Now, a brief note on geography. Notice how the Nuristanis seem to build their settlements on top of hills and mountains? It’s a basic defensive gesture. Why do we keep building our bases at the bottom of valleys? That doesn’t seem right, but surely there must be a reason for it… right?

Joshua Foust, Registan

Commenter David addresses Foust’s question: “And, as to why we build where we do, it’s all driven by logistics and the need for a steady flow of fuel tankers and other heavy trucks to be hauling material to the bases.”

I thought it likely due to logistics, too. The photos posted at Registan are incredible, and point to the terrain-related difficulties in Afghanistan. (Also, and I think this every time I view photos from the region: how starkly beautiful, and how intimidating, the landscapes.)

….if there’s someone left to “hold” after ISAF troops “clear”, then leave the area – a reminder here, from Joshua Foust at Registan.net, in assessing the latest developments in Garmsir, Helmand:

“They’re saying all the right things. They did last year, and the Brits did the few years before that. Winning consent, holding and building, everything—we know the right things to say. But while Mr. Pannell ably showcases what the Marines can do when several hundred occupy a town, I didn’t see any indication of that local governance they mentioned so many times. Where were the Afghan police? I think I saw an Afghan general… where were his troops? …. In other words, there needs to be a permanent, civilian presence left behind that can establish the responsive local government COIN requires. And that just isn’t happening right now.”

Methinks this will feed into future messaging from NATO military and political spokespersons about how in the end, it’ll be up to the Afghans to take up the fight.

Remember this column by Margaret Wente of the Globe & Mail discussing, among other things, Canadian troops getting hurt/killed for being among Afghan villagers while, at the same time, allegedly hiding behind the wire?

Letter writers to the paper and I were underwhelmed.

Mark at The Torch was underwhelmed.

Former CF OMLT trainer in Afghanistan BruceR was underwhelmed.

Now also underwhelmed is Joshua Foust at Registan.net.

Welcome to the club, Josh.

Note: Derrick Crowe is the Afghanistan blog fellow for Brave New Foundation / The Seminal. You can learn more about the dangers posed to U.S. national security by the war in Afghanistan by watching Rethink Afghanistan (Part Six): Security, or by visiting http://rethinkafghanistan.com/blog.

Apparently I underestimated the U.S. government’s capacity for crazy.

Last week, I said:

The prospects for success of a quick, violent blow are dim.  The hardened core of the Taliban is the Quetta Shura Taliban. It’s called the Quetta Shura Taliban because it’s based in Quetta, capital of Balochistan in Pakistan. That’s where we suspect Mullah Omar and possibly Osama bin Laden hide from U.S. forces. It’s also a major city of 750,000+ people, almost all of them non-combatants. Thus, our ability to strike the “violent blow” that could end the al-Qaida/Taliban threat (assuming we’re not willing to drop 600,000+ troops into Afghanistan tomorrow to suddenly begin a textbook counterinsurgency) would depend on our willingness to repeat the carnage of Fallujah 2004 in a city roughly twice its size. This move would ignite Pakistan, to put it mildly, and it would put their nuclear arsenal on the game board in the scramble.

In the days after my attribution of a modicum of good sense and humanitarian concern to the U.S. government, the Telegraph reported that the U.S. is threatening to launch drone attacks against suspected Taliban targets in Quetta. The story labels this potential move a “major escalation,” and they’re not kidding.

[L]ast week Anne Patterson, America’s ambassador to Islamabad, told the Daily Telegraph that the offensive in Swat was not targeting the insurgents posing the greatest danger to Nato forces in Afghanistan.An official at the Pakistani interior ministry told the Daily Telegraph: “The Americans said we have been raising this issue with you time and again. These elements are attacking Nato forces in southern Afghanistan, especially in Helmand. The Americans said ‘If you don’t take action, we will.’”

…

US unmanned drone strikes have so far been confined to Pakistan’s federally administrated tribal border regions where Islamabad holds little sway. But attacks in or around Quetta, in Baluchistan, would strike deep into the Pakistan government’s territory and are likely to cause a huge outcry in the country.

This is crazy town, people. An attack on Quetta would cause a phase shift in Pakistan. We’re talking destabilization par excellence. A recent poll by Gallup Pakistan showed that the Pakistanis view the U.S. as the biggest threat to their country, far surpassing India and the Taliban:

When respondents were asked what they consider to be the biggest threat to the nation of Pakistan, 11 per cent of the population identified the Taliban fighters, who have been blamed for scores of deadly bomb attacks across the country in recent years.

Another 18 per cent said that they believe that the greatest threat came from neighbouring India, which has fought three wars with Pakistan since partition in 1947.

But an overwhelming number, 59 per cent of respondents, said the greatest threat to Pakistan right now is, in fact, the US…

That kind of visceral reaction to the United States comes, in large part, from a popular rejection of U.S. drone activity over Pakistan. From a May op-ed in the NYT by Kilcullen and Exum:

[T]he drone war has created a siege mentality among Pakistani civilians…the strikes are now exciting visceral opposition across a broad spectrum of Pakistani opinion in Punjab and Sindh, the nation’s two most populous provinces. Covered extensively by the news media, drone attacks are popularly believed to have caused even more civilian casualties than is actually the case. The persistence of these attacks on Pakistani territory offends people’s deepest sensibilities, alienates them from their government, and contributes to Pakistan’s instability.

An airstrike open-season over Quetta would be the apotheosis of stupid. It would cause public opinion in Pakistan regarding the U.S. to metastasize further while increasing sympathy for the Taliban and al-Qaida. The Pakistani civilian government, already pushed by public outrage into publicly distancing themselves from the drone policy and assuring their populace that it would end soon, would look impotent and consent to their governance could become brittle. In short, we’d succeed in taking on the role we’ve attributed to the Taliban–the destabilizer of a nuclear-armed Pakistan.

In addition to lighting the fuse on the instability mentioned above, there’s the moral repugnance of firing ordinance into such a densely populated area. From a March NYT story on the same topic:

Missile strikes or American commando raids in the city of Quetta or the teeming Afghan settlements and refugee camps around the city and near the Afghan border would carry high risks of civilian casualties, American officials acknowledge.

Drone operators executing strikes in Pakistan tend to rely on spotters on the ground placing infrared beacons near suspected Taliban targets. (Otherwise, the drone operators are firing on people that appear to be moving dots on the ground, indistinguishable from non-combatants.) Those beacons are often placed by paid informants who have financial incentives to place as many of them as possible, meaning there’s no guarantee the missiles will hit actual Taliban. Thus, the drone strikes have killed massive numbers of civilians and relatively few suspected Taliban or other combatants. But, even if you’re fine with the potential for non-combatant deaths, you still need some functional intel coming in to guide the strikes if the purpose is to kill Mullah Omar and/or Bin Laden.

The Telegraph’s story seems to make clear that we either lack actionable intelligence, or we lack confidence that the Pakistanis wouldn’t tip off the targets and allow them to escape:

Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, said the US had so far been unable to provide detailed intelligence to target the Quetta Shura. He said: “We need real-time intelligence. The Americans have never told us any location.”

The lack of trust and/or usable intelligence leads the U.S. to consider even worse ideas, like sending U.S. commandos into Quetta:

Western intelligence officers say Pakistan has been moving Taliban leaders to the volatile city of Karachi, where it would be impossible to strike. US officials have even discussed sending commandos to Quetta to capture or kill the Taliban chiefs before they are moved.

As Joshua Foust noted back in 2008, if we take this belligerent stance of, “Do it or by God we’ll do it,” and then we follow through with boots on the ground or missiles from the air without the authorization of the Pakistani government, it’d be tantamount to a declaration of war on Pakistan.

In the midst of the “gotta have this done before morning deadline” news and analysis, I haven’t found wiser words than Joshua Foust’s at Registan.net:

“We have no idea how the election went …. If we’re not all admitting—and I’m using the plural deliberately, because I include myself in this—that we’re stumbling about in the dark while prognosticating about this thing, then we are lying to our readers.”

Here here!

The Talib Info Machine has cranked out a statement (Arabic online – .pdf of Arabic at non-terr site – Arabic to Google English – .pdf of official English at non-terr site) calling for a boycott of the upcoming elections.

Joshua Foust at Registan.net calls this “wonderful news”:

“Seriously, I was worried when the Taliban hadn’t contested any of the voter registration drives, not even in insurgency-ridden areas like Ghazni or Kunar. To me, that indicated they felt so unthreatened by the election that it was fine to let it proceed—and even worse, the inevitability of Hamid Karzai to lose win could be easily spun into “democracy doesn’t work.””

Well put.

From Joshua Foust at Registan.net, an assessment of two tales, one from the Washington Post, the other from CNN, of a major offensive underway in Helmand, and his worries about same.

(Thanks to JF for the mention of my minor observation regarding Canada’s approach to protecting Kandahar City.)

Part of the fight in Afghanistan is dealing with opium growing and trafficking to eliminate security issues, but could this approach be puttingh the cart before the horse?

Counter-narcotic efforts are sold, in part, as a way, to keep cash out of teh Taliban’s hands – this, from a recent NATO news release:

“…. The confiscation and destruction of this contraband demonstrates the skill and resolve of Afghan security forces, ISAF, and coalition forces in successfully targeting illegal activities that finance the insurgency ….”

Allison Brown, a former Counternarcotics Advisor to the Government of Afghanistan, shares her thoughts on what needs to be done on this front in a paper shared via Small Wars Journal.  Most of her ideas, like calls to increase security, and improve infrastructure and market access to market, make sense.  However, this one, as pointed by Joshua Foust at Registan.net, maybe not so much:

“…. subsidize factories that pay weekly wages to absorb poppy workers. Who would choose stoop labor in distant poppy fields over comfortable conditions working alongside friends and family members? What does it matter, really, if there is nothing that the Afghans can make that anyone wants? Subsidizing make-work is cheaper monetarily and politically than fighting and over time builds a skilled workforce ….”

In fact, Registan.net shares a link to an interesting paper out of the University of Oslo (.pdf), pointing out the fact that it’s the conflict that causes the poppy cultivation, not the other way around:

“…. We show that the recent rise in Afghan opium production is caused by violent conicts. Violence destroys roads and irrigation, crucial to alternative crops, and weakens local incentives to rebuild infrastructure and enforce law and order ….  We therefore conclude that the dramatic rise in Afghan poppy cultivation in the period 2002-2007 is a direct consequence of the rising violent conficts in the country. This is why we claim that narcotics production is conflct-induced….”

The paper also calculates it’s the CONFLICT, not the PRESENCE OF WESTERN TROOPS that appears to cause opium production:

“…. we find no support for the hypothesis that there will be an increase in opium production in areas controlled by Western forces due to safer smuggling routes ….”

The “pay fhem for make work” ideas may be an offshoot of an approach advocated by the International Council on Security and Development (formerly known as the Senlis Council).  The group is pushing for, essentially, legalizing and regulating the opium trade in Afghanistan to make it above board:

“…. A village-based economic solution to Afghanistan’s poppy crisis is available, which links Afghanistan’s two most valuable resources – poppy cultivation and strong local village control systems – through the controlled cultivation of poppy for the village-based production of morphine. Based on extensive on-the-ground research, ICOS has developed a Poppy for Medicine project model for Afghanistan as a means of bringing illegal poppy cultivation under control in an immediate yet sustainable manner. The key feature of the model is that village-cultivated poppy would be transformed into morphine tablets in the Afghan villages. The entire production process, from seed to medicine tablet, can thus be controlled by the village in collaboration with government and international actors, and all economic profits from medicine sales will remain in the village, allowing for economic diversification ….”

I am no expert at alternative crop strategies and approaches, especially while there’s firing still under way.  I also concede it’s not an easy shift to be made from opium to something legal.  From what little I read, though, in reports from non-partisan sources like the Congressional Research Service:

“…. Across Afghanistan, militia commanders, criminal organizations, and corrupt officials have exploited narcotics as a reliable source of revenue and patronage, which has perpetuated the threat these groups pose to the country’s fragile internal security and the legitimacy of its embryonic democratic government …. many observers have warned that drugrelated corruption among appointed and elected Afghan officials may create new political obstacles to further progress ….”

and the length of time any progress can be made in a country that’s been hurting so long, I’m not confident any regulation or legalization effort can be carried out without major push back from the players benefiting from the status quo. Especially when there’s still fighting under way.

The last quote is from a report last updated in January 2008.  I’d be glad to hear from anyone who can tell me it’s much different now, but I suspect not so much.

 | Registan.net | Domenica 21 ottobre 2007 | Joshua Foust |

For well over a century, the Caspian basin has been “the next big thing” for energy, a potentially wealthy region crippled only by its inaccessibility. This was the result of technology in the nineteenth century, when oil was exported on muleback, and later ideology, when the Bolsheviks seized Western assets, and the Soviets later denied westerners access only until they desperately needed cash. Since “The Fall,” the mad scramble for the region’s oil and gas has reached a fever pitch, resulting in the destruction of several large companies, the acquisition of others, and an incredible degree of political and commercial back-dealing and betrayal.
This story, which most only know in a general sense (if at all), is the story LeVine lays out. The primary author of a blog which shares its name with his book, LeVine was a regional correspondent for the New York Times and the Almaty bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal. Such a position gave him key access to many of the players he describes—from the hilariously pompous middlemen like James Giffen to heads of state like Nursultan Nazarbayev—and a bracing, spellbinding narrative full of intrigue to tie together an incredibly complex story.
While the broadest strokes of this story aren’t especially new (regular readers of most blogs or news accounts of Central Asia won’t find world-altering surprises), LeVine adds value by not only placing the current geopolitical wrangle in a broad historical context, but by offering deep insights into what each of the players was thinking, as well as all of the messy back room negotiations that created the modern Caspian. This is where his access as a journalist really comes out to shine: he had the benefit of collecting interviews and notes over more than a decade, all of which allowed him to craft what could be a definitive history not just of the struggle for Caspian oil, but of the men who struggled for it. New characters, mostly if not always unheard of pop in and out of the story, sometimes changing it but always adding intrigue. For example, the erratic behavior of Azeri negotiator Marat Manafov, remembered mostly for drawing a pistol on oil executives at a posh hotel, was mind-boggling to read, especially in such a serious context and with such huge stakes.
Much like Steve Coll’s masterpiece on the CIA-al-Qaeda struggle throughout the 80s and 90s, this insider access is incredibly valuable, but only gets you so far: at some point, the realization sets in that this is everyone’s personal interpretation and spin of what happened and what they were thinking. While it’s true that this the case of most histories, the reliance on personality leaves big gaps that I wish could be filled in, most especially what was happening on the Russian side. We learn a great deal about what the Clinton White House was thinking (and internally debating) during the mad rush of the 90s, much of what the major oil executives were up to, and even a surprising amount of the normally hyper-private middlemen. There is keen insight into what the Azeris and Kazakhs were trying to get. But the coverage of Russia felt oddly flat.
This isn’t much of a criticism—there are only so many people one can talk to, even over a decade, especially on a subject as intensely sensitive (and especially so in Russia) as oil rights and exploration and politics. But while such an exercise gains one an incredible glimpse into how the oil industry operates, and more importantly how it plays into national and international politics, it can only go so far.
Indeed, while this is a glorious history written in the vein of Hopkirk’s The Great Game, it is short on analysis. While LeVine raises appropriate and troubling questions—such as Russia’s reliability as an honest broker or trading partner, and whether America’s self-insertion into the region will be for good or ill—there’s not much here to help in answering them.
The history, however, is indeed glorious. I found the opening section, in which LeVine details the first Baku boom a century ago, of incredible interest. Aside from the gaudy excesses of the original barons (the current ones are more discreet in how they blow millions on luxury), what was most striking was the incredible waste. This was something even the contemporary Europeans, such as the descendants of Alfred Nobel (who not only were the primary developers in Baku, but also invented the modern oil tanker), found shocking. Wells would be tapped and left as gushers, spewing untold amounts of wealth into the air and then into the ground, making everything a soupy, useless, toxic mess. This horrendous waste and pollution, unfortunately, continued through the Soviet era, right to the 1985 Tengiz blowout that burned for over a year. 85 miles away, 700-ft tall column of flame was visible, and apparently it was so hot water boiled from nearly 200 feet away.
There’s another untold story there, one perhaps worthy of follow up: the unbelievable environmental damage the Soviets wrought, in Central Asia (mostly Kazakhstan, as the Aral Sea, Semipalatinsk, and Tengiz disasters may indicate), but across the entire USSR. Oil is a messay, dangerous industry—that much everyone can agree to (and the battle over preserving the wildlife refuges off Sakhalin speak to some long-overdue push back against reckless exploration). But so is communism, both in the hundred million people sacrificed to its ideology last century and the continued legacy of the scars its land bears. LeVine’s book is an important part of this story, and is so well written it is worth reading even if one has no interest on the subject. But it is only a part of a much grander, and sadder, story.

Joshua Foust diz que sim e explica porquê neste artigo da Columbia Journalism Review: Echo Chamber.