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Saturday, October 6, 2012

Reconstruction Update


  1. “Skateboarding in Kabul,” ForeignPolicy.com, Sep 2012.
A skateboarding park in Afghanistan might seem a little out of place, but in a country where nearly 70 percent of the population is under the age of 25, Oliver Percovich -- the founder of  the NGO Skateistan -- decided there was an unique opportunity to work for peace. In “Skateistan: The Story of Skateboarding in Afghanistan,” Oliver explains, "The whole idea was that we're building something for the kids, in Afghanistan, and it doesn't matter if they're poor, or rich, or coming from different ethnicities." As soon as he loaned out a few boards, he says, "I saw the gleam in their eyes and knew they were hooked." Since 2007, Skateistan has grown into an organization that employs youth from the street, teaches kids a new sport, and provides a please for boys and girls to play together.

  1. “Kabul's fallen skateboard fanatics,” BBC, Sep 2012.
In a video filmed in June, 14-year-old Khorshid tips her skateboard off the high edge of a quarter-pipe, at Kabul's indoor skatepark.
She appears fearless - and she was, say her friends, until she was killed by a Taliban suicide bomber last weekend.

  1. “Great Games, Local Rules: The New Great Power Contest in Central Asia,” Alexander Cooley.
The struggle between Russia and Great Britain over Central Asia in the nineteenth century was the original "great game." But in the past quarter century, a new "great game" has emerged, pitting America against a newly aggressive Russia and a resource-hungry China, all struggling for influence over the same region, now one of the most volatile areas in the world: the long border region stretching from Iran through Pakistan to Kashmir.
In Great Games, Local Rules, Alexander Cooley, one of America's most respected international relations scholars, explores the dynamics of the new competition for control of the region since 9/11. All three great powers have crafted strategies to increase their power in the area, which includes Afghanistan and the former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. Each nation is pursuing important goals: basing rights for the US, access to natural resources for the Chinese, and increased political influence for the Russians.
However, overlooked in all of the talk about this new great game is fact that the Central Asian governments have proven themselves critical agents in their own right, establishing local rules for external power involvement that serve to fend off foreign interest. As a result, despite a decade of intense interest from the United States, Russia, and China, Central Asia remains a collection of segmented states, and the external competition has merely reinforced the sovereign authority of the individual Central Asian governments. A careful and surprising analysis of how small states interact with great powers in a vital region, Great Games, Local Rules greatly advances our understanding of how global politics actually works in the contemporary era.

  1. “All-out Middle East war as good as it gets,” AsiaTimes, Sep 2012.
TEL AVIV - It is hard to remember a moment when the United States' foreign policy establishment showed as much unanimity as in its horror at the prospect of a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran.
In a September 10 report for Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, Anthony Cordesman warns, "A strike by Israel on Iran will give rise to regional instability and conflict as well as terrorism. The regional security consequences will be catastrophic."
And a "bi-partisan" experts' group headed by former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and co-signed by most of the usual suspects states, "Serious costs to US interests would also be felt over the longer term, we believe, with problematic consequences for global and regional stability, including economic stability. A dynamic of escalation, action, and counteraction could produce serious unintended consequences that would significantly increase all of these costs and lead, potentially, to all-out regional war."
If a contrarian thought might be permitted, consider the possibility that all-out regional war is the optimal outcome for American interests…

  1. “So Much for the Good War,” ForeignPolicy.com, Sep 2012
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the plight of the Afghan woman was a minor, but important part of the narrative that shaped the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan. Girls, for the first time in years, headed to schools, and women -- at least in Kabul -- were able to move without the blue shuttlecock burqas that symbolized their bondage under the Taliban.
So it is with great irony that this week, one of the worst ever for coalition forces in Afghanistan, foreigners were killed in Kabul by a suicide bomber who was neither male nor linked to the Taliban. The perpetrator was a young woman affiliated with the Hezb-i-Islami (HIG) militant group led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a bitter foe of the Taliban and former U.S. proxy who on 9/11 was self-exiled in Iran.
The ever pragmatic Hekmatyar is a weather vane, indicating the trajectory of the conflict in Afghanistan and the ever shifting domestic and regional power game. His role in the Sept. 18 bombing shows that the insurgents have the upper hand, their fight against the United States and Kabul government will continue, and Afghanistan is headed toward a messy, full-scale civil war.

  1. “Failed Efforts and Challenges of America’s Last Months in Iraq,” New York Times, Sep 2012. 
The request was an unusual one, and President Obama himself made the confidential phone call to Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president.
Marshaling his best skills at persuasion, Mr. Obama asked Mr. Talabani, a consummate political survivor, to give up his post. It was Nov. 4, 2010, and the plan was for Ayad Allawi to take Mr. Talabani’s place.
With Mr. Allawi, a secular Shiite and the leader of a bloc with broad Sunni support, the Obama administration calculated, Iraq would have a more inclusive government and would check the worrisome drift toward authoritarianism under Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
But Mr. Obama did not make the sale.

  1. “Pictures of Afghanistan in the Fifties and Sixties Are Totally Depressing,” Reason.com, Oct 2012.
"Given the images people see on TV, many conclude Afghanistan never made it out of the Middle Ages," writes Mohammad Qayoumi at Retronaut. "But that is not the Afghanistan I remember. I grew up in Kabul in the 1950s and ’60s. Stirred by the fact that news portrayals of the country’s history didn’t mesh with my own memories, I wanted to discover the truth."  
Qayoumi's gallery of what the Graveyard of Empires looked like before it was brought into contemporary civilization by the Hippie Trail, Soviet modernization, Taliban discipline and American nation-building is at once endearing, heartbreaking and disturbing. Because it turns out pre-modern Afghanistan looked pretty, well, modern.

  1. “Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund: Quarterly Report,” World Bank, Sep 2012.
Donors have contributed a total of US$5.7 billion since the inception of ARTF in 2002. SY1390 was a record year with US$933 million paid in, the majority of which was paid in during the second half of the year (US$877 million). SY1391 has started out strong with US$526 million contributed during the first quarter from four donors: Japan, Canada, Finland and the United States. At the same time last year the ARTF had received only US$57 million…In addition to the funds already received in SY1391 Q1, another US$430 million has been pledged for the remainder of the solar year. This amounts to a total of projected contributions of US$930 million. As a resultof the restructuring of the Afghan financial year, SY1391 will last only 9 months (March 21 to December 20, 2012) and consist of only three quarters. US$930 million divided over only three quarters, an average of US$311 million per quarter, is therefore a very high level of contributions compared to previous years.

  1. “The U.S. Surge and Afghan local Governance,“ United States Institute of Peace, Sep 2012.
This report focuses on both the U.S. military’s localized governance, reconstruction, and development projects and U.S. civilian stabilization programming in Afghanistan from 2009 through 2012. Based on interviews with nearly sixty Afghan and international respondents in Kabul, Kandahar, Nangarhar, and Washington, this report finds that the surge has not met its transformative objectives due to three U.S. assumptions that proved unrealistic. It also examines lessons from the U.S.surge’s impacts on local governance that can be applied toward Afghanistan’s upcoming transition.

  1. “Afghanistan Monthly Progress Report. July and August 2012,” Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Aug 2012.
On 8 July at the Tokyo Conference the international community, including the UK, agreed to help the Government of Afghanistan meet its country’s development needs for the years up to and after security transition in 2014. Specific pledges were made to 2017, with strong commitments from the international community to provide financial assistance to Afghanistan through the ‘Transformation Decade’ to the end of 2024. This support is vital to ensure that the Government can provide continued stability and prospects for its people when international military troops withdraw at the end of 2014. Our support will depend on the Government taking forward key governance and economic reforms, including on protecting the rights of women and girls, outlined in the Tokyo Mutual Accountability Framework (TMAF). At the request of the Government of Afghanistan, the UK agreed to co-chair the first Ministerial review of the TMAF benchmarks in 2014.

  1. “Six Conditions for an Effective Transfer of Power in Afghanistan,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sep 2012.
The subject is the transition of power in Afghanistan and I’ve been given seven minutes to summarize what needs to be done in a way that is intended to be controversial and stimulate discussion.
Let me begin by saying that even if you ignore Afghanistan’s neighbors, you cannot ignore the complexity of the challenges. Unless we take far more realistic and effective action than we have to date, there is a significant probability that Afghanistan will go from the center ring of America’s strategic circus in 2010 to an awkward cross between its freak show and its clown car by 2016.
To be specific, we need to learn from past experiences and cases like Afghanistan and Iraq, that a successful transfer of power has six elements. The first is effective leadership, not honest elections…

  1. “Infantry Battalion Operations in Afghanistan: Lessons from 1st Battalion, 6th Marines (1/6),” Marine Corps Center for Lessons Learned, August 2012.

  1. “A slightly different approach: Norwegian non-military collaboration with Afghanistan,” Norwegian Peacebuilding Resource Centre, August 2012.
Norway has a long history of providing humanitarian assistance to Afghanistan through non-governmental organisations and the United Nations, and has played an active role in aiding the rebuilding and development of the country since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The Norwegian approach has tried to balance support for military and civilian efforts, fully engage with the Government of Afghanistan (GoA) and at the same time help protect the humanitarian space. Norway has been loyal to the development strategies and priorities agreed upon among the GoA, donors and international organisations. It has promised to continue its development collaboration with Afghanistan beyond 2014 when the military engagement is to end. However, the form and extent of this collaboration is likely to depend on developments in Afghanistan over the coming years – and not least on the ability of the GoA to handle and implement development projects in a transparent and corruption-free manner.

  1. “Lessons from Afghanistan’s History for the Current Transition and Beyond,” United States Institute of Peace, Sep 2012.
Despite interesting patterns from the past and at least superficially striking parallels with the present, policies on Afghanistan have not been adequately informed by an understanding of the country’s history. Nor has the extensive academic literature on Afghan history been translated into policy; on the contrary, much that has been attempted in Afghanistan since late 2001 has been remarkably ahistorical. This report identifies broad historical patterns and distills relevant lessons that may be applicable to policies during the 2011 to 2014 transition and beyond.

  1. “The Haqqani Network: A Foreign Terrorist Organization,” Institute for the Study of War, Sep 2012.
The Haqqani Network is the most lethal terrorist network operating in Afghanistan. It has been linked to several of the most high-profile attacks on U.S. and foreign personnel and is responsible for most spectacular attacks and high level assassinations in Kabul and northern Afghanistan. Formerly led by aging patriarch Jalaluddin Haqqani, the Haqqani Network is currently run by his sons, Sirajuddin, Badruddin and Nasiruddin and their uncle, Ibrahim. In late August, news reports surfaced that Badruddin, the day to day operational commander of the network was killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan. Badruddin’s death will seriously alter the day to day efficacy of the network’s strategic and operational capabilities. However, his death will not have a serious effect on the network’s financial empire, which will ultimately give the network an opportunity to regenerate an operational replacement.
The network also includes many family members living abroad, from Pakistan to the Persian Gulf. Under the leadership of Jalaluddin’s sons, the network operates out of a support zone in North Waziristan, Pakistan, opposite Afghanistan’s eastern border in the provinces of Khost, Paktia and Paktika.

  1. “Taliban Perspectives on Reconciliation,” Royal United Services Institute, Sep 2012.
In July 2012, the authors of this report interviewed four senior Taliban interlocutors about the Taliban’s approach to reconciliation. The primary objective was to draw them out on three key issues:
1. International terrorism and the Taliban’s links with Al-Qa’ida and other armed non-state actors.
2. The potential for a ceasefire.
3. Parameters for conflict resolution and continuing presence of US military bases.
The interlocutors we interviewed referred mainly to the so-called Quetta Shura Taliban led by Mullah Mohammad Omar. This is, as they all confirmed, the primary vehicle driving the insurgency, and, in their view, continues to enjoy the allegiance of other key groups dotting the insurgent landscape.
The unwavering consensus amongst our interviewees was that for an agreement to hold, it would ultimately require approval by Mullah Mohammad Omar…

  1. “Kabul: City Number One,” BBC, Sep 2009.
Part One - 1971
There are many individuals and fragmentary events that have led to the present situation in Afghanistan. But there was a moment in 1971 when four separate things happened in and around Kabul that in their different ways reached back into the past and forward into the future.
That year the BBC sent a film crew to Kabul to recreate the first great military disaster of the British Empire - the retreat from Kabul in 1841. The BBC began by gathering Afghan tribesmen together to be extras. They acted out being taught cricket by the British. The Afghans then pretended to be fierce rebels storming out of the Kabul Bazaar to attack the British camp outside the city. 

  1. “Huge Uncertainty' in Afghanistan,” Council on Foreign Relations, Sep 2012.
President Obama has withdrawn the last of the so-called 30,000 "surge troops" he sent to Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010, but Max Boot, a veteran military analyst for CFR, says there are "huge uncertainties about the outcome" in the country. He says that "we certainly do not have the sense of victory in sight that we saw in Iraq when the surge troops were pulled out of there." Even though President Obama campaigned in 2008 on a platform of bolstering forces in Afghanistan, "he has done very little to rally public support for the war effort, again because I think he's fundamentally ambivalent about the war himself," Boot says. He also says there are significant questions about long-term U.S. commitment "because neither President Obama nor [Republican presidential nominee] Governor Mitt Romney is eager to talk about Afghanistan."

  1. “Waiting for the Taliban,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Sep 2012.
The withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan will leave the country worse than it was before 2001 in some respects. There is no clear plan for the future. Washington will progressively lose its influence over Kabul, and drone operations in Pakistan are not a credible way to fight jihadist groups on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The situation will only worsen after 2014, when most U.S. troops are out of the country and aid going to the Afghan government steeply declines.

  1. “No Time to Go Wobbly in Afghanistan: Focus on Stability, Not Exit Deadlines,” Armed Forces Journal, Sep 2012.
In a parody of Army Gen. David Petraeus’ famous assessment of progress in Afghanistan — “fragile and reversible” — the transition process there is fragile and irreversible. There is no turning back. Propelled by the logic of war, economic necessity and war weariness, the allies — the U.S., the 50 nations of the International Security Assistance Force and Afghanistan — are force-marching toward a new strategic paradigm.

  1. “Afghanistan Index,” The Brookings Institution, Sep 2012.

 

 

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