NightWatch

For the Night of 25 September 2009

Iran - the World: Today all news services reported the existence of a secret underground facility for enriching uranium that is too small for making fuel for a power reactor but small enough for enriching fuel for military uses, namely making fissile material for making nuclear warheads.

The US, UK and France have cornered Iran and embarrassed its supporters by exposing Iranian perfidy. The US smoked out President Ahmadi-Nejad into admitting the existence of the previously undisclosed facility. An Iranian spokesman proclaimed it was a safeguard against a surprise attack, without explaining that no attack has occurred, why Iran should fear such an attack and the reasons that peaceful nuclear energy reactors required a safeguard facility that could never meet their needs… ever.

The first order inference is that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons program. That puts the lie to a National Intelligence Estimate and a recent assertion by the Director of National Intelligence that the Intelligence Community still judged that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, UNLESS that was just part of the official cover story.

If Dennis Blair’s statement was not part of the story to cover the President’s surprise announcement today, then those analysts must submit their resignations because they clearly are incompetent, based on the pubic record. They failed twice on the one issue about which failure cannot be an option – the existence of an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

The 2007 Estimate is a monument to misguided analysis because the secret program near the religious center of Qom has been under construction for years, according to the Allied information.

Iranian leaders are mendacious and deceptive. Iran is now exposed as a state governed by liars to the international community and their own population. Hmmm... clerics who lie compulsively?

Even Russian President Medvedev supported the Western statement that the secret site must be inspected and investigated immediately by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The Western stratagem knocked Russia off the fence.

The only outlier is China whose leaders have made no comments.

The Persians are insufferably smug about their ability to deceive the descendants of younger civilizations. This time the tables turned against them. The US resolution passed by the UN Security Council plus today’s revelations about Iranian duplicity discredit Ahmadi-Nejad and humiliate Iran before the UN General Assembly, and no shots were fired. This is tonight’s good news.

Long essay alert!

Afghanistan: a phenomenological analysis.

In the aftermath of the McChrystal assessment, the White House must determine whether there exist alternatives to adopting a new strategy that remains unproven and reinforcing it with more than 40,000 more soldiers.

NightWatch judges there are alternatives to adding large numbers of troops. The best and easiest one is to stay the present course and never let the Quetta Shura think it can ever win, ever. That is the most certain path to political power sharing negotiations and a reduction of violence in the near term, by the onset of winter weather.

In brief, the Taliban must accept that they cannot ever govern Afghanistan alone again. They must come to learn that they must share power with the other ethnic groups. US and NATO military power can make this epiphany occur in Mullah Omar’s dreams.

The US and NATO must realize that the Pashtuns have earned the right to participate as a legitimate member in the government of Afghanistan. The US and NATO cannot defeat the Pashtuns militarily, but can induce them into a power sharing arrangement without massive increases in forces, just enough to maintain the present standoff and with reserves to blunt any more surges by the enemies of Kabul.

These findings are based on more than 30 years of experience studying Afghanistan, informed by the phenomenology of internal instability problems in more than 60 states.

None of the analyses in the public domain treats the phenomenology of instability. This essay shows that Afghanistan is heading for power sharing no matter what either side does barring an exponential increase of forces and resources by either side, for which there are no indicators.

In short, if the US does nothing but maintain the forces it has, indefinitely, the Taliban cannot win. Short of adding several hundred thousand Coalition combat forces, the Coalition cannot win. This creates a condition that leads both sides inexorably to negotiations about power sharing, but the two sides do not yet seem prepared to appreciate the obvious or understand how close they are to an agreement.

The chart below depicts the phenomenology of instability. Power is a zero sum game in which losses to the regime flow to the anti-government forces, in this case, the Pashtuns who oppose the government.

The shift in power leads to violent confrontation as the forces converge and then power sharing, if no side has the power to vanquish the other, which is the usual case.

Power sharing is generally peaceful, may last a long time, but always and eventually features one group attempting a breakout that tests whether it has the political clout and the military power to seize national authority from its power sharing partner. Power sharing is not amicable.

If a group attempts a breakout and fails, the earlier power sharing arrangement restores. If it attempts a breakout and is destroyed, it cedes power to the victor. The gamble and the risks tend to prolong power sharing arrangements.

As the power of the regime declines and flows to and strengthens the rebels, the two converge towards power sharing. Violence is greatest as the two converge, which is the current condition of Afghanistan. It is right now in the convergence box.

The violence during the national elections and their aftermath camouflage the underlying reality that the government could not create wholly credible elections and the Taliban could not prevent the elections. The result is a political draw and disappointment to both sides.

Nevertheless, small changes by the Quetta Shura and the Karzai government could result in the Pashtuns sharing national power in Kabul with a significant reduction in violence. The anti-government Pashtuns are the real political opposition.

In 200 of the 399 districts of Afghanistan, power sharing is taking place already because the Taliban are at least as powerful as the local government representatives in those districts. The Taliban have earned the right to govern in many districts because the agents of the government have fled or failed to maintain law and order. This means the Taliban decide disputes and solve local problems at the district level. The Taliban restore law and order, they say.

The Taliban claim to be the power that ends lawlessness must be challenged everywhere, constantly.

Power sharing is not yet taking place at the province level of government and not at the national level. The Taliban have no capability to deliver the benefits of global contacts to the locals, but they can maintain law and order.

The Taliban have not shown they are capable of holding power over an entire province. In the aftermath of the elections, some groups might be tempted to test whether they can hold a province against the best that the Coalition can send against them, before the Coalition reinforces. This bears a careful warning watch.

What does power sharing mean? The Kabul government must be prepared to share power with the Pashtuns. That means it must be ready to recognize the Taliban or other designates as a legitimate Pashtun political and military force in Afghanistan. Heaven knows the Pashtuns, whether Taliban or just local nationalists, have earned that recognition. It is time to use that distinction against their rebellion to end it.

The Pashtuns must accept they cannot win and agree to work with the government. Every day, the message of their inability to win must be reinforced.

One brilliant Reader suggested the Coalition should legitimate Taliban or the Pashtuns as a political party. Then it should invite that party to elect or select its delegates to a Kabul shura and make it part of the government decision-making apparatus. That would replicate the practices of the Kings of Afghanistan.

What makes this feasible? The Taliban have surged their forces in major offensives three years in a row and suffered horrendous losses in the numbers of fighters. They have proven they can dominate politically all regions where Pashtuns reside, but cannot resist Coalition military power whenever it is applied. The only path open to the Taliban that bypasses the current military stalemate is political. Omar is no fool and knows this, but does not recognize that the time is now. He needs some help.

During the elections in 2009, the anti-government forces managed a miracle of military coordination in mountainous terrain to execute 700 or more attacks on a single day. That surge made no difference in the situation, extraordinary as it was. Heck, Coalition forces can not execute 700 attacks in a day!

The Taliban cannot win. They are at their culmination point, in US Army argot. They cannot expand much father because there are no more enclaves of Pashtuns that are not on their side. Their brand of Islamic observance has no following among the Hazaras, Tajiks or Uzbeks.

The problem is that Taliban Internet postings continue to interpret the US debate over next steps as a sign that the Taliban are winning. They are not, to be sure, but the Taliban leaders do not yet realize they cannot win.

As for the Coalition, it has proven that it can push back, if not defeat, the most that the Taliban and its allies can pit against them. On the other hand, even with significant reinforcements, the numbers of Coalition combat forces are too few to shrink permanently the numbers of districts dominated by the Pashtuns, except for brief non-sustainable periods.

Dear Readers, the phenomenology shows this is a standoff that is tailor-made for negotiations and power sharing. The requirement is to commit enough resources so that the Taliban and the Pashtun tribal leaders understand they can never win. The current fighting indicates the Taliban leaders have not yet had this epiphany, but they will “get it” before winter.

The security situation is not as bad as McChrystal’s report suggests, mainly because it is heading for power sharing, in the NightWatch analysis.

Afghanistan is heading for power sharing regardless of what the US does. Increments of more troops will not change that trend, but some might help speed up the process that disabuses the Taliban leaders in thinking that they are winning.

Note on Islamic burial fraud. Acting on impeccable intelligence, such as that provided by the local governor, the US should call the bluff of local leaders about their claims that US air attacks killed innocent civilians. Exhume the dead sheep and dogs. Quranic law does not protect dead animals presented as innocent civilians from exhumation. A few exposures of fraud will restore the moral high ground.

In Pakistan, if a Pashtun civilian is killed by a bomb, the Army says he or she should not have been under the bomb, according to Pakistan military authorities. In fact, Pakistanis flee when they hear the scream of jet engines. There is a lesson here about how Muslim Armies treat Muslim civilians.

In Afghanistan, the small numbers of refugees in the combat zone are an indicator that there are no innocent civilians. Civilians -- women and children - who carry ammunition and cook for the fighters are known as supporters, not innocents. If the rule is good enough for the Pakistan Air Force, it ought to be good enough for the air forces protecting the administration in Kabul! If you want to avoid being bombed with the anti-government killers, run.

The US willingness to pay reparations plus unwillingness to offend Muslim sensibilities about exhumation make the US a “patsy” and the Afghans know it. If elders bury dogs and claim money, the US has the right to demand proof for what it has paid for, sensibilities or not, even under Islamic observance which does not condone fraud. Get a clue.

Exhumation of a few dogs and sheep would expose the frauds and liars and get the US out of the silly situation in which Taliban propaganda neutralizes use of Coalition air power because of timid leadership. Call the bluff, NATO. The MOST effective asset for protecting US, UK, Australian, Danish, French, Dutch, German, Italian and other soldiers permitted to fight the Taliban – is Allied AIR POWER. See Ralph Peters’ article this week for more cheerleading.

At the risk of repetition, no Afghan ever was afraid of a good counter insurgency force on the ground. Everyone is afraid of the air force.

End of NightWatch for 25 September.