NightWatch

For the Night of 21 September 2009

Thailand: The 81-year-old king has been admitted to hospital suffering from a fever. Doctors said King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-serving monarch, had shown signs of fatigue and was being treated with antibiotics.

King Bhumibol is deeply revered by most Thais and his health is a matter of public anxiety. Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva told reporters there was "nothing to be concerned about". People have gathered at the hospital to convey their prayers and good wishes. Political protests have taken a time out.

Pakistan: For the record. ''The bastards first used us and are now playing dirty games with us,'' A. Q. Khan wrote about the Pakistani leadership in a December 2003 letter to his wife Henny that has finally been made public by an interlocutor and published in The Times of India.

''Darling, if the government plays any mischief with me take a tough stand,'' he told his wife, adding, ''They might try to get rid of me to cover up all the things they got done by me.''

''We put up a centrifuge plant at Hanzhong (250km southwest of Xian),” Khan wrote. “The Chinese gave us drawings of the nuclear weapon, gave us 50kg of enriched uranium, gave us 10 tons of UF6 (natural) and 5 tons of UF6 (3%).'' UF6 is uranium hexafluoride, the gaseous feedstock for an enrichment plan.

A.Q. Khan took the fall, but he was the agent of Pakistan’s civilian and military governments and had official Chinese cooperation. So much for commitment to nuclear non-proliferation.

Afghanistan: Taliban leader Mullah Omar said 20 September that the Taliban are prepared to fight a long war to oust foreign forces from Afghanistan, Al Jazeera reported. Omar said in a message for the Muslim Eid holiday that Afghans successfully ousted the British after fighting them from 1839 to 1919 and that Afghans are prepared to "wage jihad" until independence is achieved again.

Omar stated no new policy.

Poland: The Foreign Minister called for closer security ties in Europe after U.S. President Obama's scrapping of its missile defense plan, Reuters reported 21 September. "I hope this will prove a salutary shock, especially for the right end of Poland's political spectrum," Radoslaw Sikorski told TOK FM radio, adding it could lead some to rethink "the dream of basing everything on a bilateral alliance with the United States."

The US President has received bad treatment from portions of the Polish and Czech press, but polls consistently have shown that electorates in both states overwhelmingly opposed the missile defense shield. The press coverage implies that Polish and Czech leaders were willing to accept the US missile defense facilities as a form of hostage taking, to ensure a timely and effective US response to Russian pressures. This is an unspoken time honored practice in South Korea and in Japan, prior to the ascendancy of the Democratic Party of Japan coalition.

Honduras: Deposed President Zelaya defied threats of arrest and returned home to Honduras today, three months after he was flown into exile. Seeking safety at the Brazilian Embassy, Zelaya called on his countrymen to come to the capital for peaceful protest. "It is the moment of reconciliation," he said Monday during a televised speech that featured Zelaya's voice but not his image.

His surprise arrival sparked demonstrations in the streets outside the embassy as supporters, who have protested for months since his ouster, cheered his return.

Zelaya judged he needed to make a sensational statement because outside pressure has had no effect in diverting the interim government from its commitment to holding elections on schedule in November and arresting Zelaya for constitutional crimes. Internal exile in the Brazilian Embassy does not seem particularly astute. In any event, his return did not cause the splash he apparently hoped.

The Wall Street Journal today published the followed excerpt from a study by the Congressional Research Service that calls into question the prudence and accuracy of the US Department of State’s criticism of Honduras.

The Supreme Court of Honduras has constitutional and statutory authority to hear cases against the President of the Republic and many other high officers of the State, to adjudicate and enforce judgments, and to request the assistance of the public forces to enforce its rulings." —Congressional Research Service, August 2009

This assessment carries an implicit judgment that in requiring Honduras to restore Zelaya the Department of State is pressuring Honduras to betray its constitution and the rule of law. This is a study in democracy.

Preliminary Comments on the Commander’s Summary of COMISAF’s Initial Assessment: General McChrystal’s assessment is now available in redacted form. Its opening sentence, apparently intended as a shocker, exposes a lack of insight. McChrystal’s staff asserts the stakes are high in Afghanistan. The ensuing summary fails to provide credible evidence to support the assertion. High for whom? Afghanistan poses no threat to the US, based on this Assessment.

The conclusion that Afghanistan could become a safehaven for “terrorism” does not contain the adjective “international.” Afghanistan has never been free of attacks aimed at instilling terror, even during its many civil wars. That is how tribes fight without killing lots of people, by demonstration. John Keegan describes this as “pre-modern” warfare.

The threat that motivates US involvement, according to the US President, is “international terror.” That phrase did not make the General’s cut apparently, which raises questions about what the General’s staff thinks it is doing in Afghanistan.

Stopping terror is not what the President said. He spoke about stopping international terror. That would mean the US forces should be fighting in western Pakistan where the international terrorists reside. The Commander’s Summary agrees with and reinforces the NW contention that the international terrorists are not in Afghanistan, but in Pakistan. The Summary does not make clear how operations in Afghanistan affect the international terrorists in Pakistan.

Those are two of the internal contradictions and inconsistencies in the Commander’s Summary.

The Commander’s Summary does not acknowledge that the Afghan Taliban have sworn to never allow international terrorists – in other words Arabs -- back into Afghanistan, as NW has noted in the past. All sources in the public domain indicate the Taliban have been true to their oath since 2001.

Another serious omission in the Summary is that it fails to use the word “tribe” or any of its adjectival forms. Apparently that word is politically incorrect. The Afghan population just underwent an exercise in public franchise in which the members of tribes voted according to the directions of their tribal leaders or tribal affiliations. What else? The paramount lesson in Afghan democracy from the national elections also did not make the General’s cut, apparently.

The US strategy centers on the need to “protect the population,” whatever that means. If that does not mean siding with pro-government tribal leaders, then it means nothing. The Afghans pride themselves on being a tribal society, but the ISAF Commander’s Summary makes no concession to that source of Afghan pride. Protecting the “population” without mentioning the tribe betrays a lack of cultural insight.

Other problems include use of conventional war language – victory and defeat, for example. Nothing in Afghanistan’s history has ever been quite that black and white. Victory is always relative and defeat is never permanent.

Then there is the comment that “we must fight classic counterinsurgency operations…” Umm… where are such operations defined? French operations, American operations and British operations all were tailored to the threat and the threat was different in each location. The operations were different, as a result. The French and British had success for a time. The last successful US counter-insurgency operation was in the Philippines.

American counter-insurgency operations in Vietnam were supplanted by a conventional invasion by the North Vietnamese Army after Tet 1968. The US operations in the Philippines a century ago were much more like modern day Pakistani operations—brutal and indiscriminate. All successful counterinsurgency operations that might qualify as “classic” were harsh. The so-called new doctrine in the US Army handbook is not only new, but untested by the US Army. It is distinctly not classic.

A Reader would be justified in wondering what that phrase is supposed to mean to serious people concerned about Afghanistan? Later on in the Summary, the term “comprehensive counterinsurgency operations” is used. In what way are they different from “classic” counterinsurgency operations? What does “comprehensive” mean when ISAF does not have enough troops to protect Kabul, much less 200 of the 399 districts that the Taliban control or dominate?

In what way would ISAF forces protect the Afghans better than the Taliban who actually do protect the Afghans from ISAF, bring law and order, provide resolution of local disputes, plus bring justice to corrupt policemen and local officials? If the majority of Pashtuns want a moderate form of Sharia as the basis of government, would ISAF respect that? If Afghans showed they preferred an Islamic Republic, would ISAF honor that?

There is much more worthy of comment, but NightWatch judges from the Commander’s Summary that the people who wrote it let the Commander down. They did not prove the stakes are high; that the situation is imperative; that protection of the population is a reasonably achievable objective; did not examine other more cost-effective alternatives to expanding the forces or show that stability is achievable or desirable in US interests. For example, and arguably, a chronically unstable Afghanistan unnerves both Iran and Pakistan and helps protect US interests in India, Iraq and Israel.

The press accounts say McChrystal has not asked for the 45,000 more troops he thinks he needs. Based on the words in the ISAF Commander’s Assessment about not seeming to be an occupier, he should not be the person making the request at all, if he takes those words seriously. It should be President Karzai.

The failure to mention the President of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan again spotlights the inconsistent thinking that pervades the more or less disjointed statements in the Commander’s Summary. After reading the Summary, one might well wonder what and where is the strategy? Protecting people is a task, not a strategy. 45,000 more troops will make little lasting difference in that task, except to the families of those killed.

A strategy might be to declare ISAF will defend and enrich all tribes and clans that side with the government in Kabul, renounce Islamic extremism and promote the welfare of women, children, widows and orphans. That might start to transform the fight.

End of NightWatch for 21 September.