Defining Success in Afghanistan

I had wanted this comment to follow directly after the first, in which I quoted from a summary of 2007 declassified documents re Pakistan's support for the Taliban. But as a new commenter here I wasn't familiar with the moderation protocol and wanted to wait, given that there'd been a delay in the first comment posting.

To reply first to the topic of the SWJ post,
I think it's a moot question as to whether the U.S. should stay on in Afghanistan and do nation building. The U.S. military bases being built in Afghanistan -- three at the last count, and which are to be reserved for U.S. use -- are just one sign that the Pentagon is planning on being in the country a long time, whether or not there will be extensive drawdowns of combat troops.

I also think it's playing ostrich at this to argue the questions of whether the U.S. can achieve victory in Afghanistan and what victory might look like. That's because it's obvious by now that until the Pakistan military's modus operandi in Afghanistan is halted NATO is trying to empty the ocean with a sieve and making it impossible for Afghan self-governance.

Just to review: the MO is to use proxies to assassinate or intimidate every Afghan they neutralize who shows intelligence and skill as an administrator, and who's not corrupt.

That's the same MO the Pak military used in East Pakistan and in Kashmir. It's the same MO they used in Baluchistan. It's the same MO they used in Afghanistan after the Russian pullout.

In fact it's the same MO they use against their 'own' people in the Punjab and Sindh who would seriously challenge the power of the country's largest landholders.

So I don't want to hear at this point about paths to victory in Afghanistan and nation building. First replace a sieve with a bucket.

One reason I chose to scare up a summary of those declassified documents is that their release marked a turning point, in that the U.S. government could no longer practice denial and deception regarding the extent of the involvement of the Pakistan military/ISI with the Taliban.

This has meant that since the release of those documents U.S. officials have had to substitute for denial verbal handsprings; e.g., 'We still believe it's only rogue elements in the ISI,' 'They're improving,' and creative excuses; e.g., 'Remember we need to transport NATO supplies through Pakistan,' but the tactics haven't fooled any informed observer.

And such tactics won't fool U.S. military servicepeople once they leave Afghanistan and settle into civilian life -- the ones who will steel themselves to dig into the details of the U.S. government's actions toward Pakistan. They may know the big picture while in theater but the devil is in the details.

Yet if the U.S. military command sees the lengthening shadow stalking it, it hasn't given a sign of this under Gates's leadership and Mullen's.

Virtual suicide missions, FUBAR orders, and friendly fire are all part of the fabric of war. But I believe that U.S. tolerance for the Pakistan military's use of proxies to murder U.S. troops represents the first time in history that taxpayers are in effect funding the killing and maiming of their own country's finest citizens in order to placate a vaunted ally.

How does the U.S. military high command think that thousands of ex-servicepeople are going to react when they learn in detail of such an atrocity?

So I would be a little less concerned at this point about defining success in Afghanistan and a lot more concerned with halting a betrayal of horrific proportions.

Now to reply to some specific comments here:

James, regarding your statement, "I understand that role of the Saudi/Pakistan support to the Taliban; however, they didn't support the Taliban when is was Mullah Omar and 5 other guys. [...]"

From yesterday's <a href=http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jan/23/pakistan-godfather-taliban-…;
Guardian report on former ISI spymaster and vaunted "godfather" of the Taliban, Sultan Amir Tarar:<blockquote>[...] He ran a network of CIA-funded training camps in the tribal belt and Balochistan, which funnelled tens of thousands of mujahideen guerrillas into battle against the Soviets.
[...]
Among his students was a young Afghan cleric named Muhammad Omar, who emerged as head of the Afghan Taliban and seized power in Kabul in 1996. Tarar played a key role in that movement too.

Operating under diplomatic cover, Tarar was the ISI's point-man with the Taliban, nurturing a relationship in which Pakistan offered arms, advice and finance.

He developed a close personal relationship with Omar and, according to some reports, advised him as US forces attacked Afghanistan in late 2001.
[...]</blockquote>It was never "Mullah Omar and 5 guys." It was always Pakistan's high military command working in close cooperation with the U.S. command through the ISI front and with financial help and advice from the U.S. and Saudi military and intelligence services.

That's the truth. That Omar and his crew filled a law-and-order vacuum in Afghanistan and thus were tolerated and even welcomed by many Afghans until they recoiled from the Taliban's methods and Saudi-inspired Wahhabist doctrine makes it no less true.

As to the extent to which the U.S. government directly contributed to the indoctrination techniques Tarar used to radicalize Afghan refugees, see the March 2002 Washington Post report, <a href=" http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A5339-2002Mar22?language=print… ABC's of Jihad</a>:<blockquote>In the twilight of the Cold War, the United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance to the Soviet occupation.

The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books, though the radical movement scratched out human faces in keeping with its strict fundamentalist code.
[...]</blockquote>Many of those textbooks were used in the madrassas that were set up in refugee camps in Pakistan for Afghan refugees. And just to be clear, those camps were not exclusively reserved for Pashtuns. Afghans from all clans and ethnic backgrounds were given refuge in Pakistan once the Russian military entered Afghanistan.

James, regarding your statement, "It was the lack of quality education in the Pashtun regions of Pakistan that provided the demand for the Wahabbism madrassas," that is not entirely correct from my reading of Ahmed Rashid's authoritative history of the Taliban See pp. 89-90 of his 2001 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Taliban-Militant-Islam-Fundamentalism-Central/dp/… Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia</a>.

In brief, Rashid recounted that the aim of both the JUI and Zia's military regime in setting up madrassas was to indoctrinate and train Afghan Pashtuns to govern in Afghanistan. Later, as the Pakistani public education system collapsed (or to be more precise, was allowed to collapse), Zia vastly increased the number of madrassas. And yes, those schools became the only source of formal education for many of the poorest Pakistanis, and not just the Pashtuns.

What the passages in the book do not address is why Zia allowed the education system to collapse, despite massive infusions of aid from the West to prop it up. And when I say massive, I mean uncounted USD billions -- so many billions that no one in the 'international community' wants to tot up exactly how many.

This comment section is not the place to explore where successive Pakistani regimes diverted the education aid money to, and why Zia didn't want the country's masses to receive quality public education. But I will say here that it's uniformed to assume that a better education system is the key to turning Pakistanis away from radicalism.

And before I leave the subject of education: it shouldn't be assumed that the madrassas are the sole educational sources of radicalization in Pakistan. Indeed, a Frontline documentary aired a year or so ago featured Pakistani educators pointing out that the greatest radicalizing influence was Pakistan's public schools -- and that in comparison many madrassas were bastions of liberalism.

Thus, only the fact that many Pakistani families can't spare their children for school attendance has prevented an even greater level of radicalization than is seen in today's Pakistan.

"It is possibly not wise to define options in such absolute and extreme terms."
I didn't say that as absolute or extreme. American investors spend countless dollars in India because there is an abundance of workers that are much cheaper to employ than their American counterparts. That is what I was referring to. I don't expect Afghans to become Indians but a stable Afghanistan would provide similar investment opportunities.

James, Madhu:

"Washington D.C., August 14, 2007 - A collection of newly-declassified documents published today detail U.S. concern over Pakistan's relationship with the Taliban during the seven-year period leading up to 9/11.
[...]
[T]he declassified U.S. documents released today clearly illustrate that the Taliban was directly funded, armed and advised by Islamabad itself.

Obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the National Security Archive at George Washington University, the documents reflect U.S. apprehension about Islamabad's longstanding provision of direct aid and military support to the Taliban, including the use of Pakistani troops to train and fight alongside the Taliban inside Afghanistan. [Doc 17]

The records released today represent the most complete and comprehensive collection of declassified documentation to date on Pakistan's aid programs to the Taliban, illustrating Islamabad's firm commitment to a Taliban victory in Afghanistan. [Doc 34].

These new documents also support and inform the findings of a recently-released CIA intelligence estimate characterizing Pakistan's tribal areas as a safe haven for al-Qaeda terrorists, and provide new details about the close relationship between Islamabad and the Taliban in the years prior to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Declassified State Department cables and U.S. intelligence reports describe the use of Taliban terrorist training areas in Afghanistan by Pakistani-supported militants in Kashmir, as well as Pakistan's covert effort to supply Pashtun troops from its tribal regions to the Taliban cause in Afghanistan-effectively forging and reinforcing Pashtun bonds across the border and consolidating the Taliban's severe form of Islam throughout Pakistan's frontier region.

Also published today are documents linking Harakat ul-Ansar, a militant Kashmiri group funded directly by the government of Pakistan, [Doc 10] to terrorist training camps shared by Osama bin Laden in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. [Doc 16]

Of particular concern was the potential for Islamabad-Taliban links to strengthen Taliban influence in Pakistan's tribal regions along the border. A January 1997 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan observed that "for Pakistan, a Taliban-based government in Kabul would be as good as it can get in Afghanistan," adding that worries that the "Taliban brand of Islam... might infect Pakistan," was "apparently a problem for another day." [Doc 20]
[...]
Islamabad denies that it ever provided military support to the Taliban, but the newly-released documents report that in the weeks following the Taliban takeover of Kabul in 1996, Pakistan's intelligence agency was "supplying the Taliban forces with munitions, fuel, and food." Pakistan's Interservice Intelligence Directorate was "using a private sector transportation company to funnel supplies into Afghanistan and to the Taliban forces." [Doc 15]

Other documents also conclude that there has been an extensive and consistent history of "both military and financial assistance to the Taliban." [Doc 8]
[...]
<strong>Highlights</strong>

> August 1996: Pakistan Intelligence (ISID) "provides at least $30,000 - and possibly as much as $60,000 - per month" to the militant Kashmiri group Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA). Despite this aid, the group is reaching out to sponsors of international terrorism including Osama bin Laden for additional support, and may in the near future become a threat to Islamabad itself as well as U.S. interests. HUA contacts have hinted they "might undertake terrorist actions against civilian airliners." [Doc 10]

> October 1996: A Canadian intelligence document released by the National Security Agency and originally classified Top Secret SI, Umbra comments on recent Taliban military successes noting that even Pakistan "must harbour some concern" regarding the Taliban's impressive capture of Kabul, as such victory may diminish Pakistan's influence over the movement and produce a Taliban regime in Kabul with strong links to Pakistan's own Pashtuns. [Doc 14]

> October 1996: Although food supplies from Pakistan to the Taliban are conducted openly through Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISID, "the munitions convoys depart Pakistan late in the evening hours and are concealed to reveal their true contents." [Doc 15]

> November 1996: Pakistan's Pashtun-based "Frontier Corps elements are utilized in command and control; training; and when necessary - combat" alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan. [Doc 17]

> March 1998: Al-Qaeda and Pakistan government-funded Harakat ul-Ansar (HUA) have been sharing terrorist training camps in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan for years [Link Doc 16], and HUA has increasingly been moving ideologically closer to al-Qaeda. The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad is growing increasingly concerned as Fazlur Rahman Khalil, a leader in Pakistan's Harakat ul-Ansar has signed Osama bin Laden's most recent fatwa promoting terrorist activities against U.S. interests. [Doc 26]

> September 1998 [Doc 31] and March 1999 [Doc 33]: The U.S. Department of State voices concern that Pakistan is not doing all it can to pressure the Taliban to surrender Osama bin Laden. "Pakistan has not been responsive to our requests that it use its full influence on the Taliban surrender of Bin Ladin." [Doc 33]

> September 2000: A cable cited in The 9/11 Commission Report notes that Pakistan's aid to the Taliban has reached "unprecedented" levels, including recent reports that Islamabad has possibly allowed the Taliban to use territory in Pakistan for military operations. Furthermore the U.S. has "seen reports that Pakistan is providing the Taliban with materiel, fuel, funding, technical assistance and military advisors." [Doc 34]"

For the entire article and links to the documents cited above see
<a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB227/index.htm">this page</a>.

"My main issue with the ISAF and 3-24 lines are that they are stated- as they are stated here (i.e.: "the true cost of doing nothing is far higher")- as facts instead of assumptions. "
The true cost of doing nothing will almost certainly be far higher. :)

9/11 would seem to me to be the cost of doing nothing. Just my opinion. If you are right then we spend a bunch of money and establish an effective government in Afghanistan which 10 years from now may become the new India in the sense of economic opportunities. But if you are incorrect then we have another terrorist attack and maybe one that dwarfs the effects of 9/11. I don't want to see another 9/11 to prove that I am right that the cost of doing nothing is truly higher.

No worries. I have put my boot in my mouth a few times too, lol.

I agree that we finally have the right number of troops on the ground here and can now provide the security needed to fix the governance side of things in Afghanistan. The problem is that we don't have the people in place on the civilian side to actually make those fixes.

"If the Pakistani state had been set up differently, then you are correct, we would not see the poor governance of Pashtun areas."
When the US should have sending money to Pakistan/Afghanistan to build schools and rebuild the destroyed infrastructure in Afghanistan from the Soviet occupation, we were too busy rebuilding eastern Europe. And we figured that we had already spent enough money and effort in SWA.

Yikes. I deserved that, didn't I?

No, no, no. I wasn't talking about you. I was expressing a common frustration you find among the Indian (and some Afghan) diaspora about American decision-makers and this was the wrong place and the wrong thread to express that frustration. This was entirely my error and I apologize completely.

But, if our understanding is so good, why are we where we are today? If it is as Cole stated, we finally have the correct support that is needed, then fine.

I don't believe that has been communicated in a meaningful way to the American public.

When I talk about propaganda, I am talking about that which is directed at various publics. I am talking about frequent SWJ commenter Omar Ali's concept of information operations directed at the public of Pakistan and the US and etc. This is real and not paranoia.

If the Pakistani state had been set up differently, then you are correct, we would not see the poor governance of Pashtun areas.

My point is that the poor governance, historically, is partly a function of the idea that someone else will step in and "fix" everything. I believe a reading of the history of the region will show that.

Again, my deepest apologies.

But you know, you frequently read in the Indian papers that Americans are being duped. It must be frustrating for you on the ground to read that but why shouldn't I discuss it? Why should I pretend a thing which doesn't exist?

"A hybrid COIN/counterterrorism approach may be an option when ANSFs are ready. They are not. As today's SWJ article points out in "Counterinsurgency: Falling Short...," civilians of the U.N. and NGOs are ill-prepared to conduct nation-building WITHOUT the point of a gun. Without coalition or effective ANSF able to provide such protection and mentor the ANSF, the civilian mercenary option becomes the sole less than palatable option."

Exactly the point that I have tried to make on both threads I have commented on about this subject. We cannot conduct the FID in Afghanistan to secure our national interests in the region until there is security. That security will not come without the population-centric COIN with ISAF in strong kenetic support of ANSF (often times in the lead). As the ANSF become fully staffed, more effective and capable to plan/execute their own COIN, we can begin to scale back the roles ISAF plays in the kinetic side and focus more on FID. But, the end goal of tranferring resposibilty of Security, Development, and Economic growth is dependent on mentoring and developing Afghan leaders to manage those institutions and building that link between the Government and the people.

"The rise of the Taliban had more to do with Saudi money and Pakistani regional strategic aims than it did to any "abandonment." We shouldn't be so quick to believe propaganda."

I understand that role of the Saudi/Pakistan support to the Taliban; however, they didn't support the Taliban when is was Mullah Omar and 5 other guys. They didn't support the Taliban when they had rescued the two children that had been kidnapped and were being raped by the warlord. They didn't even really support the Taliban when they took Kandahar City. It was the lack of a government that cared for more than the non-pashtun areas that allowed the rise of the Taliban. It was the lack of quality education in the Pashtun regions of Pakistan that provided the demand for the Wahhabism madrassas. The same madrassas from which the Taliban received the majority of their fighters.

I am not just reading propaganda publications to find my information. I have sat through conferences given by experts with over 30 years experience on the ground. I have been there on the ground and interfacing with the locals nearly daily. We shouldn't be so quick to assume someone is uneducated on the region and the subject at hand. You may have a different opinion about the roles or strategies from that of the good major and myself but please try to express them in a way that doesn't challenge our integrity or intellect on the matter.

<blockquote>This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan's own uncertain position as a new political entity.<blockquote>

Keep this in mind, too, as you think about "nation-building" in Afghanistan too. The laws of unintended consequences in this region are brutal.

And, of course, as with any theory proposed by an online nobody, it's probably bunk.

But that excerpt is a doozy, isn't it? It ought to be read by every SA policy analyst and ought to have been read out loud in our hearings on the subject of AfPak some years ago.

Knowledge is power.

@ James:

The rise of the Taliban had more to do with Saudi money and Pakistani regional strategic aims than it did to any "abandonment." We shouldn't be so quick to believe propaganda.

I am so sorry to be such a broken record on the subject and I am sure I come across as a typical Indo-Pak online diaspora squabbler, but I am alarmed at the fantastic ability of our decision makers to think they know more than they do.

It is my belief that the South Asia intellectual "bench" here in the States is shallow and riddled with the influence of our prior Cold War relationships. By this I do not mean to insult any South Asia policy experts. I am talking about the sum-of-the-whole, not the individual parts.

What do I mean?

<strong>Grant, James</strong> - and others. Please take a look a the following excerpt taken from a 1949 book on the subject of Jinnah. The linked post states: "....Margaret Bourke-White's 1949 book, Halfway to Freedom, and which I republish in this post. The book was based on dispatches Bourke-White filed for LIFE magazine on post-Independence India and Pakistan. The excerpts deal with the earliest days of Pakistan and the last days of its founding father (pictured above with Mohandas K. Gandhi), Muhammad Ali Jinnah (1876-1948), the Quaid-i-Azam ("great leader")."

<blockquote>This would need clarification in the constitution. Presumably Jinnah, the lawyer, would be just the person to correlate the "true Islamic principles" one heard so much about in Pakistan with the new nation's laws. But all he would tell me was that the constitution would be democratic because "the soil is perfectly fertile for democracy."

What plans did he have for the industrial development of the country? Did he hope to enlist technical or financial assistance from America?

"America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America," was Jinnah's reply. "Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed" -- he revolved his long forefinger in bony circles -- "the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves."

He leaned toward me, dropping his voice to a confidential note. "Russia," confided Mr. Jinnah, "is not so very far away."

This had a familiar ring. In Jinnah's mind this brave new nation had no other claim on American friendship than this -- that across a wild tumble of roadless mountain ranges lay the land of the Bolsheviks.

I wondered whether the Quaid-i-Azam considered his new state only as an armored buffer between opposing major powers. He was stressing America's military interest in other parts of the world.

"America is now awakened," he said with a satisfied smile. Since the United States was now bolstering up Greece and Turkey, she should be much more interested in pouring money and arms into Pakistan.

"If Russia walks in here," he concluded, "the whole world is menaced."

In the weeks to come I was to hear the Quaid-i-Azam's thesis echoed by government officials throughout Pakistan.

"Surely America will build up our army," they would say to me. "Surely America will give us loans to keep Russia from walking in."

But when I asked whether there were any signs of Russian infiltration, they would reply almost sadly, as though sorry not to be able to make more of the argument, "No, Russia has shown no signs of being interested in Pakistan."

This hope of tapping the U. S. Treasury was voiced so persistently that one wondered whether the purpose was to bolster the world against Bolshevism or to bolster Pakistan's own uncertain position as a new political entity.</blockquote>

What does this have to do with our mission in Afghanistan? Everything. That was written in 1949. Think about that. <strong>Robert C. Jones</strong> and <strong>Omar Ali</strong> are both correct. Constitutions matter. Our "allies" long-term strategies matter.

It is my theory that we never understood the region correctly and so we wasted time trying to convice the Pakistani Army to round up networks and "do counterinsurgency" when those tactical maneuvers will never link up with our larger strategies. In misunderstanding this, we created friction on the Afghanistan side. How can our Afghanistan allies trust us when we don't know anything about the region?

If there are any Af-Pak Hands lurking, I suggest adding the link or the Burke-White book to any reading list on the region.

http://pundita.blogspot.com/2011/01/quaid-i-azam-has-bad-cold-margaret…

Our failure to deal with the post-Soviet Pashtunistan led to both the rise of the Taliban and arguably the event of 9/11 in the first place. Yeah it is more expensive to nation build in Afghanistan than it is to sit in our little world back in North America but the true cost of doing nothing is far higher.

The means that Sri Lanka used to defeat the Tamil Tigers go against democracy at its core. We are supposed to be the beaming light of hope and freedom throughout the world and how would that change if we conducted a Sri Lanka COIN strategy of brute force without regards to collateral damage and loss of innocent human life, and silence of the press though retaliatory violence and murders throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan? Could you really support that?

And that is exactly what Russia tried in Afghanistan but the difference is that the entire Muslim world rallied around the mujaheddin. This is not likely to have happened throughout the Hindu community.

we'll know it when we see it?

Ahh, Maj we find ourselves engaged in virtually the same debate just on a different thread, lol.

""We" are facing an insurgency is a way to frame the problem, but it would run counter to our COIN doctrine: COIN is when you assist another government in fighting their insurgency."
True but how do you define it when we toppled the existing government and are still in the process of standing up the new one? Should we are wouldnt we be nation-building is a completely different debate. As we find ourselves today we are in a place that requires one of two things. Conduct COIN on behalf of and be side the emerging government of GIRoA or say we have done our part GIRoA this insurgency is now yours to deal with.

Where has anything except COIN ever defeated an insurgency? COIN in how you counter and insurgency just as many other strategic uses of force are agreed upon as the best way to counter the opponents strategy. COIN is not a cookie cuter strategy that you take 3-24 and put it on the table and you magically win. It is something that must be applied to the current field of battle and we must figure out what pieces fit where.

"How can we "prove" that the surge was necessary?"
How can you prove it wasn't? Up until that point we were getting slaughtered. If there was no surge in Iraq and the COIN failed it would not have been viewed as the surge was necessary but instead that COIN was ineffective. But it did succeed and the surge played a large part in that so therefore it is reasonable to say that the surge was necessary.

The bottom line here is that we cannot change the past and avoid the insurgency in Afghanistan as much as we could not change the past in Iraq in 2006. But in both cases we were/are faced with the insurgency and the way to defeat them is using COIN which required/requires a surge to provide that initial shift in momentum. We will see how well we handle(d) the other portions of the COIN but the surge worked as planned in Iraq.