Saving Afghanistan from Pakistan

Posted By Christian Brose Wednesday, April 29, 2009 - 8:46 PM Share

Reading the news out of Pakistan these past several days, followed by Dave Kilcullen's recent testimony on that subject, I am left with the desire to take a bath with a toaster. Here's Andrew Exum's more thoughtful yet equally glum conclusion:

Studying the past few years, one could arrive at the conclusion that Pakistan's army is epically incompetent. One could similarly arrive at the conclusion that Pakistan's army is competent -- but fighting for the other side.

Over the past 100 days, the Obama administration has argued that our success in Afghanistan is linked to progress in Pakistan -- on security and governance, among other things. In theory, that's right. In practice, though, to assume that success in Afghanistan requires near-term progress in Pakistan may be like waiting for Godot, or worse. I would challenge that assumption, for there is a lot we can achieve in Afghanistan on its own terms, right now -- from training and expanding the security forces, to building state capacity, to better coordinating our allied civil-military campaign. We should not link "Af" and "Pak" to such a degree that it leads us to underestimate what can be achieved in Afghanistan and overestimate what is possible in Pakistan.

The implications of this aren't pretty. As with any policy, our strategy toward Pakistan -- if, unlike John Kerry, you believe we have one -- is a mixture of aiming for the best but hedging against the worst. Is it time to start focusing more exclusively on the latter? In other words, do we need to begin shifting to a strategy of containment in Pakistan, either because the government and military can't contain their own domestic threats or because they won't (or maybe both)?

I hope I'm wrong on this, and I encourage experts (and readers in the comments section) to tell me so, and why. But if I'm not, then we may need to find concrete ways to delink "Af-Pak," rhetorically and strategically, lest the intractable problem of Pakistan sink the real gains we can make in Afghanistan.

EXPLORE:AFGHANISTAN, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION, PAKISTAN

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WALKING WOUNDED

11:53 PM ET

April 29, 2009

Allah's bomb

in radical hands is the strategic center of the Pashtunistan war. That's why Afghanistan was really scary, not the airline hijack plots. Awful as 9/11 was, it didn't engage in worse-case targeting, and was a one-off technique. But it could have depopulated a county, or worse, given access to AQ Kahn's expertise.

Why is axis-of-proliferation N. Korea still broke and without usable fission weapons, while Pakistan has enough to face down India? The answer is that PRK doesn't have the backing of big-time oil money. Arabia is a stake-holder in Dr. Kahn's enterprise. Put a knife to that tumor and we fear to discover that it's already metastasized, Arabia's missiles armed while we were all steamed up about Iraq and Iran.

Resolving the Pakistan-Afghan civil wars will probably involve Arabia-Iran, India-Pakistan and a termination of Israeli expansion. For two terms we've seen movement in the wrong direction in all four conflicts, with little room to wag a strategic finger at the Islamic Republic of Pakistan's divided army command. Their grunts and civilians have almost certainly taken more casualties than US losses in 9/11-OIF-OEF combined.

The elephant in the room is the thing that we won't talk openly about. Who has nukes today, and what are the conflicts driving proliferation and civil war?

MARCOS EL MALO

8:34 PM ET

April 30, 2009

Not Past the Point of No Return

Kilcullen paints a pretty bleak picture, but clearly he sees some hope for turning the situation around, especially with his emphasis on building up Pakistan's LE capabilities. Kilcullen is definitely one to whom we should listen attentively. He's a top COIN strategist with much boots on the ground experience, and he was part of the Petraeus brain trust.

ASHLEYCHOFFMAN@CNAS

1:55 PM ET

May 4, 2009

Washington Needs to Ditch 'Af-Pak'

Ashley Hoffman from CNAS here -- I would point readers to a commentary by CNAS Research Assistant Brian Burton "Washington Needs to Ditch 'Af-Pak,'" an interesting read on the 'Af-Pak' phrase.

Excerpt: "Given that many Afghans and Pakistanis are already highly suspicious of U.S. motives, the last thing American policymakers should be doing is rhetorically signaling that they regard these two countries, which have a complicated and problematic relationship, as the same entity."

Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.