The United States, Afghan, Qatari, and Pakistani governments have all voiced their support for the opening of a Taliban office in Doha in order to promote peace negotiations. Some consider transforming the Taliban from an armed insurgency into a legitimate political group to be the critical first step in the Afghan peace process. However, to date, reconciliation efforts have stalled and focus more on rhetoric rather than substance.
There is no concrete evidence that Taliban leadership is either worn down or desperate to reach a peace agreement. Attempting to secure his legacy as a peacemaker, Afghan President Hamid Karzai wants to reach an agreement before the end of his term in April 2014. Because the Taliban have also cooperated somewhat with this principle of reconciliation, it is not immediately clear why the current approach has achieved nothing.
Viet-Nam Viet-Cong Redux
The answer is that the Doha peace process has been riddled with unrealistic expectations, and remains hopelessly inconsistent. Such reconciliation efforts without strategy and clear objectives reflect a hook without bait – while encouraging, these talks are doomed to fail without significant reform. Only with realistic expectations, a coherent strategy, national solidarity, and lots of patience, will reconciliation stand a chance of materializing.
Where We've Been Thus Far
The reconciliation offer requires three specific things from the Taliban: ending violence, breaking ties with al-Qaeda, and accepting the Afghan Constitution. The fourth, less advertised condition is the acceptance of a residual ISAF element in Afghanistan post-2014. At a recent summit in London, British, Afghan and Pakistani leaders set a six-month timeline to reach a peace settlement.
But substantive results are unlikely to emerge until after the 2014 Afghan Presidential elections. This is the single most important date in the reconciliation process and will set the tone for future debate. A six-month deadline to reach an agreement is not only unrealistic, but also damaging to the credibility of the process.
Maintaining a large military presence in Afghanistan is not in the strategic interests of either the U.S. or the Afghan government. It does not help the United States accomplish its long-term goal of countering terrorism from the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, nor its short-term goal of helping Afghanistan achieve stability and self-reliance in fighting insurgency. It is also economically unsustainable. However, retaining a smaller, lighter, residual presence in Afghanistan is critical to U.S. strategy and vital to core U.S. interests.
Additionally, U.S. strategy in Afghanistan must be based on a vision that goes out decades: Considering only short-term goals amounts to strategic myopia, unworthy of the sacrifices made by almost 2,200 U.S. service members in Afghanistan alone.
A Case for Lighter, Smarter, Long-term Residual Presence
With Osama Bin Laden dead and al-Qaeda's capabilities diminished in the Af-Pak region, the immediate threat of attacks on the U.S. from the region has greatly diminished. But the ingredients that could help Al Qaeda regenerate in the next decade remain, and thus the mission endures.
In fact, the “surge” of U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2009 had little to do with bin Laden; rather, it was an attempt to rescue the failing mission of stabilizing Afghanistan. Bin Laden was hunted and killed not by the surge, but by a small, specialized group, the likes of which I argue should remain in Afghanistan to monitor and guard against the long-term threat of terrorist cells.
More importantly, a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy must include the training of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) to counter domestic threats. But this will take significantly longer than estimates suggest. As such, the U.S. must alter its stated strategy in Afghanistan to consider the training and equipping of the ANSF a key element of its plan to counter threats, and support Afghanistan in its domestic fight against terrorists that, left unchecked, could re-emerge. The numbers of trainers must be kept low and should not be outsourced to contractors. Currently, the only elements specifically designed to counter insurgencies are the U.S. Special Operations Forces (SOF). Considering the nuanced task, the training force should be predominantly SOF.
President Obama's Syria nightmare is becoming increasingly bizarre. The man who claimed he could distinguish dumb from smart wars is marching headlong into the dumbest one yet, with allies jumping ship left and right. Consider, please, the following:
(1) NBC just released a poll saying a majority of the American people are opposed to another war in Syria, and 80% are opposed to a war without Congressional authorization.
(2) But Congress is out of session. Nevertheless Mr. Obama is under pressure to attack before Congress returns from its Labor Day vacation. Moreover, despite the fact that at least 188 members of Congress have called for a debate and vote on the war question; thus far, Mr. Obama has not indicated he will call Congress into an emergency session. Yet six years ago, Senator (candidate) Obama told interviewer Charlie Savage on December 20, 2007: “The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”
(3) The nearest counterpart to our Congress, the British Parliament, just voted to pull the plug on Prime Minister David Cameron's warmongering — and in so doing, the unwritten British Constitution has made a mockery of the written, legalistic US Constitution. Bottom line: the checks and balances in the UK are working to ensure our closest ally will not partake in our adventure, while those in the United States are being bypassed.
(4) The UN and the Security Council also pulled the plug on approving and supporting a US strike; ditto for the Arab League and Jordan, and our coup-leading friends in Egypt.
(5) The secretary general of NATO, Anders Rasmussen, said NATO will not be part of a strike on Syria.
So who is left in Obama's increasingly isolated coalition of the willing: France and Israel — two countries with a lot of sordid baggage loading down the Syria Question. Some readers may never have heard of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, but your can bet most Syrians have.
A reasonable person might ask how an obviously intelligent Mr. Obama could land himself in such a mess?
“Deep within every one of us lies a natural understanding of good and evil. That is why one man can tell the truth convincingly…but it takes the entire apparatus of the state to peddle a lie, and propagate that lie to new generations.”…Gandhi
While the world watches to see when and how the ‘punishment attack’ will be launched on Syria, I read reports all day trying to see if anyone would lay out what really has been going on. They did not.
The US and its allies, to their eternal shame, have already used WMD on the Syrian people, but initially in a non traditional form. They changed their game plan for future regime changes to avoid using their own troops and as little cash as possible. How?
They went rogue. They went over to terrorism. They went over to al-Qaeda, that’s how. Using the Gulf State proxies has fooled no one here.
They dusted off Ziggy Brzezinski’sold destabilization plan for starting Muslim holy wars against the Russians in the Caucasus. The strategy was to keep them tied up in the tried and true, ‘death by a thousand cuts’ insurgent wars.
Ziggy has no regrets over the 150,000 dead in the Chechen war. His justification was “Would you have rather seen them marching into Europe?” There was a little problem with that. They never could have marched into Europe as both ‘assured mutual destruction’ and tactical nuclear weapons served as an effective bear trap.
We move on now to how earlier in Afghanistan where Saudi money and CIA logistics cranked up the first major ‘use the locals for cannon fodder’ war in that region. And yes, the Madrasa schools to indoctrinate children to be an endless supply of holy warriors…yes…we and the Saudis did that.
The newly disclosed information includes individual agency budgets along with program area line items, as well as details regarding the size and structure of the intelligence workforce. So one learns, for example, that the proposed budget for covert action in FY2013 was approximately $2.6 billion, while the total for open source intelligence was $387 million.
Some of the information only confirms what was already understood to be true. The budget for the National Security Agency was estimated to be about $10 billion, according to a recent story in CNN Money (“What the NSA Costs Taxpayers” by Jeanne Sahadi, June 7, 2013). The actual NSA budget figure, the Post reported, is $10.8 billion.
And the involuntary disclosure of classified intelligence budget information, while rare, is not unprecedented. In 1994, the House Appropriations Committee inadvertently published budget data for national and military intelligence, the size of the CIA budget, and other details. (“$28 Billion Spying Budget is Made Public by Mistake” by Tim Weiner, New York Times, November 5, 1994)
But the current disclosure of intelligence budget information dwarfs all previous releases and provides unmatched depth and detail of spending over a course of several years, based on original documents. The disclosure is doubly remarkable because the Post chastely refrained from releasing about 90% of the Congressional Budget Justification Book that it obtained. “Sensitive details are so pervasive in the documents that The Post is publishing only summary tables and charts online,” Post reporters Gellman and Miller wrote.
This is not a whistleblower disclosure; it does not reveal any illegality or obvious wrongdoing. On the contrary, the underlying budget document is a formal request to Congress to authorize and appropriate funding for intelligence.
But the disclosure seems likely to be welcomed in many quarters (while scorned in others) both because of a generalized loss of confidence in the integrity of the classification system, and because of a more specific belief that the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy today requires increased public accountability.
Though it has never been embraced as official policy, the notion of public disclosure of individual intelligence agency budgets (above and beyond the release of aggregate totals) has an honorable pedigree.
In 1976, the U.S. Senate Church Committee advocated publication of the total intelligence budget and recommended that “any successor committees study the effects of publishing more detailed information on the budgets of the intelligence agencies.”
In a 1996 hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee, then-Chair Sen. Arlen Specter badgered DCI John Deutch about the need for intelligence budget secrecy.
“I think that you and the Intelligence Community and this committee have got to do a much better job in coming to grips with the hard reasons for this [budget secrecy], if they exist. And if they exist, I'm prepared to help you defend them. But I don't see that they exist. I don't think that they have been articulated or explained,” the late Sen. Specter said then.
Committee Vice Chair Sen. Bob Kerrey added: “I would concur in much of what the Chairman has just said. I do, myself, believe not only the top line, but several of the other lines of the budget, not only could but should, for the purpose of giving taxpayer-citizens confidence that their money is being well spent.”
In 2004, the 9/11 Commission itself recommended disclosure of intelligence agency budgets: “Finally, to combat the secrecy and complexity we have described, the overall amounts of money being appropriated for national intelligence and to its component agencies should no longer be kept secret” (at page 416, emphasis added).
These are clearly minority views. They could have been adopted at any time — as disclosure of the aggregate total was — but they haven't been. (And even these voices did not call for release of the more detailed budget line items that are now public.) And yet they are not totally outlandish either.
The initial response of the executive branch to the Washington Post story will be to hunker down, to decline explicit comment, and to prohibit government employees from viewing classified budget documents that are in the public domain. Damage assessments will be performed, and remedial security measures will be imposed. These are understandable reflex responses.
But in a lucid moment, officials should ponder other questions.
How can public confidence in national security secrecy be bolstered? Is it possible to imagine a national security secrecy system that the public would plausibly view not with suspicion but with support, much as the strict secrecy of IRS tax returns is broadly understood and supported? What steps could be taken to reduce national security secrecy to the bare minimum?
Looking further ahead, is it possible to devise an information security policy that is based on “resilience” to the foreseeable disclosure of secrets rather than on the fervently pursued prevention of such disclosure?
Pakistan-Afghanistan: The Chinese news service Xinhua published a report on the outcome of talks between Afghan President Karzai and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Excerpts follow.
“Pakistan said Tuesday that Afghan Taliban insurgents are unwilling to talk to Karzai government and its peace negotiators at least for now.“
“The statement came hours after Afghan President Hamid Karzai concluded a two-day visit to Pakistan that was focused on efforts to encourage Taliban to come to the negotiating table.“
“Karzai's spokesman, Aimal Faizi, said in Islamabad that Karzai had pressed for Islamabad's help to bring Taliban leaders to the negotiating table.“
“Afghan government claims that leaders of Taliban are living in Pakistan and that Islamabad should use influence on them and facilitate direct talks between Taliban and Afghan High Peace Council.“
“Pakistan's Advisor to the Prime Minister on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz said that Taliban are not willing to talk to Afghan government or Afghan High Peace Council.“
“However Pakistan will try its best to persuade them to hold dialogue so as to avert outbreak of civil war in post-conflict Afghanistan, Aziz told state radio.“
Comment: The message behind the message is twofold. First is that the Taliban expect to return to power which explains their disinterest in peace negotiations with Karzai. Second, Pakistani national security interests require stability in post-Karzai Afghanistan. Thus, Pakistan will act to avoid another outbreak of civil war after US and NATO forces leave and the Taliban returns to power. That is the meaning of the last sentence quoted above. Pakistan will not act to help save Karzai.
The simple bluntness of the statements attributed by Sartaj Aziz confirms that senior Pakistani officials are in communication with the Afghan Taliban leaders in Quetta sufficiently to speak for them.
