(Nighttime) View From The Top, 30 September 2008

I apologize for the delay today. Just never got the head-of-steam necessary to peruse the internet this morning, and then work came around.

I have loads of links, however, to pass along.

-- The building of a competent and (only slightly) dependent Afghan National Army continues. This time, with Italian planes! I guess it's better than nothing, but I wish that this was an indication of Italian morale rather than a shrewd business maneuver. Allez-ons, Europe!

-- A column from the UK's Guardian explains the place Malalai Kakar, one of the prominent women Afghan policemen, holds within the long tradition of fighting Afghan women. The piece is pretty fluffy and light on details, but the story of Kakar herself is one every American and, more importantly, every Afghan should hear. Furthermore, her death at the hands of the Taliban highlights the gang-like quality of her murderers. She was targeted because of her effectiveness and because of her figurehead-like quality as a female hero. Again, let me reiterate: the Taliban aren't uber-Muslims, they aren't holy warriors infuriated by the "occupation" of Jerusalem. They're a gang, eager for power and dismissive of the interest of "the people."

-- Good article from the CS Monitor's Gordon Lubold. My gut says he's right, that there is a significant chunk of the military leadership that is frustrated by bureacratic friction and lame-duck lethargy of GWB in re: Afghanistan. I have no firm evidence this is correct, mind you, but the stuff I see on forums, blog-comments, and anecdotally, suggests that there's enough of an underswell of irritation that I wouldn't be surprised if there was a plan to blitz the new POTUS with the plans and hand him the pen to sign the orders.

(Plus in the article the man, the myth, the boy-wonder John Nagl gets a citation. Someone needs to start a tally of how many mentions that dude gets in a year. My guess? Over 100.)

-- AP report of 20,000 Pakistanis fleeing the fight in FATA for Afghanistan. While I'm sure that much of the flight is based on the increase in Pakistan military action in the region, I bet there's a group of people who look across the region and see more peaceful and less onerous conditions in Afghanistan under coalition forces, and think "Why not?" See the line from this NYTimes version* the story, with the line "Many refugees who fled Afghanistan for Pakistan in the 1980s have now returned home." Maybe a thin lining of optimism on the impending storm cloud?

Furtherly, while 20,000 refugees seems a large number, this CBC report claims that Pakistani officials think the clash between Taliban&Friends and the military has displaced as many as 500,000 people. Yikes.

-- In some of my more cynical moments, I begin to imagine a near-future news story that reads something like "politicians and countries previously in support of the War in Afghanistan have begun to change their minds based upon Nothing Happening." 

As the old adage goes, "the grass is always greener on the other side, and the less prominent war is always easier to support and more morally 'obvious'." That's how I remember it, at least. So here's a bold experiment: starting with this story of the aggregate death toll in Afghanistan reaching 535 since 2001, I'll keep track of when the first prominent voice that was "for Afghanistan" switches to "retrea-- err, 'strategic redeployment' from Afghanistan". If that person is still in support of the war when 535 die, but against it when another 535 die (that means a total fo 1070 for you liberal-arts majors), he/she shall receive a Shenanigans!!1! from your fearless bloggespondent (a should-be-word I'll apply for a patent).

-- This column, "Why the US is losing in Afghanistan",  from the Asia Times is an absolute must-read. Here's a money quote:

"The US has been slow to commit the resources required and has never adequately funded the conflict. The US failed to provide substantial funds early in the war, when national building and stability operations might well have stopped to resurgence of the Taliban and growth of the insurgency, and then reacted to the growth of the threat with inadequate resources and funding of the US military, US aid and diplomacy, and Afghan force development efforts. 

The end result is a consistent failure to provide the resources to allow the US and NATO/ISAF to seize the initiative, and defeat the insurgency. It is also a legacy of underfunding that has progressively increased the length and total cost of the war in human lives, the wounded, and dollars."

RTWT.

Well put, sir. Years ago, the author, Anthony Cordesman, used to be an aide to a Senator from Arizona, one John McCain. One can only hope that, if McCain is elected, Cordesman has the ear of POTUS.

-- On a non-GWoT note, this is an asinine idea that cements, for me, the idea of why I will never voluntarily live in California.

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* A more opinionated note: in the aforementioned NYTimes article, there's a bit of gamesmanship from Pakistan in the article. According to John Burns, the author (who I immensely respect as a reporter, btw) reports that:

"At a briefing for reporters on Monday in Islamabad, the Pakistan capital, a Pakistani military official said the Bajaur militants had put up stiff resistance and had used equipment and reinforcements from across the border in Afghanistan."

This leads to incriminations from Pakistani military officials that the coalition forces aren't preventing the inflow of terrorists from Afghanistan in the Pak-Taliban fight.

Whoop-dee-effin-doo, Pakistan

I apologize if I can't gin up the sympathy, but the claim that America hasn't a) committed as much blood-and-treasure as Pakistan to GWoT or b) kept up her end of the deal in re: to border security in Af-Pak, is ludicrous. Really.

The fact that the FATA region has become a festering culture-dish of anti-American Islamo-thugs is irrelevant to Pakistani officials. If one guy who is sympathetic to al-Qaeda's goals moves 100 yards from Afghanistan to Pakistan, it means that coalition forces are equally culpable in the "border battle."

B.S.

Get your s*** together, Pakistan, or get ready for the pharmaceutical-grade scrutiny that comes with an engaged U.S. public. Eastern-Asia-Business as usual, this ain't. You can no longer game the U.S. government into meaningless ten-digit-level bills of financial support of the Pakistani regime.