Foreign Policy In Focus

On May 12, the New York Times did a very curious thing.

In an article entitled “Indian and Afghan Leaders Forge Deeper Ties in Meeting” by Alissa J. Rubin and Sanger Rahimi, the newspaper failed to mention that during his visit to Afghanistan, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had endorsed peace talks between the Taliban and the government of Hamid Karzai.

The Times’ piece—buried on the back pages—led with an agreement by the two governments to “move ahead on a strategic partnership” and then prattled on about aid. The words “Taliban” and “talks” never appeared.

In contrast, a May 13 Reuters article led with “India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, backing Kabul’s peace plan to reconcile with the Taliban-led insurgents.” According to Reuters, the Prime Minister said, “Afghanistan is embarked upon a process of national reconciliation. We wish you well in this enterprise.”

A BBC broadcast also led with the “Taliban talk” news, and the print version put it in the third sentence. To date the New York Times has yet to report the fact that India abandoned its previous opposition to opening talks with the Taliban.

How could the Times miss a story like that? There are only two explanations. One, that the two reporters are the kind that would have asked Mary Todd Lincoln if she liked the play. Two, that the reporters put the breakthrough remarks into the story, and an editor in New York took them out.

As a whole, Times coverage of the Afghan War has not been very good, certainly not nearly as good as the reporting by the McClatchy newspapers, let alone the international press. But their reporters have rarely demonstrated incompetence, and there is nothing in the record to suggest that Rubin and Rahimi are not good reporters. They could have missed what is probably the most important development in the past year—if so, time for reassignment to the Metro Desk—but it is much more likely that higher ups in New York left it on the cutting room floor.

Bad news sense? Maybe, but then again, maybe not.

On May 14, the Times wrote an editorial entitled “Pakistan After Bin Laden” where the following paragraph appears:

The Obama administration also needs to take a harder look at military aid to Pakistan, to determine what is vital for counterterrorism and what might be tied to specific benchmarks, like apprehending the Taliban chief, Mullah Omar, and members of the Haqqani network.

In short, the Times is arguing that Pakistan should take out the very people whom the Karzai government will need to talk with in any negotiations with the Taliban. There is an old rule in the business of negotiations: don’t arrest or kill the people you want to talk with. That is, unless you don’t really want to have talks. The Israelis have developed this into a science: as soon as it looks like there are going to be talks between Israel and the Palestinians, they build some new settlements, knowing that the provocation will torpedo any negotiations. 

The Times is a strong supporter of U.S. Gen. David Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, which consists of attacking the Taliban in order to weaken them prior to a political settlement. The idea is that if they are first beaten up, the insurgents will be more pliable during negotiations. 

However, since the Taliban show no signs of throwing in the towel—indeed, U.S. civilian intelligence agencies pretty much agree that the war is going badly and the situation is not likely to improve—the Times’ position is a formula for continuing the war.

The 2010 “surge” of troops into Afghanistan has been largely a bust. The south, where most troops went, is quieter, but hardly pacified, and insurgent attacks have increased in other areas of the country, particularly in the east and the north. This past year has been the deadliest for both Coalition troops and Afghan civilians.

Is that what the Times wants? Indeed, wants it so badly that it won’t report that there has been a major diplomatic breakthrough? If you don’t print the news that you don’t like, it didn’t happen? 

Boy, that’s a relief.

More of Conn Hallinan's work can be found at Dispatches From the Edge.

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the fifty-third in the series.

Recent cables published by WikiLeaks from the American embassy in Ottawa paint a less than flattering picture of Stephen Harper. The Canadian prime minister, whose Conservative Party took a commanding majority in nationwide elections last week, has built his political success on a platform of aggressive nationalism concerning the country’s Arctic sovereignty, pro-business economics, and keen avoidance of doing anything about climate change.

But from the perspective of American diplomats, Harper has a decidedly different list of priorities he pursues in private.  In a cable that dates to January 2010, US Ambassador to Canada David Jacobson outlines what he sees as prime minister’s top five policy objectives.

Not surprisingly, “Harper’s top goal for 2010 is remaining in power,” which Jacobson notes will force the country’s conservatives “to claim credit even when it is not due to them.” While Harper has enjoyed unrivalled personal popularity throughout Canada, his party was not as warmly embraced. “Harper failed to convince the public to give them a majority” in successive federal elections during 2004, 2006, and 2008, though Jacobson notes that a new round of elections in 2010 might prove beneficial to the party.

Conservatives arguably have the most to gain in a new election, given the many self-inflected wounds suffered by the Liberals under [Michael] Ignatieff over the past year. The Conservatives nonetheless do not wish the public to blame them for a new and still unwelcome election.

In fact, it’s not clear if Harper’s Conservatives have much going for them beyond Ignatieff’s incompetence to effectively organize a viable opposition. 

Liberal disarray and disappointing fundraising in the second half of 2009 leave the Liberal party in poor shape to face an election, which Ignatieff now admits that the public does not want. Nor have the Liberals hit upon a potentially winning issue. They and the NDP have tried to turn the treatment of Afghan detainees transferred by the Canadian Forces to Afghan authorties in 2006 and 2007 into a major embarrassment for the government. So far, the public isn’t biting (51 percent remain unaware of the issue…), and it is far from clear that there is much political utility for any of the opposition parties in making a major push to continue this probe.

According to the cable, Harper’s second priority, after preserving his own employment, is to “re-grow the economy.” While the prime minister and his associates have taken the lion’s share of credit for helping steer the ship of state through the turbulent economic waters of the 2008 financial and economic crisis, the US embassy in Ottawa wasn’t so sure these claims were the entirely accurate. “The jury is still somewhat out on whether long-standing monetary and fiscal policies were the main factors,” the cable notes, “or whether Canada’s huge resource base and openness to international trade were not at least as much factors.” It didn’t matter, though because “the Conservatives have in any event pretty much succeeded in convincing the public that they are more trustworthy on this issue than the Liberal would be.” Still, “The Conservatives do not appear to have any bold measures up their sleeves to improve the economy, but appear content to wait for…a rising global economy—especially the US—to life all boats.”

Harper and his gang might have been waiting to ride the coattails of an American recovery, but it’s clear that the Canadian prime minister didn’t like Washington’s methods for stimulating the economy. From the embassy’s perspective, Harper had developed something of an obsession with what it considered his third priority: overturning provisions in the American Reconstruction and Recovery Act. Harper had addressed this issue “so often with President Obama that it has become somewhat of a private joke.”

While American protectionism was centrally important to the Harper government and his big business allies, it wasn’t clear to Jacobson than the topic was all that important to anyone else, or that any success on this front would be of much political utility. “The public—but not the business community—has largely lost track of the dispute…so even a failure in the talks might hurt Conservatives less than would been likely only a few months ago.  None of the opposition parties has any better plan on how to reverse any US inclinations.”

The cable paints Harper as particularly dismal on environmental politics, a topic the American embassy considered important to the prime minister’s future success despite his personal disinterest. The document points out that Harper agreed to attend the historic 2009 multilateral negotiations in Denmark to stem the worst effects of environmental degradation. 

Harper somewhat grudgingly went to Copenhagen for the UN summit on climate change, but only after President Obama announced that he would attend. PM Harper’s participation was virtually invisible to the Canadian public, and there was considerable negative coverage of his failure to play a more prominent role—or even to sit in on the President’s key meetings with world leaders. 

Jacobson correctly suggests that Harper’s lackluster performance at Copenhagen left his government in the unenviable position of looking at once detached from what many consider the most important international security issue facing mankind, and a lap dog to American power.

Environmental Minister Jim Prentice was sent out to do the media scrums and to insist that Canada was a helpful participant and would work closely with the United States on a continental strategy on climate change. Now he must come up with some proposals that make Canada not seem merely to be going slavishly along with whatever its American “big brother” decides to do—which will not be easy.

Making matters worse,

A substantial proportion of the Canadian public and industry…are opposed to Harper taking a leading role and are even opposed to him following any likely leads set by the Obama administration. In that respect, given Canada’s role as a major petroleum and natural gas producer, he will have an even more difficult political balancing act that will the United States or the Europeans. 

But once again, the Conservatives would be bailed out, Jacobson predicts, not by their own creative thinking or popularity, but by the opposition’s incompetence. “No big, sexy initiatives are likely from the Conservatives…Luckily for the government, the Liberals also do not have any great ideas up their sleeves.”

Most interestingly, given the election results of last week, the cable notes that “getting out of Afghanistan as gracefully as possible” would be Harper’s fifth and final major priority over the coming year. Despite his original gung-ho support for NATO operations in Afghanistan, Harper more lately repeatedly insisted that Canada would begin withdrawing its presence in the country by the end of 2011.

Diminishing public support for the mission, a sense that Canada had dones more than its share, and unspoken relief that the US surge will let Canada off the hook all argue against any Canadian political leader rethinking Canada’s strategy, at least for now. Absent a federal election in which the Conservatives win an actual majority…the likelihood at present is that Canada will withdraw on schedule, as gracefully as possible. 

Harper changed his message while campaigning in April, announcing that “I have never said there’s no risks in Afghanistan,” defending his decision, without consulting the parliament, to extend the country’s commitment in Central Asia by three years. The plan would leave roughly 950 of the 2,500 troops currently in the country behind to train Afghan and military personnel. With a new majority, however, we may expect to see other tweaking of previous Harper promises with regards to the Afghan state-building project.  

We're honored to have Michael Busch dissecting the latest WikiLeaks document dump for Focal Points. This is the forty-eighth in the series.

What to make of the Gitmo assessment of Abu Zubaydah, the Saudi-born Palestinian man once described by George W. Bush administration as the “number three” guy in al Qaeda?  The fourteen-page document, released as part of WikiLeaks’ “Gitmo Files” trove, is at once a collection of rumors, contradictory data and bizarre analysis that at the same time, serves as an uncompromising verdict of Abu Zubaydah’s guilt in crimes against the United States.

The memo begins with the bold claim that Zubaydah

Is a senior member of al-Qaida with direct ties to multiple high-ranking terrorists such as Usama Bin Laden (UBL). Detainess has a vast amount of information regarding al-Qaida personnel and operations and is an admitted operational planner, financier and facilitator of international terrorsist and their activities. Detainee participated in hostilities against US and Coalition forces and was involved in several plans to commit terrorist acts against the US, its interests and allies. 

Quite a valuable prisoner, by the looks of it, then. How did the commanding officer, Rear Admiral D. M. Thomas, come to learn all of this information? Not through direct talks with Zubaydah, as the report makes clear at its close: “Due to detainees’ HVD status, detainee has yet to be interviewed.” Instead, Thomas seems to have relied upon claims made by dozens of other detainees—whether at Guantanamo or other sites of extraordinary rendition—while denying Zubaydah’s own claims as patently false.

And as it turns out, it’s Zubayadah’s story that proves most interesting, and at the end of the day, seems the likeliest to be true, even as it too suffers from problems of consistency. The report offers the “Detainee’s Account of Events,” though where this account was delivered is never explicitly made clear. According to Zubaydah’s own testimony, he very much wanted to become an al Qaida operative, but the terrorist outfit wouldn’t let him. 

Detainee stated he was originally a “bad Muslim” who arrived in Afghanistan in 1990-1991. He was determined to attend militant training because he was inspired by the Palestinian cause….Detainee stated that in 1993, following the first Afghan jihad against the Russians, he decided to dedicate his life to jihad.  Detainee noticed that of all the other groups in theater, only al-Qaida remained to continue the jihad struggle. Detainee submitted the requisite paperwork to join al-Qaida and pledge bayat (an oath of allegiance to UBL. Detainee’s application to al-Qaida was rejected.

But in the very next paragraph, Zubaydah offers a slightly different account of his troubles with al Qaeda that merits no mention from the report’s author.

In approximately 1991 or 1992, detainee sustained a head wouldn from shrapnel while on the front lines. Detainee stated he had to relearn fundamentals such as walking, talking, and writing; as such, he was therefore considered worthless to al-Qaida. Detainee asked Abu Burhan al-Suri for permission to repeat the Khaldan Camp training. Detainee did not pledge bayat to UBL and did not become a full al-Qaida member. Detainee refused to make the pledge unless al-Qada agreed to stage an attack inside Israel or mount an operation to help free Shaykh Umar Abd al-Rahman aka (the Blind Sheik) [sic].

So which is it? Did al Qaeda reject Zubaydah, or did Zubaydah reject al Qaeda? This question is never addressed, much less resolved. Instead, the report details two more meetings between Zubaydah and bin Laden that demonstrate little other than the latter’s distaste for the former.

The question of Zubaydah’s testimony and its provenance is of chief significance. The report notes that shortly after Zubaydah’s last contact with bin Laden—where the al Qaeda chief appears to have shut down the Palestinian’s plan for an attack in Israel—he was picked up by Pakistani security forces “in Faisalabad on 28 March 2002.” In the process, Zubaydah was “shot three time while attempting to escape. Detainee was transferred to US authorities immediately after his arrest and once his condition stabilized, he was transported out of Pakistan.” A few lines later, the memo notes that Zuybaydah was transferred to Gitmo in September 2006, over four and a half years later. So what happened to him in the intervening period?

Quite a lot, as it happens. Unremarked upon in the report is the now established evidence that Zubaydah was flown to the Cuban detention facility in 2002, where he remained for nine months before being shipped off to another CIA interrogation facility in Thailand. There, according to Andy Worthington,

the FBI began interrogating him using old-school, torture-free methods, which had a proven track record. Within a matter of weeks, however, the FBI agents were shamefully discarded by the administration’s most senior officials, who believed that another major attack was imminent, and that only the use of torture would persuade a significant captured terrorist — as Zubaydah was presumed to be — to talk. The job of interrogating Zubaydah was handed over to the CIA, whose new repertoire of techniques consisted primarily of torture, including waterboarding (a form of controlled drowning), confinement in tiny, coffin-like boxes, extreme violence, prolonged isolation, and the use of sustained nudity and loud music and noise.

Zubaydah was returned to Guantanamo in 2006. Shortly thereafter, Zubaydah became a central figure in the ICRC reports documenting American torture practices in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and was the centerpiece of one of the so-called “torture memos” released by the Barack Obama administrations just two years ago this month.

The shocking incidence of mental health disorders suffered by detainees at Guantanamo has been particularly striking in the Gitmo files released thus far by WikiLeaks, and it’s clear from Zubaydah well-documented history that he should be tallied with those prisoners suffering psychological distress. In Barton Gellman’s review of Ron Suskind’s One Percent Doctrine, it’s noted that

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." 

This might explain the slightly varied accounts Zubaydah reportedly gave American intelligence officers of his difficult history with al Qaeda. In any event it’s hard to escape the conclusion, based on the mountain of evidence that has surfaced thus far about Zubaydah’s condition, arrived at by Dan Coleman, the FBI’s chief al Qaeda expert: “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”

He’s also still Guantanamo Bay. Despite the government’s own admission that Zubaydah was not, contrary to its earlier bombast, “a 'member' of al-Qaida in the sense of having sworn bavat (allegiance) or having otherwise satisfied any formal criteria that either [Zubaydah] or al-Qaida may have considered necessary for inclusion in al-Qaeda,” it continues to hold him in detention “based on conduct and actions that establish Petitioner was ‘part of’ hostile forces and ‘substantially supported’ those forces.” All totaled, Zubaydah has been in American custody going on nine years, and there’s no sense that resolution of his case will occur at any point in the foreseeable future.

David Brown for the Washington Post reports on land-mine injuries suffered by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Doctors and nurses treating soldiers injured in Afghanistan have begun speaking of a new "signature wound" -- two legs blown off at the knee or higher, accompanied by damage to the genitals and pelvic injuries. . . . Of the 142 soldiers with genitourinary wounds who arrived at Landstuhl [Germany, site of U.S. military hospital] last year. . . . 47 had injury to one testicle, and 21 men lost a testicle. Eleven soldiers had injuries to both testicles, and eight lost both testicles.

In fact

Twice as many U.S. soldiers wounded in battle last year required limb amputations than in either of the two previous years. . . . and nearly three times as many suffered severe wounds to their genitals.

Why the increase?

Although the U.S. Army Medical Command released the data on genital injuries, military officials are reluctant to discuss these wounds further.

Why not? According to Maj. Gen. Stephen R. Lanza, chief of Army Public Affairs, "detailed discussion . . . can potentially provide insights to our enemies into the effectiveness of their improvised explosive devices and other weapons they use."

What kind of insights is the Army afraid that the Taliban might glean from information about the injuries? Let's take a guess: figuring out exactly how much explosives and of what variety to ensure the majority of victims lose both testicles.

What about body armor? Brown reports:

Body armor, which has greatly reduced fatalities, usually includes a triangular flap that protects the groin from projectiles coming from the front. It doesn't protect the area between the legs from direct upward blast.

Odd oversight, isn't it? Brown again.

Various laboratories are reportedly working on forms of shielding that would provide such protection.

Doesn't this remind you of the early years of the Iraq War when Hummers were insufficiently protected with armor plating? Meanwhile, Americans need to ask themselves if they really want their troops in a conflict where not only do our young men need to concern themselves with being injured and killed, but with an enemy that may be all too eager to calibrate its mines for maximum castrating effect.

(Pictured: Generals McChrystal and Petraeus.)

A woman named Paula Broadwell, whose book about Gen. David Petraeus will be published shortly, touched some tender nerves with a couple of posts at Thomas Ricks's Best Defense at Foreign Policy. Michael Cohen at Democracy Arsenal summed it up.

There's been a lot of back and forth between Paula Broadwell and Josh Foust about the issue of village razing in Afghanistan. . . . I won't bother to summarize the entire discussion, but it began with what I think can be charitably described as Paula's less than empathetic response to an Afghan village being destroyed. What I find most striking [besides] the rather bloodless manner in which Broadwell describes the incident [is the] unintentional, insight into how dramatically the war in Afghanistan has shifted in opposition to the population-centric policies being espoused a year ago.

A lot of COIN advocates will tell you that . . . even though airstrikes are up 300% and targeted killings are on the rise and more homes are being destroyed since General David Petraeus took over command . . . it's still just counter-insurgency. But for those with long memories the operational approach . . . under General McChrystal was to avoid civilian casualties and even property destruction at all costs, even at the risk of putting US troops in harm's way. (Some even argued that protecting civilians was actually more important than killing insurgents).

Cohen reminds us that the all-merciful McChrystal even wrote: "Destroying a home or property jeopardizes the livelihood of an entire family -- and creates more insurgents. We sow the seeds of our demise." 

The irony, of course, is that Petraeus was supposed to be the picture of moderation in contrast to Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Not only was the latter let go for indiscretions to Rolling Stone on the part of him and his staff, but, while in Iraq before his Afghanistan command, he helped with the cover-up of Cpl. Pat Tillman's death by friendly fire. Also, as Commander of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq from 2003 to 2008, McChrystal acquired a reputation for ruthlessness. Along with killing al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his unit killed or captured many other al-Qaeda leaders. It was also accused of abusing detainees.

Has Petraeus, then, bent and twisted counterinsurgency beyond all recognition? Near as I can tell, a main feature of COIN is that it's supposed to protect civilians. At this point, in Afghanistan, does anybody really know what counterinsurgency is anymore?