First off, it looks like I was running 24 hours ahead of the news cycle on my last report....again!
Even though the earthquake in Haiti has sucked all the air out of the newsrooms, there have actually been a lot of developments and good articles this week.
Iraq
Two significant items here. There first is that Iraq disqualified 500 political candidates and 15 parties entirely from their upcoming provincial elections. This was done under the legal auspices of preventing former Baathists from coming back into power. However, the panel that made these decisions was handpicked by Prime Minister al-Maliki, and targets Sunnis. Maliki has had long standing ties to unsavory, Iranian backed characters like Muqtada al-Sadr, and turned a blind eye on the Shi’ite death squads that were tearing the country apart prior to the surge. He fought US commanders tooth and nail when they tried to implement strategies to stop the death squads, which ended up ethnically entire sections of the capitol.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/iraq/2010737892_iraq08.html
The decision looks very partisan, even to casual western observers. Among those banned include a former defense minister and a former President (Alawi). The end result is that many Sunnis feel they have been cut out of the political process, and that it makes the government look non-representative and repressive. If Iraq goes up in flames again, historians will look back at this decision as the spark that started the fire.
On a similar note, only 50,000 of the 96,000 Sons of Iraq have been integrated into the government service so far. That leaves almost 50,000 armed former insurgents with a grudge if the political process fails.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100119/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq_32
The U.S. had to lean on al-Maliki HARD to get him to integrate even a fraction of the former insurgents into national service.
Afghanistan
Nothing but bad news out of Afghanistan this week. First off, my prediction that the Taliban will melt away out of Marjah looks to be right. In fact, that was the plan all along, apparently.
“By openly discussing their plans for Marjah, military officials risk the possibility that the Taliban will act contrary to their plans and mount a stiff defense that could swell American casualties. But defense officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the future military operation, said commanders are banking on the assumption that Taliban foot soldiers may choose to quietly slip back to their civilian lives rather than face vastly superior U.S. forces.”
My best guess is that because McChrystal never really supported the Helmand operations in the first place, he’s mostly looking for a way to get out, claim victory, avoid casualties, and move on to operations he feels more vital. We’ll see if he bother to follow the COIN strategy of “Clear, Hold, Build”, though, since we already did the first part. Problem is, holding requires lots of troops to babysit the locals.
The Taliban is continuing to score big. This week they conducted a series of embarrassing attacks on the capitol (Kabul) while Hamid Karzai was swearing in what little of his cabinet was confirmed by the Assembly.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-01-19-afghanistan-security_N.htm?csp=34
At first blush, this attack appears to have been a failure. The militants inflicted light casualties, didn’t achieve any of their tactical goals, and died to a man. Problem is, it was a major strategic victory in the same way the Tet offensive was. It sent the message that the US and the Afghan government can’t protect you. And that is a perception fatal to any COIN operation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/world/asia/20kabul.html
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/losing_the_info_war_39kX5JCU6zkaAxMS7vaCKI
Note that the Taliban got their message across loud and clear…and that some of the locals think the US was behind it. This brings me to my next point. Even though the US has worked hard to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan (2/3rds of all civilian casualties are now caused by the Taliban) via ever more restrictive rules of engagement, the Taliban is still able to successfully blame the US for casualties, and to stir up riots whenever it’s convenient using fabricated incidents which play upon cultural fears and stereotypes (much the way the Klan did to stir people up against Blacks, Jews, and Catholics once upon a time). The propaganda war for the Taliban is pretty simple if all they have to do is schwack civilians with a hidden bomb, send in a few ringers to claim a US drone did it, and leave.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/01/15/taliban-cause-most-civilian-deaths-but-u-s-gets-the-blame/
Oh, wait, it gets worse. Only 15% of all Afghani recruits are literate. 21.3% of the Afghan economy (GDP) consists of bribes. $2.5 billion in bribes. To put it in perspective, the opium trade brings in $2.8 billion. As things stand, getting the people to trust the government is a hopeless task.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/Afghanistan/article6990580.ece
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100119/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_afghanistan_corruption_report_3
There are also signals that the various players in the DoD, congress, DoS, and White House aren’t all on the same page, and it’s sending a lot of mixed messages. Indeed, Secretary Gates was in India this week reassuring them that the US wouldn’t abruptly leave Afghanistan, despite what VP Biden and Sen. Levin might be saying back home. This lack of cohesion doesn’t help the folks on the ground at all, and strengthens the Taliban. President Obama needs to lay down the law to all the various parties about staying “on message”. He knows how to do it in a campaign, and this isn’t very much different. It’s still a PR campaign with a central message.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcmanus17-2010jan17,0,320817.column
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/20/world/asia/20briefs-India.html?hp&ex=&ei=&partner=
Iran
Iran finally officially announced it was rejecting the SC5+1 proposal. They’re only 3 months late. No one seemed to bat an eyelash.
http://www.iranfocus.com/en/nuclear/iran-snubs-nuclear-fuel-deal-diplomats-19542.html
The G5+1 met at the UN. The US bent over backwards to accommodate Chinese demands in order to make the meeting happen. In response, China snubbed the group and sent a low level functionary at the UN to the meeting, and flatly rejected further sanctions, saying “now is the wrong time”.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9aa27c02-03a1-11df-a601-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1
Still, Western diplomats see some hope in the Chinese phrasing, which leaves open a window that there may be a right time…some time. Western diplomats remind me of nothing so much as a teen-age girls sitting by the phone waiting for her two timing ex-boyfriend to call. There’s probably a lot more productive ways to spend your time.
Still, there is a ray of hope in this. It is possible that a group of countries would be willing to impose sanctions unilaterally, and bypass China. It would hurt Iran, but China is their biggest trading partner (15% of China’s oil comes from Iran). Thus, it seems likely that such non-uniform sanctions would have a very limited effect on Iran (as has been described in previous posts)
In the better late than never category, US intelligence officials have finally fessed up that the 2007 NIE assessment of Iran (which stated Iran had stopped nuclear work in 2003) was completely wrong.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/19/review-says-iran-never-halted-nuke-work-in-2003/
Score one for intel services…again. Day late and a dollar short as usual. As a result of their collective bungling, their report bolstered the arguments of the doves in Washington, weakened the President and Israel’s positions, and may have bought Iran an extra two years to work on developing thermonuclear weapons. Nicely done. I know they get a lot of things right that we never hear about, but you’d think they’d find a way to get some of their successes out there. Because right now, they haven’t looked good in a long time.
Iran pointed out the obvious this week: they could inflict heavy casualties on the US 5th Fleet if attacked, either by the US or Israel. This is your usual posturing, and simply serves to remind the US that even if no sanctions can be passed, a military option against Iran isn’t a politically viable one (what happens in the next two elections to the party that was responsible for instigating the worst Naval loss since Pearl Harbor?). Essentially, Iran is rubbing our noses in our own self imposed impotence. The second, underlying intent of this is to get the US to lean even more heavily on Israel to forgo attacking Iran, since we would end up bearing the brunt of their retaliation.
http://www.iranfocus.com/en/iran-general-/iran-says-may-hit-western-warships-if-attacked-19534.html
Pakistan
Here’s another sobering look at why Islamic terrorism won’t be going away anytime soon. Basically, even the state funded schools in Pakistan (not just the Madrassas) are a junior jihadist breeding ground.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/16/AR2010011602660.html
This is disturbing, because it indicates the situation in Pakistan is not likely to improve anytime soon, and will remain a haven for terrorist organizations in the foreseeable future. Even worse is the danger that this creates with India. As long as these schools are whipping kids into paranoid frenzies about outsiders trying to destroy Islam, India will be the most convenient target for their delusions. Which brings us to…
India
This week Indian Prime Minister Singh met with SecDef Gates. Among the topics were India’s frustrations with China over China’s repeated hacking attempts on Indian government networks.
Gates also reminded a press meeting that terrorists are trying to provoke a war between Pakistan and India, and that after the Mumbai attacks India may be out of patience.
Given that India is the only regional counterweight to Al-Qaeda and China, wouldn’t it seem prudent to try harder to bring them into our sphere, even if it is at the expense of Pakistan? Frankly, it’s pretty obvious who we want to win that fight.
Israel
Israel is quietly pushing for sanctions, particularly with Germany. Germany has strong economic ties with Iran, and actually has the ability to hurt them financially (at least in the short term until new rat lines are established).
Israel’s being quiet about things at the moment. It is like the old movies though: get worried when it gets TOO quiet. Israel is still pressing people for sanctions, so an attack isn’t imminent. If it goes 2-3 weeks without the Israelis making any attempts to resolve the situation, watch out. It probably means that they’re getting all their political and military ducks in a row before the do whatever it is they’re going to do.
On a side note, Israel is trying to mend ties with Turkey. Diplomatic relations have been declining for a while, highlighted by a particularly nasty slight delivered to the Turkish ambassador to Israel about 3 weeks ago.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-israel-qa19-2010jan19,0,2032883.story?track=rss
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