The Futility of Partitioning of Afghanistan

Partition is in the air, it seems. Just as the ICJ was contemplating the legality of Kosovo’s declaration of independence from Serbia, along came the detailed proposal for de facto partition of Afghanistanfrom Ambassador Robert Blackwill. Walter referenced the article in aprevious post, and if you didn’t go and read it in its entirety the other day, you ought to click on over now and give it a once-over.

Astute readers will note that we’ve finally reached that point in the Afghanistan war—the point that was reached much earlier in Iraq. It was in 2004 that Ambassador Peter Galbraith fired a similar salvo in the ongoing debate on what to do with our ward state in the Middle East. And much like with the Galbraith plan, there’s a whiff of unreality to what Ambassador Blackwill is proposing.

It’s not that his argument blithely dismisses the human costs of what partition usually entails, as Ahmed Rashid suggested in the second half of an op-ed in this morning’s Financial Times. After all, Blackwill was U.S. Ambassador to India—a fractious land that is no stranger to sectarian strife both along its border and within. And in this capacity he was no doubt made very aware of the kind of repercussions partition produces. Indeed, Blackwill is explicit in excusing the inevitable human toll by appealing to a lack of vital U.S. national interests at stake in Afghanistan. Of course he’s right to do so, as this kind of incredibly costly war cannot be run indefinitely for purely humanitarian ends.

And it’s not that partition is always categorically the worst outcome in any situation, as some reflexively note as soon as the p-word is uttered. Despite the grisly costs in lives lost and ruined, partition was arguably the only way forward for India and Pakistan in the wake of Great Britain’s hasty departure from the subcontinent. Though countless thousands died, it’s easy to imagine many more perishing in an ensuing civil war had orderly partition not occurred, slapdash as it was. And the partition of Yugoslavia along the borders of its constituent ethnic republics, though bloody and painful, has led to an era of relative peace and reconciliation in the region. Even Bosnia’s de facto partition into autonomous ethnic para-states, though it bodes ill for its future integrity, has brought a certain level of stability to that patchwork nation.

No, the unreality kicks in towards the end of the article, where Ambassador Blackwill lists the supposedly surmountable challenges his plan faces. The following three passages stick out like sore thumbs:

Pakistan would likely oppose de facto partition. Managing Islamabad’s reaction would be no easy task — not least because the Pakistan military expects a strategic gain once the U.S. military withdraws from Afghanistan. …

… Fearing a return of Pakistan dominance in Afghanistan, India would likely encourage Washington to continue ground combat in the south for many years to come — and would have to be told that was not in the cards. …

… Putting together a coalition of like-minded nations to implement this strategy would be a daunting diplomatic challenge — not least with Tehran.

So the three nearby major powers with most at stake in Afghanistan do not want Afghanistan partitioned. And going by the first half of Ahmed Rashid’s op-ed, it would appear that there’s absolutely zero constituency among the Afghans themselves for such a solution. The idea is a non-starter, pure and simple. It’s not that American power is in decline. It’s that it’s difficult to imagine any Great Power ever being able to fundamentally reshape a local reality against the wishes of all of the regional players.

But it’s hard to blame Ambassador Blackwill for his mistake. The core assumption at the heart of his proposal—that we can shape the outcome in any meaningful way if only we use our power correctly—is the same core assumption you’ll find in almost all plans for Afghanistan. Rory Stewart’scaustic critique of these assumptions in Der Spiegel, now just over a month old, is more and more devastating with each passing day. Perhaps it’s something indelibly Western in our mindsets that forces us to see the world as a giant puzzle, with all its problems ultimately solvable. The danger is that this fallacy may lead us to reliably pick the wrong courses of action. Over and over and over again.

Source : http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2010/08/04/on-the-futility-of-partition/

The Jerusalem Post - July 28

Waging war morally

The ravages of the Afghanistan war were displayed for all to see. Tens of thousands of documents, most of them descriptions made by lower-ranking servicemen of specific incidents that took place between January 2004 and December 2009, detailed the day-today realities confronted by the coalition forces in Afghanistan.

There was the duplicity of Pakistan, suspected of receiving aid from the US and other coalition countries, while at the same time providing Taliban forces with vital support. There was the widespread corruption of Afghanistan’s officials and police, which prevented funds earmarked for orphanages, hospitals and other humanitarian needs from reaching their destination.

But what received the most Israeli media coverage – because of the pertinence to Israel’s battles against Hamas and Hizbullah – were the extensive reports of civilian deaths caused by coalition forces.

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, who this week made public the 91,000 secret, sensitiveUS military documents on the war in Afghanistan, said at a press conference on Sunday, “It is up to a court to decide clearly whether something is, in the end, a crime. That said, on the face of it, there does appear to be evidence of war crimes in this material.”

Assange did not seem too concerned about the possible criminality of his own decision to leak documents that could endanger coalition forces operating in Afghanistan.

WERE JUDGE Richard Goldstone to look into the incidents of civilian deaths detailed in the paperwork, he would probably agree with Assange. Judging from Goldstone’s verdict on Israel during Operation Cast Lead, as detailed in his UN report, he would all but ignore the Taliban’s use of Afghanistan’s civilians as human shields, while incriminating the US, Britain and the other coalition forces for perpetrating war crimes such as disproportionate collateral damage.

In fact, applying Goldstone’s ethical standards would effectively rule out the possibility of warfare of any kind against foes like the Taliban.

“When you send a lot of soldiers to a place like Afghanistan inevitably there will be some civilian casualties,” Prof. Asa Kasher, an internationally renowned expert on military ethics and author of the IDF’s moral code, noted in response to the Wikileaks material. In other words, it is impossible to launch a war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, or for that matter, against Hamas in Gaza, without committing what Goldstone and other human rights activists would consider to be “war crimes.”

According to Kasher, Israel’s rules of engagement are utterly ethical and essentially the same as those of all other western countries, including the US, Britain, Germany, France, Italy and other coalition countries fighting in Afghanistan. Professionalism, another important factor in maintaining a high ethical standard, is also equivalent.

So if Israel’s actions in Gaza were judged to be illegal, so would the coalition’s in Afghanistan.

THE IMPLICATIONS of Goldstone’s thinking are farreaching – and not just for Israel – as the leaked documents underline.

Were his parameters accepted, they would mean that Israel, unable to engage in warfare with Hamas without causing civilian casualties, would have to refrain from defending itself altogether. Instead, it would have to rely on diplomacy with an organization that refuses to recognize the right of Israel to exist. Doing nothing to protect residents of Sderot and other settlements near Gaza from the constant barrage of Kassam missiles is, apparently, not immoral.

Meanwhile, the US, Britain and the other coalition forces would have to give up their war against the Taliban and Al-Qaida, launched after 9/11. Religious extremism would be free to run rampant, murderously settling scores against those who cooperated with the coalition forces in the hope of ushering in a freer society – women who removed the burqa, politicians who pushed for democracy and freedom, and educators who hoped to supplement the Koran with math, science and literature.

But morality does not demand submission to terrorists and violent religious extremists. Terrible things happen in war, including the unavoidable deaths of civilians.

But refraining from waging war against evil, or defending what is good, is a betrayal of the human obligation to champion freedom.

That would be truly immoral.

Source :  http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/Article.aspx?id=182929

The New York Times - 15-07-10

Congress Passes Financial Reform

There was more than enough in the financial reform bill — now on its way to President Obama — to merit broad support. Yet, for Thursday’s final Senate vote on the bill, 60 to 39, just three Republicans joined 57 Democrats to support reform. In the House, only three Republicans voted for the bill when it passed that chamber in June, 237 to 192.

Republican opponents would have you believe that lack of bipartisanship was evidence of the bill’s unworthiness, but the margin of victory was really about partisan politics and not the bill’s content. That made the vote an even greater victory for Mr. Obama, who has had to fight for every inch of progress against entrenched Republicans (who have been willing to deny unemployment benefits to millions of Americans rather than cooperate with Democrats on anything).

As was the case with last year’s economic stimulus and this year’s health care overhaul, Republican opposition to the bill was primarily an attempt to drag down Mr. Obama by killing any legislative accomplishment.

When that effort was headed for failure, Republican leaders disparaged the bill on ideological grounds. On Thursday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, lashed out at what he called a “government-driven solution,” while the senior Republican on the banking committee, Richard Shelby of Alabama, bemoaned “vast new bureaucracies.”

Those are convenient and time-tested bugaboos to campaign by, but they ignore the urgent needs the bill addresses, and its achievements. Those include resolution procedures to help ensure that shareholders and creditors — not taxpayers — bear the losses when big financial institutions fail; new capital requirements for banks and other curbs to help quell speculative excess, including the regulation of derivatives and restrictions on proprietary trading.

To get all that, the bill had to withstand a lobbying juggernaut. Since January 2009, the financial sector has spent nearly $600 million to weaken reform, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The lobbyists notched some victories, to be sure, mainly in the defeat of reforms that would have broken up large banks and done more to constrain risk-taking throughout the financial system.

But they also lost, especially on consumer protection. The new consumer financial protection bureau established in the bill is a milestone, not only for its intent and power to rectify lending abuses, but because it will institutionalize the insight that the safety and soundness of banks cannot — and should not — be measured by profitability alone, but by the impact that bank practices ultimately may have on consumers.

Having earned this victory, the Obama White House and the bill’s Congressional supporters still have another fight ahead of them — over implementing the bill. The legislation requires regulators to write hundreds of rules and conduct dozens of studies, a process that occurs largely outside of public view.

Complicating public trust in the process is the fact that some of the regulatory bodies — the Federal Reserve comes most prominently to mind — are still run by the same people who were blind-eyed as the financial crisis developed. And because the implementation phase is labor- and resource-intensive, public-interest groups, including consumer and investor advocates, will be outmatched by the financial lobby. Congress will have to be unceasingly vigilant during the rule-making to ensure that resulting regulations reflect lawmakers’ intent and the public’s needs.

The administration also must supply top-level fire power, and use the president’s bully pulpit, to guarantee that the bill’s promise is fulfilled.

Supporters of this much-needed financial reform bill took a well-earned bow on Thursday. Now they have to get back to work.

Source : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/16/opinion/16fri1.html?_r=1&hp

The Dawn - 16-07-2010

A State of Confusion

WASHINGTON’S lack of direction in its Afghanistan policy is perplexing. The mixed signals coming from the US suggest that the Afghan imbroglio is not being dealt with in a desirable fashion. As reported in this newspaper, US opposition has halted efforts by Pakistan to bring the Haqqani network to the table in order to make peace with the Afghan government. The hardening in the American stance came after Gen David Petraeus replaced Stanley McChrystal as the Isaf commander. Petraeus wants the militants defeated in the field and favours designating the Haqqani network as a terrorist group. This, it is said, will torpedo efforts for a political solution to the Afghan quagmire.

However, one US senior official said recently that there is room for those who want to “come in from the cold”. Differences between the American civilian and military leadership over how to deal with Afghanistan were brought to light by Gen McChrystal’s indiscretions. But Washington must clearly spell out what sort of policy it wants to pursue in Afghanistan. Abrupt about-faces in this regard will not help. Washington needs to communicate to Islamabad and Kabul its vision for an Afghan solution. The US administration’s own lack of clarity was evident in the frustration expressed by senior lawmakers as they grilled Richard Holbrooke during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday.

The confusion needs to end and Washington needs to pursue a solid Afghan policy. As long as confusion prevails only the militants will benefit and an end to the war will be unlikely in the foreseeable future. If the US keeps changing its stance every time a new general takes command of the operation it will cause much bitterness in both Islamabad and Kabul. It is significant that both the Afghan and Pakistani governments are on the same page with regard to bringing most of the Afghan Taliban into the political mainstream. This is a welcome departure from the mistrust of the past. If the Americans have credible information that the link between Al Qaeda and the Haqqanis is too strong to be severed, they should share it with Kabul and Islamabad. Or else it’ll be seen as an effort to scuttle Hamid Karzai’s efforts to forge an ‘all-Afghan’ solution. Senior American lawmakers have admitted that the Haqqanis are the most significant threat to stability in Afghanistan. They must now decide whether to engage the militants politically or to dig in for what appears to be an open-ended conflict.

Source : http://epaper.dawn.com/ArticleText.aspx?article=16_07_2010_007_001