605 WK13 QUESTION
gusarman1
slides_script.pdf
SLIDE 1 The war in Afghanistan is our nation’s longest war. This long war may be followed by what is going to be the courses’ longest lecture. And I think for all the military has sacrificed, we all have an obligation to understand the past and the potential future of that conflict. So make yourself comfortable and hold on. The map on the right of this first slide is a general breakdown of the ethnic composition of Afghanistan. I think this will be significant as we go along, it shows the area of the Pashtun, and population largely across the Pakistani border but along other places as well. Not all Pashtuns are Taliban, but almost all of the Taliban are Pashtuns. SLIDE 2 In the next slide, you see the business class to war; the veterans in the class may recognize this picture. And I don’t think that any of us would want to make a long, long journey under these particular conditions. SLIDE 3 The next slide shows the disposition of forces for ISAF – International Security Assistances Forces. You’ll note the American flags tend to be in the most difficult regions. At the peak of troop strength, there were 75 thousand U.S. forces that were increased by 30 thousand during the surge, and there were 40 thousand NATO and non-‐NATO allies participating as well. The allies not only contributed militarily but they also contributed a great deal to the political legitimacy of the conflict. SLIDE 4 The next slide is where we should always begin, a discussion with our national interests and our objectives. I think this summarizes those primary interests and objectives. The second bullet there, containing Radical Extremism, refers to our objective of containing and destroying Al-‐Qaeda. SLIDE 5 The next slide shows the three musts that we will assess over the course of this particular presentation: a stable and legitimate government, capable security forces, and Pakistani cooperation in denying sanctuaries. 2
SLIDE 6 In the next slide, a little bit of background before we get into the contemporary substance of the problems. Afghanistan and geopolitics has played a major role. The old Silk Road that passed through part of Afghanistan for thousands of years was a bridge between China, the Middle East, and Europe. Yet became, later on, a buffer state, separating clashing European empires, the famous great gain where the British used Afghanistan as a buffer zone to protect British India from an expanding Russian empire that was moving down through central Asia. As a cold war battleground, the soviet invasion in 1979, a conflict that left or that was fought for more than 10 years. And finally, the ongoing conflict that links many, many regional disputes. And it’s important, I think, to remind ourselves that the Afghans have been at war for nearly 35 years. And that too plays a very important role in the way that they see the contemporary issue and conflict. SLIDE 7 The next slide shows conflicts that are linked with Afghanistan. Certainly the war against terrorism, for us the conflict with India and Pakistan has played out in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s relationship with the Afghan government and our own government as well. Iran, the Taliban, The United States – Iran was very supportive in the beginning and because of the evolution of many problems they are now playing a double game both supporting the government in Kabul, but also supporting some Taliban factions just to make the lives a little difficult for the United States and for ISAF in general. Central Asia and Russia both fear the spread of radical Islam into their territories, so we need to think of this conflict as much as a regional strategy and not something that just affects Pakistan and Afghanistan and the United States. SLIDE 8 The next slide, I think, is a truism and this is a phrase delivered by Ambrose Bierce, a journalist at the turn of the 20th century. I think that every time we go to war, many Americans scramble to their maps to find out exactly where we are even if they don’t know why we are there. SLIDE 9 The next slide shows the complex nature of the conflict, this is a cheery little slide but I think that it is realistic in terms of what we are facing. The first bullet, the rural based insurgency 85% of the Afghan population lived in the countryside. The painting at the bottom right hand corner, a picture or a copy of that is in the Afghan MOD’s office, I’m not sure the Brits are happy about that. But it shows the first Anglo-‐Afghan war of 1842 where a British army was annihilated while it was retreating from Kabul to Jalalabad – something that the Afghans do remember. SLIDE 10 The next slide shows the multi-‐front, crowded battle space and the Human Terrain and this is a very toxic mix, there’s no clear order of battle, there are shifting alliances, and while counter-‐insurgency in the manual or on paper seems so compelling and so logical, at least until you try to apply it to the conditions that you see on this particular slide. I will comment on that second bullet, the part-‐time insurgents or accidental guerrillas as they are called, those who are really not terribly 3
committed but do things for pay or through intimidation planting IEDs or firing at an American or an ISAF convoy are just some of the examples of what is covered in that second bullet. SLIDE 11 The next slide gets us back to the three musts, and the first one we’ll look at is the idea of a stable, legitimate regime that can govern with minimum corruption and move the country past the elections of 2014. SLIDE 12 The next slide shows Hamid Karzai with CIA ops and American Special Forces during the early phase of the invasion in 2001. We literally saved his life and I am not sure he has been eternally grateful. There may be some reasons for his behavior that I will get to. SLIDE 13 The next slide shows the Northern Alliance, the CIA, and Special Ops using airpower to defeat the Taliban, this was a very small footprint operation that killed over a thousand Taliban who then fled into Pakistan and then we made the shift to Iraq and Afghan became a secondary theater and economy or force operation as it was called. And eventually the Taliban returned from their sanctuaries regroup recruited and the conflict we’re seeing today was rekindled. SLIDE 14 The next slide is an attempt to show the dynamics of governance: what we have tried to do. The first bullet represents these violent oscillations from the Constitutional Monarchy to the communist rule to the Taliban, and then eventually to the democracy in quote. And the problem is that the three parallel authority structures have been decimated by 35 years of war. These parallel structures were the government, tribal elders, and the clerics. The tribal elders at the local level were always the dominant power, with the clerics coming in second, and the government a distant third. That has been stood on its head, and the new constitution created a very strong executive, weak parliament, and very fragile ties to traditional local institutions. This all came about beginning in 2001, at the bond conference in Germany. And through that 5 year process there was a constitution drafted, ratified, and the first elections held that brought Hamid Karzai into power. The constitution stands political tradition on its head. It is now a top-‐down government rather than a bottom-‐up government. And our forces for the last ten years have been struggling with this, and much of our nation-‐building and coin operations are in attempt to link the bottom, or the local institutions, with a very distant government in Kabul. SLIDE 15 The next slide looks a little bit more in depth at Mr. Karzai and what makes him tick. And I think what comes out of this particular slide is that his constant reoccurring Anti-‐American Rants are aimed at a domestic audience more than anything else. He is looking past the American presence and I think that last bullet, “A little knowledge of history helps” is very, very important and explains a great deal about Karzai’s rhetoric and his behavior. 4
SLIDE 16 This next slide is an attempt to show this, and these are characters during the first Anglo-‐ Afghan war in 1842. Shah Suja was an exile in Egypt, he’d been overthrown. The British brought him back and installed him in Kabul as a British puppet. Karzai is a direct tribal descendant of Shah Suja and the Taliban constantly reminds Afghans about this fact because the Shah is a reviled and hated figure in Afghan history. The Taliban, on the other hand, they identify with Dost Mohammad. Mohammad rallied Afghan forces and defeated the British in the first Anglo-‐Afghan war. So these Afghans know their history, even the majority of illiterate Afghans know history. So this is a very, very effective propaganda tool by the Taliban. And I think it can explain a lot of Karzai’s behavior. SLIDE 17 The next slide is a cartoon that kind of dramatizes what appears to be gross ingratitude to what the Americans are doing in Afghanistan. SLIDE 18 The next slide, however, is an attempt to not let Karzai off the hook. Here is an effort, I think, that shows that he is very, very poor at nation building. The constitution that governs Afghanistan was an effort at state building rather than nation building. He has been unwilling to weed out incompetence, he rules by patronage and power brokers and I think that a failure in 2014 to make an election both secure and fair and honest will certainly jeopardize international aid and will have to keep flowing in after 2014. And here again is one of the flaws of the constitution. The constitution should’ve provided for the election of provincial governors instead, those governors are appointed by the president. And this really opens the flood gates to corruption and rule by patronage. SLIDE 19 The next slide shows a snapshot of this corruption. 2.5 billion In bribes paid by the average afghan, and then you can see the officials to which these bribes have been paid. And this is really just the chunk change; it doesn’t cover the millions and perhaps billions of dollars in corruption that come through contracts with construction – with other contracts associated with nation building and how much of that is skimmed off goes to Afghan officials and much of the Karzai family. SLIDE 20 The next slide takes us to the second of the three musts, and that’s providing capable security forces. SLIDE 21 The first one in the next slide is the Afghan police force; they are the least popular, and most hated, institution in Afghanistan. They suffer from mass illiteracy, crime, corruption, equipment losses, drug use, and very unreliable in terms of protecting Intelligence and keeping it from the Taliban. On the other hand, they are understaffed, overstretched, and they have the highest casualty rate of any force in Afghanistan. I think one of the problems is, you can see there, to get more trainers and more common standards, and reductions of the 25% dropout rate. And a big one is the next to last bullet; 5
there really is no link between the police and the judicial infrastructure. And if you don’t have this, you’re not going to have a rule of law. The Taliban, on the other hand, will come in and use traditional Sharia law. By Sharia law there is a big body of case law under Sharia law, and the Taliban can adjudicate land disputes, divorces, common things like that, and they do it very quickly and without bribes and without delays. So this is something that the Taliban used to compete very effectively against the government. SLIDE 22 The next slide shows the Afghan army. In contrast to the police, this is the most popular institution in Afghanistan. The 40% pay increase in 2010 helped a great deal. And what we are attempting to do is a self-‐sustaining force of about 170 thousand. And to do that, something has to be done with the annual attrition rate; we lose about 30% a year to attrition, or people just not renewing. There is a terrible shortage of non-‐committed officers and Junior Officers. These are really being built from the ground up. They have difficulty maintaining equipment. Ethnic balance is a problem, because there are not enough Pashtuns in the army, much less in leadership position. And motivation is always a question, I think, that desertion rate goes to that. So this, I think, is the most important element in our exit strategy. Will they be able to take on more responsibilities and to conduct independent operations? As we transition from combat operations to train and assist and advisory roles. This, I think, is the most important element in the strategy. It’s a little early to judge it. My feeling is that this could work. SLIDE 23 The next slide shows the recurring problem over the last couple of years of green on blue violence. Green on Blue means our allies killing American forces. And much of this has been attributed to Taliban infiltration, I think recent studies though; show that it has to do with cultural differences and Pashtun honor code. I think it’s important, and we do try to train the trainers to understand Pashtun culture. And one of the problems is that our trainers have to almost forget everything they’ve ever known about training Americans. The old stereotype of the sergeant screaming in the face of the recruit or the trainee, you would never do this in Afghanistan, particularly to humiliate or to dishonor an Afghan, particularly a Pashtun, in front of his peers. And it is almost certainly a formula that is going to get some kind of retribution against the person or persons who have done this; big problem for the future as we phase out. SLIDE 24 The next picture or slide shows a big debate as we transition, and that is the big footprint versus the small footprint. Do we engage in counterterrorism that requires a fairly small footprint or a larger footprint to engage in counterinsurgency operations? Do we want to be perceived liberators or occupiers? What has the presence of foreigners of Afghanistan meant over the years? And with a large footprint there is always the danger as we see almost every month: collateral damage, civilians being killed, cultural affronts (burning Qur’ans for example) and all of this feeds into Afghan as well as American war weariness, and feeds Taliban propaganda. 6
SLIDE 25 The next slide shows the very wise words, I think, of a very wise British officer who made the statement, Lord Roberts, during the second Afghan war. And I think that this is something to consider, perhaps the less the Afghans see of their American counterpart, the less they will dislike us as well. SLIDE 26 The next slide takes us into another area that has been a huge problem throughout the Afghan war, and that is the Opium dilemma. SLIDE 27 The next slide shows some of the major problems that we face. 90% of the world’s opium comes from Afghanistan. It is a major source or Taliban resources and it is a major source of corrupting the Afghan government. And the irony is that both the prophets and eradication fuel the insurgency. We have been very careful about eradication so as not to alienate the farmers who may depend on the poppy harvest to support their families. The Karzai government has been implicitly part of the problem and the eradication methods that we are attempting in the short term is to target traffickers and interdict the supplies or crop rather than to go in and eradicate it in the fields. The long term strategy is crop substitution, to get the Afghans to grow wheat, or cotton, or to grow other things that will pay them as much as the opium will. The problem is that many of these crops simply don’t pay as much as farmers can make. This last bullet, I think, indicates that as production continued to go up since midway through the conflict. SLIDE 28 The next series of slide shows that we are not getting into the eradication business; Marines watching the harvest. SLIDE 29 The next slide shows more marines watching opium being harvested. SLIDE 30 Next slide shows what the raw material looks like when you scrap the weeping base opium product out of the poppy. SLIDE 31 The next slide shows what the strategy is, the interdiction. Here a large supply of opium products is being burned by Afghan forces. SLIDE 32 The next slide takes us into the first phase of what we are trying to do in order to extradite ourselves from Afghanistan. And the first bullet has been an insistent one to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-‐Qaeda. The next include things that I’ll look at in more detail later, and that is to train and 7
mentor Afghan security forces. That’s costing about 5 billion a year and that’s going to continue to 2018. We want to retain and secure some support bases, we want to continue to carry out counter terrorist operations, and sustain political stability in Afghanistan through the 2014 elections. SLIDE 33 This next slide then brings us to a key question about whether we can do all of this; who are the Taliban? And from left to right we see the Haqqani network led by Julaladdin Pakani, you see Mullah Omar, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, these were all warlords during the soviet period, and we supported all of them through the central intelligence agency. They are now major parts of the struggle with the Taliban. SLIDE 34 And the next slide then raises a question, a serious question that has an impact on our strategy to date. This will be answered, or at least discussed in coming slides. The question is, are they interested -‐these Taliban leaders-‐ are they interested in local power or have they taken on al-‐Qaeda’s global Jihad? Who really is the enemy? And some would argue that mixing al-‐Qaeda and the Taliban has made them morph into those who have global jihad as the objective. Others would argue that al-‐Qaeda has been their tactical mentor, but they don’t share the goals of global Jihad. SLIDE 35 The next slide continues to develop this particular theme, and here the question has really divided Washington into debating camps, I won’t say warring camps, but the left hand side there are those who believe if the Taliban come back, then al-‐Qaeda will return as well, but they don’t make a distinction really between al-‐Qaeda and the Taliban and this faction would favor, and has favored, very robust insurgency operations. On the other side, on the right hand column are those that argue that had it not been for al-‐Qaeda, the Taliban would probably still be ruling Afghanistan and that al-‐Qaeda is responsible for their fall of power. Many in Afghanistan resented the Arab arrogance of Al-‐Qaeda and that they were their tactical mentors but it’s a mistake to conflate the Taliban and al-‐Qaeda. And that al-‐Qaeda is a dispensable ally. And this faction believes that a very robust counter insurgency is what we should have followed and what we need to follow in the future. SLIDE 36 The next slide then introduces the whole concept of negotiating with the Taliban – is it going to be possible? On the left you see the Afghan and ISAF positions, primarily break with Al-‐Qaeda and honor the existing constitution. On the right the Taliban want the Americans to get out, or at least more recently to set a time table before negotiations begin. They are primarily looking for some role in power sharing in a post-‐2014 government. And the yellow highlight on the left shows the real dilemma: Can you share power without undermining the existing constitution, the democratic institutions and particularly human rights and particularly with regard to woman’s rights and overcoming all of the horrible treatment of women under Taliban rule. 8
SLIDE 37 The next slide takes us to the final of the three musts and that’s Pakistani cooperation in denying sanctuaries and denying support to the Taliban and to al-‐Qaeda. SLIDE 38 The next slide is a summary of how Pakistan defines its national interests. It views almost everything through the lens of India. India is the archenemy and dominates Pakistani’s strategic perceptions. And the second bullet, I think, shows the dilemma. The Afghan Pashtuns (the Taliban) are a strategic asset that protects Pakistan from Indian support of non-‐Pashtun forces. Afghanistan provides Pakistan with strategic depth. They don’t want to be encircled by India. I think that fear, more than anything else, causes Pakistan to play this dual role, or hedging strategy, with the United States. On the one hand, they do support many of our objectives, but clearly they are harboring the Taliban leadership and providing those forces with assistance. SLIDE 39 The next slide shows some of the reason for Pakistani duplicity. The old British legacy of the 1893 Durand Line, a line negotiated between Durand, the British diplomat, and Amir of Afghanistan. And this line demarcated the buffer zone between the expanding Russian empire and the Indian empire; the British were trying to defend. The line was drawn in areas that were very easy to defend militarily, and it was meant to be temporary; Temporary being a long, long time. It was good for a hundred years it actually expired in 1993 and the Pakistanis fear that depending on how the war turns out, that the Pashtuns may try to claim the Pashtun territory in Pakistan. And this is a very serious threat to an artificial state that is already suffering from separatists movements and if you were to lose territory this might bring about forces where the whole country would begin to fragment. So Afghanistan is viewed through that as one of many strategic lenses from Pakistan. SLIDE 40 The next slide shows something that has come about fairly recently and there’s a little bit of optimism here. The Pakistanis have begun to open a dialogue with non-‐Pashtun ethnic groups and the Afghan Taliban are an asset, but the Pakistanis fear that if they win in Afghanistan then the Pakistani Taliban will be strengthened. Almost all of the Pakistani Taliban are opposed to the existing Pakistani government or the enemies of the state. So coming to the conclusion, apparently, that a broad based government in Afghanistan best serves Pakistan’s interests. At the same time, there are the radical proxy forces that the Pakistani still use to oppose India and recent examples in Kashmir and Bombay make the point. SLIDE 41 The next slide shows the great danger and why Pakistan is the perfect storm and why stability is so vital from the point of view of American Interests. The Pakistanis are spending heavily on a second generation of Nuclear Arms, they have more than 77 thousand people working in a dispersed infrastructure of production, and weapons, and weapons locations and command and control systems. How all of this works is a major gap in our intelligence, as the recent Snowden files and 9
leaks have made very, very clear. There are multiple terrorist groups in Pakistan, and we know that one of their goals is to get their hands on a nuclear weapon or at least fissile material that may be made into a weapon, not a nuclear weapon but a weapon that could be very dangerous in spreading radioactive material all over large urban areas. SLIDE 42 The next slide shows the strained strategic partnership as a result of some of the things I’ve talked about; is the glass half-‐full or half-‐empty? And it is true that the Pakistani themselves have suffered mildly through the war, more than 35 thousand people killed by terrorists in Pakistan, and at the same time the Pakistani have captured more al-‐Qaeda members than any other country. They support these radical proxies against India as I’ve noted, but they have -‐as the last slide indicated – come to the conclusion that some of the radical organizations and militias and organizations that they’ve created have really begun to turn on them and at least are sometimes difficult if not impossible to control. But I think our main goal, the last bullet, is to stop using Afghan insurgents to pursue national goals or the U.S. will take unilateral action as we have done, with drone strikes, sometimes in collaboration with the Pakistani government, and sometimes without. SLIDE 43 The next slide shows the primary contribution that the Pakistani government has made. Virtually, well, most of the logistic equipment and support that goes into Afghanistan is off loaded at the port of Karachi and transported over two main routes; one going into Kandahar and the other into Kabul up over the Khyber Pass. This has been a major contribution; very sensitive items are flown in, a lot of in flown directly from the United States but still we could not have conducted the war without these major supply lines, operated by the Pakistanis. SLIDE 44 The next slide shows that it has very dangerous operations, the drivers of these trucks, that show rush hour in the Khyber Pass make about $300 for a ten day trip. On the other hand it is a major contribution to the economy, about 5 million dollars and counting. And it employs a fair number of Pakistanis. SLIDE 45 The next slide shows the northern distribution route and this came about simply because of the unreliability with the route through Pakistan. This, as you know, is episodically or periodically closed. And we have opened the Northern Distribution Route where supplies come down through Central Asia. And it really begins, as the map shows, up in the Baltic, where the supplies are off loaded in the Baltic States and then are transported over Russian rail lines. We also transport some supplies and a lot of personnel by traveling over the whole Russian airspace. So the Russians have been amazingly cooperative in this Northern Distribution Route, which is playing a key role both in getting supplies in and now in getting surplus supplies out as we exit. 10
SLIDE 46 The next slide illustrates why the Russians have a terrific interest in the outcome. The map at the top on the right hand side, highlighted, shows what the radical Islamist in Chechnya and other parts of Central Asia claim. They would like to have a caucasus emirate that is separate from Russia. So Russia has a very direct interest in containing radicalism and preventing the kind of spillover that might otherwise take place. They’re also interested in interdicting drug traffic, they suffer about 30 thousand dead every year related to some form of heroin addiction. They are concerned with a premature exit by ISAF but at the same time they don’t want any permanent American bases in Central Asia. But in the short term they’re being very, very cooperative on the Afghan front. SLIDE 47 The next slide gets us back to the post-‐2014 Strategic Partnership, or SOFA the status of forces agreement. At this recording it hasn’t been finalized yet, but this slide shows the American objectives and what we are kind of negotiating for through our ambassador Dobbins. We would like to have five bases for counter terrorism operations, training and mentoring. We want to demonstrate a commitment for the long term, but whether or not 8,000 or 13,000 U.S. Forces will remain, hopefully there will be 7,000 allied forces there to support counter terrorism and the training operations, and of course airpower since the Afghans have only a very mason and limited capability with their air-‐force. SLIDE 48 The next slide offers some very tentative conclusions and that is to Afghan’s neighbors, to varying degrees, are threatened by instability and radical Islamists. And to overcome these common threats we need a focused, regional strategy and to try to get away from the bilateral conflicts; particularly, India, Pakistan, and more recently Iran and the United States, where Afghanistan has been low-‐key but still an area where there is proxy warfare going on between United States and Iran. The “three musts” that I talked about are not being achieved and I think that the post-‐2014 stability is problematic. The one three must that is working best, I think, is the security forces, and they may very well be able to rise to the task of supporting a government against whatever the Taliban is able to assault them with, assuming we are not successful in negotiating some kind of ceasefire with the Taliban. And I think that the variable that affects all of this the most is the war weariness in the United States, our domestic economic crisis, loss of support for the war, and the complex crises in the Middle East that may be a further diversion of resources and responsibilities. SLIDE 49 Finally in the last two slides, we must remember the cost of Afghanistan: more than 2,200 killed, 19,000 wounded and still counting. SLIDE 50 And in the very last slide we want to remember this has been our longest war, that 136 months has now up to 148. I think that in the future Afghan will prove to be the graveyard of empires or 11 alternative have our scarified been good enough that we will leave behind a government capable of taking care of itself. And we all hope that this is the option that transpires. Or will Afghanistan, 20 years from now, look pretty much, the way it did when we arrived?
