Rory Stewart's sorrowful assessment of the Afghanistan project

Rory Stewart, the man who walked across central Afghanistan in winter, and later urged light-touch, sustainable engagement underpinned by modest expectations, is back with a sorrowful assessment of the West's options as the training mission collapses:

In the absence of “victory”, three alternative strategies have been proposed: training the Afghan security forces, political settlement with the Taliban and a regional solution. But training Afghan forces, which cost $12bn in 2010 alone, will not guarantee their future loyalty to a Kabul government. Two years and many regional conferences have passed since the formation of the Afghan Higher Peace council, and the clear Nato endorsement of reconciliation: but there is no sign that insurgents, the Kabul government or its neighbours will reach a deal, or feel much desire so to do. So there is no military solution, and no political solution either. Nor will there be before the troops leave. We will have to deal for decades with a troubled Afghanistan, which is not likely in my lifetime to be as wealthy as Libya, as effectively governed as Iraq, as educated as Syria, or as institutionally mature as Pakistan.

A Rory Stewart Afghan strategy -- on timed release?

In August 2009, as the Obama administration mulled an escalation of its war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Rory Stewart, the Brit who walked across Afghanistan in mid-winter, mused about his consultations with U.S. officials to the Financial Times' Emily Stokes : 

Since arriving at Harvard in June last year, he has been consultant to several members of Barack Obama’s administration, including Hillary Clinton, and is a member of Richard Holbrooke’s special committee for Afghanistan and Pakistan policy. “I do a lot of work with policymakers, but how much effect am I having?” he asks, pronging a mussel out of its shell.

“It’s like they’re coming in and saying to you, ‘I’m going to drive my car off a cliff. Should I or should I not wear a seatbelt?’ And you say, ‘I don’t think you should drive your car off the cliff.’ And they say, ‘No, no, that bit’s already been decided – the question is whether to wear a seatbelt.’ And you say, ‘Well, you might as well wear a seatbelt.’ And then they say, ‘We’ve consulted with policy expert Rory Stewart and he says ...’”

Stewart's own recommendation, voiced in Senate testimony in September 2009, was for a scaled-down and therefore sustainable -- and long-term -- commitment:

Back from the cliff's edge: Rory Stewart hails Obama's limited goals in Afghanistan

There is perhaps no one writing about U.S. and allied policy in Afghanistan who exhibits a subtler and more comprehensive grasp at once of the realities on the ground and of the dominant conceptual frame of Western policy there than Rory Stewart. Armed with that understanding, he has taken the measure of Obama's policy review and redefinition and put his finger on the extent to which Obama has revolutionized U.S. aims and therefore, over the long haul, the likely means of fostering those aims.

In some ways, Stewart's latest assessment of U.S. policy and likely outcomes seems like a course reversal of his analysis prior to Obama's speech (in Senate testimony in September  and in The London Review of Books in July). Then, he warned that the U.S., gearing up for a troop surge, was preparing to drive off a cliff and pondering only details akin to whether or not to wear a seatbelt.  Then, too, he deployed a withering ventriloquism to expose what he regarded as circular logic in maximalist counterinsurgency aims:

Obama skates past a strong counter-proposal on Afghanistan.

President Obama stuffed a bit of straw into one opposing view of the right course in Afghanistan in his lunch with reporters yesterday.

As reported by Marc Ambinder, Obama, in a rundown of alternative courses to the one he's chosen, said:

The other argument is that we can sort of stand pat, whether it's at 30,000 or 40,000 or 50,000, you have some platform there, you're basically pulled back and hunkered down but you're able to prevent Kabul from being overrun; you can still project some counterterrorism operations in the region. The problem there is whether that level is 50 or 60 or 70, you have sort of a flatline, where there is no inflection point, there's no point at which, we can say conditions have changed conditionally sufficiently so that we can start bringing our troops home.

Note the escalation in Obama's presentation of the troop level needed for this "option": 30-40-50-60-70. Perhaps there have been advocates for all those levels.  But compare the fully articulated strategy of one dissident from the outlines of the McChrystal plan, Rory Stewart:

The best Afghan policy would be to reduce the number of foreign troops from the current level of 90,000 to far fewer – perhaps 20,000. In that case, two distinct objectives would remain for the international community: development and counter-terrorism. Neither would amount to the building of an Afghan state or winning a counter-insurgency campaign. A reduction in troop numbers and a turn away from state-building should not mean total withdrawal: good projects could continue to be undertaken in electricity, water, irrigation, health, education, agriculture, rural development and in other areas favoured by development agencies. Even a light US presence could continue to allow for aggressive operations against Al Qaeda terrorists, in Afghanistan, who plan to attack the United States. The US has successfully prevent Al Qaeda from re-establishing itself since 2001 (though the result has only been to move bin Laden across the border.). The US military could also (with other forms of assistance) support the Afghan military to prevent the Taliban from seizing a city or taking over the country.

The core of Stewart's argument is that such a commitment would be sustainable -- and calibrated to a realistic time frame for Afghan development:

While, I strongly oppose troop increases, I equally strongly oppose a total flight. We are currently in danger of lurching from troop increases to withdrawal and from engagement to isolation. We are threatening to provide instant electro-shock therapy followed by abandonment. This is the last thing Afghanistan needs. The international community should aim to provide a patient, tolerant long-term relationship with a country as poor and traumatized as Afghanistan. Judging by comparable countries in the developing world (and Afghanistan is very near the bottom of the UN Human Development index), making Afghanistan more stable, prosperous and humane is a project which will take decades. It is a worthwhile project in the long-term for us and for Afghans but we will only be able to sustain our presence if we massively reduce our investment and our ambitions and begin to approach Afghanistan more as we do other poor countries in the developing world. The best way of avoiding the mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s – the familiar cycle of investment and abandonment which most Afghan expect and fear and which have contributed so much to instability and danger - is to husband and conserve our resources, limit our objectives to counter-terrorism and humanitarian assistance and work out how to work with fewer troops and less money over a longer period. In Afghanistan in the long-term, less will be more.

 The alternative to Obama's surge put forward by Stewart is not, per the argument framed by Obama, maintaining a mid-sized force too small to improve the status quo until we get exhausted. It's to keep a force (and aid effort) that we can maintain for decades to foster a development that will take decades. Stewart might argue (he hasn't) that his strategy is comparable to securing one's financial future with a $1000 yearly term life insurance payment, whereas Obama's is comparable to slapping down six figures in a risky derivative bet.

Obama could argue that Stewart's course is seductive but false: that a Taliban thriving long-term in large parts of Afghanistan will destabilize Pakistan; that with 20,000 troops the U.S. can't sustain intelligence operations; that there's no viable mission for 20,000 troops. Here, he didn't.

On trusting Obama: the Af/Pak review

A friend who has read my posts on Afghanistan challenged me yesterday: "So what should we do?  I don't want to just read your presentations of what other people think. Take a position."

I responded that in this blog I try to remain conscious of my limitations. I am obviously no expert either on Afghanistan or on military strategy. My training, such as it is, is in literary criticism.  Don't laugh. That does equip me to assess the quality of evidence and analytical rigor that various informed commentators bring to the table, as in assessments of Matthew Hoh filtered through James Fallows here, an Oxfam survey of ordinary Afghans here, and Rory Stewart vs. Steve Coll here. In my view Coll, who has effectively expressed support for the outlines of McChrystal's proposed surge, and Stewart, who recommends that the U.S. and allies cut back to 20,000 troops and provided only targeted, decentralized aid for select projects in Afghanistan, have been the most effective advocates for the two poles of debate.

In limiting myself to close reading, perhaps I've equivocated. I took some comfort yesterday in confessions of ambvialence from Fred Kaplan and Joe Klein. Throughout Obama's long policy review, one has heard many variations from honest commentators of the theme, "I'd hate to be in his shoes."

Still, for the record: as indicated if not expressed outright in the posts of above, I find Coll's argument more convincing than Stewart's.

Churchill's memo to Obama

A warning to Obama as he prepares to unveil his new Afghan strategy:

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent, or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations - all take their seats at the Council Board on the morrow of a declaration of war. Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.
Winston Churchill, My Early Life: A Roving Commission (1930), Chapter 18 (With Buller To The Cape), p. 246 (cited in Wikiquote).

Obama at Fort Hood: Embracing 'The Long War'?

The President at Fort Hood today did not sound like a man planning to scale back American military commitments:

This generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen have volunteered in a time of certain danger. They are part of the finest fighting force that the world has ever known. They have served tour after tour of duty in distant, different and difficult places. They have stood watch in blinding deserts and on snowy mountains. They have extended the opportunity of self-government to peoples that have suffered tyranny and war. They are man and woman; white, black, and brown; of all faiths and stations – all Americans, serving together to protect our people, while giving others half a world away the chance to lead a better life.

In today's wars, there is not always a simple ceremony that signals our troops' success – no surrender papers to be signed, or capital to be claimed. But the measure of their impact is no less great – in a world of threats that know no borders, it will be marked in the safety of our cities and towns, and the security and opportunity that is extended abroad. And it will serve as testimony to the character of those who serve, and the example that you set for America and for the world.

Here, at Fort Hood, we pay tribute to thirteen men and women who were not able to escape the horror of war, even in the comfort of home. Later today, at Fort Lewis, one community will gather to remember so many in one Stryker Brigade who have fallen in Afghanistan.

Long after they are laid to rest – when the fighting has finished, and our nation has endured; when today's servicemen and women are veterans, and their children have grown – it will be said of this generation that they believed under the most trying of tests; that they persevered not just when it was easy, but when it was hard; and that they paid the price and bore the burden to secure this nation, and stood up for the values that live in the hearts of all free peoples.

There is nothing jingoistic or chauvinistic about this. But note the assertions of linked fate: to protect our people, while giving others half a world a way the chance to live a better life....But the measure of their impact is no less great – in a world of threats that know no borders, it will be marked in the safety of our cities and towns, and the security and opportunity that is extended abroad.

Note also the verb tense sequence: perfect (past leading to present moment), present continuous, and a use of the future that is thematically akin to the future perfect -- looking back at the present from a time ahead. There's a grammatical fusion of his own administration's commitments with Bush''s and perhaps with those of presidents to come.

Note too, that like Shakespeare Henry V before the battle of Agincourt, Obama pulls the commander-in-chief trick of inviting the men to envision their future satisfaction in a triumph that has yet to happen:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,

Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,

And rouse him at the name of Crispian...

This story shall the good man teach his son;

And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,

From this day to the ending of the world,

But we in it shall be remembered-

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...(HV IV, iii).

Perhaps Obama has absorbed Gates' concept of "the long war" -- which, Gates told West Point in April'08, "is likely to be many years of persistent, engaged combat all around the world in differing degrees of size and intensity," adding, "This generational campaign cannot be wished away or put on a timetable."

Gates moderates an expansive sense of mission with a determination to leverage allies, aid and diplomacy to leverage a minimalist use of military force. In an article outlining his strategic vision in Foreign Affairs (Jan/Feb '09, no longer available free), he wrote:

What is dubbed the war on terror is, in grim reality, a prolonged, worldwide irregular campaign -- a struggle between the forces of violent extremism and those of moderation. Direct military force will continue to play a role in the long-term effort against terrorists and other extremists. But over the long term, the United States cannot kill or capture its way to victory. Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit. It will take the patient accumulation of quiet successes over a long time to discredit and defeat extremist movements and their ideologies.

In one sense, this mission is unexceptionable, as the U.S. will doubtless continue to attempt to foster development and democracy throughout the non-rich, nondemocratic world. The hard questions have to do with means -- with the assumption of a "prolonged, worldwide" military campagin . Rory Stewart, Afghan minimalist, wants to foster better governance and development in Afghanistan - he just wants to do it with 20,000 troops and selective, decentralized aid, rather than with 100,00 and a client state relationship. Stewart mocks maximalist assumptions like those expressed by Gates - that with the right combination of tools the U.S. can drain every failed-state swamp where terror breeds.

Obama certainly shares Gates' sense of the scope of the U.S. role in the world, as well as his predilection to "subordinate" military effort to diplomacy and aid. But is he signed up for "the long war"? It's starting to look that way.

"The logical core of Matthew Hoh's resignation letter": a counterpoint to Fallows

James Fallows has a post titled "The logical core of Matthew Hoh's resignation letter." Hoh is the former army captain and Iraq War veteran who just resigned in protest a position of responsibility in Afghanistan, warning that he "fail[s] to see the value or worth" of military support of the Afghan government.

Hoh's resignation is an act of courage and principle, and he sounds some resonant alarms. When I read his letter, I couldn't help but wonder what would have been the impact if Colin Powell had picked a propitious moment to do something similar.

However, I must disagree with Fallows. I do not think that the passage he identifies is the core of Hoh's argument, nor is it entirely logical. Here it is:

"I find specious the reasons we ask for bloodshed and and sacrifice from our young men and women in Afghanistan. If honest, our stated strategy of securing Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda resurgence or regrouping would require us to additionally invade and occupy western Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. [My (Fallows') emphasis.] Our presence in Afghanistan has only increased destabilization and insurgency in Pakistan where we rightly fear a toppled or weakened Pakistani government may lose control of its nuclear weapons. However, again, to follow the logic of our stated goals we should garrison Pakistan, not Afghanistan. More so, the September 11th attacks, as well as the Madrid and London bombings, were primarily planned and organized in Western Europe; a point that highlights that the threat is not one tied to traditional geographic or political boundaries."

For starters, the claim that continuing U.S. efforts to fight the Taliban and prop up the Afghan government "would require us" to invade and occupy Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, etc. is a red herring (leave Pakistan aside for a moment). The unspoken assumption is that terrorist threats from all lawless states are equal, and/or that al Qaeda could host itself equally effectively from Somalia, Sudan or Yemen, in each of which it has operated. Steve Coll has, I think, countered this assumption effectively:

It is simply not true that all potential al Qaeda sanctuaries are of the same importance, now or potentially. Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have a 30-year, unique history of trust and collaboration with the Pashtun Islamist networks located in North Waziristan, Bajaur, and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. It is not surprising, given this distinctive history, that al Qaeda's presumed protectors -- perhaps the Haqqani network, which provided the territory in which al Qaeda constructed its first training camps in the summer of 1988 -- have never betrayed their Arab guests.

These networks have fought alongside al Qaeda since the mid-1980s and have raised vast sums of money in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states through their connections. They possess infrastructure -- religious institutions, trucking firms, criminal networks, preaching networks, housing networks -- from Kandahar and Khost Province, and from Quetta to Karachi's exurban Pashtun neighborhoods, that is either impervious to penetration by the Pakistani state or has coopted those in the Pakistani security services who might prove disruptive. It is mistaken to assume that Bin Laden, Zawahiri, or other Arab leaders would enjoy similar sanctuary anywhere else. In Somalia they would almost certainly be betrayed for money; in Yemen, they would be much more susceptible to detection by the country's police network. The United States should welcome the migration of al Qaeda's leadership to such countries.

Accepting Coll's argument -- and I'm sure that there are informed parties to the debate who don't -- narrows the main counterterrorism focus to Aghanistan and Pakistan. But it does not follow that the logic of U.S. engagement in Afghanistan suggests tat the U.S. should "invade and occupy" Pakistan, as Hoh claims. Pakistan is a different country, and requires a different approach. As Rory Stewart points out, Pakistan is a more dangerous habitat for al Qaeda precisely because it's a stronger state than Afghanistan, and at least a nominal ally, and we don't have license or capacity to "invade and occupy" it (thank God).

The fact that a strategy we're currently engaged in in Afghanistan won't work in Pakistan and can't be tried there doesn't suggest either that it can't work in Afghanistan or that some other strategy might not work in Pakistan. Coll sees the key to happier outcomes for the region, and more effective counterterrorism, to be economic development in Pakistan on a par with, say, India's.* Pakistan can't get there without going a long way toward peace with India -- a goal that the U.S. can only help further with a very light touch, if at all -- as Hillary's highly contentious recent visit indicates.

There is no question that designing and implementing a U.S. strategy that would help establish modicum of peace and prosperity in Afghanistan and Pakistan is devilishly complex and difficult. But that doesn't mean that the U.S. can abjure trying -- whatever level of military engagement in Afghanistan might help further that end. Nor does it mean that adding troops in Afghanistan entails "invading and occupying" Pakistan, let alone Somalia etc.

In my view the "logical core of Hoh's letter" -- and its strongest challenge to U.S. policy -- lies elsewhere. It's in his claim that US military engagement stimulates the insurgency -- the more U.S. engagement, the more the more stimulus, and the stronger the Taliban. This argument has several parts: 1) Pashtun identity requires resisting control by "urban, secular, educated and modern Afghanistan"; 2) foreign troops joined to a government representing that internal enemy further stimulate resistance; 3) the government to which the U.S. has yoked itself is hopelessly corrupt and predatory; and 4) the U.S. presence in Afghanistan destabilizes Pakistan.

That is a fearsome indictment -- especially since few would dispute that the dynamic Hoh outlines has been at work in recent years. McChrystal himself acknowledges these realities. From McChrystal's 8/30 assessment:

GiRoA [the Afghan government] and ISAF [the international force led by the US] have both failed to focus on this objective [understanding the choices the Afghan people make between government and insurgents]. The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government....A foreign army alone cannot beat an insurgency; the insurgency in Afghanistan requires an Afghan solution...All ethnicities, particularly the Pashtuns, have traditionally sought a degree of independence from the central government.

Where McChrystal differs from Hoh is in his conviction that the US military can change the dynamic by changing its own practice, strategy, and culture. That's where the road forks. He asserts that "the popular myth that Afghans do not want governance is overplayed," and that the U.S. military can win allegiance by making "protecting the population" its primary goal; by changing its "operating culture" to one "that puts the Afghan people first"; and by "building personal relationship with its Afghan partners and the protected population."

That's an oddly utopian program for a ferociously tough commander. Cheney would have had a field day with McChrystal's language four or five years ago, e.g., "All ISAF personnel must show respect for local cultures and customs and demonstrate intellectual curiosity about the people of Afghanistan." This from a man whose chief responsibility in Iraq was running assassination squads against al Qaeda. If he can sell this strategy, it's through a kind of Nixon to China authority.

We're in unchartered territory. McChrystal is calling for a counterinsurgency effort more nuanced, more sensitive, more self-sacrificing and more multifaceted than any in history. He and Petraeus et al are pivoting from a remarkable, if partial and perhaps even temporary, military success in Iraq. But that precedent is no more complete an analogy than those of Vietnam or the Soviets in Afghanistan.

*India has its own dangerous insurgencies to cope with, but these days the US doesn't get so exercised about Maoists. That's a strange irony of history. I sometimes wonder, while we're so preoccupied with Islamic jihad, what new malign ideology will burst out of nowhere to exploit the horrific tools of terror developed over the last 20 years, and seek to develop worse. UPDATE 11/1: today's Times has a front page story about India's Maoist insurgency -- and a pending 70,000-troop counterinsurgency effort.

Did McChrystal (or Petraeus) Read Henry V?

I was astonished to read in today's Times that the authors of the U.S. military's current counterinsugency doctrine are steeped in contemparary scholarship of the 100 Years' War (among many other conflicts).

Astonished, because apparently a bit of throwaway literary free association I indulged in last week, comparing McChrystal's articulation of how to win the local population's hearts and minds to that of Shakespeare's Henry V, apparently has some basis in reality.

I did wonder while writing the post whether Shakespeare's version of Henry's approach to "playing for a kingdom" by being "the gentler gamester" itself had any basis for in reality. The Times article indicates that it did:

...by the time Henry landed near the mouth of the Seine on Aug. 14, 1415, and began a rather uninspiring siege of a town called Harfleur, France was on the verge of a civil war, with factions called the Burgundians and the Armagnacs at loggerheads. Henry would eventually forge an alliance with the Burgundians, who in today’s terms would become his “local security forces” in Normandy, and he cultivated the support of local merchants and clerics, all practices that would have been heartily endorsed by the counterinsurgency manual.

Of course, Henry's aim, ruling a foreign country by remote control, would not be endorsed by the counterinsurgency manual - not consciously, anyway. But that's pretty much what critics of current and pending policy like Rory Stewart see the U.S. trying to do.

Steve Coll vs. Rory Stewart on the AfPak endgame

In almost perfect counterpoise on Obama's excrutiating decision on how to proceed in Afghanistan and Pakistan are two supremely well-informed former sojourners in that country, Rory Stewart and Steve Coll. Stewart sees futlity in what he casts as neoimperialist attempts to shape an alien culture; Coll outlines with great authority the dangers of letting the Taliban thrive, and advocates working to foster an Afghan government that negotiates and governs its way to a measure of legitimacy and adequate authority. They are not quite opposites, since Stewart would not cede the country to the Taliban and Coll is cautious and noncommittal about the degree of military engagement. But they're on different sides of the midpoint.

Considering the linked or not-so-linked goals of neutralizing al Qaeda and stabilizing Afghanistan, both emphasize the swallow-the-spider-to-catch-the-fly nature of pursuing the latter goal as a means to the former. But Stewart ravels out the chain of goals to mock it, while Coll demonstrates pretty powerfully that the concantenations are real. Here's Stewart's irony:

Policymakers perceive Afghanistan through the categories of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency, state-building and economic development. These categories are so closely linked that you can put them in almost any sequence or combination. You need to defeat the Taliban to build a state and you need to build a state to defeat the Taliban. There cannot be security without development, or development without security. If you have the Taliban you have terrorists, if you don’t have development you have terrorists, and as Obama informed the New Yorker, ‘If you have ungoverned spaces, they become havens for terrorists.’

Coll breaks this circularity by widening the chessboard. The key to Pakistani stability, he emphasizes, is peace with India:

American policy over the next five or 10 years must proceed from the understanding that the ultimate exit strategy for international forces from South Asia is Pakistan's economic success and political normalization, manifested in an Army that shares power with civilian leaders in a reasonably stable constitutional bargain, and in the increasing integration of Pakistan's economy with regional economies, including India's. Such an evolution will likely consolidate the emerging view within Pakistan's elites that the country requires a new and less self-defeating national security doctrine. As in the Philippines, Colombia, and Indonesia, the pursuit of a more balanced, less coup-ridden, more modern political-military order in Pakistan need not be complete or confused with perfection for it to gradually pinch the space in which al Qaeda, the Taliban, and related groups now operate. Moreover, in South Asia, outsiders need not construct or impose this modernizing pathway as a neo-imperial project. The hope for durable change lies first of all in the potential for normalizing relations between Pakistan and India, a negotiation between elites in those two countries that is already well under way, without Western mediation, and is much more advanced than is typically appreciated. Its success is hardly assured, but because of the transformational effect such normalization would create, the effects of American policies in the region on its prospects should be carefully assessed.
Against this backdrop, a Taliban insurgency that increasingly destabilizes both Afghanistan and the border region with Pakistan would make such regional normalization very difficult, if not impossible, in the foreseeable future. Among other things, it would reinforce the sense of siege and encirclement that has shaped the Pakistan Army's self-defeating policies of support for Islamist militias that provide, along with a nuclear deterrent, asymmetrical balance against a (perceived) hegemonic India.

More directly to the point of how the U.S. should proceed in Afghanistan, Coll one by one recouples the delinkages of those who suggest the U.S. can 'contain' al Qaeda without working hard to foster a coherent state in Afghanistan. First, most arrestingly, he debunks the notion that chaos or Taliban rule in large swaths of Afghanistan and Pakistan don't matter much, because al Qaeda could find a haven in any of a number of failed or extremist states:

It is simply not true that all potential al Qaeda sanctuaries are of the same importance, now or potentially. Bin Laden and his No. 2, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, have a 30-year, unique history of trust and collaboration with the Pashtun Islamist networks located in North Waziristan, Bajaur, and the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan. It is not surprising, given this distinctive history, that al Qaeda's presumed protectors -- perhaps the Haqqani network, which provided the territory in which al Qaeda constructed its first training camps in the summer of 1988 -- have never betrayed their Arab guests.
These networks have fought alongside al Qaeda since the mid-1980s and have raised vast sums of money in Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states through their connections. They possess infrastructure -- religious institutions, trucking firms, criminal networks, preaching networks, housing networks -- from Kandahar and Khost Province, and from Quetta to Karachi's exurban Pashtun neighborhoods, that is either impervious to penetration by the Pakistani state or has coopted those in the Pakistani security services who might prove disruptive. It is mistaken to assume that Bin Laden, Zawahiri, or other Arab leaders would enjoy similar sanctuary anywhere else. In Somalia they would almost certainly be betrayed for money; in Yemen, they would be much more susceptible to detection by the country's police network. The United States should welcome the migration of al Qaeda's leadership to such countries.

Coll also rebuts the notion that the Taliban might not shelter al Qaeda this time around:

It would also be mistaken to believe, as some in the Obama administration have apparently argued, that a future revolutionary Taliban government in Kabul, having seized power by force, might decide on its own or could be persuaded to forswear connections with al Qaeda. Although the Taliban are an amalgamation of diverse groupings, some of which have little or no connection to al Qaeda, the historical record of collaboration between the Haqqani network and al Qaeda, to choose one example, is all but certain to continue and probably would deepen during any future era of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. The benefits of a Taliban state to al Qaeda are obvious: After the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States gathered evidence that al Qaeda used Afghan government institutions as cover for import of dual-use items useful for its military projects. Reporters with the McClatchy newspaper group's Washington bureau recently quoted a senior U.S. intelligence official on this subject: "It is our belief that the primary focus of the Taliban is regional, that is Afghanistan and Pakistan. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that the Taliban are abandoning their connections to al Qaeda ... The two groups ... maintain the kind of close relationship that -- if the Taliban were able to take effective control over parts of Afghanistan -- would probably give al Qaeda expanded room to operate." This assessment is consistent with recent history.

Coll has a nuanced view of history. He sees the parallels between U.S. attempts to pacify Afghanisan and the Soviet debacle there, but also the differences:

By comparison to the challenges facing the Soviet Union after it began to "Afghanize" its strategy around 1985 and prepare for the withdrawal of its troops, the situation facing the United States and its allies today is much more favorable. Afghan public opinion remains much more favorably disposed toward international forces and cooperation with international governments than it ever was toward the Soviet Union. The presence of international forces in Afghanistan today is recognized as legitimate and even righteous, whereas the Soviets never enjoyed such support and were unable to draw funds and credibility from international institutions. China today wants a stable Afghanistan; in the Soviet era, it armed the Islamic rebels. The Pakistani Army today is divided and uncertain in its relations with the Taliban, and beginning to turn against them; during the Soviet period, the Army was united in its effort to support Islamist rebels. And even if the number of active Taliban fighters today is on the high side of published estimates, those numbers pale in comparison to the number of Islamic guerrillas fighting the Soviet forces and their Afghan clients.
In other words, the project of an adequately stable Afghan state free from coercive Taliban rule for the indefinite future can be achieved, although there are no guarantees.

He also debunks the cliche that a cohesive state in Afghanistan is an impossible dream because it has never happened before:

Nor does the project of an adequately intact, if weak and decentralized, Afghan state, require the imposition of Western imagination. Between the late 18th century and World War I, Afghanistan was a troubled but coherent and often peaceful independent state. Although very poor, after the 1920s it enjoyed a long period of continuous peace with its neighbors, secured by a multi-ethnic Afghan National Army and unified by a national culture. That state and that culture were badly damaged, almost destroyed, by the wars ignited by the Soviet invasion of 1979 -- wars to which we in the United States contributed destructively. But this vision and memory of Afghan statehood and national identity has hardly disappeared. After 2001, Afghans returned to their country from refugee camps and far flung exile to reclaim their state -- not to invent a brand new Western-designed one, as our overpriced consultants sometimes advised, but to reclaim their own decentralized but nonetheless unified and even modernizing country.

The range of Coll's historical perpective - that the U.S. is not the Soviet Union (though prone to some of the same kinds of errors), that a coherent Afghan state is not a pipe dream, that the AfPak badlands are al Qaeda's native environment -- is really priceless. Equally nuanced is his sense of the possibilities and limitations of political pressure informed by goals that are political in the deepest sense: peace between Pakistan and India, inter-ethnic engagement and negotiation by the Afghan government.

None of this deep knowledge and balanced perspective means that Coll is necessarily right about the prospects of in some recognizable sense "winning" in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But he's come closer than either Richard Holbrooke or Stanely McChrystal to articulating what success might look like -- and even how the U.S. and international community might help foster it.

Stewart's view is as complex, nuanced and informed as Coll's. He details the unlikeihood that the U.S. can defeat the Taliban outright; the equal unlikelihood that the Taliban could overrun the entire country; the impossiblity of "building" a central government whose writ extends in modern nation-state style across the entire country; and the paradox that a relatively strong state can be a more dangerous haven for the likes of al Qaeda than a weak one. He emphasizes what can't be done more than what can, and Coll does the opposite; but both see a mixed outcome and the possibility for limited cooperation/collaboration with the Afghan government, infused by humility.

But a fundamental difference remains. Coll defends assumptions and ultimately (if equivocally) embraces goals that Stewart sees as delusive:

The fundamental assumptions remain that an ungoverned or hostile Afghanistan is a threat to global security; that the West has the ability to address the threat and bring prosperity and security; that this is justified and a moral obligation; that economic development and order in Afghanistan will contribute to global stability; that these different objectives reinforce each other; and that there is no real alternative.

But why delusive? In the end, Stewart's critique devolves into literary criticism - an analysis of the syntax of two 19th century British statesmen with different world views. His preference for the language and world view of the skeptic is not an argument. He highlights many perhaps insurmountable difficulties of attaining the vision outlined above, but he stops short of really indicating how to attain a messy but viable alternative. Coll, in the end, engages facts on the ground more relentlessly.

UPDATE 11/1: In retrospect I don't think I did justice to Stewart's argument here, which is cleaner in his Senate testimony. His case for why Afghanistan is unlikely to achieve a reasonably unified national government any time soon is at least as detailed as Coll's to the contrary, as is his policy recommendation -- 20,000 troops, aid targeted to selected projects.

I do think that there's a logical flaw in one of Stewart's syllogisms: a) Afghanistan is 30 years behind Pakistan in state-building capacity; b) Pakistan is a worse danger to us than Afghanistan, precisely because it's a cohesive enough state to preclude full-scale US military engagement in its tribal havens for the Taliban and al Qaeda; c) we're actually better off with a weak Afghanistan than we'd be with a relatively strong one. That sequence ignores the fact that Pakistan is so dangerous in large part because of the long Afghan Civil War and Pakistan's engagement with (creation of) the Taliban. Stewart lampoons the chicken-egg nature of arguments for counterinsurgency-as-counterterrorism, the interchangeability of alleged cause and effect But his attempt to pull the cause and effect chain straight is no more convincing than that of the counterinsurgency theorists.

More to come on this.