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Afghan Escalation: Eikenberry Dissents, Obama Feels Railroaded By Military

By Steve Hynd

Just as it seemed that all was hunky for the escalationists, US ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry has stuck his oar in the works. Both the NY Times and the Washington Post have the leaked story of secret cables from Eikenberry to the White House:

expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, senior U.S. officials said.

...After a top-level meeting on the issue Wednesday afternoon -- Obama's eighth since early last month -- the White House issued a statement that appeared to reflect Eikenberry's concerns.

"The President believes that we need to make clear to the Afghan government that our commitment is not open-ended," the statement said. "After years of substantial investments by the American people, governance in Afghanistan must improve in a reasonable period of time."

There's an easy way to do that. Announce a timetable for a phased and responsible withdrawal. It looks like the White House might get there before the Center for American Progress think tank, which did so much work to say such a timetable was essential in Iraq but hasn't said squeak about it for Afghanistan.

Obama is said to have felt "rushed and railroaded" by the military, and Eikenberry's dissent came at just the right time to ensure Obama would reject the current set of four options leaked by pro-escalationists. He's now apparently told them to go back to the drawing board, although some form of troop increase is still said to be on the cards. McChrystal is "fuming", says the BBC, because Eikenberry has rained on his parade.

Oh, and apparently the review has already decided that the Taliban cannot be defeated outright, simply contained and diminished so that it can't overthrow the Kabul central government. So much for the hawkish rhetoric on that one.

Update: Michael Cohen notes that:

the Times advances the story even further:

General Eikenberry sent his reservations to Washington in a cable last week, the officials said. In that same period, President Obama and his national security advisers have begun examining an option that would send relatively few troops to Afghanistan, about 10,000 to 15,000, with most designated as trainers for the Afghan security forces.

. . . Pentagon officials said the low-end option of 10,000 to 15,000 more troops would mean little or no significant increase in American combat forces in Afghanistan. The bulk of the additional forces would go to train the Afghan Army, with a smaller number focused on hunting and killing terrorists, the officials said.The low-end option would essentially reject the more ambitious counterinsurgency strategy envisioned by General McChrystal, which calls for a large number of forces to protect the Afghan population, work on development projects and build up the country’s civil institutions.

I'm really not sure what to make of all this; the leaking that is going on here is just ridiculous. It's very possible that this is a trial balloon meant to light a fire under Karzai . But honestly I don't think so. Instead, I think President Obama is taking charge of his Afghan policy in a significant and long overdue way - and more important, standing up to his generals and national security advisors who seem to want to shoot first and ask questions later.

So, probably a smallish surge focussed on training the Afghan national security forces and a timetable designed to get the Afghan government to face the prospect of standing on its own.

Iran has stopped expanding enrichment, say diplomats

By Steve Hynd

Reuters has an interesting report today from diplomats at the IAEA in Vienna:

Iran has effectively stopped expanding active uranium enrichment since September, diplomats said, while considering a big power offer to fuel a medical reactor if it turns over enriched material seen as an atomic bomb risk.

While Iran's stock of low-enriched uranium (LEU) has likely risen by 200-300 kg from 1,500 kg reported by U.N. monitors in August, the number of operating centrifuge machines at its Natanz enrichment plant has remained at about 4,600, they said.

Iran's potential enrichment capacity was much higher. It had installed at least 8,700 centrifuges in all by late September, diplomats said. A fresh figure was not yet available.

But it was unclear why almost half the centrifuges were not yet enriching, remaining idle or undergoing vacuum tests.

Diplomats and analysts said possible reasons ranged from technical glitches to politically motivated restraint, to avoid closing the door to diplomacy with world powers and provoking harsher international sanctions or even Israeli military action.

The last time there was a chance of negotiations on Iran's nuclear program, back in 2007, Iran likewise slowed expansion of its enrichment facilities. Unfortunately, the Bush administration went along with the usual neocon and Israeli pressure and restricted those talks to matters dealing with Iraq, thus aborting a great chance of opening a wider dialogue.

Hopefully, the Obama administration won't be so fast to close of avenues, despite the same-old pressure from the same-old suspects to to do. Reuters also reports that Iran and Turkey have been having talks on one possible solution to the impasse over the IAEA's Draft Deal - holding Iran's LEU "in escrow" in Turkey rather than simply sending it to Russia or France, two nations which Iran has good reasons to view as unreliable partners.

Honoring The Fallen

By Steve Hynd

I have to admit that, as a European - a Scotsman - in a foreign land I don't really get America's Veterans Day. Reading blogposts and tweets by American writers today, I've seen countless expressions of support for those who serve because they "defend our freedom". I managed to upset at least three aquaintances because I tweeted that, whatever the national trope may say, even American soldiers don't actually defend "our freedom" - they serve the national interest as decided by politicians of the time. They can be honored for doing so, they can even be honored for serving because they believe they are defending our freedom, but at the end of the end it all boils down to Clausewitz: "war is the continuation of politics by other means."

Don't get me wrong. I have the utmost admiration for those who put their lives on the military line for their nation - especially in an all-volunteer army. Many may have joined for reasons more to do with escaping dead-end towns or furthering their own prospects in life than a desire to "defend our freedom", but most seem to end up believing they are doing just that. But there are few now who believe that Korea or Vietnam were about actually defending freedom, or the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There are many who believe that the continuation of the long war in Afghanistan isn't about defending our freedom either - and more than a few of those wear a uniform.

Veteran's Day is known in Europe as Remembrance Day. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the guns fell silent. Almost all the veterans of World War One are dead now, the last European veterans passed away this year and there's only one known survivor of the fighting left in the U.S. Maybe with their passing we're all forgetting that the Great War was a fight billed at the time as one to "defend our freedom" that turned out simply to be a monumental waste of the "Lost Generation", 16 million lives gone because leaders wanted to play power politics.

Today, please, honor those who fell for a "continuation of politics by other means" and those who still put their lives on the line for that too-often ignoble purpose, but leave off the jingoism.

Dulce Et Decorum Est (Wilfred Owen)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! -- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under I green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, --
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Update: Matt Yglesias gets it.

Update 2: Thanks to David Sirota for tweeting this link to One City, a Buddhist blog. Greg Zwahlen quotes Kurt Vonnegut:

When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Update 3: More good sense from John Quiggin, who deliveres a timely reminder of the evil that mediocre men can do, and from Stephen M Walt, who writes that the best way to honor those who serve is to "make sure they aren't asked to fight and die to no good purpose."

"We have tested all the assumptions"

By Steve Hynd

I'm loathe to link uber-dork Jake Tapper but he does have the story of the day:

Senior administration officials tell ABC News that President Obama at his war council meeting tomorrow will assess four different specific strategies for Afghanistan and Pakistan, including two different options put forward by Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

At his meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Friday, October 30, President Obama asked Pentagon officials to assess in detail two other strategy options, including the missions, troop requirements and cost.

All four options increase the levels of US troops in Afghanistan. The president has not yet been presented with those new assessments.

All four options will be discussed in detail when the Joint Chiefs and other senior officials meet with the President tomorrow.

Rumors that Obama had already decided on 34,000 troops seem to have been exaggerated some and it appears Obama will now decide when he returns from his trip abroad, but all the options do involve a troop increase. Obama told ABC News:

“I've been asking not only General McChrystal, but all of our commanders who are familiar with the situation, as well as our civilian folks on the ground, a lot of questions that, until they're answered, may -- may create a situation in which we resource something based on faulty premises,” Mr. Obama said, “And I want to make sure that we have tested all the assumptions that we're making  before we send young men and women into harm's way, that if we are  sending additional troops that the prospects of a functioning Afghan  government are enhanced, that the prospects of al Qaeda being able to  attack the U.S. Homeland are reduced.”

His obligation, the President said, is to make sure that “whatever investments we make are leading to a safer United States, are sustainable.”

“There are a whole host of those questions that we have worked through systematically.  I have gained confidence that there's not an important question out there that has not been asked and that we haven't asked -- that we haven't answered to the best of our abilities. And as a consequence of the process that we've gone to, I feel much more confident that when I issue my orders, that not only do we have a better prospect of success and we are serving our men and women in uniform well, but that we are not also looking at an indefinite stay in -- where we have bought, essentially, a -- a permanent protectorate of Afghanistan that I think would be unsustainable.” [Emphasis Mine - S]

There's a logical disconnect here though. The one thing that never seems to have been on the table is a timetabled withdrawal. That's not too surpising. As Gen. Jim Jones told Spiegel, "generals always ask for more troops" and the civilians who might have raised it as an option are deliberately ignoring arguments applied to Iraq from 2006 to 2008 - arguments they often made themselves - that the only way to force political reconcilliation and better governance from a host nation that is fully aware it is propped up by Western military force is to announce a date certain for the end of that prop.

UK's New Afghan Tactic: Give Appearance Of Exit Strategy

By Steve Hynd

With British public opinion now overwhelmingly against the occupation of Afghanistan following the deaths of five UK soldiers at the hands of an Afghan policeman last week, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has taken only seven days to do his own strategic review. Unsurprisingly, he's come up with a plan that gives the illusion of progress, and of heading for the exit.

Brown wants to begin handing over districts in the troublesome Helmand province to Afghan security forces, with at least two handed over by the crucial deadline of midsummer next year and the rest following for completion by 2014. I say the middle of 2010 is crucial because that's when the British general election will be and Brown knows he's already behind against his Tory rival. If he can't show at least the appearance of an exit strategy working by then, he's sunk, and he knows it.

But, given the many obvious shortcomings of Afghan security forces, the notion of handing parts of Helmand is ludicrous on the face of it. Which means that U.S. forces, probably surge forces from Obama's coming escalation, will need to take up the plentiful slack.

U.S. and U.K. officials may have denied reports that the U.S. military was going to accomodate Brown's electoral worries by moving British troops out of dangerous areas, but in practical terms it's difficult to see how this new strategy is different from that.

UK Independent's front page Remembrance Day call for Afghanistan withdrawal

By Steve Hynd

It was inevitable that Remembrance Sunday would mean a lot of British soul-searching over continued military involvement in Afghanistan. That introspection was evident in national newspapers today, including in the London Times, where foreign correspondent Christina Lamb had a long and thoughtful article about the ongoing occupation which weighed the pros and cons of various possible courses. Among her revalations, that the policeman known only as Gulbuddin who shot and killed five British soldiers last week was a victim of sexual abuse by his commander.

According to two Afghans who knew him, Gulbuddin had complained of being brutally beaten, sodomised and sexually abused by a senior Afghan officer. A policeman named Ajmal, a friend of the gunman, said Gulbuddin had been constantly tortured. “He was being used for sexual purposes,” said Ajmal.

Another policeman, Kharullah, who was injured in the shooting, said: “Gulbuddin was beaten many times and that’s why he got angry. One day when he was patrolling with British soldiers, he swore he was going to kill him.”

When Gulbuddin opened fire with a machinegun, his target was his alleged abuser. According to the Afghan sources, the five British soldiers were killed simply because they were present and considered to be the man’s protectors.

That directly contradicts P.M. Gordon Brown's claim that Gulbuddin was a Taliban infiltrator, and the Taliban's subsequent propaganda coup in accepting him as a hero - but it doesn't leave British plans in any better place. If such abuse can go on, and have this effect, then what chance of "they'll stand up as we stand down"?

That's just one of the many areas of uncertainty about Western hopes and plans for Afghanistan that Lamb addresses. But her piece is just a taster for the Independent newspapers editorial calling for withdrawal: front-paged in the print edition on this day, of all days.

...we asked: "What is this war for?" Although we never received a satisfactory answer, we welcomed the fall of the Taliban and reluctantly accepted Mr Blair's argument, made with his trademark persuasiveness, that the best protection against their return was to help rebuild the country. Thus the mission crept from bringing mass murderers to book to fostering democracy, female emancipation and winning the battle against drugs. Those are worthy aims, but eight years on we have made limited progress. In the meantime, British forces, which had borne few casualties until then, were deployed in 2006 to Helmand province.

It is not so much the casualty rate, however, but the lack of progress that should demand a re-examination of our policy. Gordon Brown's speech last week did not deliver the review needed. It contained the glaring contradiction between the claim that our troops are needed in Afghanistan "to keep the British people safe" and the warning that, if Mr Karzai's government fails to clean up its act, it will have "forfeited its right to international support". If you believe that our mission in Afghanistan makes British streets safer, then its continuation should not depend on Mr Karzai. If, on the other hand, you believe, as Kim Howells, the former Foreign Office minister, said last week, that any remote or long-term effect on British streets is outweighed by the propaganda gain to jihadist ideology of our "occupying" a Muslim country, then Mr Karzai's shortcomings give us another reason to get out.

There are, of course, still good reasons to stay, although they are secondary. The Afghan people do not want foreign troops to leave until security is better. But the longer we are there the more our forces provide target practice for jihadists and grievances for nationalists to turn to jihadism, as Patrick Cockburn argues so forcefully today.

A second reason for staying is that our withdrawal could undermine Barack Obama, whose leadership is needed in the world. But we have left Iraq while the US stayed. In any case, as we report today, the US is keen to move British forces away from being a political target.

Ultimately, we should make a British decision in the British interest. And that decision should be to wind down combat operations over a period – say, by Remembrance Sunday next year – and to restrict the mission to training the Afghan army and police force. Special forces operations should continue, especially on the Pakistan border, to disrupt any attempt by al-Qa'ida to return. But beyond that it is time to act on the observation of David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, that there can be no military solution in Afghanistan.

It is time, on this solemn day on which we remember the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for our freedom and security, for a change in policy. It is time to say that this war is ill conceived, unwinnable and counterproductive. It is time to start planning a phased withdrawal of British troops.

The British public are in broad agreement. A new poll by ComRes for the BBC shows just how strongly:

I feel I have a good understanding of the purpose of Britain's mission in Afghanistan
Agree 54%, disagree 42%, don't know 4%

 

All British forces should be withdrawn from Afghanistan as quickly as possible
Agree 63%, disagree 31%, don't know 6%

 

The war in Afghanistan is unwinnable
Agree 64%, disagree 27%, don't know 10%

 

The levels of corruption involved in the recent Presidential election show the war in Afghanistan is not worth fighting for
Agree 52%, disagree 36%, don't know 12%

The percentage of people polled calling for withdrawal- a massive 63 percent - is up from 34% two weeks ago, and 25% two weeks before that. With a general election looming, victory is likely to go to the party that most meets British voters' wishes for the nation's soldiers to leave Afghanistan.

Pakistan's Nukes and Tom Clancy Scenarios

By Steve Hynd

Sy Hersh has a must-read piece on Pakistan's nukes, examining how secure they are, in the current issue of the New Yorker. He get's a lot right, and has a lot of illuminating passages about the US/Pakistan relationship, but in the whole piece - eight pages in the web version - he only has one actual scenario for a loose-nuke situation.

the safeguards meant to keep a confrontation with India from escalating too quickly could make the arsenal more vulnerable to terrorists. Nuclear-security experts have war-gamed the process and concluded that the triggers and other elements are most exposed when they are being moved and reassembled—at those moments there would be fewer barriers between an outside group and the bomb. A consultant to the intelligence community said that in one war-gamed scenario disaffected members of the Pakistani military could instigate a terrorist attack inside India, and that the ensuing crisis would give them “a chance to pick up bombs and triggers—in the name of protecting the assets from extremists.”

At least Hersh managed to come up with a scenario, however unlikely. In that he's doing better than Arnaud DeBorchgrave did recently when he fearmongered over the prospect of an Al Qaeda assault grabbing a Pakistani nuke. My comment on DeBorchgrave's post is one I'm perfectly happy with.

But someone - it might as well be me - should point out that there's been several such potential situations over just the last decade, including the Mumbai attacks of 2006 and again of 2008 as well as the 2001 terror attack on the Indian parliament. Not once did any dissafected Pakistani fundamentalists within their military heist a nuke, intact and ready to go, with which to blackmail anyone.

The London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies says that Pakistan's nuclear weapons safeguards are "robust" and include both multi-layered perimeter security and deep personnel assessment as well as separation for the components of a working weapon (physics package, trigger assembly and delivery system). There's no reason to suspect otherwise. Pakistan keeps its nukes in pieces, triggers separate from fissionable core - and then an unauthorised user would still need both the trigger codes which are one of Pakistan's most closely guarded high-level military secrets and some form of delivery system to somewhere useful. Pakistan doesn't leave it's nuclear-capable missiles and aircraft just lying around either.

The number and level of security precautions to be circumvented make any scenario such as Hersh describes unlikely to the point of being in the realm of Tom Clancy novels, not the real world. We'd be as well worrying about Alien Space Bats giving terrorists a bomb.

James L. Jones: "Generals Always Ask For More Troops"

By Steve Hynd

In a new interview with German mag Der Spiegel out today, Obama's National Security Adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, is sounding skeptical about the McChrystal escalation request for extra troops in Afghanistan. He says, dismissively, that "generals always ask for more troops".

SPIEGEL: The Obama administration is reviewing the strategy for Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal, the top US commander in Afghanistan, is asking for additional troops.

Jones: Generals always ask for more troops. Take it from me.

SPIEGEL: You would know. You're also a general and you were in Afghanistan from 2003 to almost 2007 ...

Jones: ... and of course when I was there I asked for more troops. When we started in 2003, we had to develop a plan. So by definition, you have to ask for people.

SPIEGEL: And now you support General McChrystal's demand for 40,000 additional troops?

Jones: We are in the middle of a process with the president and all of his advisers in assessing the overall situation in Afghanistan. I believe we will not solve the problem with troops alone. The minimum number is important, of course. But there is no maximum number, however. And what's really important in Afghanistan is that with this new administration we insist on good governance, that it be coordinated with economic development and security, and that we have much, much better success at handing over responsibility for these three things to the Afghans.

SPIEGEL: To President Hamid Karzai, who has just been reelected after a controversial election?

Jones: To the Afghans. And we will put much more emphasis on battling corruption and putting competent and honest people in positions of authority. We will be working with our friends and allies to do that.

SPIEGEL: When do you expect a final decision on McChrystal's request?

Jones: It will be a decision made by all NATO members, not just the US president. As part of NATO we are one of 28 nations, and we are going to closely follow NATO's discussions of the McChrystal request. It's a NATO request of which the US will do a portion of it, but we think other countries will do their share as well.

If Jones really means that, and isn't just glad-handing NATO co-operation to a European media outlet, then the McChrystal request may just be D.O.A. Britain might contribute troops for a training mission, but I doubt America will get any other realistic contributions from other NATO members. Canada is on its way to its own exit ramp, Italy and France will not get further involved and Germany is deeply riven on the issue. The rest, frankly, don't count.

Jones also suggests that the main mission of "defeating , disrupting, and dismantling" Al Qaeda has already succeeded in Afghanistan and that the real focus of that mission is now in Pakistan - where extra US and NATO troops are of very limited usefulness.

SPIEGEL: What is the goal in Afghanistan right now -- to win the war?

Jones: Our definition of the goal has been to defeat, disrupt, and dismantle the al-Qaida network, which is the one that is the most significant threat to our homeland and to the European homeland. These are people that will stop at nothing. So we pay a lot of attention to where they are and what they're doing. We want those three D's, if you will, to make sure that they cannot come back to Afghanistan and reestablish a platform from which they can organize and equip themselves to do what they did several years ago. On that score, we're pretty successful in Afghanistan.

SPIEGEL: But al-Qaida has not been destroyed. The terrorists are now operating from Pakistan.

Jones: Unfortunately, there are some safe havens in Pakistan and it looks like the Pakistan army is seriously going after them. There are operations in Swat Valley and now in South Waziristan and we hope that they will continue. We intend to be of whatever help we can to ensure that they try to rid themselves of that cancer that exists between the two countries.

SPIEGEL: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently expressed her disappointment in how the Pakistani government is fighting al-Qaida. Do you share her view?

Jones: Well, if you had been here in March and asked me the question whether I'm more worried about Afghanistan or Pakistan, I would have said Pakistan because they had this policy of appeasement, which was flawed. I think they recognized it as well. Since March, they have done reasonably well in what they set out to do. We hope they have long-term objectives to go after all insurgents, not just theirs, but after the Afghan Taliban, al-Qaida, and other groups. This is really going to continue to eat at the fabric of their country if they don't.

Although Jones says that he doesn't know when U.S. troops will withdraw from Afghanistan, he also raises the legitimacy issue, using a phrase other administration officials have already trotted out: "we can't want this more than the Afghans". He also says "You can keep on putting troops in, and you could have 200,000 troops there and the country will swallow them up as it has done in the past."

With administration officials signalling that we're still some time away from any official announcement on McChrystal's plan, Jones would appear to be one of the skeptical voices within the administration about the need for that escalation.

New Afghan Compact Is A Clunker

By Steve Hynd

The Obama administration has a new so-called Afghan Compact which is designed to increase good governance in Afghanistan and reduce corruption. The main problem, though, is that any compact needs two sides agreeing to implement it.

The success of the so-called "Afghanistan Compact" will hinge on Karzai's willingness to take bold actions such as cracking down on official corruption, replacing ineffective ministers and surrendering some power to local authorities, which in the past he's resisted or failed to undertake.

"As long as the population views its government as weak or predatory, the Taliban's 'alternative' style of delivering security and some form of justice will continue to have traction," says a U.S. government document that outlines part of the proposed Compact and was obtained by McClatchy.

"We would have to see some really concrete actions on the part of Karzai to be able to take this seriously," said Marvin Weinbaum, a former State Department intelligence analyst, now at the Middle East Institute. "It looks great on paper."

Yeah, the military's counter-insurgency theory and the infamous COIN Guide for Policymakers look great on paper too. But when the rubber hits the road...

The new-deal Compact, in the manner of the new softly-softly colonialism that COIN has popularized, is entirely a U.S. creation but is supposed to look like it's Karzai's idea:

The Obama administration has been developing the Compact for months in coordination with U.S. allies and Karzai's government. It's tried to keep the effort quiet so it could be presented as an Afghan initiative, according to several U.S. and European officials and the U.S. government document. "Afghans must lead," the document says.

The document outlines proposals for ceding greater power to authorities who run Afghanistan's 34 provinces and nearly 400 districts, including providing them with more development funds and the ability to direct them to projects that they think are most needed.

U.S. officials said Karzai also would be expected to implement new efforts to crack down on rampant corruption fueled by the country's production of opium, which is used to produce heroin, and to replace ineffective ministers with technocrats. Ministries that fail to improve could see international funds cut, they said.

Like any of the ministers care if their ministries funds get cut. It'll reduce their graft money inflow somewhat, but most are making far more from the corruption or drug trafficking they're supposed to stop. The people that get hurt, therefore, are common Afghans at the bottom of the heap. Meanwhile, plans to decentralize just mean more opportunities for provincial warlords and grafters to make some of the moolah their Kabul superiors have been keeping to themselves. That's if they ever happen, which I wouldn't suggest Obama holds his breath for. Puce wouldn't suit him.

Cynical, moi?

A U.S. intelligence official also said he was skeptical because the compact would require Karzai to break deals he made with warlords and power barons who oversaw ballot box-stuffing on his behalf.

"Karzai won't do the things it says he'll do — in fact, he can't do some of them without getting killed — and we have no way to enforce it. Do we threaten to cut off aid if he doesn't give Parliament or the provincial governors a bigger role? Threaten to withdraw troops? Arrest his brother down in Kandahar for drug-trafficking?" said the U.S. intelligence official.

Gareth Porter in his latest piece (subscription only, sorry) agrees with that anonymous U.S. intelligence official. He writes:

the sudden intensification of administration pressure on the issue of corruption is aimed less at far-reaching reform of the system than at avoiding a significant worsening of the problem in the wake of Karzai's fraudulent re-election.

In return for their pledges to guarantee huge majorities for Karzai in the Aug. 20 election, the Afghan president had to make promises to a number of power brokers or warlords in the provinces. Some of those were promised key ministries in the next government, according to Gilles Dorronsoro, a specialist on Afghanistan at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The main concern in Kabul and Washington in the wake of Karzai's reelection is how many of the warlords to whom Karzai is indebted will be rewarded with ministries when the new cabinet is announced,

"Everybody who supported Karzai now expects their payback," said Dorronsoro, who spent the entire month of August in Afghanistan.

...Dorronsoro believes the administration's influence on Karzai's new government is going to be constrained by Karzai's dependence on provincial and sub-provincial warlords who control the actual levers of power outside Kabul. The U.S. pressure on Karzai "can only work on a few ministries and a few issues", he told IPS.

Gareth quotes David Kilcullen as saying last August that "There is no Afghan government in the way there is an American government. There are only a series of fiefdoms." In the majority of those fiefdoms, it will be business as usual.

Meanwhile, across the pond, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is sending what his opposition rightly says are conflicting signals.

Gordon Brown has told Afghan President Hamid Karzai he will not put UK troops "in harm's way for a government that does not stand up against corruption".

In a speech, Mr Brown said the UK "cannot, must not and will not walk away" from its mission in Afghanistan.

But he said continued coalition support would depend on the delivery of reform.

"International support depends on the scale of his ambition and the degree of his achievement in five key areas: security, governance, reconciliation, economic development and engagement with its neighbours," said Mr Brown.

"If, with our help, the new government of Afghanistan meets these five tests, it will have fulfilled an essential contract with its own people. And it will have earned the continuing support of the international community, despite the continuing sacrifice.

"If the government fails to meet these five tests, it will have not only failed its own people, it will have forfeited its right to international support."

Brown cannot have it both ways. Either the UK will withdraw its support - and that means including withdrawing its troops - if Karzai doesn't play nice or it "will not walk away". Yet Brown is in the same cleft stick Obama is in; he's only being a little more honest about it. A timetable for withdrawal - and the prospect of Karzai and his warlords having no Western backing in their ongoing thirty year civil war with the Taliban - is the only leverage the West realistically has left. We've seen this situation before, in Iraq in 2006/08. However, for the moment, the U.S. and U.K. governments are too afraid of the political blowback domestically to properly wield the only political stick they have.

Which means the new Afghan Compact is a clunker that should be traded in before it costs us even more blood and treasure.

Killers at Fort Hood All U.S. Soldiers - Army

By Steve Hynd

By now you may have heard about the shocking situation at Fort Hood, Texas, where three shooters have killed 12 and wounded 33. AP has just reported Lt. Gen Bob Cone as telling a news conference that all three killers were U.S. soldiers and that all the shootings happened "at the base's Soldier Readiness Center where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening."

PTSD perhaps?

Update: ABC News says that the main suspect is a Major Malik Nadal Hasan. The rightwing Islamophobes are going to go nutzo about that name.

Update 2: At the moment I'm updating news as it appears from people on my Twitter stream. According to @marcambinder, CNN is reporting that Maj Hasan was a recently-minted psychiatrist trained at Walter Reed. The BBC reports that he was due to be deployed to Iraq very shortly.

Here's video of the Fort Hood commander's statement, again from the BBC.

Update 3: Richard "RockRichard" Smith has running updates at VetVoice. So does the excellent Robert Mackay at The Lede.

Update 4: Rep. John Carter says two others who were detained have been released. (And soon after Carter tells MSNBC one suspect is still in custody).

Update 5: (Final one of the night) Hasan is alive after been shot by law enforcement, and is in a stable condition under military guard. Reportedly, the other two suspects have been released after all and the confusion was because Hasan was still in custody.

More, I'm sure, on this tomorrow.

Our sympathies to the families of those killed and our best wishes to those wounded and their loved ones.