War in Congo: Rape, the Secretary of State and Security Sector Reform (Update 2)

Secretary Clinton is on an 11 day, 7 nation trip through Africa this week and next. She started in Kenya and Angola. Today she was in Kinshasa and then Goma and highlighted the continuing use of rape as a weapon in the long-running Congolese conflict. There are a several things to flag and read if you haven't already.

First, the Washington Post has this horrifying piece about the rising rate in rape as a result of the ongoing FARDC offensive against the FDLR (in part the former Rwandan genocidaires). What I found was different about the piece: interviews with rape victims and interviews with soldiers who try to justify/rationalize their behavior. It also describes how nothing happens, even when commanders are notified of these crimes.

The story includes an interview with a soldier explaining that lack of pay, lack of food rations, and being away from home, justify rape (the can of sardines was supposed to be a food ration for several soldiers for more than a week):

"The truth is like this," said one officer, sitting under a shed and sipping a powerful local brew. "What is making soldiers to do these bad things is their treatment by the army. Imagine, one can of sardines?! And you send a soldier away for 10 years?! So, I'm hungry, I'm in need of a wife and I have no money to pay for a prostitute, he said. "If I see a woman walking on the road, and I love her, I will take her. I will help myself."

So, in Goma, Secretary Clinton, reportedly visibly shaken by her conversations with victims, announced $17 million in assistance.

She also reportedly spoke to President Kabila about improving pay, living conditions,and training for the Congolese armed forces. That sounds nice, but let's hope she provided more advice than that. Since Ambassador Rice keeps saying the US is actually going to contributing more than its substantial assessed contributions to UN operations, maybe we can figure out a way to help build capacity for military justice for example, perhaps by training others to do it given our obligations in Afghanistan.

Since we've learned a lot recently about actually paying soldiers, lowering absenteeism rates and increasing professionalism, maybe that's something we could share with the EU and the UN as they work to professionalize the FARDC. One thing is for sure, things aren't going to change in Congo until we figure out ways to make sure the FARDC aren't away from home for too long, and of course are held accountable for raping, looting, and generally behaving like a bunch thugs.

UPDATE 1: More on Clinton's plan to fight rape in DRC:

She announced that the American government would train doctors, supply rape victims with video cameras to document violence, send American military engineers to help build facilities and train Congolese police officers, especially female police officers, to crack down on rapists.

That and the Secretary also mentioned the need to better regulate the conflict-funding mineral trade in the region.

UPDATE 2: Thanks to Vanessa for pointing this out but Texas in Africa (and some people in the comments) makes the following observation about the program:

$17 million is a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed to treat the tens of thousands of victims who need immediate help...That money is nowhere near enough to whip the police force into shape (and they need training on more issues than just gender-based violence), but it will certainly help.

And then a commenter:

Also on the camcorders - don't they contain coltan, and wouldn't distributing large numbers of them simply increase the demand for the mineral "they" say should be curtailed to stop the violence? Or don't they believe that?

Well, obviously, I don't know how many camcorders we're talking about but that strikes me as the deepest of ironies. The minerals are funding the conflict. The soldiers/combatants who are exploiting resources rape women. And then later the women get the camcorders, the very camcorders for which the resources are exploited and...And as Texas in Africa points out, that's money we're not spending on training/properly paying security forces.

But the Taliban Might Try to Get Pakistan's Nukes! Oh Wait... UPDATED

...they have tried already. Via the Times of India:

Pakistan's nuclear facilities have already been attacked at least thrice by its home-grown extremists and terrorists in little reported incidents over the last two years, even as the world remains divided over the safety and security of the nuclear weapons in the troubled country, according to western analysts.

The incidents, tracked by Shaun Gregory, a professor at Bradford University in UK, include an attack on the nuclear missile storage facility at Sargodha on November 1, 2007, an attack on Pakistan's nuclear airbase at Kamra by a suicide bomber on December 10, 2007, and perhaps most significantly the August 20, 2008 attack when Pakistani Taliban suicide bombers blew up several entry points to one of the armament complexes at the Wah cantonment, considered one of Pakistan's main nuclear weapons assembly.

Well thank goodness the attacks were ineffectual. So it seems that extremists know where Pakistan's nuclear weapons are and have attempted to at least disrupt activities at those locations, if not failed utterly in actually absconding with a device. It is slightly reassuring that the Pakistani Army was able to keep the weapons safe and appear to maintain fairly robust security measures.

Granted, these attacks all occurred prior to the late winter offensives by the Pakistani Taliban, but the reality is the Taliban threat to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is way overblown. Pakistan sports one of the largest armies in the world that is becoming increasingly modern (thanks to the infusion of U.S. money and training). To suggest that the Taliban will come out of the mountains to defeat the Pakistani Army to obtain nuclear weapons seems absolutely preposterous to me.

I would even argue that such an attempt by the Taliban would be a grave strategic misstep by them. Without Pakistan viewing them as an existential threat (which they are not), the Pakistani government will not attempt to eradicate them. If a substantial effort is made to obtain weapons, that could very well change the government's calculus on who is a greater threat: extremists or India.

I don't believe that the Taliban will mount a serious attempt to obtain a nuclear weapon nor will they ever be a serious threat to the existence of Pakistan. That just leaves us to worry about a coup in which the ownership of the devices is left in question. But don't bet on the Taliban making that happen. There are a whole lot of other groups that want to get their hands on those weapons whose agendas are much more aligned with the ISI's.

H/T to SNLII for passing on the article.

UPDATE: Jari points out that the footnotes from the CTC Sentinel suggest that the sites that had been attacked were not likely nuclear facilities and that the attacks were overstated. I'd say much like the Taliban threat to the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

It's like Rip van Winkle or something

It seems like every day I read another opinion column in which the author proposes a policy course that has been widely discussed, perhaps criticized, and either implemented or disregarded already. Our fresh thinker tends to present his or her idea as cutting-edge, out-of-the-box, and certain to succeed. Today's installment comes from everyone's favorite right-wing McLaughlin Group commentator, Tony Blankley:

Also, we cannot deny the locals the revenue from the poppy fields and hope to befriend and empower the local tribal chiefs and farmers. It would be better if we simply bought the whole yearly crop (approximate cost $2 billion to $3 billion - but far cheaper in both dollars and American lives than the alternative,) and directed it to the legal pharmaceutical market. Thus, the Afghans keep their desperately needed money (and their traditional tribal relations and culture), the Taliban doesn't get its cut, and we keep the heroin off the streets of Europe and America.

I'm pretty sure no one has thought of this one before: why don't we just buy up all the opium and channel it into legal pharma?? Then the bad guys can't make any money off of it!

Only, they can. Does Blankley really think that the "Taliban's cut" in the drug trade comes from buying up the crop and then selling it at a higher price? Money is extorted and stolen from the Afghan people by the insurgents. It doesn't matter where this money comes from (but drugs happen to be a convenient medium because there's a premium to be made on their transport and sale, too). If the coalition starts buying up the crop, then the enemy will simply extort American dollars from farmers instead.

Unless, that is, we're able to cleave the insurgents from the farmers and the rest of the civilian populace. The odds of that don't look great at this point, especially with these force levels. (Not to mention the fact that the strategic logic of committing the necessary forces is... well, let's say it's questionable.)

Here's another charming nugget from the same article:

According to several of the troops with whom I talked, a policy that merely wanted permanently to suppress the Taliban could be more surely gained by fully empowering the local tribal chiefs and warlords to go after the Taliban - who, though of the same Pashtun tribe as many Afghans, are considered different subsets of tribe and thus foreigners worthy of enthusiastic slaughter.

Afghans hate foreigners, whether Macedonian, British, Russian, American or Pakistani Pashtun.

Is he serious? Does he think most Pashtun tribesmen in the Hindu Kush have any concern for (or even know) which side of the Durand Line they're on?

Blenkley figures we ought to just go away and takes the gloves off of the "local tribal chiefs and warlords." (In the latter case, hasn't Karzai pretty much already done that?) Those power brokers are only likely to "go after the Taliban" so long as it's in their interest to do so, which is to say so long as it looks like they're certain to win, and like they have more to gain from prosecuting a campaign against the Taliban than from reconciling with them, switching sides, or negotiating. This idea is based on the false perception that there is some sort of wide consensus about exactly who the bad guys are in Afghanistan.

I don't want to sound like Josh Foust here, but can the Blankleys and other political hacks of the world get out of the business of offering half-baked "solutions" to complex problems like Afghanistan?

"Karzai should see this as 'Godfather II'..."

"You got to get out of the business and go legit."

That's what one UN official had to say about the Afghan president's familial links to drug trafficking and other forms of criminality, as related by the excellent Elizabeth Rubin in yesterday's New York Times Magazine. More:

Yet on every trip I’ve made to Kandahar, I have heard another story about Ahmed Wali and drugs. Some of the people who have recounted the incidents are now dead. Like Malim Akbar Khakrezwal, an elder of the Alakozai tribe. In 2006, he took me around the fertile lands of his district, which are now infiltrated by Taliban. He told me that when he was provincial-intelligence chief, he captured 1,400 kilograms of opium belonging to Jan Muhammad, then governor of Uruzgan and a very close friend of the president. Jan Muhammad told Akbar to release the opium, and he refused. “My brother called me and said, ‘We are not able to fight these big people,’ ” Akbar told me. “ ‘We are weak. Release them.’ So I went to Ahmed Wali and said: ‘You are my commander; what should I do with this opium? Should I give it back to Jan Muhammad?’ ‘Yes. Give it back,’ he said. Twenty days later I was released from my position.” Last year he was assassinated.

A Western intelligence official who has spent much of the last seven years in Kandahar and, for obvious reasons, wanted to remain anonymous, told me: “The Karzai family has opium and blood on their hands. They systematically install low-level officials up to provincial governors to make sure that, from the farm gate, in bulk, the opium is moved unfettered. When history analyzes this period and looks at this family, it will uncover a litany of extensive corruption that was tolerated because the West tolerated this family.”

Perhaps. Or not. As many Afghans have pointed out, U.S. history is full of robber barons and of families who made their fortunes during Prohibition, and in the words of Ashraf Ghani “turned very decent as families.”

The article's already been linked by a bunch of people, but I'm highlighting it here in case you've missed it. In the midst of all this talk about strategic re-assessment in Afghanistan, and with the 20 August presidential election looming, we might ought to give a little consideration to how our horse (?) is being perceived by his own (myriad) constituency/ies, right?

Uncle Mehsud Wants You!

There is an interesting article in the LA Times today about the Pakistani Taliban kidnapping teenage boys as some sort of recruitment process. It appears that the Taliban has been doing this in Swat for a while to train the boys to be scouts, suicide bombers, and generic fighters, according to both the boys and a Pakistani Army officer. The article discusses the draconian training regime:

The boys were blindfolded and taken to a camp where about 150 other boys were being trained, the 16-year-old said. At his camp, he said, conditions were harsh. Food was scarce, and at times dinner amounted to a piece of flatbread shared among four boys. The recruits had to wake up before sunrise for morning prayers, then run up and down the hillsides. Calisthenics and at times firearms demonstrations followed. In the afternoons, there were indoctrination sessions to convince the youths of the ideal of waging holy war against the military. "We were miserable there," the 16-year-old said. "That's why we escaped."

Transgressions were dealt with harshly. One boy who didn't attend morning prayers had his face painted black. Another boy who used a splinter of tree bark to clean his teeth had his head shoved underwater and held there. He was told he was being punished because he didn't get permission from the tree's owner.

I'm not too sure what to make of this. At first I thought, no kidding - of course they're recruiting boys to do a lot of dirty work. While always cautious of males of any age, a 15 year old kid does not register immediately as a threat to a passing convoy as he is not a military-age male (usually 18-35 or so). It is also easier for them to conceal their true intent by doing what teenage boys usually do in these areas. You can scout against counterinsurgent convoys easily while selling soda and cigarettes, playing football or cricket, or doing menial labor for your family. Obviously the Taliban would love to have a cadre of these guys. This is true also for suicide bombers.

But the methods of recruitment and training seem a little bizarre to meet this model (which I came across in Iraq). First, you don't need to train scouts like this - you just pay the kids and tell them what type of info you want and how to contact you. Second, they make terrible fighters because they are generally too young to be proficient. Spend any time with a teenager and try to get them to do work and you would understand what I mean. Now extrapolate that to hard mountainous insurgency fighting and I would hazard that they become a little more useless (in general - Africa's child soldiers don't fit this mold, but the Taliban isn't forcing narcotics on these kids so I consider it a different case). Thirdly, they said they weren't being trained to be suicide bombers so that wasn't the likely intent of why they were there - and it seems that was kept for the true believers.

So what to make of this? It seems to me then that they were being trained to be fighters as that's the only likely scenario I see based on their comments to the reporter and the Pakistani Army. If I could not be a pessimist for a second, this seems to bode poorly for the Pakistani Taliban. If they need to kidnap teenagers, who will be sub-performing fighters and don't want to do it in the first place, it seems to me that the Taliban might be having problems with recruiting, training, and deploying a large enough force to counter the Pakistani Army.

Ok, optimism is over. For this to matter, the Pakistani Army would need to continue to press against the Taliban and take advantage of this and the reported power vacuum. Too bad that's not likely.

Cordesman: up to nine additional brigades needed in Afghanistan (UPDATED)

Anthony Cordesman suggests that we need between three and nine additional brigades in Afghanistan. The London Times, reporting on an editorial that appears in its own pages, somehow figures that this could mean up to 45,000 new troops. (I usually base calculations on an estimated BCT size of 3,500; I'm not sure where this 5K-to-a-brigade is coming from.) Here's part of his list of what needs to be done to shift the tide of the war:

Second, to be effective, [ISAF] must eliminate as many national caveats and restrictions on troops as possible, and add a substantial number of additional US combat brigades. Experts differ, but this could mean anywhere from three to nine brigades above the 21,000 additional forces that President Obama approved in the spring of 2009.

Third, it must create a larger and more effective mix of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Many experts believe this means roughly doubling the targets from 134,000 men for the army to 240,000, and from 82,000 to 160,000 for the police by 2014. Equally important, member nations must provide the trainers, mentors and money to make this force effective. They must put them in the lead as soon as possible to show the Afghan people that security has an Afghan face, that it can last, and that every step is being taken to limit civilian casualties.

There's some other stuff about aid effectiveness and corruption, which is worth reading if only to say "who cares how much money Oxfam is spending on security when the Afghans are going to waste some significant chunk of what they DO get through corruption?"

Anyway, worth a look.

UPDATE: Today's Times includes a letter from Cordesman disputing the 45K number the paper assessed as his recommendation in the headline. I like to pretend like he was made aware of the whole deal by this post. Let me have my moment!

London Times

August 12, 2009

US Army Manpower

Afghanistan, military manpower, figures and speculation

Sir, You claim in a news story that my article for your Comment section (“More troops, fewer caveats. Let’s get serious”, Aug 10) called for 45,000 more US troops in Afghanistan, and you speculate whether I might be speaking for General McChrystal. As the disclaimer to my piece made clear, the views I expressed were completely my own. They in no sense reflect the views of General McChrystal.

Moreover, while I referred to a range of three to nine brigades, I deliberately did not make any estimate of manpower. There are many types of brigades and many ways they can be deployed. The lower end of the range in my article could easily amount to a quarter of the total you suggest.

Anthony H. Cordesman, Washington

President for Life? Easy, Hold a Referendum to Make Constitutional Change Legitimate

Le Monde has an interesting editorial today about the growing number of African leaders who are obtaining changes in their countries' constitutions to permit them to remain president, initially for additional terms but usually for what amounts to a lifetime appointments. (Instead of translating full paragraphs, as Alma did earlier this weekend, I will just summarize relevant points).

Last week, the President of Niger, Mamadou Tandja, won a referendum to change the constitution to allow him to run for a third term. He supposedly won with a 90% margin. It took some work for Tandja to get his way: he had to dismiss parliament, dissolve the constitutional court, and replace its members with judges who would approve of his referendum plans.

The Presidents of Algeria, Tunisia, Cameroon, and Chad, have also taken these types of steps. There are rumblings, the editorial says, that the president of Burkina Faso, Blaise Campaore, wants to do the same so he can run for a fifth term in office. These Presidents hold elections sure but what kinds of elections exactly? Usually, the ones that, despite widely reported irregularities and intimidation, the international community rules them good enough. To use the expression of one of my grad school professors, those elections get a D-. They don't fail, they just don't really pass either. It's just too much of a hassle to worry about them though.

So, given that elections are fast approaching in both Guinea and Cote d'Ivoire, the editorial asks, how do you organize elections so they aren't hijacked by either a single official or of course a party in a country's conflict? How do you make sure that elections aren't used to rubber stamp constitutional changes that undermine peace and security? What should our response be to such D-"elections" and "referenda"?

Mauritania's first suicide bombing, targeting the French embassy in Nouakchott

A quick reaction to the suicide bombing that took place today against the French embassy in Nouakchott. According to the AP, a man detonated the explosive belt he was wearing outside of the French embassy (the local media is more vague about the location, saying it was a little further down the road). Two security guards and a woman were lightly injured, while the kamikaze was killed.

Mauritania’s first experience of terrorism on its soil is recent. In 2005, the GSPC (Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat), which rebranded itself Al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) in early 2007, attacked the Lemgheity military post. In 2007, four French tourists were killed in Aleg, in the south of the country. In early 2008, shots were fired against the Israeli embassy, and in September of that same year, 15 soldiers were taken hostage and beheaded near the town of Zouerate. Finally, in June, an American aid worker was killed in what appeared to be an attempted kidnapping. AQIM claimed responsibility or was found responsible for all of these incidents.

Today’s event represents the first occurrence of a suicide bombing in Mauritania. There had been warning signs. When the first Mauritanian blew himself up in Bouira (Algeria) during the summer of 2008 as part of an AQIM operation, this triggered a fear that his example may inspire other extremists recruited in Mauritania. Over the past year and a half, the Mauritanian police has raided several AQIM safehouses in Nouakchott and found arms and explosives, including explosive belts—suggesting that one or more people were already, at the time, willing to blow themselves up.

The suicide attack before the French embassy today represents the realization of this worrisome prospect, and follows the line of attacks targeting either the Mauritanian army or Western expatriates. This attack is also, in all likelihood, a strong message sent to the newly-elected (and already contestated) President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who has sworn to rid Mauritania of terrorism. This new incident--which has not yet been claimed by anyone--also suggests that the terrorist threat, although recent in Mauritania, may be there to stay. The dismantling of the Mauritanian branch of AQIM and the numerous arrests in early 2008 did not prevent the group from reforming.

It will be interesting, in the next few months, to observe how the recent surge in the Malian army’s effort to go after AQIM on its territory (with the help of the Tuareg community who knows well the terrain and is well versed in the art of guerilla warfare) will impact on neighboring countries. The area of the Sahara between Mauritania, Algeria and Mali has long been a lawless zone and a sanctuary for AQIM’s southern cells. If Mali is successful in chasing AQIM out of its territory (and assuming they can keep that territory clear), and if the Algerians are able to do the same on theirs, will these cells relocate to Mauritania ?

Olivier Roy on the U.S. and Pakistan

Interesting interview in Le Monde of Olivier Roy, one of the finest experts on Islam and Islamism, on the death of Baitullha Mehsud, the leader of the Pakistani Talibans. Here is my quick and dirty translation of the two key paragraphs :

Q : Can this be considered a victory for the American and Pakistani forces ?

A : Yes, since Baitullah Mehsud symbolized the rise of the Talibans and the unification of different radical forces in the region. It shows in particular the efficiency of the American tactic consisting in using drones that are costless in terms of human lives. For the Americans and the Pakistani Army, it is positive. But it is very unlikely that this will reverse the situation, because it is not just about an individual. There is in this zone a conjunction between the tribal, clan, and ethnic solidarities and the Taliban ideology, and this is why the movement is strong. It also shows that there is cooperation in the field of intelligence : Americans could probably not have localized Mehsud without Pakistani help.

Q : This illustrates, then, that the cooperation between Pakistan and the US is working well ?

A : What it illustrates is the fact that, when Pakistanis want to cooperate, things work out. But I do not think that this signals a fundamental change in the very ambiguous policy of the Pakistani army. Pakistanis play a very complex and ambiguous game, and we have no indication that they are in a phase of full and complete cooperation with the Americans in the struggle against the Talibans. In the present case, Baitullah Mehsud was becoming dangerous for the Pakistanis.

The Pakistani use the Talibans to undermine the authority of the Karzaï regime, but the Pakistani army has no desire to see the Pakistani Talibans look in the direction of Islamabad, as the Talibans from the Swat Valley did a few months ago. The Pakistani army does not want to break the momentum of the Talibans, but it wants them to be not strong enough to threaten the central government. It is in the framework of this subtle and very risky game that the Pakistanis have helped the Americans. No matter how strong they are, the Americans will not get anywhere without the help of the Pakistanis.

One minor conclusion : the French, unlike Australians and East Tennesseans, think drone strikes are cool.

One more important conclusion : To find out whether we have a reasonable chance of success in Afghanistan, the first question to ask is : can we succeed in Afghanistan if we fail in Pakistan ? And if the answer is no, then it all boils down to the following : what leverage exactly do we have on the Pakistani army? Pakistan would not be the first country whose elite (political or military) finds a low-level insurgency to be more beneficial for its vested interests than peace. The U.S. will need to convince the Pakistani army that they share the same interests ; if these interests include preventing the Talibans from laying hands on Islamabad and taking control of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, that’s something. But reducing the Taliban presence in Pakistan to the point that they do not threaten Afghanistan (or Pakistan) anymore ? This will be a harder sell.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em. Unless You're in Baghdad.

So apparently with all of the problems facing Iraq, an important piece of legislation that Maliki is pursuing is to ban smoking in public places. For those of you who have spent any time on the ground in Iraq, smoking is huge there. People smoke everywhere. One of the most important parts of negotiating at the tactical level (company/field grade officers with local leaders) in my experience was the trading of cigarettes prior to the meeting. You talked about your families and the weather and enjoyed one of the few vices allowed in the country (while alcohol is not specifically banned and is actually widely used in Iraq, it is all behind closed doors for fear of retaliation from extremists).

It also seems to be oddly timed. I appreciate the sentiment of improving the public's health, but it's something the people in general enjoy and it's not like the massive public healthcare system is being overburdened by cancer treatments (yet). By that I mean they don't really treat cancer at all, so it's not currently costing the Iraqi government anything. As opposed to, say, people getting blown up, drilled, or shot. Or maybe the petroleum law, disposition of Kirkuk, reintegration of the Sons of Iraq into the government fold, disarmament of private militias, etc, etc, etc.

Here's hoping they bring back the Sumers - at least they were made more of paper than tobacco. Maybe the parliament will debate it over a couple cartons of Miamis.

Japanese community festivals, national reconciliation, and Iraq

There are two people whose writing ability I would trade body parts for: Christopher Hitchens and David Foster Wallace. Two completely different styles, obviously, and it's hard to imagine content more varied. But both guys are just such an absolute pleasure to read that I really don't care much what the subject is. I've read everything DFW ever wrote (from tennis to cruise ships to lobster festivals and more), and I try to keep up with Hitchens as best I can (though he's so prolific that it's difficult).

In this week's Fighting Words -- Hitchens' weekly column for Slate -- we're met with a sort of sappy sentimentalism you don't normally see from the world's crankiest public intellectual. The spark for all this: a festival in California. Hitchens elaborates:

This time every summer I begin to suspect myself of going soft and becoming optimistic and sentimental. The mood passes, I need hardly add, but while it is upon me, it amounts to a real thing. On the first weekend of every August, in Palo Alto, Calif., the Japanese community opens the doors of its temple and school in order to invite guests and outsiders to celebrate the Obon Festival.

Ancestor-oriented celebrations are not exactly my thing, but there is a very calm and charming way in which the Japanese use this particular moment in the lunar calendar to remember those who have preceded them and to make the occasion a general fiesta. (I suppose the nearest regional equivalent would be the Mexican Day of the Dead.) The clement weather allows the wearing of the lighter yukata, or summer kimono, and the staging of the Bon Odori dance, in which all can join, to the soft rhythm of taiko drums. For the rest of the time, the yagura, or wooden scaffold, is the center of a sort of fairground, in which stalls and raffles compete for custom with the sellers of sake and Japanese beer and with an amazing teriyaki buffet.

There's a large turnout of non-Japanese for these attractions, getting larger every year it seems to me, but it doesn't succeed in swamping the main event or in making it into a mere tourist attraction. You come across a group of grave and serious Japanese gardeners, engaged in the judging of a bonsai competition, and you suddenly appreciate that nothing can turn this consideration into a hucksterish sideshow. (One day, perhaps, someone will write something serious about the Japanese genius for small things and for miniaturization, which extends from carvings to plants to the idea of painting on grains of rice and which seemed at one point to lead the world in the concept of the microchip.)

If you've read his stuff before, you'll be a little surprised to see Christopher Hitchens singing the praises of a pseudo-religious, ethnic-identity based celebration -- this is, after all, the author of God is Not Great, among other forceful explications of secular humanism. So why all the gushing? Well, perhaps because it's easy to see how it all could have gone so much differently.

In the United States, and especially in California, the war against Japanese imperialism was also accompanied by collective punishment of Japanese-Americans and the sequestration of their persons and property. When I first came to the Bay Area in 1970, I was introduced by Carey MacWilliams, a great historian of the state, to Lou Goldblatt of the longshoremen's union, one of the very few public figures to have opposed the indiscriminate internment. It was a crime committed largely by liberals like Earl Warren, as many people prefer to forget, and was even supported at the time by the Communist Party. (Actually, why do I say even? Communists by then were getting pretty used to supporting mass roundups and deportations.)

Hatred and fear and bigotry were probably never more general or more strongly felt than against Japanese people in America in the period between Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and Hollywood and the comic book industry kept the feeling alive for some years afterward. Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas drew howls of laughter when he said a kind word to young Rep. Daniel Inouye, who had lost a limb fighting for America in Europe, and—thanked for taking the trouble to notice the newcomer—roared: "Ain't no trick to it! How many one-armed Japs we got around here?"* (Actually, I think that was pretty funny.)

It may be that this narrative resonates more with me than most: my twin brother's wife is a fourth-generation Japanese-American from California. Her grandparents met and married behind a fence at the Manzanar internment camp. Lest we forget, this was a mere six decades ago, and in perhaps the freest and most open society man has ever known.

And so, the point?

Well, my point is that under the azure blue skies that prevailed all of last weekend, you would not have known that any of the bitterness and misery had ever taken place. There were old people present, Japanese and non-Japanese, who had a real memory of it. And there were young people to whom, if it occurs at all, it must seem prehistoric. But there was no awkwardness; no "making nice," no pretense of a false coexistence. All could meet under the great roof of a secular multiethnic democracy, and all did, sharing the food and the music and admiring one another's children. And if this of all reconciliations can occur, without it even having to call itself a reconciliation, then perhaps we are not all heading for hell on a sled as fast as we sometimes think. Ernest Renan said that to form a common nation, people had to agree to remember a few things but also to forget a few things. Without undue amnesia, and without being mandated or enforced or policed, this maxim seems to have been followed naturally in this case.

So why is this meaningful? Well, if for nothing else, then simply because it reminds us how recently our world was riven with violence on a scale nearly unimaginable to those of us born in the latter part of the 20th century. In living memory, as they say. No matter what you think about the necessity or morality of the whole deal, it's a matter of record that hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians were immolated by American bombs. Those people were the mothers and fathers, uncles, brothers, cousins and so on of people who lived and live in this country. And yet by and large their descendants don't rage against this historic iniquity, don't seek reparations, don't consider blowing themselves up in shopping malls or airplanes to right the wrongs visited on their ancestors.

And so what? Well, it sort of gives you hope for a place like Iraq, doesn't it? Ok, if not hope, then at least some vague precedent. I know there are a host of differences in these scenarios. I know that there are massive, meaningful dissimilarities in culture, religion, economics, government, level of development, national character, and so on that inform and control the ways that different populations respond to conflict and injustice. Japan wasn't gripped with insurgency or civil war after the 1945 surrender. The two scenarios have almost nothing in common, except for this: in both places, awful things happened to people, many of whom were innocent.

Somehow Japan has emerged from that experience as a strong and vibrant democracy, the Japanese people are free of anti-American grudge, and our country hosts a large and incredibly well-integrated ethnically Japanese population. How did all this happen? Why did it happen to the Japanese, and how do we help other populations recover from conflict with similar resiliency? I can't answer those questions and I'm not sure anyone can nail it down, though I'm sure there are people who can speak to them in some kind of meaningful way.

So when I see people saying that there's no chance that Iraq will become an integrated, peaceful, multi-ethnic and multi-confessional modern state, I consider what our grandfathers must've thought in 1945: did the Germans -- hell, Nazis! -- seem amenable to reconciliation, to integration into the European political and economic framework? Did the Japanese -- those very same Japanese who showed such wanton disregard for their own lives as to fly suicide missions in airplanes or run as waves into enemy guns?

Maybe I, like Hitchens, am feeling a little loopy, intoxicated with optimism. (Just not about Afghanistan, I guess.) But it's worth keeping in mind sometimes that there was a time when the world was more hateful, more dangerous, more fractured, more violent, and all around shittier than it is today, and some of those things in some of those places have changed for the better. So don't cross your fingers or anything, but maybe consider the fact that a century and a half ago, Americans were shooting one another up, too.

Baitullah Mehsud dead?

This morning the news reported that one of Mehsud's wives had been killed in a drone strike. As the day went on, intelligence officials apparently became increasingly confident that the Pakistani Taliban leader had been killed as well. The Times reports:

The C.I.A. missile strike in Pakistan’s tribal areason Wednesday may have killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the country’s fearsome Taliban militia, American and Pakistani officials said Thursday.

Officials in Washington and Islamabad were scrambling to make sense of intercepted communications that seemed to indicate that Mr. Mehsud might have been killed in the strike, and by Thursday evening American officials said they were growing increasingly confident that the Taliban leader was dead.

Still, they cautioned that it could be weeks before they could be certain, given the difficulty of getting to the remote location in South Waziristan to perform DNA tests.

Andrew Exum wonders what effect Mehsud's death would have on Pakistan's appetite for continued fighting in Waziristan.

But it's my sense that many in Pakistan consider Mehsud to basically be the root of their problems and that taking him out would be the natural end to a campaign against the militants in FATA and the NWFP. So should we worry that the death of Mehsud might, perversely, mean a relaxation of the Pakistani Army's campaign against Pakistan's insurgent groups? Or will this instead fill them with confidence to carry on?

For one thing, the campaign slowed down dramatically after the Swat offensive. We've been hearing for weeks about how the Pakistani Army is preparing for bloody and protracted fighting in Waziristan, and how they were making final preparations for an offensive. As far as I can tell, that hasn't happened yet. There are a lot of bombs being dropped from F-16s, and that's all well and good, but I'm reasonably sure this long-awaited ground offensive has yet to take place. Does that seem more or less likely now if Mehsud is dead? I know my answer.

Islamabad has already demonstrated its indifference to any ideas we may have about seeking Pakistani help interdicting the flow of fighters and/or materiel westward and northward across the Durand Line. In fact, Pakistani officials have even complained about the coalition's Helmland offensive, suggesting that it does nothing to improve the situation and only causes more problems for them. And now we think that the death of their "ace of spades" is going to motivate them to go in and clean out the whole area, the cost of which effort seems to dramatically outweigh the benefit for them?

This isn't North Korea. Pakistan may not do what we like or expect, but that tends to be a problem with our expectations, not their rationality. How long is it going to take us to absorb the simple lesson that the war in Afghanistan, in the final analysis, probably does Pakistan much more good than harm?

I could choke that Tarkin bastard

Says Kilo, amusingly, in the comments:

If it turns out that tackling corruption/trafficking in Afg is a requirement to a stable state with a viable govt (and I don't know that it is), well I'd expect to see the USS Death Star brought to bear on that problem sometime in 2150.

I want to dispute the parenthetical aside, though: I think tackling those things is a requirement for the simple reason that corruption is a major driver of the insurgency. It constrains the ability of the government to deliver the sort of justice that Afghans yearn for -- hell, more than justice, it may just be predictability. As a number of people have said lately, at least with the Taliban, you knew what you were getting; it sucked, but it was predictable.

You may have a stable state with a viable government (and that might even be the Taliban), but it seems to me that without some sort of security from the government, you're still gonna end up dealing with disaffected populations. And in a place where it's nearly impossible to extend the writ of government and the rule of law very far beyond the major population centers, and where there's a fighting tradition, a lot of those disaffected populations are going to be armed and violent. So then we're back where we started with an insurgency. (Only this time, maybe we don't have to counter it.)

Candide's take at COIN in Afghanistan (UPDATED)

Interesting talk today at USIP on counterinsurgency in Afghanistan with David Kilcullen and Andrew Wilder. Kilcullen was luminous as always, but although everything he said rings true, I am not sure where this takes us in terms of COIN strategy. Let me try to summarize his intervention in a nutshell and a (at least half-fictional) dialogue:

Kilcullen: So far we have attempted to defeat the insurgents rather than the insurgency. We need to change this and move from an enemy-centric approach to a population-centric one.

Candide: OK, that’s Galula 101, I get it. So that will require lots of boots on the ground, which is why we keep sending more and more guys.

Kilcullen: And since the Taliban’s strategy is to wait us out and intimidate the population rather than seek military engagement, this means that this commitment needs to be extended in time.

Candide: Uh oh, not sure this is going to fly with lots of NATO leaders who are hoping to get reelected.

Kilcullen: This is why this extended commitment can only be done realistically (and effectively) by the Afghans themselves, so we need to beef-up the ANA and ANP.

Candide: OK, so let’s train more people.

Kilcullen: Not that simple. Afghans will only resist the Talibans if they think that another form of government can bring them more security, justice and basic services (to put it simply). And it is worth training more soldiers and policemen (especially policemen) if you can make them accountable and ensure that they do not turn into security threats for the people they are meant to protect. Training more bad cops sounds exactly like what could make the life of the average Afghan more miserable.

Candide: Does that mean we should put everything on hold until the governance/corruption problem is solved? So what do we do now?

Seriously, if this is where the counterinsurgency is to be won, why isn’t there more thinking and effort put into good governance and accountability? Is it for fear of undermining Karzai? Or because the task is already deemed hopeless?

UPDATE: Here's the link to the AP story about Kilcullen's remarks. The lede:

An incoming adviser to the top U.S. general in Afghanistan predicted Thursday that the United States will see about two more years of heavy fighting and then either hand off to a much improved Afghan fighting force or "lose and go home."

David Kilcullen, a counterinsurgency expert who will assume a role as a senior adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been highly critical of the war's management to date. He outlined a "best-case scenario" for a decade of further U.S. and NATO involvement in Afghanistan during an appearance at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Under that timeline, the allied forces would turn the corner in those two years, followed by about three years of transition to a newly capable Afghan force and about five years of "overwatch."

"We'll fight for two years and then a successful transition, or we'll fight for two years and we'll lose and go home," Kilcullen said.

"I think we need to persist," he said, but with "some pretty significant limits on how much we're prepared to spend, how many troops we're prepared to send, how long we can do this for."

The Geometry of Objects

In the comments on my last post, fellow Ink Spotter MK made the following comment: "I can't imagine that you're looking for a linear relationship between political objectives and military strategy in an unconventional conflict in the modern security environment." I'm certain that he is not the only person out there who thinks that this could be the case as I've heard it before from others.

But I just don't see how it could be any other way. I cannot think of any case in which the military strategy could be tangential at best and peripheral at worst and still work towards attaining the political objective. What has occurred in the modern era (presumably since the end of the Cold War) or is different about unconventional warfare that could cause this shift in relationship between the two objects that had previously existed since the formation of political entities?

In the case of Afghanistan, it appears to me that the military strategy is focused on the wrong population on the wrong land. To suggest that strategy might attain the stated political objective is to suggest that somehow defeat will come to the enemy through some sort of osmosis through the semipermeable Durand Line. Or an ink spot writ much larger. I don't think we have any historical evidence that suggests that might be possible or likely.

So I'll pose this to our readers and I hope that you respond (in keeping with Gulliver's guidance please). Is MK's assertion correct that the modern security environment has fundamentally changed so that there is no longer a linear relationship between political objectives and military strategy?