by Sumitha Narayanan Kutty
It has been a worrisome few weeks for Iran. The negotiations with world powers over its nuclear program are seeing significant differences, there is chaos in Iraq to Iran’s west, and more recently, the political transition in its eastern neighbor, Afghanistan, hit a serious bump with allegations of [...]]]>
by Sumitha Narayanan Kutty
It has been a worrisome few weeks for Iran. The negotiations with world powers over its nuclear program are seeing significant differences, there is chaos in Iraq to Iran’s west, and more recently, the political transition in its eastern neighbor, Afghanistan, hit a serious bump with allegations of fraud threatening to derail the process.
The presidential election stalemate has now been temporarily resolved with both candidates — Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai — agreeing to a “comprehensive audit.” However, the second more crucial aspect of this agreement, the formation of a “national unity government,” remains ambiguous at best. This lack of definition has left room for different interpretations.
Any uncertainty in Afghanistan’s political transition does not bode well for the country’s future stability, especially on the eve of the American withdrawal. At this juncture, no other country could be more worried about what goes on in Kabul than Iran, perhaps even more so than the United States.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s intervention, which ultimately helped clinch the deal in Kabul, received only a murmur of resistance in Tehran. The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs made no comment on the development in its media briefing this week and instead condemned the bombing in eastern Afghanistan, which killed forty.
At her briefing the week before, the Foreign Ministry’s spokesperson, Marziyeh Afkham, stressed that the future of Afghanistan depends on the formation of “an all-inclusive government.” The Iranian administration, as it has done in the past, reiterated its “support for any candidate” who was declared Afghanistan’s new president. Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia and Pacific Affairs Ebrahim Rahimpour also conveyed the same in a meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai — Iran favors no candidate and “whoever wins is the internal matter of Afghanistan.”
Iran’s Interests in Afghanistan
An often ignored neighbor, Iran has a lot at stake in Afghanistan. For starters, the country, unlike the United States, cannot afford an “exit” from the region. This makes Afghanistan’s future stability ever more critical to Tehran’s strategy for its immediate neighborhood in the short term.
Iran pledged over $900 million in aid to Afghanistan between 2002 and 2013. It spent over half of that amount on infrastructure projects in western Afghanistan that feed into Iran’s regional integration strategy, particularly in the border province of Herat. The protection of its financial assets and personnel engaged in commerce and trade is another priority for Tehran. Almost fifty percent of Afghanistan’s oil imports are provided by Iran and trade between the two countries has doubled in recent years to over $2 billion, with Afghanistan accounting for 45 percent of Iran’s exports.
The countries’ centuries of interactions have produced deeply entrenched political, economic, religious, ethnic, and cultural influences that have proved very useful to Iran in recent decades — particularly during Afghanistan’s inflection points such as the Soviet invasion of 1979, the fight against the Taliban through the 1990s, and the group’s ultimate ouster in 2001.
Through the span of the Soviet invasion, Iran focused on creating what scholar Mohsen Milani labels, an “ideological sphere of influence” in Afghanistan using Shiite and non-Pashtun (Tajik, Uzbek) groups that were based in the country’s north.
The 1990s were spent consolidating these “Northern Alliance” forces into powerful political players who eventually formed the government in 1992 under a power-sharing agreement. But before the Iranians could savor this victory, ethnic rivalries between the warlords dragged Kabul into a civil war and eventually gave way to the Taliban’s rise. When the United States intervened in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban in 2001, Iran provided much needed ground support to the US through the very same Northern Alliance.
Since then, Tehran has worked to first, preserve its former relationships with key political players — Shia and non-Pashtun — and second, pragmatically forge new ones with anti-Taliban Pashtun leaders. Iran is constantly acccused of “meddling” by the West, but when it comes to Afghanistan, it has neither resisted a Pashtun president nor emphasized candidates from minority communities. It repeatedly demonstrated this in the 2001 Bonn negotiations as well as the 2004 and 2009 elections. The Iranians do not object as the Tajik and Hazara minorities are satisfactorily represented in the Afghan cabinet.
Abdullah or Ghani?
Notwithstanding the current situation, how would a new president, be it Abdullah Abdullah or Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, impact Kabul’s ties with Tehran?
Abdullah, previously the presidential frontrunner and long-time leading opposition figure, has good relations with Iran and a win could help boost its role in the country. A former aide to Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, Abdullah commands support among minority Tajiks (the late Massoud had a chequered history with the Iranians and engaged both Iran and Pakistan to meet his needs). Iran was quick to condemn an attempt on Abdullah’s life in June.
In the run up to the first round of elections, Abdullah was instrumental in bringing together other pro-Iranian former warlords including Ismail Khan, an old Iranian hand with a power base in the border province of Herat, which is the heart of Iran’s influence in Afghanistan. This list also included parliamentary candidates such as Mohammad Yunus Qanooni, an ethnic Tajik and recently installed vice president; and Mohammad Mohaqiq, leader of the Shia Hazara community and founder of the People’s Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan. Mohaqiq is also Abdullah’s second vice-presidential candidate.
When it comes to Ghani’s relations with Iran, there is little in comparison. This former finance minister of Pashtun ethnicity has remained too closely associated with the West for Iran’s comfort. On his part, Ghani has over the years maintained a cautious distance from Iran. His presidency may not freeze out Tehran but it won’t exactly prioritize its interests either.
The Waiting Game
Iran’s political clout in Kabul will continue to prove beneficial to Tehran but there has been open pushback against its rising influence in recent years. Sections of the Afghan public and its media have accused the Iranian government of funding Afghan provincial council members. Protests targeting its consulate in Herat are on the rise with even the provincial governor Said Fazilullah Wahidi mincing no words about the “unfriendliness of Iran.”There was even some outrage when one of Abdullah’s vice presidential candidates paid tribute to the leader of the Iranian revolution, Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini, on the 25th anniversary of his death.
Given all of the above, Tehran may opt to keep a low profile and conduct its politics with greater restraint. Interestingly, Iran and the United States are on the same page regarding the election — a policy of “no favorites” with support for transparency in the election audit process. Ideally, this would be followed by the formation of an all-inclusive or unity government.
For now, Tehran is playing the waiting game in Afghanistan. With the country battling a “terrifying” threat in Iraq and its economic future hinging on an increasingly elusive nuclear deal, Iran cautiously hopes the Afghan political transition will resolve itself and not upset its calculations to the east as well.
– Sumitha Narayanan Kutty is a foreign affairs analyst and journalist specializing in Iran and South Asia. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Quarterly, Al-Monitor, Asia Policy, and the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs. She previously worked in reputed broadcast and new media firms in India and is currently a columnist for The News Minute. Sumitha holds an M.A. in Security Studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Washington DC and a post-graduate diploma in broadcast journalism from the Asian College of Journalism (ACJ), India. Find her on Twitter.
Photo: Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani (R) speaks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai during their meeting at Tehran’s Saadabad Palace Dec. 8, 2013.
]]>by Charles Naas
President Barack Obama and the United Nations have again warned President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that, unless he signs a bilateral security agreement, which gives all foreign troops complete immunity from Afghan law, these troops will be withdrawn at the end of the year. To do so would leave the Afghan military, [...]]]>
by Charles Naas
President Barack Obama and the United Nations have again warned President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that, unless he signs a bilateral security agreement, which gives all foreign troops complete immunity from Afghan law, these troops will be withdrawn at the end of the year. To do so would leave the Afghan military, a force that now numbers over 300,000, without further western training programs, especially in the maintenance of modern equipment, infantry/special forces tactics and communications but still facing a continued Taliban opposition.
Last year the Loya Jirga, a traditional body of eminent tribal leaders including many from Pashtun areas along the border with Pakistan — the center of Afghan Taliban strength — recommended approval of the agreement, but Karzai said the President who takes over after the April election should be responsible for an action with such long-term consequences. He has withstood allied pressure for over a year and relations between the western allies and the Afghan government are gravely frayed. Karzai’s action may seem on the surface self-defeating in light of the military’s continued need for assistance, but lets go more deeply into his dilemma.
Over 100,000 American and allied forces have been in Afghanistan for over a decade and there has been heavy fighting in localized areas with substantial civilian casualties. We have used our highly aggressive Special Forces and drones that have had some success militarily but frequently produced civilian losses. And, the Taliban usually move back in once the foreign forces depart and reportedly have a strong presence in over half of the provinces. There is no sign that the struggle is near a successful conclusion. The on-again, off-again political negotiations between the Afghan government and the Taliban — aimed at finding political compromises — have apparently made little progress.
Perhaps more important is that the country has become highly divided politically over the US presence. We have poured billions of dollars into our efforts to modernize parts of the country, which includes military expenditures, Afghanistan’s educational and legal systems, and its roads and medical facilities. Following the draconian rule by the Taliban, much of this aid was welcomed by major parts of the population but it also deepened the gulf between the traditional rural tribal society and the urban population. The latter have borne the brunt of the daily presence of road blocks, convoys roaring through the streets and suicide bombings. The villages have been subjected to intrusive and terrifying night raids often directed by faulty intelligence. Not to mention the fact that many of the US-led reforms in Afghan society have violate religious beliefs and long-held customs.
In Afghanistan, a nation weary from the current conflict as well as its long civil war and resistance to the Soviet Union, the US is looked upon by many as the occupier, the enemy. Karzai recognizes this fact and has been responsive by criticizing many aspects of our use of arms and refusing to sign the agreement. Any leader in Afghanistan is also cognizant of the historical fate of those who have been identified with the presence of foreign forces. All the important communist leaders who came to power as a result of the 1973 coup and the Soviet invasion met dire fates.
It’s a rough and tough country and, contrary to our own society, history is a living and breathing thing. The Afghan leaders are also fully aware that in Iran a status of forces agreement caused massive demonstrations and marked the political emergence of Ayatollah Khomeini. Karzai may have simply had enough of us and his domestic burdens.
With his warnings, President Obama has established a politically defensible basis for ending the US presence in Afghanistan and implementing a full withdrawal at the end of this year; that may well be his purpose.
But, would a status of forces agreement, which cannot be signed until the security agreement is finalized, and the retention of 3-10,000 troops ensure Afghanistan’s prosperity? Very unlikely. Whoever is elected as the new Afghan president must continue to deal with a Taliban that has shown little inclination to bargain seriously, cope with all the ethnic and cultural tensions that beset that country and depend economically on foreign assistance.
Let us not expect the victory parade. We can at least hope that the activities of the remnants al-Qaeda, the reason we first invaded the country, will be minimized and that, as in years past, the country can slog along day-to-day. The Pakistan government has announced a military intervention into its part of the tribal area but, unless it is very substantial and near permanent, the impact in Afghanistan will be years in coming.
As one who values dearly his four years served in that country several decades ago, I deeply regret my pessimism.
]]>by Tyler Cullis
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that January was the first month without a U.S. drone strikein the Pakistani tribal areas since 2011. The Washington Post argues that this is the result of a request from Pakistan’s government after ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, though some suggest [...]]]>
by Tyler Cullis
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism reports that January was the first month without a U.S. drone strikein the Pakistani tribal areas since 2011. The Washington Post argues that this is the result of a request from Pakistan’s government after ongoing peace talks with the Taliban, though some suggest that President Obama’s new rules on targeting, released simultaneously with his National Defense University speech in May 2013, have limited the range of actors that would have earlier been targetable by the CIA and Defense Department.
It is likewise unclear whether this development will continue in the months ahead. Good reasons, however, suggest so as the war in Afghanistan draws down and the U.S. (potentially) loses access to bases in the country and to human intelligence. Below I detail some key issues we will need to pay attention to in the days ahead to see whether the White House will tilt away from the war-everywhere posture that the United States has assumed since Sept. 11.
Will the Afghan War come to a close?
It is becoming increasingly clear that President Hamid Karzai will not sign the U.S.-Afghan Bilateral Security Agreement before presidential elections in April. This poses a major dilemma for the White House, which must decide whether to make contingency plans for a small residual force should Afghan approval be forthcoming at a later date or plan a full withdrawal. But the implications run much deeper as to both the U.S.’s legal rationale for its war on al-Qaeda and the U.S.’s ability to carry out drone operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas.
If the White House is forced to commit to a total withdrawal by the end of 2014, the U.S. will lose its last remaining zone of active hostilities in its war with al-Qaeda. In this way, the legal rationale for drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia will be completely untethered from any traditional war theater. This bodes ill for the continued ability of the Obama administration to wage drone warfare without incurring massive reputational damage to the United States.
Moreover, as the New York Times reported, a total withdrawal would mean the loss of basing operations in Afghanistan and thus the loss of staging grounds for CIA drone flights into Pakistan’s tribal areas. Without good options elsewhere, U.S. drone operations in the tribal areas will be seriously circumscribed, if not altogether curtailed.
How will the White House interpret its own policy guidelines?
During his May speech, President Obama outlined new targeting rules to be effective outside areas of active hostilities. These rules provide that “the United States will use lethal force only against a target that poses a continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons.” In the absence of such a threat, the U.S. will forgo the use of lethal force (i.e., drone strikes).
However, a leading human rights lawyer, Sarah Knuckey, caught a discrepancy between the President’s policy guidelines and the justification provided by an administration official for last week’s drone strike on an al-Shabaab commander in Somalia. Instead of posing a “continuing, imminent threat to U.S. persons,” as is mandated, the U.S. official said that Ahmed Abdi Godane, the target, posed an “imminent threat to U.S. interests in the region.” Intended or not, the switch in the operative language is cause for concern, as “U.S. interests” could be stretched indefinitely to render a much wider swath of individuals targetable for drone strikes.
What is important, however, is whether the administration adopts an expansive or narrow interpretation of its own policy guidelines. With such elastic concepts as “imminence” and “U.S. interests” determining who is targetable, the White House can opt to keep the U.S. on permanent war footing long past the Iraq and Afghan Wars if it so chooses. Transparency in how the U.S. targets individuals and conducts drone strikes will be crucial to determining which of the two paths the President has chosen.
Will the U.S.’s traditional allies continue to cooperate on intelligence?
In a major policy speech at the Harvard Law School in 2011, CIA Director John O. Brennan argued that “when the [U.S.] upholds the rule of law, governments around the globe are more likely to provide us with intelligence we need to disrupt ongoing plots.” However, U.S. allies, especially in Europe, have long castigated the U.S. for its “global war on terror” and parted ways with successive White Houses over the applicable legal framework. Nonetheless, NATO allies have continued to share intelligence regarding foreign terrorist organizations, up to and including locational data for U.S. drone strikes.
Last week, however, a leading UK barrister published legal advice for a British parliamentary group concerning the legality of GCHQ surveillance, as well as intelligence cooperation with the United States. This legal advice included the striking conclusion that should a UK person share intelligence with the U.S. with the knowledge that such intelligence could be used for a drone strike, that person might be criminally liable as an “accessory to murder” under UK law. Already, a case was pressed on such grounds (though it failed for different reasons).
This was well-publicized in the British press and received much attention in U.S. legal circles. What effect it will have on intelligence cooperation is unclear, but the implications of “business as usual” have been rendered transparent. The White House can put forth dubious legal justifications for its drone operations, but that will not prevent close allies from risking criminal liability should they continue to cooperate with the U.S.
]]>Editor’s note: Mr. Naas is a retired Foreign Service Officer who served 4 years in Afghanistan during better times.
President Obama has announced that the United States will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Massive amounts of equipment are already en route back to bases in this country. [...]]]>
Editor’s note: Mr. Naas is a retired Foreign Service Officer who served 4 years in Afghanistan during better times.
President Obama has announced that the United States will withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Massive amounts of equipment are already en route back to bases in this country. On Jan. 11, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai visited Washington to meet with President Obama and to hammer out understandings that will guide both countries in 2013 and into 2014. Photos of the two leaders’ reveal few smiles; the future of Afghanistan is at stake. Now, in the eleventh year of US efforts to destroy al Qaeda, help Afghan leaders defeat the Taliban insurgency and create the conditions for a stable government and basic security, we are facing the end game of our commitments.
The early January discussion centered essentially on a number of key security matters related to our planned withdrawal:
- the pace of Western force withdrawal and the size of the forces, if any, to remain in Afghanistan for the indefinite future;
- the training of Afghan troops and police, particularly village police;
- the combat role, if any, of western forces and a definition of the legal status of the troops who carry out these remaining tasks; we seek legal immunity for our forces, which Karzai finds difficult to accept (in Iraq, Nouri al-Maliki could not accept this and the US military role thus essentially ended);
- a further significant issue to be settled is the role of the small remaining training cadre in emergency combat situations such as when training missions face superior Taliban units.
As the two presidents looked ahead with trepidation on the face of one party and resolve on the other’s, history hung heavily on them. In the past forty years, Afghanistan has had no sustained period of peace nor a strong sense of national unity and purpose. The coup by a coterie of domestic communists and young military officers in 1973 and the removal of the monarchy started the long down hill course of the Afghan people. There followed the Soviet invasion in 1979, the resistance to the Soviets by the mujahiddin (tribal/anti-communist groups) who were aided by the US, and the withdrawal of the Soviet troops in 1989, followed by the long civil war from which the Taliban emerged as preeminent. The Taliban enforced an extremist Islam and provided a sanctuary for al Qaeda that led to US intervention following the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers on September 11,2001.
In the decade that has followed, over 2,000 Americans have been killed and in excess of 18,000 have been wounded in fighting the Taliban and allied tribal units based in Pakistan. Peak strength of US forces was slightly over 101,000 in 2011. The cost of the war has been estimated at about one trillion dollars. What have we gained from this very sizable investment?
Actually, quite a lot has been achieved. A new central government was established by our government and allied western powers, a reasonably fair election has been held and President Karzai has so far pledged to observe the restriction of a two term presidency. A government exists in all the provinces, although some in Taliban areas in the southern and eastern parts of the country are under continuing stress. A fairly free press has been established. Many critical roads have been rebuilt and new ones reach into areas never before provided with the means of transportation. Schools, some for girls, as well as medical facilities, have also been constructed. Some of the greatest strides have occurred in the realm of communications; computers, cell phones, email, social media etc. have gained a solid footing. Millions of Afghans have returned from Pakistan and Iran where they had taken refuge during either the Soviet or civil war periods. Perhaps most important for the long term has been the discovery of vast mineral resources in the nation, including huge amounts of lithium, which is a vital component in batteries. One source reportedly noted that Afghanistan could be the Saudi Arabia of lithium. Finally, a national army of over 300,000 is receiving training from US and other western military forces.
Unfortunately, much of the above has a big BUT after it. The nation is still seriously divided by tribal and ethnic rivalries that existed long before I was there a few decades ago. The army, after extensive training, still has only a few units able to take on the Taliban who, although having suffered serious casualties, have endured and have important assets in major cities and provinces, including those to the north of the Hindu Kush. The porous border with Pakistan has not ben sealed and the tribes provide a terribly important place for rest, resupply and training in new armaments. Efforts to negotiate some sort of political solution with the Taliban have not produced important results as yet and it appears that the Taliban are determined to wait out our departure and attempt a return as we steadily reduce our forces. Perhaps the most significant development over time is the increasing friction between our two peoples at the street level. We are, I am told, more and more frequently viewed as another occupier like so many that have preceded us. Ongoing green on brown casualties are a painful reminder that perhaps already we have just stayed too long.
Looking ahead to the period after 2014 and to that leading up to our departure, we can expect severe disorder at times and threats to any hope for Afghan stability.
- We can expect a slight revival of al Qaeda, which has lost dozens of its leaders and as an organization has spread and is now concentrated in East and North Africa and the Yemen. It will continue to be a militant force in the Pakistan tribal areas and in a position to cooperate with some of Pakistan’s indigenous Islamist extremists.
- The Taliban have been badly hurt in clashes with US troops but are still a strong, essentially Afghan insurgency that must be a part of future political accommodation.
- Domestic ethnic/tribal rivalries will be a way of life and at any time can erupt into violence; all the hatreds of the civil war have not been reconciled.
- There is a definite danger that Afghanistan will be the cock pit of regional rivalries. Pakistan views the country as part of its strategic defense depth against India and India in turn is increasing its presence and aid programs to counter Pakistan. For many years Iran has considered western Afghanistan an area of special interest and has had a large presence. The substantial Shi’ite population, roughly 15-20%, are considered to be a ward of Iran.
- Afghanistan’s mineral wealth will attract many countries and that will have negative as well as positive consequences.
Our direct interests in Afghanistan are limited but the above factors will keep American diplomacy busy. The temptation to yet again get deeply involved will also contribute to great divisions here at home over America’s international role.
Photo: President Barack Obama and President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan deliver remarks at the White House in Washington, D.C., on May 12, 2010. White House Photo.
]]>The International Crisis Group has issued a report strongly critical of the expectations being advanced by US policymakers that Afghanistan will be “stable” enough by 2014 for a handover of national security to Kabul:
A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present [...]]]>
The International Crisis Group has issued a report strongly critical of the expectations being advanced by US policymakers that Afghanistan will be “stable” enough by 2014 for a handover of national security to Kabul:
A repeat of previous elections’ chaos and chicanery would trigger a constitutional crisis, lessening chances the present political dispensation can survive the transition. In the current environment, prospects for clean elections and a smooth transition are slim. The electoral process is mired in bureaucratic confusion, institutional duplication and political machinations. Electoral officials indicate that security and financial concerns will force the 2013 provincial council polls to 2014. There are alarming signs Karzai hopes to stack the deck for a favoured proxy. Demonstrating at least will to ensure clean elections could forge a degree of national consensus and boost popular confidence, but steps toward a stable transition must begin now to prevent a precipitous slide toward state collapse. Time is running out.
Institutional rivalries, conflicts over local authority and clashes over the role of Islam in governance have caused the country to lurch from one constitutional crisis to the next for nearly a decade. As foreign aid and investment decline with the approach of the 2014 drawdown, so, too, will political cohesion in the capital.
…. Although Karzai has signalled his intent to exit gracefully, fears remain that he may, directly or indirectly, act to ensure his family’s continued majority ownership stake in the political status quo. This must be avoided. It is critical to keep discord over election results to a minimum; any move to declare a state of emergency in the event of a prolonged electoral dispute would be catastrophic. The political system is too fragile to withstand an extension of Karzai’s mandate or an electoral outcome that appears to expand his family’s dynastic ambitions. Either would risk harming negotiations for a political settlement with the armed and unarmed opposition. It is highly unlikely a Karzai-brokered deal would survive under the current constitutional scheme, in which conflicts persist over judicial review, distribution of local political power and the role of Islamic law in shaping state authority and citizenship. Karzai has considerable sway over the system, but his ability to leverage the process to his advantage beyond 2014 has limits. The elections must be viewed as an opportunity to break with the past and advance reconciliation.
Quiet planning should, nonetheless, begin now for the contingencies of postponed elections and/or imposition of a state of emergency in the run up to or during the presidential campaign season in 2014. The international community must work with the government to develop an action plan for the possibility that elections are significantly delayed or that polling results lead to prolonged disputes or a run-off. The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) should likewise be prepared to organise additional support to Afghan forces as needed in the event of an election postponement or state of emergency; its leadership would also do well to assess its own force protection needs in such an event well in advance of the election.
All this will require more action by parliament, less interference from the president and greater clarity from the judiciary. Failure to move on these fronts could indirectly lead to a political impasse that would provide a pretext for the declaration of a state of emergency, a situation that would likely lead to full state collapse. Afghan leaders must recognise that the best guarantee of the state’s stability is its ability to guarantee the rule of law during the political and military transition in 2013-2014. If they fail at this, that crucial period will at best result in deep divisions and conflicts within the ruling elite that the Afghan insurgency will exploit. At worst, it could trigger extensive unrest, fragmentation of the security services and perhaps even a much wider civil war. Some possibilities for genuine progress remain, but the window for action is narrowing.
Both the Obama Administration and Romney campaign have committed themselves to completing the handover by 2014.
]]>The allegations were first brought to light by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. Filkins later confirmed the exchanges of cash with Karzai himself, who [...]]]>
The allegations were first brought to light by New York Times correspondent Dexter Filkins. Filkins later confirmed the exchanges of cash with Karzai himself, who called the allegation defamation even as he admitted it was true.
But what exactly does the exchange of cash mean?
Iran has long been involved in post-Taliban Afghanistan. As Amb. James Dobbins recounts in his section of the U.S. Institute of Peace’s Iran Primer, which was also published at Tehran Bureau, Iran’s relationship with the Northern Alliance allowed the December 2001 Bonn Conference to end successfully with the creation of an Afghani government. It was also Iran, says Dobbins, who represented the U.S. at the conference, and suggested adding language about elections to the interim Afghan constitution created in Bonn.
Most analysts seem to agree that the “bags of cash” pseudo-scandal only reinforces the notion that Iran and the U.S. share an interest in a stable Afghanistan, or at worst, that the cash handed over pales in comparison to what the U.S. throws around with Karzai unlikely to be beholden to Iranian demands.
“Worries about geopolitical bogeymen can overwhelm good sense,” writes Foreign Policy‘s Steve LeVine on his blog about oil geopolitics. “Just who is Tehran endangering by keeping Karzai lubricated with pocket change? For one, the fellows U.S. troops are fighting: the Taliban.”
“Today’s alarmism is partly over Karzai’s use of some of the Iran money to buy off Taliban leaders. To which one can rightly reply, So what? The strategic payoff is how power operates in Afghanistan,” he adds.
Michigan professor Juan Cole blogs that the revelation underscores several realities, among them “that the US and Iran are de facto allies in Afghanistan (in fact both of them are deeply opposed to the Taliban and their backers among hard line cells of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence).”
“US military spokesmen have sometimes attempted to make a case that Iran is helping the hyper-Sunni, Shiite-killing, anti-Karzai Taliban, which is not very likely to be true or at least not on a significant scale,” he continues. “The revelations of Tehran’s support for Karzai give credence to Iranian officials’ claims of having been helpful to NATO, since they both want Karzai to succeed.”
Even Ann Marlowe, a visiting fellow at the neoconservative Hudson Institute, doesn’t think the revelation is a big deal, despite underscoring the Karzai’s “venality”: “On the bright side, the Iranian money probably doesn’t influence Mr. Karzai’s policy or Afghan actions any more than, say, our money does,” she writes on a New York Times online symposium on the subject. “The Afghan president has always had a ‘strategy of tactics,’ playing one powerbroker off against another to make sure he stays afloat.”
Thought she concludes that the money might be intended to hasten a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Marlowe acknowledges the ‘bags of money’ don’t pose a great threat to the United States: “The bogyman of Iranian influence in Afghanistan is overhyped. The Iranians have every interest in a relatively stable neighbor.”
This is just about the same view as neoconservative Council on Foreign Relations scholar Max Boot, who writes in Commentary: “These cash payments hardly mean that Karzai is a dupe of Iran. He gets much more money and support from the U.S. than from the Iranians, and he knows that.”
“In a way, what the Iranians are doing, while undoubtedly cynical, is not that far removed from conventional foreign-aid programs run by the U.S., Britain, and other powers that also seek to curry influence with their donations,” Boot notes. He does, however, have concerns that the Iran-Karzai relationship is an indication of what is to come for Afghanistan should the U.S. “leave prematurely.”
So there you have it. Not much on the left, not much on the right. The “bags of cash” scandal has ended up being little more than the rare confirmation of business as usual.
]]>- Commentary: Max Boot blogs that, in light of Hamid Karzai’s acknowledgment that he receives $2 million a year from Iran, “the Iranians have attempted similar dollar diplomacy in Iraq, Lebanon, and lots of other countries. No surprise that they should try the same thing with another neighbor.” Boot says Iran’s policy is to give money to both the Afghan government and, allegedly, the Taliban, and its tendency to make contributions in cash is cynical and “seedy.” But the strategy is “not that far removed from conventional foreign aid programs run by the U.S., Britain and other powers.” Karzai’s decision to take Iranian money doesn’t make him a “dupe of Iran,” and he gets far more money from the U.S., says Boot. Instead, Boot takes the lesson that the revelations should be a warning that if the U.S. leaves, “Afghanistan will once again be the scene of a massive civil war, with neighboring states, and in particular Pakistan and Iran, doing their utmost to exert their influence to the detriment of our long-term interests.”
- Pajamas Media: Michael Ledeen writes that the Wikileaks release shows that Iran is engaging in the “murder of Americans.” Ledeen says the documents show proof that he’s “been pretty much on-target all along” and that his critics owe him an apology. “But the really big apologies are due from our political leaders, who… have failed to respond, either politically (as I have proposed) or militarily,” he writes. He names many officials from the Clinton, Bush and Obama White Houses and says they are “all accomplices to the great evil that is the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and calls for overt support of Iranian opposition movements.
- The Washington Post: Thomas J. Raleigh, a strategic planner at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad since August 2008, opines that while Iraq is building a stable and prosperous economy, “Iran will be feeling increasingly isolated.” Iranian visitors to Iraq will see the benefits of free trade and democracy and will come back to Iran wanting a similar standard of living. “As the Iraqi standard of living rises, Iranian leaders will eventually find themselves confronting an economic ‘comparative crisis’ much like that East German leaders confronted in the 1980s as their people looked enviously ‘over the wall’,” writes Raleigh.
- The Washington Post: Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl writes that supporting free access to the internet should be better funded by the State Department and describes the success of such firewall breaching firms as UltraReach, a company which allows internet users to circumvent national firewalls. Diehl writes that the companies’ founders say that with $30 million in funding they could “effectively destroy the Internet controls of Iran and most other dictatorships.” Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner has said that defeating internet censorship would be a “game changer” in countries like Iran. Diehl writes that the holdup in funding such projects is rooted in a fear of offending the Chinese government. “State is polishing its policy and preparing yet more training programs, Iranians and people from dozens of other countries are trying to get free access to the Internet,” concludes Diehl.
Calling Karzai a “bandit” who “has no interest in assuming the burden of governing Afghanistan,” Ajami stated that the bleakly pessimistic November 2009 memo by U.S. ambassador Karl Eikenberry arguing against a troop surge was “completely on the mark”. He went on to argue that “the Afghanistan campaign can’t be won,” that “there’s nothing to be gained in Afghanistan,” and that the notion of Afghanistan as the “central front” in the war on terror is a myth.
“Look, I was a hawk on the Iraq war, and I didn’t question the Iraq war,” Ajami said. “I haven’t really written much on Afghanistan by way of criticism…but I have dark thoughts about Afghanistan and whether Afghanistan is worth American blood and American treasure.”
His interviewer, former Reagan speechwriter Peter Robinson, was clearly expecting something more upbeat and seemed taken aback by Ajami’s criticisms of the war. “Well, I didn’t expect you to be quite so grim about it,” Robinson muttered in response, before asking whether Ajami felt that the recent commitment of 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan was worth it. Ajami didn’t answer the question directly, but clearly indicated a negative answer, concluding of the war that “it just doesn’t end well.”
Ajami’s blunt attack on the war is particularly interesting given his close connections to the neoconservatives who were the strongest advocates of the recent troop surge. Indeed, if one were to rank the Arabists with the greatest influence on neoconservative thinking about the Middle East, Ajami would likely be second only to Bernard Lewis. Does this influence mean that his criticisms will receive a respectful hearing on the right? Or will he receive the same treatment as previous right-wing critics of the war like George Will, whose September 2009 call for the U.S. to “get out of Afghanistan” brought forth a series of vicious attacks from the neocons alleging cowardice and appeasement? (Peter Wehner’s jab that Will’s column “could have been written in Japanese aboard the USS Missouri” was par for the course.) Perhaps the most likely outcome is that Ajami’s inconvenient criticisms will simply be ignored altogether.
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