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Dr. Charles Cogan |
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Blogs Several
new developments have taken place since I wrote my retrospective article on Afghanistan a few weeks ago, an article that has
just appeared in the 25th anniversary issue of the World Policy Journal. Firstly, the world financial crisis has
worsened precipitiously, which could impel a new American Administration to break the cycle of expeditionary wars in Muslim
countries in the Middle East. Secondly, both the Pakistani Army in Pakistan and the American forces from Afghanistan have
become more aggressive toward the Taliban and al-Qaeda, while at the same time offers of negotiation have been extended, mainly
through the intermediary of the Saudis, to those who are considered the less extremist among the Taliban. Thirdly, and perhaps
most importantly, a new cast of characters has arrived on the scene, principally: President-elect Barack Obama; and Gen. David
Petraeus, the new head of the Central Comand, whose writ stretches from Egypt and the Horn of Africa to the Indian subcontinent,
including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Petraeus has already been to Pakistan to confer with the civilian and military leadership
there.
Putting more troops into Afghanistan, as Mr. Obama recommended during the election campaign, would seem to be counterintuitive
to history. The more Western troops that are introduced amidst the fiercely nationalistic Pashtuns and other Afghans, seems
likely to generate more resentment and more resistance. Meantime, civilian casualties continue to mount, both by American
Predator drone attacks into Pakistan’s tribal areas and by Allied bombings and ground attacks in Afghanistan, provoking
the legendary spirit of vengeance in that part of the world. The Russian example in the 20th Century and the British
example in the 19th Century are there for all to see. Both were driven out of the country ignominiously. Afghans
dislike intensely armed foreigners, especially Westerners, operating with impunity in their own country. Why turn our eyes
away from this fact of history?
In the face of this negative past history, perhaps Gen. Petraeus and his impressive staff of counterinsurgency experts
can come up with a new solution, which might include the coopting of Pashtun tribal leaders. But I remain to be convinced
– as long as American and allied military remain in Afghanistan in what is seen by many Afghans as a colonial-style
occupation force, while the principal enemy – al Qaeda – is not even in Afghanistan anymore but continues to enjoy
a safe haven in Pakistan. In the meantime, the secondary enemy – the Taliban, for having sheltered al Qaeda –
enjoys at least the tacit support – in part due to fear – of a majority of the Pashtun population on both sides
of the border…The Taliban being overwhelmingly Pashtun.
There are many negative signs in this situation: the inability to stifle the opium poppy crop, which has become a significant
part of the Afghan economy; the weak leadership in Kabul under Ahmed Karzai; the untested new civilian leadership in Islamabad
under Asaf Ali Zardari, who is widely regarded as having a corrupt past; and the reluctance of many of the allied partners
in the Afghan stabilization force (ISAF) to put their troops in harm’s way. These so-called “caveats” are
having a poisonous effect on the publics of those allied countries whose troops are doing the fighting and sustaining casualties.
As I stated in my retrospective article, the time could come for the U.S. to make plain to Pakistan that if it cannot
control its border, if it continues to allow terrorists to operate in Afghanistan from a safe haven inside Pakistan, then
the U.S. would have to scale back its operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan while keeping its sights trained from
afar on possible al Qaeda operatives. The metaphor I used is, “You can’t aircondition a room with the windows
open.”
A new U.S. President has the unique advantage of not having to be burdened by the actions of his predecessor. It is
called change. The irony – and the tragedy – is that the solution to the Arab-Israeli
problem has been known for the last forty years. Always the answer is the same, as in the following commentary in the Economist
in May 2007 : “to arrive at peace, Israel would have to give up the West Bank and share Jerusalem; [and] the Palestinians
would have to give up their dream of the right of return and assure the security of Israel as a Jewish state. All the rest
is detail.” There is one
detail that should be added to this tableau: the settlement must be accompanied by an international security force, including
American and European troops. It would be unthinkable, given Israel’s territorial exiguity, that an international force
run by troops from the West would not have to remain for many years to protect against Arab irredentism and Israeli expansionism.
Allowing the Palestinians to return
to Israel, even in a small number, would have a harmful effect on the state of Israel and for the future of that country.
Just as the Germans are not going to return to East Prussia, and Mexico is not going to retake California, the Palestinians
should not expect to return inside the armistice lines concluded as a result of the 1948-49 war. The Six Day War of June 1967 constituted a clear break in
American policy towards Israel. Before then, American aid to Israel was not excessive. Afterwards, the situation was completely
reversed, notably in the war of 1973, when the United States, faced with a desperate situation in Israel, sent in extremis
and in plain sight a massive resupply of arms and ammunition into Lod airport, in Tel Aviv, putting paid to the already tattered
image of American even-handedness in the Middle East. For Israel too, 1967 constituted a break with the past. Before then, and putting aside the military adventure
in Suez in 1956, in which the role played by two major European powers, Britain and France, mitigated somewhat its own responsibilities,
Israel had not violated the rules of the international community, represented by the United Nations. UN Security Council Resolution
181 of 1947, which preceded the first Arab-Israeli war, called for a partition of Palestine, which the Jewish side accepted
but the Arab community, the neighboring Arab states, and the Arab League did not. The war that followed was thus not a violation
of that resolution by Israel, and the armistice that concluded it in 1949 was under the aegis of the United Nations. The aftermath of the Six Day War, by
contrast, demonstrated that Israel was not fundamentally concerned by international laws or conventions when what it considered
as its own vital interests were at stake. Even if Gamal Abdal Nasser was responsible for the initial escalation -- in particular
his closing of the Tiran Straits, engendering a blockade of the Israeli port at Eilat, which had enabled Israel to have access
to the Red Sea – the preventive and unilateral military intervention of Israel went against the Charter of the United
Nations. In the aftermath of the
Six Day War, Israel, supported by the United States, put together a strategy vis-à-vis the resolutions of the UN which
has continued until today, and which combines selective acceptances, sophisticated evasions, and straight-out confrontations
–while depending on the capacity of Washington to define the terms of the resolutions to Israel’s advantage or
to block them with its veto power. Thus,
to reduce the territorial sacrifices demanded by United Nations Resolution 242 of November 22, 1967, the United States introduced
a subtle linguistic ambiguity, assuring that the final text called for the withdrawal by the Israelis “from territories
occupied during the recent conflict” and not from the territories occupied. The crucial ambiguity introduced
by the simple elimination of the definite article, as well as the phrase recognizing the right of Israel to exist within “secure
and recognized borders” were exploited by the Israelis as a justification of a quasi-permanent occupation of the West
Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. (Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005). In fact, there is nothing explicit
in Resolution 242 which states that the borders between Israel and its Arab neighbors should be renegotiated. Therefore, at the end of the Six Day War, Israel, without
a United Nations cover, kept the occupied territories in spite of Resolution 242 and, moreover, began a
creeping colonization in the territories. There are now some 145 colonies in the West Bank with a total population of 240,000.
Another 185,000 Israelis are in East Jerusalem, that is, the historic Arab part of the city, also captured by Israel in the
Six Day War. This process has followed its course without the international community – or more specifically the Security
Council of the United Nations -- raising serious and credible objections (in other words demanding the respect of its own
resolutions), essentially due to the influence of the United States and its propensity to use its veto to prevent undesired
outcomes. Despite occasional efforts by American Administrations (notably that of George H.W. Bush) aimed at
least at reining in the Israeli colonization of the territories, these have never had substantial results, because Congress
would not tolerate using aid as a leverage on Israeli behavior.Yet
there is nothing in Resolution 242 that authorizes the settlement of Israeli citizens in territories occupied during the 1967
war. Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention (August 12, 1949), relative to the protection of civilians in time of war,
contains the following provision: “The occupying power will not be able to proceed to deportation, or to transfer its
own population into the territories occupied by it.” In sum, Israel has no locus standi in the
West Bank, and this is at the heart of his credibility problem with the international community. Unless negotiations can succeed
in arranging amicable land swaps which would permit Israel to keep its major settlements in the West Bank, it should not be
a question of freezing these settlements, it should be a question of removing them. Note: this a translation into English of an excerpt from Charles Cogan’s book, La République
de Dieu (Editions Jacob-Duvernet, 2008). Artistically,
architecturally, Isfahan is one of the urban jewels of Iranian civilization. It is a symbol of the beauty that Iranians, in
certain respects uniquely, have been able to render through their country’s history. Is Iranian civilization prepared
to self-destruct in an attempt to annhilitate Israel? Surely, Iranians know what would be coming at them in retaliation for
such a rash attack, were it to take place. I can recall the old saw that was uttered in Washington, in frustration, during
the hostage crisis of 1979-1981: “What is black and white and glows in the night? Tehran.”
The frustration stemmed from the fact that, though the Embassy had been taken by force, this was not, properly speaking,
an act of war. The “students” who entered the Embassy grounds carried sticks but not – until later –
pistols. And a group of female “students” held up a streamer at the window of the Ambassador’s office which
read, “We do not want to inconvenience you. All we want is a sit-in.” It was a sort of “soft-war”
scenario at which the Iranians seem to excel. A hundred years ago, the Iranians pulled off a similar “stunt”:
20,000 of them staged a sit-in at the British diplomatic compound for a matter of weeks, the result of which was a concession
by the ruling Qajar dynasty represented in the Constitution of 1906. Now again, the Iranians are acting against the British
Embassy, arresting some of the local employees. Why? Because of the past history…and because there is no American Embassy
in Tehran, and there hasn’t been since November 1979.[i]
So if Iran would obviously prefer to avoid military annhiliation, why are the Hitler-like rants of Ahmedinejad tolerated
by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei? To curry favor with the Arab street, not by nature disposed to like Persians? To brandish
the threat of a WMD attack in the region in order to intimidate the leaderships of the “moderate” Arab states?
(However, with his credibility having been damaged by the election campaign and its aftermath, Ahmedinejad may feel compelled
to tone down his rhetoric).
It might appear to some that the Iranians are superior to the rationalist West in the matter of psychological thrust
and parry. Takiya, for example, the Iranian word for the virtue of dissimulation in the face of a powerful enemy,
is outside the rationalist paradigm of the Enlightenment, with its attachment to the truth. Could it be that, knowing the
West’s penchant for rationalist thinking, pragmatism and literal-mindedness, the Iranians are simply gaming us?...observing
with some delectation our Pavlovian reaction to their threats?
Clearly, using the fine art of takiya, the Iranians have been able to convince at least some in the West that
their quest for a nuclear capability is only for peaceful purposes. Ironically, Iran has much on its side in the nuclear argument.
As a signatory to the porous Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium. Unfortunately, Ahmedinejad,
with his apocalyptic rhetoric, has spoiled everything. The Israelis, because of past history, and the watchword of “never
again,” now feel obliged to take his threats seriously. [i] In the famous photograph of the American hostages being led blindfolded by their captors, there is an Iranian
in the picture who looks like Ahmedinejad. However, it is not him. Although he was a member of the “Followers of the
Line of the Imam” who seized the Embassy, he was not one of the participants, as he had wanted to take over the Soviet
Embassy as well! One of the meanings of “facility”
in English is now rare: “a tendency to be easygoing, yielding, etc.” But in French, facilité is
very much a live word. “Solutions of facility,” which Charles de Gaulle inveterately decried, means taking the
easy way out. This the United States has done with regard to the Palestinian-Israeli “peace process” for the last
forty-plus years since the Six Day War of 1967.
Bland statements to the effect that the international community does not recognize the annexation of Arab East Jerusalem,
or flaccid pronouncements that the building of settlements in the Arab West Bank are “unhelpful” for the peace
process, have essentially been all the U.S. has been able to muster by way of reining in its Middle East ally.
Is this now changing? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has remained – so far – very much
on Barack Obama’s playbook, has described the President’s position in categorical terms: “He wants to see
a stop to settlements – not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions. That is our
position. That is what we have communicated very clearly.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though he has now accepted – grudgingly and with caveats – a two-state
solution between Israel and Palestine, nevertheless cannot accept ruling out “natural growth” in settlements.
After all, babies are babies! They keep coming!
Now the Israeli Prime Minister has gone a step further, in response to a State Department admonition to Ambassador
Michael Oren that construction of an apartment complex in East Jerusalem, financed by an American businessman, Irving Moskowitz,
should not take place. Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that the issue of construction in Jerusalem cannot be linked to
a discussion on settlements. What is more, construction in Jerusalem, the capital of Israel and the Jewish
people, is not open to discussion, as Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem is indisputable. Ironically,
former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had already offered East Jerusalem to the Palestinians in 2000. (Barak, now Netanyahu’s
Defense Minister, was also Netanyahu’s team leader in the successful takedown of a terrorist group aboard a Sabena plane
at Brussels airport in 1972. Netanyahu was slightly injured in the leg). The background to Barak’s offer (and Yasir Arafat’s
demurrer) is as follows: Towards
the end of the Clinton Administration, peace seemed to be within grasp. First at Camp David in the summer of 2000, where the
negotiations ended inconclusively after 15 days of intense negotiations, and later at Taba at the end of that year. The positions
of the two sides seemed to be getting closer. On 2 January 2001, just after the initial talks at Taba, Yasir Arafat was invited
to the White House where he was presented with a final offer by President Clinton, who was only days away from leaving office.
This offer comprised the following elements, according to Dennis Ross, the leading American negotiator at the working level: …a Palestinian state in all of
Gaza and nearly all of the West Bank; a capital for that state in Arab East Jerusalem; security arrangements that would be
built around an international presence; and an unlimited right of return for Palestinian refugees to their own state, but
not to Israel.[i] In spite of the formidable powers
of persuasion of Bill Clinton, Arafat, always elusive at the hour of decision, could not or would not accept the offer of
the United States President. The main reason for this refusal, it appears, was that Arafat could not accept a right of return
limited to the new state of Palestine, for in so doing this would put an end to the dream of the Palestinians in the camps
surrounding Israel that they could someday return to their lands in what has become the state of Israel. Three days earlier, Dennis Ross had given a warning
to the Palestinian negotiator, Abu Ala: Mark
my words [the Bush Administration] will disengage from the issue, and they will do so at a time when you won’t have
Barak…but at a time when you will have Sharon as Prime Minister. He will be elected for sure if there is no deal, and
your 97 per cent [of the West Bank] will become 40 to 45 per cent; your capital in East Jerusalem will be gone; the [Israeli
Defense Forces] out of the Jordan Valley will be gone; [the] unlimited right of return for refugees to your state will be
gone. Abu Ala, you know I am telling you the truth. With a note of complete resignation, Abu Ala replied, “I’m afraid it may take another fifty
years to settle this [conflict] now.”[ii] Now Sharon is in a coma, and Netanyahu,
who is even more beholden to the Israeli hard Right, is Prime Minister. Will the talented team of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton,
and George Mitchell be prepared to give up “solutions of facility” and lead the parties into a settlement? To
leave a settlement to the parties themselves is, of course, a prescription for no change. Note: The above material referring to Dennis Ross is drawn from Charles Cogan’s
book, “La République de Dieu,” (Editions Jacob-Duvernet, Paris, 2008). Editor’s Note: Charles Cogan was the chief of the Near East-South Asia
Division in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA from August 1979 to August 1984. It was this Division that directed the
covert action operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He is now a historian and an associate of the Belfer Center’s
International Security Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. |
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On August 12, after a day of visiting rape victims in lovely, lush Kivu Province, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a
town meeting, of sorts, with Congolese students far, far away, in the capital, Kinshasa. When one of the students asked her
what Mr. Clinton thought, she blew it. It was understandable; she was tired; he is no longer her hierarchical supervisor.
Actually, the exchanges had been friendly enough at the beginning but got a little edgy, according to Jeffrey Gettleman of
the New York Times, “when several students pushed her on why Congo, whose first prime minister was ousted with
the help of the CIA, should now trust the United States. She then became a little prickly.”
Mr. Gettleman chose his words wisely. Others have not been so prudent. Prime Minister Lumumba was probably ousted
with at least the encouragement of the CIA, but he was not outed. What would you do
in the summer of 1960, as Lumumba was bringing in 1,000 Soviets into the country and acting so weird as to persuade Washington
officialdom that he was on drugs? What would you do if you were the CIA Chief -- the late Larry Devlin, a swashbuckling veteran
of World War II in Italy, formerly based in Brussels where he had taken the measure of Lumumba at a conference
the year before? What would you do to advise the rival Binza Group, headed by Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, whose life
Devlin had saved that summer in warning him of impending attacks. You probably would have encouraged him to oust Lumumba,
which the Binza Group did in September 1960.
As I stated above, the CIA had nothing to do with the outing of Lumumba. But attention! It was not from lack
of trying, or rather, it was from lack of trying. Let me explain. In August 1960, at a National Security Council meeting,
President Dwight Eisenhower said words to the effect that it would be a good idea to get rid of Lumumba. The Director of Central
Intelligence, Allen Dulles, took this as a marching order. (This was before the days when a covert action operation had to
be blessed by what is known as a “Presidential Finding,” in writing).
The wheels were set in motion. Experts arrived in Kinshasa (then known as Leopoldville). Poison arrived in Kinshasa.
The idea was to have a “third country national” (i.e. a non-American) enter Lumumba’s bungalow where he
was under United Nations protection, and put the poison in his toothpaste. Of course, no one ever got near the bungalow and
Devlin, who had been dragging his feet on the whole idea, tossed the poison into the Congo River. Lumumba
smuggled himself out of the bungalow but was later captured by Mobutu’s troops and eventally taken to a jail in Thysville,
farther downriver from Kinshasa, along with two of his aides. In January 1961, Mobutu’s colleague, Intelligence Chief
Victor Nendaka, informed Devlin that Lumumba was going to be moved. Apparently the Binza Group feared that the troops holding
Lumumba might revolt and free him.
A few days later, and as agreed with the Binza Group’s rival, Moïse Tshombe, Lumumba and his two aides arrived
by plane in Lubumbashi (then known as Elisabethville), in Katanga Province. They were promptly taken to a group that included
Tshombe’s right-hand man, Interior Minister Godefroid Munongo. There they were shot to death by a Belgian colonel. Note: the above account is included in a case study written
by the author for Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and entitled: “Avoiding the Breakup: the US-UN
Intervention in the Congo, 1960-1965.” (File number 1549.0 in the Case Study Program). The author was Deputy Chief of
the CIA in the Congo between 1963 and 1965. Afghanistan: Time to Set Deadlines 1 Sept
09, WPJ Blog
Now that the Afghan elections are over, and have taken place in an atmosphere, if not of harmony, that of relative stability
-- which was the true, if unarticulated, purpose of President Obama’s 21,000-strong surge of last spring – it
would seem that the time for setting a deadline for a troop withdrawal is here. An elected president will shortly take office
for a term to last for five years. The government in Kabul is in no more disarray than was the government in Baghdad back
when we first started talking of a troop withdrawal there.
One of the more dispiriting television clips on Afghanistan was aired on “The News Hour” recently. It depicted
a small unit of American troops in Nuristan Province. They were deployed in a remote bunker, subject to sniper fire from the
outside, and utterly unable to reach the population they were supposed to separate from the Taliban. One may ask, what is
the objective of this lonely, hapless activity?
It is useful to remind ourselves that the Taliban is not our historic enemy. It is al-Qaeda, which is no longer even
in Afghanistan. It is across the border in the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) of Pakistan. The myth that al-Qaeda
could reestablish itself in Afghanistan is just that. In the period 1996-2001, when the Taliban ruled in Afghanistan, the
U.S. tolerated that rule – even to the extent of bargaining with the Taliban in a vain attempt to get them to hand over
Osama bin Laden. In the future, the U.S. would not tolerate an al-Qaeda presence in Afghanistan. What,
then, is the purpose of our being in Afghanistan? When the main enemy – al Qaeda – remains largely out of harm’s
way, across the border in Pakistan; and when the Afghan President, although a member of the leading ethnic group, the Pashtuns,
has a government whose key military and intelligence organizations are dominated by the Tadjik-based Northern Allliance, as
Selig Harrison pointed out with supporting detail in a recent op-ed in the New York Times. In
brief, while we have elaborated a plan to withdraw troops from Iraq and have implemented the initial phase by leaving the
cities as of last June 30th, why is there no talk of planning in similar terms for Afghanistan, if for nothing
else than giving ourselves a “cover” for pulling out.
In my view, the one mistake of the Obama Administration’s foreign policy so far was the decision to augment the
U.S. forces in Afghanistan by 21,000 personnel. This has been accompanied by a civilian “surge,” including the
assignment of five American diplomats of ambassadorial rank to Kabul. Afghanistan is simply not that important in the global
scheme of things.
If after a U.S. withdrawal, the Taliban were to resume power in Kabul, we could be back to the situation that prevailed
from 1996-2001, with the exception that the U.S. would not allow al-Qaeda to roam free in Afghanistan, as was the case in
that earlier period. In the event that the U.S. could not establish an accommodation with a Taliban government,
and if that government were to allow al-Qaeda to return to Afghanistan and set up training camps, the U.S. would not have
the inhibitions that it had in 1996-2001. The U.S. could attack these camps from other countries in the region or from offshore.
And if the Taliban restored some
of its medieval practices, who are we to blow against this action in the name of religion. In fundamental terms, it is not
our business how foreign cultures comport themselves.
No Caning This Time 15 Sept
09 HuffPostBlog
South Carolina, the most “reb” of the rebel states (remember the Nullification Act?) has the distinction of unruly
behavior in legislatures. Addison Graves Wilson, Sr., known as Joe except on his birth certificate, called the President a
liar the other evening in the House of Representatives. A hundred and fifty years ago, another South Carolina Congressman
beat a Massachusetts Congressman severely with a cane. That Congressman, Charles Sumner, took three years to recover and now
stands proudly, but in bronze, looking down towards Harvard Square.
The moment of the caning was 1856, and the tension between abolitionists on the one hand, and advocates of states rights
(including the right to hold slaves) on the other, was nearing its paroxysm. In a historic turnabout,
the party of Lincoln is now championed in the South, and the Democratic Party that included Copperheads, some of whom were
Southern sympathizers, has been shut out of the South. Secessonist talk again is in the air but should not be taken seriously.
That question was settled, once and for all, in the bloody crucible of the Civil War. What is new, and disturbing,
is the polarization that has taken place around the person of Barack Obama. Adoration on the one hand, frustrated vexation
on the other (“You lie!”) – due in part to the unwillingness of some, whether they acknowledge it or not,
to accept the presence of a black man in the White House. But black man there is, and it is incumbent on all citizens to respect
the office of the President and not engage in acts of discourtesy – or worse. Can the Center Hold? 4 Nov
09 HuffPost Things fall apart;
the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon
the world The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned…
This fragment of William Butler Yeat’s immortal poem, “The Second Coming,” is apt for Pakistan today,
where innocents lie in pools of blood and jihadis gleefully claim responsibility for inhuman acts in the name of religion.
The country, imperfectly formed, with millions of the subcontinent’s Muslims left outside the “land of the pure”
(Pakistan’s birth name), and with its eastern part amputated in 1971 as Bangla Desh, is in the grip of a civil uprising.
The question, indeed the key question for the region is: can the center hold? The center is, of
course, the Pak Army, and the central question today is whether the Army, the steel frame of Pakistani society, can hold the
line against the rising tide of Islamist radicalism. Opinions vary: some see the possibility of a “colonel’s coup”
against the establishment; others see the Punjabi-led officer corps as the country’s main bulwark against jihadi mobs.
During the recent tumultuous visit of a head-scarved Hillary Clinton, a new catch phrase emerged: there is a “trust
deficit” between the two countries. The fact is that there has frequently been a “trust deficit” between
them, and for at least two reasons. First, Pakistan is an unsatisfied country, cheated at the beginning out of Kashmir by
the whim of the latter’s Hindu maharajah, and then defeated in two wars by its bigger sister country, India. Second,
Pakistan’s masses, radicalized en permanence during the regime of the “neutralist” Zulfiqar Ali
Bhutto, are out of step and out of tune with the country’s – mostly Punjabi – elites. Thus the grumbling and the sourness that Secretary Clinton
encountered during her visit reflected the raspy relationship that, for a good part of the time, has existed at the political
level of this “alliance” (even while, at the operational level, things continued more or less to perk along).
The restrictions on aid
placed by the U.S. on Pakistan because of its nuclear weapons program accounts for a large part of the “trust deficit”
on the Pakistani side. This is liable to increase in view of the new American rapprochement with India and its nuclear dimension.
The rapprochement being the major, if not the sole, accomplishment of the Bush Administration, it should be preserved and
kept in mind when issues such as Afghanistan and Kashmir come up. The Pursuit of Happiness and the Common Good America
is the land of “rugged individualism.” “No taxation without representation” is often mutated into
“no taxation” – witness California. Government intrusion is derided as “socialism” – a
tradition that has its roots on the heavy Elizbethan hand over colonial America. “Why should we help the losers?”
was a refrain heard at “tea parties” and town hall meetings as health care was debated in at times highly uncivil
circumstances this past summer. Individualism,
unlike in the United States, has a rather pejorative connotation in France. As the late eminent historian François
Furet described it, the idea that the happiness of the individual should become the goal of society and that the social realm
should be limited to the sum of all these individual happinesses constitutes a “disguising of egoisms” –
which leads to a twofold deterioration: political by a sort of anarchy and moral by hedonism. The concept of society as a
market where the individual lives for himself and his own happiness and for that of those close to him, brings an “inevitable
civic deficit, which contains the moral detour that it introduces: the absence of the common good.” When Thomas Jefferson coined the phrase “pursuit
of happiness” and put it as an imperative in the Declaration of Independence, could he have foreseen the huge bonuses
(and now stock options in a rising market) given to investment bankers in New York, while in the hinterlands millions of unemployed
and underemployed are groaning in poverty or nearing it? Has rugged individualism and neglect of our poorer citizens become
the norm of American behavior? Have we returned in time to the “mauve decade” of the 19th Century when
the so-called “robber barons” built lavishly ostentations mansions in Newport, Rhode Island, and facetiously called
them “cottages”?
How to react to this glaring disparity in incomes that has increased exponentially during the last three decades? This
development was largely ignored or put aside by many Americans who thought that they too might realize the American dream
and reap riches. It did not happen in most cases. Now the issue has exploded before the public as a result of the crisis in
the financial markets that brought on the Great Recession. How to mitigate the rampant greed that has infected Wall Street and a part of the American business
community? We cannot replace the market economy, which has been a fact of life in the West for centuries. We cannot turn to
revolutionary Marxism, which has proven to be a demonstrable failure. Perhaps the people should mobilize in favor of the Scandinavian example – democracy
with a social face, so to speak. Swedish taxes are onerous – and sometimes wealthy Swedes leave that country to escape
them – but perhaps that is the way it should be in the United States. If this leads to fewer risk-takers in our banking
system, this could be a small price to pay for the disaster that has hit the world and that began with an economic downturn
in the United States in December 2007. One step forward will be allowing the Bush tax cuts – which largely but not exclusively
benefited the rich – to expire in 2010. How
else to cope with this glaring shortcoming of the capitalist system while preserving the system itself? The Political
Class is Falling Off the War in Afghanistan 30 Nov 09, Huff Post Have you noticed? More and more people are falling off the war in Afghanistan: George
Will, Andrew Bacevich, Gary Wills, John Mearsheimer, and now…Karl Eikenberry, former American commander Afghanistan
and present Ambassador there. The latter, though not advocating a pullout, is reported to be not in favor of a troop increase
unless President Ahmed Karzai will reform his government with new and competent people, and eliminate the rampant corruption.
The Ambassador’s position goes distinctly against the recommendation of the Spartan-limned Gen. Stanley McChrystal,
the present American commander in Afghanistan, who wants to put in upwards of 40,000 more U.S. troops into the country. Have you read the McChrystal report?
It is quite an eye-opener. It says relatively little about al-Qaeda, which President Obama has rightly singled out as the
enemy. Al Qaeda is not even in Afghanistan anymore but in Pakistan’s tribal regions. Al Qaeda’s strength may not
number more than a couple of hundred. The retrospective truth is that Afghanistan ceased to be a “necessary war”
in late 2001, when al-Qaeda escaped into Pakistan. The McChrystal report lists three principal opponents: the Quetta Shura (the Afghan Taliban, based
in Quetta, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province); the network of Jalaladin Haqqani, operating in Afghanistan; and the
followers of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, also operating in Afghanistan. What do these three groups have in common? They all have
had connections with the Pakistani Intelligence Service (ISI). The Afghan Taliban were created by the ISI in 1994 in order
to bring Afghanistan out of anarchy and assure that country as Pakistan’s “near abroad,” away from Indian
influence. Haqqani and Gulbuddin are former Mujahidin comanders in the war in the 1980’s against the Soviets, supported
by the ISI and behind it, the U.S. and several other interested countries.
One may ask, what are we doing in this galere? We seem to have gotten ourselves involved, almost by inadvertence, in
a civil war in Afghanistan. The
three groups mentioned above are an expression of discontent on the part of the leading ethnic group in Afghanistan, the Pashtuns,
comprising some 40 per cent of the population. Their discontent is focused on the government in Kabul where, though the president,
Ahmed Karzai, is a Pashtun, the main security and military positions are held by the Northern Alliance, the expression of
the second largest ethnic group, the Tadjiks. It was the Northern Alliance, together with American conventional and unconventional
forces, that overthrew the Taliban as the protector of Al-Qaeda in the Fall of 2001, after the 9/11 atttacks.
What we should be thinking about, and what more and more observers are talking about, is how do we get out
of this mess? If the Taliban were to take back control in Afghanistan, would they allow al-Qaeda back in, considering what
happened to them in the fall of 2001? Perhaps not. In any event, and what seems to escape the public, is that in today’s
world, you don’t need training camps in Afghanistan in order to carry out terrorist attacks. If the Taliban were to take over in Afghanistan, would
the ISI stand idly by or would it try to assert some kind of control over, or at least strengthen its relationship with, the
Taliban? Probably. Gordon
Brown has said it, and Karl Eikenberry has aparently said it too: why throw more troops into the fire in Afghanistan to support
a corrupt government? …Especially
when the main enemy isn’t even there. Editor’s
Note: Charles Cogan was the chief of the Near East South Asia Division in the Directorate of Operations of the CIA from August
1979 to August 1984. It was from this Division that was run the covert action operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
He is currently an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School. A Toilet in Somalia 8 Dec 09, Huff Post Intelligence professionals get it. But the
general public does not. The image is out there of terrorists in djellabas negotiating fences in terrorist training camps
in Afghanistan. This was in the good old days, before 9/11. Such, the pensée unique goes, is what would happen
if the Taliban took over in Afghanistan again and brought al-Qaeda back. Rolf Mowatt-Larssen was quoted in the New York
Times on December 2 as saying, “There is no direct impact on stopping terrorists around the world because we are or
are not in Afghanistan.” Rolf knows whereof he speaks: a graduate of West Point, a former CIA Chief in Moscow and lately
chief of intelligence at the Department of Energy, he is now the reigning guru on nuclear terrorism. The article goes on to
state that, “Mr. Mowatt-Larssen, now at Harvard, argued…that a safe haven can be moved to many different states,
and the bigger threat exists in cells, including in Europe and the United States.” In other words, al-Qaeda and like-minded
terrorists don’t need Afghanistan to carry out terrorist operations. These can be mounted from anywhere or anyplace,
from Yemen to Somalia, to Hamburg or to…Detroit. In carefully chosen but tortuous formulations, President Obama
– almost subliminally – got across the notion that the Taliban are different from al-Qaeda, in his speech at West
Point: -- “I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the
epicenter of the violent extremism practiced by al Qaeda…We must keep up the pressure on al Qaeda…Our overarching
goal remains the same: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and to its capacity to threaten America
and our allies in the future. -- “…We will support efforts by the Afghan government to open the door to those
Taliban who abandon violence and respect the human rights of their fellow citizens.” In
other words, al Qaeda are the real bad guys, whereas there may be some good guys among the Taliban. Then, one may ask, since
al Qaeda’s terrorists, numbering in the hundreds, are now in a safe haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas, why are
we sending thousands more combat troops into…Afghanistan! In his speech at West Point, President Obama recognized
the protean nature of the al Qaeda threat: “Where al Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold – whether
in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere – they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships.” Yet
the President, in ordering 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan, in addition to the 21,000 he sent last spring, aligned himself
not only with his pre-campaign rhetoric about a “necessary war,” but also with the sway that the military has
established within American society. At least he did allow himself an out, which is quite unaligned with military doctrine:
“After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.” It was, indeed, a tortuous exercise for a tortured
President. Editor’s Note: Charles Cogan was the chief of the Near East South Asia Division in the
Directorate of Operations of the CIA from August 1979 to August 1984. It was from this Division that was run the covert action
operation against the Soviets in Afghanistan. He is currently an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International
Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Kind Hearts and Minarets 16
Dec 09, WPJ Blog President Nicolas Sarkozy had some kind words to say about the Swiss the other day, in the wake
of the surprising referendum banning future construction of minarets in the Confederation. The French intellectual class,
in the main, jumped all over him. There are indeed some kind things to say about the Swiss. They are an example of an inter-cultural
modus vivendi. Of the Confederation’s total population of 7.7 million, 72.5 per cent are German speakers, 20.4 per cent
are French speakers, 6.5 per cent are Italian speakers, and 0.5 per cent are speakers of Romansh (an obscure Romance language).
All four are recognized as national languages. The Swiss gladly accept husbanding others’ money. They also husband
their immaculate and picturesque farmlands. Their cities are clean, well ordered, and well policed. The Swiss don’t
like outside interference. They have a sturdy, almost totally conscript army to back this up. In the late Middle Ages, Swiss
soldiers were considered among the best, if not the best, fighters in Europe. Switzerland has not been in a state of war since
1815. There are four minarets currently in Switzerland, where the Muslim population is 400,000. By a strong majority
(57.5 per cent) the Swiss people in a referendum on November 29 voted that there shall be no more.
What exactly did President Sarkozy say that caused a typically French intellectual dither?
Firstly, that the referendum (“yes or no”) was not a good medium for such a complex subject (although the
recourse to the referendum is constitutionally mandated in the Swiss Confederation). Secondly, rather than rail against the
Swiss, one should look deeper into the motivation behind such a vote of rejection. Thirdly, and most saliently, while no one
is seeking to discourage the practice of religion, Muslims should be aware of Europe’s Christian heritage and France’s
Republican traditions and therefore should not be overly provocative and should practice their faith with “humble discretion.” In
evoking the “Christian heritage,” M. Sarkozy reopened the old religious debate in France over laïcité,
the French tradition of secularism, which prohibits the intrusion of religion into the affairs of state. Laïcité
was a reaction to the French monarchy and the clerical architecture that was imbedded in it. Though both are long gone, the
question remains and is debated: is laïcité religion-neutral or is it anti-religious? The latter interpretation,
found often on the Left, is not that of M. Sarkozy: I don’t accept a sectarian concept of laïcité. [I don’t even
accept] the vision of an indifferent laïcité. I believe in the need of religion for the majority of women
and men in our century. It so happens that M. Sarkozy’s declaration (Le Monde of 9 November) coincided
with two things: the campaign of the French president to explore France’s national identity in view of its having become
weakened in the face of globalization; and the regional elections in France in the coming spring. To his political opponents,
M. Sarkozy is opening this debate, perceived by some as having an anti-immigration undertone, in order to shore up support
among right-wing voters who might be otherwise tempted to vote for the far-right National Front of Jean Marie Le Pen in the
coming elections. But M. Sarkozy also has convictions, as evidenced in his book of conversations about religion, published
in 2004, well before he was elected President (“La République, les religions, l’espérance”).
For M. Sarkozy, the key word is espérance (“hope”). Here is an excerpt from what he had to say
about it in this book: the spiritual question is that of hope, the hope of having, after death, a perspective of accomplishment
in eternity. Underneath Monsieur Sarkozy’s irrepressible urge to “tell it like it is,” in
feisty and often over-the-top language, lies a keen political instinct, to the surprise of many and the chagrin of some. He
appears to sense that a Europe of moribund Christanity and of living just for one’s enjoyment is weakening the fiber
and coherence of society and, specifically in France, is weakening the “Republican” spirit (liberty, equality,
fraternity). Sarkozy’s efforts to shake up the pensée unique in France are commendable. An attitude
that stemmed from France’s wounds in the World War II period and that exhibited itself in hypersensitivity towards any
slighting of national sovereignty is now démodé. The French President has departed from the reflexive
reserved attitude toward the United States, toward NATO, toward Israel. But in emphasizing France’s Christian roots
(as he has done repeatedly), he is risking alienating those in France who are not Christian and those who are not believers.
Editor’s Note: Dr. Charles Cogan was a CIA operations officer from 1954 to 1991. His last
overseas assignment was as CIA Chief in Paris from 1984-1989. He is the author of “French Negotiating Behavior: Dealing
with ‘la Grande Nation’” (United States Institute of Peace Press, 2003). He is currently an Associate at
the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He is an officer in the Légion
d’Honneur.
Slouching
toward Jerusalem 22 Dec 09, WPJ Blog: 31 Dec 09, Huff Post: Cross-Posted with the World Policy Journal
Blog On December 8, the State
Department issued the following statement: The U.S. position on Jerusalem is clear and remains unchanged: that Jerusalem and all other permanent
status issues must be resolved by the two parties themselves. It has been official U.S. policy for many years that the future
status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue… Why did the State
Department feel compelled to issue such a statement? Apparently because the European Union’s Foreign Affairs Council
issued a statement on the same day in Brussels, on the Middle East Peace Process, and one can only conclude that the U.S.
Government wanted to distance itself from the EU statement. On Jerusalem, the EU statement had this, inter alia, to say: The Council recalls
that it has never recognized the annexation of East Jerusalem. If there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found through
negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states. An earlier EU draft specifically
stated that the Palestinian capital should be in East Jerusalem, but intense Israeli lobbying, including and especially among
the new EU members from Eastern Europe, resulted in striking that reference in the final version. Usually, the American
phrase that Israeli-Palestinian issues “must be settled by the parties themselves” is in effect a code word for
allowing the Israelis perpetuate the status quo, the Israelis being by far the stronger party. At least the U.S. statement
declared that Jerusalem remains an outstanding issue, and this is important. It seems clear, however, that the U.S., while
openly favoring a “two-state” solution, cannot bring itself to advocate a “two-capitals” solution
as well. The assertion in the December 8 statement that “the U.S. position on Jerusalem is clear and remains
unchanged” contains a number of historical omissions. Initially, during the Truman Administration, the U.S.’s
declared policy was that “there should be a special international regime for Jerusalem.” After the Six Day War
in 1967, when Israel extended is laws and administration to newly-conquered East Jerusalem, the U.S. declared that it “does
not accept or recognize these measures as altering the status of Jerusalem.” In 1976, the U.S. declared that
“substantial resettlement of the Israeli civilian population in occupied territories, including East Jerusalem is illegal
under the [Geneva] Convention [of 1949].” In the late 1960’s and onwards, the U.S. position shifted from that
of “internationalization” of Jerusalem to that of Jerusalem as an “undivided city,” with free access
to the holy places for all faiths. President Reagan stated in 1982 that “…we remain convinced that Jerusalem
must remain undivided, but its final status should be decided through negotiations.” Note: all the above declarations
remain position statements. No implementation has taken place. According to the Century One Bookstore on the Internet,
there are twelve “periods” (aka regimes) that have existed in Jerusalem. The Jews were the first (Hyksos period),
but they are nowhere – until 1948 -- in the Common Era, whose periods are as follows: Roman, Byzantine, early Muslim,
Crusader Kingdom, Mameluk, Ottoman Turk, and British Mandate. Why then should Israel have exclusive governance over
Jerusalem (not to speak of the fact that a former Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, offered East Jerusalem as the Palestinian
capital at Camp David in 2000, only to have the agreement as a whole rejected by the Palestinian leader,
Yasir Arafat)? Is this a case of historical overreach? The very key position
that East Jerusalem occupies in any final settlement should be patent from the above history. That is why the recent decision
of Prime Minister Netanyahu to institute a ten-month freeze in settlement construction on the West Bank (but excluding East
Jersusalem) falls far short of adequate. It is not even a good beginning, contrary to official statements from Washington. Editor’s Note: Charles Cogan was the chief of the Near East South Asia Division in the Directorate
of Operations of the CIA from August 1979 to August 1984. From September 1984 until July 1989 he was CIA Chief in Paris. He
is currently an Associate at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Charles G. Cogan: Hands Off Kashmir! 8
Jan 10, Huff Post Blog: Cross-Posted with the World Policy Journal America’s rapprochement with India,
and its centerpiece nuclear agreement, is a bright star in the otherwise murky firmament of the George W. Bush years. India
is a large power; it is a secular, democratic power, not influenced by Islamist radicalism. Its large Muslim population of
140 million seems generally—so far—not attracted to that kind of fanaticism. India is a country with a population of 1.17
billion whose numbers are destined to exceed those of China by 2050. (Pakistan’s population, much smaller, but not insignificant,
is roughly 180 million). The advantage of the U.S.-India rapprochement, in the short and medium term, lies in the fact that
this huge country is right next to a string of Muslim countries whose populations are generally (though not universally) hostile
to U.S. interests. Because of the strategic importance that the United States places on both India and its troubled sister, Pakistan,
policymakers in Washington have periodically tried to play the role of peacemaker in the region, hoping to push both nuclear-armed
countries to resolve the bad blood between them—which, for the most part, has revolved around the contested province
of Kashmir. In 2009, U.S.
Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke reportedly tried to include India in his Afghanistan-Pakistan (AfPak) portfolio, which seemed
to mean that he wanted to take a crack at the Kashmir problem. The Indians, however, would have none of it, and AfPak remains
limited to the two nations that make up the somewhat unwieldy conjunction. Steve Coll, in a New Yorker article on March 2, 2009,
brought to light a parallel or “back” channel in Indo-Pak negotiations that took place during the regime of Pervez
Musharraf. If the discussions had succeeded, and it appears they came close, it could have resulted in a sort of free movement
of populations across the Kashmiri line of separation—without a change of sovereignty between the advantageous Indian
and unimpressive Pakistani portions. However, Musharraf went into a political tailspin after his dispute with the Pakistan
judiciary and had to leave office in August 2008. With his departure, the talks seem to have ended. Ironically, according
to Coll, the Indians had come to trust Musharraf, despite the fact that he was the main instigator of the abortive Pakistani
attack at Kargil, in Kashmir, in 1999. The arrangement nearly worked out reflects the Indian insistence that the line of separation (called
the Line of Control) must not be altered, as this could affect the status of the Indian-held Valley of Kashmir, the beautiful
“jewel in the crown” of the whole affair. Moreover, from the Indian point of view, ceding any part of Indian-held
Kashmir, in what would be seen as for religious reasons, would compromise the Indian political philosophy of secular government. In any event, a settlement now
seems extremely unlikely in the short term, especially after the horrific attacks on Mumbai in November 2008 which originated
in Pakistan. As long as Kashmir remains as it is, unequally divided, Islamabad will likely never be satisfied, which means
we can expect more Pakistani agitation inside India and an increasingly stronger riposte from New Delhi. There is definitely
a fear that the two Pakistan-sponsored terrorist groups, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are not only still active; worse,
extrapolating from the attack on Mumbai, these groups may have set their sights on more ambitious targets, unleashing havoc
within India’s metropolitan cities rather than engaging India’s massive deployments in Jammu and Kashmir. So where do things stand now? New Dehli seems intent on dialing
down tensions. In October 2009, India withdrew two divisions (30,000 troops) from Kashmir. Still, India is estimated to have
roughly 120,000 troops massed along the Line of Control which separates the two Kashmirs. Overall in the state, the exact
number of Indian forces is not known but probably numbers in the hundreds of thousands. Islamabad, for its part, may be likely to
exercise greater restraint, given the horror that resounded internationally over the Mumbai attacks. Whether Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)—which has long trained and supplied Islamist militias in the region with the aim of
destabilizing Indian control—continues to support its proxy armies or no longer can keep them on a leash is another
matter. At the moment,
in winter, the insurgency in Kashmir usually dies down, only to flower again in the spring. Yet, this week saw a suicide attack
in Lal Chowk, the nerve center of the capital, Srinagar. The attack was claimed by third terrorist group, Jamiat-ul-Mujahidin,
with the announced goal of demonstrating that militancy in Kashmir is not over. But should the United States attempt to mediate this ongoing
struggle? Certainly, there are a number of analysts and officials in Washington who believe that a lasting peace in Kashmir
would lessen the strains between these two nations and allow Pakistan’s army to focus on more pressing problems—such
as the rise of a powerful domestic Taliban that has inflamed the Afghanistan border regions and increasingly threatens and
attacks the urban centers. My answer is a simple “no.” Kashmir does not constitute a negotiation in which Washington should get
involved, even if it is 97 percent Muslim (in the Kashmir portion of the Jammu and Kashmir state) and was handed over to India
by its Hindu maharajah in 1947. (The Hindu-majority Jammu portion of the state is the ancestral homeland of the Kashmiri Brahmins,
whose most illustrious offspring was Jawaharlal Nehru). The temptation for U.S. policymakers to get involved in the dispute is latent. In October 2008,
Barack Obama, a month before he was elected, stated that “working with Pakistan and India to try to resolve the Kashmir
crisis in a serious way” was among the “critical tasks for the next administration.” Pakistan, as the irridentist
party, would welcome it; indeed, the attacks by Pakistan-sponsored groups in Kashmir and elsewhere in India
may be aimed in part in provoking the U.S. to intervene on the dispute. (Note the U.S. did intervene, and succesfully, at
the time of the Kargil attacks). But the overriding consideration is the new U.S.-Indian relationship which risks being diluted or worse, damaged,
by an American intervention on the Kashmir issue which, almost by definition, would call into question the permanence of the
Line of Control. India is too important to Washington to be left with a threat to its status quo, which has been in place
for 60-plus years. India is the heir-state to British India. It retains the capital of British India, Delhi, and its government
infrastructures. Pakistan has a new name (“land of the pure”) and a new capital, Islamabad. The partition, occasioned
by Muslim fears of being submerged by a Hindu majority, and which the British did not prevent, is now regarded by many as
having been a mistake. Moreover, the Obama administration already has its hands full, both domestically and overseas. With two ongoing wars,
potential conflict in Iran, and recalcitrant partners in New Delhi and Islamabad, brokering a resolution in Kashmir seems
a sight too far. Kashmir is one case in which the U.S. tendency to remake the world order should be held in check. Unless tensions
escalate dramatically, this is a conflict that India and Pakistan should sort out bilaterally. Hands off Kashmir!
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