Update (May 9, 2012):  Confirming earlier speculation, the parents of Bowe Bergdahl today announced that he is a focus of now-stalled negotiations between the United States and the Taliban over a proposed exchange of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.  The New York Times reports that they are frustrated over what they see as the Obama administration’s lack of political will to go forward with the exchange.  The newspaper also quotes Pentagon officials as saying that they are working to gain the soldier’s release.  But all of this underscores the question of why Bergdahl was not a focus of the clandestine “strategic release” program in Afghanistan.

The news follows reports earlier this year that among the concessions that the White House is prepared to make as the political endgame approaches in Afghanistan is the transfer of high-level Taliban commanders from Guantanamo Bay to Qatari house arrest. Although the move is currently in abeyance following the breakdown in negotiations with the Taliban two months ago, the Obama administration justified it as an important “confidence building” measure that would establish its bona fides with Afghan insurgents.  At the time, there was some speculation that the gesture would be tied to the release of Bowe Bergdahl, the U.S. soldier who is about to begin his fourth year of captivity at the hands of the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network.

U.S. officials acknowledge that the releases in Afghanistan are risky and critics are raising questions about their merits.  But it is troubling that they have gone forward at all without any apparent effort to demand Bergdahl’s freedom as reciprocation.  As the U.S. military furnishes more details in the days ahead, it should also provide assurances that it is not leaving one of its own behind.

(As a sidenote, it is dismaying that the media — here, here and here — is more focused these days on Bo, the White House dog, than on Bowe the soldier.)

This commentary was originally posted on Chanakya’s Notebook.  I invite you to follow me on Twitter.

The deal President Obama recently signed in Kabul with his Afghan counterpart President Hamid Karzai ostensibly sequesters U.S troops on the ground in Afghanistan for the next twelve years. And then in 2024, so the story goes, the U.S. will leave for good. Of course, the plan includes graduated measures that decrease the U.S footprint in Afghanistan  (soldiers depart starting 2013; power is transferred in 2014 and so on) but the plan sounds (reads?) non-credible: it essentially allows U.S. involvement in Afghanistan to  turn as much on circumstances there and at home. Neither side has costs attached to staying longer or leaving earlier.

But maybe it’s enough that there’s a plan. And maybe it’s good enough that there are pictures that go along with that plan to prove that some kind of agreement happened.  On to Chicago!

Afghan troops target a poppy field for eradication in 2009. (Photo: isafmedia)

With the United States and NATO making plans to draw down most of their troops over the next few years, Afghanistan faces a precarious future. While the military situation has improved, insurgency continues; the government’s authority extends little beyond the capital; foreign aid accounts for 80 percent of the national budget; and the country’s principal cash crop, opium poppies, is a criminal enterprise, or rather a network of vying criminal enterprises that includes warlords, government officials, and insurgents. Afghanistan accounts for 90 percent of the world’s supply of heroin. Production and revenues continue to increase despite efforts to eradicate poppies or to divert farmers to alternative crops.

Even when ineffective, Government eradication efforts have the perverse effect of generating resentment among the poppy growers, who are concentrated in southern Taliban strongholds, such as Helmand and Kandahar. Meanwhile, the Taliban, who sought to eradicate poppy cultivation when they were in charge, have now established themselves as the protectors of peasants whose livelihood depends on income from poppies. Thus, the poppy economy tends to strengthen political support for the insurgency in certain key areas.

Writing in U.S. News & World Report, Vartan Gregorian, president of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic foundation, proposes turning that last liability into an asset. He cites a proposal put forward in 2005 by the Senlis Council (now, the International Council for Security and Development). The objective is to redirect the same farming activity into a legal route through village-based licensing and production of pharmaceutical morphine. Similar programs, supported by the United States, have succeeded in places like India and Turkey (although presumably on a different scale). The plan could lay a viable and legal basis for economic development and provide affordable pain-relieving drugs for developing countries. Gregorian notes that 80 percent of the world’s people currently have no access to morphine.

Skeptics argue that Afghanistan’s corrupt and inefficient government is incapable of administering such a program effectively and that the price for legal opium is far less than the criminal enterprises will pay. To that, Gregorian suggests that multinational administration could help, but also that virtually anything would be an improvement over the present situation: the poppy production is already there, already central to the Afghan economy, and highly resistant to eradication. In addition, if less remunerative, a legal opium market would be more stable and less dangerous to the farmers than the current system. Traditional authorities could be co-opted into the program’s administration, and Afghan clerics could point out that the production of addictive substances is forbidden under Islam, while the production of medicines certainly is not.

Of course, Gregorian’s proposal, on its own, would not be a solution to Afghanistan’s problems. By providing viable economic foundation, however, it could be a useful and even necessary supplement to military and diplomatic efforts to secure the country’s future.

Guy Gunaratne and Heidi Lindvall interview Sri Lankan military official (credit: journalism.co.uk)

In the maelstrom of conflict reporting from different corners of the globe, and its analysis and resultant policy-setting by major powers, the local scorecard is often unclear. If insurgents control six out of ten villages in a district, are they winning? Many would say yes. But if we knew that this was two fewer than they occupied last month, the answer is different. Yet again, if there had been scores of defections to the rebels in that same month, we would be still more uncertain.

Gauging the meaning of events in conflict zones, and finding substantial data, are painstaking tasks for researchers and analysts. The “fog of war” that faces conventional militaries becomes for journalists and analysts a nebulous mist. In this article I will use Afghanistan as an example, though lack of infrastructure and governance, which complicates information retrieval, characterizes most conflict areas and hence its analysis.

The information mentioned above is usually available to journalists and researchers, yet the art lies in crafting a conflict narrative, backed up by factual events, to show which side has the upper hand. The classic barometer is allegiance of the masses, through polls (if people are accessible) in a cross-section of urban areas (if surveyors can reach them).

Yet what drives public opinion? In a democratic, industrialized nation, a poll reveals aggregate tendencies for an amalgamation of individuals. However in a tribal-based society, where sub-groups often decide issues unanimously to maintain group cohesion, respondents may not want to answer differently than their family members or neighbors. Moreover, respondents may respond with what they believe a surveyor wants to hear, believing he/she is with the government, introducing a second-guessing dynamic that further complicates assessment.

Polling and surveys are only one aspect of data retrieval challenged by realities in the conflict zone. Others include:

1. The sheer amount of information available. Given a lengthy conflict and global attention, not to mention fat contracts for firms and individuals operating in an unsafe environment, which in turn spawn more information, everyone with internet access is blog posting about their “unique” work. While this is informative, it muddies the stream for professional prospectors, and obscures sources. Last week I came across three different tribal maps for Helmand province, with little overlap.

2. Reality depends on to whom one speaks. Analysts must uncomfortably bridge the gap between the often pessimistic stance of international journalists, on the one hand, and the positive, upbeat tone struck by aid agencies (and coalition military for that matter) “on the ground” that need to show and tout progress. Journalists may indeed have a fresher set of eyes, and the experienced ones an ability to get at the marrow, yet spending a week or two criss-crossing a country yields much less insight than the input of an NGO manager who has lived there six months.

In February, the Syrian army laid siege to Homs for 26 days. When the event subsided the city’s chief of police estimated deaths at 3,000, while foreign correspondents reported twice as many.

3. Last week’s bread is stale (and may not even be bread). Given the time it takes for news of events and political nuances to travel from hinterlands to urban areas, an alliance may have shifted by the time an analyst publishes in a monthly periodical. A civilian aid worker who leaves a rural post for the capital and returns six months later may find a new set of government actors, with different tribal backgrounds than the former, or ideas about development. Insurgent influence can fluctuate just as quickly, with significant bearing on provincial security and policy.

Arsene Bwenge, writing about the Democratic Republic of Congo in Researching Conflict in Africa (2005, UN Press), relates how “reports by the local press and radio stations, and by human rights and environmental activists, and development agencies, are taken as the means of expression by the eyewitness population.” With limited access to insecure areas, firsthand accounts become muddled and diluted by the actors relaying the story back to national capitals and home offices.

The best way to counter these challenges is to have unmitigated access to an individual or team locally placed who can inform on local developments. In Afghanistan, coalition military bases host civilian political and development officers, who through engagement with provincial, district, and tribal leaders maintain adept ears to the ground. When a canal dries up or mudslides destroy houses, these officers know it, and can be in contact with their superiors in Kabul for further action, if necessary, or simply just to report. Most analysts do not have this luxury. The respected analysis NGO, Afghan Analysts Network (AAN), based in Kabul, would do well to staff its own provincial offices.

Sound, measured guidance is found in the US Institute of Peace (USIP) instructional manual Conflict-sensitive Approaches to Development, Humanitarian Assistance, and Peacebuilding, which reminding researchers that ““good enough” thinking is required. This means accepting that the analysis can never be exhaustive, nor provide absolute certainty. Conflict dynamics are simply too complex and volatile for any single conflict analysis process to do them justice.”

The survey found that more than two-thirds of those polled — 69 percent — thought that the United States should not be at war in Afghanistan. Just four months ago, 53 percent said that Americans should no longer be fighting in the conflict, more than a decade old.

What can you expect of a public that only hears news stories of America and NATO’s troubles in Afghanistan. If it bleeds it leads, that’s the way things are. What is missing is any leadership from the Oval Office. Americans are now only hearing the costs of being in Afghanistan. The ‘Why’ we are still there is not being answered. That job belongs to whoever is Commander in Chief of the war. Walter Russell Mead strongly made this point:

If the commander in chief doesn’t defend the war and make a case for his chosen strategy, the American public has little else to go on but the most garish of headlines. Afghanistan was supposed to be the “good war” that this administration wasn’t going to neglect as — it charged — the Bush administration had done. Yet today, the only thing coming from the Obama administration on the subject is radio silence.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: the president has a duty to talk about the war — to explain to the American people why we are fighting, what we hope to accomplish, and why there is reason to believe that we can succeed. If the chosen strategy has run into obstacles, that is what war is about. Presidents are not infallible and war fighting involves flexibility and realism as well as courage and commitment. But the President seems to be conducting his administration as if the war weren’t happening. It is something to be swept under the rug, ignored, deprecated — and, on the current course, lost.

If President Obama thinks it best for the US to get out of Afghanistan then he needs to say so and do so. If, as his current strategy exists, he believes that having American forces fighting extremists, Al Qaeda, factions of the Taliban, and keeping the peace in Afghanistan is worth the costs, he needs to explain this to the American people. War is a serious business, and we need a serious leader. President Bush let the Iraq War dominate his presidency, in many ways to the detriment of the country and his political standing. But one thing is for certain, you knew where he stood. We understand that President Obama is more focused and naturally inclined to focus on domestic matters. But he is not a governor. He is the commander in chief and needs to act like one.

In 1857 the East India Company, a British corporation that had colonized India for a hundred years, introduced the latest version of its service cartridge at the village of Dum Dum outside Calcutta. The cartridge had to be greased by hand to be effective. Rumors soon reached the Indian army contingents that the grease was made of pork fat — unholy for Muslims, and beef fat — unholy for Hindus. Entire regiments mutinied, shot their British officers and any other Westerners they could find.

Because the East India Company depended on the large native Indian army to maintain control, the Indian Mutiny almost ended British rule of India.

Amazed at the culturally inept behavior of the East India Company after their generations long occupation, the British government disbanded it and made India an official Crown Colony run from London. A British Army was sent to break the mutiny which it did using the same level of indiscriminate force that the Indians had in mutinying. But it was touch and go for a few weeks as Indian religious leaders fanned the flames of rebellion against British rule.

History has a way of repeating itself. Especially in South Asia.

It boggles the mind to think that after 13 years in that country, Americans in Afghanistan would be callous and insensitive enough to burn copies of the Koran.

Muslims believe the Koran is the very word of God. It is kept on top of book shelves and read by placing it on a wooden platform to prevent dirt from soiling it. One washes ones hands before touching a Koran, covers ones head when reading it. You couldn’t spend a week in a Muslim country without understanding the Koran’s significance. Now imagine the feeling of the Afghans who saw Americans throwing bag-loads of the holy book in a garbage dump and burning them!

The damage that has been done to the credibility of allied forces in Afghanistan and beyond is incalculable. When calm will return is anyone’s guess as the New York Times reported:

“Armed with rocks, bricks, pistols and wooden sticks, protesters angry over the burning of the Korans … took to the streets in sometimes lethal demonstrations in half-dozen provinces … that left at least seven dead and many more wounded.

The fury does not appear likely to abate soon. Members of Parliament called on Afghans to take up arms against the American military… ‘Americans are invaders, and jihad against Americans is an obligation,’ a member of parliament said … ‘to urge the people from the pulpit to wage jihad against the Americans,’ he said … “This is not just about dishonoring the Koran, it is about disrespecting our dead and killing our children,” a protester said referring to other recent incidents.”

As during the Indian Mutiny of 1857, violent demonstrations and killings are in progress days after the burning episode went public. In a major breach of security, last Saturday, four days after the protests began, two American officers — a Major and a Lt. Colonel — were shot in a high security command and control facility by an Afghan using a silencer equipped pistol. Both officers were shot in the back of the head. The killer escaped.

As a result of these murders, American General John Allen, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan has withdrawn all Western security advisers from Afghan ministries. The fallout from the unprecedented recall was summed up by the New York Times:

“The advisers’ withdrawal cast doubt on one of the most critical parts of the international mission in Afghanistan: the mentoring and training of Afghan forces who are to assume responsibility for security and the war against the Taliban after the United States pulls out its combat troops.”

The question in Afghanistan now is how far will the protesters go? And will significant numbers of the Afghan National Army and Police join in. If this were to happen the choices facing the United States would be bleak. One option — rush in reinforcements to stabilize the situation, which would mean a bloody conflict waged against the very people America is there to help. The other option — to accelerate the exit from Afghanistan, which given the number of troops on the ground and the recently adopted schedule to end combat by 2014 would look like and feel like a rout of American and NATO forces.

There is, of course, a chance that the situation may revert to its previous tinder-box calm. Awaiting the next spark. Which will surely come.

The British pounded the mutineers into submission in 1857 and held on to their Indian Empire for another 90 years. I suspect the United States will be lucky to remain in Afghanistan for another year.

This post originally appeared in the Huffington Post (2/27/12) and is reprinted with permission from the author. Photo credit, AFP.

Afghan traffic police in class in 2011 (credit: NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan)

The shooting of two American officers in the Ministry of the Interior in Kabul this last Saturday was a shocking and disturbing event. If however NATO pulls its advisors out of ministries, while understandable, it would be a disappointing precedent and undermine progress and modernization in an evolving Afghanistan.

As stability in this country largely depends on security, international efforts in recent years have focused on training of Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF), an umbrella term for the army, air force, and various police branches. The Ministry of Interior commands the police, which have more contact with the population than the army, and needs the capacity to train and maintain able forces. As foreign militaries prepare for a dramatic drawdown over the next two years, the handover for security responsibilities in various districts and provinces is being watched by sundry elements affected, including insurgents and narcotraffickers.

Per its own assessment last October, NATO Training Mission Afghanistan (NTM-A) averaged 1875 newly trained Afghan police a month in 2011. To reach its projected need of 157,000 by November 2012, they will need to average 1750 a month until then. Fewer available NATO advisors will complicate this.

Yet a more prosperous country also depends on education, health, equitable justice, and economic outlook, and foreign advisors, both military and civilian, play invaluable roles in these relevant ministries. Brain drain from Afghanistan over the last 30 years has decimated the talent and experienced personnel needed to govern, hence the need to train and retain the next generation. While NATO does not provide all advisors, pulling them out would be a harmful precedent for others. International experts, and Afghans with Western education, have been drafting budgets, writing proposals in polished English, and constructing the timelines needed to plan out ministerial strategies, alongside Afghan counterparts. This is not to imply that non-Afghans are making consequential decisions. Ministers themselves provide expertise as returnees, such as Minister of Finance Omar Zakhilwal, or with significant NGO experience, such as Minister of Education Farooq Wardak. Such individuals have experienced functioning bureaucracies, understand the foreign community, and have developed relevant vision and managerial skills.

This horrific assassination also needs to be viewed in its appropriate context. There has been a virtual cordon, a “Ring of Steel” as it is known locally, of security checkpoints around downtown Kabul, dramatically reducing terrorism in the city. Attacks have been few and far between, and when they do occur have been for media and psychological impact rather than strategic gain. Last year’s shooting on the American embassy for example, and primitive explosives under police buses. Insurgents know they cannot win on the battlefield and so target the foreign press and the minds of regular Afghans, yet intelligent observers see this for what it is.

Security unquestionably is a primary concern in any workplace, and especially Kabul in 2012. Yet pulling advisors out of ministries active in planning the country’s development, while safer for them, will also threaten future opportunities for all Afghans. In 2009, the International Crisis Group (ICG) recommended cancelling presidential elections for fear of related violence and ballot stuffing. I responded that would only hand a victory to insurgents, slowing governance reform and allowing them to operate amid uncertainty. The same principle applies here. NATO and its Afghan colleagues should not retreat to bunkers. Advisors need to stay and contribute by example. The strength of governance is forged through its being challenged.

The assassination of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani is a signal of things to come: the Taliban have demonstrated that they have upper the hand over the Afghan military and police. The Taliban have shown that they are not weakening and that they will not settle the conflict in Afghanistan on any terms but their own. They want Afghanistan for themselves and they have shown, over the course of the last month or so, that they can wrangle with any comers who want to take them on in a fight. Indeed it’s not at all unlikely that this is the first volley in what may be a relapsed civil war that has already immiserated Afghanistan for many decades.

Rabbani, an ethnic Tajik and a former leader of the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, had served as head of the Afghan High Peace Council, the group tasked to work out a negotiation between the battling sides. Rabbani managed to convince his former colleagues and other leaders of the Northern Alliance that it would be in their interest to negotiate with their enemy, the Taliban. With his murder, there can be little doubt that many Afghan leaders are squarely facing the prospect of a new turn at civil war that has destroyed the social, economic and political fabric of Afghanistan over the course of the last thirty years.

Rabbani’s assassination is therefore thoroughly political. It is a declaration that not only is the U.S. led peace effort doomed to fail, but that the Afghan led effort to reconcile the Taliban with Kabul will also fail. (Perhaps  it is a declaration that the peace effort has already failed.) The U.S and its NATO allies had then better rethink their exit strategy out of Afghanistan, the Taliban seem to taunt: not even those considered out of reach are truly out of reach.

Indeed Rabbani’s assassination smacks a little of the September 2001 assassination of Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud–two days before the al Qaeda sponsored 9/11 attacks on U.S. soil. Shah Masoud’s assassination demonstrated that the Taliban had cleared the way for a period of unchallenged rule. It declared the end of the civil conflict that had riven Afghan politics to the core-Pashtun tribes seemingly against nearly everyone else. Despite the 2001 U.S. invasion which finally (and many thought truly) ended the civil war in Afghanistan Ahmed Shah Masoud’s assassination nevertheless structured the politics to Afghanistan for the last ten years. Consider that were Ahmed Shah Masoud still alive Hamid Karzai might today be some provincial governor of little note or regard.

Burhanuddin Rabbani’s murder in his own home in what many consider to have been the safest neighborhood in Kabul is a loud declaration that not even Kabul, thriving politically and economically under  President Karzai’s hub of influence, is outside the reach of the Taliban. It is a declaration  that everyone is fair game-even reformed and respected political leaders like Rabbani who credibly cast himself as a peacemaker in this iteration of Afghanistan’s contested politics. He seemed to embody the very hope that Afghanistan might surmount its current run of internecine conflict. Rabbani’s assassination, and the removal of his presence and the moral weight of his views burnished by his decades long anti-Soviet leadership, has now made the negotiations between Kabul and the Taliban a blatantly, naked partisan affair. It is a declaration which can have only one logical consequence: war, dressed up in its urban, civil disguise.

The leaders of the Northern Alliance including former presidential candidate Abdullah Abdullah have declared that Rabbani’s assassination proves that the Taliban will not negotiate militarily or politically. That it does no good to call an insurgent a ‘dear brother’ as President Karzai is wont to do. Rather the Taliban seem to be gearing up for civil war, one they intend to win by fighting in way that no well-trained military can counter–much less an inchoate and incompetent one like the Afghan military tasked to take over the security operations of Afghanistan entire in two years. It’s a good bet that the Taliban will attack Afghan leaders when least expected in a manner that is most unexpected.

It has been reported that Rabbani was assassinated by a suicide bomber who hid explosives in his turban. Indeed reports suggest that the man was allowed into such close proximity with the aged leader that moments before he was killed Rabbani’s assassin embraced him warmly. Given the means by which Rabbani was killed no one could have stopped the attack. The Taliban’s strategy now seems to be to fight in a way that no one– not even U.S and ISAF soldiers– can stop them. The recent 20 hour siege against the U.S Embassy and a NATO base suggests just that strategy: surprise urban guerilla warfare. It’s not so much that the Taliban attacked international institutions; it’s that they humiliated the supposedly well-trained Afghan military stationed in and around Kabul.Thus the target of their attacks and therefore their scorn seems to be the Afghan military and Afghan leaders-in short any standing Afghan institution.

Dexter Filkins writing for the New Yorker enumerated a list of upper-tier Afghan leaders who have been killed recently:

“Taliban assassins have killed Syed Khili, the chief of police of Kunduz Province; Daoud Daoud, the chief of police for northern Afghanistan; Khan Mohammed Mujahid, the chief of police of Kandahar Province; Jan Mohammad Khan, a close friend and adviser to President Hamid Karzai; and, most spectacularly, the President’s half-brother and political chieftain, Ahmed Wali Karzai.”

There can be little doubt that Afghan and U.S officials are now increasingly wondering whether President Hamid Karzai might soon become a member of that list.

(Image courtesy of Getty Images)

Ten years ago the story of the Taliban as a criminal organization began its unfolding international public narrative. Ten years ago the story of Islamist rebellion and insurgency in Afghanistan dovetailed directly with the story of American politics in the 21st century. That story is run through with cheap talk, carnage, forsaken promises and missed opportunities to right old wrongs. So it’s worth thinking today, a day past the 9/11 commemorations: what if things had gone differently ten years ago? What if there had been no devastating act of terrorism ten years ago on September 11th 2001? What might have been the case in Afghanistan then?

A bit of recent history: Ten years ago, box cutters in hand, nineteen men from countries in the Middle East friendly to the United States–not one of them from Afghanistan– brought about the terrible events in downtown New York City and Washington D.C that soon after set America and Americans on the path to a decade long war. Even though al Qaeda sponsored terrorists attacked the United States, the Bush administration alleged that Taliban leader Mullah Omar, then no less than the chief executive of the government of Afghanistan, was a co-conspirator of the attacks and thus could not be blameless. Therefore when the Taliban promised to expel bin Laden, then-President George W. Bush argued the Taliban’s promise was non-credible and readily invaded Afghanistan.

That invasion turned into a war not of attrition but rather of retribution in places- valleys, mountains and cities- that have never held much strategic interest for the United States. In ten years tit for tat attacks that though tactically successful have not yielded long-term strategic gains and instead have been all together too costly. More than 2500 American and NATO coalitions soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the 2001 invasion. Some estimates suggest that more than 20,000 Afghan civilians have been killed in Afghanistan as a direct result of the invasion and NATO operations there. Other estimates present figures double that number. Hard fought territory has shifted from the Taliban’s possession to the invading U.S and NATO forces and back again. And there have very few developments that justify for many Americans and international observers the invasion and what has turned out to be America’s longest war. However, earlier this year twenty three highly trained U.S Navy Seals set right the call of retributive justice: in May Osama bin Laden was found in a military cantonment town in Pakistan and was killed on sight. The story of the 9/11 attacks had come full circle it seemed: events played out that did not touch Afghan soil, nor were they brought about by Afghan souls yet ran through the whole of Afghanistan.

The events of 9/11, the war in Afghanistan and even the death of bin Laden have all been unalloyed world shakers and it is hard to imagine that things could have taken a different turn. But suppose the attackers had been foiled at some earlier time. Or if, like the young Nigerian man Umar Abdulmuttalab, they had failed in their attempt to bring about the destruction that indeed took place, perhaps things might have been different.

Suppose that the attacks on 9/11/2001 had not occurred. The U.S. would not have invaded Afghanistan then. Thus, barring being overrun out of Kabul by the ethnic Tajik and Uzbek Northern Alliance, the Taliban would have remained in power. And internal democratic and strategic politics would have determined their fate.

Consider then that if the U.S had never invaded Afghanistan and had not interfered in internal Afghan politics the Taliban might have fallen of their own accord, victims of their own politics and policies. For though widely feared after their mid-90’s takeover, the Taliban were never a part of the life of the average Afghan man, woman, child in far-flung villages and towns in Northern and Western Afghanistan. Theirs was rule by Leviathan social order: a strict version of Shari’a applied in civil and criminal matters. But very few people ever came before the auspices of the Taliban’s varied and antiquated version of Islamic justice.  It is not hard to imagine that their brutal rule would have spurred on an insurgency from a grass-roots alliance made up of all their near innumerable enemies.

And there’s the Taliban’s entirely negative balance sheet on Afghanistan’s economy. Steering a traditional agrarian economy, and later through failed attempts at central planning, the Taliban let Afghanistan’s infrastructure and wider assets go to hay. Productivity never staggered higher than that under the perpetual civil war the country had slogged through for at least two decades. Supposing then that the Taliban managed to stay in power in the absence of the 9/11 attacks, their tenure in power would not have been assured.

As the Taliban’s brutal and ad hoc run in power failed to generate social order based on investments in infrastructure that sustained stability and economic growth in distant corners of Afghanistan, it’s not unlikely that another round of insurgent civil conflict might have burst into full-on civil war in Northern and Western Afghanistan. No doubt India and Iran would have parlayed their influence onto any such rebellion. No doubt in turn that Pakistan would have redoubled its intelligence and operational work on behalf of the Taliban in order to combat India’s growing influence in the North and the West.

But through it all the United States would not have been involved in Afghanistan. The U.S. government could have put the surplus $1 trillion that it spent on its post 9/11 wars back into its domestic economy to grow out of the Great Recession which no doubt would have bowed markets whatever the events of some cool September day in 2001. American soldiers would have been spared grueling rotations into and out of war zones. Indeed without the attacks of September 11th the U.S. would not have embarked on the unending and boundless”War on Terror”. (I assume that without 9/11 President George Bush would not have the pretext to go to war against Saddam Hussein.)

Yet this happier story runs into the problem of narrative splicing: even if the 9/11 attacks had not happened, everything else about the region would have been the same. Everything that was in place in the region a month before the attacks would have remained the case. Barring some strategic change in the Taliban’s assessment of its then mutual advantage relationship, al Qaeda would have continued to enjoy safe haven in Afghanistan in exchange for tactical attacks against the Taliban’s enemies. Perhaps through terrorism, violent repression and by generating the fear of repression, the Taliban would have only gotten stronger as they consolidated their rule in Afghanistan.

Now perhaps the United States would have succeeded in negotiating Osama bin Laden’s arrest for his role in the attack in Yemen against the USS Cole. Though an interesting possibility, this is unlikely to have been the case. This even though there have been reports that the Taliban were ready to hand over Osama bin Laden . For the U.S. did not think such offers were credible. (There’s little doubt that those reports then and now are cheap talk: there’s no cost to reporting facts that cannot now be of any consequence whatsoever.)

The Taliban would have carried on its repressive policies against women, minorities and any and all enemies of the so-called Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. And along with al Qaeda the Taliban, its nationalist objectives met, would have supported the call and function of global terrorism unchecked. Given this all-too plausible scenario, it’s not difficult to think that Afghanistan would have remained a failed state, a pariah state–little different than the vicious regime that has torn asunder the country and the people of Sudan.

There can be little doubt then that even despite having failed to put up what we now call the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the government of Afghanistan would have aided and abetted al Qaeda’s plots against the United States. It’s not implausible to think that at least one of those plots might have been successful. And perhaps that attack would have been successful on an overwhelmingly large scale, just as the terrible events of that September day were successful from the perspective of the terrorists who perpetrated those attacks.

Suppose then there were a successful attack on U.S. soil of the sort that actually did occur in September ten years ago. After a cataclysmic event, the U.S government under a Republican or a Democratic president would have marshaled every available asset to go to war against the organization that perpetrated the attack-al Qaeda-and the country which harbored it-Afghanistan.

Given any successful attack in the United States that originated from Afghanistan the U.S would have invaded. The planning and goals behind the invasion would surely have been different but whatever the slightly varied story, the U.S and its allies would have encountered facts on the ground similar to those that in the factual world seem like boundless and unending war.

On the occasion of Eid, the celebration at the end of the month of Ramadan, Mullah Omar declared the Taliban are willing to deal politically with the U.S and President Karzai’s government Kabul. The Taliban leader let it be known that even though he is now principally interested in a workable prisoner swap, in the long run he is ready to work in good faith with the other side of the bargaining table to achieve his ultimate political goals.  This is a tremendously important development because this means the Taliban are openly inviting the specter of ending the conflict in Afghanistan on political terms.

Recent reportage on leaks on secret high level U.S and Taliban talks suggests that those negotiations that many thought have been going well, are off. President Hamid Karzai is said to have been behind the concerted effort to bring down the talks this past June.  This news has caused many analysts to worry that the best hope for a settled peace in Afghanistan has slipped past the NATO allies.

Ahmed Rashid, the noted Pakistani journalist, in a new piece for the New York Review of Books, claims otherwise. He asserts the talks are going well despite the leaks. For the leaks were meant to derail the talks. That is, chatter about the negotiations had been designed to ultimately and finally scuttle any progress behind the scenes to get the Taliban and their U.S. and NATO opponents to see eye to eye. Rashid insists that the talks are ongoing despite interference from Kabul. If true, this is a significant development.

Here’s Rashid’s view on the matter, at length:

“By acknowledging that there have been contacts with the Americans, Mullah Omar is sending a clear message to his fighters that future political talks are a possibility, while signaling to the Americans that he may eventually be prepared to broaden the scope of the dialogue and those already participating in it.”

“He categorically accepts that “all” ethnic groups “will have participation” in governing Afghanistan in the future and tries to play down the position taken by some non-Pashtuns in the former Northern Alliance that they will never negotiate with the Taliban. He opposes long-term US bases in Afghanistan and does not accept a limited withdrawal of US-NATO troops; he wants the US and NATO to “immediately” withdraw all their forces. He hopes to be at peace with his neighbors and the world, he writes, and he will do nothing to aggravate tensions. But the Taliban will not accept an imposed regime and they demand complete independence for Afghanistan. (This is as much a message to Pakistan as it is to the US.)”

Mullah Omar’s message is as much about strategy as it is strategic. He is signaling that he is willing to play politics in multidimensional political space with numerous partners and opponents if certain conditions are met. This isn’t a bad start, nor is it necessarily a cheap signal. The Taliban might have been weakened over the course of the 30,000 soldier surge into Southern Afghanistan (analysts still debate the truth of the matter) and perhaps above and beyond rhetoric, he is demanding the immediate withdrawal of U.S. and NATO combat troops to get the pressure off his back. Therefore if talks are ongoing this means that the U.S are willing to deal on terms that may well favor Mullah Omar.

But whatever the truth of the matter in on the negotiations, rhetoric matters. Mullah Omar envisions a politics for Afghanistan for Afghans. He is against long-term U.S. bases, which are now being gamed out in more docile parts of the country. He is against U.S. puppet-mastery. Omar is signaling that he is willing to work with Karzai in Kabul, though he could do without Karzai in or out of power. The U.S. political leadership would do well to heed this rhetoric, for it is a rhetoric that is shared by a large majority of Afghans.

No doubt the U.S negotiators have extended to the Taliban more than they might admit publicly. Indeed, many in Afghanistan claim that immediate withdrawal out of Afghanistan is one of the most important requirements for halting conflict there. Therefore, as such any movement toward or away from that position will trigger a meaningful signal for how the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan will turn.

The Karzai government for its part seems disinclined to sit aside by the sidelines. Many analysts have claimed that he (or someone in his executive team) is responsible for the June leaks that arrested the high-level U.S – Taliban talks. Yet, Karzai is term limited out. One wonders what stake he has in seeing talks fail since any settled negotiations are likely to be finalized many years after he leaves office. One wonders whether he still has a dog in the race: does he intend to hold onto power for the longer term?

There is no doubt that Karzai wants peace with the Taliban on his own terms, whatever Mullah Omar declares. Does Karzai want that peace won and delivered on those terms because he expects to be in power well after the scheduled 2014 drawdown.

The report of the deadly twinned attack against the British Council in Kabul this morning serve to confirm the hypothesis that militants associated with the Taliban are ramping up their strategy to target civilians as well as military assets. The Taliban have claimed direct responsibility for the attack in which at least 8 people, nearly all Afghans civilians, were killed.

This attack and many others like it, seemingly directed at civilians, looks more like a an armed social offensive, an “us against them” insurgency”, heavily branded with the hallmarks of a nationalist movement that propagandizes spilling the blood of individuals and groups deemed colonizers and occupiers and those deemed their local lackies. (There is more than a tinge of ritual sacrifice here.)

In a strikingly horrific set of moves over the past year the Taliban seem ready to declare that the colonizers include not only those who are not indigenous born, but also all those who might work with foreign governments and aid groups. It’s not a stretch then to think that the Taliban are ready to redefine the term “indigenous”– and therefore, “valued”– to be coextensive with their self-professed identity: to be Afghan is to be Taliban. And therefore, to push the argument, to be Taliban simply is to be Afghan-nothing more or less.

This strategic turn is a formidable one; one that bears ill-tidings for Afghanistan. Consider a recent report in the New York Times: “On [this past] Thursday morning, two mines planted on a road in western Herat Province exploded, destroying a minibus and a truck and killing 23 civilians and wounding eight, according to Afghan officials.” Moreover “the attacks had occurred in an area frequented by the Taliban but with no coalition forces present, and apparently had been deliberately aimed at civilians.”

This development implies that either the Taliban have made the calculation that all bets are off–that all civilians can be legitimate targets; they’ll argue for and against the merits of the death of innocent Afghan nationals on a case by case basis. (The Taliban might expect that Afghans will view the murder of diplomats and aid workers as just as legitimate as they might view the killing of ISAF soldiers, though there seems little direct evidence of that view). Or, there is no argument at all here: Afghanistan is simply in a state of nature, a state of perpetual war. According to this view, the caricature of the Hobbesian argument for might as right wins out; let the consequences be whatever they might be.

And why is this? Why might the Taliban have taken the latter view? Because they are convinced that when NATO and its allies depart from Afghanistan in 2014 and leave behind whatever small intelligence and strike capabilities as seems fit, the Taliban will snatch effective power from Kabul. For NATO’s recently changed and ongoing counter-terrorism strategy cannot protect and sustain the central government in Kabul for an indefinite period of time. And indeed, the Taliban can afford to see out NATO and have muscularly asserted just such a strategy. For they know they have time on their hands.

And they know that more than their enemies, Kabul, the Northern Alliance, and other smaller nationalist groups, they stand united in their one goal: total domination of every square mile of Afghanistan-this, in spirit if not in the number of flags planted on the ground. They have placed in their rifle sights the ethnic Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks and other groups who make up the Northern Alliance. The Taliban mean to once again make Afghanistan a country fit only for themselves.

The fact that the Taliban are responsible for most of the civilians killed in Afghanistan seems beside the point. The Taliban certainly seem as if they do not expect, nor are they bothered by, any strong social backlash against them. This, because there isn’t any. Though the United Nations estimates that 80% of civilian casualties in Afghanistan have been caused by anti-government elements, the Taliban have yet to suffer public shame and broad denouncements for it. Part of the blame is simply, again, a caricature of a Hobbesian story: in a seemingly lawless land the people of Afghanistan would rather have a Leviathan impose order, even if that order represses some people all of the time. The Taliban have successfully branded themselves as that Leviathan. For they claim to be less expropriative than the central government in Kabul. Indeed, this is a winning argument against the central government in Kabul.

There have been far too many cases of government officials who have demanded outrageously large bribes and, indeed, tracts of land in exchange for the most insignificant bit of contract coordination and fulfillment. The average Afghan, who in the past seldom interacted with representatives from Kabul or their local operatives, has had little need to secure protection against his neighbors. The structure of clan politics typically sufficed to establish both norms of conduct and shame that have sustained contract exchange over time. Kabul’s interference into local politics has disrupted that social and economic exchange for people in far flung parts of the country. Indeed, the people affected by the call for bribes have sought protection from the Taliban–often the local young charismatic leader who has seen fit to hitch up with the loosely associated nationalist movements that have provided the local support and fire for the Taliban insurgency.

The Taliban seem to have determined that it can take the propaganda hits in Kabul and Kandahar that might be ginned against them. Kabul is enemy territory for the Taliban and Kandahar remains the site of the most vicious dug-in-fights in Afghanistan. Heads will roll and as they do the Taliban will notch up their possession of tracts of real estate, village by village if need be. Or so they might think. Or so, certainly their moves tends to reveal. As long as they can maintain control in the farther reaches of Afghanistan, they can afford to ransack the larger, more centrally located, cities. One day they will fall, the Taliban might strategize. And it is enough to strike fear amongst the population that that day will come on the backs of those Afghans who stand against them.

Afghanistan seems to be sinking- that is, whatever there is left to sink. Earlier this month, the King of Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was assassinated and predictable political exchange immediately ground to a halt. The powerful thorn on the side of Afghan pols, General David Petraeus, left to take up his new role as CIA Director in Langley, Virgina. General John Allen took over command of the Afghan war, a move that still remains something of a question mark. To top it all, the powerful Mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi was assassinated on July 27th by a suicide bomber. All this threatens to disrupt whatever predictability and coherence there was in Afghan politics.

Kandahar- until recently the hub of the Taliban insurgency and the opium trade- is the political heart of Southern Afghanistan. It is kept in check by a few powerful warlords who are close to President Karzai, and who serve as the coalition that keeps him entrenched in power. Now much of that coalition has fallen apart as Kandahar’s political leaders have been handicapped by one political assassination after another.

Only two weeks ago, Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai’s half brother, was killed by a close family associate. Appointed the head of a powerless Provincial Council, Ahmed Wali nevertheless rose to become the most powerful man in Kandahar. He embodied power: he had the ability and knew the right people to get things done, even if he did not hold a notable official position. Ahmed Wali’s death shot off a round of infighting and jostling to take his ground in the South. The man considered most likely to emerge victorious in the struggle was the Mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi. He was killed in a suicide attack only a day or so ago. Add to this news, ruinous to Afghan pols, the fact that President Karzai’s adviser and close personal friend Jan Muhammed Khan was also killed a few days ago, and politics in Kandahar might seem to have come unchained.

Indeed whether true or not, the Taliban have already taken credit for each one of these murders. The last month has been a public relations bonanza for the insurgents. It remains to be seen whether the Taliban will succeed in pushing forth an offensive against NATO’s ISAF troops in the midst of this power vacuum, where Afghanistan’s international allies have been hobbled by the complete absence of anyone who can get anything done anytime soon. (No doubt the Taliban are even now mounting just such an offensive to drive back into Kandahar. Certainly their recent high profile attacks on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul will burnish the image of their strike capabilities.)

Further consider General David Petraeus’ departure from Afghanistan to lead the CIA at the request of U.S. President Barack Obama. General John Allen, Petraeus’ replacement in the field, has yet to be militarily tested on Afghan terrain, even if the task set before him is much more difficult than the one that was given to his predecessor. Put all this together and note that there’s been no real correction to put upright Afghanistan’s lilting, sinking ship.

Sink or float, it can’t help that though Afghanistan’s politics are extremely centralized, its governance is highly decentralized. A handful of far flung warlords friendly to President Hamid Karzai rule Afghanistan as if it were a geo-polity barely stitched together with the indistinguishable thread of opium dollars. Until recently, both the central government based in Kabul, run by the deeply flawed President Karzai, and its international NATO allies could reliably count on politics as usual to chug along precisely, perfectly corrupt as usual. The greased palm conducted the politics of the day. To avoid international investigation, warlords helped NATO and ISAF’s logistical effort to secure a foothold in Southern Afghanistan.

With men like Ahmed Wali and Ghulam Haider Hamidi gone, the most troubling issue roiling Afghanistan is that there may now be fewer than a handful of men in Kandahar or elsewhere who might pull politics and mutual exchange into their hands and thereby make a restive pet out of a snarling monster. For good or for ill, if Afghanistan is to remain stable politically, even if pitifully weak and corruptible, those men must be seated with crowns as the nepotistic warlords might then be given incentive to marshal their assets to aid NATO’s counterinsurgency and counter-terrorist effort.

If President Karzai is to hold onto effective power until his term expires in 2014 he will need to put his approved stamp of privilege and access into the hands of men in whom he has confidence, and maybe even trust. And here’s the thick mud to mire it all: Ahmed Wali Karzai and Ghulam Hamidi were killed at close range by men who were allowed into their presence and confidence: the former was killed by gunshot wounds to the head, the other killed by a suicide bomber who hid his lethal bounty under his turban.

The test of President Karzai’s political strength will be to choose men to support him and who, against the threat of assassination, have the temerity to stand up and stabilize Afghanistan before the international drawdown’s 2014 deadline. The test of  NATO allies’ strength and endurance will be to countenance the corruption and malfeasance that will surely break out while those men go about their business.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai’s half-brother and, seemingly, sole proprietor of Kandahar-the birth place of the Taliban in Afghanistan–has been assassinated by a close family associate. The reason behind the assassination has not been revealed.

This news fundamentally roils politics, strategy and hedging in and for Afghanistan. Ahmed Wali, the most important linchpin of politics and peace in Kandahar, who wielded de facto executive power through his personal and political connections has just been removed from the scene of cagey politics he himself helped establish. Now no one knows what tomorrow and the day after, the week after, will look like in Kandahar. Any scenario one might picture is likely to be grim. Expect a round of assassinations as powerful families who head powerful tribes kill off each other to secure effective power in Kandahar.

Consider that politics in Afghanistan is nothing but clientelistic exchange. NATO and its principal backer in Afghanistan, the United States, has been exchanging money, gifts and promises of contracts for some variant of predictable peace. Ahmed Wali Karzai, though head of the near powerless Kandahar provincial council–another man occupies the role of governor of Kandahar- nevertheless was nevertheless the most important power broker in Kandahar. He was also tagged as a principal mover and manipulator of the poppy trade. What’s more he was long accused of being an insider in the Afghan drug trade that partly sustains the Taliban. Nevertheless the suspicions gingerly directed at him for double crossing the U.S. and its allies were trumped by the necessity of backing the man who seemed to embody all effective and operational power in Kandahar. That he was also the younger brother of the corrupt President Hamid Karzai and had risen in power and prestige in lock-step with the elder Karzai’s internationally backed rise to executive power did not hurt his political and financial fortunes. He was considered to have been in the CIA’s payroll throughout President Bush’s run of Afghanistan.

This anchor of clientelism, then, protected both the Karzai family and at least some American and NATO interests in Afghanistan. The death of Ahmed Wali Karzai now signals a complete and irreversible rupture in the clientelistic program.

Afghanistan is a near-frontier country; the rule of law does not exist there as an injunction to sway minds and cojole mutual advantage moves. This could not be more true of Southern Afghanistan. Therefore there cannot be peace in Kandahar if there does not exist an individual who can guarantee some modicum of peace-a strong man. Ahmed Wali was that strong man. He helped secure Kandahar for NATO interests by providing security and logistical aid to ISAF forces and its supply convoys. Now, put aside the issue of peace, and its demands: Ahmed Wali’s assassination signals the start of an all-out war between powerful tribal factions in Kandahar. Not only will there be no peace (a negative proposition), the region might well erupt into internecine conflict that will only drain out the resources that NATO has put aside to secure stability until its final drawdown in 2014.

And that is the fundamentally troubling issue for the United States and its NATO allies: it cannot afford more instability and more bloodshed just when countries like Canada and France are irreversibly drawing out of Afghanistan. Boots on the ground are increasingly spread thinner; and now a truly disruptive state of affairs looms on the horizon in Afghanistan.

Finally consider that just at the moment that NATO and its allies are trying to convince low and mid-level Taliban to switch allegiances to Kabul, the Taliban are likely to trumpet Ahmed Wali’s assassination as their doing, whatever the truth of that claim. They will point to this attack as their strongest signal yet that Kabul remains weak; that those who would support the Kabul government had best think twice. This propaganda victory, masked in claims of a moral victory, is sure to scare off Taliban leaders who until earlier today might have considered switching to Kabul in some hope that the Karzai clan headed by Hamid and Ahmed Wali might secure their futures.

Sixty-eight year old Bob Woodward, an associate editor at the Washington Post, is considered one of America’s most informed investigative journalists. In 1972, his disclosure and consistent reporting with Carl Bernstein of the Watergate Scandal led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon.

Woodward, a Pulitzer Prize winning author of 12 bestselling non-fictions, published his book Obama’s Wars in 2010 which focuses on the war in Afghanistan and the internal debates in Washington, Islamabad and Kabul about the war.

In an exclusive interview with Dawn.com, Bob Woodward talks about the future of Afghanistan and Pakistan in the midst of America’s gradual withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Q: Washington has now confirmed contacts with Taliban for brokering peace in Afghanistan. Had the Americans already contemplated embarking upon a negotiation process with the Taliban or is this a decision made as a last resort because mere military action has not worked?

A: Oh yes, that is the way you end a conflict, isn’t it? In my book, Obama’s War, the Americans say that they won’t defeat the Taliban but will make them a part of the fabric of Afghanistan. A political settlement eventually has to be the end of the conflict.

Q: What is the feeling like in the Obama administration as it prepares to pull out of Afghanistan? Is there a sense of achievement or is it marked with a feeling of regret for not achieving the objectives set earlier in 2001?

A: It is, as the phrase goes, fragile and reversible.

Q: Does that mean al Qaeda will regroup and reemerge in Afghanistan in the future?

A: No, I don’t think so. They will be crazy to return with the deployments and the capabilities the US has in Afghanistan. In my book, I talk of CIA’s 300-man army in Afghanistan, the Counter Terrorism Pursuit Teams (CTPTs). If the United States had these CTPTs prior to 9/11, it would have perhaps easily driven bin Laden and al Qaeda out of Afghanistan in spite of the protection provided to them by the then ruling Taliban regime.

My assessment maybe wrong as it is based on an “if-question” but the point is you don’t necessarily need a lot of force to keep al Qaeda out of Afghanistan.

Q: In your book, there is a continued fear of another 9/11-like attack on the United States? Do you think that is a genuine concern?

A: Yes, it is.

Q: And you also argue that the Afghan war has actually shifted to Pakistan. How much as the war trickled down to Pakistan?

A: In my book, I quote President Obama saying that the “poison” (war) is in Pakistan. The killing of Osama bin Laden inside Pakistan is the proof of that. The Pakistani military and the intelligence officials continued to say that that bin Laden and al Qaeda leaders were not in Pakistan. It was their official position.

Q: So how upset is Washington with Pakistan after the killing of bin Laden on the Pakistani soil?

A: The US is very upset with Pakistan but it is one of those things that both the countries can’t do much about because they need each other. I think both the countries are being very naïve. They are thinking that when they are working together then there will be a total overlap of national interest. This does not happen in international politics. They have to live with this reality.

Q: Do the Americans hold the Pakistani intelligence services responsible for harbouring bin Laden?

A: Yes that is right. It is already known but what has not been established yet is who at what level collaborated with al Qaeda. People in the US government have said that there is no evidence which can substantiate that Pakistan’s top leadership, President Zardari, army chief Kayani and ISI head Shuja Pasha, directly knew that bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan.

Q: Is Washington worried about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear program?

A: Oh yes. That is a real worry. But that is one of those realities that everyone has been able to live with so far.

Q: In your book, you term the Quetta Shura as the central pillar of Taliban, which manages operations and appoints commanders. How significant is the Quetta Shura?

A: The Quetta Shura is definitely a serious issue because it’s the top leadership of the Taliban. It is a part of the potential negotiation. The US has stepped up its efforts in Pakistan. The Quetta Shura is real.

Q: Who are the Americans more comfortable talking to, Asif Zardari or General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani?

A: The United States realises that Kayani has the real power in Pakistan. Obama is trying to talk to Kayani about the importance of having a civilian leadership and a democratic government. I am sure Kayani buys that argument.

Q: Is Kayani as popular with Washington as Musharraf?

A: [Laughs] No. Certainly not. Kayani does not have the political ambition that Musharraf had. At least people in the US think he does not want to become the president of Pakistan.

Q: With the announcement of the US roadmap for pull-out from Afghanistan, there is a growing fear of desertion in Pakistan similar to what the Americans did after the end of the Cold War. Is the history going to repeat itself?

A: That is what a lot of people in the United States are trying to avoid because they are aware of the history. During the relationships between the countries, there come times when people get excited about good things happening and they become upset with bad things occurring. At times, countries lie to each other. You have to totally learn to deal with that. The future is going to be a test for both the countries. I don’t think bad things won’t happen but there should be accommodation for both the countries for each other.

Q: Does the United States differentiate between al Qaeda and Taliban or are all of them seen from the same lens?

A: I don’t think the American people can differentiate between the two. The Taliban are not held in the US in high regard because of their extremist practices and they killed a lot of American soldiers. However, the Taliban have not attacked the United States successfully yet although they tried to do so with the failed attempt by Faisal Shahzad at Time Square.

Q: Will diplomatic relations between Pakistan and the US further worsen in the future?

A: Their relationship is precarious but I don’t think it is going to fall apart.

Q: What is the best way for the United States to engage Pakistan after it leaves Afghanistan?

A: If you read between the lines, everyone seems to be talking about withdrawing by 2014. The United States military, on the other hand, still wants to leave 15, 000 to 25, 000 troops in Afghanistan though this decision has still not been worked out. Everyone knows the perils of a total withdrawal.

Q: To what extent has the Raymond Davis episode and then bin Laden’s killing damaged cooperation between the CIA and the ISI?

A: The current relationship is based more on verification rather than trust. Both the secret services have similar goals in certain areas and dissimilar goals and interests elsewhere. In Obama’s Wars, I say Pakistan is a “powder keg” whose ingredients are political instability, weak civilian control, a powerful army and a strong intelligence system which still has a strategy of cooperating with the US on the one hand and supporting the extremist groups on the other hand. The other ingredients of the Pakistani powder keg include its nuclear program; position between Afghanistan and unresolved problems with India.

Malik Siraj Akbar, a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow based in Washington DC, is a visiting journalist at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) of the Center for Public Integrity (CPI).

As Helene Cooper and Mark Landler, writing for the Times, report this plan is far bolder than anything the military had supported.  Yet this was the political winner within the administration, the one that split the difference between having left Afghanistan yesterday with the whole all 100,000 ground troops and the far more moderate and militarily sensible move to give the troops fighting the Taliban a fighting chance.

President Obama’s decision on the particulars of the drawdown have been beset by the argument that the U.S. has been in Afghanistan for nearly ten years and that as such, somehow, it’s high time to leave Afghanistan. In fact, the U.S. moved away from Afghanistan as soon as President Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. Since then less than 40,000 U.S. soldiers had been defending Afghanistan, until President Obama pushed up troop deployment to about 70,000, nearly double the previous troop presence.  It is breath-taking then, that President Obama decided to lighten the troop load in Afghanistan. No doubt he thinks that the battle against al Qaeda and the Taliban can be fought with less troop intensive methods, for instance, counter-terrorist methods like night raids and predator drone strikes.

In fact the decision to withdraw signals a political decision that 70,000 troops would allow a sufficiently strong troop presence in Afghanistan until the U.S. finally disengages in 2014. This move is sure to put decisive pressure on President Hamid Karzai to accept that he and others in power in Afghanistan need to govern in a way that will complement a changing U.S. strategy. Indeed, this will force Mr. Karzai to accept the brunt of resurgent U.S counter-terrorism activity, whatever political benefits demagoguery might bring.

What are the benefits, then, of this move to withdraw troops? It is certainly a political decision, more than a military one. The benefits are thus likely to be political as well.  It offers a chance for President Obama to credibly show that he is a peacetime president as much as he is a war-hawk.  That, after Iraq he will drawn down action in Afghanistan and will (one hopes soon) disengage in Libya- a policy that seems to offer some substance to his Nobel Peace prize.

This move also shores up Vice President Biden’s standing in the American political arena, at the expense of lions like out-going Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. This move also leaves some breathing room for the president to negotiate with his Republican opposition on the U.S. budget and its deficits, and the broader, and deeper, problem of U.S. sovereign debt. Further, it undercuts GOP presidential nomination front-runner Mitt Romney’s demands that the U.S. withdraw swiftly out of Afghanistan.

The costs of the move? The president’s decision to drawdown more significantly and more swiftly will impact the way the war in Afghanistan is fought. This move effectively decapitates counterinsurgency as a fact of the matter on the ground. Indeed, Cooper and Landler report that out of the top 30 most wanted al Qaeda leaders, U.S. counter-terrorism efforts have killed 2o, all over the course of the last year and a half – during Obama’s watch.  Needless to say, counter-terrorism has won over counter-insurgency, clearly evident after the May 2nd raid in Abottabad that netted and killed Osama bin Laden.

Still, the real loser of this move might well be General David Petraeus, the man who literally wrote the counterinsurgency manual, and then personally oversaw its implementation in Afghanistan from strategic and field leadership positions. Now, as the incoming Director of the CIA, his job will be to draw down counterinsurgency- his pet project- and redouble the agency’s efforts toward counter-terrorism.  There is little doubt that he will be successful in this effort- he has seemed to have failed at little else. Nevertheless, President Obama’s decision just made Patraeus’ upcoming job at the CIA a bit more pressing, a bit more strategically cutting than the stings and arrows with which his predecessor had to deal.