Pakistan » Undiplomatic

2 December 2009 Charles J. Brown
12:50 pm

Reading between the Lines: Obama’s Sotto Voce Message to Pakistan

One other observation — one that I don’t think I’ve seen elsewhere. Twice in the speech, Obama talked about the danger of nuclear weapons. The first was during his arguments on why this is a necessary war:

The people and governments of both Afghanistan and Pakistan are endangered. And the stakes are even higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them.

The second was toward the end, when he made a brief reference to his campaign to reduce the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons:

We will have to take away the tools of mass destruction. That is why I have made it a central pillar of my foreign policy to secure loose nuclear materials from terrorists; to stop the spread of nuclear weapons; and to pursue the goal of a world without them. Because every nation must understand that true security will never come from an endless race for ever-more destructive weapons — true security will come for those who reject them.

You can bet that our friends in Islamabad heard the implied message here: we will not let your nukes fall into the hands of extremists, and if I have my way, we will do everything we can to ensure that you don’t get to keep your nukes no matter who is in charge.

The Pakistani military is, I’m sure, really really unhappy about this. Keep in mind that they view everything through the lens of what they see as India’s existential threat to Pakistan. They already regard U.S. policy in Afghanistan as nothing less than a covert attempt to help India encircle Pakistan (really — I’m not making this up). And now Obama has made it clear he’s going to do what he can to take away their toys.

This is not going to help the Zadari Administration, which already has lost all credibility with the military because of its close relationship with the U.S.

Photo: US Department of Energy archives.

The Speech

My thoughts on the speech are up over at Care2, my other blog home. An excerpt:

[Obama] laid out a clear strategy, refuted the key arguments against his approach, and reminded everyone of why this is a war we must fight. Equally importantly, he served notice to both Kabul and Islamabad that Bush’s blank check strategy is over. And he did not pull punches when it came to acknowledging both governments’ corruption and ineptitude. . .

Of course, the speech was the (relatively) easy part. The much harder part — actually implementing the strategy as outlined, but also doing it successfully — will take years, and no matter how good Obama’s intentions, may ultimately fail. This is now Obama’s war. It doesn’t matter that Bush got us into it. It only matters how (and when) the President manages to get us out.

You can read the whole thing here.

Punkistan

Via Londonstani over at Abu Muquwama, the rise of Pakistani Punk. First a band called Bimbu Sauce (read Londonstani’s original post to get an idea of just what the band’s name means).

Next, co-VEN. Londonstani has a link to the video for “Ready to Die.” Here’s a version recorded live in Lahore that translates those part of the song that are in Urdu:

Apparently MTV has a channel on Pakistani cable, but it looks like most of what they play are variations on Bollywood or Eurodisco (plus one particularly strange Beatles rip-off). In fact, all they’re missing is Kanye crashing their version of the VMAs.

Afghanistan: Blast from the Past

Kimberly Marten, a professor of political scientist at Barnard College and Columbia University is researching the role of war lords in Afghanistan and Pakistan, had a piece last week in the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times asserting that the Obama Administration and Afghan government had adopted a policy to pay tribal militias to maintain security during the elections, but now wrongfully plan to make it permanent.

I agree with Marten. She makes a strong case that this policy, initially promoted by David Kilcullen (an Australian who was the senior counterinsurgency advisor to Gen. David Petraeus), is a return to the British colonial military practice of paying Pashtun tribal members in the geographical areas that would later become Pakistan (although Pashtuns live on both sides of an arbitrary colonial-era border between Afghanistan and Pakistan).

Marten argues that by injecting outside money into Pashtun tribal politics, the British disrupted not only local Pashtun tribal politics, but also undermined equality of all Pashtun men, which had been embraced for centuries. British intelligence officers charted sub-tribes and leaders, known as “maliks” and paid them more. This practice became entrenched for decades, thus upon independence in 1947, Pakistan not only continued it, but enshrined it in the Pakistan constitution. The Pakistanis feared the maliks, who were threatening to secede and establish an independent Pashtunistan.

In these Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan, which buttress Afghanistan’s porous southern boundary, the maliks work with federal agents, control budgets, set priorities, administer laws and dispense patronage. According to Marten, corruption abounds and until recently, only maliks could vote. Astonishingly, the British colonial punishment system remains in effect.

Marten notes that those who have been left outside of the malik system (and have not benefited from its patronage) have become a breeding ground for al Qaeda and support for the Taliban. Poverty-stricken young people, with no prospect for jobs or educational opportunities, have found jihad to be the only outlet available. It is no coincidence that this is now al Qaeda’s home base, creating a major security headache not only for Islamabad, but also Kabul and Washington.

I can think of two other good reasons for not paying the maliks in Afghanistan. Marten believes that the Afghanistan National Army is the one Afghani institution that instills pride and a healthy sense of nationalism. Why pay maliks $150 per month when the U.S. objective is to build strong security institutions, enabling Afghanis to eventually assume these responsibilities from ISAF? Let’s put our money to its most effective use in what is already a too costly eight-year war.

Second, Marten argues that Gen. David Petraeus pursuit of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq was based upon Kilcullen’s hypothesis that the best practice in any tribal situation is to recruit local leaders to enforce the community’s laws and practices. This is how Petraeus worked with the Sunni sheiks in central Iraq: by paying them, creating the equivalent of another malik system. Due to the rise of sectarian violence in Iraq and reported targeting of these leaders by the Shiites, it remains to be seen if this practice has indeed been successful.

Why start up another such system in Afghanistan when the evidence of such practices in Pakistan are clearly problematic and the jury remains out on whether the Iraq policy has effectively worked?

Marten is right when she argues that sustainable economic growth is not possible without a stable and secure environment. Most expatriates I know in Afghanistan, work in compounds, going from compound to compound and having simply not enough direct contact with Afghanis because the security situation is so unstable. By paying militia, the U.S. recreates a British colonial military policy that undermines its efforts to build an effective Army and police forces, This policy only reinforces the power of regional war lords, who have long been part of the problem and not the solution in advancing a stable Afghanistan.

Bombing in Peshawar; Gross Stupidity in DC

Via the NYT:

Militants opened fire on security guards and rushed a small truck packed with explosives through the gates of a five-star hotel in this northwestern city on Friday, detonating a huge bomb in the parking lot that killed at least 11 people and wounded 55, Pakistani officials said.

Witnesses said the blast left a crater six feet deep and 15 feet wide and was powerful enough to be heard for miles. Police officials estimated that more than 1,000 pounds of explosives were used.

Television images showed parts of the hotel reduced to rubble and wounded people with blood-soaked clothes being helped out of the smoke-filled lobby of the hotel, the Pearl Continental, one of the few in the city that cater to Western visitors.

I’ve stayed at the Pearl (and at the Marriott in Islamabad, which was bombed in a similar attack last September). My thoughts go out to those who fell victim, particularly the Pakistanis working in the hotel.

This is in all likelihood the work of al Qaeda, who, as Patrick Barry over at Democracy Arsenal notes, may have been responding to a McClatchy report that the U.S. planned to buy the hotel and turn it into a “super consulate.”

A senior State Department official confirmed that the U.S. plan for the consulate in Peshawar involves the purchase of the luxury Pearl Continental hotel. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly.

Hope the “senior State Department official” who blabbed about this to McClatchy is happy. There are few things worse in this world that talky “senior officials” (a monniker that isn’t always true, as reporters use it to describe everyone above a desk officer) who share operational details of a sensitive (and uncontroversial) project and put lives at risk just so they can feel good about having talked to a reporter.

Hell isn’t warm enough for folks that vain or stupid.

Obama’s Foreign Policy: Nothing Personal

When I read Marc Ambinder’s report of Obama’s meeting today with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev, the following passage stuck out:

At a briefing with reporters this morning, senior administration officials seemed to go out of their way to define the content of the developing Obama-Medvevev relationship as being workmanlike, rather than personal. ”Out strategy was not to make the goal of the meetings to establish some buddy relationship,” an SAO said. “The goal is to advance our interests. Having dialogue is a means…. but the goal is not to have a personal relationship.”

Now take a look at what Obama said in his joint appearance with Gordon Brown at the White House last month:

Well, first of all, the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain is one that is not just important to me, it’s important to the American people. And it is sustained by a common language, a common culture; our legal system is directly inherited from the English system; our system of government reflects many of these same values. So — and by the way, that’s also where my mother’s side of my family came from.

So I think this notion that somehow there is any lessening of that special relationship is misguided. Great Britain is one of our closest, strongest allies and there is a link, a bond there that will not break. And I think that’s true not only on the economic front, but also on issues of common security.

At the time, much of the British press — and a not inconsiderable portion of the MSM in the States — hyperventilated over what Obama’s supposed “snub” of the Brits. No State Dinner! He returned the Churchill statue! He gave the PM DVDs as a gift! OMG the Special Relationship is no longer special! In contrast, Obama’s meeting with Brown this morning was low-key, restrained and focused on the the challenges facing the G-20 — as it should be.

Next, take a look at part of the President’s statement on his Administration’s strategy for Afghanistan-Pakistan:

The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan. In the nearly eight years since 9/11, al Qaeda and its extremist allies have moved across the border to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier. This almost certainly includes al Qaeda’s leadership: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. They have used this mountainous terrain as a safe haven to hide, to train terrorists, to communicate with followers, to plot attacks, and to send fighters to support the insurgency in Afghanistan. For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world.

The object is to defeat al Qaeda, not get bin Laden. Similarly, the Administration has made it clear (albeit informally) that it no longer will refer to the conflict with al Qaeda as the “Global War on Terror.”

So what do these stories and statements have in common? For Obama, foreign policy is not a frat party. Brown is not his “staunch friend.” Medvedev is neither a “soul” mate or “troublesome and unhelpful.” ; and Osama bin Laden is not an “evil-doer.”

Unlike his predecessor, who personalized everything, Obama is keeping his distance, regardless of whether he is dealing with a friend, competitor, or enemy. He is pursing a businesslike approach to foreign policy, focusing on country-to-country relations, not private relationships.

That is pretty much a textbook example of realism. He views relationships as a function of American interests, and acts accordingly. The downside of this approach is that some issues, such as human rights, are less likely to impress the President as priorities simple because it’s the right thing to do. He still may (or may not) champion human rights, but he’ll do so because it is in America’s best interest.

Obama has to walk a pretty fine line on his current trip. He must demonstrate leadership without looking like the United States still has the ability — or the credibility — to define the agenda. He must demonstrate to other world leaders that he can push his ideas forcefully without trying to cram them down their throat. He must demonstrate a willingness to compromise without looking weak.

If he pulls all of that off, it might be because he didn’t try to treat everyone as his pal. It’s a pretty sensible approach, and it mirrors his “no drama” persona.

It’s going to be a fascinating few days.

Pakistan: Mad Libs

In case you missed the big South Asia story of the weekend, here it is, via WaPo:

Unable to crush street protests Sunday that spilled out of this city and threatened to reach the capital, the Pakistani government announced early Monday morning that it would restore the former chief justice of the Supreme Court and a group of other deposed judges in a major capitulation to opponents.

The move reflected the weakening position of President Asif Ali Zardari, a key U.S. ally, but it also signaled a peaceful end to a mounting political crisis in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 172 million. Zardari had resisted bringing back former chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry for months, but he faced mounting pressure from a broad coalition of opponents who demanded the reinstatement of Pakistan’s independent judiciary and threatened to march on the capital, Islamabad, until Chaudhry was brought back.

The decision marked an extraordinary victory for Pakistan’s legal community, which has been agitating peacefully for the judges’ reinstatement for the past two years, and for Zardari’s major political rival, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, who joined the lawyers’ crusade last month and quickly became its most forceful advocate.

It’s always the same in Pakistan, to a point of dreary familiarity: protests = instability = weakened regime. I get the feeling that WaPo merely trots out the same basic story every eightteen to thirty-six months. With some minor changes, this lede could have been about the protests that led to Musharraf’s downfall, or even about the events that led Musharraf to depose Sharif.

So in the spirit of helping WaPo save time the next time this happens, I thought I would create a Pakistan version of Mad Libs:

Unable to verb type of demonstration day of week that spilled out of city in Pakistan and threatened to reach the capital, the Pakistani government announced early following day that it would verb political opponent in a major capitulation to opposition group .

The move reflected the weakening position of current leader , a key U.S. ally, but it also signaled a peaceful/violent end to a mounting political crisis in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 172 million. Current leader had resisted verb political opponent for unit of time , but he faced adjective noun from a broad coalition of opposition figures , who demanded reinstatement of/release of/an end to opposition figure/branch of government and threatened to type of protest in/on the capital, Islamabad, until political opponent was brought back.

The decision marked an extraordinary victory for Pakistan’s pro-democracy group/fundamentalists/NGO community/opposition party , which has been agitating violently/peacefully for political opponent ’s reinstatement/release for the past unit of time , and for current leader ’s major political rival, rival’s name , who joined the synonym for protest last unit of time and quickly became its most forceful advocate.

It has become a cliché to describe Pakistan as a failed state. I don’t think that’s entirely accurate — Pakistan hasn’t failed so much as found itself stuck in a cycle of pseudo-democracy, corruption/incompetence, coup, dictatorship, protest, end of dictatorship, and then back to pseudo-democracy again. That’s not so much failure as it is a long, slow death spiral. And with each turn, the fundamentalists get a little stronger.

Regardless of how you describe it, Pakistan clearly wins the award for the country most-likely-to-screw-up-everybody’s-plans-by-creating-a-big-honking-mess-at-home-or-in-neighboring-state. Afghanistan may be a chaotic mess, but it doesn’t have nuclear arms. North Korea may have nuclear arms, but it doesn’t have to contend with Islamic fundamentalists. Iran may have Islamic fundamentalists trying to build a bomb, but a) they’re Shiites rather than Sunnis, and thus do not enjoy the widespread support of other radical Islamists; and b) they haven’t (as far as we know) built the bomb yet.

Pakistan, in contrast, has it all: it is an enormous mess; has a system of government that has remained consistently unstable; is a nuclear power; and has a large contingent of religious fanatics within its borders.

We are still paying for Bush’s inexplicable failure to demand that Musharraf take action against those in the ISI and military who were responsible for sponsoring both the Taliban in Afghanistan and the Lashkar-e-Taiba in Kashmir. In the end, the Bush Administration’s Pakistan policies — rather than Iraq or Afghanistan — may be remembered as its most disastrous foreign policy mistake — as well as the greatest risk to Obama’s ability to purse a smarter course in foreign policy.

Press Release of the Day

This would be hilarious if it wasn’t such a serious issue. From the State Department (emphasis mine):

Taken Question

India: Meeting of Secretary Clinton and [Indian] Foreign Secretary Menon

Robert Wood

Acting Department Spokesman, Office of the Spokesman

Bureau of Public Affairs

Washington, DC

March 9, 2009

Question: Did Special Representative Holbrooke attend the meeting?

Answer: No.

This is what is known as a “taken question,” one where the spokesman is asked a question during the daily briefing to which s/he doesn’t know the answer. This may be the shortest answer to a taken question I’ve ever seen.

It also reinforces reports that the Indians pushed very hard to exclude Kashmir from Holbrooke’s brief, which tantamount to excluding Syria from George Mitchell’s. As Steve Coll’s brilliant piece in last week’s New Yorker makes clear, Kashmir is in many ways the key to solving the Afghanistan and Pakistan crises.

I don’t necessarily believe that it makes sense for Holbrooke to get involved in Kashmir — as Coll notes, neither the Indians or the Pakistanis want outside mediation in what have been somewhat productive back-channel talks. But the Obama Administration’s decision to accede to the Indian demand almost certainly has given the Pakistanis the impression that the United States favors India. Should a time come when the parties seek outside mediation, that may come back to limit the American role.

Cricket Attack

In my travels to South Asia over the years, I became a fan of cricket (at least of the One Day International version), which can be as exciting and compelling as any American sport. My friend Harini and I used to have a pretend-argument over whether baseball or cricket was the superior sport. And in 1996, I happened to be in Colombo, Sri Lanka, when the Sri Lankan team won its first (and so far only) World Cup. It put any celebration by an American city after a major championship to shame.

So today’s news that gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan cricket team during a tour of Pakistan is particularly disturbing:

A dozen gunmen attacked the Sri Lankan national cricket team and its police escort in a brazen commando-style operation in the city of Lahore on Tuesday, killing six police officers and wounding six cricketers before fleeing in motorized rickshaws, the Lahore police chief and a Sri Lankan official said. . . .

The police chief said 12 gunmen attacked the cricketers, and were positioned in vehicles, including motorized rickshaws. According to another police official, Shoaib Janbaz, the gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade but it missed the motorcade and did not explode. Police escorts who were traveling in a van fired back but failed to hit the attackers, witnesses said.

The assailants fled in the rickshaws and another vehicle stolen near the scene, Mr. Janbaz said, leaving behind rucksacks filled with pistols, hand grenades and an AK-47 assault rifle, he said. Television footage showed several of the gunmen firing with apparent impunity, spraying bullets from automatic rifles from the traffic circle and a grassy sidewalk area.

No one has yet claimed responsibility. Given the description of the attackers as “bearded,” I presume that police will focus on Islamic militants as the culprits. That said, I wouldn’t rule out the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Sri Lanka’s own terrorist group, which has been the target of a government offensive that has rolled up much of previously held LTTE territory.

As you’d expect, politicians in the region already are using the attack to pursue their own agenda. A Pakistani minister has suggested that this was an Indian “conspiracy” to “defame” Pakistan. An Indian official has reminded everyone that Pakistan’s indigenous terrorists are “a grave threat to the entire world.” And the Sri Lankan foreign minister talked about renouncing all forms of violence and terrorism — which, of course, is code for “destroy the LTTE.”

Our thoughts and wishes go out to those, both Pakistani and Sri Lankan, who were killed or wounded in the attack.

Will China Force Pakistan’s Hand?

Long-time readers of this blog know that I’m not a big fan of the government of the People’s Republic of China. They have a consistent talent for doing the wrong thing.

But I have to give them major props today:

Security agencies in China are quizzing their Pakistani counterparts about possible links between the attack in Mumbai and terrorist organisations based in Pakistan, informed sources said. Chinese agencies have already taken measures to seal off possible loopholes in the country’s borders with India, Pakistan and Afghanistan to ensure that no fugitives sneak in. Beijing is particularly worried that Pakistan based terrorists might seek refuge Xinjiang, the terrorism hit province bordering Pakistan.

“We are ready to cooperate with India and Pakistan to fight terrorists groups that are active in the region,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao told TOI. “We face the danger of terrorists’ attacks from supporters of the East Turkmenistan movement. So, we are very concerned,” he said.

China, which is a close allay of Pakistan, is capable of persuading leaders in Islamabad to part with critical intelligence and even hand over terrorists to India. But Beijing might prefer to deal with Pakistani leaders on this score to safeguard itself from terrorism spilling across the border to its own territory.

Liu, the foreign ministry spokesman, said China was ready to join hands with India to track down terrorists groups that may have been involved in the attack in Mumbai on November 26.

Clearly the PRC is acting in its own interest here — it doesn’t want the chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan (and lately, India) to bleed across its borders into Xinjiang, its predominantly Muslim province. Nonetheless, it’s refreshing to see them do the right thing.

Last week, I speculated as to whether a potential war between India and Pakistan could eventually draw in China on Pakistan’s side, which could have only disastrous consequences. Although that certainly remains a remote possibility, I am reassured to see the Chinese government pushing the Pakistanis to do the right thing.

Transition Open Thread

It’s going to be a light blogging day today, as I’m in consulting land. In the meantime, what do you guys think of the WaPo report that Richard Holbrooke will serve as the President’s envoy to South Asia? And does this news in any way undermine The Condi’s efforts in the region?

Talk amongst yourselves.

India-Pakistan: China, Obama,and the Specter of 1914

Given the increasingly heated rhetoric between India and Pakistan, two questions come to mind, one obvious, the other not so much. Will this spiral out of control and lead to war, including perhaps a nuclear exchange? And what will China do? Specifically, what happens if China comes in on Pakistan’s side?

Remember that the First World War began when a small group of Serbian nationalists committed an act of terrorism on Austrian soil (or at least Austrian-controlled soil). But things didn’t get out of hand until Russia came in on Serbia’s side and Germany did the same in the case of Austria-Hungary.

If I were President-elect Obama, I’d get Hillary on a plane now, preferably on a joint mission with The Condi. We can’t wait until January 20th to allow this thing to get completely out of control. Because the current crisis is no more about terrorism than it was in 1914.

The Foreign Policy Team: No Surprises

President-elect Obama named his National Security team. No surprises.

That extends to the reaction: the MSM is focusing on the “team of rivals” meme, and the netroots are debating whether they should be concered that “centrists” will hold the three key positions. I think both are missing the key story here, which I and others outlined last night in reaction to the NYT story on the Obama Administration’s plan to mount the most ambitious restructuring of U.S. national security institutions since the Truman Administration.

I’ll have more later on ten key posts, beyond the Deputy Secretaries and Deputy National Security Advisor, to watch for as the transition moves forward.

One other note: Obama’s press conference reflects the reality that the terrorist attacks in India haven’t really percolated to the top of people’s thinking about U.S. national security. Yes, Obama did mention it, but in the context of terrorism and not its potential impact on Indian-Pakistani relations. Equally importantly, nobody in the press bothered to ask a follow-up question.

Mumbai

Over the years, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in India, but not much in Mumbai. That said, like any visitor to India’s financial and creative capital, I made sure to the Taj Hotel, which is a national treasure.

Now it’s on fire. At least 80 people are dead, and countless more are wounded. My thoughts and prayers are with everyone in that fair city. I can only hope my friends there are okay.

Right now a domestic group known as the Indian Mujahideen has claimed responsibility, but some analysts think it may be al Qaeda.

Three things to watch as events unfold:

1. India-Pakistan. If it turns out that Pakistan-based militants are behind these attacks (or even worse, that the Indians discover evidence linking Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency to those responsible), it could spark a major regional crisis and perhaps even war. And since both India and Pakistan are nuclear powers, that means a major international crisis as well.

2. Reprisal attacks. Although Hindus outnumber Muslims by a factor of more than six to one in India, that still means there are 150 million Muslims. In the past, Muslim violence has led quickly to reprisal attacks against Muslim communities. In 2002, for example, after a Muslim mob attacked a train in the state of Gujarat, riots by Hindus led to the death of over 2,000 Muslims. In 1993-1994, Muslim-Hindu riots in Mumbai caused death of over 900 people. Regardless of whether the instigators of today’s attacks turn out to be from outside India or not, chances are that we will see reprisal attacks in very short order.

3. Domestic politics. Currently, a coalition led by the Congress Party of India is in power, and its main rival, the Hindu-nationalist BJP, has been in disarray. The attacks may change that, however, as BJP politicians have not hesitated in the past to use communal violence to whip up Hindu nationalist fervor.

Maybe if They Changed Their Name to AIG. . .

I am taking a break today, but I just ran across a story that I needed to post:

Pakistan immediately needs $10-to-15 billion to deal with the current economic crisis, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told a briefing in New York. Mr Bashir, who participated in the inaugural meeting of the Friends of Pakistan group, said the new government was aware of the economic challenges facing the country and was taking steps to cope with them “$10 to 15 billion is our immediate requirement,” he said.

Snarky comment: if they relocate Pakistan to Wall Street, there’s plenty of bailout money to go around.

Serious comment: this is the other shoe. When governments start “failing,” because they can’t obtain sufficient credit, the crisis in confidence has hit a new level.

Twenty Questions for the Debate Tonight

Twenty questions I would like to see asked at the debate tonight:

1. Are we at war with Pakistan? Senator Obama, given your pledge to go into Pakistan, if necessary, to take out Osama bin Laden, do you support President Bush’s current counter-insurgency efforts along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border? And Senator McCain, when Senator Obama made those comments, you accused him of being reckless. Do you now think President Bush is being reckless?

2. Numerous reports have indicated that the State Department is woefully underfunded and understaffed. Secretary Gates, among others, has urged Congress and the President to take steps to address these concerns. Congress has largely been unsympathetic. What would you do, as President to make the State Department more effective, and to give it the resources it needs to succeed?

3. Do you support making USAID a cabinet-level agency? Given the current financial crisis, can the United States afford to continue its foreign assistance programs? Do you support reestablishing the US Information Agency or a similar construct to coordinate and strengthen our public diplomacy?

4. Is the United States more or less safe and secure than it was on September 12, 2001? Why or why not?

5. Senator McCain, can you please tell me what the difference is between Russian incursions into Georgia and American incursions into Pakistan? Don’t both involve a large power moving into territory controlled by a democratic ally of the United States?

6. Some have argued that the American century is over and that China will soon be the world’s dominant economic and political power. Do you think that is accurate? Why or why not? Would it matter if the United States wasn’t the biggest dog in the yard anymore?

7. Senator McCain, five former Secretaries of State, including two who have endorsed you, have called for dialogue with Iran without preconditions. You have stated your opposition, and your candidate for Vice President has suggested that such views are naive. Yet when it came time for you to choose someone to brief Sarah Palin on foreign policy, you asked Henry Kissinger, one of those five, to do it. Do you still believe that it is not possible for the United States not to talk to Iran?

8. Senator Obama, are there any situations where you think it would be necessary to set conditions before meeting with a foreign leader? In other words, is there anything that any leader can do that would make it impossible for you to meet with him or her?

9. Senator McCain, your running mate has suggested that the United States should not second-guess Israel should it decide to attack Iran. Is that your view as well? Senator Obama, do you agree or disagree?

10. Both of you have called on the Bush Administration to close Guantanamo and to end the practice of torture. There is growing evidence that Bush Administration officials may have violated U.S. law as well as treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory. Would you favor the investigation of such allegations and the prosecution of those, up to an including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, found to have broken American laws including statutes against war crimes?

11. What can the United States do to strenghten the United Nations?

12. Should the United States ratify the International Criminal Court treaty?

13. What can the United States do to prevent genocide? Would you favor military intervention by U.S. forces if it could help prevent a genocide? Would you have intervened in Rwanda? What are you going to do in Sudan?

14. What is the one foreign policy issue that you think is currently under the radar but will have an impact on your administration?

15. Most of the world has come to regard the United States as part of the problem rather than part of the solution. What steps would you take to reverse that?

16. Have we “lost” Latin America? What steps would you take to reverse growing anti-Americanism in the region?

17. When this campaign started, no issue was bigger than Iraq. Now it appears to be an almost forgotten issue. Senator McCain, given Prime Minister Maliki’s outspoken desire to see American troops leave, why do you continue to oppose a phased withdrawal from Iraq? Senator Obama, is there any situation where you can see American troops remaining in Iraq beyond the timetable you outlined?

18. Is the war in Afghanistan lost? Would you favor a surge there along the lines of what happened in Iraq?

19. Senator McCain, how can we afford to stay in Iraq and deal with the financial crisis at home? Senator Obama, you have suggested moving troops in Iraq to deal with the growing crisis in Afghanistan. Can we afford to do that as well?

20. Given the fact that Russo-American relations have cooled considerably since Russia’s invasion of Georgia, what steps would you take to ensure continued Russian-American cooperation on anti-proliferation measures, including not only implementation of Nunn-Lugar, but also the situations in Iran and North Korea?

Add your own questions in the comments below.

Sarah Palin and Henry Kissinger: Blech.

Two of my least favorite people in the world got together yesterday to have some laughs and share some good times.

No, I’m not talking about Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson. In case you didn’t hear, Sarah Palin met with Henry Kissinger yesterday. I wonder if Henry tried to pick her up? “Vell Sarah, you are very pretty. Have you ever done it with a war criminal?”

Ewwwwwww.

In any case, I happened to have an inside source at the U.S. mission to the U.N.. S/he was kind enough to make a list of all the questions the Sarahnator asked Hank the K:

What’s the difference is between a hockey mom and a Secretary of State?
Why can’t I see Afghanistan from my house?
Is a foreign minister kinda like a community organizer?
Do I have to read foreigners their rights before I talk to them?
Do I get to torture people personally the way Cheney does?
Are there foreigners I might mistake for moose?
Have you met John Bolton? Is he as cute as everyone says he is?
Why does this Karzai guy wear those funny dresses? Is he gay or something?
Why am I meeting with the President of Columbia University? I never went to that college.
Why does the President of the United Nations go by the name Binky Moon?

Here’s the scary part. Apparently a CNN sound tech picked up a small part of the conversation:

Kissinger: (something about a speech, not sure to whom he was referring) “And I’m going to give him a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia.”

Palin: “Good, good. And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.”

As I said yesterday, sometimes reality transcends satire.

Today, the fun continues. Palin is meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, Ukrainian President Viktor Yuschenko, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, new Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Word is that she spent at least two hours last night just learning how to say their names.

Photo illustration: New York Magazine

Huge Bombing at Islamabad Marriot

At least 40 dead — with the number likely to increase significantly.

You can find additional photos here. It looks like the entire hotel went up in flames.

The New York Times quotes one of the leaders of the democratic opposition that helped push out Musharraf:

A prominent Pakistani lawyer, Athar Minallah, said: “It’s the 9/11 for Pakistan. It’s an attack on Pakistan, an attack on the people of Pakistan.” Mr. Minallah, a leader of the lawyers’ movement that protested against the rule of President Pervez Musharraf, said the extremists “have crossed the limits. . . . There cannot be any justification for this,” he said. “It is for the people of Pakistan to join hands and sort out this menace. They are enemies of Pakistan.”

Back when I regularly traveled to Pakistan (almost 15 years ago), that’s where I stayed in Islamabad. If memory serves me, security at the hotel was pretty extensive, so I have to wonder whether this was an inside job. I also can’t help thinking about the fact that most of the people on the lower floors would have been local staff, not foreigners.

This is the second major terrorist attack in three days (the other was the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen). There’s a good chance that this was undertaken by an al Qaeda affiliate. I think it’s important to ask whether the two attacks’ proximity in time was planned or merely a coincidence.

Our thoughts go out to the victims and their families.

Some Polite Questions for the Bush Administration

From today’s Los Angeles Times:

A long-delayed plan to send dozens of U.S. military advisors to Pakistan to train its army in counterinsurgency could begin in a matter of weeks under a new agreement on a training base, according to the top U.S. military officer.

Excuse me, Bush Administration, sorry for intruding. I don’t mean to be a pest. Would you mind if I just asked one little question here? Great! How about two? Three? No more than that, I promise. Thanks!

Okay, here it goes. Again, sorry for the bother.

ARE YOU FREAKING INSANE?

ARE YOU SMOKING CRACK?

DON’T YOU MORONS REMEMBER HOW VIETNAM STARTED?

Okay, thanks. Yeah, I did mean the caps. Sorry about that. You can go back to finding more dangerously nuke-ridden failed states to “advise.”

While You Were Filing for Bankruptcy: Pakistan

Has Bush just gotten us into another war? According to a number of press reports today, the Pakistani Army has orders to fire on American troops should they cross the border from Afghanistan:

Pakistani troops have been ordered to fire on U.S. forces, if they launch another raid across the Afghan border, an army spokesman tells the Associated Press.

“The orders are clear,” Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said in an interview. “In case it happens again in this form, that there is a very significant detection, which is very definite, no ambiguity, across the border, on ground or in the air: open fire.”

And they’re our ally. Led by the guy we wanted to succeed Pervez Musharraf.

It looks like Adm. Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has suddenly decided to vacation in Islamabad.

Meanwhile, Jeff Stein over at SpyTalk suggests some troubling parallels to an earlier American conflict:

Pakistan is beginning to remind me of Cambodia.

Just as Pakistan gives shelter to the Taliban attacking us in Afghanistan, not to mention Osama Bin Laden, Cambodia in the 1960s provided a haven for the North Vietnamese Army, which was killing us across the border.

Just as in Pakistan, we “secretly” bombed Cambodia to get the North Vietnamese, killing innocent peasants. When Cambodia’s prime minister resisted American pressure to oust the North Vietnamese, he was overthrown by U.S.-backed generals.

When we next sent combat units into Cambodia, there was a quantum leap of death, havoc — and radicalization — in the countryside, just as in Pakistan today. Cambodia’s communists now found the peasants to eager to sign up, just as Muslim extremist leaders are finding today in Pakistan. . . .

Is something like that in Pakistan’s future? Nobody can be sure. We do know that the escalation of U.S. (and some Pakistani) military operations there, much ballyhooed here for killing a few al Qaeda captains, is turning more and more Pakistanis against us. And that’s a quandary for which there are no immediate answers, much less easy ones.

But we do know there’s one big difference between Cambodia and Pakistan.

Pakistan has nuclear weapons.

The analogy isn’t perfect. We fomented the coup that brought Lon Nol to Cambodia, but in Pakistan, our guy got overthrown. And there’s a big difference between a massive bombing campaign and a few cross-border incursions. But it does make you think.

Undip reader Midwest McGarry, who raised similar concerns, also asks why American incursions don’t trigger the War Powers Act. One reason is that both the U.S. and Pakistan officials are pretending none of this happened:

. . .the Pakistani and United States military publicly denied any such incident on Monday, and a Pakistani intelligence official said that an American helicopter had mistakenly crossed the border briefly, leading Pakistani ground forces to fire into the air. . . . On Tuesday, American officials repeated their denials that such an incident occurred.

If there were no incursions, there is no need to inform Congress as required by the War Powers Act.

But there’s another, more important reason. Back in 2001, shortly after September 11, Congress passed a S.J. 23, Authorization for Use of Military Force:

[T]he President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons. . . .

SPECIFIC STATUTORY AUTHORIZATION- Consistent with section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution, the Congress declares that this section is intended to constitute specific statutory authorization within the meaning of section 5(b) of the War Powers Resolution.

So you see, Midwest, the President already has the authorization he needs.

Am I the only one not comforted by that?

Maybe the October Surprise came a bit early this year. So far, no new statements by either campaign.

While You Were Watching the View. . .

Don’t feel bad — I was too. But meanwhile, the Administration continues its sightseeing tour of Pakistan’s NWFP.

The US military conducted another airstrike inside Pakistan’s lawless tribal agencies. The target of the strike was an al Qaeda-linked group called Al Badar, which is run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.

Unmanned Predator aircraft launched several missiles in the early morning at a target in the village of Tol Khel on the outskirts of Miramshah, the administrative seat of North Waziristan. Twelve members of Al Badar (or Al Badr) were reported killed and 14 were reported wounded in the attack, according to AFP. . . .

Hekmatyar runs the Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, a radical Taliban-linked faction fighting US forces in Afghanistan. He has close links to al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, as well as the Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s military intelligence agency.

The US targeted a Hekmatyar compound in South Waziristan on Aug. 13. Taliban commanders Abdul Rehman and Islam Wazir, three Turkmen, and “several Arab fighters” were reported in the strike. Reports indicated up to 25 terrorists were killed in the attack.

The US has conducted eight airstrikes and raids in North and neighboring South Waziristan since Aug. 31. Five of the strikes have been aimed at compounds in North Waziristan. Four of them were operated by the Haqqani Network. . . .

The Haqqanis are closely allied with the Taliban and al Qaeda, and have close links with the Inter-Services Intelligence. The Haqqanis run a parallel government in North Waziristan and conduct military and suicide operations in eastern Afghanistan. Siraj Haqqani, Jalaluddin’s son, has close ties to Osama bin Laden and is one of the most wanted terrorist commanders in Afghanistan.

Holy Bush Doctrine, Batman!

Looks like Bush is taking Obama’s advice. Too bad it’s seven freaking years after he first should have done it.

Call me a cynic, but I can’t help believe that the Bush Administration (and the McCain campaign, for that matter) and trying as hard as they can to find and kill Osama before the election.

Department of Things They Should Have Thought of Seven Years Ago

From the BBC today:

US to focus on Pakistani border

Adm Mike Mullen said he had asked for a “a new, more comprehensive military strategy for the region that covers both sides of that border”. The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff has called for a new strategy in Afghanistan which will deny militants bases across the border in Pakistan. The US must work closely with Pakistan to “eliminate [the enemy's] safe havens”, he told Congress.

. . .Mullen was giving evidence to the House Armed Services Committee months before the seventh anniversary of the US-led invasion of Afghanistan to overthrow the Taleban and pursue al-Qaeda. He argued that militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan were waging a common fight.

“In my view, these two nations are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them,” he said. “We can hunt down and kill extremists as they cross over the border from Pakistan… but until we work more closely with the Pakistani government to eliminate the safe havens from which they operate, the enemy will only keep coming.”

You think?

Um, pardon the impertinent question, but shouldn’t you have freaking done this seven years ago????

Our earlier incompetence in Iraq is going to look like a walk in the park compared to what we’re now trying to do in Afghanistan.

Heckuva job, Dubya.

While You Were Away: Pakistan

Third in an ongoing series on important stories you might have missed as a result of Conventionspalooza.

When we last looked at Pakistan, it already was a huge mess. President Pevez Musharraf was on the verge of being impeached, the multi-party coalition was squabbling about everything except getting rid of Musharraf, and the Inter-Services Intelligence Service had been implicated in the bombing of India’s embassy in Pakistan.

One month later, things are even worse. The good news is that Musharraf is no longer President, having resigned before he was impeached.

Now the bad news. Where to start?

1. The two largest parties in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan People’s Party (the late Benazir Bhutto’s party, now led by Asif Ali Zadari) and the Muslim League-N (led by Nawaz Sharif, who was Prime Minister when Musharraf staged his coup back in 1999), continue to fight one another. The most recent conflict was over the reinstatement of Supreme Court justices fired by Musharraf back in November of last year. Those firings were the first in a series of events, including the assassination of Bhutto and the resignation of Musharaf, that have largely restored democracy in Pakistan but have done little to actually give the new rulers the authority or ability to rule.

On the day after Musharraf resigned, the conflict over whether to reappoint all of the fired justices came to a head. ML-N leader Nawaz Sharif told the PPP that if it did not agree to reinstate former Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry within 72 hours, the ML-N would leave the government. PPP leader Zadari refused, in part because he believes that Chaudhry would reopen the numerous investigations into his alleged personal corruption. In the end, the ML-N quit the coalition and on September 5, the PPP reinstated three of the four justices. The one exception was Chaudhry, who the PPP argued had become too political a figure because of his vocal opposition to Musharraf’s rule.

The end result? One of Pakistan’s most important advocates for democracy and transparency has been sidelined because of his willingness to support investigations into past corrupt practices by. . .

2. . . .the new President of Pakistan. On September 6, Zadari was elected President by the National Assembly, Senate, and four provincial assemblies, as required under the Constitution. Zadari won, in part, by pledging to support the elimination of a constitutional amendment giving the President the power to dismiss parliament. In response to his election, the ML-N called on him to step down as head of the PPP.

Zadari is regarded as friendly toward the United States, in large part because he appears willing to pursue those elements of Al Qaeda and the Taliban currently in control of sections of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province.

His election was not without controversy: he is known as “Mr. Ten Percent” because he allegedly demanded 10 percent of all foreign contracts signed while his wife was Prime Minister (these are the allegations that led Zadari and the PPP to oppose the reinstatement of Chaudhry as Chief Justice).

In addition, there was this report:

Asif Ali Zardari, the leading contender for the presidency of nuclear-armed Pakistan, was suffering from severe psychiatric problems as recently as last year, according to court documents filed by his doctors. The widower of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was diagnosed with a range of serious illnesses including dementia, major depressive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder in a series of medical reports spanning more than two years.

In court documents seen by the Financial Times, Philip Saltiel, a New York City-based psychiatrist, said in a March 2007 diagnosis that Mr Zardari’s imprisonment had left him suffering from “emotional instability” and memory and concentration problems. “I do not foresee any improvement in these issues for at least a year,” Mr Saltiel wrote. Stephen Reich, a New York state-based psychologist, said Mr Zardari was unable to remember the birthdays of his wife and children, was persistently apprehensive and had thought about suicide.

Mr Zardari used the medical diagnoses to argue successfully for the postponement of a now-defunct English High Court case in which Pakistan’s government was suing him over alleged corruption, court records show. The case – brought to seize some of his UK assets – was dropped in March, at about the same time that corruption charges in Pakistan were dismissed. However, the court papers raise questions about Mr Zardari’s ability to help guide one of the world’s most strategically important countries following the resignation last week of Mr Musharraf, under whose rule the corruption cases against the PPP leader and his late wife, Benazir Bhutto, were pursued.

In other words, Zadari, who may be corrupt, mentally unstable or both, is now the leader of a state with nuclear weapons. Of course, it could have been worse — there was an attempt to get A.Q. Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program and leader of a smuggling ring responsible for selling nuclear technology to North Korea and Libya, to run.

3. It is not yet clear whether the ISI and the Pakistani military will actually take orders from President Zadari. The chances of a military coup are lower than they were a month ago, but it would be inaccurate to suggest that they have receded completely. Meanwhile, the ISI has not yet been held accountable for their role in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

4. The war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda is not going well — despite the fact that the government of Pakistan officially “outlawed” the Taliban two weeks ago. The two groups control large swathes of the NWFP, and have the support of locals.

Last week, American special forces mounted a raid into Pakistani territory in order to take out a “moderately important terrorist target.” They followed that up Monday with a unmanned drone attack on a compound believed to belong to Jalaluddin Haqqani, a senior Taliban commander.

The first response from the Pakistani government came not form elected officials but rather the army:

A Pakistan army spokesman warned that the apparent escalation from recent foreign missile strikes on militant targets along the Afghan border would further anger Pakistanis and undercut cooperation in the war against terrorist groups.

On Saturday, Pakistan closed the Torkham Border Crossing in the Khyber Pass in response to the incursion. Torkham is the main supply route for NATO forces operating in Afghanistan; roughly 70 percent of NATO materiel comes in via that route. On Monday, the Pakistani army spokesman issued the following statement:

Border violations by US-led forces in Afghanistan, which have killed scores of Pakistani civilians, would no longer be tolerated, and we have informed them that we reserve the right to self defense and that we will retaliate if the US continues cross-border attacks.

As Sean-Paul Kelley over at The Agonist noted, is anyone in Washington paying the least bit of attention to all this?

As if we didn’t have enough to worry about. Hey, I got a great idea, let’s accidentally start a war with Pakistan, a very unstable country, with no real leader and nukes. Great idea!

Also last week, thirty-five people were killed in a suicide bomb attack in Peshawar, and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani was the target of an assassination attempt in Islamabad.

In sum, the departure of Musharaf has done nothing to slow Pakistan’s descent into chaos. And once again, the United States remains unwilling or unable to develop anything resembling a coherent policy.

Thought for the Day

President Bush must be relieved that Asif Ali Zadari was elected President of Pakistan.

Imagine what would have happened if the second place finisher had won.

Bush would have had to learn how to say Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui.

Green as in Not Even Remotely Envious

Good to see that Green Party Presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney has not jumped off the crazy train. In fact, she’s now the conductor.

Here are excerpts of an interview McKinney did with The Final Call. As in Louis Farrakhan’s newspaper.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. I’m such a kidder.

Actually, I’m not:

Now unfortunately we are in the midst of a presidential campaign and Pakistan is being bombed literally as we speak. Somalia is occupied, the once proud leadership of Ethiopia has now become the back pocket handmaiden of the George Bush administration for rendition and torture. . . .

We decry the United Nations occupation of Haiti. The people of Haiti had the self confidence and the perseverance after their president was stolen with U.S. weapons to vote and insure the election integrity of that vote for Renè Prèval. Renè Prèval needs to be free to lead the Haitian people. . . .

[In Zimbabwe,] people who don’t have title to the land should not be allowed to occupy the land. The title of land can’t be granted to those who have stolen the land. Land reform is the issue all over Africa. The issue is land and the land must be free to be settled by the original inhabitants who were removed from that land illegally as a result of colonialism.

I learned so much from this interview. We’re at war with Pakistan. We’re occupying Somalia. The UN is occupying Haiti at our beck and call. Oh, and McKinney hearts Mugabe.

So McKinney’s strategy is to seek both the black helicopter and the black nationalist vote.

And the Greens wonder why they aren’t taken seriously?

Actually, maybe Barack should worry. After all, the Greens are putting together a ground game that just might rival Obama’s. Check this out:

Heh.

Hat tip: Reason Hit & Run

Photo: Ed Yourdon via Flickr, using a Creative Commons license.

Musharaf Does Nixon, Bush Does Ostrich

So I spent yesterday driving home from Michigan, and Musharaf goes and resigns. First Russia-Georgia when I go three days without blogging and now this. I guess I have to stop going on vacation.

Judging by his television address, it was a truly Nixonian moment: Musharaf rambling on and on, finally getting to the point only after about six hours. Okay, more like thirty minutes, but you get the point. There are plenty of blogs analyzing what this means for Pakistan. So instead, let me focus on what this means for the United States.

Shockingly, the Bush Administration continues to demonstrate its inability to think strategically about what arguably is one of the most important countries on earth:

“We’ve said for years that Musharraf is our best bet, and my fear is that we are about to discover how true that was,” one senior Bush administration official said, acknowledging that the United States had stuck with Mr. Musharraf for too long and developed few other relationships in Pakistan to fall back on.

Administration officials will now have to find allies within the fractious civilian government, which has so far shown scant interest in taking on militants from the Taliban and Al Qaeda who have roosted in Pakistan’s badlands along the border with Afghanistan.

At the same time, suspicions between the American and Pakistani intelligence agencies and their militaries are deepening, and relations between the countries are at their lowest ebb since Mr. Musharraf pledged to ally Pakistan with the United States after the 9/11 attacks.

What is wrong with these guys? Could they not see this coming? I mean how hard could it have been to start reaching out to the PPP and Sharif? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket.

To demonstrate just how obtuse the Bush Administration has been in Pakistan, compare and contrast the following two passages. First, from Jane Meyer’s The Dark Side:

What put Zubayda in CIA custody was not toughness, it was money. [In 2002, Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence service (ISI)] bought the original tip leading to his whereabouts with a small bribe to [a driver]. Afterward, the CIA bought Pakistan’s help for a much larger sum. A CIA source involved at the time disclosed, “We paid $10 million for Abu Zubayda.” He said the money went to the ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence service. “They built a new headquarters on thirty-five acres they bought outside of Islamabad, and they got themselves a helicopter. We funded the whole thing.”

Now flash forward six years to earlier this month:

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful [Inter-Services Intelligence] service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

[I}ntercepted communications between [ISI] officers and militants who carried out the attack…[provide] the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India.

So the organization we funded in 2002 to prevent future Embassy bombings (and 9/11s) is now responsible for plotting Embassy bombings. Heckuva job, CIA.

And now the kicker: Here’s what the White House had to say today about Musharaf’s resignation:

President Bush, at his ranch in Crawford, Tex., made no statement about Mr. Musharraf’s resignation. A White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said, “President Bush appreciates President Musharraf’s efforts in the democratic transition of Pakistan as well as his commitment to fighting Al Qaeda and extremist groups.”

Astounding. Just completely astounding.

So now, for the second time in a little over a week, the Bush Administration has lost a key ally in the war on terror: first Putin turns Russia into the neocons’ latest Nazi Germany fantasy, and now Musharaf, the one guy the Bushies thought could deliver in Central Asia, resigns.

And once again, the Bushies have no clue as to what comes next or what they should do. Maybe the neocons can start arguing that Pakistan is actually the new Nazi Germany. I mean they already have three (Iran, China, Russia) — why not go four for four?

This is not merely a bad week, it’s really, really, really bad policy.

Wonk’d: Why the UN Human Rights Council Blows

As I’ve noted in my two previous posts, I’m both a fan and a critic of the United Nations. But if there’s one thing the United Nations does really really really badly, it’s human rights.

It wasn’t always this way. Thanks in part to the leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt, the early years of the United Nations adopted both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. Over the next several decades, a number of other important treaties followed, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention against Torture, and the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, among others.

Lately, however, not so much. The UN Commission on Human Rights became so disreputable — by doing things like electing Libya as chair and failing to take action on Rwanda — that the UN decided to abolish it and replace it with a new body that would address many of its shortcomings.

During the 2005 UN Millennium Summit, the General Assembly agreed to the creation of a new Human Rights Council, supposedly putting into place safeguards that would prevent similar problems in the future. Sadly, the United States chose not to play a central role in the negotiations over how the Council would be constituted or how it organizes itself. Thank you, John Bolton, you self-righteous paleocon jerk.

(Full disclosure: Steve Clemons, Scott Paul (both of the Washington Note), Don Kraus (my successor as CEO of Citizens for Global Solutions) and I organized the successful opposition to the Bolton nomination.)

(And for the UN wonks out there, yes I know I’m oversimplifying this timeline. But please keep in mind that I’m not writing for you.)

So there we were, a new start, a new opportunity to do serious human rights work.

Whoopsie.

Sigh.

Today we have a body that in many ways is worse than its predecessor. There are a lot of issues that the Council should be looking at these days — Darfur, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Burma, Pakistan, and Iraq, to name just a few. Instead, the it has spent almost all of its time on one issue: Israel.

The reasons for this have to do not with human rights in that country –- which, to be clear, should be looked at, as should human rights issues in every country. Rather it’s the product of those who currently sit on the Council. Dictatorships make up over half the Council’s membership. They have spotlighted Israel to deflect attention from the human rights abusers within their own ranks, as well as to stick it to the West (and, to be clear, Israel).

Meanwhile, the Bush Administration continues to refuse to engage the Council, deciding not to stand for election and even failing to send an Ambassador to Council meetings. Of course that’s assuming it could even get elected to the Council, given its own human rights record. Either way, its actions have only encouraged the misbehavior and discouraged those who would stand up to such nonsense.

And then, late last week, we have the latest outrage:

A former spokesman for Cuba’s foreign ministry was appointed this week to head the United Nations Human Rights Council’s advisory committee. Radio Rebelde says Miguel Alfonso Martinez, is president of the Cuban Society of International Law, was appointed this Monday to head the Advisory Committee of the UN Human Rights Council.

Oy vey. Oh wait — saying that might get me investigated by the Council.

This isn’t the first bad appointment either. Richard Falk, a Princeton professor who has compared Israeli policy in the Gaza Strip to Nazi Germany, is the Council’s Special Rapporteur on. . . wait for it. . .Israel. And Jean Ziegler, who once helped Muammar Qaddafi establish a peace prize named after the dictator and who has praised, among others, Robert Mugabe and Fidel Castro, was elected to the Council’s Advisory Committee.

The Council has more than a bad joke. It’s a black eye for the UN and and embarrassment to the entire world. Furthermore, it has become a convenient whipping boy for the paleocons here in the United States.

It’s time to start over. . .again.

Maybe the third time will be the charm.

Terrorism, Security, and the Foreign Service

I have long believed that Americans fail to understand or appreciate the heroism and courage of our foreign service officers (FSOs). Spending three years in the bowels of the State Department only reinforced that conviction.

If you ever enter the State Department via its main (C Street) entrance, you should look for large green marble plaques at each end of the lobby. Each lists those American diplomats who have lost their lives in the service of their country. As then-Deputy Secretary of State John Whitehead noted in 1988,

In the State Department lobby, just inside the C Street entrance, there are two large plaques, where the names of ambassadors and others who have died while serving their country are inscribed. It is a grim list, but a proud list, too; a list of those who defended peace and freedom to the very end.

Much to my surprise, there is no page on the State Department website that reproduces the list or provides brief biographical information.

That’s a tragedy, because each of these individuals deserve greater recognition. But equally sad, the plaques include only Americans who have died — foreign nationals, such as those killed in the 1998 Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, are not honored (at least not there). That also is a fundamental — and almost criminal — oversight.

But the purpose of my post today is not merely to recognize the courage and heroism of those who have given their lives in the pursuit of American foreign policy, but also to ask whether Americans recognize the risks that diplomats must take to promote and protect American interests.

Most Americans think of our diplomats — if they think of them at all — as glamorous Cary Grant types, wearing black tie, attending parties, and sipping martinis. Certainly such representation duties are a part of a foreign service officer’s job, but only on rare occasions. Most of a typical FSO’s work involves tracking developments on the ground and then reporting back to Washington.

These days, that job is much harder, in large part because of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security’s fortress mentality — particularly their demand that FSOs work and live inside supposedly impregnable walls, often miles from a city center.

I fear that this emphasis on security at all costs has had a deeply corrosive impact on America’s ability to understand and interact with the world. But it also makes it harder and harder for the average foreign service officer to do their jobs.

Part of the problem is that our government does not think of diplomats the way it thinks of members of the military: as people who are willing to take certain risks to protect American interests. Instead, FSOs are treated like museum pieces that must be kept behind multiple layers of protection.

I do not mean to make light of the very serious threats that our diplomatic outposts face or the risks taken by those, foreign national and American alike, who choose to work in them. But is the greater security really worth the negative impact on American interests? And by wrapping our foreign service officers in a false cocoon of security, aren’t we isolating them from the very people with whom they should be meeting?

Reversing this trend is not going to be easy. Were a President or Secretary of State to instruct Diplomatic Security to stop building isolated citadels, sooner or later, terrorists (or an angry mob, as happened in Pakistan in 1979) would attack an embassy or consulate and kill Americans (and foreign nationals, lest we forget). That will result in months of finger-pointing, accusations and counter-accusations, and Congressional hearings on why we failed to protect our diplomats.

But chances are that another catastrophic attack will occur regardless of whether we decide to move our diplomats out of the fortresses and back into city centers. I didn’t check the Googles, but if memory serves me, there have been serious attacks on American diplomatic outposts in Serbia and Turkey in recent months. Chances are that there are more I don’t remember, and that DS has succeeded in preventing a few as well.

In the end, we need to ask ourselves which is worse: putting our foreign service officers at greater risk so that they can do their jobs, or turning them into diplo-hermits, so isolated that they cannot really understand or appreciate what is happening on the ground?

The time has come to recognize the courage of our foreign service officers. I have had the honor to know many FSOs, and without exception have found them to be deeply dedicated to their work and their country. They are nothing like the right wing stereotype, which paints them as disconnected East Coast elitists who share noting with the average American. In fact, most are themselves average Americans whose profession just happens to be promoting American foreign policy rather than building cars or writing code.

But the time also has come for Diplomatic Security to stop forcing American diplomats to hide behind blast-proof walls and let them interact once again with the local populace. Representing the United States means being seen by individuals who haven’t had to go through three layers of security — people whose assumptions about and stereotypes of Americans are only reinforced by such measures. Yes, that will put FSOs at greater risk, but that is the nature of service to our country, whether it be in the armed forces or the diplomatic corps.

I think that most FSOs would agree with me, but I doubt their political masters (or DS for that matter) will ever have the guts to make the changes necessary.

Five to Watch: The Rest of the World

Between the U.S. Presidential election and the Beijing Olympics, there isn’t much space on the Intertubes or the cabletubes for other stories. And I understand that The Washington Postdated is running a five-part series on McCain’s wacky aunt, so they’re not going to be much help either.

But that doesn’t mean the rest of the world has taken a break. Here are five stories worth watching in the coming weeks:

1. Bolivia. This Sunday, voters will go to the polls to decide whether to recall Bolivian President Evo Morales (an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez), the Vice President, and nine provincial governors — many of whom are Morales critics. Originally envisioned as a way to end the political impasse between Morales and his opponents, the vote instead has exacerbated tensions, and could strengthen separatist sentiment in four provinces. In the lead-up to the vote, Chavez and Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner had to cancel a planned meeting with Morales as a result of the unrest, and Morales had to relocate planned independence celebrations to La Paz from the opposition-controlled Sucre after opposition supporters blockaded the airport.

2. Rwanda-France. On Tuesday, Rwanda issued a report formally accusing French government officials of complicity in the 1994 genocide. Rwanda President Paul Kagame, who has steered Rwanda away from the francophone bloc and towards a closer relationship with the United States, cut ties with the French government back in 2006 as a result of a French judge’s efforts to have him charged for allegedly playing a role in the death of President Habyarimana — an event that either triggered the genocide or was used as an excuse for its genesis. Two separate issues appear to be at play here: questions about French complicity, which may have included training of and advice to the pre-genocide army, and the role of Kagame’s RPF movement, which human rights groups say is responsible for war crimes (albeit not genocide).

3. Mauritania. On Wednesday, a group of Army officers seized power from the first-ever democratically elected government in Mauritania. The coup took place after Mauritanian President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi attempted to fire four senior military officers — who instead led the coup. The President and Prime Minister are both under house arrest, and while the new leaders have promised new elections, a history of coups and military rule make such an outcome unlikely. The recent discovery of significant oil reserves further complicates matters.

4. Iraq. Think everything in Iraq is peachy? Think again. The Parliament recessed on Wednesday without passing an essential provincial elections bill, hampering further efforts at reconciliation dependent on the vote’s outcome. The sticking point is Kirkuk, which the Kurds want to annex but other factions want to keep separate. Once again, oil is playing a role — Kirkuk has lots of it. Perhaps the worst news is that the Iraqis decided the best course of action at this point is to appoint yet another commission to study the matter while the rest of the Council of Representatives went on vacation.

5. Pakistan. Perhaps the biggest mess in the world today, Pakistan continues to find new ways to destabilize itself. As a result of the secret police’s (and perhaps the military’s) role in the bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, U.S.-Pakistani relations are the worst they’ve ever been. The military’s accomodation of the Taliban and al Qaeda in the Northwest Frontier Province hasn’t helped much either. Meanwhile, Parliament is debating whether to impeach President Pervez Musharaf at the very moment that Musharaf has headed to Beijing for the Olympics. With no one apparently in charge and the ISI and military facing increasing calls for reform, another coup is a real possibility. This time, however, the generals are unlikely to continue to pursue policies favorable to American interests.

The Mother of All Hungamas

My friend Nilay, who hails from Guwahati in the Assam province of India, taught me a great Hindi word: hungama. Think of it as a cross between a major kerfuffle and a holy mess.

RIght now, Pakistan has managed to put itself in the middle of one big honkin’ hungama, perhaps the largest ever recorded. Via The New York Times:

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful [Inter-Services Intelligence] service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

[I}ntercepted communications between [ISI] officers and militants who carried out the attack…[provide] the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Concerns about the role played by Pakistani intelligence not only has strained relations between the United States and Pakistan, a longtime ally, but also has fanned tensions between Pakistan and its archrival, India.

[snip]

When asked Thursday about whether the ISI and Pakistani military remained loyal to the country’s civilian government, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the [U.S.] Joint Chiefs of Staff, sidestepped the question. “That’s probably something the government of Pakistan ought to speak to,” Admiral Mullen told reporters at the Pentagon.

Uh-oh.

If there’s one thing we don’t need right now, it’s a nuclear state deciding to commit an act of war on another nuclear state. What the hell were these guys thinking? “I’m bored.” “Yeah, me too.” Hey, I know what we can do. Let’s turn South Asia into a big glass puddle!”

This could spin out of control faster than a tight-fitting sari on a Bollywood starlet. The Indians are not going to be satisfied with false contrition and muttered apologies.

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