My last post noted how the blockbuster memoir by Robert M. Gates reinforces the points many observers have made about the defects of the Obama administration’s national security process. The revelations also bolster my own argument that President Obama and his team share a good deal of the responsibility for the ongoing crisis in relations between Washington and Hamid Karzai’s government […]
Washington is in a rush and everyone knows it The U.S. commentariat spent much of last month ruminating over the lessons of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Left unexamined were the important lessons relating to the U.S. endgame in that country and how they should be applied to the accelerating withdrawal from Afghanistan.* I […]
by Jennifer Norris Americans who left the theatre watching “Zero Dark Thirty” thinking that the dark stain of torture is in our past, should be cautioned by our exit strategy in Afghanistan. As a 2014 deadline for ending our combat mission in Afghanistan approaches, policymakers say that our main objective is to prepare Afghan security […]
President Hamid Karzai will go down in Afghan history as a weird sort – of politician, of man, who dresses with flagrant panache, favoring a mix of traditional outfits and English tailored clothes and who lives a strangely, elegantly mixed up pro-Western and half-traditional life, guarded, in Kabul. In his politics, too, he favors a […]
Even as President Obama trumpets his plans to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan in two years’ time, he also insists (though in a sotto voce way) that he wants to maintain a limited but long-term military presence focused on counter-terrorism missions and training Afghan security forces. Of course, this is the same promise he […]
There are several updates to the key points I outlined in last week’s post about President Obama’s handling of the Afghan war. The first concerns the success of the surge of 30,000 extra troops that Mr. Obama announced in December 2009, most of which were deployed in southern Afghanistan. As I noted, one of the significant […]
There are major dents in the president’s foreign policy claims A spate of new books offers critical appraisals of President Obama’s stewardship of national affairs. Bob Woodward’s latest volume, “The Price of Politics,” draws an unflattering portrait of his management of fiscal policy, echoing themes in Ron Suskind’s “Confidence Men.” On foreign policy, Ahmed Rashid’s […]
Right after U.S. forces went into Afghanistan in 2001 — in those heady “Paris 1944” days of liberating Kabul and most of the country — one of my best friends put to me an urgent request. Knowing I was en route to Kabul he asked me to please bring him a “Karzai hat” upon my […]
As the debate over the post-2014 Afghanistan gains more attention, observers fear a ‘political earthquake’ in the country where the US troops’ withdrawal coincides with the next Afghan presidential elections. With the exit of the United States, Afghanistan’s economy and sources of financing the government in Kabul […]
President Obama’s announcement of far larger and more accelerated withdrawals of U.S. forces from Afghanistan than many had expected affects Indian security interests and the U.S.-India relationship in significant ways.
Politics turns on public finance; public finance turns on politics. Afghanistan is no different than the United States, or the United Kingdom on those terms. So it comes as a dismaying shock that the government of Afghanistan might have to bail out its largest and most important private bank. Kabul Bank has taken losses as […]
Though he might well trot about in handmade footwear, President Karzai has been flip-flopping, first moving away from his backers and back into the fold when promises to coddle his administration recently fell to strong remonstrations and anger within the diplomatic circles in Kabul. First, citing charges of election fraud, he promised that he won’t […]
My colleagues Pat Frost and Rob Grace ( over at the Law and Security Strategy blog) and I have written extensively on why the situation in Afghanistan looks grim. The war there is a long haul; the Karzai government is corrupt, a two-timing, untrustworthy thing; viable solutions to the conflict in Afghanistan require negotiated international […]
The story of US/Karzai government negotiations with members of the Taliban have already taken so many twists (mostly rhetorical rather than substantive) that one should not feel ashamed to be confused as to what exactly is going on between the two warring parties. One second the Obama administration admits (Gates) to ongoing negotiations and the […]
Well now. This isn’t good. The Karzai Administration is taking in more than $1 million a year off the books from Iran’s government to pay for presidential expenses. The Chief of Staff is taking in the cash, no doubt helping Mr. Karzai pay for his lavishly, handsomely decorated, pain-stakingly made shawls. Some of it goes […]