Taliban

By John Hannah

In today's Wall Street Journal, Bret Stephens rises to the defense of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Toward the article's close, Stephens writes that:

It would be  ... useful if some of Mr. Karzai's more acerbic Western critics could ask themselves why matters went abruptly south in Afghanistan after several years in which they had gone swimmingly well under Mr. Karzai. ... The answer has a lot less to do with Mr. Karzai's performance than with NATO.

Stephens's basic point is worth bearing in mind. Ever since last year's presidential campaign, there's been an unfortunate tendency to assess America's Afghan campaign as one long, steady downward spiral to disaster. "Eight years of drift," according to Obama administration officials seeking to explain their lengthy deliberations over strategy and troop numbers. But, as Stephens suggests, the reality is a good deal more complex. The fact is that, after a period of genuine progress following the Taliban's removal in late 2001, the situation in Afghanistan only began to deteriorate markedly between 2005 and 2006. Suicide attacks quintupled that year. Remotely detonated bombs more than doubled. Insurgent attacks nearly tripled. And the trends have steadily worsened every year since. The question is why? What changed in that time period that might help account for the sharp decline in America's war fortunes?

I certainly don't have an exhaustive answer, but I do have a few ideas that merit consideration:

1. Zalmay Khalilzad left Afghanistan  

Khalilzad served as President Bush's special envoy for Afghanistan from the country's liberation in 2001 until 2003. In 2003, he became U.S. ambassador. Khalilzad had an extraordinary relationship with Karzai, spending hours alone with him on a daily basis -- mentoring, advising, reassuring, hectoring (the latter only in private). The relationship allowed Khalilzad to succeed, far more often than not, in getting Karzai to do the right thing. Karzai had enormous confidence in Khalilzad -- and, more importantly, in the unflinching U.S. support that was manifested in Khalilzad's role.

Khalizad left Afghanistan in the summer of 2005. Since then, no other U.S. official has come close to replicating his relationship with Karzai. On the contrary, we've seen an ever-widening breach of trust and confidence between Karzai and the United States, bottoming out this spring when the Obama administration let it be known that it was "desperately searching" for an alternative to Karzai. Causal lines are always hard to draw, but it's difficult not to discern a significant connection between the end of Khalilzad's tenure in Kabul and the mounting frustrations with Karzai's performance in Washington. At a minimum, this suggests that now that Karzai's second term is a done deal, the Obama administration needs urgently to find a way to rebuild its badly tattered relationship with him. Can that be done with the people currently in charge of Afghan policy? That's a tough question, but it needs to be asked.  

2. NATO assumed overall command for the Afghan mission from the United States.

Most importantly, NATO took over operations in southern Afghanistan, the heart of the Taliban insurgency, in mid-2006. Karzai and the Afghans fretted throughout 2005 about the planned handover to NATO, urging the U.S. not to follow through. Despite repeated assurances from Washington, the Afghans palpably feared that the transition to NATO reflected the start of America's ultimate withdrawal from Afghanistan. Psychologically, this perception of declining U.S. commitment almost certainly had the dual effect of dangerously demoralizing the Afghan government and people (resulting in counter-productive hedging behavior), while emboldening the Taliban.

Similarly, the Pakistani government -- believing the United States to be once again headed for the Afghan exits -- was encouraged even further in its double game of maintaining an "option" for returning a friendly Taliban to power in Kabul.

Militarily, the shift to NATO, particularly in the south, undeniably resulted in a significant loss of combat effectiveness on perhaps the war's most important front. While America's British, Dutch, and Canadian allies fought valiantly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces, they were no match -- frequently by their own admission -- for the extraordinary fighting skills of their U.S. counterparts.  With only some exaggeration, a senior Afghan official once told President Bush that 800 U.S. troops had generated a greater sense of security and well-being among the population in Helmand than 8,000 NATO forces.

Finally, at an administrative level, putting the 26-member alliance in charge made a hash of command and control in the Afghan theater, undermining severely the unity of military and civilian effort that is essential to successful warfare, especially counter-insurgency operations.

Whatever the merits of ramping up NATO's role -- e.g., the importance of multilateralism; the need to divert greater U.S. attention and resources to the deteriorating situation in Iraq -- the benefits, in retrospect, have not been worth the costs in terms of advancing U.S. war aims. Since late 2008, the United States has been engaged in a delicate effort to re-balance the relationship between America and NATO, and to once again take ownership of the Afghan war in a much more aggressive way. The Obama administration's decisions on increasing troop numbers, as well as changes that have already been made in command and control arrangements in Afghanistan, are a crucial part of that essential return to full-blown U.S. leadership of the war effort.

3. America's failure to hold Pakistan to account for its support of the Taliban became fully manifested.

I vividly recall that from 2003 onward, Zal Khalilzad repeatedly tried to warn U.S. officials about the need for a strategy that would aggressively counter Pakistani efforts to resurrect the defeated Taliban. President Karzai and his security advisors harped constantly on the same issue. Yet it was all to no avail. Special Afghan pleading, some officials complained. The Musharraf government is already under enough pressure assisting our efforts to kill and capture al Qaeda operatives, others said. Whatever the excuses, far, far too little was done. As a result, by 2005-2006 the Taliban, as a serious insurgent force, began coming back with a vengeance. Even then, Washington was slow to respond in developing a serious policy to address Pakistan's double-dealing. Not until 2007-2008 did talk get serious about dramatically expanding operations to target Taliban leaders and disrupt their operations in Pakistan. It was only at this point that the United States began putting together a comprehensive diplomatic, economic, and military plan designed to pressure and empower the Pakistani government to act seriously against the Taliban monster it had encouraged along the Afghan border. To its great credit, the Obama administration has expanded and fully resourced this effort with Pakistan in ways that, at long last, are beginning to show signs of tentative progress.

There are, no doubt, a host of other causes that contributed to the war's downward spiral. But the larger point is that the United States did enjoy a significant period after the Taliban's downfall when real progress was being made. The causes of that success and why things began going badly need to be studied closely. The bottom line is that the deterioration of recent years was not inevitable. Rather, it resulted from real shifts -- and failures -- of policy, many of which are subject to U.S. control, influence and correction.

It's, of course, true that the costs the U.S. may need to endure now in correcting past mistakes will almost certainly be higher than if we'd gotten it right the first time. But not nearly as high as the costs of allowing the Taliban to return to power, allied with al Qaeda, with its sights firmly set on taking over a nuclear-armed Pakistan.      

David McNew/Getty Images

Sunday was another tragic day in Iraq, more than 150 people were killed and another 500 injured in attacks on the Ministries of Justice and Interior in Baghdad. The devastation was another sad reminder of how fragile are the gains bought so dearly by Iraqis and Americans -- military and civilian -- working every day in that country to consolidate progress toward a secure and representative Iraq.

Those who believe Iraq was "the wrong war," or that violence and authoritarianism are endemic in a country with such deep sectarian divisions, or those who practice the soft bigotry of low expectations (as President Bush so nicely phrased it in a different context), and believe Muslims incapable of democracy will likely see these attacks as justification for accelerating our disengagement from Iraq. Such a conclusion is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the domestic politics of Iraq in the run up to their January provincial elections.

War is the extension of politics by other means, as Clausewitz teaches, and domestic politics is what these attacks were about. Iraqi security forces are struggling to prevent such attacks. Prime Minister Maliki's confidence in their ability has always run ahead of their actual performance (as early as 2005 he advocated a security hand over) and he has been party to politicizing their ranks. 

But Maliki is running on a platform of providing security and negotiating the U.S. withdrawal. Anything that calls security into question or precipitates a return by American military forces into Iraq's cities (from which we had withdrawn on June 30 in accordance with the Strategic Framework Agreement) hurts Maliki's claim. And it doesn't just hurt Maliki, it hurts other incumbent politicians, like the Mayor of Baghdad, who also argued for removing blast walls to facilitate movement and commerce and a return to normalcy in the capital.

After the last spectacular attack, against the Foreign Ministry on Aug. 19, Prime Minister Maliki responded in a stridently partisan fashion, blaming Sunni and al Qaeda as one, conducting arrests and crackdowns that have a suspicious political tilt against his political opponents. While the U.S. military spokesman tried to put a good face on the Iraqi government's reaction, comparing it to the crasser political manipulation of the Aug. 19 bombings, Maliki's statement in the aftermath speaks for itself:

The cowardly acts of terrorism which occurred today must not weaken the resolution of Iraqis to continue their journey and to fight the followers of the fallen regime, the Baathists and al-Qaeda."

This, before the government had any reasonable idea of who conducted the attacks. There are numerous political factions that could benefit from delegitimizing the Maliki government's record, not least rival Shi'ia who excluded him from being their standard bearer in the election.

But the good news is that political pluralism has taken root in Iraqi politics. Maliki couldn't win the support of a Shi'ia-only slate organizing for the January elections, so he opted to build a cross-sectarian slate. He's not trying very hard, mind you, as his statement blaming Sunni for Sunday's bombing shows. But his effort to appeal across sectarian lines was his Hail Mary (so to speak) and shows he believed voters would reward the choice. Vice President Tariq al Hashimi, a Sunni, is likewise tacking beyond sectarianism to broaden his prospective political base. 

This is a hugely important development, seldom seen in fragile societies. Usually, as with the Balkan elections of the early 1990s, politicians prey on voters' mistrust and trend toward extremes which is why elections in factional societies are so often polarizing and foster an upward spiral of violence.

In the last provincial elections, nearly all incumbents were voted out of office, a strong signal that average Iraqis believed they weren't doing their jobs. And voters weren't just "simplifying the map," moving to the sectarian extreme out of fear: Shi'ia voted out Shi'ia, Sunni voted out Sunni, Kurd voted out Kurd. What Iraqi political elites took from that election is the fundamental commandment of democracy everywhere: Thou Shalt Respect the Voters.

Talking to Iraqi politicians (as I did the past couple of weeks around their country), what is most striking is the extent to which they sound like small-city politicians in our own country. They worry about power outages and sewer systems and the quality of education for youngsters. They're mad at the central government for not funding activity they consider its responsibility. They rail against corruption -- even as many of them practice it -- and fear exposure by the free media that is burgeoning. Accountability has come to Iraqi politics, and the politicians know it.

A representative government is struggling to emerge in Iraq. It may not succeed in bridging the sectarian tensions, corruption, and long shadow of decades of authoritarianism that inhibits initiative. In Iraq, strong cultural undercurrents cut against the kinds of behavior that make successful democracies successful. But Iraqis want it, and political elites are responding. This is good news for Iraq and for the advancement of our values in the world.

AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP/Getty Images

By John Hannah

My old boss, Dick Cheney, gave a speech last night blasting the Obama administration's national security policy. One of his many targets was an interview that Rahm Emanuel did with CNN this past weekend -- in particular, Emanuel's claim that President Obama's current reassessment of Afghan policy was, for the first time ever, airing certain first-order questions about U.S. strategy. For officials of the previous administration, the objectionable portions of Emanuel's remarks included the following:

And when you go through all the analysis, it's clear that basically we had a war for eight years that was going on, that's adrift. That we're beginning at scratch, and just from the starting point, after eight years. ... And the president is asking the questions that have never been asked on the civilian side, the political side, the military side, and the strategic side. What is the impact on the region? What can the Afghan government do or not do? Where are we on the police training? Could that be something the Europeans do? Should we take the military side? Those are the questions that have not been asked. And before you commit troops . . . before you make that decision, there's a set of questions that have to have answers that have never been asked. And it's clear after eight years of war, that's basically starting from the beginning, and those questions never got asked.

The first problem with Emanuel's charge, of course, is the inconvenient fact that the Obama administration, itself, already conducted an exhaustive review of Afghan policy this past spring. Remember? The one that had the president on March 27 unveiling a "comprehensive, new strategy" that "marks the conclusion of a careful policy review." The one that had the president sending another 21,000 American troops off to war?

If true, Emanuel's implicit accusation that basic questions were not asked in that first review would be a shocking indictment of the administration's own competence. If untrue, Emanuel was gratuitously insulting the professionalism of his hard-working colleagues involved in the review, presumably to advance some other agenda. Anyone familiar with the skills, experience, and stellar reputation of Bruce Riedel -- who the administration hand-picked to oversee the initial assessment -- knows full well that the first possibility is out of the question. Rest assured that all the questions Emanuel asserts have simply never, ever been asked before about U.S. strategy were indeed asked in the course of Riedel's efforts.    

Of course, Emanuel's real target here was - surprise! -- the Bush administration. President Obama has come under heated criticism for wavering in the face of General McChrystal's recommendation for a large troop increase in Afghanistan. But it's not wavering at all, Emanuel assures us. It's purely a matter of the president acting responsibly and performing necessary due diligence -- basic Policy 101 sort of stuff that his predecessor in the White House never did before sending Americans into harm's way.

The problem with this claim is that it's as untrue (and slanderous) with respect to the Bush administration as it is with respect to the Riedel review. As Cheney pointed out last night, the fact is that President Bush ordered a comprehensive review of America 's faltering Afghan policy in the early fall of 2008. That October, the Washington Post reported that the review's purpose was to "return to basic questions":

What are our objectives in Afghanistan ? What can we hope to achieve?  What are our resources? What is our allies' role? What do we know about the enemy? How likely is it that weak Afghan and Pakistani governments will rise to the occasion?

The review was led by Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, President Bush's deputy national security advisor for Afghanistan and Iraq. It brought together officials from the White House, Pentagon, State Department, Intelligence Community, and every other civilian agency concerned with Afghan policy. The review lasted for weeks and exhaustively examined all angles of U.S. strategy. In addition to its internal discussions, the group received briefings from the likes of Afghanistan 's Defense Minister, Abdul Rahim Wardak, and (Ret.) General Dave Barno, the first commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The review included a trip by Lute to the AfPak theater to test some of the emerging recommendations with our political and military leaders on the ground. Its deliberations were ruthlessly self-critical of severe shortcomings in the war effort and argued the need for urgent changes in American strategy, in particular a far more robust counter-insurgency effort. All the questions that Emanuel raised with CNN were in fact raised during the Bush review, in addition to an array of others.

The Bush effort was provided to the incoming Obama administration during last year's transition, including its finding -- based on an initial request for additional forces submitted by then-commanding General McKiernan -- that more U.S. troops would be needed to conduct a successful counterinsurgency strategy. On that question, my understanding is that President Bush was fully prepared to defer to the wishes of President-elect Obama and do whatever would make the new administration's job easier; that is, Bush was fully prepared either to shoulder the decision to order more U.S. forces to Afghanistan before leaving office or he would leave that critical call to President Obama, giving the new administration a chance to conduct its own comprehensive review of the situation. The Obama team, quite understandably, opted for the latter course and President Bush deferred to their wishes -- as he invariably did on virtually every major question during the transition in his determined effort to make it one of the smoothest and most cooperative in American history.

As Cheney suggested in his remarks yesterday, anyone reading both documents would find significant overlap in the Bush review from 2008 and the review that the Obama administration conducted this past spring. One reason that's not particularly surprising is that Doug Lute, who was in charge of the Bush review, was also a major player in the initial Obama assessment. Indeed, Lute continues to serve on President Obama's national security council staff with responsibility for the Afghan portfolio. Perhaps Rahm Emanuel should ask Lute to refresh his memory by taking the short walk over to Emanuel's White House office with a copy of the Bush review. Emanuel could also draw on the expertise of any number of the other participants in the Bush effort, many of whom continue to work for the Obama administration, including at senior levels. I'm also quite sure that some of those who have subsequently left government service, such as former State Department Counselor, Eliot Cohen, former advisor on counter-insurgency, David Kilcullen, and former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, Jim Shinn, would also be happy to talk to Emanuel about their work on the 2008 Bush assessment and the wide range of issues that were studied.

None of this, of course, should obfuscate the fact that the Afghan war effort was in dire shape by the close of the Bush administration.  An urgent course correction was required. President Obama quite courageously decided to do exactly that last spring when he accepted the recommendations of the Riedel review, opted to pursue a fully-resourced counter-insurgency strategy, and put in place a commanding general committed to carrying that strategy out. In response, conservative national security experts in general -- and former Bush administration officials, in particular -- were quite vocal in their support of the president, applauding his gritty determination to buck the advice of many in his own party and do what was necessary to fight and win the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

What has people criticizing the administration now is the endless public hand-wringing about whether to support its hand-picked commander in doing what's urgently required to implement a strategy that President Obama himself announced to the world less than six months ago. The key things that have changed in the interim -- the badly flawed Afghan presidential election and rapidly declining public support for the war effort, especially within the president's own Democratic Party -- were both developments subject to the Obama administration's influence and control, not the Bush administration's. It's President Obama's performance as commander-in-chief and wartime leader, both at home and abroad, that is now in the spotlight and it's clearly causing the administration real discomfort. Trying to deflect attention from that serious problem by leveling new, politicized charges against its predecessor that are so demonstrably spurious is unlikely to help much. It should stop so that the Obama administration and the country can get back to the deadly serious business of how best to protect and defend our interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as well as the broader war on terrorism.     

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images