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U.S. aims to clinch Afghan deal on prisoner transfer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke in a call on Saturday about efforts to quickly resolve one of the most vexing issues in the two countries' relations, the delayed transfer to Afghan control of a key detention center.
The Pentagon said the two men "agreed to use the next week to conduct intensive work with a view to concluding an agreement," spokesman George Little said in a statement.
The transfer of the detention center at Bagram air base is a persistent source of tension, with Karzai's office warning in a statement on Wednesday that "any more delays could harm the bilateral relations."
U.S. commanders want to ensure that dangerous prisoners will not be released back to the battlefield. But Karzai has raised alarms by warning that any "innocent" prisoners being held at the facility will be released.
Little's statement said an agreement on the detention facility would be one that both "fully recognizes Afghan sovereignty and our mutual interests in security of the Afghan people and our respective forces."
During Hagel's visit to Afghanistan last weekend, Karzai accused the United States of colluding with the Taliban and of holding unilateral negotiations with the insurgents - allegations the United States sharply denied and which exposed deep tensions after 11 years of war.
The United States plans to pull out just over half of its 66,000 troops from Afghanistan by early next year and leave a relatively small force after 2014, focusing on training Afghan forces and conducting limited counterterrorism operations.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Local Afghans Protest U.S. Special Forces
March 16, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Several hundred residents of Afghanistan’s volatile Wardak Province are marching on the Afghan parliament building in Kabul to protest the presence of U.S. Special Forces in their area.
Police said between 200 and 500 demonstrators have gathered in the Afghan capital, chanting anti-American slogans and demanding the release of nine local citizens they say were detained by U.S. forces.
"We have gathered here to protest against the [U.S.] Special Forces in Maidan, Wardak, because they enter people's houses and torture innocent people, they have also detained 10 people and it is not clear what will happen to them," one protester told Reuters.
U.S. officials say only four the nine missing men were arrested in joint U.S.-Afghan raids.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month asked all U.S. Special Forces to leave Wardak, accusing them of murders and disappearances.
But he agreed to give U.S. commanders more time there to create a solution for maintaining security in the province, which militants use as a corridor to bring weapons into Kabul.
Based on reporting by dpa, AP, and Reuters
Hamid Karzai's risky rants
Foreign Policy By Omar Samad Friday, March 15, 2013
As Americans try to make sense of the latest salvo of rhetoric coming out of Kabul, Afghans are also perturbed by confusion engulfing their country's prospects at a time when both sides are expected to soberly focus on immediate challenges, maintaining Afghanistan's stability, and making sure that America's longest war is not perceived as a defeat when the mission ends in 2014.
Instead, all sides are witnessing a gradual erosion of bilateral trust that can be traced back at least as far as the controversial 2009 Afghan presidential elections. President Hamid Karzai has alleged that Western powers were trying to undermine his candidacy, while Afghan politicians accused his campaign and each other of fraud.
Evolving perceptions of U.S. and Afghan intentions since then continue to spark both nations' suspicions, raise questions about respective motivations, increase casualty counts on all sides, and test the strategic partnership that is essential to a successful transition process encompassing the security, political and economic sectors.
Such conditions can become untenable and strengthen the agenda pursued by most Taliban and their regional extremist support network.
The latest controversy was sparked a few hours after twin suicide attacks in Kabul and Khost killed scores of civilians last week. During a speech on International Women's Day, President Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of unintended collusion and of holding back-channel talks. Without offering further details, he suggested to the Taliban that their attacks will create a sense of insecurity that could end up prolonging the U.S./NATO engagement, and criticized the United States for holding secret talks with the insurgent group that do not involve him.
In a convoluted way, the Afghan president is trying to convince elements of the "patriotic Taliban" to step up and put a stop to the carnage that is hurting ordinary Afghans. It is also not clear what evidence exists that continued Taliban atrocities are what the U.S. and NATO governments desire in order to have an excuse to prolong their presence in Afghanistan. Karzai has failed to explain how such a scenario aligns with the ongoing talks his government is carrying out with the U.S. and others on the post-2014 presence of troops to fight terrorism and train and support Afghan forces.
In his comments, Karzai also claimed that Americans and other countries are eyeing different elements of Afghanistan's mineral reserves, which he said would be negotiated taking Afghan interests into account.
There may be an element of truth to the claims, but both the Taliban and U.S. officials denied the accusation and offered strikingly opposite commentary. Many Afghan pundits, including opposition political parties, were highly critical of the tirade, describing it as far-fetched and provocative.
A week later, in an interview broadcast in Kabul on Thursday, Karzai offered a more positive assessment of his relations with the United States, and said that his comments were not meant to be critical, but corrective.
Whether Karzai's rant was purposefully timed during the top Pentagon official's visit or not, Chuck Hagel's first visit as Secretary of Defense did not go as planned. He was hoping to resolve two outstanding issues: one regarding the transfer of prisoners to Afghan custody, and the other Karzai's recent demand that Special Operations forces be withdrawn from Wardak Province. Although discussions are ongoing, neither issue was resolved during the conversations that took place hours after Karzai's diatribe.
Some commentators floated the notion that Karzai was getting back at Hagel because of sharp comments that were attributed to the then-Senator in 2003 during a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which President Karzai was grilled by U.S. lawmakers. Heads of state are not usually asked to testify before Congress, and the Afghan ambassador at the time was fired for erroneously scheduling the event, though Karzai's staff had previously approved the president's appearance before the Committee.
The issue that seems to have rattled Karzai the most, however, is linked to his suspicion that the U.S. government is undermining his lead on the peace process by holding secret talks with Taliban representatives.
Karzai is not entirely incorrect when he says that secret contacts are underway between U.S. intermediaries and high-flying Taliban representatives who are now "sipping coffee" with Westerners in the Gulf and Europe. However, he is wrong to assume that these contacts amount to negotiations on the future of the country. The American interlocutors are mostly go-betweens who advocate dialogue and may not have the full blessing of the American government.
The Taliban say they are interested in talking to the Americans about a prisoner exchange, which would also help boost their political credentials through interactions with the international community, whereas Washington is partly using the contacts to convince Taliban leaders to enter into talks with Kabul. With the Taliban adamant so far about not recognizing Karzai as a stakeholder, the U.S. effort should not be seen as counter-productive.
If one is to assume that the "patriotic Afghan Taliban" - as Karzai described them in a speech this week - are actually in touch with him, they are not responding in kind, preferring instead to remain anonymous, since none have dared to advocate a desire to enter into peace talks with Kabul yet. This means that the so-called reconcilable Taliban are either being restrained by their more extremist counterparts, are not in a position to engage right now, are not willing to recognize Kabul, or do not exist as at all.
On the issue of prisoner transfers from U.S. to Afghan custody, Karzai's weekend ultimatum was once again rejected, as U.S. officials expressed misgivings about dangerous individuals who they fear Afghan officials will release. Instead of discussing the merits of the process and arriving at a mutually acceptable solution, the two sides have so far stuck to their respective positions.
With regard to the demand that U.S. Special Forces vacate Wardak province after allegations of civilian mistreatment last month, Karzai's request has yet to take effect. With parts of the province under Taliban control, and Wardak serving as a strategic entry point into Kabul, American officers, local leaders and even Afghan security officials have questioned the validity of the demand. So far, neither side has offered a mutually satisfactory solution that would not jeopardize the security situation and put the capital at risk.
Following the weekend outbursts, Karzai's spokesman lamented that the President is not taken seriously when he demands that his Western allies take practical steps to address all contentious issues, especially his demand for exerting more pressure on Pakistan, seen by Kabul as backing Afghan Taliban efforts.
Regardless of their actual origin, Karzai's pointed accusations nowadays are part venting, part drama and mostly motivated by political calculus. They are undoubtedly also intended to influence the upcoming presidential elections and the legacy Karzai wants to leave behind when he steps down in 2014.
However, his excessive use of the public pulpit - instead of diplomatic and political channels - could reduce the effectiveness of his overtures. This type of in-your-face politics may not win him many converts in Afghanistan, or help realize his political aspirations.
What is less apparent to Karzai and his politically motivated cronies is the public relations impact in Western nations, as well as the strategic communications bonanza that such rhetoric provides to his domestic and regional detractors.
Although Karzai is justified in the eyes of many Afghans when he complains about civilian casualties and chastises the West for waging war in Afghan villages instead of pursuing terrorist in their hideouts in the tribal regions of Pakistan, his choice of venue, rhetoric and timing undermines the real intention.
Provocative claims not only exacerbate public confusion, but they also dampen support for the Afghan mission in troop-contributing nations where questions about further engagement already abound.
Contrary to the delusional belief within Karzai's inner-circle that the West needs Afghanistan more than Afghanistan needs the West, the country cannot afford to alienate those who have contributed to the positive changes that have taken place over the past decade, and who are committed to continue to help beyond 2014.
This is not to say that mistakes were not made over the years, that certain strategic and tactical decisions were not erroneous, or that Western policies have all been thoughtful. There is enough blame to be shared on all sides, but now is not the time to engage in finger pointing or scoring points.
At the same time, Afghan sensitivities that are known to benefit the armed opposition need to be taken into account, as all sides need to engage in more coordination and trust building, and aim for solutions to technical or legal concerns.
However, if Karzai's intention is to engage in political flirtation with America's enemies, either in the hope of becoming the peacemaker or to be remembered as the nationalist who accelerated the Western withdrawal, his plan could backfire and end up damaging his domestic political base. Many Afghans consider the core Taliban (with the exception of some who are not in a position to act) as a pariah radical group supported by hardline regional actors. By alienating his base, there is a risk that Karzai could become a weak lame-duck president earlier than expected.
What Afghan leaders need to be reminded of is that hardcore Taliban and regional detractors are the beneficiaries of fractured domestic politics and incoherent international relations. There are powerful networks in the region (and some within the country) that want to destabilize the country and damage Afghan relations with the international community. Those are detrimental for stability and the transitions Afghanistan and many others are facing over the next two years.
This delicate situation requires better management of frustration and rhetoric on both sides in order to accomplish the goal of meaningful strategic partnership.
Omar Samad is President of Silkroad Consulting. He was Afghan Ambassador to Canada (2004-2009) and France (2009-2011), and Spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2001-2004). He can be reached at osamad@silkroad-consulting.com.
Afghan army commandos hold exercise in Kabul
KABUL, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Afghan National Army ( ANA) commandos were involved in a one-day military exercise in the capital of Kabul on Saturday, as Afghan troops take the lead of nearly 80 percent of combat operations in the war-torn country.
Addressing the exercise, Afghan Defense Minister General Bismillah Khan Muhammadi said the ANA troops are fully capable of protecting the country after the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Officials with the ministry told reporters that the drill was aimed at testing the preparedness of the forces to meet the challenges in various situation.
The high-profile exercise included search-and-rescue and ground operation backed by military helicopters.
The Afghan security force will take over full security responsibilities from NATO-led coalition force by the end of 2014.
Starting this spring, U.S. troops will switch to a support role -- training, advising and assisting Afghan force, several months earlier than the mid-2013 deadline agreed at a NATO summit in Chicago last year.
Currently, there are about 100,000-strong foreign troops in Afghanistan to curb the Taliban-led insurgency entering its 12th year.
US helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, killing 1
By KIMBERLY DOZIER | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan Saturday, killing one member of the U.S.-led coalition and injuring another in what was the second deadly air crash in the country in a week, NATO officials said.
The crashes come as U.S. officials are grappling with tough talk from Afghan President Hamid Karzai whose recent anti-American rhetoric has complicated relations at a time when international troops are withdrawing from the war.
Capt. Luca Carniel, a spokesman for the coalition, said there was no enemy activity in the area when the helicopter went down, and that the cause of the crash was being investigated. Officials did not release the type of helicopter that crashed, or the nationalities of the casualties.
The helicopter went down in Daman district, a few kilometers (miles) east of Kandahar, said Javeed Faisal, the spokesman for Kandahar province.
On Monday, a Black Hawk crashed outside Kandahar, killing five U.S. troops. Two more U.S. troops were killed that day by an insider attack, making Monday the deadliest day for U.S. troops so far this year.
In addition to the casualties, U.S. officials are trying to contend with Karzai's remarks that were so anti-American they prompted top NATO commander Gen. Joseph Dunford to issue a warning to his commanders by confidential email this week to be on watch for violent blowback, in the form of more insurgent and insider attacks.
When the email was leaked, Karzai's office responded by saying his comments "were meant to help reform, not destroy the relationship."
Karzai started the week by accusing the U.S. and the Taliban of colluding on two deadly suicide bombings last weekend in an effort to create instability and give U.S. forces an excuse to stay. On Thursday, Karzai did not back down or retract his earlier statements, instead saying the U.S.-Afghan relationship "is complicated" by "terrorism, transition of the Bagram detention facility, continued civilian casualties (from NATO operations), and lack of respect for the national sovereignty of Afghanistan."
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel spoke on the phone with Karzai on Saturday to discuss Karzai's concerns, including the detention facility, according to Pentagon press secretary George Little.
"They agreed to use the next week to conduct intensive work with a view to concluding an agreement that fully recognizes Afghan sovereignty and our mutual interests in security of the Afghan people and our respective forces," Little said in a statement.
Karzai is pressuring the U.S. to go ahead with the handover of the U.S.-run detention facility next to Bagram Air Field. The transfer was scheduled for last week, but was called off when Karzai objected to terms of the transfer, including allowing the U.S. to keep its veto power over the release of Afghan detainees the U.S. feels are too dangerous to free. Karzai said this week that any further delay could harm bilateral relations.
Another issue dividing the U.S. and the Afghan president is Karzai's demand that U.S. special operations forces leave the province of Wardak, next to Kabul, because of complaints the U.S. or Afghans working with them abused local citizens, arresting several. Karzai had given them a deadline of earlier this week to leave, but agreed to give Dunford more time to craft a solution that maintains security in Wardak, which is used as a gateway by militants to bring bombers and weapons into Kabul.
Several hundred demonstrators angry over the delayed departure chanted "U.S. special operations forces out!" as they marched to the Afghan parliament building in Kabul Saturday.
Kabul's deputy police chief Gen. Mohammad Daud Amin said the demonstration of roughly 500 Afghans had been peaceful.
The demonstrators are seeking the release of nine local citizens who they believe were detained by the U.S. forces. Banners in the Afghan languages of Pashto and Dari as well as English read, "I want my father," and "We want our prisoners back from the government, dead or alive."
"Americans and U.S. special operations forces must leave," said protester Abdul Hadi.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that four men were arrested in the province in joint U.S.-Afghan raids, but had no information on the other five alleged detainees. They have denied the allegations of abuse.
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Follow Kimberly Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KimberlyDozier.
Nato troops in Afghanistan 'in a similar situation to failed Soviet invasion'
Nato troops in Afghanistan find themselves in a similar situation to the failed Soviet invasion and are also waging a campaign which is "unwinnable in military terms", according to a provocative Ministry of Defence analysis.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 15 Mar 2013
Kabul - Both the Nato campaign and the 1979 invasion were initially attempts to impose "ideology foreign to the Afghan people", whose aims were quickly dropped when they ran into difficulty.
Nato, like the Soviets, has been unable to "establish control over the country's borders and the insurgents' safe havens", or "protect the rural population", according to the paper written by retired officers for an internal MOD think tank.
"The [Soviet] 40th Army was unable to decisively defeat the Mujahideen while facing no existential threat itself, a situation that precisely echoes [the Nato coalition's] predicament".
As combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the country will again be left "with a severely damaged and very weak economic base", reliant for years on vast sums of international aid.
The paper, Lessons From the Soviet Transition in Afghanistan, was prepared for the MOD's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), to provoke internal debate and challenge current military thinking.
The MOD last night said it did not represent the government's position, or "any belief within the MOD that the Nato campaign is 'unwinnable'." But its conclusion that there are "an extraordinary number" of parallels with the doomed Russian intervention will make uneasy reading for politicians. The campaign has cost nearly 450 British lives and billions of pounds.
World opinion had judged both "as failed interventions" and both Nato and the Soviets had faced "increasing domestic and financial pressure to abandon the enterprise", the paper said.
The eventual success of the Nato withdrawal from Afghanistan "is likely to be judged on the same criteria as those used objectively to judge the Soviet transition", including "the longevity and effectiveness of the incumbent central government".
A spokesman for the MOD said that "in contrast to the Soviet experience, the international community has committed to long-term support for Afghans as they shape their country over the coming years".
"We are in Afghanistan to protect the UK's national security by helping Afghans to take control of their own. We are not, and never have been, trying to build a perfect Afghanistan – rather one that does not again provide safe haven for international terrorists. We have also always been clear that the situation in Afghanistan will not be solved by military means alone."
A New Deal for Afghanistan?
The Huffington Post (blog) By Wais Ahmad Barmak Minister, Rural Rehabilitation and Development of Afghanistan 15/03/2013
What are the real threats facing the Afghan people as we approach 2014, when international military troops withdraw to their bases or leave the country -- and responsibility for security rests wholly with Afghanistan?
Will Afghan National Security Forces, trained and equipped by the West, defect or melt away? Or will some internal mass uprising reveal a degree of discontent with the efforts, investments and sacrifices of the past decade, sufficient to cast them aside? People are even asking themselves, 'was the whole effort a mistake?' because of the relentless negative portrayal of my country in the media and among commentators.
And yet, all the evidence points in another direction, to another future. One that is rocky, not wholly clear-cut, and subject to disruption from sporadic acts of violence, but not one in which total social, political or military collapse is likely to happen.
In brief, the Taliban cannot win a military battle, nor can they win an electoral one. No one -- apart, perhaps, from a few ideological zealots -- will want to vote for them. Not the million girls in schools. Not young Afghans who want to achieve more than a subsistence standard of living for themselves and their families. Not shopkeepers who want to expand businesses and to develop their nascent entrepreneurial spirit, but are constrained by a lack of basic infrastructure and outmoded trading policies and practices (which the Government has still to address). And not the thousands of village women joining savings groups for the first time, pooling funds to invest in home-based businesses.
What the insurgents can do is continue to kill thousands of Afghans every year who are simply going about their daily lives, attending the mosque, travelling to market or to a wedding.
Though insurgents can disrupt, they cannot wholly destroy the gains of the past decade. If few are driven by ideology; many more are driven by unemployment. And here presents a key challenge: how and where to create the 400-600,000 jobs needed each year in a country where two-thirds of the population is aged 25 or younger. In my view, it is unemployment rather than insurgency that poses the greatest threat to achieving a stable future for Afghanistan.
Last year's major international conferences in Chicago and Tokyo helped us all move forward. Chicago set a baseline of funding for Afghan National Security Forces and the Government's recurrent costs. Long-term strategic partnerships cemented with countries such as the US demonstrate to the Afghan people the global community's commitment to working with Afghanistan in the years ahead, to ensure my country never again becomes a breeding ground or safe haven for terrorists, a threat not just to the region, but the entire world.
These commitments give Afghans hope in the future, assurance that the world will not abandon Afghanistan again. And they are being agreed in the recognition that, given the ever-changing, multi-faceted nature of international terrorism, the consequences of abandonment could be even more severe than those of the past.
Those conferences set the scene for a more equal partnership between the Afghan government and the international community, with clear commitments on both sides. Donor assistance must be more closely aligned to our development priorities, more support must be channelled through formal government systems, where we must have the controls in place to ensure funds are spent as intended.
Those long-term commitments make development aid more predictable, building on the past decade's investment in Afghanistan's industries, health, education, and overall economy to realize the nearly two-dozen National Priority Programmes endorsed by donors as focal areas for development.
One major effect will be to create jobs. As a government minister responsible for achieving growth and redevelopment in rural Afghanistan, the challenge posed by high levels of under- or unemployment is significant. Three-quarters of Afghans live in rural areas, mostly engaged in farming, yet agriculture only contributes one-third of the country's GDP. One way of increasing this contribution will be through establishing value chains enabling farmers to add value to the food they grow through processing and canning, through cold storage for off-season sales, and building national and regional distribution networks.
Strengthening the non-farm rural economy is a priority if we are to address the challenge of opium poppy cultivation. Working together with ministry colleagues in Agriculture, Counter-Narcotics and Energy and Water, we have developed programmes taking a multi-pronged approach to boosting the rural economy, promoting licit and lasting jobs.
But real investment in strategic infrastructure is also essential: without access to electricity or water for irrigation and household use, my government's ability to strengthen the rural economy, to reduce population drift to towns and cities, and to provide sustainable jobs for our young men and women, will always be seriously compromised. Perhaps what my country needs most is a New Deal for Afghanistan. If so, it is the American Government and people, together with Afghanistan's international friends and partners, who can offer the greatest experience, knowledge and insight on which to draw and to work with us to achieve a stable, secure and prosperous Afghanistan.
The REAL reason the U.S. failed in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy (blog) By Stephen M. Walt Friday, March 15, 2013
Why did the U.S. fail in Afghanistan? (I know we are pretending to have succeeded, but that's just camouflage to disguise what is in fact an embarrassing if predictable defeat). The reasons for our failure are now being debated by people like Vali Nasr and Sarah Chayes, who have offered contrasting insider accounts of what went wrong.
Both Nasr and Chayes make useful points about the dysfunction that undermined the AfPak effort, and I'm not going to try to adjudicate between them. Rather, I think both of them miss the more fundamental contradiction that bedeviled the entire U.S./NATO effort, especially after the diversion to Iraq allowed the Taliban to re-emerge. The key problem was essentially structural: US. objectives in Afghanistan could not be achieved without a much larger commitment of resources, but the stakes there simply weren't worth that level of commitment. In other words, winning wasn't worth the effort it would have taken, and the real failure was not to recognize that fact much earlier and to draw the appropriate policy conclusions.
First, achieving a meaningful victory in Afghanistan -- defined as defeating the Taliban and creating an effective, Western-style government in Kabul -- would have required sending far more troops (i.e., even more than the Army requested during the "surge"). Troop levels in Afghanistan never approached the ratio of troops/population observed in more successful instances of nation-building, and that deficiency was compounded by Afghanistan's ethnic divisions, mountainous terrain, geographic isolation, poor infrastructure, and porous borders.
Second, victory was elusive because Pakistan continued to support the Taliban, and its territory provided them with effective sanctuaries. When pressed, they could always slip across the border and live to fight another day. But Washington was never willing to go the mattresses and force Pakistan to halt its support, and it is not even clear that we could have done that without going to war with Pakistan itself. Washington backed off for very good reasons: We wanted tacit Pakistani cooperation in our not-so-secret drone and special forces campaign against al Qaeda, and we also worried about regime stability given Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, these factors made victory even harder to achieve.
Third, we couldn't get Karzai to reform because he was the only game in town, and he knew it. Unless the U.S. and NATO were willing to take over the whole country and try to govern it ourselves -- a task that would have made occupying Iraq seem easy -- we were forced to work with him despite his many flaws. Successful counterinsurgencies require effective and legitimate local partners, however, and we never had one.
In short, the U.S. was destined to lose because it didn't go all-out to win, and it shouldn't have. Indeed, an all-out effort would have been a huge mistake, because the stakes were in fact rather modest. Once the Taliban had been ousted and al Qaeda had been scattered, America's main interest was continuing to degrade al Qaeda (as we have done). That mission was distinct from the attempt to nation-build in Afghanistan, and in the end Afghanistan's importance did not justify a substantially larger effort.
By the way, I am not suggesting that individual commanders and soldiers did not make enormous personal sacrifices or try hard to win, or that the civilians assigned to the Afghan campaign did not do their best in difficult conditions. My point is that if this war had been a real strategic priority, we would have fought it very differently. We would not have rotated commanders, soldiers, and civilian personnel in and out of the theatre as often as we did, in effect destroying institutional memory on an annual basis and forcing everyone to learn on the job. In a war where vital interests were at stake, we certainly wouldn't have let some of our NATO partners exempt the troops they sent from combat. And if the war had been seen aa a major priority, both parties would have been willing to raise taxes to pay for it.
Thus, the real failure in Afghanistan was much broader than the internal squabbles that Nasr and Chayes have addressed. The entire national security establishment failed to recognize or acknowledge the fundamental mismatch between 1) U.S. interests (which were limited), 2) our stated goals (which were quite ambitious), and 3) the vast resources and patience it would have required to achieve those goals. Winning would have required us to spend much more than winning was worth, and to undertake exceedingly risky and uncertain actions towards countries like Pakistan. U.S. leaders wisely chose not to do these things, but they failed to realize what this meant for the war effort itself.
Given this mismatch between interests, goals, and resources, it was stupid to keep trying to win at a level of effort that was never going to succeed. Yet no one on the inside seems to have pointed this out, or if they did, their advice was not heeded. And that is the real reason why the war limped on for so long and to such an unsatisfying end.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Afghan President Hamid Karzai spoke in a call on Saturday about efforts to quickly resolve one of the most vexing issues in the two countries' relations, the delayed transfer to Afghan control of a key detention center.
The Pentagon said the two men "agreed to use the next week to conduct intensive work with a view to concluding an agreement," spokesman George Little said in a statement.
The transfer of the detention center at Bagram air base is a persistent source of tension, with Karzai's office warning in a statement on Wednesday that "any more delays could harm the bilateral relations."
U.S. commanders want to ensure that dangerous prisoners will not be released back to the battlefield. But Karzai has raised alarms by warning that any "innocent" prisoners being held at the facility will be released.
Little's statement said an agreement on the detention facility would be one that both "fully recognizes Afghan sovereignty and our mutual interests in security of the Afghan people and our respective forces."
During Hagel's visit to Afghanistan last weekend, Karzai accused the United States of colluding with the Taliban and of holding unilateral negotiations with the insurgents - allegations the United States sharply denied and which exposed deep tensions after 11 years of war.
The United States plans to pull out just over half of its 66,000 troops from Afghanistan by early next year and leave a relatively small force after 2014, focusing on training Afghan forces and conducting limited counterterrorism operations.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Local Afghans Protest U.S. Special Forces
March 16, 2013 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Several hundred residents of Afghanistan’s volatile Wardak Province are marching on the Afghan parliament building in Kabul to protest the presence of U.S. Special Forces in their area.
Police said between 200 and 500 demonstrators have gathered in the Afghan capital, chanting anti-American slogans and demanding the release of nine local citizens they say were detained by U.S. forces.
"We have gathered here to protest against the [U.S.] Special Forces in Maidan, Wardak, because they enter people's houses and torture innocent people, they have also detained 10 people and it is not clear what will happen to them," one protester told Reuters.
U.S. officials say only four the nine missing men were arrested in joint U.S.-Afghan raids.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai last month asked all U.S. Special Forces to leave Wardak, accusing them of murders and disappearances.
But he agreed to give U.S. commanders more time there to create a solution for maintaining security in the province, which militants use as a corridor to bring weapons into Kabul.
Based on reporting by dpa, AP, and Reuters
Hamid Karzai's risky rants
Foreign Policy By Omar Samad Friday, March 15, 2013
As Americans try to make sense of the latest salvo of rhetoric coming out of Kabul, Afghans are also perturbed by confusion engulfing their country's prospects at a time when both sides are expected to soberly focus on immediate challenges, maintaining Afghanistan's stability, and making sure that America's longest war is not perceived as a defeat when the mission ends in 2014.
Instead, all sides are witnessing a gradual erosion of bilateral trust that can be traced back at least as far as the controversial 2009 Afghan presidential elections. President Hamid Karzai has alleged that Western powers were trying to undermine his candidacy, while Afghan politicians accused his campaign and each other of fraud.
Evolving perceptions of U.S. and Afghan intentions since then continue to spark both nations' suspicions, raise questions about respective motivations, increase casualty counts on all sides, and test the strategic partnership that is essential to a successful transition process encompassing the security, political and economic sectors.
Such conditions can become untenable and strengthen the agenda pursued by most Taliban and their regional extremist support network.
The latest controversy was sparked a few hours after twin suicide attacks in Kabul and Khost killed scores of civilians last week. During a speech on International Women's Day, President Karzai accused the United States and the Taliban of unintended collusion and of holding back-channel talks. Without offering further details, he suggested to the Taliban that their attacks will create a sense of insecurity that could end up prolonging the U.S./NATO engagement, and criticized the United States for holding secret talks with the insurgent group that do not involve him.
In a convoluted way, the Afghan president is trying to convince elements of the "patriotic Taliban" to step up and put a stop to the carnage that is hurting ordinary Afghans. It is also not clear what evidence exists that continued Taliban atrocities are what the U.S. and NATO governments desire in order to have an excuse to prolong their presence in Afghanistan. Karzai has failed to explain how such a scenario aligns with the ongoing talks his government is carrying out with the U.S. and others on the post-2014 presence of troops to fight terrorism and train and support Afghan forces.
In his comments, Karzai also claimed that Americans and other countries are eyeing different elements of Afghanistan's mineral reserves, which he said would be negotiated taking Afghan interests into account.
There may be an element of truth to the claims, but both the Taliban and U.S. officials denied the accusation and offered strikingly opposite commentary. Many Afghan pundits, including opposition political parties, were highly critical of the tirade, describing it as far-fetched and provocative.
A week later, in an interview broadcast in Kabul on Thursday, Karzai offered a more positive assessment of his relations with the United States, and said that his comments were not meant to be critical, but corrective.
Whether Karzai's rant was purposefully timed during the top Pentagon official's visit or not, Chuck Hagel's first visit as Secretary of Defense did not go as planned. He was hoping to resolve two outstanding issues: one regarding the transfer of prisoners to Afghan custody, and the other Karzai's recent demand that Special Operations forces be withdrawn from Wardak Province. Although discussions are ongoing, neither issue was resolved during the conversations that took place hours after Karzai's diatribe.
Some commentators floated the notion that Karzai was getting back at Hagel because of sharp comments that were attributed to the then-Senator in 2003 during a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in which President Karzai was grilled by U.S. lawmakers. Heads of state are not usually asked to testify before Congress, and the Afghan ambassador at the time was fired for erroneously scheduling the event, though Karzai's staff had previously approved the president's appearance before the Committee.
The issue that seems to have rattled Karzai the most, however, is linked to his suspicion that the U.S. government is undermining his lead on the peace process by holding secret talks with Taliban representatives.
Karzai is not entirely incorrect when he says that secret contacts are underway between U.S. intermediaries and high-flying Taliban representatives who are now "sipping coffee" with Westerners in the Gulf and Europe. However, he is wrong to assume that these contacts amount to negotiations on the future of the country. The American interlocutors are mostly go-betweens who advocate dialogue and may not have the full blessing of the American government.
The Taliban say they are interested in talking to the Americans about a prisoner exchange, which would also help boost their political credentials through interactions with the international community, whereas Washington is partly using the contacts to convince Taliban leaders to enter into talks with Kabul. With the Taliban adamant so far about not recognizing Karzai as a stakeholder, the U.S. effort should not be seen as counter-productive.
If one is to assume that the "patriotic Afghan Taliban" - as Karzai described them in a speech this week - are actually in touch with him, they are not responding in kind, preferring instead to remain anonymous, since none have dared to advocate a desire to enter into peace talks with Kabul yet. This means that the so-called reconcilable Taliban are either being restrained by their more extremist counterparts, are not in a position to engage right now, are not willing to recognize Kabul, or do not exist as at all.
On the issue of prisoner transfers from U.S. to Afghan custody, Karzai's weekend ultimatum was once again rejected, as U.S. officials expressed misgivings about dangerous individuals who they fear Afghan officials will release. Instead of discussing the merits of the process and arriving at a mutually acceptable solution, the two sides have so far stuck to their respective positions.
With regard to the demand that U.S. Special Forces vacate Wardak province after allegations of civilian mistreatment last month, Karzai's request has yet to take effect. With parts of the province under Taliban control, and Wardak serving as a strategic entry point into Kabul, American officers, local leaders and even Afghan security officials have questioned the validity of the demand. So far, neither side has offered a mutually satisfactory solution that would not jeopardize the security situation and put the capital at risk.
Following the weekend outbursts, Karzai's spokesman lamented that the President is not taken seriously when he demands that his Western allies take practical steps to address all contentious issues, especially his demand for exerting more pressure on Pakistan, seen by Kabul as backing Afghan Taliban efforts.
Regardless of their actual origin, Karzai's pointed accusations nowadays are part venting, part drama and mostly motivated by political calculus. They are undoubtedly also intended to influence the upcoming presidential elections and the legacy Karzai wants to leave behind when he steps down in 2014.
However, his excessive use of the public pulpit - instead of diplomatic and political channels - could reduce the effectiveness of his overtures. This type of in-your-face politics may not win him many converts in Afghanistan, or help realize his political aspirations.
What is less apparent to Karzai and his politically motivated cronies is the public relations impact in Western nations, as well as the strategic communications bonanza that such rhetoric provides to his domestic and regional detractors.
Although Karzai is justified in the eyes of many Afghans when he complains about civilian casualties and chastises the West for waging war in Afghan villages instead of pursuing terrorist in their hideouts in the tribal regions of Pakistan, his choice of venue, rhetoric and timing undermines the real intention.
Provocative claims not only exacerbate public confusion, but they also dampen support for the Afghan mission in troop-contributing nations where questions about further engagement already abound.
Contrary to the delusional belief within Karzai's inner-circle that the West needs Afghanistan more than Afghanistan needs the West, the country cannot afford to alienate those who have contributed to the positive changes that have taken place over the past decade, and who are committed to continue to help beyond 2014.
This is not to say that mistakes were not made over the years, that certain strategic and tactical decisions were not erroneous, or that Western policies have all been thoughtful. There is enough blame to be shared on all sides, but now is not the time to engage in finger pointing or scoring points.
At the same time, Afghan sensitivities that are known to benefit the armed opposition need to be taken into account, as all sides need to engage in more coordination and trust building, and aim for solutions to technical or legal concerns.
However, if Karzai's intention is to engage in political flirtation with America's enemies, either in the hope of becoming the peacemaker or to be remembered as the nationalist who accelerated the Western withdrawal, his plan could backfire and end up damaging his domestic political base. Many Afghans consider the core Taliban (with the exception of some who are not in a position to act) as a pariah radical group supported by hardline regional actors. By alienating his base, there is a risk that Karzai could become a weak lame-duck president earlier than expected.
What Afghan leaders need to be reminded of is that hardcore Taliban and regional detractors are the beneficiaries of fractured domestic politics and incoherent international relations. There are powerful networks in the region (and some within the country) that want to destabilize the country and damage Afghan relations with the international community. Those are detrimental for stability and the transitions Afghanistan and many others are facing over the next two years.
This delicate situation requires better management of frustration and rhetoric on both sides in order to accomplish the goal of meaningful strategic partnership.
Omar Samad is President of Silkroad Consulting. He was Afghan Ambassador to Canada (2004-2009) and France (2009-2011), and Spokesperson for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2001-2004). He can be reached at osamad@silkroad-consulting.com.
Afghan army commandos hold exercise in Kabul
KABUL, March 16 (Xinhua) -- Hundreds of Afghan National Army ( ANA) commandos were involved in a one-day military exercise in the capital of Kabul on Saturday, as Afghan troops take the lead of nearly 80 percent of combat operations in the war-torn country.
Addressing the exercise, Afghan Defense Minister General Bismillah Khan Muhammadi said the ANA troops are fully capable of protecting the country after the withdrawal of foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.
Officials with the ministry told reporters that the drill was aimed at testing the preparedness of the forces to meet the challenges in various situation.
The high-profile exercise included search-and-rescue and ground operation backed by military helicopters.
The Afghan security force will take over full security responsibilities from NATO-led coalition force by the end of 2014.
Starting this spring, U.S. troops will switch to a support role -- training, advising and assisting Afghan force, several months earlier than the mid-2013 deadline agreed at a NATO summit in Chicago last year.
Currently, there are about 100,000-strong foreign troops in Afghanistan to curb the Taliban-led insurgency entering its 12th year.
US helicopter crashes in Afghanistan, killing 1
By KIMBERLY DOZIER | Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — A helicopter crashed in southern Afghanistan Saturday, killing one member of the U.S.-led coalition and injuring another in what was the second deadly air crash in the country in a week, NATO officials said.
The crashes come as U.S. officials are grappling with tough talk from Afghan President Hamid Karzai whose recent anti-American rhetoric has complicated relations at a time when international troops are withdrawing from the war.
Capt. Luca Carniel, a spokesman for the coalition, said there was no enemy activity in the area when the helicopter went down, and that the cause of the crash was being investigated. Officials did not release the type of helicopter that crashed, or the nationalities of the casualties.
The helicopter went down in Daman district, a few kilometers (miles) east of Kandahar, said Javeed Faisal, the spokesman for Kandahar province.
On Monday, a Black Hawk crashed outside Kandahar, killing five U.S. troops. Two more U.S. troops were killed that day by an insider attack, making Monday the deadliest day for U.S. troops so far this year.
In addition to the casualties, U.S. officials are trying to contend with Karzai's remarks that were so anti-American they prompted top NATO commander Gen. Joseph Dunford to issue a warning to his commanders by confidential email this week to be on watch for violent blowback, in the form of more insurgent and insider attacks.
When the email was leaked, Karzai's office responded by saying his comments "were meant to help reform, not destroy the relationship."
Karzai started the week by accusing the U.S. and the Taliban of colluding on two deadly suicide bombings last weekend in an effort to create instability and give U.S. forces an excuse to stay. On Thursday, Karzai did not back down or retract his earlier statements, instead saying the U.S.-Afghan relationship "is complicated" by "terrorism, transition of the Bagram detention facility, continued civilian casualties (from NATO operations), and lack of respect for the national sovereignty of Afghanistan."
Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel spoke on the phone with Karzai on Saturday to discuss Karzai's concerns, including the detention facility, according to Pentagon press secretary George Little.
"They agreed to use the next week to conduct intensive work with a view to concluding an agreement that fully recognizes Afghan sovereignty and our mutual interests in security of the Afghan people and our respective forces," Little said in a statement.
Karzai is pressuring the U.S. to go ahead with the handover of the U.S.-run detention facility next to Bagram Air Field. The transfer was scheduled for last week, but was called off when Karzai objected to terms of the transfer, including allowing the U.S. to keep its veto power over the release of Afghan detainees the U.S. feels are too dangerous to free. Karzai said this week that any further delay could harm bilateral relations.
Another issue dividing the U.S. and the Afghan president is Karzai's demand that U.S. special operations forces leave the province of Wardak, next to Kabul, because of complaints the U.S. or Afghans working with them abused local citizens, arresting several. Karzai had given them a deadline of earlier this week to leave, but agreed to give Dunford more time to craft a solution that maintains security in Wardak, which is used as a gateway by militants to bring bombers and weapons into Kabul.
Several hundred demonstrators angry over the delayed departure chanted "U.S. special operations forces out!" as they marched to the Afghan parliament building in Kabul Saturday.
Kabul's deputy police chief Gen. Mohammad Daud Amin said the demonstration of roughly 500 Afghans had been peaceful.
The demonstrators are seeking the release of nine local citizens who they believe were detained by the U.S. forces. Banners in the Afghan languages of Pashto and Dari as well as English read, "I want my father," and "We want our prisoners back from the government, dead or alive."
"Americans and U.S. special operations forces must leave," said protester Abdul Hadi.
U.S. officials have acknowledged that four men were arrested in the province in joint U.S.-Afghan raids, but had no information on the other five alleged detainees. They have denied the allegations of abuse.
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Follow Kimberly Dozier on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KimberlyDozier.
Nato troops in Afghanistan 'in a similar situation to failed Soviet invasion'
Nato troops in Afghanistan find themselves in a similar situation to the failed Soviet invasion and are also waging a campaign which is "unwinnable in military terms", according to a provocative Ministry of Defence analysis.
Telegraph.co.uk By Ben Farmer 15 Mar 2013
Kabul - Both the Nato campaign and the 1979 invasion were initially attempts to impose "ideology foreign to the Afghan people", whose aims were quickly dropped when they ran into difficulty.
Nato, like the Soviets, has been unable to "establish control over the country's borders and the insurgents' safe havens", or "protect the rural population", according to the paper written by retired officers for an internal MOD think tank.
"The [Soviet] 40th Army was unable to decisively defeat the Mujahideen while facing no existential threat itself, a situation that precisely echoes [the Nato coalition's] predicament".
As combat troops leave Afghanistan by the end of 2014, the country will again be left "with a severely damaged and very weak economic base", reliant for years on vast sums of international aid.
The paper, Lessons From the Soviet Transition in Afghanistan, was prepared for the MOD's Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), to provoke internal debate and challenge current military thinking.
The MOD last night said it did not represent the government's position, or "any belief within the MOD that the Nato campaign is 'unwinnable'." But its conclusion that there are "an extraordinary number" of parallels with the doomed Russian intervention will make uneasy reading for politicians. The campaign has cost nearly 450 British lives and billions of pounds.
World opinion had judged both "as failed interventions" and both Nato and the Soviets had faced "increasing domestic and financial pressure to abandon the enterprise", the paper said.
The eventual success of the Nato withdrawal from Afghanistan "is likely to be judged on the same criteria as those used objectively to judge the Soviet transition", including "the longevity and effectiveness of the incumbent central government".
A spokesman for the MOD said that "in contrast to the Soviet experience, the international community has committed to long-term support for Afghans as they shape their country over the coming years".
"We are in Afghanistan to protect the UK's national security by helping Afghans to take control of their own. We are not, and never have been, trying to build a perfect Afghanistan – rather one that does not again provide safe haven for international terrorists. We have also always been clear that the situation in Afghanistan will not be solved by military means alone."
A New Deal for Afghanistan?
The Huffington Post (blog) By Wais Ahmad Barmak Minister, Rural Rehabilitation and Development of Afghanistan 15/03/2013
What are the real threats facing the Afghan people as we approach 2014, when international military troops withdraw to their bases or leave the country -- and responsibility for security rests wholly with Afghanistan?
Will Afghan National Security Forces, trained and equipped by the West, defect or melt away? Or will some internal mass uprising reveal a degree of discontent with the efforts, investments and sacrifices of the past decade, sufficient to cast them aside? People are even asking themselves, 'was the whole effort a mistake?' because of the relentless negative portrayal of my country in the media and among commentators.
And yet, all the evidence points in another direction, to another future. One that is rocky, not wholly clear-cut, and subject to disruption from sporadic acts of violence, but not one in which total social, political or military collapse is likely to happen.
In brief, the Taliban cannot win a military battle, nor can they win an electoral one. No one -- apart, perhaps, from a few ideological zealots -- will want to vote for them. Not the million girls in schools. Not young Afghans who want to achieve more than a subsistence standard of living for themselves and their families. Not shopkeepers who want to expand businesses and to develop their nascent entrepreneurial spirit, but are constrained by a lack of basic infrastructure and outmoded trading policies and practices (which the Government has still to address). And not the thousands of village women joining savings groups for the first time, pooling funds to invest in home-based businesses.
What the insurgents can do is continue to kill thousands of Afghans every year who are simply going about their daily lives, attending the mosque, travelling to market or to a wedding.
Though insurgents can disrupt, they cannot wholly destroy the gains of the past decade. If few are driven by ideology; many more are driven by unemployment. And here presents a key challenge: how and where to create the 400-600,000 jobs needed each year in a country where two-thirds of the population is aged 25 or younger. In my view, it is unemployment rather than insurgency that poses the greatest threat to achieving a stable future for Afghanistan.
Last year's major international conferences in Chicago and Tokyo helped us all move forward. Chicago set a baseline of funding for Afghan National Security Forces and the Government's recurrent costs. Long-term strategic partnerships cemented with countries such as the US demonstrate to the Afghan people the global community's commitment to working with Afghanistan in the years ahead, to ensure my country never again becomes a breeding ground or safe haven for terrorists, a threat not just to the region, but the entire world.
These commitments give Afghans hope in the future, assurance that the world will not abandon Afghanistan again. And they are being agreed in the recognition that, given the ever-changing, multi-faceted nature of international terrorism, the consequences of abandonment could be even more severe than those of the past.
Those conferences set the scene for a more equal partnership between the Afghan government and the international community, with clear commitments on both sides. Donor assistance must be more closely aligned to our development priorities, more support must be channelled through formal government systems, where we must have the controls in place to ensure funds are spent as intended.
Those long-term commitments make development aid more predictable, building on the past decade's investment in Afghanistan's industries, health, education, and overall economy to realize the nearly two-dozen National Priority Programmes endorsed by donors as focal areas for development.
One major effect will be to create jobs. As a government minister responsible for achieving growth and redevelopment in rural Afghanistan, the challenge posed by high levels of under- or unemployment is significant. Three-quarters of Afghans live in rural areas, mostly engaged in farming, yet agriculture only contributes one-third of the country's GDP. One way of increasing this contribution will be through establishing value chains enabling farmers to add value to the food they grow through processing and canning, through cold storage for off-season sales, and building national and regional distribution networks.
Strengthening the non-farm rural economy is a priority if we are to address the challenge of opium poppy cultivation. Working together with ministry colleagues in Agriculture, Counter-Narcotics and Energy and Water, we have developed programmes taking a multi-pronged approach to boosting the rural economy, promoting licit and lasting jobs.
But real investment in strategic infrastructure is also essential: without access to electricity or water for irrigation and household use, my government's ability to strengthen the rural economy, to reduce population drift to towns and cities, and to provide sustainable jobs for our young men and women, will always be seriously compromised. Perhaps what my country needs most is a New Deal for Afghanistan. If so, it is the American Government and people, together with Afghanistan's international friends and partners, who can offer the greatest experience, knowledge and insight on which to draw and to work with us to achieve a stable, secure and prosperous Afghanistan.
The REAL reason the U.S. failed in Afghanistan
Foreign Policy (blog) By Stephen M. Walt Friday, March 15, 2013
Why did the U.S. fail in Afghanistan? (I know we are pretending to have succeeded, but that's just camouflage to disguise what is in fact an embarrassing if predictable defeat). The reasons for our failure are now being debated by people like Vali Nasr and Sarah Chayes, who have offered contrasting insider accounts of what went wrong.
Both Nasr and Chayes make useful points about the dysfunction that undermined the AfPak effort, and I'm not going to try to adjudicate between them. Rather, I think both of them miss the more fundamental contradiction that bedeviled the entire U.S./NATO effort, especially after the diversion to Iraq allowed the Taliban to re-emerge. The key problem was essentially structural: US. objectives in Afghanistan could not be achieved without a much larger commitment of resources, but the stakes there simply weren't worth that level of commitment. In other words, winning wasn't worth the effort it would have taken, and the real failure was not to recognize that fact much earlier and to draw the appropriate policy conclusions.
First, achieving a meaningful victory in Afghanistan -- defined as defeating the Taliban and creating an effective, Western-style government in Kabul -- would have required sending far more troops (i.e., even more than the Army requested during the "surge"). Troop levels in Afghanistan never approached the ratio of troops/population observed in more successful instances of nation-building, and that deficiency was compounded by Afghanistan's ethnic divisions, mountainous terrain, geographic isolation, poor infrastructure, and porous borders.
Second, victory was elusive because Pakistan continued to support the Taliban, and its territory provided them with effective sanctuaries. When pressed, they could always slip across the border and live to fight another day. But Washington was never willing to go the mattresses and force Pakistan to halt its support, and it is not even clear that we could have done that without going to war with Pakistan itself. Washington backed off for very good reasons: We wanted tacit Pakistani cooperation in our not-so-secret drone and special forces campaign against al Qaeda, and we also worried about regime stability given Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, these factors made victory even harder to achieve.
Third, we couldn't get Karzai to reform because he was the only game in town, and he knew it. Unless the U.S. and NATO were willing to take over the whole country and try to govern it ourselves -- a task that would have made occupying Iraq seem easy -- we were forced to work with him despite his many flaws. Successful counterinsurgencies require effective and legitimate local partners, however, and we never had one.
In short, the U.S. was destined to lose because it didn't go all-out to win, and it shouldn't have. Indeed, an all-out effort would have been a huge mistake, because the stakes were in fact rather modest. Once the Taliban had been ousted and al Qaeda had been scattered, America's main interest was continuing to degrade al Qaeda (as we have done). That mission was distinct from the attempt to nation-build in Afghanistan, and in the end Afghanistan's importance did not justify a substantially larger effort.
By the way, I am not suggesting that individual commanders and soldiers did not make enormous personal sacrifices or try hard to win, or that the civilians assigned to the Afghan campaign did not do their best in difficult conditions. My point is that if this war had been a real strategic priority, we would have fought it very differently. We would not have rotated commanders, soldiers, and civilian personnel in and out of the theatre as often as we did, in effect destroying institutional memory on an annual basis and forcing everyone to learn on the job. In a war where vital interests were at stake, we certainly wouldn't have let some of our NATO partners exempt the troops they sent from combat. And if the war had been seen aa a major priority, both parties would have been willing to raise taxes to pay for it.
Thus, the real failure in Afghanistan was much broader than the internal squabbles that Nasr and Chayes have addressed. The entire national security establishment failed to recognize or acknowledge the fundamental mismatch between 1) U.S. interests (which were limited), 2) our stated goals (which were quite ambitious), and 3) the vast resources and patience it would have required to achieve those goals. Winning would have required us to spend much more than winning was worth, and to undertake exceedingly risky and uncertain actions towards countries like Pakistan. U.S. leaders wisely chose not to do these things, but they failed to realize what this meant for the war effort itself.
Given this mismatch between interests, goals, and resources, it was stupid to keep trying to win at a level of effort that was never going to succeed. Yet no one on the inside seems to have pointed this out, or if they did, their advice was not heeded. And that is the real reason why the war limped on for so long and to such an unsatisfying end.
www.afghanistannewscenter.com