Robert Kaplan describes the logic for negotiating with the Taliban in order to “make progress and find an exit strategy” in Afghanistan. But halfway through the article the reader will come to the realization that Kaplan isn’t talking about the War in Afghanistan at all, but about something much larger: Pakistan, India, Pashtunistan, the Great Game. The discussion is about the Taliban only in the sense that when you talk about a dog, it necessarily includes the tail. Kaplan places the origins of the Taliban in Islamabad — and the region.
Remember, it wasn’t radicals burrowed deep within the ISI who made the decision to help bring the Taliban to power in the mid-1990s: it was the democratically elected government of the western-educated Benazir Bhutto who did that, on the theory that the Taliban would help bring stability to Afghanistan. This history indicates the degree to which talking to the Taliban has broad support within the Pakistani political establishment.
The Pakistani military and political establishment both view Afghanistan through the lens of their conflict with India. When they look to the west they envision an “Islamistan” of Afghanistan and other Central Asian countries with which to face off against Hindu-dominated India to Pakistan’s east. Afghan President Hamid Karzai, with his pro-western and pro-Indian tendencies, gets in the way of this Pakistani vision. But even if Pakistan were to come to terms with Karzai, it would still need to have lines of contact with all Afghan groups, including the Taliban….
Sugata Bose, a history professor at Harvard, in 2003 described the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier area as “historically no frontier at all,” but the very “heart” of an “Indo-Persian and Indo-Islamic economic, cultural, and political domain that had straddled Afghanistan and Punjab for two millennia.” The fact, which we all keep repeating, that there is no solution for Afghanistan without a solution for Pakistan, is itself an indication of the extent to which both countries are joined. This makes it even more crucial for the ISI to maintain contacts and highly developed networks with all principle Afghani political and guerrilla groups.
You can see where this is going. The idea is to resolve The War in Afghanistan in the framework of some grander regional bargain which will ’suck the life’ out of radical groups like al-Qaeda. Where have we seen this before? Veterans of the Bush Administration, who were reviled for accepting the doctrine that terrorism was largely state-supported or state-enabled, may now be watching a revival of their doctrine under a new brand name: shut down the state support for terror with diplomacy and voila! once you mop up the puddle it won’t come back. Except this time, the job is going to be accomplished not by a demonstration of military action, but a still undetermined combination of demonstrations of resolve and diplomacy. But since the Bush doctrine was never wholly reliant on arms and never completely without diplomacy, what this probably means is that the Obama administration simply means to alter the proportions between these two ingredients. They are going to get their chance to try out the new approach. How they will fare only the future will show.
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26 Comments
1. blert:The ONLY Great Game gambit that has a hope in hell is getting NATO home and letting India establish her ground game.
NATO troops are too much of a logistics burden and they have absolutely no punch. Indeed, the beer brigade actually stimulates attacks. Not only is beer haraam
and the Germans infidels — but they ‘fight’ like women; that is, all talk and no courage. Hell, even their CINC is a woman! They also want to focus on the drug trade instead of opposing the Talibs.
By comparison, the Indian’s have some real skin in the Game. They have a much, much lower logistical burden — they even fight for less pay. And they have so many more mountain troops. Quantity has a quality all its own.
We have absolutely NO prospect of getting troop density up to where it must be to prevail as long as we must support them in the lavish way of the West.
Apr 11, 2009 - 5:02 pm 2. blert:The opportunity for Paki elites to line their own purse with drug lord pay-offs has to be ever persuasive to TPTB in Islamabad.
The idea that an economic cripple like Pakistan can ever link all of the Stans into cohesion is delusional.
That these nostrums are bandied about among the Department of State whiz kids and majordomos is indicative of what they’ve been smoking.
It’s high time to put down the bong.
Apr 11, 2009 - 5:07 pm 3. blert:Perhaps now wiser heads have figured out that COIN warfare is not applicable to Pashtunistan.
We can only hope.
Apr 11, 2009 - 5:09 pm 4. JMH:Except this time, the job is going to be accomplished not by a demonstration of military action, but a still undetermined combination of demonstrations of resolve and diplomacy. But since the Bush doctrine was never wholly reliant on arms and never completely without diplomacy, what this probably means is that the Obama administration simply means to alter the proportions between these two ingredients.
Unfortunately the resolution of the terrorist problem is going to require shooting a few people. Like Wretchard pointed out in the
ebolaHezbollah thread a couple spots below, the younger ranks of the terrorist organizations won’t accept diplomatic agreements because they haven’t made their bones yet. They’ll need to go on killing until they can claim a position of influence, by which time there will of course be a new wave of recruits, so it never ends.Someone is going to have to shoot enough of the terrorists that the rest decide to make a career change. Then and only then can diplomatic solutions have a chance.
Apr 11, 2009 - 5:35 pm 5. whiskey:Obama’s goal is to further Muslim jihad. Once you accept the background of the man (born and raised a Muslim, as he points out all the time to Muslims) and his questionable actions (his trip to Pakistan while a College student one summer, unexplained and undocumented, doubtless for Jihad) everything becomes clear.
Obama has not thought out a plan for victory because the victory he wants is for the Taliban and AQ. Like all good Muslims, this is his goal.
A goal widely shared by most if not all of his supporters. Despite the Media propaganda, everyone in America knew well that Obama was a Muslim, and a “Whitey” hating race-baiter who loathed America and “White Guys” with equal measure. It is precisely because they knew that 52% of voters went ahead and voted for the guy.
All across the West, people are demanding surrender to Islam and barbarism? Why? Because it just happens? Please!
The West demands surrender because to fight (which is not that difficult comparing resources and abilities) would require loss of political, social, moral, cultural, and economic power from favored groups to mostly White Men.
And that just cannot be allowed. Most of the West and Most of America would rather all the great Western cities be turned into great smoking radioactive holes in the ground than fight back against Jihad. And lose power.
It’s really just as simple as that.
Obama is not AFRAID of what is happening in Somalia and being pegged “weak.” Because most voters endorse that weakness heartily. Just as he’s not frantically putting together a plan to win in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Because both as a Muslim he wants the enemy to win, and he knows most of the Nation would happily endorse a defeat.
A massive and humiliating defeat of the US military after it performed the incredibly threatening miracle of the Iraq Surge, when everyone said Iraq was lost, would eliminate once and for all the existential threat to political and social and moral and cultural and economic power of favored groups: SWPL Yuppies, Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, and Women. And end forever the ability of young White Men to rise to the very top of political and social power through combat bravery and service. It really is that simple.
I’m sure a lot of polling has been done, and the prospect of a US defeat in Afghanistan would actually buoy Obama and Dems. Which is exactly why they are pursuing it.
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:06 pm 6. whiskey:Let me add that this particular Administration is even more poll-driven than Clinton’s. Axelrod and other Administration officials constantly cite polls in their responses to criticism, and the Journolist co-ordinated responses by Axelrod and others to various “distractions” have all polled well.
That Obama is not taking cheap and easy ways to act “Presidential” and “strong” is itself the dog that is not barking in the night-time, as his polls which remain quite high.
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:08 pm 7. Habu:From the mountains,
to the valley’s
to the ocean’s, white with foam
Islam, oh Iss-lam
Our e-tern-nal foe
Is-lam oh IIss-lam…. Our e- ter naal foe.
Just bring the boys/girls home and start building bigger nukes…oops obama wants us denuded of all defensive and offensive weapons…well the this ones for us then.
http://tinyurl.com/y8nkyr
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:10 pm 8. Tony:No good comes of surrendering to an enemy who is willing to die for his cause.
Other than the Vichy, my liberal friends haven’t been able to point to ANY happy endings from surrender.
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:43 pm 9. Wadeusaf:Okay do I have this right? Kaplan is saying that the Obama administration is going to seek to create a democratic structure in the middle of the Stans, while allowing the Afghan Pashtun to settle in all cozy with their Pakistani Pashtun brothers and cousins? Is that what President Ohama is thinking will be supportable in order to bring peace?
Or is this the plan to provide cover for a withdraw? We’re outta there before the Taliban create mountains of bones a la the Khmer rouge and reeducate the ones who are left a la the Viet Cong. Is that the price now for killing Bin Laden? Does President Obama really think the Taliban will sell him out? Or will Pakistan merely place him under house arrest like they did with A.Q. Kahn.
That appears to be a large price for no good peace.
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:44 pm 10. Elijah:previously, concerning Eurasia
“To put it in a terminology that hearkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep the tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”
Media reports coming out of the South Asian subcontinent point to a US intent that goes beyond bringing Afghanistan under control, to playing a determining role in the vast Eurasian region.
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:45 pm 11. Walt:Obama claims that it was Bush
Apr 11, 2009 - 6:49 pm 12. In the Industry:Who bogged us down in Hindu Kush
Not understanding that it’s just a game
Between the Paki ISI
And all the other little fry
Who cares when you’ve got Georgie Bush to blame
Obama says we should have been
Engaged in a war we could win
Instead of messing up in old Iraq
A war Obama says was wrong
And claims he was right all along
To go after bin Laden and his claque
So now he wants to put our guys
Into a place where most supplies
Must come by road and if its cut what then?
And yes we know the Taliban
Still rule the roads and so they can
Decide not just the where but also when
To close the road through Pakistan
To all our guys in far Afghan
And then we’ll say in closin’ au revoir
To Obie’s foolish thought that he
Could talk his way to victory
Just hope it’s not a Chosin reservoir
Many months ago Ralph Peters published an article that drew the ideal map of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, one in which the borders conformed to the populations. Pakistan was basically neutered as Baluchistan rose. Don’t remember what became of the Pashtun areas.
This is again one of those situations where the states make no sense. Africa is full of that too. But here the main nonsensical state has nuclear weapons. So I don’t see where this ends.
Maybe this overdoes it. Iraq made no sense as a state and there is a +50% chance that we have helped make it somewhat coherent through elections and shared toil against al Qaeda. But if Afghanistan is hard to fit into this template, it’s hard to see how Pakistan is made to fit into this template too.
Apr 11, 2009 - 7:29 pm 13. Herb:I have serious doubts that the Stans can be converted into Nation-States. Its the back of beyond. The people who live there are not civilized in any sense of the word. The height of modernity to them is an AK47. I think the best outcome is to wall it off and air drop radios and Christian tracts to them and hope for the best. Alternately, there’s the Coulter Solution(TM): Take over the place, kill all the men and convert the women and children to Christianity.
Apr 11, 2009 - 8:03 pm 14. Mark:President Bush pursued a civil nuclear cooperation bill with India, thereby supporting an ally in the war (now conversation) against radical Islam.
But in the age of Obama, we must believe that whatever Bush did was misguided (not to mention a ‘distraction.’)And India is Islamophobic. Therefore India cannot be our ally.
Maybe Whiskey is right. US politics are lukewarm at best regarding military options at this time, and therefore Obama’s poll numbers are still secure when he does nothing. But that those numbers can change.
Apr 11, 2009 - 8:20 pm 15. 3Case:Benazir Bhutto was educated at Radcliffe in the early/mid ’70s. I suppose you could call that western educated. Perhaps our host would reflect on the nature of Harvard education in that time frame.
Apr 11, 2009 - 9:16 pm 16. JWT:Walt,
Feel free to set this concept to verse:
In a test of wills, who is likely to flinch first, the 12th Imam, or the First Pantywaist?
Apr 11, 2009 - 10:27 pm 17. Nomenklatura:“The idea is to resolve The War in Afghanistan in the framework of some grander regional bargain which will ’suck the life’ out of radical groups like al-Qaeda… what this probably means is that the Obama administration simply means to alter the proportions between these two ingredients. They are going to get their chance to try out the new approach. How they will fare only the future will show.”
Obama’s ‘resolutions’ have not so far featured any actual accomplishments, other than his own personal advance from one position to the next.
Apr 11, 2009 - 10:51 pm 18. E. Nigma:As I have been told by a military friend of mine, “hope” is not a plan.
The outlines of a plan begin to form, and yes, “hope” seems part of it. Our President seems to hope that the nature of Islam will change after about 1400 years. He hopes that Pakistan will begin to behave in a coherent manner. He hopes that he can mediate a resolution to the Islam-Hindu dispute that goes back a bloody 800 years to the beginnings of the Moghul Empire (Islamic caliphate ruling India).
Hope is not a plan.
The country is in the best of hands.
The other day, while waiting for a flight in an airport, I caught a talking head interview with a CNN anchor, Tina Brown and Tony Blankley. One of the questions was “why did Barack Obama use his middle name (Hussein) so much in Turkey?” Why, when the Rethuglicans used it during the campaign, they were chastised. But is this hypocrisy, when a man uses his own middle name?
Apr 12, 2009 - 4:37 am 19. 3Case:He is signaling that he is not a Crusader, I think. He is signaling something else, but that is not yet altogether clear to many of us. When the cold wind of reality blows away the smoke of Hope and Change, perhaps we will all have a clearer view.
The bow of fealty to the Saudi King made the something else quite clear and is completely consistent with his newborn use of his middle name.
Apr 12, 2009 - 6:00 am 20. mikec:I really doubt Kaplan’s assertion that the Taliban were created by the Pakistan’s government. In “The Rise of the Taliban” by N.Nojumi, it’s pretty convincing that the initial Taliban revolution was a surprise to the Pakistan government. After the Taliban had taken Qandahar, The Pakistan army and the rest of the government started to give full support to them, but that’s a long way from “creating” them.
I really respect Kaplan’s work and I’m surprised that he would promote this false idea.
Apr 12, 2009 - 7:09 am 21. Willie G:Whatever the Plan for “Hope and Change” we can rest asured that it bodes ill for all of us, even those who believe in the Obamessiah.
The time between now and then is best spent cleaning, oiling and sharpening.
Apr 12, 2009 - 7:33 am 22. NahnCee:“…bodes ill for all of us, even those who believe in the Obamessiah.”
I do not consider those who believe in the Obamessiah to be “us”, but a mutated bunch of “them”.
Apr 12, 2009 - 10:59 am 23. Mike Sylwester:whiskey (@5)
Once you accept the background of the man … (his trip to Pakistan while a College student one summer, unexplained and undocumented, doubtless for Jihad) everything becomes clear.
He was transfering from a college in Los Angeles to a university in Manhattan. His mother was living in Indonesia, so he did the trip in that direction, around the world. As he continued from Indonesia to New York, he stopped in Pakistan and India to visit the families of his Pakistan friends from the Los Angeles college. Obama’s roommate in Los Angeles was a student from Pakistan, and Obama knew several Pakistani and Indian students through his roommate.
So, his trip to Pakistan has an explanation that should satisfy everyone except the people who think Obama is a secret Moslem.
What is really questionable about that trip is that he did not stop in Kenya, where his alleged father lived.
Apr 12, 2009 - 11:03 am 24. Mike Sylwester:In the industry (@12)
Iraq made no sense as a state
Iraq essentially covers the basins of the Euphrates River and Tigris River. In that regard, Iraq makes geographic sense.
Apr 12, 2009 - 11:07 am 25. Walt:JWT @16
I’ll work on it, but the only thing that rhymes with pantywaist is candy taste.
Apr 12, 2009 - 4:32 pm 26. Dave:@Mike Sylwester #24:
We played the banjo gaily
Where historic waters flow.
We drove the tanks together,
Where we should have drove before.
You can talk about your Schickelgruber
And sing of Imelda too.
But ’twas the Butcher of Baghdad
Whose turn came to be through.
Yes, with those two rivers there, the outlines of Iraq are approximately where they ought to be.
Iraq, at the center of the fertile crescent should prove prosperous, even without oil revenue. Through the latter in and you got
something good going.
The reason that Iraq became a gangster state was that the Baathists overthrew the monarchy in 1957. Regime change was long overdue.
Getting a functional replacement up and running took some doing, but it looks like that has been accomplished.
Good positional warfare, I would call it.
Apr 12, 2009 - 10:28 pmSorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.