[Peace-discuss] The Obama administration on AfPak

[C. G. Estabrook]

[While the press publishes thumbsuckers (journalese for will-he-or-won't-he 
think pieces, etc.) on Afghanistan, the man Obama chose to run his 
administration's policy in the crucial theatre of the SW Asian war (while Gen. 
Petraeus flips coins at the Super Bowl) makes clear the USG plans to the people 
who matter -- the Nato and other states who will be asked to back them.  The war 
in Afghanistan (really against Pakistan) will be “much tougher than Iraq,” says 
the egregious Richard Holbrooke, and longer than the 14-year war in Vietnam. 
Obama's down with that.  --CGE]

	The New York Times
	February 9, 2009
	Holbrooke Says Afghan War ‘Tougher Than Iraq’
	By NICHOLAS KULISH and HELENE COOPER

MUNICH — The war in Afghanistan will be “much tougher than Iraq,” President 
Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan said at a security 
conference here on Sunday.

“There is no magic formula in Afghanistan,” the envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, 
warned an audience of European policy makers and military planners. “There is no 
Dayton agreement in Afghanistan,” he added, referring to the peace accord he 
negotiated to end the war in Bosnia. “It’s going to be a long, difficult struggle.”

Mr. Holbrooke was part of a high-level American delegation at the annual Munich 
Security Conference over the weekend. The group, led by Vice President Joseph R. 
Biden Jr. and including Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, and 
Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the United States Central Command, did not 
paint a rosy picture of the situation in Afghanistan.

The American view of Afghanistan’s problems differed from that of the country’s 
president, Hamid Karzai, who also spoke Sunday.

While Mr. Karzai acknowledged the security problems, he said that great progress 
had been made, from roads to schools to health services. In an address that at 
times sounded defensive, he said Afghanistan was neither a “narco-state” nor a 
“failed state,” as critics have labeled it.

Mr. Karzai called again for reconciliation with Taliban forces “who are not part 
of Al Qaeda, who are not part of terrorist networks, who want to return to their 
country.” He also criticized NATO over the number of civilian casualties it has 
caused in the course of battling the insurgency.

American officials at the conference questioned the gap between Mr. Karzai’s 
presentation of reality and what they see as the facts on the ground. The 
pervasive corruption in the country is viewed as a central reason that the 
Afghan leader has fallen out of favor with the Obama administration. Mr. Karzai 
faces an election in August.

General Petraeus’s comments, on the other hand, were greatly anticipated as the 
final day of the conference got under way. He is widely credited for the 
improved security situation in Iraq, where he was the senior commander during 
the troop increase known as the surge. Expectations are running high that he can 
repeat the success of that strategy in Afghanistan.

General Petraeus spoke of the need for outposts and patrol bases in the 
provinces. “You can’t commute to work” when conducting counterinsurgency 
operations, he said Sunday. “A nuanced appreciation of local situations is 
essential” to understanding “the tribal structures, the power brokers, the good 
guys and the bad guys, local cultures and history,” he said.

“There has been nothing easy about Afghanistan,” said General Petraeus, adding 
that he “would be remiss if I did not ask individual countries to examine very 
closely what forces and other contributions they can provide” ahead of the 
elections in August. He said needs included not only ground forces but also an 
array of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, military police 
officers, special operations, cargo and attack helicopters and more. Mr. Obama 
is planning to send as many as 30,000 additional troops to try to turn the tide 
in the war against insurgents.

Some NATO allies have been slow to contribute additional forces.

In his comments, General Jones was critical of the effort to stabilize the 
country thus far. “The international coordination was spotty at best,” he said. 
“We tended to focus too much on the military reconstruction part, which was 
important but not the only thing that should have been done.”

The Americans were not alone in their calls for a more robust effort. Radek 
Sikorski, the foreign minister of Poland, called Afghanistan a test for NATO, 
and emphasized that the security situation had to improve immediately. “If this 
year we don’t turn the tide, it’s going to be much harder later on,” he said.

Britain’s defense secretary, John Hutton, made what may have been the harshest 
comments directed at the alliance’s prosecution of the war, accusing NATO of an 
obsession with bureaucracy. “What I want from NATO is more of a wartime 
mentality,” he said.

In an interview on Saturday, Vice President Biden expressed sympathy for Mr. 
Karzai for the challenges he faces in governing Afghanistan. “Karzai has an 
incredibly difficult job,” he said.

“Do I think — me speaking, Joe Biden — think he could do more? Yes. Do I 
understand why from his perspective he might think he couldn’t do more? Yes. 
Does there ultimately over the next year have to be a change in appointing 
strong governors? Having a police force that is free of corruption? Cracking 
down more on the corruption within his own government? The answer is yes. Yes, 
all of the above has to occur.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/world/europe/09munich.html?ref=world