It is India’s obsession with Pakistan that is forcing it to increase its strategic presence in Afghanistan.  India knows that, given the geographic propinquity to Afghanistan, Pakistan will always enjoy an unsurpassable strategic advantage over India.  Still, India has a number of additional advantages.  First, it is a rising economic power and can entice Afghanistan by offering huge amounts for economic development.  As a country whose economy is teetering at the edge of a calamitous precipice, Pakistan has little to offer Afghanistan in terms of developmental assistance.  Second, as a strategic partner of the United States, India is given pretty much a green light by the administration of President Barack Obama to escalate its strategic presence in its immediate
neighborhood.  As recently as only a few days ago, President Obama – who knows as much about the tortured history of South Asia as he does about the convoluted history of Afghanistan – gave Pakistan a public lecture that it should not view India as its “mortal enemy.”  Needless to say, India also believes along the same line.  However, what is more noteworthy is that Pakistan does not.  Thus, it makes a lot of sense for India to persuade Pakistan of that through its foreign policy behavior – its non-threatening posture – rather than a near-obsessive pursuit of enhancing its strategic presence in Afghanistan.

A complete picture of the reality of South Asia is that both Pakistan and India have been behaving obsessively when it comes to Afghanistan.  The darkest days of India’s foreign policy were when Pakistan succeeded in enabling the capture of power by the Taliban in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s.  After that, India, along with Russia and Iran, did its best – albeit quite unsuccessfully –
to provide military and economic assistance to the Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Masood in his uphill but enormously courageous military campaign to dislodge the Taliban from power.  The United States succeeded in obtaining that goal where the collective endeavors of India, Russia and Iran failed.  The Taliban regime was dismantled in November 2001 as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan brought the Taliban to power in Afghanistan substantially in its quest for “strategic depth,” which was supposed to provide it some advantage over India in future military conflicts.  India, for its part, had every reason to be fearful of the growing power of Islamist extremism in relation to the Taliban rule of Afghanistan, which provided an enhanced strategic advantage of Pakistan.  That advantage was expressed through numerous incidents of terrorism in the Indian-administered Kashmir.

As the Islamist groups inside Pakistan turned against their own government in the first decade of the current century, and as the U.S.-Pakistan ties remain under enormous stress, the shoe is on the other foot.  India is exploiting the situation to enhance its strategic presence in Afghanistan.  The recent strategic partnership between New Delhi and Kabul, which might turn out to be not worth the paper it is written on – is a persuasive example of that reality.  There is little doubt that it is aimed at undermining the strategic advantage of Pakistan, the strong denials of India and Afghanistan to the contrary.  In that sense, those ties remain the legitimate target of Pakistan’s own future endeavors to undermine them.

One wonders how much of this egregious reality of South Asian power politics President Obama knows, understands, and internalizes, when he stood atop his soap box and started lecturing Pakistan that India is not its mortal enemy.  If the United States were not embroiled in finding a political solution to the war of Afghanistan – a war that it seems to be losing at present –  it may have played a role in bringing the two South Asian arch-rivals together.  However, upon reflection, India is not at all perturbed that the United States is too busy with the war to be playing such a role.  In fact, India is of the view that its best interest will be served while the United States plays no such role, for it is afraid of losing its strategic advantage in its negotiations with Pakistan; negotiations that are not really aimed at resolving anything.

Pakistan, for its part, knows that it does not have much of a strategic advantage over economically powerful and politically resourceful India.  So Pakistan seems to be operating on a slightly different version of the old adage: “The strong do whatever they will, and the weak suffer what they must.”  Pakistan’s version of that adage involving India seems to be “weak will do unto the strong whenever they can.”  Afghanistan serves (and will continue to serve) as an ideal place for Pakistan, regardless of whether the United States stays or leaves that country.  Since it considers that country as a legitimate part of its sphere of  influence, Pakistan regards the “encroachment” of India in that country as a serious “offense,” which deserves an appropriate response.  Thus, and sadly so, the unending Indo-Pak rivalry in Afghanistan promises to be both brutal and bloody.

As much as President Barak Obama entered office claiming to know the world of Islam – since he is the son of a Muslim father who was never there, but the fact that he grew up in Indonesia, a country with largest Muslim population – the promise related to his upbringing was never reflected in his handling of America’s ties with the world of Islam.  Watching his performance in office, he looks like another Chicago politician, full of verbose rhetoric but palpably short on implementing it.  I don’t question his intentions when he became president.  My sense is that issues affecting the world of Islam never really remained the focus of his attention for long.

When it came to Pakistan, Obama was more interested in fulfilling the intent of his speeches as a presidential candidate – he bluntly promised to take whatever action was needed against Pakistan, if he found evidence of that country’s involvement in terrorism (perhaps he did not use those exact words, but I am not violating his general intent underlying those frequently iterated statements).  Even before the assassination of Usama Bin Laden last May, Obama bought the argument of Vice President Joe Biden that the United States’ best approach to deal with terrorism is the wholesale implementation of a counterterrorism (CT) strategy.  As much as General David Petraeus – a champion of the counterinsurgency strategy – disagreed with him, he was forced to adopt it.  There is no doubt that the use of drone attacks targeting al-Qaida leaders had some success.  However, if the Obama administration thought that the use of CT would result in winning the war in Afghanistan, it was sadly mistaken.  The U.S. Special Forces are reportedly killing many Taliban fighters, but the Taliban are consistently showing their increased capabilities to launch attacks on a number of important targets inside Afghanistan, including the U.S. Embassy.

At least during the Bush administration, Pakistan could get away with the deceptive policy of constantly providing a wink and a nod to the Islamist groups while assuring the United States that it was serious about fighting these groups to help win Bush’s war
against terrorism.  George W. Bush may have chosen to believe that lie.  The Obama administration has learned not to trust the Pakistani leadership.  That attitude has gained in strength in the past three years.

The Obama administration also raised the bar of “credible performance” too high for Pakistan from the very beginning.  The litmus test of credibility was how brutal the Pak Army was going to be in fighting and eradicating the Islamist groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and how efficiently it would be in patrolling the highly porous Pak-Afghan
borders.

What the Obama administration did not understand was that the price for such behavior was going to be too high for Washington to pay.  Simply put, Pakistan, in turn, wanted the reestablishment of the hyphenated Indo-Pak relationship in U.S. foreign policy; it wanted to acquire the same rewards that India was given through its strategic partnership with America; and it also wanted to gain access to the cutting edge of U.S. defense technology and defense platforms to modernize its military.  Even if President Obama wanted to, he would not have been able to sell that package to the U.S. Congress. The Indian lobby inside the U.S. legislature has done an excellent job of creating a highly friendly environment for India – something akin to the Israeli lobby.

Could Pakistan have been satisfied with a lesser package of friendship from the U.S.?  Perhaps, but events were moving too fast for its leaders inside Pakistan.  The Islamists were getting too powerful to be taken on even by the Army without being able to absorb the cost.  And the cost was (and it remains) too high in the form of increased instability.  The turning of Pakistan into a Jihadi suicidal culture is the worst nightmare even for the Army. What is also hurting it is the fact that Islamization has become a mounting challenge within the ranks of the Army.  The Pakistani Army needs a period of peace to figure its long-term strategy regarding the Islamists and the United States’ involvement in Afghanistan.  But it has neither peace from the Islamists nor
less pressure from the United States.

Then came the assassination of UBL at the hands of the U.S. Special Forces.  The Army took it so personally as a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty, and the fact that it was caught napping, that there was not much room left for trust or cooperation between Pakistan and the United States.  To add insult to injury, the Special Force’s success in killing UBL enabled America’s Defense officials to issue arrogant statements about how willing they are to repeat such future operations inside Pakistan.

Have the Pakistan-U.S. deteriorating ties reached a point of no return?  Certainly not; both sides need each other badly. As long as the United States remains in Afghanistan, it needs Pakistani routes to get supplies to the NATO troops.  Similarly, Pakistan badly needs American economic and military assistance.  The only question is who is going to blink first?  Is the Pakistani Army willing to buckle down and accept its previous role of serving America’s security interests and paying the price, in terms of the increased internal instability?  Given a high degree of pragmatism on the part of Pakistan’s Army, it can still be done, but for the right price.  So, an even more important question is how far is the Obama administration willing to go to pay that price?  The answer to that question is likely to emerge in the next few weeks and months.  In the meantime, both sides would be well-advised to tone down their contentious and accusatory rhetoric towards each other.

The awesome asymmetry of power between the United States and the Taliban of Afghanistan is such that it creates a spurious sense of hubris in Washington that it alone can decide the pace and intensity of the military conflict, and that it alone can set the timetable for the withdrawal of its forces from the conflict zone.  That was the major assumption of Henry Kissinger’s approach to negotiating the modalities of bringing about an end to the conflict with the North Vietnamese representatives in the 1970s.  The United States found out, to its bitter surprise, how wrong Kissinger really was then.  The North Vietnamese had a stout sense of America’s growing vulnerabilities – the public war protest movement and the intensifying refusal of the U.S. Congress to finance that war.

In Iraq, thanks to the Sahwa movement of the Sunni Iraqi insurgents, the United States did not face defeat, even though it came to the precipice of it.  It eventually succeeded in creating a false semblance of victory, when the level of violence went down in Iraq and the Bush administration brought about major troop withdrawals.  However, as we are finding out on a weekly basis, the conflict in Iraq is far from over.  Thus, only future historians will decide whether the United States won or lost in Iraq.

Things are entirely different in Afghanistan in 2011.  It is a conflict that refuses to go away.  America cannot decide whether or not it wants to implement the counterinsurgency (CI) doctrine in Afghanistan that General David Petraeus famously (and ostensibly successfully) implemented in Iraq.  President Obama’s chief objective is to create some ground realities that would convince the highly skeptical American voters that he is winning in Afghanistan.  So, he is putting all his eggs into the basket of Counterterrorism (CT) strategy, which does not require a high number of boots on the ground in Afghanistan.  There seems to be a profound conclusion in Washington that there will be a credible government in Kabul by July 2012 that would be able to govern the entire country, and that Afghanistan’s security forces will be able to replace the international security assistance forces (ISAF).  That variable became an important aspect of the “talking points” that the talking heads in Washington have been using since President Obama’s speech on June 22, 2011.

However, the ground realities in Afghanistan have a special way of making fools of all of the Washington-based (or Kabul-based for that matter) experts whose full-time indulgence is to live in a make-believe world.  The surprise attack of June 29, 2001, when the heavily guarded InterContinental Hotel was attacked by Taliban suicide attackers, jolted all the forecasters to reexamine their conclusions regarding America’s troop withdrawal from Afghanistan.  President Hamid Karzai described it as “the worst attack in the Afghan capital for months…”  What is important to note is that, by carrying out that attack, the insurgents are “trying to tighten their psychological grip on the capital with a two-pronged campaign to sow urban terror and extend their influence in surrounding provinces.”

So, what should the Obama administration do now?  The most obvious and vital option is to abandon all notions of withdrawal of American troops and introduce a mega-strategy to fix Afghanistan through nation-building.  I know, “nation-building” is currently a four letter word in Washington, and there is absolutely no constituency for it there.  However, the aforementioned Pottery Barn rule is just as applicable to President Obama today as it was applicable to President Bush in the aftermath of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.  The only difference is that Iraq in 2011 continues to create a spurious sense of stability, which is eroding steadily, while political stability in Afghanistan has never existed since 1978, when it was invaded and occupied by the Former Soviet Union.

America’s post-World War II success stories – Japan and Germany – are shining examples of nation-building that lasted over several decades.  And both of those countries were “modern” polities before the war.  Afghanistan also requires nation-building.  However, unlike Germany and Japan of the post-World War II years, it will require an infinitely longer period of time to fix.  It has remained a hellish place since 1978.  It is an absolutely corrupt society with a very high degree of illiteracy, gross absence of institutions, and rules of engagement for “good governance.”  It is a place where obscurantism rules all walks of life.  It has a large expatriate community that can play a crucial role in nation-building.  However, that community is too smart to resettle in Afghanistan as long as warlordism, an opium trade, and religion-based terrorism rule the day.  But, they are likely to return to Afghanistan if the Obama administration signals its serious commitment to nation-building strategy in Afghanistan.

The option of nation-building may appear more palatable for the Obama administration if it considers the fact that it may have no intention of totally withdrawing from Afghanistan.  If it plans to keep a sizeable number of troops in country for the purpose of continuing its exercise of its counterterrorism (CT) strategy, the implementation of that strategy without elaborate  nation-building promises to sink that country deeper into chaos and instability.  Make no mistake, these are variables that both al-Qaida and the Taliban prefer, in order to escalate their own effective capabilities for carrying out deadly attacks and mayhem.

Washington operates on its own logic (or the lack thereof) and its own myths about every major issues faced by any sitting president.  The current myth is that the Afghan conflict is resolvable on the U.S. terms.  And the U.S. terms include killing as many Taliban as possible, thereby persuading the remainder of the Taliban that their best option is to negotiate their continued survival with the U.S. government.  Since America’s leading politicians are driven by how best to define the American version of victory in Afghanistan, they tend to forget that the other side is equally capable of calculating the modalities of such a victory on its own terms. Therein lies the rub for several reasons.

First, the Taliban is not interested in negotiating peace with the U.S. on the terms that are best suited for the Americans.  Second, the war in Afghanistan has not reached a point when the Taliban as a group is convinced that their best option is to negotiate with the Americans.  In fact, an entirely contrary argument on the issue can be made.  The war is not going well for the Americans, and they, as usual, are watching the clock and are getting increasingly eager about a phased withdrawal from that country.  In fact, President Barak Obama’s chances of reelection in 2012 depend heavily (right behind his success in creating a high rate of employment inside the United States) on his ability to demonstrate to the American voters that he is indeed in the process of phasing out America’s continued presence from Afghanistan while winning the conflict.

Unfortunately for the American side, the Taliban know that fact very well.  As it becomes increasingly crucial for the Americans to get out of Afghanistan for electoral reasons, the Taliban can correctly envisage that situation as a harbinger of victory.  All they had to do is just prolong the battle and wait.

Under these circumstances, it is futile to expect a mass switching of the side by the Taliban.  Thus, stories on that topic in the American media remain anecdotal rather than portraying them as a rising trend among the Taliban, especially in the South, which is an area of strong Taliban presence and influence.

Is there any scenario when the American occupation forces of Afghanistan can bring about a successful conclusion of the conflict?  Given the intensity of the hatred, suspicion, and ill will that both sides hold toward each other, one cannot think of any such scenario.  Mullah Mohammad Omar, leader of the Afghan Taliban, who has been pursued as a “high value target” by both Bush and Obama administrations, is not expected to find any reason to negotiate with the  American side.  Besides, what makes the Americans or President Hamid Karzai to think that Omar would be interested in sharing power with the Karzai government, which has been the focal point of his contempt and anger since it came into existence?

On the basis of these factors, the successful end of the Afghan conflict has to be along the lines of a clear-cut defeat either of the Taliban or the Americans.  Given the fact that Afghanistan continues to serve as a graveyard of empire, at least the burden of history as well as the current ground realities are very much against the Americans.

The cause of Governor Taseer’s murder was the blasphemy laws of Pakistan that are being invoked to raise the level of tensions by accusing non-Muslims of insulting the religion or the Prophet of Islam, and then not even having an unbiased inquiry into the accusation.  He was a critic of it and was a strong voice about repealing them.  According to reports, there is a widespread support for such laws inside Pakistan.  As an example of the popularity of the blasphemy laws in Pakistan, consider this.  More than 500 scholars of the Jamaat Ihle-Sunnat, a relatively moderate Islamist group, “have advised Muslims not to offer the funeral prayers of Governor Punjab Salman Taseer nor try to lead the prayers.”  They also advised people against “expression of grief or sympathy on the death of the governor, as those who support blasphemy of the Prophet are themselves indulging in blasphemy.” The environment of fear is intensifying, and religious fanatics are having a field day in defaming a religion one of whose chief tenets is tolerance.

The murder of a high ranking official by his supposedly elite guard also points to the fact that Pakistan’s security forces are being regularly contaminated by the inflamed rhetoric of those who propagate apocryphal stories of “defamation” of Islam and stories about how Islam is under constant “threat.”  The only and mounting reality is that the chief threat to Islam is coming from those who are spreading such stories nonsensical stories, who are accusing minorities of defaming Islam, and who are murdering those who are asking them to tone down their insane rhetoric.

What most people (especially those who are at the helm of the government in Washington) fail to understand is that the civilian government of Pakistan is too weak to stand up to the rising tide of extremism.  Fanatics anywhere do not have to have large number of supporters.  Even their small gatherings are so voluble and so dedicated to their cause at a given time and at a given place that they tend to create simultaneous a movement and an environment of terror.  That movement, if not countered by the law enforcement forces, tends to gather momentum and expands.  It seems that most—if not every—official in Pakistan is getting scared in that environment of terror, getting scared of being accused of as an “agent of America” if he/she criticizes the irrational ululations of the forces of extremism.  The country is full of stories of conspiracies: about America, about India, and about the “secret” plans of taking away Pakistan’s nuclear weapons, and, above all, about conspiracies regarding Islam.

What is happening to Pakistan, whose religious enlightenment—not of the imaginary type promoted by General Pervez Musharraf, but a genuine one was a living force at one time? 

The origin of the malignancy of extremism go back to Zulfiqar Ali—father of Benazir Bhutto—who started appeasing Islamic parties in the early 1970ss to prove his own commitment to Islam.  However, Bhutto was too much of a secularist and too hard a whisky drinker to fool anyone.  Then came Zia ul-Haq, the Islamist General, who unabashedly used Islam to stay in power.  In Zia’s regime those contentious blasphemy laws were originally promulgated.

The post-9/11 environment created a profound siege mentality inside Pakistan.  George W. Bush’s warnings to Pakistan—that either you are with us or you are with the terrorists—offended the dignity of Pakistan.  The global perspective that Islam was under attack by the world’s lone superpower put everyone on the offensive in Pakistan.  Islamists and other religious extremists thrived under such a charged environment.  No Pakistani official dared to challenge them fearing the dreaded charge of being an agent of America.  While Usama Bin Laden and his ilk was envisioned as the enemy of the civilized world in the West.  Inside Pakistan, Ben Laden’s infamous phrase of about the “crusade by the Christians and Zionists against Islam” was emerged as the new enemy.  And that perception, over time, transformed itself into a siege mentality.

General Musharraf played a crucial role in that transformation, once again, to extend the term of his rule.  He made George Bush believe that he was the last and real promise against the takeover by the Islamist extremists, while at the same time coalescing, conniving with, and appeasing the Islamists inside Pakistan to stay in power. 

Considering how “superb” America’s intelligence agencies are in their “just in time” analyses and producing “agile intelligence,” Musharraf fooled Bush for a long time.  In the meantime, religious extremists continued to grow.  The world only knows about the infamous Deobandi Madrasas (religious schools) of Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier that are spreading the ideology of militancy.  However, the entire country is being contaminated by the Deobandi-Wahhabi rhetoric of religious fanaticism, obscurantism, and atavism. 

Under such an environment, the most crucial question is how untainted the security forces of Pakistan are these days?  Even General Ashfaq Kayani cannot answer that question with certainty.  Just look at the ISI and its own so-called “rogue elements” that are reported to be sympathizing with the Taliban of Afghanistan.  Who can stay with any amount of confidence how much infiltration has been made in the Pakistani Army by the Taliban of Afghanistan?  These are the questions that the Pakistani military’s high command must find answers to earnestly and most urgently.  They do not need to be on the defensive in answering these questions to the Americans.  After all, those questions are about the long-term stability of Pakistan.  The recipe of Pakistan continued existence as a nation-state rests in promoting Islamic moderation, which is the real face of Islam.

An important question that comes to mind is whether Obama would have fired General McChrystal for the same interview if the war in Afghanistan was going well for the United States. Under such circumstances, replacing a winning general would have been well nigh impossible. Then, Obama could not have said, as he did after relieving McChrystal of his command, that war is bigger than any one man. He would have still chastised the general for imprudent remarks, but would have moved on by saying that “the war in Afghanistan is too important for me to be swayed by some minor irritants like this interview.” While McChrystal was presiding over a failing war, he was a readily dispensable commodity for a highly ambitious American president, whose vision is fixed on winning a second term. And even some semblance of success in Afghanistan toward the end of 2011 becomes an important factor in Obama’s reelection.

In the meantime, President Barack Obama is developing an uncanny profound commitment to a strategy in Afghanistan that does not seem to be working. There are several problems with that strategy.

The foremost one is that it is promoting Hamid Karzai’s administration, which seriously lacks legitimacy. The doctrine on Counterinsurgency, FM 3-24, outlines a number of indicators of legitimacy for a government that U.S. troops are trying to defend in a country. At least three of those indicators are worth-mentioning: the ability to provide security for the populace, selection of leaders in a manner deemed just and fair by a majority of the populace, and a high level of regime acceptance by social institutions. Needless to say, the Karzai government is decidedly ‘flunking’ on all of these three variables.

The United States can do very little to legitimize the government of Hamid Karzai. In fact, it is stuck with him. That very fact, and the regular news items about the high degree of corruption and the constant parceling out of billions of dollars from Afghanistan to foreign banks and other safe havens are providing convincing evidence that the “rats know the ship is sinking, and they have started the process of abandoning it.”

We also hear reports that President Karzai, after becoming convinced that the United States would not stay in Afghanistan for long, has already started negotiating some sort of a deal with Pakistan that would provide stability to his country in the post-American era. As much as Pakistan is maligned by Washington and other Western countries, it might be the only source on which Karzai can count for alleviating the rising power and influence of the Taliban. The United States and other Western troops have an option of leaving Afghanistan; however, Pakistan is “doomed” to stay next door to Afghanistan forever for geographical reasons!

The second significant problem with America’s strategy in Afghanistan is that, thus far, American commanders have not found a way to win the war. The campaign in Marja turned out to be a “bleeding ulcer,” as it was candidly depicted by the departing Commanding General McChrystal. The Taliban side has been watching closely, and with much glee, the mounting confusion among American commanders about implementing new tactics. As General David Petraeus takes charge of the military campaign, the most significant thing to watch is how different his tactics are going to be about the use of force, destroying the property where the insurgents are allegedly hiding, and the use of air power. These issues – referred to in military jargon as “courageous restraint” – were reportedly causing a lot of grumbling and resentment among the foot soldiers and Marines that their hands were being tied in the name of winning the hearts and minds.

General Petraeus promised, during his confirmation hearing to replace McChrystal, that he would take a closer look at the issue of courageous restraint. At least the Republican Senators will be watching closely to see whether he really means to bring about any change. McChrystal’s critics do not care to remember that, in implementing courageous restraint, he was only following what Petraeus’ COIN doctrine had advocated. However, Petraeus is also characterized as a “political general.” But does the war in Afghanistan need a political general or a general who is willing to stay loyal to tactics purely on the basis of his military judgment? The answer to this question is obvious.

If the chief reason for the alleged success of the Surge Strategy in Iraq was its capacity to exploit the resentment of al-Qaida among the Sunnis of that country, there is no evidence that something akin to that tactic has yet been found in Afghanistan. Ethnic resentment between the Pushtoons and the Tajiks might be just one reason for the acute unpopularity of the Karzai government. Even though he is a Pushtoon, he has surrounded himself with the Tajiks.

The third problem related to the current U.S. strategy in Afghanistan involves Ambassador Carl Eikenberry and Special Envoy “Bulldozer” Richard Holbrooke. Both of these individuals publicly clashed with Karzai and McChrystal. By getting rid of McChrystal while leaving these individuals in their places, President Obama is demonstrating that he is really limited in his choice of competent personnel. The reports are that both Eikenberry and Holbrooke are on notice to get along with Petraeus. But that artificial restraint might still turn out to be problematic in the sense that it is likely to stifle honest disagreements that should still be debated in order to avoid the pathology of “group think.” These officials can still disagree without becoming disagreeable and without attempting to score points by conveniently leaking their disagreements to the press.

What President Obama ought to do is to look for another strategy right now as a fallback option. He ought to look into why Karzai and the Pakistani government are so eager to cut a deal. Perhaps the United States ought to consider becoming a party to it. Another option ought to bring Iran into the negotiating process on Afghanistan as part of the “regional influentials.” It would be a mistake to conclude that Iran would destabilize Afghanistan in the post-American era. After all, an unstable Afghanistan would be very detrimental to Iran’s interests. The same thing applies to Pakistan. A third option is to put pressure on both India and Pakistan to look for a rapprochement on Afghanistan that involves broader issues of negotiations between those two acute rivals. Fourth, for the development of his next strategy, President Obama ought to stop looking at the Brookings Institution or other think tanks in Washington to hand him over a nicely packaged – but highly flawed – strategy. He might be well advised to let the South Asian nations and Iran play a distinct role in hammering out ways to stabilize Afghanistan. The United States can still play an important role in such a process. With the passage of each week, the current strategy is looking more like a failed one. It badly needs to be replaced by a new one, if the United States wishes to find a winning way of exiting the Afghan quagmire.

American Muslims – a great number of them – do not seem to have gone through the kind of socialization process that other Americans have about developing a strong sense of belonging to this country. I am not questioning their patriotism; and I am certainly not stating that there is any sympathy among them toward any terror groups. What I am saying is that Muslims anywhere in the world grow up with an overarching love for, and commitment to, Islam, which overrides all other sentiment. That issue does not cause any problem with their loyalty to a nation, or steadfastness to a secular idea, as long as there is no tension – or worse yet – contradiction between their commitment to a nation or to a secular idea and their religion. That has never been the case until al-Qaida and other Islamist groups started to emphasize in the post/911 era that Islam is under attack. The United States’ invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq made that argument for some American Muslims, if not necessarily credible, at least not as contentious as it is generally thought in the West.

However, no equally powerful voices emerged in the world of Islam to counter the claims of the Islamists. The Sunni Muslim regimes – who always suffered from a lack of domestic legitimacy for their rule, and who persistently exploited Islam to seek that legitimacy by co-opting Sunni Islamic scholars to endorse their autocratic and illegitimate rule – were not going to stick their necks out by countering al-Qaida’s Islam-related argument. That is not to say that they agree with that terrorist entity.
For Sunni Muslim regimes, to defend the United States – which remains the chief occupying force of two Muslim countries, and which is waging a “global war on terrorism” – has become a highly risky proposition in the world of Islam.

Besides, the Bush administration, as part of its confused strategy of intimidation in the Middle East between 2003 and 2006, waged a public campaign of vilifying major Sunni Arab governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt for not being democratic, as if Washington had discovered that fact only after it was attacked on September 11, 2001 by the 19 young Arab hijackers of three U.S. airplanes. The lone superpower was being swept away by its then newly-found logic that terrorism in the non-democratic states of the Middle East was growing, and that the autocratic regimes were tacitly encouraging the terrorists to terrorize the outside world so that they would not focus their energy on destabilizing or overthrowing those governments.

Another major Muslim country, Pakistan, once again became a “frontline” state in another of America’s major wars within a span of a little over ten years. As a frontline state, Pakistan was gradually being pushed toward an era when its own Islamist forces would become a major threat. Thus, the major focus of Pakistan’s dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, was to make sure that his country remained a faithful player in America’s war against terrorism, which was increasingly viewed inside both Afghanistan and Pakistan as a war against Islam.

So, different Muslim regimes were involved in their own struggle to survive and were not interested in becoming chief defenders of the United States against the rhetorical barrages of al-Qaida and other Islamist groups which stated that the lone superpower was waging a war against Islam. Even if one or more Muslim regimes were to make an audacious stand to defend America’s global war, they would not have made a convincing case in the eyes of the Muslim masses. It is the nature of Sunni Islam that allows no monolithic authority—a la the Catholic Pope or even an Ayatollah of Shia Islam—to become the chief interpreter of Islamic theology. Those who criticize Muslim leaders for not authoritatively condemning terrorism and becoming a convincing “voice” of Islam are either uninformed of this reality, or choose to ignore it.

In the meantime, two aspects of the United States’ handling of terrorism are emerging as its chief sources of resentment among Muslims. First, the continued U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq is adding further fuel to the Islamist argument that the lone superpower is determined to establish its firm grip on Muslim countries and to make sure that they remain subservient to its policies and its resolve to maintain the supremacy of Israel in the Middle East. The second source of anti-Americanism is President Barack Obama’s determined approach to heavily rely on counterterrorism (CT) – which has been symbolized by the heightened use of UAVs to kill al-Qaida forces in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or in any other Muslim country where Islamic forces are gathering momentum. On the contrary, in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal’s application of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, developed by General David Petraeus, emphasizes nation-building on a mini-scale (the “clear-hold-build” approach that was proved effective in Iraq). The United States hopes to remain popular among the masses in Afghanistan by applying the COIN approach to dealing with the Taliban, yet it is so insistent upon applying the CT approach in Pakistan. The inherent contradictions between the two approaches are becoming obvious to people of those two countries, and to Muslims at large, on a daily basis.

From America’s point of view, the CT approach is most effective and least damaging. It is also popular inside the United States, because it requires no troops on the ground, no casualties, and no body bags. If in the process of using the UAVs there are civilian casualties, the United States government issues the usual statement of regrets or apologies, or worse yet, it calls it “collateral damage.” But the fact that, more often than not, the UAV attacks also result in the loss of innocent civilian lives creates ample resentment among Muslims toward the lone superpower.

America’s global war on terrorism – even though it is no longer labeled thus by the Obama administration – has created an environment where a number of Muslims, even inside the United States, are having a hard time developing a sense of shared rationale for its related military actions, violence, death, and mayhem.

However, alternatives to America’s current approach to fighting terrorism are easy to proffer; they are hard to implement. Despite that fact, I will offer a few suggestions.

The foremost suggestion is to end America’s occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq. However, that is not going to happen anytime soon, because the conventional wisdom among Washington officials is that both countries would descend into chaos. It may be that the U.S. occupation of those countries might create the same result over the long run. But no serious examination of that proposition is taking place inside the United States. There are, to be sure, a number of stated deadlines regarding the redeployent of American forces from Iraq and Afghanistan; but no one really believes that they should be taken as serious commitments. The Obama administration, like the preceding one, wants no part of becoming responsible for “losing” in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The second alternative for Washington is to fully focus on nation-building both in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the United States has introduced nation-building through the Kerry-Lugar legislation. However, the use of a CT approach in that country is overshadowing the good will that should stem from the Kerry-Lugar Bill. President Obama has ruled out an ambitious commitment to nation-building in Afghanistan, regardless of the fact that it holds promise for stabilizing that country.

As the mid-term congressional election gets closer, the Obama administration, in an attempt to minimize electoral losses of Democratic candidates, is likely to be focused on making populist choices regarding its dealings with terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That means there is going to be an increased emphasis on CT tactics over implementing a comprehensive nation-building strategy. However, in order to win against terrorist forces in South Asia, the need for now is to make realistic choices, which means earnestly thinking about conducting nation-building campaigns in both of those countries. The growing popularity of the al-Qaida mentality of creating chaos and mayhem in Yemen, the Horn of Africa, Pakistan, and Afghanistan is proof that killing terrorists does not equal defeating terrorism.

The third approach is to consider developing Joseph Nye’s concept of “smart power” into complex policies aimed at nullifying al-Qaida’s potent argument that Islam is under attack. Nye has defined it as follows: “Smart power is about tapping into diverse sources of American power, including our soft power, to attract others. It is about how we can get other countries to share our goals without resorting to coercion, which is limited and inevitably costly.”

As promising as the notion of smart power is, it still requires considerable tweaking to deal with the complex strategic realities of South Asia and elsewhere. For instance, the goal of the United States in Pakistan and in Afghanistan is to enhance stability and democracy and to defeat and minimize, if not eradicate, the Islamist influence. The first two goals are laudable. Washington is not likely to have any problem persuading either of those countries to pursue it. However, on the issue of minimizing the influence of the Islamists, the Obama administration faces a major problem. It is relying heavily on the use of military power (or in the words of Nye, “hard power”).

There are additional problems inside Pakistan that are coming into conflict with America’s objectives related to that country and neighboring Afghanistan. India’s increased presence in Afghanistan has become a major problem from Pakistan’s perspective. When the United States asks India to train the Afghan police or military forces, Pakistan views that development with considerable alarm. The Indian-trained Afghan security forces are likely to be anti-Pakistan. That is just a perverse reality of South Asia that has yet to be taken into consideration. Despite its long-term involvement in South Asia, the United States either does not understand the overarching nature of regional rivalry between India and Pakistan, or is choosing to ignore it at its own peril.

Using Nye’s notion of smart power, the Obama administration must find a way of minimizing Pakistan’s strategic concerns over heightened interest and the presence of India in Afghanistan. Otherwise, Pakistan is not likely to cooperate with the United States wholeheartedly as long it remains wary about India’s enhanced presence in Afghanistan. It has shown its displeasure allegedly by conniving about, if not directly supporting, two terrorist attacks on India’s Consulate in Afghanistan.

At this time, India, after getting encouragement from the United States about its involvement in stabilizing Afghanistan, has even approached Russia to seek avenues of cooperation with that country. India is also conducting a separate dialogue with Iran on the subject. The Obama administration may be too overwhelmed with its domestic politics to fully study the implications of Indian overtures toward Iran and Russia in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s reactions to them.

Lately, General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani, Pakistan’s Army Chief, has been quite candid about his country’s strategic interests in Afghanistan and India’s heightened presence therein. He has resurrected the concept of “strategic depth” that was first mentioned by General Zia ul-Huq in his interview with the American Journalist, Selig Harrison, in the mid-1980s. The upside of Kayani’s candor is that the Obama administration is receiving an earful of what Pakistan really wants in Afghanistan as a price for its cooperation with the United States. The downside is the fact that the Pakistani Army, once again, is proving that democratically-elected leaders in that country continue to play second fiddle to the Army. In any event, it is up to Washington to decide what policy to develop by fully utilizing the concept of smart power.

America’s involvement in Afghanistan and its ties with Pakistan have to be properly advertised, once again through the use of smart power, both in the world of Islam and inside the United States. The purpose of such a strategy is to consciously develop “Muslim stakes,” both domestically and internationally, regarding America’s fight with the Islamist forces. The congruities between American strategic and Muslim interests have to be acutely and incessantly developed by the U.S. government using the blueprint of the congruity between American and Israeli interests.

The recent fatwa of a leading Pakistani Muslim scholar, Dr. Tahir ul-Qadri, condemning terrorism is the second revolutionary development in the Sunni world; a similar fatwa issued by India’s Deoband Madrassa in June 2008 being the first one. Even considering the highly independent nature of Sunni Islam, these fatwas are eminently better than any official statements issues by any U.S. or Western agencies condemning terrorism. Even though they do not instantly become a source of Muslim consensus, the legitimacy of condemnation by Dr. Qadri and the Deoband Madrassa are incontrovertible. They already have been given ample publicity by the world media. As an important aspect of the use of its smart power, the United States ought to incessantly publicize it to condemn terrorism.

America’s efforts to defeat the Islamist extremists will only succeed when they become comprehensive and dynamic in the sense of ever-changing to suit altering circumstances. For this purpose, the U.S. should use smart power ingeniously, and launch a highly visible campaign (i.e., public diplomacy) to publicize all Muslim condemnations generated in different corners of the world of Islam. In the final analysis, the best way to use smart power is to fight the Islamists’ attempt to legitimize terror in the name of Islam with the endeavors of highly credible Muslim sources to condemn it as inherently anti-Islamic.

Such an approach is direly needed, not just in South Asia, but in a number of failing and near-failing Muslim countries and also for educating American Muslims about America’s approach to the Muslim world. That is the best way to curtail the long reach of al-Qaida.

First and foremost, it unwittingly underscores the fact that most of the world of Islam is on fire. Just look at the trans-Sahel region and the Horn of Africa. To the east of that continent, the Arabian Peninsula has been experiencing increased amounts of turbulence in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Across the Persian Gulf, Iran does not look too stable; its two neighboring states, Pakistan and Afghanistan, are where the United States is fighting its war against religious extremism. That phrase is President Barack Obama’s euphemism for George W. Bush’s GWOT.

If you continue travelling east of Afghanistan to Central Asia, it appears serene. But don’t be fooled by that palpable serenity, and certainly don’t tell the Chinese that their neighboring states are likely to remain stable. Leaders in Beijing (with the full cooperation of the brutal regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan) are being proactive in suppressing the Muslim Uighurs, who are yearning to secede from China in its Western province of Xinjiang. Continued turbulence in the Muslim republics of the Russian Federation is also making the Chinese leader very nervous.

The second aspect of the current FP issue that I noted (but remained totally unimpressed about) is what type of strategy the US government should use in its ongoing wars in Muslim lands. The Surge strategy, which has been given credit for stabilizing Iraq (even though that credit remains only partially correct), is being applied in Afghanistan. Edward Luttwak, a U.S. military strategist and historian, argues for the use of strategic bombing in Afghanistan as the best way to deal with the Taliban. He wants the United States to arm the Afghan anti-Taliban militias to the teeth, and to let them do the fighting and dying instead of U.S. soldiers. That worked in the 1980s against the Soviet Union because it was occupying Afghanistan. However, the United States is envisaged now by the Afghans as the occupying force. So, arming the Afghans to the teeth might also result in increased U.S. deaths if or when they were to turn their guns against their American masters. He has completely glossed over that fact. Regarding Luttwak’s suggestion of the use of strategic bombing, I am amazed at how callous some Western strategic thinkers remain about the insignificance of the so-called huge collateral damage that will surely stem from that measure in any part of Afghanistan. While advocating strategic bombing, he has nothing to say whether the US should continue to use the Surge strategy or completely abandon it. Obviously, arming the anti-Taliban Afghan will defeat the very rationale of General Stanley McChrystal’s Surge strategy. Bad suggestion, Ed! My advice to you is that you need to clean your foggy strategic lenses!

The mega-conflict of the 21st Century – how to deal with Islamist insurgency and how to “cure” the failing and failed Muslim states – defies any consensus on the modalities of a comprehensive solution. In the absence of that consensus, the use of “kinetic” force remains the sole tactic to fight it. However, relying on this tactic alone will not guarantee any victory for the United States.

Many years ago, I interviewed the grand old man of India’s foreign policy, Mr. K. Subrahmanyam. He observed how shrewd Pakistan has been in conducting its foreign policy within the parameters of realpolitik. His explanation for that was that the rulers of that country envisioned themselves as heirs of the great Mughal dynasty. In that capacity, they feel very much at home with the notion of being in the big league of nations. I do not necessarily agree with that observation; but the old guy had a point. Pakistan has never accepted the fact that, as a middle power, it belongs to a different league than India, which definitely belongs to the great power league.

In the past few months, the Pakistani ruling elite has been showing its deftness when it persuaded the participants of the London conference on Afghanistan in January 2010 that a dialogue aimed at bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table should be initiated. India, on the contrary, stuck to the simplistic logic that all Taliban are bad guys and should be excluded from any attempts to bring them back to the negotiating table.

India also made the mistake of backing Abdullah Abdullah for the presidency against Hamid Karzai in the last presidential election. Abdullah is a Tajik; and in that capacity, he represents a minority of the Afghan population. My own sense is that India’s decision to support Abdullah against Karzai was the result of hubris stemming from its strategic partnership with the United States. The best option for India was to remain on the sideline and watch in silence, especially because Karzai has been quite receptive (some say enthusiastic) to India’s increased diplomatic presence in his country.

In any case, Hamid Karzai got even by supporting the Pakistani argument about negotiating with the Taliban. Another point that is ignored by many is that negotiating with the Taliban is very much in harmony with General Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine, which is highly political in its emphasis in Afghanistan. Negotiating with the Taliban is exactly what Pakistan has proposed.

The third point that has been ignored by most analysts is the fact the General Ashfaq Kayani of Pakistan is proving to be a hell of a lot smarter than his predecessor, General Pervez Musharraf, in his dealings with the United States. Kayani is earnestly attempting to gain the upper hand over, if not outrightly defeating, the Tehrik-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan (TTP). The entire DoD leadership is convinced of that reality and is eager to reward Pakistan.

The preceding analysis is not meant to suggest that Pakistan is totally out of the woods. The United States is not likely to assign it anytime soon the important status that India currently enjoys as America’s strategic partner.

What this means, however, is that the United States is willing to talk “high politics” with Pakistan, including a possible civil nuclear deal, which is highly coveted by Pakistan. That indeed is a major breakthrough. Once this type of a dialogue ensues, there is no telling where it will end. Pakistan is hoping that it will result in its attainment of the highly cherished status of a strategic partner.

From Pakistan’s point of view, the Kayani approach carries enormous payoffs. To start with, it might be the beginning of an era when Pakistan makes a clear break from the Islamists of al-Qaida inclination, who wish to take that country back to the 7th Century. Secondly, it might be the beginning of a time when the FATA and the NWFP areas are administered by the Pakistani government, thereby bringing an end to making them safe places for al-Qaida and its ilk. Thirdly, Pakistan might use this policy to extract a grand bargain from Washington, whereby it can gain access to cutting-edge civilian and defense technology that it direly needs to rebuild itself as a modern nation.

If Subrahmanyam’s observation about Pakistan’s deftness regarding realpolitik is correct, we may be witnessing the beginning of a new tug-and-pull between South Asia’s two major antagonists. And the Obama administration is about to learn the topsy-turvy nature of South Asian power games.

Undoubtedly, implementation of the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine will be done widely, as the contagion of instability continues to spread from South Asia to its east in Central Asia and to its west in the Arabian Peninsula, the Horn of Africa, and the trans-Sahel region. The ghosts of Vietnam—about not giving COIN its fair due—are very much “alive.” Besides, the successful implementation of that doctrine in Iraq remains a powerful reason why it will (and should) also be implemented elsewhere. Besides, there is no other credible alternative for now.

There is a section in the draft document on “building regional capability.” The obvious focus is on Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. But it totally misses the differences in building capabilities in those three countries. The primary focus should be on massive nation-building, which will be different for each of them. In Pakistan, democracy has emerged from within, while in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has been enforced by the American occupying forces. Despite enforcement by outsiders, democracy seems to be emerging as a successful form of government in Iraq. So, governments in Pakistan and Iraq play a crucial role in managing any external aid that flows from abroad to rebuild their respective governing capabilities, and for the evolution of a civil society therein.

But in Afghanistan, a number of member nations of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) will play a lead role in nation-building. In the meantime, the most troubling aspect in Afghanistan is that the Karzai government has become the proverbial albatross around the neck of the Obama administration. The gravest mistake made by the United States was its failure to throw out the results of Karzai’s highly fraudulent reelection campaign and to organize an entirely new election.

The emphasis on building regional capabilities of the QDR 2010 draft is also a reminder of the Nixon administration’s “Vietnamization” of the Vietnam War of the late 1960s and early 1970s. That concept was also implemented in the Middle East. Consequently, the United States learned to rely on the regime of Mohammad Reza of Iran as the gendarme of ensuring America’s dominance in the Persian Gulf region. What is different now is that there is no regime in West Asia or South Asia willing to go to that extent to defend America’s interests. In fact, all friendly regimes—Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen—are increasingly coming under heavy attack by forces of instability determined to impose their own version of radical Islamic order in those countries.

A continuing emphasis of the new QDR is discussed under the section “Enhance Language, Regional and Cultural Ability.” These are also issues on which the United States remains a hapless giant, not only in the Middle East, but also elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific. Michael Schauer’s book, Imperial Hubris, establishes the fact that the United States built a large body of knowledge on Afghanistan during its proxy war to defeat the Soviet Union in the 1980s. However, while dismantling the Taliban regime in 2001, no one made use of that knowledge. Whatever happened to that body of knowledge? Why are we not able to use it to fight the Taliban-al-Qaida nexus of today?

One glaring omission in the 2010 QDR draft is, while discussing the language capabilities in the cultural education of Pakistan and Afghanistan, it neglects to mention Urdu—the predominant and the official language of Pakistan; it only lists Pushtu and Dari—the two dominant languages of Afghanistan.

Under the section, “Counterinsurgency, Stability, and Counterterrorism Operations,” the draft document mentions the U.S. challenge to forestall the fall of weak states, but it wrongly attributes the reasons for their weakness and impending fall to “humanitarian disasters.” That is akin to stating that someone’s bad cold is a result of their upset stomach. The real reasons for the impending fall of the regimes in Yemen, Afghanistan, and others are: the absence of good governance and the presence of chronic kleptocratic, highly inept, nepotistic, and, in some instances, obscurantist rule.

There is no doubt that fighting extremism and asymmetric war will preoccupy America’s powerful military well toward the end of the next decade. However, if one is looking for evidence that the United States is on top of its endeavors to tackle extremism, instability, poverty, and other reasons for the rapid spread of political instability from Asia to Africa, the draft QDR 2010 document is not very assuring. Listing the problems, but only coming up with another catalog of military platforms or operational or tactical approaches to respond to the rising tide of political instability, is not the solution. Perhaps, that is not the intent of the QDR. If true, then one might have to wait for the National Security Strategy of President Barack Obama to see whether the United States has developed a road map and applicable strategies for its long and arduous journey to stabilize the weak, weakening, or failed states.