Afghanistan

Monday

Alex Massie

President Petraeus Watch

Not much news came out of Washington last week which doubtless explains why my old chum Toby Harnden used his Telegraph column to chew over the Petraeus 2012 “speculation” one more time. This won’t be the last we hear of this, I assure you. Alas, as Toby laments, the good General stubbornly refuses to play along: The problem is that Petraeus appears to have no desire to be commander-in-chief. His denials of any political ambition have come close to the famous statement by General William Sherman. The former American Civil War commander, rejecting the possibility of running for president in 1884 by stating: “I will not accept if nominated and

Friday

Daniel Korski

How do you solve a problem like Karzai?

A few days after President Barack Obama flew to Kabul to look Hamid Karzai in the eye and demand that he combat corruption, drugs, crime and the influence of notorious warlords in his government, President Karzai has blamed foreigners, including UN and EU officials, for “very widespread” fraud during presidential and provincial elections last year. He is quoted as telling a meeting of election officials: “There was fraud in presidential and provincial council elections – no doubt that there was a very widespread fraud, very widespread … But Afghans did not do this fraud. The foreigners did this fraud.” As insane notions go this one is quite extraordinary – even

Thursday

David Blackburn

Vested interests at the MoD

Yesterday, Alistair Darling pledged £4 billion for the MoD, earmarked for Afghanistan. He did not specify what the cash would buy, presumably because the Defence Spending Review will take place after the election. But a day is a long time in politics and the forthcoming spending review no longer seems to be so decisive: BAE and the MoD have signed a £127million four-year contract to design the proposed Type 26 frigate. This is welcome in principle: the Type 22 and 23 frigates need to be replaced eventually and British companies and their employees will prosper. But this contract should have fallen under the spending review – defence procurement remains unreformed

Saturday

Daniel Korski

Germany, where art thou?

It is more than 100 days since Guido Westerwelle became Germany’s foreign minister and the questions about Germany’s diplomatic introspection remain. They may have even grown and are becoming problematic for Berlin’s allies.   Chancellor Schröder appeared to follow a Sonderweg, a philosophy that saw Berlin move away from old notions of peacemaking and away from old alliances, such as that with the United States. At times, he seemed to want a new axis between Paris, Berlin, and Moscow, making Germany a go-between between East and West, a kind of post-modern Tito. Angela Merkel’s first term addressed the worst excesses of the Schröder years, but the vagaries of coalition government

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The philosophy of war

Every war takes its time to produce a good film or even a piece of journalistic analysis that goes beyond running commentary. Apocalypse Now came years after the end of the Vietnam War and it took seven years before this year’s Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker, could be produced. The newspapers are full of excellent reporting from Kabul, with The Times Anthony Loyd, The Guardian’s Jon Boone and the NYT’s Dexter Filkens matching anything that came out of the Saigon. But sit-back-and-think-hard reporting has been rare.   Nine years after the ousting of the Taliban, author Robert D. Kaplan’s piece “Man versus Afghanistan” in the April issue of The Atlantic

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

NATO – with or without the US?

Over on Foreign Policy magazine, Andrew J Bacevich and I are going at each other. Topic: the nature of the transatlantic relationship. In the slipstream of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates’ lament about Europeans’ pacifist leanings, Professor Bacevich wrote a delightfully provocative piece arguing the US should leave NATO: “If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO’s founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country. The Kremlin

Monday

Daniel Korski

Wanted: The Hague Doctrine

Out of the conference hall, and back on to the campaign trail, it would nice to see the Tories talking about the things which make them ready for government.  In particular, William Hague should make a foreign policy speech setting out what ideas he has, and which would merit him being referred to as the likely “greatest foreign secretary in a generation” by David Cameron. Hague’s past foreign policy speeches have been solid, but unspectacular. He ticks off the likely issues, talks about global trends and looks knowledgeable about the crises that could emerge. But there is no overaching concept, such David Miliband’s idea of Britain as a “global hub”.

Friday

Daniel Korski

Defence debate? No thanks, we are British

A few days ago, BBC Newsnight ran in effect the first live TV debate between the three parties when Secretary of State for Defence, Bob Ainsworth, Shadow Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, and Liberal Democrat defence spokesperson Nick Harvey shared a platform at the Imperial War museum. The programme was meant to focus on the main issues facing the future of British defence and security. In the event, it defaulted to a discussion about Afghanistan. Despite Jeremy Paxman’s prodding, many of the strategic questions were shirked as an audience of generals and airmen fought each other over which service had played a bigger role in the Afghan theatre, and the issue

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Mars & Venus Revisited

Bob Gates’ criticism of european defence shortcomings yesterday was couched in unusually harsh terms. Then again, NATO faces an uncertain future and there’s a growing sense in the United States, I think, that europe is failing to lift its weight when it comes to defence matters. As Gates pointed out just 5 of NATO’s 28 members spend more than 2% of GDP on defence. Consequently: The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and

Daniel Korski

ISAF = I Saw Americans Fight?

The imminent Dutch withdrawal from NATO’s Afghan mission will ignite the question of allied troop contributions. But what are the real numbers and how do they compare to past missions? In a new article for the Spanish think tank FRIDE, I have done the sums, as part of a broader analysis of transatlantic “AfPak” policy since President Obama came to power. The contribution of EU member states to NATO’s ISAF has grown from 16,900 soldiers in 2007 to 22,774 in 2008, 25,572 in 2009 and 32,337 in 2010. Soldiers from EU countries have until this year made up 45–53 per cent of the total force and for three consecutive years.

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Going Dutch | 23 February 2010

“Going Dutch” will take on a whole new meaning now that the collapse of the Dutch government looks set to result in the country’s departure from Afghanistan. Withdrawal had been on the cards for at least a year – especially as the coalition Labour party had campaigned to return Dutch troops at the last election. But now the process has gone into overdrive.   Militarily, the competent Dutch forces will be sorely missed. They have done a really quite impressive job in Uruzgan province. But the Dutch pullback will be an even bigger problem politically. NATO likes to refer to the dictum it formulated during the Balkan operations – “in

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The new AfPak strategy in action – decapitation, reintegration and reconciliation (DRR)

It’s not quite the “we got him” moment, as when US soldiers unearthed the fugitive Iraqi dictator. But the capture of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, a top militant commander who is said to be second in command to elusive Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Mohhamad Omar, may be even more significant. By the time Saddam Hussein had been caught, the US was fighting a different enemy, though the Pentagon leadership had not realised yet. Baradar, who was in charge of the insurgency’s day-to-day operations on behalf of the so-called Quetta Shura, the Taliban’s leadership council, is very much today’s enemy – and his seizure should not be underestimated. Doubts remain as

Monday

Daniel Korski

It’s what comes after Operation Moshtarak that matters

Fighting is now well under way in southern Afghanistan, as NATO forces are executing Operation Moshtarak. The plan is aimed at shoring up security around Kandahar city and recapturing the remaining Taliban strongholds in Chah-e-Anjir, Western Babaji, Trek Narwa and Marjah in Helmand province, though the latter is getting all the publicity. The operation has been billed as “NATO’s biggest” and a “test” of the new counter-insurgency policy, designed to first eradicate militants and, then, follow up re-establish government control and civil services. These claims may have been exaggerated for effect. Operation Medusa in 2006 was a big battle (and one that NATO almost lost), while the forward deployment of

Thursday

Alex Massie

Con Coughlin & His Critics

David has already highlighted some of the more dubious arguments Con Coughlin deploys in response to his critics but a couple of other points may still be made. Con writes: If I understand correctly Alex Deane’s high-minded rant about the rights of innocent people receiving a fair trial (which, just to put the record straight, I fully support), he is prepared to accept at face value former Guantanamo detainee Binyam Mohamed’s claim that he was brutally tortured during his interrogation with the full complicity of British security officials. David Davies, the former shadow Home Secretary, made a similar argument on the Today programme this morning, preferring to believe the word of

Daniel Korski

The End of Charlie Wilson’s War

Rarely are obituaries so full of parties, history-changing events and personal contradictions as those of ex-Congressman and rebel-armer Charlie Wilson, who died last night aged 76. War will mix with cocaine. Burqa-clad women will mingle with strippers. “Good Time” Charlie’s life was genuinely remarkable. Described as “one the most distinctive” congressmen, he spent most of his time partying until he found the cause of a lifetime: ejecting the Soviets from Afghanistan. As detailed in the book and film “Charlie Wilson’s War”, the Texan politician used his contacts and seat on a powerful Congress committee to arm the Afghan rebels. And he did it in style – all buttoned-down, white-collared shirts,

Alex Massie Alex Massie

Charlie Wilson’s War is Over

Charlie Wilson in Afghanistan. I guess the movie they made of Charlie Wilson’s War is now more famous than George Crile’s book. That’s a shame because the movie, while entertaining, ain’t half as revelatory as the book which is more than just a political thriller explaining how – with only some exagerration – a lone Congressman funded and armed the mujahedeen in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. It’s a terrific piece of work and an excellent, if extreme in the particulars, introduction to the way the United States Congress actually works. Or worked back then, anyway, in the age of Tip O’Neil when Congress was more powerful, or perhaps simply insisted upon its

Wednesday

Alex Massie

Will British judges be “responsible” for the next terrorist attack?

Con Coughlin has an awful piece up at the Telegraph arguing that, in the light of today’s decision in the case of Binyam Mohamed, “if another al-Qaeda bomb goes off in London, the judges will be as much to blame as Osama bin Laden.” Seriously. That’s what he wrote. It’s as preposterous as it is repellent. Happily, over at Conservative Home, Alex Deane does an excellent job dismantling this and the rest of Coughlin’s diatribe here. The crux of Coughlin’s argument – in as much as there is one beyond the notion that the judiciary is inviting al-Qaeda to attack the United Kingdom – lies in the idea that the

Friday

John Bew

Talking to the Taliban | 29 January 2010

After the London conference, it is clear that “talking to the Taliban” will become part of the strategy in Afghanistan. But the conference left a number of important questions about what this means in practice unanswered. Talking to the Taliban is not a new idea. Even though he expelled a British and Irish diplomat for holding secret talks with Taliban in December 2007, President Karzai has become an advocate for such negotiations over the last two years. In the Spring of 2009, Saudi Arabia hosted tentative negotiations between Karzai’s representatives and former Taliban, with links to the current movement. But the idea now has a head of steam behind it.

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Blair wants to tell Iranian tales

Iran. That’s the news story which poor Mr Blair is trying to spin to the panel – but they don’t pick up on his hints. It would have all been all right in Basra – he’d like to say – if it hadn’t been for those pesky Iranians. As Prime Minister, if he blamed Iran in public then that would have had implications. He’d have had to follow up on it. But now he wants to tell us, or he would if those chaps on the panel would kindly probe him on it. When he was talking to Baroness Prashar he tried to start: “If what you’d ended up having

Thursday

David Blackburn

Is the West rich enough to buy the Taliban?

The Lancaster House conference commences this morning and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has penned a stupefyingly worthy article in the Times, playing the same old tunes about the intention to ‘improve governance, fight corruption and bring Taleban fighters back into society if they are ready to lay down their arms.’ The Afghanistan mission has clarity of purpose in that attempts to build a democracy have been abandoned in favour of establishing lasting Afghan security. The nascent strategy relies too heavily on the Afghan National Army; as Daniel Korski notes, the non-ideological Taliban, those inscrutable soldiers of fortune, will facilitate or undermine stability. Richard Holbrooke is adamant that: “The overwhelming majority of