Obama's Af/Pak Strategy And A Pony

By Steve Hynd

The big FP news this weekend is Obama's unveiling of his administration's strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The plan is essentially no different from that proposed in the closing months of the Bush administration, namely to use counter-insurgency tactics to accomplish a counter-terrorism goal.

That inevitably means lot's and lots of time and money - probably in the order of 15 years and $1.3 trillion if estimates from military COIN experts are to be trusted. Getting realistic estimates out of non-military COIN advocates who are backing Obama's plan - well, that's a lot harder. Neither the Obama administration's plan nor the various Villagers and think-tankers who have come to see COIN as a magic wand to make interventionism OK again are willing to commit to a timeline or budget, not even so far as saying those military experts are in the ballpark. The nearest you'll see to an explicit exit strategy is several different ways of re-saying that old "we will stand down as they stand up" Bushism. The cynical might suspect that's because they think folks like Nagl and Kilcullen are correct - or Stephen Biddle who says the new plan is only a "down payment" on a much larger and more expensive engagement - but they don't think the American people can handle that kind of bitter truth. So much for talking to us like adults.

In fact, the Obama strategy is more like the blueprint for a plan than the plan itself. There are some encouraging ideas - like Holbrooke saying the entire war on opium in Afghanistan needs a rethink - but overall a blurry, undefined plan for doubling down, surging and "when they stand up" exits should shame all Obama supporters who spent so much time rightly castigating Bush administration white paper strategies for Iraq as being ill-defined "wishing for a pony". Even Bush's plans were more detailled than we've had out of the Obama administration so far. Reading the woefully lacking white paper, I can't help thinking: it took them all that effort to produce this? The same result could have been arrived at by summarising a weeks worth of blog posts on the subject.

That has left some supporters of a greater focus on Af/Pak feeling vindicated but bitter. For myself, I'd rather see a strategy that employed counter-insurgency techniques only in so far as they made it possible to rapidly disengage and subsequently as part of a containment strategy.The three largest terror attacks in the West post-9/11 weren't planned in any Pakistani safe haven, but in Western suburbia by a widely dispersed self-starter network who only have a passing connection, if any, to Al Qaeda. That's something that can only be addressed by domestic law enforcement, not long wars in far off foreign places.

From an Afghan point of view, what they need most is run of the mill policemen and judges too. People who will detect, solve crimes, arrest and try even corrupt financial criminals - not a second paramilitary state security force. The most basic level of calm is not a military task, it's one of law enforcement. Yet there's no realistic plan to train Afghan police for a true policeman's job.

And then, like an alligator in the swamp, there's Pakistan. Spencer Ackerman notes that some in the administration aren't buying what the Pakistani's are so adept at selling:

Some in the administration are skeptical that the Pakistanis will meet their commitments under the new strategy. “You have people there who just lie to our face, like Zardari, who just lies to us,” said one official who requested anonymity, referring to the Pakistani president. “Honestly, I don’t believe there’s a war going on in the tribal areas. The Pakistanis tell us that, but they’re just baldfaced lies.” The official believes that U.S. diplomats in Pakistan accept Pakistani claims of maximal warfighting efforts at face value: “They don’t speak Urdu, they don’t speak Pashto, and they eat it all up.”

You'll see no hint of that scepticism, or any mention of the only real leverage the U.S. has over Pakistan - threatening to cut them adrift as being at least as hostile to American interests as, say, Iran - in the Obama strategy.

And all this means the entire plan might as well end...

..."and a pony."

Comments

[Quicksilver2723]

After Musharraf was kicked out of office, the Bush administration quit clearing drone attacks with the Pakistan government. It's my understanding that this policy has been continued in the current administration, which has resulted in the taking out of OBL's top tier veteran fighters with fewer and fewer civilian casualties. I notice that Zardari doesn't complain about every drone attack these days even though he most assuredly knows about them all.

I don't think the Obama administration is the least bit naive about what the Pakistani military is doing or not doing with respect to engaging their militants. There are surveillance drones overhead constantly. Also, Pakistan's grand forays against the militants and bodycounts are never verified.

I don't think it's an accident that last week a bunch of stories of the ISI's complicity with the militants came screaming out of the box either.

I'm hesitant to leap to the conclusion that the current administration is in any way hobbled by Pakistan's fatal attraction to AQ/Taliban extremists and fighters.

[Steve Hynd]

Hi Quicksilver,

They can be as un-naive as they like - if they won't say aloud that Pakistan doesn't have sufficient vested interest in carrying out any American plan and isn't likely ever to, then they're hobbled.

Regards, Steve

[Dave Schuler]

Right now I'm working on a post on the practicality of one leg of the Obama Administration's new plan, an Afghan Army of 180,000 (the size of Greece's for an economy 5% of the size of Greece's) and a national police force of 80,000. Needless to say it's a rather fanciful plan.

Another leg, Pakistan's devoting attention to removing the Taliban and Al Qaeda from the FATA is even worse.

[Steve Hynd]

Hi Dave. I'll look forward to that post. The only way Afghanistan could afford security forces that size is if the US pays for them. How much would that cost? A sizeable chunk on top of the $1.3 trillion a 15-year COIN campaign at current troop levels will cost. Less than putting that many US boots on the ground, sure, but that's a false comparison because the real comparison of opportunity costs needs to be with withdrawal then containment.

Regards, Steve