out more of these types of attacks.

Tom Ricks’s award-winning blog has posted a curious broadside against me over my misidentifying the charity Paula Broadwell is contributing some of her book royalties to. The author, a Major currently teaching at West Point who founded the charity she does contribute to, spends about a thousand words calling me shameless while expressing outrage I donated $100 to the wrong wounded veterans charity in my post criticizing Paula Broadwell’s ever-changing version of events at Tarok Kolache and oh yeah I don’t know what leadership is or something.

Needless to say, he didn’t even get the name of this blog correct, referring to us as Registan.com. Among other issues were his focus on a frankly trivial tangent to a post detailing how poorly Broadwell presented her hagiography of General Petraeus. Ricks was kind enough to let me post a response, which I’m detailing below but still: can Broadwell’s defenders even do a basic diligence on her stories? Because in the few I’ve poked into, they just don’t add up. It makes me wonder what else in her narrative needs independent confirmation.

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I appreciate MAJ Erwin’s service to our country. But I would also appreciate his portraying my comments accurately. I never claimed to “review” Paula’s book (and in fact say very specifically that I did not). While he can proclaim me shameless, I find a certain shamelessness in ignoring 1500 words about Paula Broadwell’s many problems with telling the truth, presenting that truth accurately and consistently over time, or portraying her critics fairly.

Rather than focusing on a throwaway line at the end of a long analysis of a small anecdote in Paula’s book, MAJ Erwin chose instead to take exception at my donating money to the Wounded Warriors Project with the wrong rhetoric attached to it. That’s certainly his right, and he has every right to assume my motives to feel outrage.

But the decision to focus on such a small point — literally my decision to donate to an organization supporting wounded veterans so I wouldn’t deny them a small royalty check by not buying Paula’s book — while ignoring the much bigger points about Paula’s issues with telling the truth is worrisome. Either Paula told a false version of what happened at Tarok Kolache on this blog last year, or she is telling a false version of what happened in her book. The two do not match, and it would serve EVERYONE interested in character and leadership, like Major Erwin, to contemplate that as well.

The real issue here isn’t whether I donated to the Wounded Warrior Project with the right motives, but whether Paula Broadwell is telling an incomplete version of the truth to tell the story she wanted for her hagiography of General Petraeus. No matter what people like Major Erwin try to deflect attention from that point, it doesn’t change the real issue here.

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Anyway so that’s all I say about that particular topic. I am heartened to see the stories Majors teaching at West Point hold a blog to a higher level of factual accuracy than an edited book. I’m also happy to see a focus on trivial issues rather than the substantive factual ones raised in Broadwell’s book. I’m certain that attitude is a healthy one to cultivate in future Army leaders.

IMAGE: a vegetable stand in Kapisa province, taken by Joshua Foust

Just about a year ago, I noted a disturbing trend in reporting on Afghanistan: every single year was a critical turning point in the war, going back to 2002. 2011, we were told, was the turning point where things would either get better or get worse.

Anyway, now that it’s 2012 we have a fresh round of really critical turning points in the war. In December, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta declared that the U.S. was at a real turning point in the war in Afghanistan:

“I really think that for all the sacrifices that you’re doing, the reality is that it is paying off and that we’re moving in the right direction,” Panetta said. “We’re winning this very tough conflict here in Afghanistan.”

Panetta was less than 34 miles from the Pakistan border when he told U.S. troops they have reached a turning point in the war. He also demanded that Islamabad must do more to secure its side of the border.

And the last week or so of violent riots sparked off by the accidental cremation of several pre-defaced Korans out of the Bagram detention has inspired a new round of turning points:

Days of violent protests have seen Afghan security forces turn their weapons on US soldiers, rampaging demonstrators attack Western targets and NATO pull all its advisers out of government ministries. “It has never been as bad as this and it could be a turning point” in the West’s 10-year mission in the war-torn country, said Martine van Bijlert of the Afghanistan Analysts’ Network.

Anyway, we’re still turning.

Many readers will recall a writer named Paula Broadwell. Broadwell was responsible for a shocking act of propaganda about the razing of the village of Tarok Kolache, in which she wrote on Tom Ricks’s blog of a U.S. Army unit bombing a village to the ground then mocked upset villagers for insufficiently appreciating the Army’s offer to rebuild it afterward. She quickly walked back her writing on the incident, and the Army battalion commander responsible got in his own jabs as well.

Needless to say, the incident was horrible for a number of reasons, including how many of Broadwell’s arguments about the village later proved to be absolutely false or misleading. Broadwell wrote this propaganda while researching her book-length hagiography of General David Petraeus, so perhaps it’s unsurprising that she mentions this incident in an effort to paint him in the most favorable light possible.

Paula mentions Tarok Kolache in a long narrative about efforts to “clear” the South of Afghanistan. Aside from the very unsettling fact that her book’s narrative of the campaign differs sharply from her posts about it at Tom Ricks’ blog (in the book I couldn’t find any references to “Mohammad,” the Afghan villager Broadwell accused of displaying “a fit of theatrics” when he was angry that his village was destroyed), Broadwell mischaracterizes my own objections to and analysis of this incident—and even more bizarrely, despite being in occasional email contact with me in the months since (we’re on the same listserv and have corresponded), Paula presented followup comments from LTC Michael Flynn but never sought my comment on the matter.

To wit, on page 162 Broadwell mentions my criticism of the razing:

The Afghan report claiming $100 million in property damage also set off a brief eruption in the blogosphere. Joshua Foust, a fellow at the American Security Project and a PBS columnist who previously worked in the intelligence community, revisited Flynn’s decision in October to level Tarok Kolache in a post called “The Unforgivable Horror of Village Razing.” He cited the inaccurate Daily Mail story quoting Flynn telling villagers in Khosrow Sofla that if they didn’t tell him where IEDs had been buried, he would wipe the village off the face of the earth. He argued that bombing villages in in Kandahar Province as a means of ridding them of IEDs and homemade explosives violated Article 33 of the Geneva Convention. Foust also questioned whether Flynn was circumventing oversight by the Afghan Ministry of the Interior by independently choosing members of the Afghan Local Police detachment in Charqolba Olya. He wondered whether Flynn and other U.S. commanders should have involved Afghan colonel Abdul Raziq in the clearing of Khosrow Sofla and other villages in early October.

There’s a bit more there but I’m limiting this to her portrayal of what I said. For starters, I never once argued that Flynn violated Article 33 of the Geneva Convention — I wondered at what point a policy of razing villages would violate Article 33. It is an important semantic distinction, as Broadwell’s version claims that I accused Flynn of committing a war crime. I never did such a thing.

Moving on, Broadwell declines, for reasons I don’t understand, to note that I originally wrote that first post not because of a Daily Mail article but because of what Broadwell herself had written. It was Broadwell’s boosterism of the razing policies, and not the Daily Mail’s reporting, which had first sparked my interest and then my ire. Considering the conflagration that followed, in which she participated, both on Ricks’ blog and on her own Facebook page, Broadwell cannot reasonably claim to be ignorant of what, exactly, I was responding to (especially when we consider that most of what she recounts in that paragraph is not actually in the Daily Mail story).

Further, the debate over Tarok Kolache became a series of competing posts both here and at Tom Ricks’ blog, and when actual reporters covered the story they were neither as complimentary as Broadwell nor as dismissive of local Afghans’ concerns.

Broadwell cannot claim to be ignorant of followup posts I wrote about Tarok Kolache, since in the original post there is no mention, not even in the comments, of the Afghan Local Police. That came in a succeeding post, where—once again—my concerns about the policy to build up the ALP come not from that single Daily Mail story, as Broadwell contends, but from Broadwell’s own writing. She is, once again, misconstruing the nature of the disagreement, and neglecting to mention her own role in pushing a version of events her book implicitly admits was just not accurate (at least judging by how much her version of events has evolved in the last year).

Broadwell is also leaving out huge pieces of analysis of how bad an idea this village razing was (you can see those summarized here), but I want to end this with one very important point: no matter what Broadwell writes about the necessity of dropping twenty-five tons of explosives on a collection of mud huts, no matter how often she quotes LTC Flynn denying he ever threatened villagers with the destruction of their homes if they didn’t try to remove IEDs, there are multiple examples from multiple media outlets of similar circumstances that dispute Broadwell’s account.

For example, Carlotta Gall reported on Khosrow Sofla:

Some of the damage has been extensive, such as in the village of Taroko Kalacha, in Arghandab district, which was so heavily mined by the Taliban that American forces resorted to aerial bombardment and leveled the whole village of 36 homes. The guidelines reissued by the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, General David H. Petraeus, permitted such a step, one NATO official said.

The neighboring village of Khosrow fared better. About 10 compounds and orchards were damaged, but after villagers saw the destruction of Taroko Kalacha, they hired a former mujahedeen fighter to defuse the Taliban mines and so saved their houses from destruction, said one of the village elders, Hajji Abdul Qayum.

So there’s a village seeing the devastation of a nearby town, choosing to hire someone to clear it without bombing it smithereens. In nearby Helmand, too, the British Marines showed that such devastation was just not necessary:

Ambitious plans were rapidly drawn up to clear the village of IEDs and then secure it until local residents had returned to their homes. An exhaustive process of consultation determined that dozens of families, scattered across central Helmand, were prepared to return home to Char Coucha if the bombs were cleared.

Despite high demand for counter-IED specialists across Helmand, a clearance force of 80 was deployed to Char Coucha to undertake the risky first stage of the operation – a painstaking fingertip search of an entire village and all its complex terrain, including partially-destroyed compounds with overgrown vegetation up to 6ft high.

There is ample evidence, in other words, both that Flynn did in fact issue some sort of ultimatum to the villagers of the Arghandab, and that in other areas similarly booby-trapped villages were cleared without dropping 25 tons of explosives on them. This is important as one thinks about why Broadwell would twist the reality of Tarok Kolache into such an unrecognizable mess. Knowing, for example, that multiple Afghans told reporters that Flynn had threatened their villages with destruction is difficult to square with Broadwell’s insistences that Flynn did no such thing, unless we assume the motive that she is deliberately whitewashing the reality of the war to make the subject of her book, David Petraeus (and by extension his subordinates who carried out his orders), look better than he deserves. That an ISAF Major General went so far as to tell the AfPak Channel that this was part of a deliberate policy to “allows the district governor to connect with the population by leading the process of compensating the property owner for the rebuilding costs” highlights further just how dishonestly Broadwell is portraying events.

So here’s a bigger question: when the one tiny bit of Broadwell’s story that I’m aware of is riddled with such half-truths, spin, and outright deception about what really happened, how can I possibly trust her and her co-author to tell the rest of David Petraeus’ career (and his vaunted leadership skills) honestly? She has demonstrated a decided lack of honesty in portraying what can only be called a minor sidenote in the war; on what basis can any of us trust that the bigger arguments she makes are even mostly honest?

When I contacted Broadwell, her response was cheery and non-committal. “I thought we portrayed all sides but will certainly go back and look! I don’t think anything was portrayed dishonestly at all and I am very sorry if it came across that way to you. I strive very hard to present all sides. What was written is from the blogs and can be verified.”

Indeed it can.

And no, I did not buy her book to research this. I looked through it at a Barnes & Noble, taking pictures of the relevant pages on my cellphone. I find her marketing scheme of donating some of her proceeds to the Wounded Warrior Project completely classless. Since I didn’t want to punish the WWP by not buying her book, I instead donated $100 to the project as an apology. And that’s way more than they would have gotten with a single extra book sale anyway.

IMAGE: Paula recently appeared on the Daily Show With John Stewart to promote her book. She challenged him to a pushup contest to donate money to Wounded Warriors.