Brian Downing's blog

Do They Subscribe to GQ in the Pentagon?

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 20:13:31 -0800

Something hits me every time I see American troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. Several World War Two veterans and fellow Vietnam veterans I know have the same reaction. It has nothing to do with the politics of the wars. It’s the uniforms of our soldiers today, the ones in combat zones. They’re astonishingly tidy. Parade-ground tidy, one might even say. I know the reason and it’s partly my fault.

Even though there are no Vietnam veterans in the military anymore (unless there’s a white-walled sergeant major somewhere with hash marks like the Union Pacific railroad), the military looks back on the disciplinary troubles of the Vietnam War with horror and disgust – as a Calvinist minister would a drunken weekend in a Swiss whorehouse. The wayward minister could deny it ever happened, but our generals can’t. There’s news footage and a lot of us were there. Insubordination and AWOLs were on the rise. Morale and cohesion were on the decline. Discouraging words were heard as the peasants were daring to question the regime.

The Pentagon aristocracy and their socio-consultants think they know why. It had nothing to do with incurring several hundred thousand casualties in a pointless war. Nah, couldn’t be. Anything wrong with the leadership? Well, two of the most admirable people I’ve ever known were a sergeant and a captain over there, but choi duc oi there were a lot of truly bad NCOs and officers back then. Couldn’t read a map, hated minorities, and assumed three chevrons or a bar or two made them natural leaders of men before whom lower enlisted personnel must bow. Nah, that had nothing to do with the problem.

The home office concluded it was the uniforms of the guys out in the field. Yeah, that and the hair. It was letting the guys go without shaving for a couple days and without buttoning up their jungle fatigues. Signs of the apocalypse. It was the slovenliness of soldiers that brought anarchy. Forget the Mayan calendar.

Man, I’d like to see one of today’s four-stars go back and tell these guys on Guadalcanal and at Dak To that they need to straighten up and look STRAC.

“You’re all disgraces to the uniform!!!”

“We know that . . . sir. Now excuse us but we’ve got to get the wounded out and set up Claymores.”

A reckless disregard for officialdom’s idea of what the American fighting man should look like was our war-given right. Our attire and demeanor – War Casual, let’s call it – was something we’d earned in the deal to fight in a hot, malarial, god-forsaken country where, unbeknownst to us, one day our tennis shoes would be made and other people's resorts would be built. It was a source of pride. We were a band of disheveled brothers who could push aside the Pentagon foppery that rolled so rapidly downhill. All in all, I’d say War Casual actually helped cohesion and morale.

Most of our NCOs and lieutenants let it go, though they abided by the regs. They wanted to be platoon sergeants and captains. We wanted to be PFCs: Proud Fuckin’ Civilians. We did our jobs; we just bitched more and shaved less. The better sergeants and LTs knew that. We were adopting the War Casual look our fathers had made fashionable from New Guinea to the Siegfried Line.

No one’s knocking today’s GIs here. It’s hotter in Anbar than it was in An Khe; the mountains of Paktia are even tougher than the ones in the A Shau. We knew to the day when we got out and never heard of stop-losses or fourth deployments. I just wonder how many casualties there’ve been from being buttoned up tight like that under those conditions. But I’m sure that’s all been factored in.

The generals don’t understand our soldiers. They eat chow with “their boys” and chat demotically with them, but they don’t understand them. They honestly think those guys would be less effective soldiers if they ignored a uniform reg or two while walking patrols in the Middle East and Central Asia.

The generals don’t understand “their boys” because they’ve never been in a war. They’ve commanded battalions and brigades, but they’ve never done patrols in 95-degree heat, or climbed a mountainside with a rucksack and a Prick-25, or had to confront their own mortality at nineteen or so. If they had, they’d have a better perspective on their regulations, and a better understanding of the troops they order around.

Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

Leaving Afghanistan

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:29:54 -0800

Amid the ongoing debate on escalating the war in Afghanistan come warnings of what will happen should the US not wage the war successfully. Among these warnings are: the Taliban will re-conquer the country; al Qaeda will regain the freedom of movement and training camps it had prior to 2001; and terrorism will spread more rapidly throughout the world. None of this is likely and that must be made clear to policy makers and the American public.

Insurgent Forces in Crisis

Many if not most of the fighters operating against US and NATO forces are not motivated by lofty ideals, religious fervor, or geopolitics. They are not seeking to reestablish a caliphate or even to establish an Islamist heartland in Central Asia. They seek, paradoxically enough to westerners who see themselves as avatars of impartial development, to oust foreign forces from their country whom they believe to be trying to dominate it in alliance with northern, non-Pashtun people.

This is the repeated claim not only of the Taliban, but also of various other insurgent groups such as the ones led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Jalaluddin Haqqani – both of whom worked with American intelligence in the war to oust the Soviets, both of whom are nationalist politicians not internationalist dreamers.

Insurgent forces have been successful in negotiating with local tribes, presenting themselves as defenders of Pashtun and Afghan independence, and convincing tribal elders to attach local men to fight alongside them. Insurgent recruitment of locals has been especially successful in the last few years as western claims of being in Afghanistan only temporarily have, unsurprisingly, become unconvincing.

Should US and NATO forces leave Afghanistan, the effect would be problematic if not calamitous for insurgent leaders, as it was for mujahidin leaders once Soviet troops abandoned certain provinces and eventually withdrew from the country altogether. Motivated to fight to rid their land of foreign troops, many mujahidin fighters saw their job done when Soviet forces withdrew, and chose to return to their homes. Large-scale desertions would almost assuredly recur today if western forces withdrew from the country, or at least from the Pashtun South and East where the insurgency is strongest.

Mujahidin leaders faced a further and perhaps more serious problem once the Soviet forces left. United by little if anything but opposition to foreign presence, leaders soon had to resolve political conflicts. This of course led initially to wars for local authority. The war against the Soviet leviathan was replaced by a war of all against all – and that too would likely recur.

Some factions won, others lost, still others remained neutral. Meanwhile the government in Kabul found itself in a far better bargaining position. Local leaders (political and military), facing interminable local fighting, opted to forge deals with the government in Kabul, exchanging regional autonomy for sizable payments. An array of such deals was promising until Soviet subsidies to Kabul ended with the fall of communism, and the Kabul government soon collapsed. Western coffers are fuller and their governments more stable. Iranian, Russian, and Indian support for Kabul will also be strong.

Insurgent forces today have serious fissures that would worsen without the unifying presence of foreign troops. A few Taliban commanders have been reportedly been killed after rival commanders gave western intelligence their whereabouts. Many other commanders resent the Taliban’s Kandahar elite, which relegates outsiders to subordinate roles, and recall that when the Taliban took control of most of the country in 1996, the Kandahar elite pushed them to the background.

Haqqani and Hekmatyar are important and ambitious men who are unlikely to fit in personally or ideologically with the more powerful Taliban leadership. Hekmatyar stands atop a political party (Hizb-i Islami) he has organized along Leninist lines with the intention of seizing power someday from an Afghan Kerensky. During the Soviet war, he murdered rivals in refugee camps. After the war, he conspired with Pakistani intelligence and launched an ill-starred coup. Beneath the political leadership, and even beneath the five regional commanders of the Taliban, are scores of local commanders – some eager to return home, some eager to gain more power after western forces are gone.

Finally, should the Taliban come to control the South and East after a withdrawal of western forces and despite widespread desertions, it would have to make a difficult political transformation. The Taliban would have to cease being an insurgency, which can keep support through assurances and limited services, to a government, which must provide far more. Failing that, it may itself face an insurgency.

A New and Perhaps Limited Conflict

The departure of western forces will not bring peace and unity. Rather it will bring about a new form of conflict, though not necessarily open war, between the Pashtun South and various peoples in the North – a conflict with no clear adverse potential for American national security. The Pashtun South will be adamantly opposed by Northern Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara peoples led by veteran commanders who have wisely kept forces in being in the event of a resurgent Taliban. Behind the Northern forces stand India, Iran, and Russia who are loth to see the spread of Islamist militancy and who in order to prevent this, will fight to the last Afghan.

Several things suggest that this new form of conflict will not erupt into full-scale civil war. First, war-weariness is pronounced among many Afghans and any enthusiasm felt by the Taliban will be weakened by desertions and the immediate prospect of more war. Second, the departure of US and NATO forces will facilitate a return of warfare governed by tribal custom, not by passion to free the country from foreign troops.

Westerners have seen tribal customs regarding war in practice, usually to their dismay. Northern Alliance forces parleyed with fighters at Tora Bora in late 2001 and allowed bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders to escape into Pakistan; Afghan army units today are known to negotiate separate peaces with insurgent forces. Afghan soldiers approach war with less vision of glory found in many foreign forces. Indeed, mujahidin fighters were put off and even appalled by the intensity of that vision in foreign-born jihadists, who were unsettlingly eager to die in the great cause. Afghan fighters wanted to live, saw the jihadists as obstacles to that goal, and were reluctant to go into battle alongside fighters so reckless and foolhardy.

Making deals with an enemy makes no sense to western observers, especially in a country in which “unconditional surrender” is an abiding national myth and expectation. But dealing with enemies makes eminently good sense in a country divided along scores of tribal and ethnic lines in which consideration of survival must prevail over ideas of one group’s total victory. Judicious restraint learned from hard experience triumphs over notions of glory and revenge and empire.

A war between the Pashtun and non-Pashtun people would be bloody and interminable, and this is clear to all sides. Facing stalemate, most will see the obvious advantages of negotiating power-sharing arrangements and regional autonomy – a state of affairs that has worked well for Afghanistan in the past, including periods of national greatness.

The Future of al Qaeda

The most often heard argument for continuing the US effort in Afghanistan is that al Qaeda will re-establish its training camps there, from which it will direct terrorist operations around the world. Concern over al Qaeda bases is understandably strong in the United States, but they are highly unlikely. The Taliban have stated that they seek to rid their country of foreigners and will not allow foreign extremists to return – an obvious reference to al Qaeda. Now, of course there is no reason to take their word on the matter, but there are compelling reasons to doubt an al Qaeda return to Afghanistan.

The Taliban have historically been insular and generally uninterested in the bold internationalist schemes of al Qaeda. Some interpreters of the movement claim that the Taliban adopted al Qaeda’s internationalist position after western powers invaded in 2001 and drove them into Pakistan, but there is little evidence of this. Other analysts say the opposite, that the Taliban have maintained their insularity, blame al Qaeda for being driven out of their country, and want nothing to do with conquering the region let alone establishing a caliphate. A caliphate, of course, would entail a loss of Afghan sovereignty. And in that sovereignty is something Afghans have long cherished and fought for, they are not going to allow Arabs to run their affairs.

Though bin Laden’s forces served alongside the Taliban’s for many years, there has long been tension between foreign jihadists and indigenous fighters dating back to the Soviet war. In addition to the jihadists’ reckless zealotry, they also displayed a condescension toward the locals’ uncultured ways and religious impurities. Whatever superiority they might have, al Qaeda is blamed for the ouster of the Taliban, who were content with Islamism in one country and hardly hostile to the West, including the US, as the Kazakhstan-Pakistan pipeline negotiations indicate.

Over the last few years, al Qaeda’s importance in the region has dropped significantly. They are presently far behind the numbers and skills of the Afghan Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban, Hizb-i Islami, and the Haqqani bands. Those groups no longer rely on al Qaeda for training or funding, perhaps as a result of distancing themselves from the haughty and reckless Arab guests.

Another cause for doubting an al Qaeda return to Afghanistan is that they cannot rebuild their bases or otherwise operate openly. American and to some extent Pakistani intelligence are hunting the al Qaeda leadership in the tribal agencies and have been successful in killing many second-tier leaders. Regardless of the government in Kabul, al Qaeda cannot operate openly. It is far safer where it is, in the tribal agencies.

The forces of al Qaeda would do well to remain in hiding in Pakistan, or better to leave the region. The US army reports that al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has been negligible for the last year. The Arab jihadists might well be leaving the region for Yemen, Somalia, Algeria, and Morocco, where their role will not be as small as it is now along the Af-Pak frontier.

Warnings of dire consequences following a US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan are not convincing. Indeed, the US will benefit from leaving. An Afghan pullout, along with the already mandated one from Iraq, would ease anti-western sentiment in the Islamic world and greatly weaken support for al Qaeda and kindred Islamist terrorist groups that thrive on the presence of foreign troops in the region. As paradoxical as it might appear to political leaders and to believers in the universal utility of might, a lower profile in the Islamic world would serve American interests and improve their national security. And of course Americans would benefit from suffering far fewer casualties in a distant and probably un-winnable war.

Elections and Real Politics in Afghanistan

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:52:58 -0700

It is a testament to the strength of our commitment to democracy that we Americans believe elections will solve the problems of a country – any country. This is a nice civics lesson but the lessons of history are otherwise. And it is not a sound principle of foreign policy. Elections in Afghanistan are unlikely to solve the country’s problems; they may even worsen things. In any event, other political processes are more important – we just haven’t realized it yet.

President Hamid Karzai, amid numerous allegations of fraud in August’s elections, has accepted a second-round runoff with Abdullah Abdullah. Domestic pressure for a second round was significant but it was pressure from the US and western bodies that forced Karzai to accede. Coming amid the Obama administration's debate on sending more troops, one might suspect a deal: Karzai sits for a second election in exchange for more US troops. Any such deal would be a bad one. Escalation should be assessed on its own merits, not on short-term gain. Furthermore, a deal paves the way for more deals: additional troop increases in exchange for what the Afghan government should be doing anyway – acting responsibly.

The runoff between Karzai and his principal opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, will not change anything in regard to the state’s efficacy. The winner will preside over a ramshackle apparatus fraught with corrupt and inept functionaries seeking to pull in as much money as they can while western troops are holding up their political system. The winner will not be in a better position to bargain with various tribes and people, build a fairer administrative system, and otherwise counter the rising influence of insurgent groups.

Many Afghans, even those who think little of Karzai, see the second round as the result of foreign meddling. Though this might elicit some sympathy for Karzai as he protests western interference, a stronger opposite response will weaken him. Anti-western sentiment will increase, as will already strong beliefs that the West is working to bring about Northern/Tajik control of the country. Insurgents have long played upon such beliefs, and their support in the South and East will rise.

A Karzai defeat in the runoff is unlikely though not impossible. A non-Pashtun turnout elevated by the prospect of unseating Karzai and a Pashtun turnout suppressed by insurgent threats, cynicism, and winter weather could give Abdullah the presidency. This might be welcomed in the West, but not in Afghanistan. Though of Pashtun and Tajik parents, Abdullah, by virtue of his prominence in the Northern Alliance and the Jamiat-i Islami party, is considered a Tajik – unacceptable to most Pashtuns. His election would galvanize Pashtun fears of a northern conspiracy and push the country toward a north-south conflict. Pakistan will share those conspiratorial views. It will detect the sinister hand of India’s intelligence wing and respond accordingly – in and out of Afghanistan.

The runoff election is unlikely to bring significant benefits to Afghanistan or the western effort there. It will only underscore the frailty, if not the almost uselessness, of the political framework hurriedly set up by politicians and consultants after the Taliban fled in 2001.

There is another political framework, one that Karzai has failed to deal competently with, one the West has only recently begun to appreciate – tribal parley. Significant political developments are already well under way through tribal parley, which builds consensus through dispute resolution, nationalist appeals, and suppression of warlordism. Thus far, in the contest of building consensus through tribal parley, the Taliban have a commanding lead.

Losing the War – in the Western Publics

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 20:24:43 -0700

The US and NATO have begun an ambitious counterinsurgency program in Afghanistan that places great importance on winning the support of the Afghan people. But there is a rarely-considered corollary in the counterinsurgency effort: Afghanistan must win the support of western publics. Thus far, Afghan politicians and officials and other power holders have been steadily losing western hearts and minds. The Afghans may soon face the withdrawal of western forces.

Support for the war has sagged badly in the United States, where military ventures are more admired than they are in Europe. Since last May, support for the war has fallen from fifty percent to thirty-nine percent; opposition has risen from forty-eight percent to fifty-eight percent. Eight percent of recent respondents thought the war was showing progress; twenty-six percent thought it was getting worse. Twenty-nine percent support sending more US troops; twenty-seven percent thought troop levels should remain the same and thirty-two percent favored decreasing troop levels.

Many in the public are reluctant to respect the oft-heard admonishment that present wars must not be compared to a previous one, yet comparisons are inevitable. The public sees a self-aggrandizing mandarin atop a corrupt and feckless government, a spineless military leaving the fighting to others, and a largely indifferent if not hostile population. Why, Americans are asking, should more of their soldiers be sent half way around the world to do a job that Afghans should be doing?

The administration’s statements on the war are strangely bereft of the confident and hortatory tones that any policy matter, foreign or domestic, usually enjoys. Congress shows little support for sending in more troops. General Petraeus, who pressed for his surge policy in public hearings and whose prestige rose with the turn of events in Iraq, is silent on the war to the east, even though he now oversees it.

Reversal of these trends is unlikely to come from other western political leaders, none of whom is especially supportive. Nor is it likely to come from events in the field. Counterinsurgencies are painfully slow. They often last ten or more years and do not have pivotal battles that bolster public opinion. Counterinsurgencies have only thousands of parleys, engineering projects, skirmishes, and roadside bombs – the Afghan insurgents’ weapon of choice today. The petty pace will wear on public support, and the higher casualties from the recent order to rein in air strikes will wear harder.

The revival of support in the West can only come from political events inside Afghanistan. The Afghan president must find a way to build an effective government, one capable of dealing with disparate peoples, especially in the Pashtun regions, and also capable of providing an attractive alternative to the insurgents. The Afghan army must become an effective organization that can work along with local populations and detach them from supporting the insurgents. The Afghan people themselves must build, in conjunction with counterinsurgency forces, intelligence networks and village militias to identify and wear down the insurgents.

Failing that, European countries will shake their heads at the war’s cost and begin to withdraw their troops within a year. The American public might be unlikely to support fighting and dying there much longer than that. Thus far, many Afghan political figures have behaved like black marketeers and con men in a devastated postwar country – grabbing as much as they can while they can. It is they who are losing the war.

Rethinking the Afghan Insurgency

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:24:00 -0700

A critical debate is underway to determine whether or not the US will send up to forty thousand more troops to Afghanistan. The debate is said to include a wide-range of opinion, but even at the top political and military levels, there isn’t profound understanding of insurgencies in general or the particular dynamics of the Afghan one.

The Afghan insurgency, we are repeatedly told, is based on intimidation and violence. This is true in parts of the country, but dubious in others. Indeed, seeing any insurgency as resting mainly on force is wrong and it will lead to wrong responses. Insurgencies develop when a non-government group builds rapport with at least parts of the populace. This was the case in Malaya, the Philippines, Algeria, and South Vietnam. And it is the case in Afghanistan.

Consider a few patterns:

Pashtun elders meet with western officers and accept development programs, yet too often they make only desultory efforts to fight insurgents. This is clear from numerous small engagements and glaringly so from attacks conducted by sizable insurgent forces such as those who assaulted US positions in Nuristan recently and in Kunar last year. Tribes are, among other things, intelligence networks, keeping watch and ward over their lands for trespassers, bandits, and enemies. The coalescence and deployment of large insurgent forces could not have gone undetected by herdsmen, traders, or hunters who traverse the district and report to elders. Something is amiss here.

The Pashtun tribes are vaunted warriors who repelled the Russians, British, Persians, and numerous lesser-known powers unwise enough to venture into their lands. Yet these same tribesmen are said to bow before a band of lightly-armed guerrillas. Elders have the authority, weapons, fighters, and local knowledge to mount formidable resistance, but they elect not to. Why is this?

The spread of the insurgency in recent years, according to many observers with local knowledge, is often based more on negotiation than on force. Insurgents cannot match the resources of western powers, but they are able to win local support in other ways. Taliban figures settle disputes in accordance with Islamic law, stand as opponents of northern/Tajik dominance, offer the prospect of fairer government, listen to local needs without the western assumption of superior knowledge, fight without the use of massive firepower, and represent the promise of restored Pashtun greatness. Most critically, they present themselves as an enduring, indigenous power adamantly opposed to the presence of transient, foreign ones.

The insurgents are more adept at negotiations and assurances than are the Kabul government or the western powers. Kabul’s preference for aggrandizement and the US’s ignorance of counterinsurgency have allowed the insurgents to win over large numbers of Pashtun people in the South and East. They have even been able to gain support from a few non-Pashtun groups in the North and West, in part by presenting them as an alternative to the foreigners who have overstayed whatever welcome they once had. An insurgency is in ways a debate, and thus far the insurgents’ arguments are more convincing. Pashtun elders vote with their sons by attaching local men to serve in the insurgent bands, which has helped the Taliban triple in size over the last two years.

What then of the troop surge in a country with an insurgency more entrenched than thought? More western troops in contested regions will almost certainly strengthen local beliefs and insurgent claims that US and NATO forces are another occupying force – a belief paradoxically supported by western assurances that they will stay on until the insurgents are defeated. More troops will step up the fighting, which will further alienate the support of locals who see westerners, not insurgents, as the cause of widespread destruction.

Several other questions must be central to the debate in Washington. Will the insurgents’ numbers and experience require far more western forces? Have the insurgents already consolidated in large parts of the country such that counterinsurgency is not feasible or will take a decade or more to work? Is the US public likely to support the war for another decade? What of European publics? Perhaps most importantly, can more US troops make up for the ineptitude and corruption of the Afghan army and state without becoming an occupying power?

~ ©2009 Brian M. Downing
Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

Dan Snyder In The Great Game

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:49:37 -0700

In a surprise move, the administration today named Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder to head up the war effort in Afghanistan. The former advertising moghul and renaissance man will assume full control immediately. He held a rare press conference in Ashburn, Virginia.

“With my Redskins on the way to victory I can give something back to my country by leading it to victory, too. Managerial skills are all the same,” Snyder insisted. “If you can run a successful telemarketing business like I did, you can win a war – it’s not that hard. And I’m going to do to Afghanistan what I’ve done to the Redskins.” The boisterous sports aficionados fell silent. They knew he could do it.

When asked about counterinsurgency, Snyder hesitated for a moment then replied, “It’s a lot like the counter-trey – the old reliable play John Riggins ran so well. We’ll run that counterinsurgency until the Cowbo . . . until the Taliban have had enough.”

The matter of garnering support from the Afghan people naturally arose and Snyder was ready for it. “Look, I know I won’t be popular there at first, but some of you might remember that I wasn’t very popular when I first bought the Redskins.” Several in the room nodded readily. “I’ll win over the hearts and minds of the Afghans just like I did the football fans here.”

One skeptical reporter, his press ticket crumpled in his fedora, asked how Snyder would get the US public to support his efforts so far away. “Rivalries!” he shot back. “Americans want to see the return of traditional rivalries. So I’m going to do everything I can to see that those great contests between India and Pakistan come back – to say nothing about those classic Iran-Taliban match-ups. Call me a sentimental fool, but I’m going to work on rekindling that old US-Russia rivalry we grew up on.”

He went on to outline his strategy. “Development – that’s what Afghanistan needs right now. The people there don’t need another irrigation system. More schools? Hell, I’m a dropout and I’ve got more money than Karzai does.” The audience listened in awe.

“Entertainment – that’s what Afghans want! They need to forget the tedious and thankless work of stuffing ballot boxes, harvesting poppies, and laying the same old ambushes week after week. That’s where my Six Flags Over Kabul comes in.” Knowing his cue, Jim Zorn undraped an elaborate drawing of a sprawling theme park. “Afghans are justly proud of all the foreigners that have come and gone over the years and they want to pay homage to the Greeks, Mongols, Persians, Russians, and British that helped to make Afghanistan what it is today. Americans will take their rightful place as number six on the list of those who have come to sunny Afghanistan, been charmed by its reticent natives, then left with lasting memories.”

“Do you plan on personally visiting Afghanistan?” asked another reporter, this one sporting a lengthy beard and colorful turban. “Why . . . no . . . not personally,” Snyder answered. “But in my stead I am sending Vinny Cerrato, who will meet with leaders of the Pashtun tribes.” Effusive applause and even a few cheers signaled warm approval of Snyder sending his right-hand man to Afghanistan. Cerrato strode buoyantly to the mike and stated, “I might just find a pretty good offensive coordinator over there.” In the back of the room, Redskin quarterback Jason Campbell sat stoically. Running back Clinton Portis asked what many there were wondering: “Isn’t that where you got the last four?”

On a related note, the Redskins denied reports that the team was dropping its controversial name and logo in favor of the more up-to-date Washington Mujahadin.

Copyright 2009 Brian M. Downing
Brian M. Downing is a political-military analyst who at the age of sixteen shook hands with Sonny Jurgensen. He (Downing, not Jurgensen) can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.

The Paradox of Financial Disorder

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 19:31:42 -0700

It’s been a year now since the collapse of the financial system, when venerable institutions crumbled and the world fell toward depression. Historically, economic calamities have ushered in political and economic changes, often jarring ones – some for the better, others not. The present calamity seems to be heading us for a raw deal of a smaller and more deeply entrenched oligarchy.

A year ago, the financial sector was already concentrated. The previous decade or so had seen Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Countrywide, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, and a handful of others, devour rivals. Presidents and congresses of both parties put aside longstanding bipartisan concerns over concentrated economic power, and simply looked on at centralization. Why would they do otherwise? Generous inducements were coming into the re-election coffers of both parties, and that certainly transcends statesmanship and foresight. It was a good time to be on Capitol Hill back then. It was an even better time to be on Wall Street.

But housing prices tumbled, endangering mortgage businesses and banks. Then other institutions that had built too many operations and investments on the dubious ground of various forms of debt, began to fall apart. Today far fewer significant financial institutions dominate the sector. Teddy Roosevelt and Bob La Follette would issue prompt marching orders. Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke are at parade rest.

Paradoxically, and in partial defense of inattentive policy makers, it might not be advisable to do any trust bustin’ just now. Banks are only now emerging from the “liquidity trap” and cautiously putting money out into the circular flow in the form of loans. Even the prospect of vigorous enforcement of antitrust laws would reduce lending once more, roil world markets, and lead to even greater unemployment.

The same can be said of thorough prosecution of those who engaged in criminal activity in the financial sector over the previous decade or so – and the dons know it. Prosecutions, and anti-trust campaigns as well, would lead to strategic restrictions of lending, which would forestall any economic recovery we might have in the near future.

Well then, an anti-trust campaign and criminal prosecutions will have to wait, but they will surely come in a year or so.

There’s room for doubt.

Public outrage was quite high only a few months ago, but it’s dwindled to manageable levels. The captains of finance are poised to take credit for whatever recovery we are fortunate to have and to argue that it’s best to leave things alone just now. Listen for it on a radio station near you. And we can be certain that a small but well-planned part of the sector’s injection into the circular flow has taken the form of calculated contributions to the campaigns of key politicians, ones with responsibility for . . . oh, you know which committees. That’s capitolism.

About fifty years ago, the maverick sociologist C Wright Mills warned of a “power elite” coming to dominate public life. He was widely scoffed at then, and generally dismissed as having greatly overstated his case. Perhaps we should dust off our old copies of Mills, if only to understand what’s been going on over previous decades.

Democracy in Afghanistan

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:07:45 -0700

Hamid Karzai is well on his way to winning over fifty percent of the vote, guaranteeing him a second term as president of Afghanistan. Though captious rivals are crying foul, several prominent Americans gave the elections a hearty thumbs-up at a recent gathering in a posh Kabul bunker.

Katherine Harris began the evening by certifying the election. “Everything was on the up-and-up,” she announced as she stood next to President Harzai. “It was as fair and honest as any election we’ve had in Florida!” she exclaimed pridefully. When asked why Patrick Buchanan had done so well in several districts of Paktia and Wardak, she replied, “Irish candidates always do well there.”

As if on cue, Richard J. Daley, the late mayor of Chicago and everyone’s favorite Mick, came forward. Hizzoner seconded Ms Harris’s assessment and announced plans for a new highway connecting Kabul with some place or another. No one really knew where, and amid the light-heartedness, no one really cared. “The key thing is that DynCorp and Blackwater will be replaced by upright Irish and Polish contractors impartially selected by my associates,” Da Mayor noted. As for the insurgency, Daley said that large numbers of troops weren’t needed: “It’s nothing my police force couldn’t handle in short order.”

Next came Abe Fortas, the venerable grey eminence of politics who helped young Lyndon Johnson elide the pettifogging niceties of Texas electoral law and go on to guide American foreign policy so dexterously. He arrived in a truck packed with plastic containers stuffed with papers, and quipped, “Well, it looks like we didn’t need Jim Wells County after all!” When the gathering recovered from the levity, President Karzai announced that Fortas would head the Afghan Supreme Court.

Vito Corleone, a bit frail from a recent accident at a Kabul orange stand, spoke on the ongoing unpleasantness in the South and the East. His response to a question about a tentative deal with two prominent Pashtun families and a Turkmen warlord, moved many at the proceedings. “How did it ever come to this? I swear – on the souls of my grandchildren – that I will not be the one to break the peace.” All present fought back tears as they stood and applauded.

The surprise of the evening came when Jimmy Hoffa strode up to the mike. “Sorry I dropped out of sight like that,” he told the stunned crowd. “I just got fed up with the pressures of the Teamsters and I retired to Helmand to live the life of a gentleman farmer. You have no idea how rewarding that can be. Look, I know a crooked election when I see one and this one was as above-board as any I’ve been involved in.” Mr Hoffa confirmed that he had helped restore truck traffic carrying NATO supplies through the Khyber Pass: “The Taliban are willing to deal. That’s what the big shots in the suits don’t realize. One hand washes the other, whether it’s Detroit or Kandahar.” Hoffa hinted at plans to work again with Meyer Lansky to build several casinos along the Pakistani frontier.

Shorter but no less buoyant appearances were made by Boss Tweed, Arnold Rothstein, Marion Barry, Joseph P. Kennedy, John Mitchell, Tom Pendergast, James Gettys, James Traficant, Billy Sol Estes, Big Bill Thompson, Madame Nhu, Hyman Roth, and Cotton Ed Smith from the great state of South Carolina. Bernie Madoff was unable to attend but was unmistakably there in spirit. Indeed, the Madoff spirit pervades the government in Kabul.

Then it was President Karzai’s turn at the podium. He graciously thanked those who had come. “I am humbled by the presence of so many who have done so much to bring democracy to their people. I really couldn’t have done any of this without the precedents that you established.” The dignitaries spoke as one in averring that what Karzai had done was well beyond anything they even thought possible.

Outside the bunker, though audible inside, were the sounds of festivities. Powerful firecrackers boomed throughout Kabul, and countless bottle rockets arced gracefully across the night sky – augurs of coming change. Afghans were celebrating the birth of their democracy the same way Americans celebrate the birth of theirs.

Dissemblers in the Assembly

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:22:24 -0700

While watching the president’s address to congress last week, a startling revelation hit me. It wasn’t the sharp divisiveness, echoic though it was of a congress in, say, 1860. Nor was it that Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi wore similar red outfits. That could be settled in the Burr-Hamilton tradition. Nor was it that Joe Wilson behaved like a boozy hockey fan angered by a high-sticking call. I was aghast at the number of toupées I saw in the members of congress.

It wasn’t half, a third, or even a quarter. But the occasional camera sweep of the crowd showed more than a few men with an ungainly clump of someone else’s hair sitting ungraciously atop an obviously barren pate.

Flashback
Reporter: Is that real hair on your head?

John Wayne: It’s real. . . . It's not mine, but it's real.

What’s wrong with toupées? Surely wearing a rug betokens a troubling combination of insecurity and vanity – the yin and yang of irresponsibility. And we entrust such men to govern the nation’s trade, banking, foreign policy, intelligence services, and what have you? Surely oscillating back and forth between insecurity and vanity causes bouts of dissociation and perhaps even soothing illusions of honesty and rapturous hallucinations of doing the people’s will. At least John Wayne’s self-deceptions were confined to having served at the Alamo and on remote cavalry outposts.

It gets worse.

“Not possible!”

I’m pretty sure I saw one or two congressmen with comb-overs.

“GASP!!!”

The comb-over (a term of derision made banal by long usage?) entails deliberately growing the hair on one side of the head to an aberrant length relative to other regions, then, presumably out of sight in the privacy of one’s bathroom, flipping the hair over the dome and securing it with a powerful adhesive made from space program byproducts – or else staying home on windy days. The latter-day Narcissus gazes in wonder at his reflection, takes in some shimmering mirage of youth and vitality and honor, then strides out into the world, all the while believing that no one suspects what lies beneath.

This, I’m afraid, goes well beyond insecurity and vanity and plunges headlong (how else?) into the murky depths of self-delusion. The comb-overist’s capacity for self-deception knows no bounds. Such men should never be entrusted with any matter more serious than choosing a brand of paper towel. Psychology offers no prospect of cure yet they are among us in all walks of life, some even strutting and preening on the ship of state when the wind is down.

Shiver my timbers.

I regret to report that one such delusional comb-overist reached high office in the foreign policy machinery of the previous administration. His name was Richard Perle and I invite readers to search the web for photographs of him and for fuller treatment of his ideas. As absurd as it may sound, he became convinced that if US troops invaded an Arab country – oh, say Iraq – they would be greeted as liberators and, in just a few months, leave a thriving democracy behind as they marched into the next victim of American magnanimity – oh, say Iran.

I swear to you, he really believed this. He even spoke in public about it.

President Eisenhower would never have listened to the plan. Ike was bald and never felt any need to hide it with a toupée or comb-over. Coincidence? You decide.

US National Security, Eight Years On

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 07:27:57 -0700

The September 11th attacks led to various responses in the American public, shock and outrage the most immediate. Subsequent polling data showed another response. Trust in government rose sharply and immediately – a curious phenomenon, for 9/11 could be readily seen as resulting from colossal government failures. The eighth anniversary should be a time of solemn remembrance, but not of unreflective support. It should be a time of assessing the ensuing wars and the competence of national security institutions.

Military
Initial campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq were truly remarkable and will be benchmarks for future conventional operations. Special forces and airpower worked alongside Northern Alliance fighters to drive out Taliban and al Qaeda troops in short order. In early 2003, the military plunged into Iraq and seized Baghdad in a manner that astonished all.

Soon thereafter, however, insurgencies developed. The military was slow to identify the nature of the fighting as an insurgency, and in any case acquiesced to characterizations of the fighters as only a few “dead-enders” – a judgment made by political hands in Washington with no military background or regional expertise. The military responded to the insurgencies with conventional methods of meeting force with force and calling in air power – quite effective in conventional warfare in which the military had long trained, but counterproductive against insurgencies.

Though colonels and generals who had been platoon and company commanders during the Vietnam War made the military of today, they refused to make counterinsurgency principles basic parts of its doctrines and training. Most knew that such principles had had at least some success in Southeast Asia when put to use by special forces and marines, but the post-Vietnam military reasoned that proficiency in counterinsurgency would increase the likelihood that politicians would send them off into another insurgency, which would again gravely damage the military’s cohesion and prestige – evidence that armies are not always designed to fight the previous war.

The likelihood of insurgencies developing in Afghanistan and Iraq was clear to most military analysts with even a basic understanding of those countries, and their subsequent development was apparent early on. Nonetheless, counterinsurgency principles were put into operation only slowly and belatedly. They might have been put into play too late in Afghanistan.

Intelligence
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began as a result of intelligence failures regarding al Qaeda and its determination to attack inside the US – this, even after an attempt to smuggle explosives into the country was discovered in December of 1999. Subsequent intelligence assessments have done nothing to enhance the luster of the intelligence community.

Studies of potential adverse consequences to a US presence in Afghanistan or Iraq were either inadequately developed or insufficiently disseminated to policy makers and congressional oversight committees, apparent though many such consequences were. Instead, fierce insurgencies developed, al Qaeda’s support in the Islamic world and Europe has gone up, and Iranian influence in the region has grown.

The US intelligence community is confused by the Middle East and has been since it concluded some thirty years ago that the mass movements that ousted the Shah had been orchestrated by Soviet intelligence – a preposterous assessment born of Cold War anxiety and institutional group think.

US intelligence is balefully influenced by pressures from the White House and by internal politics. It was silent when ambiguities about Saddam Hussein’s WMDs were neatly redacted by neo-conservative appointees and when the same people overstated the role of foreign powers in the Iraqi insurgency. Perhaps most importantly now, the status of Iran’s nuclear program is “determined” more by antagonistic cliques than by thoughtful analysts.

Government
The September 11th attacks gave the Bush administration the opening to embark upon an ambitious program of transforming countries of the Middle East into western-style democracies, amenable to liberal economics and non-threatening to allies. The ambitious agenda would have remained in think tanks and lobbies along with plans for interplanetary colonization, but 9/11 brought it to the Pentagon and then to CENTCOM.

The impracticality of the program is clearer with each passing year, but amid the sense of mission and might that 9/11 brought – in the administration and the public as well – it seemed both the decent and practical thing to do. Nonetheless, the administration felt the need to redact irksome intelligence reports, deleting ambiguities and nuances on WMDs in Iraq, the presence of al Qaeda in Iraq and Iran, and the eagerness of people in the Middle East to be liberated.

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, special forces and intelligence personnel – critical elements in stabilization and counterinsurgency efforts – were withdrawn for seemingly more useful service in Iraq. Many critical projects such as building the Afghan army were left to private contractors whose results were as invisible as the hand that guided them. Consequently, the Afghan army is poorly trained, unmotivated, and ineffectual against the Taliban. This has set the stage for sending in more and more US troops.

The administration rebuffed Iranian overtures for a rapprochement that would have proved beneficial in the war on terror, preferring instead to keep regime change there on the agenda. Relations worsened and cooperation on stabilizing post-invasion Iraq was delayed and plagued by mistrust.

Developing the government of Hamid Karzai was highly limited, inconsistent as it was with the priorities of the Bush administration in Iraq, uncomfortably resonant as it was with the ill-fated “nation-building” of the Clinton administration in Somalia. The vacuum has been gradually filled by the resurgent Taliban ever since. They now control over one-third of the country and may be so ensconced as to make the recently launched counterinsurgency campaign a hundred billion bucks short and six years late.

National Security
Once embarked upon, wars are beclouded by stirring exaltations of honor, pithy quotes from bold commanders of yesteryear, partisan entreaties and condemnations, and various emotional tides sweeping the public. Amid so much cant and rhetoric the original purpose of the war can be lost. The first casualty is said to be the truth; the second might well be remembering that wars should increase national security.

The war aimed to destroy al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that sought to harm American citizens in and out of the United States. The initial campaign in Afghanistan drove al Qaeda across the frontier where it has enjoyed sanctuary in the tribal areas of Pakistan. However, the lengthy US presence in Afghanistan and the invasion of Iraq have bolstered support for Islamist militancy throughout the Middle East and South Asia. The US and other nations have been reasonably successful in interrupting communications and money transfers between al Qaeda along the Afghan-Pakistani frontier, but al Qaeda has grown from a small organization to a widespread social movement that no longer needs the old al Qaeda leadership.

The Islamic world is even more disposed to see the United States as hostile to their religion and bent on dominating the region. The US has weakened the governments of generally supportive countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia by augmenting domestic anger over their rulers’ linkage to US meddling. The long-term possibilities are staggering and greatly harmful to American foreign policy objectives.

Long-time allies are questioning the judgment of so tactless a power. Many Sunni Arab states saw Saddam Hussein as a vicious tyrant but a useful buttress against Iran. His ouster upset the security situation in the Gulf region. NATO allies must contend with homegrown terror from Arabs in the diaspora of Western Europe, and are increasingly restive over how badly managed post-Taliban Afghanistan is and the growing insurgency there.

As part of the “axis of evil,” Iran was very much a target of US plans. But the wars have removed two enemies of Iran (Saddam and the Taliban) and substantially increased Iranian influence in the region. Leaders and parties close to Iran have come to control the Iraqi government, as was predictable in a country with a Shia majority and political movements long tied to Iran. In Afghanistan, Iranian influence in western provinces has grown, though in a manner that has probably brought more stability than found in other parts of the country. And throughout the Middle East, Iran has been able to play to the Arab street by pointing out the support of Arab rulers for the United States.

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have ensnarled the military in long conflicts that have cost the lives of thousands of young Americans and inched the country toward fiscal calamity. In so doing, they have also weakened American security. Stirring exaltations and pithy quotes can do nothing to alter that.

Incivility in Political Life, Today and Tomorrow

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 20:49:26 -0700

Conservative attacks on President Obama and his agenda are fierce and seemingly everywhere, especially on talk radio. The president’s healthcare program is alleged to contain provisions for government bureaus to decide who lives and who dies. His fiscal policies are said to have created or at least profoundly worsened the economic situation. Claims are leveled that the national debt is mainly his responsibility. And of course we are on the brink of fascism – their word, not my exaggeration. I just spell it right for them.

In recent elections the GOP has lost both Houses and the White House, and hysteria has set in. Facing marginality, it’s launched attacks that are loud, boorish, and often with little if any basis in reality. The GOP emerged from the ashes of the Whig party; it may be on the same path to self-immolation. Ordinarily something heading for self-destruction should be left alone, but the GOP is damaging the nation as well.

The GOP plan is to thoroughly discredit the Democrats and pave the way for big wins in Congress in 2010. History is on their side: the party out of power usually picks up more than a few seats in midterm elections. But the GOP plans may gang agley, as they aft do. Their shots are thus far not helping their cause. Statistics show declines in the president’s approval rating and also in trust in the Democrats, but they do not show increases in support for the GOP.

The Republicans appear increasingly off-putting to many in the public, and without a leader to provide adult supervision, the party will be a difficult sell to large parts of the public. The GOP is becoming seen, especially by younger voters, as the party of clods and louts. (Rockefeller Republicans at least knew good gin, enjoyed Puccini, and might have read Reinhold Niebuhr but never John Hagee.) Fewer middle-class people will wish to be associated with the present-day GOP, not by membership, not by financial support, not by electoral support. Many will turn away from politics, seeing it akin to professional wrestling but without the tongue-in-cheek quality of Vince McMahon.

New and disaffected voters might also shift to a third party, possibly one further to the right than the GOP, if the adults regain control of the party and this dismays the others. Alternately, a different kind of third party might emerge, one drawing support from those discontented with the stale packaging and hackneyed salesmanship of both major parties. They might find the left-right spectrum of politics to be archaic, lifeless, and all too convenient for the duopoly. A new movement could build upon popular discontent with the duopoly’s support for free trade and global military presence, and its blithe ignorance of the impending debt crisis and the need for an industrial policy that will revitalize the middle class.

Another possibility occurs – one whose denouement would take far longer to come about. The anger, incivility, and cynicism, which are increasing in scope and intensity on both sides, might someday prove to be part of a political dynamic more ominous than anything we’ve seen in recent memory.

Democracy and Disorder in Afghanistan

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 06:28:14 -0700

Elections took place in Afghanistan last week amid a spate of Taliban violence and a dearth of public optimism. Few observers in or out of the country expect meaningful change to come, whether Mr Karzai or Mr Abdullah or another wins. The results might not be known for months, but clearly someone must find a way to govern the country. Failure would be disastrous for Afghanistan.

In the almost eight years since the Taliban was driven from the country, politicians, warlords, and tribal elders have failed to build any semblance of national government. President Karzai’s efforts have aimed mainly at securing his personal power, which alienated many tribes in the South and built sympathy for the Taliban. Corruption dominates most spheres of life, including the police and army, which are known to make separate peaces with the Taliban.

With interest in Iraq in decline and recession a reluctantly accepted part of life, Americans are looking more at Afghanistan, and they do not like what they see. European publics, less admiring of military adventures than their American peers, are even more circumspect. Images of patrol after patrol, cynical or unctuous elders treating with western officers, and feckless politicians in the capital are not winning support back in western countries. The Kabul government must win hearts and minds in the West as surely as the counterinsurgency program must win them in Afghanistan. Failing that, official requests for troop increases will be countered by public calls for withdrawal.

Political failure in Kabul might also lead to a broader conflict in Afghanistan. Should the US and NATO withdraw, the insurgency will lose many fighters who serve mainly to oust foreign occupiers, but they will consolidate among the Pashtun tribes of the South and East. This will greatly strengthen concern in Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara peoples of the North and Center, who suffered tremendously under the Taliban and are loth to accept another period of their rough hand.

Warlords such as the Tajik Mohammed Fahim and the Uzbek Abdul Rashid Dostum have pledged support to Karzai but, wary of another danger from the Pashtun, have retained militias. And their forces are likely more able than the Afghan National Army. The Northern people will have the support of Russia, India, and Iran, all of whom wish to contain Islamist militancy, all of whom are willing to fight to the last Afghan.

Fear of a US/NATO withdrawal and the prospect of a larger war should lend resolve to the politicians in Kabul and the various local power holders with whom they must build a state and military. A ready though not entirely promising analogy might be the reforms that South Vietnam was able to push through once the US began to pull out of the country, belated and ultimately ineffectual though these reforms were.

Thus far after Thursday’s election, the auguries are not promising and dire events must be at least considered. Evidence of wide-scale vote fraud is surfacing and the Tajik candidate, Abdullah Abdullah, is crying foul. Despite the best efforts of US officials to contain the dispute, Kabul might soon see the turmoil that Tehran just stifled, though comparisons might bring some doubt. The Iranian elections took place amid considerable optimism regarding the prospects of change. The Afghan elections took place amid widespread cynicism. Furthermore, Kabul lacks the numbers of urban middle-class members and students that took to the streets of Tehran.

Nonetheless, protracted fighting, even by modest numbers of spirited demonstrators – augmented by sympathetic Taliban attacks in and out of Kabul – could prove disastrous to the feeble Karzai government, regardless of the truth of claims of fraud. Karzai has less popular support than Ahmadinejad has. He has no equivalent of the Republican Guard or Basij militia to suppress protest, though by the same token, there is little likelihood of the Afghan National Army bringing order through a coup. This leaves two forces capable of reestablishing order in the event of turmoil – the militias of Northern warlords and the battalions of the US and NATO.

Islamist Terrorism, Past and Present

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:28:34 -0700

A review of Marc Sageman, Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.

In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, we were inundated by hysterical books which purported to give serious analysis of al Qaeda but which instead only added to our confusion – and also to our injudicious responses ever since. Leaderless Jihad was not published until well after the attacks and that is one of the reasons it is perhaps the most thoughtful book on al Qaeda and the social movement associated with it.

Though a psychiatrist, Sageman rejects a psychological approach to understanding terrorists. (A sign of an independent mind, this.) After going through his database of jihadists, he finds no personalty type or traumatic event that makes people heed the call to jihad. Nor does he see social context such as poverty to be helpful. Any such context is hopelessly vague and cannot explain why so many millions of people living in that context do not become terrorists.

Instead, he calls our attention to a middle ground between micro and macro explanations – social networks. It is within networks of émigrés from a particular locale, student groups, mosques, and internet communities that young men and increasingly young women, become jihadists. And it is these networks that provide fighters and plan and execute acts of terror.

His profile of jihadists is intriguing and often counterintuitive. They are not poor. They are most often from middle-class backgrounds, though the trend since the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 is toward poorer origins. They are not deeply religious. Indeed, many had relatively secular upbringings. As for the madrassa students we see swaying rhythmically as they recite the Koran, he notes that they tend to stay in their locale or perhaps go off to fight for the Taliban, who though militants, are not usually terrorists. Jihadists are not failures. Many have education and responsibilities to colleagues and families. Nor do they typically have criminal backgrounds, though there is an increasing trend toward criminal activity as fledgling terrorists get money for their attacks however they can. Inasmuch as the funds were once supplied by al Qaeda contacts, this suggests that the West has been successful in disrupting money flows.

So, jihadism is not based on psychological problems, social context, religiousness, or ignorance. Jihadism, Sageman finds, is based on moral outrage at injustices heaped upon fellow Muslims, chiefly in Palestine, Bosnia, Chechnya, and more recently, Iraq. Significantly, the initial US invasion of Afghanistan did not elicit outrage among Muslims, but the invasion of Iraq two years later, did.

Terrorist attacks today rarely come from foreign jihadists infiltrating a western country to attack, as with the September 11th events. The danger is more with homegrown terrorists, as attacks in Britain and Spain indicate. Europe faces more such terrorists than the US does – and for reasons that Sageman articulates. After the widespread death and destruction of the Second World War, Europeans brought in large numbers of Muslims (and other minorities) from their colonies to help rebuild. Foreign workers, many from Arab countries of North Africa, were unable to assimilate into European societies even after decades, and instead lived in urban ghettoes, generally disliked by the surrounding people. The US had no such postwar immigration; Muslims coming into the US are usually middle class if not professional; and most see the US as offering greater acceptance and advancement. For them, the American Dream is both attractive and attainable.

What to do about Islamist terrorism? Sageman argues that our military responses were wrongheaded. They increase moral outrage, encourage recruits for terror networks, and make jihadists into romantic figures. Instead, networks in the West and the Islamic world should be fought by intelligence and police work followed by non-sensationalized trials that present defendants simply as criminals, not as agents of an epochal, global movement. Western societies should work to reduce prejudice and arbitrariness directed against Muslims in the diaspora. And finally, the author recommends a good faith effort to resolve the Palestinian issue, which lies at the center of much of Islamist outrage, in and out of the Middle East.

Succession and the Future of the Pakistani Taliban

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 06:45:28 -0700

Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), reportedly has been killed by a US drone strike in S. Waziristan. Aides have claimed he is not dead, but a more recent claim that he is “gravely ill” is probably backtracking and foreshadowing an announcement of his death, doubtless due to natural causes so as to admit no success for the United States and Pakistan – the latter privately supportive of the drone attacks. Mehsud’s death is certainly in some sense a victory for the US and Pakistan, but unfolding dynamics, unclear though they presently are, may not be entirely beneficial to the US.

Baitullah Mehsud learned his craft in the Afghan Taliban in the 90s and through his charisma and aggressiveness was able to build the TTP into a credible insurgent force that threatened US/NATO supply lines through the Khyber Pass and even dared to strike into the Punjab. His death leads to questions about succession – always a difficult matter on the death of a charismatic figure atop a non-routinized movement. This source of instability within the TTP was clear on Mehsud’s death and recent events have done nothing to disabuse observers of this view. His lieutenants are denying his death to buy time to promote themselves, and perhaps seeking to settle matters by killing rivals – a common enough and rather decisive technique. This presents the possibility of protracted fighting between TTP factions – a boon for Washington and Islamabad.

The recent success of drone attacks on al Qaeda, Taliban, and TTP leaders has fueled paranoia within those movements. Leaders, reasonably enough, suspect insiders are collaborating in the attacks or that US special forces enjoy support in the hills of the tribal agencies. This atmosphere augments mistrust and rivalry and makes succession a more contentious effort, if not a futile one.

The deaths of the leader and his top lieutenants, if true, present the possibility of a power vacuum in which the elders of the Mehsud tribe can reassert authority over the young men of S. Waziristan. It was chronic war that weakened their hold over those who came to see more honor and glory in fighting than in herding. Perhaps chronic war with the nightmarish addition of sudden extirpation from unseen aircraft will lead to greater control over the young men of the tribal agencies, who themselves are being worn down by years of fighting.

Other dynamics are less auspicious for the US/NATO efforts in the region. The new TTP leader might well lead his efforts with more craft and subtlety than did Mehsud, who like many guerrilla leaders enjoyed an image beyond his capability. He made one if not two serious blunders in the last year.

First, his drive into the Punjab earlier this year, which violated a pact with the the Pakistani government that gave him virtual autonomy in parts of the North-West Frontier Provinces and a free hand to fight the West in Afghanistan, managed to achieve something that no one in Pakistani politics has been able to do in decades – unite generals, politicians, and public. Most Pakistanis saw the TTP attack as a serious danger and supported the counterattack into Swat – this at a time when society seemed to be nearing anarchy. By most accounts, the TTP was driven back with considerable losses.

Second, his forays out of S. Waziristan to interdict US/NATO supplies incurred the wrath of neighboring tribes by violating boundaries and endangering sources of revenue based on truck traffic. The government in recent months has been able to enlist the support of tribal militias to fight the Mehsuds, much as the British did in Kipling’s day. Baitullah Mehsud had painted himself into a small corner of the country he hoped to control.

A more adroit successor might be able to restore the pact between the state and the TTP that Mehsud wrecked. This would enable the TTP to regenerate in its tribal lands and continue its anti-western campaigns in Afghanistan. The state, for its part, would be able to devote attention to the pressing refugee problem in Swat, forego a costly and potentially destabilizing offensive in S. Waziristan, and concentrate on relations with other Islamist groups who play important roles in strategic plans vis-a-vis India.

The absence of a successor or reassertion of tribal authority over the TTP rank and file could have adverse effects. Fighters may fall away from their commanders and resort to banditry to make a living, as did many mujahadin after the Soviet Union left Afghanistan. Alternately, many will file north and serve with the Afghan Taliban, al Qaeda, or Hizb-i Islami. Indeed, the warrior is more prized than the herdsman on both sides of the Durand Line.

Escalation and Reappraisal in Afghanistan

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 06:55:03 -0700

The recent campaign in Helmand province, in southern Afghanistan, is the first phase of a far-reaching counterinsurgency program. Western and Afghan troops will clear Taliban fighters from villages and later whole districts, then begin a seemingly simple but actually arduous process of building local military/intelligence forces and delivering medical, construction, and veterinary services to the villages. The process is intended to be repeated in other parts of the country, mainly the South and East. Many think the difficult program will require still more troops.

Troop Requirements
Though the counterinsurgency program calls for Afghan military and government personnel to play substantial roles, especially once the Taliban are driven out, this is unlikely. The Afghan army and state are not yet coherent, reliable institutions; both are corrupt and divided along ethnic lines. Neither will be able to perform a substantial role in the counterinsurgency in the near future.

This means much of the program in Helmand to be done by US and NATO personnel, and this will present difficulty in allocating forces to expand the counterinsurgency into other provinces. The Taliban will exacerbate personnel shortcomings in the counterinsurgency program by interdicting supplies, attacking small outposts, and assassinating locals deemed collaborators. Recent trends suggest that IEDs and suicide bombers will be the weapons of choice.

The demands of the Helmand campaign, the Taliban response, and plans to extend counterinsurgency into Kandahar, Paktia, Kunar, and other provinces in the South and East will present pressures for the Pentagon to call for more troops. Resonant as though these calls may be on American sensibilities to the dynamics of a previous guerrilla war, they will have forceful arguments behind them – perhaps strong enough to prevent a reappraisal of the strategic justifications for the war, however appropriate one might be.

First, advocates of a deepening commitment will point to events in Iraq, where counterinsurgency doctrines and a troop surge are thought to have effected the volte-face of many Sunni insurgents. Whatever the effect of counterinsurgency was there, it has attained a talismanic quality in the public and among political and military elites. The US, they believe, now has the tools to defeat insurgencies.

Second, advocates will argue that more troops will be essential to consolidate the hard-fought gains in Helmand and to build upon them in other provinces. Arguments will be phrased to convey that not sending more troops will mean that so many had died in vain and other emotional pleas that have historically found support in the public.

Finally, personnel for a surge in Afghanistan might not be as difficult to find as thought. The status of forces agreement governing American forces in Iraq calls for all US troops to be out by the end of 2011. This will allow many if not most of the 130,000 troops presently there to be sent to Afghanistan over the next two years (possibly to replace some flagging NATO commitments), without presenting the strains on manpower that the Pentagon has been facing over the last few years.

Helmand As Test Case, Not Phase One
The counterinsurgency program in Afghanistan is based on elaborate plans drawn up by hundreds of officials in Kabul, Tampa, Langley, and the Pentagon. The ongoing Helmand campaign is the first phase of that elaborate program. The military almost certainly sees the campaign as well planned and bound to succeed. Confidence is an essential part of military culture.

The Helmand campaign might be more usefully looked upon, not as a first phase of a larger counterinsurgency program, but as a test case of the program’s likelihood of success. Militaries, governments, and publics alike might ask, Are there viable indigenous military and intelligence forces in place? Are the Afghan state and military becoming more professional and effective? Are the tribes of Helmand shifting support to the Kabul government? Are the Taliban forces losing fighters, especially from local part-timers? Are districts becoming more secure? Unless reliable, positive answers are found to these questions, troop increases might simply be raising the stakes in a losing effort.

But who will assess the success or failure of operations in Helmand? Inasmuch as the US army seems to have principal control over the counterinsurgency program, it will likely be the judge. Reports will come up from junior and field-grade officers out in the villages and districts. to be assessed by higher-ups. This presents problems as bureaucracies are not reliable judges of their own programs. Reports reaching the Pentagon on the viability of the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) were quite optimistic about the professionalization, cohesion, and efficacy of ARVN units. But anyone familiar with operations in Laos and elsewhere would know that outside of a few units, the ARVN was plagued by widespread corruption, poor leadership, and weak cohesion.

Few US officers will report to their superiors that their program is not working. If they did, even fewer colonels would send the reports upstream, unredacted. Non-military bureaus such as the CIA and State Department will play important roles in the counterinsurgency and assessing its merits, but they too are subject to institutional pressures.

There will likely be formidable pressure to stay the course and deploy more US troops into the effort. The American public is generally supportive of the war, which it sees as more worthwhile and defensible than the war in Iraq. Support for the war will likely weaken as casualties mount with the new operations, but the deep recession is focusing a great deal of attention on domestic matters and since the end of conscription, few Americans know anyone in the military.

A survey of senior figures on the administration’s foreign policy team will not reveal many with deep knowledge of world affairs, military matters, or Central Asia. Most are politicians from a political party that, fairly or not, is vulnerable to charges of being “weak on defense,” which many fear could escalate into “Who lost Afghanistan?” Few of them will have the experience or fortitude to press for disengagement.

A notable exception is Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – a holdover from the previous administration, whose views on the country’s over-reliance on the military in foreign policy and on the Pentagon’s fixation on big-ticket weapon systems have been troubling to some but encouraging to others. He has recently noted that public support for the war will begin to wane in about a year and that signs of progress are essential to sustain public support – a statement that might reflect his unease with the war, and perhaps the president’s as well.

Gates will be critical in assessing the war and in pressing a case within the administration for expanding or reducing the effort, as was a recently-deceased former secretary of defense.

~ ©2009 Asia Times
Brian M. Downing is the author of several works of political and military history, including The Military Revolution and Political Change and The Paths of Glory: War and Social Change in America from the Great War to Vietnam. He can be reached at brianmdowning@gmail.com.