Newshoggers.com

So, It's Back To "Bomb Iran" Then

By Steve Hynd

Last December I wrote: "it is already an accepted fact among the Very Serious Person set that Obama's idea of negotiation without preconditions will get exactly one shot, will fail, and then the bombs will begin to fall." Well, that looks to be the way events are turning.

Despite Iran not having made a definite response to the IAEA's offered deal on exporting a chunk of its LEU stockpile in return for MEU fuel cells for its research reactor - the latter actually being harder to convert into bomb-grade material - the press today is full of news that Obama is looking at further sanctions "within weeks". I'm sure he's being pressed on this by Democratic hawks, the kind who keep saying Iran is definitely seeking a nuclear weapon despite there still being no concrete evidence of any such thing. All we have so far, empirically, is a record of Iran hiding its nuclear program, a bunch of doubts about what Iran might still be hiding and a whole bunch of innuendo. There's no "smoking gun".

These are the same kind of hawkish Dems who said the same thing about Iraq and who are now gleefully backing a Congressional sanctions bill that might impose a naval blockade against Iran's oil imports that would be a war crime under international law without UNSC backing. Does anyone wonder that the IAEA's El Baradei says Iran has serious trust issues? But the UNSC isn't going to back anything more than cosmetic sanctions - veto-holder China will definitely not back more serious moves even if Russia does. Nor will India, the other regional tiger economy, help keep any sanctions: Iran is India's biggest source of oil. 

The usual rightwing suspects are already making the next leap, from "Obama's predicatble failure" to the need to bomb Iran in order to save it. John Bolton said today that "we need to understand that there is no way to deal with nuclear weapons without regime change or force" and the Washington Times ran an editorial described by nuclear expert Joseph Cirincione as "sick".

Our message to the world leaders: If you want peace, prepare for war.

...The case for using force against Iran is growing more plausible as the threat intensifies. Compared to the 2002 case for war against Saddam Hussein, it is a slam-dunk.

That's the very definition of "low bar" - and Cirincione is correct, using the phrase "slam dunk" is sick, given its infamous use to justify Bush's spurious invasion of Iraq.

And yet, Iran signalled from word one that it was unhappy with the IAEA deal, especially after France shoe-horned its way in there in a spoiler move that had far more to do with its own geopolitical ambitions in the Gulf than any wish to see a deal completed. America, France and Russia have all reneged on nuclear deals with Iran in the past - Russia has just done so again at American urging - but the deal is still perhaps rescuable by substituting France and Russia for a less contentious partner, maybe Argentina or even India. Iran still wants to talk:

Speaking at a press conference in Vienna, Ali Asqar Soltanieh who was speaking with the press following the IAEA Board of Directors session allocated to discussions on outgoing Chief Muhammad ElBaradei's last report on Iran, in response to a question on the final outcome of Vienna talks and Iran's response regarding acquiring fuel for Tehran reactor, said, "Of course we need fuel, but we need guarantee about receiving the fuel."

He was quoted by the Islamic republic news agency as saying, "We are ready for the final round of talks, but we want 100 percent guarantee and the agency, too, must both supervise, and see into the implementation of the commitments made there."

Iran has also halted expansion of its uranium enrichment facility - perhaps a show of good faith. The much-hyped Qom facility turned out to be still a hole in a mountain and even the Iranian armed forces chief of staff says he favors some kind of deal. However, Iranian internal politics are no more monolithic than the American variety and Iran's "Green Movement" reformists have been just as obstructive as hardliners to any internal Iranian consensus.

The truth is that an international fuel consortium part-based on Iranian soil is the best way to bring Iran back into the mainstream of NPT-compliant nations, giving the West access and accountability while still giving Iran the safeguards it needs as well as earning it much-needed hard currency. Iran has reportedly suggested such a thing itself in the past - as part of one of the "grand bargains" Bush rejected out of hand during his eight years of mismanagement, at the UN in 2005 and again last year.

But in the rush to declare diplomacy over, that possibility hasn't even been on the table yet.

Oh why are we waiting, why-y are we waaaiting?

By Steve Hynd

Dan Froomkin asks today what I asked yesterday: what's taking so long with Obama's AfPak decision? And he comes to the same answer: fear of the Wuss Factor.

according to Paul R. Pillar, a Georgetown University professor who formerly served as the CIA's chief intelligence analyst for the Middle East, it's pretty clear that the goal of leaving behind a stable, democratic Afghanistan is unattainable.

"With the application of military force, some degree of short-term stability over some portion of Afghanistan is probably achievable," Pillar told me. "That is not to say that we have stabilized Afghanistan or that whenever we get out we'll have established some long-term basis for peace and stability. I don't think we can do that."

So is there any alternative to an open-ended commitment? The only genuine exit strategy left involves unilateral disengagement. But politically, that's a nonstarter -- at least for now. It is widely considered inevitable that if Obama began to withdraw our troops from Afghanistan without being able to declare some form of victory, he would be derided in the press and by Republicans as a coward and a quitter.

..."If political realities were not a constraint, disengagement from Afghanistan would be the best course of action," Pillar says. "But I accept the political reality that that is off the table. The president would get pilloried as being a softie and as not having the courage and determination supposedly to stand up for U.S. security. I don't buy any of that criticism myself, but that would be the political reality he's facing."

As it happens, in this case political reality actually diverges quite markedly from public opinion. The public overwhelmingly opposes the war -- 57 percent to 39 percent, according to the latest Associated Press poll. And disengagement from Afghanistan -- even though it's not even being discussed as a serious option in political circles -- is considerably more popular with the American public than escalation, which is almost all anyone in Washington can talk about. The latest CNN poll found that 49 percent of Americans favored reducing the number of troops in Afghanistan -- with 28 percent saying they should all be withdrawn immediately -- compared to less than 40 percent who want to send more.

Generalized public sentiment alone, however, is unlikely to force any American president to consider a military withdrawal without victory. "It is always easier in the short term to stay in than to get out," says Walt. "And therefore the temptation to take one more drink is always there."

What it would take is a great deal of organized political pressure. But there is no significant peace movement pushing for withdrawal. There is, in fact, almost no political manifestation whatsoever of what is the majority view. The political pressure is all coming from one side.

As Pillar explains, Democrats have long been on the defense on national security issues -- and they know that "Republicans could be skillful at exploiting this." He adds: "All it takes is one terrorist attack, nothing even on the 9/11 scale, with some sort of Afghan connections, to punctuate emphatically that line of criticism."

Froomkin joins the likes of Peter Hitchens, Hugh De Santis and Thomas Rid in recognising that the main obstacles to an Afghan disengagement are domestic. Politicians and military leaders are too afraid to admit getting involved was a mistake to begin with, too afraid of the embarassment of being seen to withdraw "in defeat". There are no other real reasons.

King Karzai?

This is a country ruled by kings. The king’s brothers, cousins and sons are all powerful. - Ahmed Wali Karzai, the President’s brother 

By Steve Hynd

Hamid Karzai has survived his inauguration for a second term as Afghanitan's president, and has spoken like a King: he has promised to end graft, appoint a clean cabinet, kick private security companies out of his nation within two years and a drawdown of foreign troops within five. He's also promised a "loyal jirga" to help reconcile the various factions within his fractured country.

It would be an ambitious agenda for any national ruler. The big question is: can he actually deliver any of it? Western leaders, desperate for any measure of legitimacy they can confer on the man who blatantly stole an election he would have won anyway, are making as many encouraging noises as they can.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said it showed Karzai understood the demands being made on him.

"When you've been re-elected, it's delivery time and I think that's what came through in President Karzai's speech," Miliband said. "It's a very challenging country to govern but you've got a very strong, substantial statement today."

European Union special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Ettore Sequi called the speech "a very good statement which reflected the right priorities the right way."

"Let's encourage and support the president and we shall have opportunities to see how that program will be translated into reality," he told Reuters.

But the reality is that Karzai isn't a King able to rule by fiat - he's a Western mostly-puppet juggling a whole bunch of intenselly rich and violent warlord supporters while looking over his shoulder at the Taliban-led insurgency.

Stopping corruption and electing a clean cabinet will require Karzai to subdue bloody warlords like his own brother quoted above, designated vice-president Mohammad Qasim Fahim or power-broker General Dostum. None are going to take marginalisation and exclusion easily. There's a good chance some will just try to have Karzai killed and figure they can do a deal with his successor.

Halting the operations of both domestic and international security companies within two years will mean seriously upsetting the likes of Hamed Wardak, son of the Afghan defense minister, and Karzai's own cousins Ahmad Rateb Popal and Rashid Popal. They and other operators of security companies have been accused of making out like literal bandits from protection kickbacks on their already lucrative trucking contracts. It will also mean stepping up the Afghan security forces to the point where they can take over from those security companies - presumably without copying their tactics of bribing local brigands to let convoys past. Such a rapid increase in both numbers and capability seems like a pipe dream to many.

And finally, to get foreign troops out of Afghanistan within five years, or even just getting Afghan forces in the lead, will mean not just doing all of the above on steroids but doing it without upsetting his Western leash-holders enough that they simply decide to replace him. Too, there are major factions within those Western nations that don't want to leave in anything even marginally close to five years. For them, "staying the course" has become a reason in and off itself: witness the shenannigans over the last year from the U.S. neocon lobby and from General Odierno over the prospect of pulling out to an agreed timetable in Iraq. Karzai's five year timeline overlaps the nest U.S. presidential election and from here it looks like Obama is by no means certain to win a second term. A new hardline Republican administration in D.C. would be inclined to tear up any timetable for withdrawal if it could justify staying longer.

Before any of Karzai's edicts can come to pass, he'll have to deal with his own robber barons, his Western liege-lords and a troublesome rebellion - all while under constant threat of being unseated and of assassination from disaffected factions. I personally would love there to be a clear and unambiguous timetable for withdrawal of Western troops from Afghanistan and so I wish Karzai the very best of luck if he's serious. But it's unclear, on the past evidence, either that he means what he says or if he does that he has the lion heart needed for the task.

And The Western Winner Of The Iraq War Is...

By Steve Hynd

It's become fairly conventional wisdom that the regional winner of the Iraq war was Iran, which now has its pensioners in control of the Iraqi central government and - theoretically - all that oil. Kurds and Sunnis may have something to say about that, however, especially once Odierno stops fantasizing about staying forever and the U.S. finally withdraws.

However, the signs are that the Western nation most poised to make gains from the aftermath of the Iraq war is France. Today, the French and Iraqi governments announced some deals which are only a start of greater partnership.

Iraq and France have reached several "important" pacts on ordnance and defense personnel exchange, the visiting Iraqi Defense Minister Abdelkader Jassem al-Obeidi announced Wednesday.

"Iraq has accepted many important French armaments," Obeidi said at French Defense Ministry with his French counterpart Herv Morin at side.

Following an order of 24 transport helicopters EC 635, worth around 500 million U.S. dollars, from France in March, Iraq are engaging in "other types of armaments" this time, Obeidi said without elaboration.

The Iraqi minister regarded France-Iraq cooperation as "the rapidest and simplest way for Iraq to recover capability to defend its air space, territorial sea and territory."

The Iraqi President was also amazingly forthcoming:

Speaking of oil exploitation industry in Iraq, Talabani said "the system of auctions isn't solely based on figures. We might give preference to the figure coming from a French company."

Talabani spoke out favor for the French energy giant Total. "We would like to see Total working on our oil deposits."

Capitalizing on local disenchantment with Britain and America post-war, France has also made important deals with other Gulf states: a military base in the UAE and defence pacts to protect both the UAE and Qatar, as well as nuclear power offers to both of those and to the Saudis, Libyans and Algerians. Along with the multi-billion potential income from those agreements comes an opportunity for French power projection as the alternative to the American big dog.

And while its ironic that the "cheese eating surrender monkeys", as the U.S. right labelled the French, are making out well from post-Iraq War situation in the Gulf, the suspicion has to be that this is exactly what France's long-term plan was all along when it refused to get involved in Bush's misadventure.

Waiting For Obama To Solve The Gordian Knot

An Afghan policeman auditions for the role of Estragon

By Steve Hynd

Even those of us who oppose any kind of McChrystal Plan for troop escalation in Afghanistan are getting a bit antsy waiting for Godot Obama to make his mind up. I realise that its a complex set of issues - a real Gordian Knot, in fact - and that all the options are bad ones. But ferchissakes, it's the sixth or seventh "strategic review" carried out by the administration or the military since Obama took office; I'm not sure any longer because there have been so many I've lost count.

And indications are that the players are just running over the same old ground and hoping for a pony. The portion of a NATO conference scheduled for Monday which was supposed to discuss force levels in Afghanistan has been postponed until at least December so that it can "take into account the latest developments in that country and the outcome of President Barack Obama's strategic review of the war". The UK's Gordon Brown has been running around like a lackey trying to drum up support for Obama's War - he's asked eight NATO countries for extra troops and so far only Slovakia has said yes. They'll double their commitment to 490 soldiers for a non-combat mission at Kabul Airport. Big fat hairy deal. Germany has extended its mission for a year but won't send extras and plans to be out by 2013. France has said "non" and Italy has said "Non c'è verso". While the main British parties have coalesced around supporting US signals that any surge will be aimed primarily at training Afghan security forces and only be backed by a political exit plan even Afghanistan can only commit to a measly 5,000 extra troops in Helmand.

And while we're on that subject of Afghan security forces, the overall idea of "they'll stand up so we can stand down" that the Obama administration has adopted wholesale from the Bush one is looking increasingly unrealistic.

While Mr. Obama ponders his options, the Afghans remain a force of largely illiterate soldiers led by corrupt, incompetent officers. Every year, one out of every four or five recruits quits, which makes increasing their overall numbers rather difficult. According to The New York Times, recent internal U.S. government reports indicate that the number of Afghan battalions able to fight independently has actually declined in the past six months.

Two public reports – from the Inspector-General of the U.S. Defence Department and the Special Inspector-General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, both available on the Web – point to a mix of progress and setbacks. However, nothing in them suggests that training an effective Afghan military or police will be easy or speedy. Certainly, these forces will not be up to serious tasks in the next year or two.

The idea, therefore, of thrusting in tens of thousands of additional U.S. soldiers to stem a deteriorating security situation, then withdrawing them and letting the Afghans smartly carry on the fight, appears more pipe dream than grounded in reality.

More pipe dream still if the surge further breaks a U.S. military that is already crippled by PTSD.

Worse, all of that will become moot if the Afghan government can't get its shit together to deliver some modicum of effective governance. I personally doubt that common Afghans would give a fig about their leaders making out like bandits in the graft stakes if they also did some actual governing work, but the indolent elite of Kabul's narcopalaces have all the sense of entitlement of feudal royalty without the sense of responsibility that used to accompany that status.

On the fringes of Karzai's inauguration - an event from which journalists have been banned lest some world leader gets their picture snapped with a warlord or drug trafficker - his own brother illustrated that feudal thinking and the way it fuels corruption.

One person that none of the foreign dignitaries will want to be seen with is Ahmed Wali Karzai, the President’s brother, who has become a symbol of everything that is wrong about the administration. Although only a member of the Kandahar provincial council, he is in reality one of the most powerful people in the country. He has repeatedly been linked by Western officials to Afghanistan’s lucrative narcotics industry.

Yesterday the President’s brother admitted that he enjoyed his influence because of his family ties. “Yes, I am powerful because I am the President’s brother,” he said. “This is a country ruled by kings. The king’s brothers, cousins and sons are all powerful. This is Afghanistan. It will change but it will not change overnight.”

Karzai understands that he'll have to make some sacrifices, but he also understands that his own neck is on the line if his faux anti-corruption drive goes too high or too far. Thus he'll throw some tokens out to the wolves. His attorney general told Der Spiegel in an interview reported today that he plans to indict three former and two current ministers for graft - all doubtless minor political players and not even the tip of the iceberg. One may well be the current Afghan Minister of Mines, who has been accused by an anonymous Obama official of taking a $30million bribe to green light China's copper mine at Aynak. Given the whopping level of bribery and graft U.S. based corporations have engaged in, that's sheerest hypocrisy in the service of the U.S. corporatocracy and will only serve to piss off the Chinese, who had been offering ways to help America out of its self-induced quagmire. And still, none of this will touch fol like Karzai's brother or other powerful warlords he can't afford to get on the wrong side of. As Der Spiegel reported:

Just how Karzai should meet the demands of the international community remains unclear. Washington and London are pressuring him to discard his designated vice president, the feared former warlord Mohammad Qasim Fahim, known to Afghans simply as "Marshall Fahim." Fahim isn't just considered to be corrupt, but is also thought to head up the country's lucrative kidnapping industry. Karzai chose Fahim for the votes he brought with him.

Diplomats in Kabul merely roll their eyes when asked about Fahim. "Fahim is for us a non-person who we would rather see before the International Criminal Court in The Hague instead of in the presidential palace," one high-level NATO official from Brussels recently told SPIEGEL ONLINE. Just as problematic for NATO is General Dostum, who Karzai recalled from his exile in Turkey in an effort to secure the support of those in northern Afghanistan who remain loyal to Dostum. Dostum is now demanding a number of top posts for his followers.

Throwing "bags of gold" at Taliban types is the latest British solution to all this Gordian knottiness, echoing the good old days of colonialism when the "wogs start at Calais" and everyone who wasn't a Briton could be assumed to be bribeable or shootable with impunity. As Human Rights Watch points out, its a fatally flawed assumption nowadays.

At best this buys a temporary space to build the government and security forces. At worst it backfires through bad intelligence, fuels corruption and creates grievances among Afghans who did not take up arms, and were not rewarded with gold. Engaging in lawlessness to address lawlessness seems perverse at best.

...Foreign embassies and armies must also change the way they operate. By having security alliances and holding high level meetings with known criminals, and hiring the armed men of former warlords or drug traffickers to provide security or logistics, they expose themselves as hypocrites to Afghans taking risks to reform their country. This short-termist deal making must change.

And finally, hovering over all like the spectre at the feast, is Pakistan's on-again, off-again entanglement with its own varieties of Taliban - bot the ones it supports and the ones it doesn't. There, all the indications are that the Pakistani military are about to play whack-a-mole again in South Waziristan, declaring victory and getting out before guerrilla tactics can attrit their own glowing propaganda.

Obama's decision is not an easy one, that I freely admit, and I'll take the vanity option of quoting myself on that:

It's a perfect Gordian Knot; when you tease out one bit to untangle it, another bit just gets pulled tighter, and there's no sword sharp enough to cut it. Anyone (including myself) who puts forward a solution for one tangle without mentioning how their solution would make other bits of the knot more intransigent is just blowing smoke up their reader's asses. Frankly, though, the notion that all of this can be untangled by military forces - practising counter-insurgency or otherwise - is truly worthy of the description "laughable".

But he could do far worse - and likely will do - than take the advice of the Guardian's Simon Jenkins:

Britain and America should demilitarize the war on terror, surely the most counterproductive main-force deployment in recent history. They need no longer rely on grand armies, popinjay generals and crippling budgets; on bringing death, destruction and exile to hundreds of thousands of foreigners in the faint belief that this might stop a few bombs going off back home. They would hand that job to the appropriate authorities; to the police and security services.

The modalities of withdrawal need obvious attention. Only idiots talk of leaving "overnight", but only idiots make departure conditional on some unachievable objective, such as more European troops or an operational Afghan army or honesty in Kabul. Defeat must be spun as victory. Retreat must be covered by the smokescreen of a loya jirga or "surge, bribe and leave". But it cannot be conditional on fantasy.

This war was never to be won, any more than that in Iraq. Both were neocon nation-building stunts that ran amok on too much money. Three million Iraqis, including almost all Iraq's Christians, were driven into exile. The same is starting in Afghanistan and will become a flood as NATO retreats. That nation's agony is not over yet, but the end cannot begin until the invaders depart. That will happen only when the pain outweighs the pride. The question is, how many corpses will that take?

The only question Obama has left to answer is: does he have the courage to overcome the Wuss Factor say that the pain already outweighs the pride. What's taking him so long?

Surging To A Broken Army?

By Steve Hynd

Yesterday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen told reporters that the Army isn't at a "tipping point" yet, even though the stress of repeated combat deployments has driven Army and Marine Corps suicides up to a record rate alongside cases of post-traumatic stress.

Today, Spencer Ackerman crunches the hard numbers and details just how little flexibility is left in the Army for any surge deployment to Afghanistan (all emphasis is mine):

If President Obama orders an additional 30,000 to 40,000 troops to Afghanistan, he will be deploying practically every available U.S. Army brigade to war, leaving few units in reserve in case of an unforeseen emergency and further stressing a force that has seen repeated combat deployments since 2002.

Spencer continues:

The 2007 troop surge in Iraq was a one-time increase of five combat brigades that ended with those brigades’ tours. By contrast, a troop increase to implement McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy is more likely to be a sustained escalation lasting beyond the tours of the initially deployed brigades. And the brigades themselves called upon to implement the troop increase will have already served numerous deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of the 14 active-duty brigades that will be available for deployment in December, five have already served three tours abroad since 2002 and four have already served two. If either the 3rd brigade of the 101st Airborne Division or the 1st brigade of the 10th Mountain Division are asked to deploy to Afghanistan, it will be their fifth tour since 2002.

Krepinevich said the stress on soldiers called upon to serve repeated tours was a problem for a troop escalation. “You really have to start worrying about greater incidents of post-traumatic stress disorder, [and] that we’re already seeing in terms of the the NCO corps,” he said, referring to non-commissioned officers like sergeants who play crucial leadership roles in enforcing soldier discipline and standards. “Yes, they’re experienced but they’re just so worn out. And that has to be a concern.”

And he writes that neither Gen. McChrystal nor DefSec. Gates would respond to requests for comment on how McChrystal's proposals for an Afghan escalation might affect dwell times, the crucial rests between deployments that have been cut back as far as twelve months from an ideal of two years. For two of the brigades that might be deployed to Afghanistan as part of that surge it would be their fifth combat deployment since 2002.

Tim Fernholz at The American Prospect today points to the essential stupidity of the surge (again, all emphasis is mine):

there is one true similarity between Iraq and Afghanistan, which is that the ultimate solution is political and economic, not military. That means considering approaches that don't rely on major troop escalation. The question of whether or not the Karzai regime can be an effective partner is critical: without a legitimate partner on the ground, no strategy predicated on keeping the Taliban from coming back to power can work. Withholding additional forces that Karzai needs to prop up his government may be the only way to ensure that the Afghan leader makes real effort to fix his corrupt and ineffectual government, as Ambassador Karl Eikenberry reportedly argued to the president last week. That's one reason why escalation can't be a fait accompli, and troops need to be at the center of the debate.

Similarly, no amount of additional military force will work without commensurate efforts on the civilian and development side, but thus far it's not at all apparent that those efforts are forthcoming. Sending more troops without appropriate civilian resources, or at the expense of those resources, will likely be a futile effort.

...Separating strategy from questions of resources and personnel undercuts the debate before it begins. The simple fact that both Americans and Afghans understand is that the war is over when American troops are no longer sent to Afghanistan. Obama has to figure out how, and when, that will happen.

As I've noted before now, Gen. Eikenberry has led where people like the Center For American Progress think-tank have failed to do so applying CAP's arguments - now vindicated by events - about Iraq both before and after the surge there to Afghanistan. There are all kinds of good reasons for Obama to listen to the ambassadorial general and the danger of pushing the Army and Marines past Mullen's "tipping point" is just one of them. Ret. Gen. Wesley K. Clark yesterday compared Afghanistan to Vietnam and echoed Eikenberry when he said that any troop escalation should be put on hold while an exit strategy is put in place.

We Did Nation Building Good - NOT

By Steve Hynd

Wonderful news: our protoges have learned their lessons well and outstripped us:

Lawless Somalia and war-torn Afghanistan topped a blacklist on Tuesday of the world's most corrupt countries drawn up by the anti-graft watchdog Transparency International.

TI's annual corruption index showed how countries devastated by conflict have become overrun by graft with Iraq, Sudan and Myanmar accounting for the three other states in the bottom five of the chart.

...Six years after the US-led invasion and the chaos that followed, Iraq was perceived to be slightly cleaner, with its score rising to 1.5 points from 1.3 points. It also climbed two places in the list.

But Afghanistan slid from 1.5 points in 2008 to 1.3 in 2009, giving further ammunition to critics of President Hamid Karzai who has just been re-elected after a vote marred by rampant fraud.

If the oligarchs who run America wanted the two countries where we've spent so much time, taxpayer's money and commoner blood on nation building to end up looking like theirselves on steroids and speed, then "mission accomplished".

I Hope Karzai Has Good Bodyguards

By Steve Hynd

Did the U.S. and allies just put Karzai on the "dead pool" list?

The establishment of a new investigations unit with the backing of Scotland Yard's Serious Organised Crimes Agency and the FBI was announced in Kabul by senior officials flanked by the US and British ambassadors following a concerted diplomatic campaign to wring concessions out of the Afghan leader.

Mr Karzai, who was declared the winner of August's disputed election, is also set to publicly accept corruption has tainted his government in a speech after his inauguration on Thursday, according to diplomats in Kabul. He has also been forced to promise senior figures will face arrest before the end of the year and a new tribunal free from political interference will try suspects.

...Government graft ranks as a prime factor in the revival of the Taliban movement throughout Afghanistan. Mark Sedwill, the British ambassador to Kabul, warned that several criminal syndicates were now more powerful than Mr Karzai's regime.

... A US official said that the Afghan leader must make painful choices between foreign aid and his cronies. He said: "We want high profile arrests and we want those rounded up to stay in prison for a very long time."

I have to confess a bit of pity for Hamid Karzai at the moment. He's going to be watching every crime boss and warlord he's pandered to as a possible patron for assassins now, simply because the US and its allies have papers that tell them COIN can only work when there's a legitimate host government. The military are still stuck on stupid in that they've laser-sighted on a COIN strategy despite every indication that their political masters don't want to hang around Afghanistan long enough to see if the military can translate their pretty paper theories into even half-workable practise. So bureaucratic inertia keeps the steamroller going.

It's been a given in Western discussion that Afghan corruption is a very bad, no good thing in and of itself. But Afghanistan has always been a nation ripe for corruption and the Soviets had exactly the same problems with their puppets as the U.S. is currently having with theirs. For much of the current mess of corruption, it only really matters to anyone except the Afghans as long as the West has an occupying force there it must sweeten with non-military aid. And in any case, graft surrounding US contractors dwarfs the pilfering of Karzai and his cronies.

So with the allies heading towards agreeing to head for the exits, is the dishonesty of the Karzai cabal really that important? I don't know, which is why I ask.

UK's Brown Wants NATO Summit For Afghan Exit Timetable (Updated)

By Steve Hynd

Faced with cratering support for the occupation in Afghanistan, Britain's Gordon Brown is trying to thread the needle by claiming that the UK's presence there is justified while looking for the fastest possible exit strategy- preferably a strategy that shows tangible progress before next year's general election. In what was billed by the government as a major foreign policy speech today, Brown has called for a London summit of NATO members to come up with a handover and withdrawal plan. The London Standard got advance notice of the speech.

“Since January 2008 seven of the top dozen figures in al Qaeda have been killed, depleting its reserve of experienced leaders and sapping morale,” Mr Brown was to say in his annual Guildhall foreign policy speech tonight. “And our security forces report to me that there is now an opportunity to inflict significant and long lasting damage to al Qaeda.”

Mr Brown will also confirm he is planning a Nato summit in London to put together an exit strategy for Afghanistan, including a timetable for handing over districts to local forces.

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, will be invited in January with senior military commanders, diplomats and foreign ministers from the US and other allies. The conference is hoped to have a galvanising effect on the war after a period of uncertainty, just as this year's G20 summit in London led to a united approach on the economy.

Mr Brown will also use the summit to increase pressure on Nato allies, particularly in Europe, to send more troops and military resources. In his speech tonight he will say: “I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished.” Mr Brown's plans suggest a withdrawal of British forces could begin in 2011, providing handovers go to plan.

This has been on the cards for a while now, and Brown's public announcement will likely get support from European NATO members. But it will also have an effect on President Obama's decision about escalation of U.S. forces. It's inconceivable that Brown might make such an announcement without first discussing it with his American ally, or that Obama will wish America to "go it alone" when the rest of NATO want to bail at the earliest responsible opportunity. Thus, Brown's speech makes it as nigh certain as it could be that Obama will opt for a minimal escalation of U.S. troops focussed mainly on a mission to rapidly train Afghan security forces and paired with a NATO-agreed timetable for drawdown and withdrawal.

Update: The Telegraph has more:

Mr Brown will say: “I have offered London as a venue in January.

“I want that conference to chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished.

“It should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010.”

It is likely that the London conference would form the first stage of a two-part event, with the second round of talks held in the Afghan capital of Kabul.

Mr Brown is keen for the Nato allies to agree a timetable which would see British troops restricted to a training and mentoring role, rather than front line fighting against the Taliban, by the end of November.

Obama has a simple choice - he can follow NATO to the exit or he can decide that America can stand alone as the sole occupier of Afghanistan, without any coalition backing. Despite the howls neocons are going to raise once this percolates through America's punditry, he's not going to decide the latter.

Update 2: The Guardian reports the actual speech just after Brown finished, and it's all exactly as the Standard said.

[Brown] said a London-based UN conference in January could "chart a comprehensive political framework within which the military strategy can be accomplished. It should identify a process for transferring district by district to full Afghan control and, if at all possible, set a timetable for transfer starting in 2010". Downing Street hopes the UN, Nato and Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, would attend a London conference, which could name some provinces that could be handed over to Afghan control quickly, while acknowledging some would take years to transfer.

Obama has repeatedly said he does not want plans to increase US troops to Afghanistan to be seen as an open-ended commitment to the country. Brown and Obama appear to be working on an Iraq-style strategy in which Afghan security forces take over areas on a phased basis as foreign troops increasingly concentrate on training rather than fighting.

And the Telegraph's James Kirkup blogs:

Note that word timetable. A timetable for transferring districts. Hmm. If you had any doubt about the Prime Minister’s signals on Afghanistan, drop them now. This is as clear a sign as we’ve had that Mr Brown is thinking about a way out.

The search for an exit strategy raises questions. For one thing, can Mr Brown’s timetable for handover be reconciled with the estimates of Britain’s commanders, who reckon it’s going to be five years before we can start reducing troop numbers?

What does this tell us about what the UK expects Barack Obama to do on Afghanistan? The signs from DC are than an American exit is on the cards.

It looks very like the beginning of the end for the Afghan occupation.

A Nuke Deal With Iran - Dead Or Alive?

By Steve Hynd

Yesterday, the Jerusalem Post ran a short piece claiming that:

Iran has completely rejected a UN-brokered nuclear deal, but US President Barack Obama has postponed the official announcement on Teheran's refusal due to internal political reasons...The official reportedly told journalists in Paris that Iran has also refused to resume nuclear talks with the six world powers.

It was tweeted by Obama critics like Danielle Pletka at the neocon AEI, but to be honest it's unbelievable. Even if Iran was willing to keep silent about such refusals for its own reasons, neither Obama nor Iran has enough pull with the IAEA's El Baradei or, especially, France's Iran-hawk foreign minister Bernard Kouchner, to keep the whole thing quiet for more than 30 seconds. In fact, it looks very like Kouchner was the source of the JP report. Today he told reporters that in his opinion: "In practice, the answer has almost been given and it is negative". That's not the same thing by a long chalk but close enough for the war-shills at Murdoch's Jerusalem rag.

There are still signs that Iran is interested in some kind of deal, though. Turkey has confirmed just yesterday, in concert with the IAEA, that it has offered to store Iran's uranium in escrow rather than sending the LEU to provenly unreliable partners Russia and France. There had been reports last week of such an offer, and also reports that Iran had rejected it. But if Turkey is going public now, then it seems Iran can't have rejected the offer yet after all. Moreover, an important voice in Iran's internal deliberations, armed forces chief of staff General Hassan Firouzabadi, said on Thursday that he favored a deal.

“We won’t suffer from an exchange of fuel,” the Mehr news agency quoted the general as saying.

“On the contrary, in obtaining fuel enriched to 20% purity for the Tehran reactor, a million of our citizens will benefit from the medical treatment it can enable and we will prove at the same time the bona fides of our peaceful nuclear activities.”

The general said he had no particular issue with the amount of low-enriched uranium that Iran shipped out - 1,200kg under the current proposals drawn up by the UN nuclear watchdog and approved by the major powers.

“The quantity of uranium enriched to 3.5% that will be shipped out in order to obtain the fuel is not so large as to cause damage,” he said.

Still, Obama is either covering bases or showing he doesn't believe in his own initiative any more, by pressing Russian president Medvedev for sanctions support and saying that “time was running out” for diplomacy. The Chinese, as ever, will be the stumbling block for further sanctions at the UNSC. They'll almost certainly veto any such move and their growing relationship with Iran pretty much guarantees they'll work to undermine any sanctions the US and others might impose unilaterally.

Iran, on it's part, is signalling that it wants a relaxation of existing sanctions as part and parcel of any deal.

Mohsen Rezaee, former commander of Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and currently the Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council of the Islamic Republic, said that, "In my opinion, the suspension of sanctions by the west is their proper response to build confidence."

"If we cannot obtain this privilege from them, we will, in practice, be the loser of this political deal (of nuclear exchange) as we were in the past," Rezaee was quoted as saying.

He pointed out that in the past, Iran, voluntarily and in order to build confidence, suspended its nuclear activities and signed Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but it did not receive deserving confidence-building response from the west.

"In the past, the U.S. President Barack Obama had asked Iran to hand over large amount, 75 percent, of its uranium to them in order to build confidence. It naturally can be the subject of a political deal," Rezaee said, adding that "the suspension of Iran's sanctions by the west can be their proper response."

Iran has also halted expansion of its enrichment program, as the IAEA reported last week, perhaps as a signal of good faith.

So it doesn't look like some kind of deal is impossible, just yet - and negotiations are probably continuing behind the scenes and off the hawkish radar. Julian Borger at the Guardian suggests a reason the Obama administration might want those negotiations to spin out for as long as possible.

After a meeting with Dmitry Medvedev, Barack Obama said time was "running out" for the deal. Strictly speaking, the time allotted by the IAEA ran out weeks ago, but all parties involved in the deal are reluctant to abandon the only really promising development in Iranian nuclear talks in more than four years.

The Americans and Europeans believe the uranium export proposal has caused new and interesting splits in the Iranian body politic that could ultimately change a line. A European diplomat I spoke to last week saw Ahmadinejad as the most enthusiastic on the uranium deal, with Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, united in scepticism with conservative opposition figures like Ali Larijani, and reformists like Mirhossein Mousavi. Tearing the deal up and threatening sweeping sanctions would simply reunify the Iranian camp, the argument goes.

But he also ends pessimistically:

And yet, time has to be called at some point, because without a deadline there is no incentive for Iran to agree to anything, and because Israel is believed to have its own timetable for military action if no progress is made. Unless something remarkable turns up, that deadline will fall at the end of December. At this rate, 2010 looks like it could be an even bleaker year in the Middle East than 2009.

If Israel attacks Iran, America and the West will be involved in another major war in the region whether they like it or not. Everyone will assume Western complicity in such an attack.

So, will 2010 finally be the year that the neocons and allied Israeli hardliners finally get their long-wished-for conflict with Iran? The "real men go to Tehran" crowd are obviously hoping so.