by Shuja Nawaz
Riedel seemed to agree with the Lute analysis on the domination of the military in the Afghan policy debate. ‘So the report’s main conclusion, I think, is pretty simple on this, which is we had to build up an Afghan Army and we had to pay for it, and in the interim, American and NATO forces would have to fight the war for some period of time until the Afghans were ready. What that period of time would be would only be determined by events on the ground. When the president did his second review, of course, he put in the timeline.’
Was it wise for Obama to announce the timeline for beginning of withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan when he did in his West Point speech in December 2009? Riedel does not think so. I agree, for many of the same reasons and also because it went against previous experience of the Soviet Union in the region and failed to recognize the nature of the local tribal system. Riedel said it was ‘an artificial timeline,’ and, ‘I don’t think it was wise at all. I think it was a compromise to achieve a political solution inside the Democratic Party rather than a strategy. The left of the party—particularly the vice-president—more or less wanted to abandon the Afghan war. They never said it in those terms, but they wanted to abandon the Afghan war. The president recognized that was irresponsible, but he wanted to give them something and particularly what he wanted to give them was a timeline and promised an early departure.’ Yet Riedel concedes that Obama was in a tough spot: ‘Part of him was quite sympathetic to the left’s argument that we should just get out. I think if he could have done so, he would have done so. But I think in the end, he’s a responsible leader, and he realized that would be an irresponsible approach. And contrary to what he was hoping in 2009 and for several years after, he’s now leaving office leaving the war with a substantial American presence for the future as far as we can see.’ Plus, of course a NATO presence, so it is not simply America’s War.
Riedel also puts some historical perspective on the latest Afghanistan war. ‘We are in the unusual position, as the United States of America, of having fought the same war twice from opposite sides.’ In the 1980s, we figured out how to bow down a superpower [the Soviet Union] by using a sanctuary in Pakistan. In the twenty-first century, we’ve been the superpower, and the enemy has a sanctuary in Pakistan. And we’re now realizing just how impossible it is to win at war if the opponent has a sanctuary. Now, the drone operations targeted the Al-Qaeda part of that sanctuary, but they never really targeted the Taliban part of the strategy. We’ve only really had one drone attack on a Taliban target . . . and it was this year [2009]. And so far, that looks like a one-off. All of which gets to the question of the third part of the whole strategy, what to do about Pakistan and how to engage with the Pakistanis.’ The idea of sanctuary held American thinking in its grip, even when they understood that the Haqqanis were a relatively small part of the internal Afghan insurgency. It poisoned the US–Pakistan relationship.
He believes that ‘the Obama administration inherited the policy on Al-Qaeda and Afghanistan that was not working, in fact, heading towards losing. They inherited from Bush, no policy on Pakistan. Bush had had a policy on Pakistan, and it was Musharraf: backing Musharraf to the hilt. Even when they began to increasingly suspect Musharraf was playing a double game with them, they just stuck with Musharraf. In fact, in the last days of Musharraf, I know that [VP Dick] Cheney told Bush in a small group meeting that, “Abandoning Musharraf would be the functional equivalent of abandoning the Shah in 1977 and ’78.” And that’s how Cheney at least, had framed the picture.’ What Cheney failed to produce was a counterfactual view of Iranian history, and in the twenty-first-century Pakistan’s history. The US did not show the stamina to continue supporting an autocrat, no matter how close to the US administration, against his own army and people. As in 1979 Iran, the US ended up on the wrong side of local history.
Both Lute and Riedel seemed to agree with the thrust of Holbrooke’s push for greater attention to Pakistan. But, as Nasr writes, the US military and intelligence policy was on a different track from the State Department. ‘The Pentagon, for its part, had a war to win and wanted Pakistan’s help to finish off the Taliban.’ The Pentagon and CIA’s goals were ‘predictably narrow in scope and all terrorism focused . . . but their constant pressure on Islamabad always threatened to break up the relationship.’ Nasr termed their tone as ‘pugilistic’ in their talks with Pakistan, but he maintains they ‘bore no responsibility for the outcome’. He recalled Holbrooke shaking his head and saying, ‘Watch them [the CIA] ruin this relationship. And when it is ruined, they are going to say, “We told you, you can’t work with Pakistan!” We never learn.’ 21 Neither the US nor Pakistan was a unitary actor. Both divided their efforts to suit domestic purposes.
Pakistan’s unwillingness or inability to share all they knew about Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban with their American counterparts remained a serious stumbling block in the relationship and figured in the crafting of Obama’s Afghanistan policy. A senior White House official reportedly was heard to repeat a familiar joke that has been applied to other nationalities in other situations: ‘When do you know the Pakistanis are lying? Their lips are moving!’ Feeding this negative view of Pakistan was the Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the powerful voice of the head of Afghan National Directorate of Security or NDS, Amrullah Saleh, a former aide to the slain Tajik leader Ahmed Shah Massoud.
The White House arranged for both Pakistani and Afghan teams to visit Washington DC during the period when the Riedel review was being prepared to seek their inputs on the way forward and to converse with each other in the presence of the Americans. As Riedel recalls, the Pakistanis got a message that they ‘were too important for us not to engage with. I think Musharraf was counting on that. He had an exaggerated sense of his ability to talk to Bush and get away with it.’ This ‘certainly led to a lack of candor in dealing with us’.
Riedel recalls asking the Afghans during one bilateral: ‘Who is our enemy in Afghanistan and where is their headquarters?’ As expected, he says, Saleh answered this by stating that ‘the enemy is the Afghan Taliban . . . and their headquarters is in Quetta, and we’ve already passed on this information to you 1,000 times! Why are you asking the same question over again?’ The next morning Riedel asked the Pakistani delegation the same question. This time it was Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the DG ISI’s turn to speak. ‘He gave a long exposition about Afghan tribal and ethnic politics and the Pashtun sense of having unfairly been removed from power and on and on. So after he made his exposition, I asked him, “General, what is your opinion of the Quetta Shura?” So he sits up, turns to his aide behind him who brings a briefcase up. The briefcase is put on the table. He opens the briefcase, takes a folder out, puts the briefcase back. Quite a show. Opens the folder and says, “I anticipated that you would ask this question. There is no such thing as the Quetta Shura.” And he closes the file. And it was really a quite a remarkable moment because it was clear there was going to be no candour on a very important issue. I would say that that characterized the Kayani era. Mullen tried very hard. So did the various CENTCOM commanders, but they never opened the door to a conversation that was really candid. And I think that when Osama bin Laden was finally found, the administration basically said, “Well, we tried, we’re done!” 22 Riedel also recalls one moment at the dinner for both Afghan and Pakistani teams when the exchanges between both Pasha and Saleh became heated enough that ‘I thought, if I don’t take these two men into another room, they’re going to start hitting each other . . . no hitting each other in the War Room!’
Against this backdrop, the key person in the crafting of the Af–Pak policy was Obama himself, a thoughtful, professorial person who had had exposure to Pakistan at a very early stage in his life when his mother would take him along to the country for her consultancy trips for USAID. Later, at Occidental College in California and then at Columbia University in New York, he befriended and roomed with Pakistanis and had even visited Pakistan as a young man. Some White House staff r
ecall his interest in and affection for Pakistan reflected in the questions he would ask during the early meetings. Gradually, this changed to disinterest and a more detached view of the situation, as he clarified US interests in the region. His style was deemed ‘Socratic’ and ‘very professional and deliberate’ and ‘studious’. He insisted on reading much of the background material given to him. At one stage during the review exercise, a senior White House official told me that Obama had some 16,000 pages of intelligence analysis available to him. He feared that the president would want to read every one of those pages!
The Soviet Union’s Example
At that point, I sent over to this friend at the White House the minutes of the Soviet Union’s Politburo meeting of 13 November 1986, where Mikhail Gorbachev got the Politburo to discuss and approve a withdrawal plan from Afghanistan. Among the leading lights of the Soviet Union at that time at this meeting were Andrei Gromyko, Eduard Shevardnadze, Anatoly Dobrynin and Marshal Sergey Akhromeyev. I highlighted some key elements of the discussion since it seemed to me that many basic issues that confronted the Soviets in 1986 remained unresolved for the Americans in Afghanistan in 2009 and that President Obama might profit from seeing how Gorbachev had handled the issues.
Gorbachev warns at the outset of the meeting: ‘We have been fighting in Afghanistan for six years. If the approach is not changed, we will continue to fight for another 20–30 years.’ At one point Gromyko emphasizes, ‘In one word, it is necessary to pursue a political settlement. Our people will breathe a deep sigh if we undertake steps in that direction. Our strategic goal is to make Afghanistan neutral.’ Marshal Akhromeyev announces at one point, ‘There is no single piece of land in this country which has not been occupied by a Soviet soldier. Nevertheless, the majority of the territory remains in the hands of the rebels . . . The whole problem is the fact that military results are not followed up by political [actions] . . . We have lost the battle for the Afghan people . . . We need to look for a way out . . . We must go to Pakistan.’ The resolution to exit Afghanistan two years hence was passed at that meeting, but it was not announced, as Obama announced his exit plan to the world in December 2009 at West Point. 23 The Soviets were smarter than the Americans in executing their exit strategy. They kept their plans close to their chests and they involved the neighbouring states.
Bruce Riedel thinks President Obama must have read that Politburo minute, but had to make a political compromise, and chose a policy that fit that need. The basic flaw in the relationship with Pakistan stemmed from the initial approach to crafting an Af–Pak policy and an Af–Pak dialogue by looking at the region through the Afghan prism.
Riedel, who is often seen as very critical of Pakistan by most observers, especially the Pakistanis, had a different view of the relative importance of Pakistan in the emerging policy of the US in the region. He says he never liked the term Af–Pak. ‘I remember saying to Richard Holbrooke shortly after we became partners . . . “Do you realize,” I said, “Richard, how most Pakistanis regard being called Pakis? Do you know that they think that’s a lot like the N word in America?” He looked at me horrified, and I thought, Nobody ever told you this before? I always thought if you were going to have a policy, you should have a South Asia policy and put all of this into a coherent goal. But if you weren’t going to do that, it should be the Pak–Af policy. Recognizing that one country is significantly bigger in every way than the other. If you pursued it from an Af–Pak policy, you were always seeing Pakistan solely from the Kabul dimension, which undermines the self-importance of Islamabad.
‘In one of my lectures that I give [frequently], I keep telling people: “Try to imagine Pakistan not sitting in South Asia. Physically take Pakistan out of South Asia and just look at it. It’s a country of close to 200 million people now. It will have 300 million people in our lifetime. It has a proven nuclear weapons programme. It has a huge military, bigger than it needs probably. It has powerful soft power as a Muslim country. It is a country which . . . actually has had real elections in which power has transitioned from one elected government to another . . . Compare that to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, you name it, and you would recognize that if we were thinking about the ten most important countries in the world for the United States in the next decade ahead, Pakistan would clearly belong. But unfortunately, because it is in South Asia, it falls into a chasm between India and Iran in which it seems to be lost and passed over.’ 24
This seemed to be the issue that afflicted the US’s view of Pakistan in the region. Further, there was a clear and abiding lack of a centre of gravity for decision making on Pakistan. The White House wished to call the shots. But the CIA, the Pentagon and, to some extent, the Department of State had their own angles and tried as much as they could to carry on parallel dialogues.
Direct trilateral discussions between the US, Pakistan and Afghanistan were few and far between. The Bush administration had given undue importance to Hamid Karzai, and frequent video-conferences with the US president allowed him to bypass local commanders and the diplomatic staff at will. Once Musharraf had lost his gloss, conversations with him were also limited. Hence, the White House chose to prepare for a tripartite with Karzai and Zardari in Washington on 6 May 2009. Zardari brought over his son, Bilawal, and, contrary to all official protocol, had him seated on his left, across from the US president and his team. 25
Vice-President Joe Biden prepared for this trilateral exchange, among other things, by meeting with a small group of think-tank representatives at his home the evening before, where he went through his briefing book while seated at his dining table and peppered us with questions late into the evening about Pakistan and Afghanistan. He got some very frank opinions, including some very pointed criticisms of Pakistan’s ‘double game’, and took copious notes. He also shared his own private views with some of us on the fragile state of democracy in both countries and the retrograde system of hereditary political parties in Pakistan.
Obama clearly needed the willing support of both leaders as he prepared his own transition from Afghanistan, even if it meant increasing the US military and financial commitment. Speaking at the conclusion of the meetings the next day he was upbeat about the tripartite dialogue, the second of a new series:
I’m pleased that these two men—elected leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan—fully appreciate the seriousness of the threat that we face, and have reaffirmed their commitment to confronting it. And I’m pleased that we have advanced unprecedented cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan on a bilateral basis—and among Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the United States—which will benefit all of our people.
He also outlined the immediate goals:
Now there’s much to be done. Along the border where insurgents often move freely, we must work together with a renewed sense of partnership to share intelligence, and to coordinate our efforts to isolate, target and take out our common enemy. But we must also meet the threat of extremism with a positive program of growth and opportunity. And that’s why my administration is working with members of Congress to create opportunity zones to spark development. That’s why I’m proud that we’ve helped advance negotiations towards landmark transit-trade agreements to open Afghanistan and Pakistan borders to more commerce . . . Within Pakistan, we must provide lasting support to democratic institutions, while helping the government confront the insurgents who are the single greatest threat to the Pakistani state. And we must do more than stand against those who would destroy Pakistan—we must stand with those who want to build Pakistan. And that is why I’ve asked Congress for sustained funding, to build schools and roads and hospitals. I want the Pakistani people to understand that America is not simply against terrorism—we are on the side of their hopes and their aspirations, because we know that the future of Pakistan must be determined by the talent, innovation, and intelligence of its people. 26
This was a theme that he returned to later that year, by when another review of the Afghan War had been done
, looking at more specific needs and actions. In his address to the cadets at West Point, he shared publicly his plan to exit Afghanistan in due course, even while he announced a surge of military troops. But there was no parallel major civilian surge in Afghanistan, nor a well-wrought and well-funded plan to engage with Pakistani civil society. All this despite engagement with members of the think-tank corps in the White House on 18 November 2009, when Ben Rhodes and other senior White House staff sought views on what the president ought to emphasize in his West Point speech. As we exited the meeting, Rhodes asked if I could send some ideas for the speech. My suggestion in an email a week later to the person who had arranged the meeting for Rhodes was for Obama to declare that the US would engage directly with civil society in both countries and not tie itself to any single individual or institution. I found out later that, among others, Secretary Clinton had pushed for the same approach. Hence, it was a pleasant surprise to hear Obama declare in his West Point address the following words:
