More War ?

More War?

US naval vessels, including the gigantic nuclear powered aircraft carrier George Washington have joined South Korean military forces in a joint naval exercise off the coast of that country. North Korea has responded by threatening  “sacred war” and nuclear retaliation.

This massive show of force is a response to the March sinking of a South Korean naval vessel near a disputed region in the oceans off the Koreas. Originally it was unclear whether a mine sank the warship, or an explosion.  Then a panel of international experts decided that the boat was sunk by a North Korean torpedo.

Why would North Korea want to sink a South Korean naval vessel? Since the 1960s there have been a series of attacks on South Korean Presidents, on airliners bound for Seoul, South Korea, or on South Korean naval vessels by North Koreans. A bitter enmity exists between the two countries.

So now we are doing war-games near the coast of North Korea and that country is talking nuclear war.

At the same time, there is more talk about Iran and its nuclear weapons program. Some people are seriously talking about attacking Iran. Iran is seriously talking about defending itself against such attacks.

Has the whole world gone mad?

We have been involved in two wars for seven years. The end--let alone victory--is not in sight. We are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on these wars while we do not have enough money to pay unemployment to those left jobless by the economic crisis. We don’t have enough money to pay for our schools, for health care, or even, in some communities, to to turn on the street lamps. We are broke and we owe $ 4 trillion to other nations.
The US casualties in these wars have been high, so have been the casualties for some of our allies. Estimates of civilian casualties in Iraq alone range from 100,000 to 800,000. Damages to houses, streets, water and sewer installations, to schools and mosques have been enormous.

Two wars, poorly if at all justified, causing damages that will not be repaired for decades. Many of these damages--the human lives taken prematurely; the lives of the survivors marked indelibly--will never be repaired.

And still we talk more war?

Wake up, America!

What were they thinking?

What were they thinking?

In his recent speech Pres. Obama announced that he will increase US forces in Afghanistan by close to 50%. He justified that decision by reminding us that in 2001 “Al Quaeda's base of operations was in Afghanistan.” To be sure, but has he not heard that the Al Quaeda leadership has long since decamped to Pakistan? There are about 100 Al Quaeda left and we are increasing our military to 100,000 men and women in order to keep them from launching more terrorist attacks. 1000 Allied soldiers for every Al Quaeda? They must be supermen, to be sure.

It makes no sense.

But here is the real puzzle: Pres. Obama is very intelligent; so is his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Their advisers are equally able. They went through a three-month, extremely careful discussion before they adopted the current plan. On more than one occasion the President and his advisers spent 11 hours in meetings to discuss this decision. Why then have they made this incomprehensible decision?

One explanation offered for the President's decision has, once again, to do with oil. Large reserves of oil have been discovered north of Afghanistan, at the edges of the Caspian Sea, in Turkmenistan and Khazakstan. The only existing pipeline for this oil goes through Russia giving Russia control over the flow of oil. That is totally unacceptable. Since 1995 there have been plans to build a pipe line through Afghanistan and Pakistan. Some people think the rush to pacify Afghanistan has little to do with the war on terrorism but, in reality, serves this pipeline project.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan to make it safe for an oil pipeline makes about as much sense as pacifying Afghanistan in order to make the US less vulnerable to Al Qaeda in neighboring Pakistan. For many years to come Afghanistan is going to be a dangerous terrain for oil pipelines.

A second explanation of the escalation bases it on considerations of domestic US politics. Some recent work on the history of the Vietnam war argues that Lyndon Johnson's reluctance to give up on that war was mostly motivated by domestic policy considerations. When, in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party took power in China a great hue and cry was started by right wing politicians about the government “losing” China. The State Department, they claimed, was riddled with communists. That story only died at the end of the red scare that Sen.Joe McCarthy orchestrated in the early 1950s. From this perspective, President Lyndon Johnson perhasps continued the Vietnam war, against the advice of his staff, because he was afraid the right-wing would attack him and the Democratic Party for “losing” Vietnam.

Similar considerations could be moving Pres. Obama. Perhaps he does not want to appear weak in the face of terrorist threats or indigenous insurgency in Afghanistan. Christian Parenti stated this view very bluntly: “The real purpose of these 30,000 soldiers is to make Obama look tough as he heads toward the next US presidential election.” Once again domestic political considerations would be playing an important role. But that, of course, does not justify the escalation. We would not want one American or Afghani to be harmed for the sake of protecting Democratic politicians from attacks by right wing Republicans.

A third explanation points to the President's conception of America's role in the world.

In 2007, then candidate Obama spoke about American leadership, how in the past America “led and lifted” the world and promised to renew that leadership. When, very recently, now Pres. Obama left for China he repeated his views about American leadership of the world. This idea may well be behind this escalation of the Afghan war.

The war begun eight years ago to destroy the Taliban and bring peace to Afghanistan has, so far, failed. The Taliban are gaining in strength; the devastation of the country is worse than ever. Does a leader give up when projects seem to fail? Failure is not a word in the leader's vocabulary; he does not accept defeat. Instead he goes back into the fray, redoubles his efforts and, as Obama keeps saying about Afghanistan, “finishes the job.” As leaders of the world, we Americans must finish the job we started – whatever the cost. According to the account of the deliberations in the New York Times “The more he [President Obama] learned about the consequences of failure, and the more he narrowed the mission, the more he gravitated toward a robust if temporary buildup.” Gen. McCrystal warned of “mission failure” and the President responded with the decision to escalate. When Vice-President Biden asked whether the Taliban were a threat to the US, the President responded: “I just want to say right now, I want to take off the table that we’re leaving Afghanistan.” Withdrawal was never an option. Leaders always emerge as winners.

That image of ourselves as World Leaders-- more than any of the other motives discussed – seem to encourage the President and his advisors to escalate the Afghan war. But this explanation also fails. It does not justify sending one more soldier to Afghanistan.

Fortunate in inhabiting a fertile country with a population enriched generation after generation by enterprising and talented members of other peoples, the United States has become a very rich country. It has become, for that reason, a very powerful country. But being powerful is not the same as being a leader. The powerful are often bullies and we have frequently used our power to try to impose our will on other nations. The Korean War was costly for us and the Koreans. But Korea is still divided. We fought the Vietnam war in order to prevent the world from going communist. We lost that war but all the dire predictions about Asia going Communist turned out to be false. President Reagan invaded Grenada – a country he probably could not find on the map. The elder Bush bombed Panama City killing 1000 civilians. The younger Bush did untold harm to Iraq and to Afghanistan. We have not acted a leaders but as thugs and bullies. If President Obama wants to restore genuine leadership, he has to restrain the military and its inclination to solve all problems with bombs and bullets. He has to withdraw from Afghanistan as he is withdrawing from Iraq.

Escalating the war in Afghanistan will cause untold harm to people in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It will cause untold harm to our nation by perpetuating our role as world bully.

Illusory Security

Illusions of Security
President Obama has decided to escalate the war in Afghanistan. In his speech he was very clear about the purpose of that escalation: “I make this decision because I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by Al Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11 and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak.”
Many commentators have questioned whether the means chosen by the President are feasible: Will we be able, in a year and a half, to train an Afghan army and police force able to keep the Taliban in check? Will we be able to persuade the Afghani government to eschew corruption? Few people believe that these goals can be reached in less than 5 years--if ever.
But there is another question which is very rarely being addressed: has the President chosen the right means to enhance our security? The purpose of this escalation is to reduce the danger of further terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda. But is escalation in Afghanistan the best way of gaining greater security for ourselves and other Western nations?
There is general agreement that Osama bin Laden and his people are not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan--although the Pakistani government has recently denied that. Fighting in Afghanistan in order to reduce the power of Al Quaeda reminds one of the drunk who looks for his wallet under a streetlight. Someone asks him: 'Did you lose it here?' The drunk answers 'No, but this is where the light is.' We are trying to protect ourselves against Al Qaeda in a country where they have a very limited presence. Why fight the Taliban in Afghanistan if our enemy, Al Quaeda, is in neighboring Pakistan? The answer: Well we are not at war in Pakistan but in Afghanistan so we might just as well fight there.
This makes absolutely no sense.
The Taliban have some sort of complicated relationship to Al Qaeda. But they are not going to fly planes into buildings in the US – they do not have the capability. The Taliban in Afghanistan do not threaten the security of America. But since we can't catch Osama bin Laden and his staff, we make war against some of his friends and supporters.
That makes no sense either.
The government of Pakistan appears not at all happy with this plan to send more troops to Afghanistan. They fear that Taliban will flee from American attacks into Pakistan and thus bolster their presence where Bin Laden is now hiding out. Attacking the Taliban in Afghanistan will only strengthen them in Pakistan.
That will not make America more secure.
Osama bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan. We do not have troops there but we are regularly launching bombing attacks on militants in the border regions. A while ago, these drone attacks managed to kill an Al Quaeda leader. But, as David Bromwich wrote in the Huffington Post,
“To assassinate one major operative, Baitullah Mehsud, as Jane Mayer showed in a recent article in the New Yorker, 16 strikes were necessary, over 14 months, killing a total of as many as 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were bystanders. What comes of the reputation of policemen in a crime-ridden neighborhood when they conduct themselves like that? And what makes anyone suppose the reaction will be less extreme when the policeman comes from another country? And yet, from the president's West Point speech, one would not guess that he has reflected what our mere presence in West Asia does to increase the enchantment of violent resistance and to heat the anger that turns into terrorists people who have lost parents, children, cousins, clansmen, and friends to the Americans. The total number of Muslims killed by Americans in revenge for the attacks of September 11th now numbers more than a hundred thousand. Of those, few were members of Al Qaeda, and few harbored any intention, for good or ill, toward the United States before we crossed the ocean as an occupying power.”
In the light of these horrendous civilian casualties, why would Afghanis not regard Americans a terrorists, just like Al Quaeda,--only much more deadly. Why would they not believe that we are just out to kill Muslims? Once they came to believe that, they would surely throw their sympathies and support to Al Quaeda, making us less secure.
Increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan and increasing American and NATIO firepower will increase the number of innocent civilian victims. Surely that will not “win the hearts and minds” of people in the Middle East for us. If anything, it will gain more supporters for terrorist attacks on us. It will not enhance out safety.
The means chosen by President Obama to increase our security are bound to have the opposite effect. They will leave us more vulnerable. The sooner we leave that part of the world, the sooner can reduce the threat of terrorist attacks.

Corruption abroad and at home

Corruption abroad and at home.
Corruption is a central topic in discussions of Afghanistan. From the American side the matter looks very simple: the Afghanis are corrupt; we are not. There is some support for that view. In the index of 180 countries compiled by Transparency International, Afghanistan is second from the bottom. The only country more corrupt is Sudan. The United States ranks 19 from the top just above Barbados and Qatar.
But recent reports from Afghanistan show that corruption in that country is much more complex.
The American and NATO troops in Afghanistan need to be supplied with everything from armored vehicles, to weapons, to toilet paper. These supplies come into the country in large convoys of trucks that often move through hostile territory where the convoys are liable to come under attack. To meet that problem a number of Afghani security companies have come into existence to protect these convoys. Some of the most important of these security companies are owned and run by, for instance,the son of the defense minister, or by cousins of the president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai. You need to be well-connected in order to get ahead in Afghanistan. We regard that as a form of corruption.
In the United States, in the meantime, a small uproar concerns the taxes to be paid by private equity companies and hedge funds. Private equity companies buy up existing enterprises. Sometimes they manage to improve the enterprise's efficiency and thus to enhance the viability of the firm. In many other cases, the companies bought up by private equity firms are overloaded with debt and end up going out of business while the private equity firm walks away with profits in the millions of dollars. ( This is how Mitt Romney got to be rich.) How should those profits be taxed? The current tax rate on these profits is 15%. Private equity firms are lobbying furiously against proposals to raise that tax rate. They may well succeed in this because they too are well connected. Being well-connected in Afghanistan means that you have family relations to the powerful; being well-connected in the United States means that you give money to the right legislators and bureaucrats. Getting advantages from family connections is corrupt; getting advantages from handing out campaign funds... is what?
Is it really true that the Afghanis are corrupt and we are not?
But there is more. Let us go back to the Afghani security companies that protect supply convoys for US and NATO troops. They are not well armed. They protect their convoys by bribing the Taliban not to attack. The money for these bribes comes from the US government. It is our government that pays its enemies – the Taliban – not to attack us. If Afghanistan is corrupt to the point of buying off their enemies, our government is involved in this corruption because it hires the security companies and supplies the pay-off money.
There are several lessons to be drawn from the stories. The first goes back to the New Testament: if you see a mote in the eye of the other, do not overlook the beam in your own.It is easy for a nation to be self-righteous; it is better to be as critical of oneself as one is of others. The second lesson is this: as long as we remain involved in Afghanistan we will be involved in maintaining its corrupt practices. If we want a clean government in Afghanistan, the first thing we need to do is to leave the country. If we want to have a clean government at home, the same it true: we need to leave Afghanistan.

Who is the Enemy in Afghanistan?

Who is the enemy in Afghanistan?

Matthew Hoh fought in Iraq in 2004- 2005 and again in 2006 - 2007 both as a commissioned officer in the Marine Corps and as a civilian employee of the US government. He is a hero and a patriot. During the last six months he worked in Afghanistan as a foreign service officer. When he resigned his job last week, he stated that the war in Afghanistan, in his view, served no purpose. Human lives, by no means only American, and huge amounts of money were being wasted on a misguided undertaking.

From where we are in the US, it is difficult to say whether Hoh's doubts about the Afghan war are correct. But the questions he raises are critical. Whatever President Obama and his advisors decide about that war, Hoh's questions must be answered if our government chooses to continue that war in any form.

We attacked Afghanistan in 2001 because Obama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, was said to be hiding out in Afghanistan. The Taliban, then in power in Afghanistan, refused to surrender him to us. US and NATO troops destroyed their government. While no one knows where bin Laden is, the most common opinion is that he is now living in Pakistan. Fighting in Afghanistan will not bring us any closer to capturing him.

Hoh insists that, moreover, Al Quaeda has training camps in Sudan, in Yemen, in the former Yugoslavia, and in Europe. The 9/11 attack was hatched in Hamburg, Germany. The war in Afghanistan will only marginally weaken Al Quaeda. Afghanistan plays a minor role in the continued existence of Al Quaeda.

Who is the enemy in Afghanistan? It is often said to be the Taliban--religious fanatics whose political outlook is the opposite of ours: they despise democracy and seek to establish a theocratic state. (They regard the separation of Church and State, practiced by us, as evil). They do not believe in equality for women, or in individual liberty (the freedom to run one's life as one chooses--as long as others are not harmed by one's choices). Our ways are abhorrent to the Taliban; their ways are anathema to us.

But says Hoh, is that a reason for continuing that war? Surely an excellent question.

What is more, Hoh thinks, the insurgency we are fighting is not primarily led by the Taliban, by the Islamist movement that wants to establish a theocratic state in Afghanistan. The energy for the bloody fighting against US and NATO troops comes from sheer nationalism. When George Washington and the American Patriots fought the British, they fought a nationalist war. Their goal was to have Americans govern themselves and to force the British out of any positions of power in the colonies. The enemy in Afghanistan, according to Hoh, are similar nationalist movements. But they differ from the Patriots in the US in that they are not defending the independence of the entire country, but often of a small area, one particular valley, the home of a particular tribe.

Afghanistan, in the opinion of Hoh and of many other observers, is not one country, but a collection of very local populations focused on their locality, their own language and traditions. All of this is held together by a corrupt and ineffective government in the largest city Kabul. But Afghanis think of themselves not as citizens of the country, Afghanistan, but as citizens of the specific place where they were born that their families inhabit, and where they have been for generations. No common language, tradition, and family connections link all Afghanis to each other. Their identity is connected to their locality, not to the country as a whole.

These very local groups want to be left alone to run their collective lives as they have for a long time. The longer US troops remain in the area, the more we will inflame this nationalist resistance. The Russian invasion faltered for the same reasons--all the tanks and guns of a superior army were powerless in the face of the local loyalties of Afghan tribesmen.

These local Afghan tribes are no threat to the safety of the US. They want to be left alone. If we do that, that will be the end of their interest in us.

Does Hoh assess the Afghani situation correctly? Has he understood some fundamental truths about Afghanistan? Most likely there will be sharp differences of opinion among people who know Afghanistan at first hand. These questions have no answers that all the experts accept.

But Hoh does raise the key question in Afghanistan: who is the enemy? It seems extremely plausible that in Afghanistan Al Quaeda is not the enemy. Are the Taliban the enemy? Why are we fighting them in 2009? Are the enemies very local tribesmen defending their desire to be left alone? Who is the enemy?

President Obama and his advisors must give us a clear and persuasive answer to the question of who the enemy is. Once the enemy is identified, we must be told why that enemy is worth fighting. Unless there are answers to those two questions, we should should tell all Americans in Afghanistan--military and civilian--to get on the next plane home.

It is pointless to fight a war if you do not know whom you are fighting.

What to do in Afghanistan?

No one seems to know what to do in Afghanistan. There are huge debates within the military. The White House is thinking about the options. More and more voters oppose sending more troops. No doubt the situation is very difficult. But one difficulty most of us have is that we have very limited information about Afghanistan and the situation there.
Every now and then, though, we get a glimpse of the reality of Afghanistan and what we see is a mixture of Alice in Wonderland and Gilbert and Sullivan.
A recent newspaper report relates how the Afghani constitution provides for provincial councils. Every province is supposed to have a council elected by the inhabitants of the province. These councils were elected when the people voted recently. There is only one problem. There is nothing for these councils to do. Every province is run by a governor appointed by the national president. The provincial councils may neither pass laws nor make decisions about spending money. They have no function. Some of them never meet.
The same Constitution provides for the election of district, municipal, and village councils. But villages and municipalities are run by village elders who consult with the male leaders of the locality after Friday night prayers at the mosque. These local councils, supposed to be elected later this year, promise to have the same future as the provincial councils; they will be completely useless.
How did Afghanistan get this Constitution that clearly does not fit its actual institutions? After the fall of the Taliban in 2001, a conference was held in Bonn, Germany under UN auspices to discuss the future of Afghanistan. The conference picked Afghani leaders who would write and later approve a new constitution. This constitution was written, supposedly, by Afghani experts but you need not look very closely to see that a lot of American “ experts” had significant influence on the process. The Afghanis voted for the Constitution and then proceded to govern themselves pretty much as they have done for a long time.
But every step they take is, apparently, closely supervised by a long list of American nongovernmental organizations. The article mentions the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University, the National Democratic Institute, USAID ( which pays for a significant portion of these useless elections), there is the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit and the Aid- Effectiveness Program of Oxfam (usefully located in Boston).
Most members of the Provincial Councils are twiddling their thumbs after spending money and effort to get themselves elected. One notable exception is the brother of Pres. Hamid Karzai, who “made a reputation for himself by holding news conferences denouncing ineffective international aid.”
What a story! We try to establish democracy in Afghanistan by participating actively in writing their constitution for them. The constitution we write elects many people who would have no job to do. Many NGO bureaucrats anxiously watch over this constitution adopted by Afghanistan for the sake of American support and approval. In the meantime, the people in the provinces, towns and villages of Afghanistan continue to follow their established forms of government including their own forms of local consultation.
One of the two goals of American policy in Afghanistan, according to Gen. McChrystal, is to strengthen the Afghan government. Which government is he talking about – the government we imposed on Afghanistan or the government that actually governs the country?

Escalation in Afghanistan

Barack Obama won the Presidency with the promise of change. What kind of change?

It now appears that one change will consist of sending another 20 to 30 thousand US troops to Afghanistan, more or less doubling the number of Americans fighting in that country.

What should we think about that?

Afghanistan is a country the size of Texas with a population of 32 million. Literacy is at 28 %, average life expectancy 42 years. It is very different from any country we know. Infrastructure--roads, electric power supply, drinkable water, reliable communications and transport hardly exist. The different parts of the country are not well knit together. Afghanistan is one country in name only. Different parts of the country are inhabited by different peoples who each speak their own languages. Each have strong loyalties to their own and deep distrust of the members of the other peoples.

There is a central government in the capital, Kabul, that controls the capital itself, more or less. But it does not control the rest of the country. There police and military power is in the hands of warlords--strongmen with their own armies that control a bit of territory and are frequently battling other strongmen. In addition there is the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic force. The Taliban were organized originally by the ISI ( The Pakistani Internal Security Services) with the support of the US who groomed the Taliban the fight the Russians when they occupied Afghanistan in the 1970s and 80s.

Once the Russians left, the US lost interest in Afghanistan and left the Taliban to take over the country.

Why are we fighting in Afghanistan?

The official story is that after 9/11 the US government demanded that the Afghan government--then in the hands of the Taliban--hand over Osama Bin Laden. When they refused we invaded to catch Osama and punish the Taliban. We seemed to have succeeded in the second goal because the Taliban collapsed after a brief war fought by US planes and Afghan warlord ground troops. But today the Taliban are daily growing in strength. They are said to be active in 72% of the country.

The truth is more complex. The US government was pretty ready to attack Afghanistan even before 9/11, hoping to weaken Al Quaeda by expelling them from their sanctuary there. Nor is it true that the Taliban refused to hand over Osama bin Laden. They did refuse to hand him to the US, but were willing to hand him over for trial to a third country. But our government rejected that offer.

We did not catch Osama. He is, people say, in Pakistan . So why fight in Afghanistan? That question is difficult to answer. Maybe it does not have an answer except that, having once started the war, we need to fight to victory. But we know where that kind of thinking leads. It added several years to the war in Vietnam and we lost it anyway. It is clear that the insistence on victory has needlessly cost a lot of lives--American as well as many more Iraqi ones--without bringing us any closer to victory in Iraq.

What are we fighting for?

There are different answers to this question:

1. We are trying to support the democratic government of Hamid Karzai. But the government consists largely of different warlords whose dedication to democracy may be doubted. The people of Afghanistan do not believe that their government is democratic. More importantly, American-style electoral democracy is not a part of Afghan culture. It is doubtful that it can be imposed by a foreign army.

2. Stability in the region. Afghanistan was reasonably stable under the Taliban ( as Iraq was under Saddam Hussein). Our efforts have been effective in destabilizing the region. A prime example: Today Afghanistan supplies 90% of the world’s opium supply. The opium trade had been suppressed pretty effectively by the Taliban. Opium is Afghanistan’s only export. It has corrupted everyone including many government leaders.

3. Suppress Al Quaeda and the Taliban. The Afghan war does not seem to have succeeded in do that. For all anyone knows Al Quaeda has moved on to Pakistan and our efforts should be directed towards strengthening the fragile democracy there.

Is there a military solution?

Our military efforts routed the Taliban in 2002--only temporarily, it seems now--and installed our government under Hamid Karzai. But our military efforts were unable to establish a government that is able to govern. These military efforts were unable to unify the country, or even to make the country secure enough for rebuilding what decades of invasion and civil war have destroyed and to bring the country’s infrastructure, let alone its educational system, into modern times.

The critics of the US military effort--and there are many of those--point out that the goal of unifying the country, or establishing a government that actually governs, is not a task that any military establishment can accomplish. Heavily armed soldiers, helicopter gunships and bombers do not serve to establish governments that their citizens respect and, more importantly, obey. Soldiers and planes to not serve to unify a country in practice divided into many separate fiefdoms, each with their own military leader and private army.

As a part of the military solution, the US command is now arming private warlords to fight the Taliban. We have done this before, for instance, when we armed Osama bin Laden in his struggle against the Russian occupation. That experiment ended very badly. But the lesson that arming private militias in Afghanistan often has disastrous effects, seems lost on our military leaders.

The aims of US actions in Afghanistan, say these critics, are political--unifying the country, establishing an effective government. Military means cannot reach those goals.

What should Obama do?

A larger view of the region points to the involvement of Pakistan in the Afghan troubles and reminds us that, on the one hand, the conflict with India is a central aspect of all Pakistani actions and that, on the other hand, Afghanistan’s neighbor on the opposite side, Iran, must also not be forgotten. The resolution of the problems of Afghanistan, some experts believe, requires an effort at regional diplomacy to try to help lower the India-Pakistan tensions, and to address Iranian interests, on the one hand, and to give generous but carefully supervised economic ( not military) aid to Pakistan and Afghanistan. The role of the US military as well as of NATO is of lesser importance than the diplomatic efforts. Those would consist centrally of negotiations between the Afghan government of Hamid Karzai and the Taliban, on one side, and between India and Pakistan on the other. They might also involve negotiations between the US and Iran

The only reasonable policy is to develop a plan for leaving Afghanistan as soon as possible in order to replace the current, failed military strategies with attempts at many-sided negotiations.