View U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan in a larger map

The New America Foundation has mapped drone strikes in Pakistan over the past 6 years using Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann’s drones database. Their policy paper is here, describing their methodology. Although they estimate the “true civilian fatality rate since 2004” to be “only” 32 percent, they criticize the use of drones as ineffective, and no substitute for a proper strategy in Pakistan. At the same time, “drone attacks in the tribal regions seem to remain the only viable option for the United States to take on the militants based there who threaten the lives of Afghans, Pakistanis, and Westerners alike.”

The drone database is an ongoing project. The latest map update was March 2nd.

Only in America could a whiskey-loving, cocaine-snorting, womanizing badboy and flamboyant wisecracker, elected to serve in the US Congress from a rural backwater district situated deep in Dixie Christian fundamentalist territory, find an idealistic spark that made him determined to fund a crackpot Muslim fundamentalist “freedom fighter” insurgency halfway across the world, and help bring down an empire.

And then we fucked up the end game.

Sorry Charlie, but now the world knows you were right. And you will be missed.

Farhat Taj has a very interesting article in the Daily Times (Pakistan) that vigorously justifies drone attacks. Taj’s credentials are curious—she is a research fellow at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research at the University of Oslo, and a member of Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy—yet it is with that background that she writes from first hand experience praising US drone attacks and saying that Waziristan locals agree with her. For what the article lacks in sophistication and structure it makes up for with its unique perspective.

There is a deep abyss between the perceptions of the people of Waziristan, the most drone-hit area and the wider Pakistani society on the other side of the River Indus. For the latter, the US drone attacks on Waziristan are a violation of Pakistani’s sovereignty. Politicians, religious leaders, media analysts and anchorpersons express sensational clamour over the supposed ‘civilian casualties’ in the drone attacks. I have been discussing the issue of drone attacks with hundreds of people of Waziristan. They see the US drone attacks as their liberators from the clutches of the terrorists into which, they say, their state has wilfully thrown them. The purpose of today’s column is, one, to challenge the Pakistani and US media reports about the civilian casualties in the drone attacks and, two, to express the view of the people of Waziristan, who are equally terrified by the Taliban and the intelligence agencies of Pakistan. I personally met these people in the Pakhtunkhwa province, where they live as internally displaced persons (IDPs), and in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

I would challenge both the US and Pakistani media to provide verifiable evidence of civilian ‘casualties’ because of drone attacks on Waziristan, i.e. names of the people killed, names of their villages, dates and locations of the strikes and, above all, the methodology of the information that they collected. If they can’t meet the challenge, I would request them to stop throwing around fabricated figures of ‘civilian casualties’ that confuse people around the world and provide propaganda material to the pro-Taliban and al Qaeda forces in the politics and media of Pakistan.

I pose that challenge because no one is in a position to give a correct estimate of how many individuals have been killed so far in drone attacks. On the basis of American media estimates, 600 to 700 ‘civilian population’ have been killed. The Pakistani government, pro-Taliban political parties like Jamaat-e-Islami, Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam, Tehrik-e-Insaf, and the media are quoting the same figure. Neither the government of Pakistan nor the media have any access to the area and no system is in place to arrive at precise estimates. The Pakistani government and media take the figure appearing in the American media as an admission by the American government. The US media too do not have access to the area. Moreover, the area is simply not accessible for any kind of independent journalistic or scholarly work on drone attacks. The Taliban simply kill anyone doing so.

The people of Waziristan are suffering a brutal kind of occupation under the Taliban and al Qaeda. It is in this context that they would welcome anyone, Americans, Israelis, Indians or even the devil, to rid them of the Taliban and al Qaeda. Therefore, they welcome the drone attacks. Secondly, the people feel comfortable with the drones because of their precision and targeted strikes. People usually appreciate drone attacks when they compare it with the Pakistan Army’s attacks, which always result in collateral damage. Especially the people of Waziristan have been terrified by the use of long-range artillery and air strikes of the Pakistan Army and Air Force. People complain that not a single TTP or al Qaeda member has been killed so far by the Pakistan Army, whereas a lot of collateral damage has taken place. Thousands of houses have been destroyed and hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed by the Pakistan Army. On the other hand, drone attacks have never targeted the civilian population except, they informed, in one case when the funeral procession of Khwazh Wali, a TTP commander, was hit… I have heard people particularly appreciating the precision of drone strikes. People say that when a drone would hover over the skies, they wouldn’t be disturbed and would carry on their usual business because they would be sure that it does not target the civilians, but the same people would run for shelter when a Pakistani jet would appear in the skies because of its indiscriminate firing.

Look at this powerpoint slide! I haven’t seen that many arrows since Agincourt. From Marginal revolution:

It’s all in this military powerpoint, apparently official.  On the positive side they are aware the problem is complex.

In the Novum Organum, published in 1620, Francis Bacon presented his idea of scientific method. In it he lists four “idols of the mind” which hinder correct scientific reasoning. I think Powerpoint should be promoted as a new idol.

Despite its complexity, it is worth reading through the entire document to see how they reached this particular slide. But in no way can I imagine calling this a “model” of dynamics. It is more like a link analysis of To Do’s.

h/t to Joe. Also see: Present Arms! The military and Powerpoint.

Kaplan argues that NATO’s 7000 troop contribution to the Afghan surge should not be considered an end, but a beginning:

Consider: China is rising as a great power, particularly in the naval sphere. The U.S. will not fight a war with China, but it will leverage like-minded, democratic others such as India, Indonesia, Australia, South Korea, and Japan to help manage Chinese ascendancy in the maritime rimland of Eurasia. This will take a lot of work, and a lot of ships. And with the U.S. increasingly tied up in the Indian and Pacific oceans as the years and decades march on, it will help to rely increasingly on European forces to cover the the Atlantic and Africa for them.

Although Kaplan continues to be pushing Europe towards a more warlike nature, there seems to be a slight change in tone. Take this quote from the Dispatch:

At home, Europe’s social safety net is estimable. But what will the European Union, now with its own president and foreign minister, work toward abroad?

Now, remember this?

What does the European Union truly stand for besides a cradle-to-grave social welfare system? For without something to struggle for, there can be no civil society—only decadence.

Anyways, read the whole Dispatch at The Atlantic: Let’s Go, Europe.

The New York Times has gathered together an impressive round table of wise men and women to discuss the case of Ahmed Wali Karzai, (brother of President Karzai) who has been linked to the drugs trade in Afghanistan and recently was outed as a long-time CIA asset. Ahmed Karzai is a symbol of corruption in Afghanistan, and the CIA’s connection with him undermines America’s nation-building agenda in Afghanistan. So, how to deal with him?

The round table includes many of the usual suspects: Stephen Biddle, Andrew J. Bacevich, Fred Kagan, Vanda Felbab-Brown and Robert D. Kaplan. The round table is still going on so for the Afghan hands out there, keep your tabs on it here.

Hat Tip to Chief Wiggum for bringing our attention to a new Kaplan article in the NYT.

Beijing’s Afghan Gamble
By ROBERT D. KAPLAN
IN Afghanistan’s Logar Province, just south of Kabul, the geopolitical future of Asia is becoming apparent: American troops are providing security for a Chinese state-owned company to exploit the Aynak copper reserves, which are worth tens of billions of dollars. While some of America’s NATO allies want to do as little as possible in the effort to stabilize Afghanistan, China has its eyes on some of world’s last untapped deposits of copper, iron, gold, uranium and precious gems, and is willing to take big risks in one of the most violent countries to secure them.

In Afghanistan, American and Chinese interests converge. By exploiting Afghanistan’s metal and mineral reserves, China can provide thousands of Afghans with jobs, thus generating tax revenues to help stabilize a tottering Kabul government. Just as America has a vision of a modestly stable Afghanistan that will no longer be a haven for extremists, China has a vision of Afghanistan as a secure conduit for roads and energy pipelines that will bring natural resources from the Indian Ocean and elsewhere. So if America defeats Al Qaeda and the irreconcilable elements of the Taliban, China’s geopolitical position will be enhanced.

This is not a paradox, since China need not be our future adversary. Indeed, combining forces with China in Afghanistan might even improve the relationship between Washington and Beijing. The problem is that while America is sacrificing its blood and treasure, the Chinese will reap the benefits. The whole direction of America’s military and diplomatic effort is toward an exit strategy, whereas the Chinese hope to stay and profit.

But what if America decides to leave, or to drastically reduce its footprint to a counterterrorism strategy focused mainly on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border? Then another scenario might play out. Kandahar and other areas will most likely fall to the Taliban, creating a truly lawless realm that wrecks China’s plans for an energy and commodities passageway through South Asia. It would also, of course, be a momentous moral victory achieved by radical Muslims who, having first defeated the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, will then have triumphed over another superpower.

Read the rest.

As an adherent of the Robert D. Kaplan school of travel, I’m a big fan of overland travel. Given the choice and when time allows, I’d much rather travel by boat, train, or bicycle. Flying is convenient—but it rushes you to your destination without letting you appreciate the distance. But like any form of mass public transportation, it can present opportunities to meet people (some interesting, some weird). Flying from Tokyo to Dubai, I introduced myself to my seatmate and we began chatting. It turns out he was an Afghan national living between Japan and the UAE, and once we spoke a bit and he saw that I knew something about Afghanistan, or at least enough to have a conversation about his country, we spent several hours chatting on world affairs and his life story on our many hours together. (The moment when he opened up and began to talk about his life story was after this exchange: Him: “I’m not a Pakistani Afghan, I’m Persian.” Curzon: “Persian? Do you mean Hazara or Tajik?” Him: “Yes, Hazara, you know well…”)

My seatmate was born in Kabul in the post-monarchical Republic of Afghanistan, the period after the fall of the monarchy and before the Soviet invasion. His father was Hazara and his mother was Pashtun, but his family was culturally Hazara and he spoke Persian, although he did not elaborate further. He attended one of the best private schools in the city until the age of 8, when the fighting forced his family to flee Kabul, and they relocated to the mountains to the west of the city (the town name began with a “b,” I cannot recall further). After surviving the violence there for four years, they moved to Mazar-e-Sharif in the north and spent several years there. At the age of 14, his family was separated and he spent three weeks walking, alone, from northern Afghanistan to the Pakistan border, where he spent a few months at a border camp until being reunited with his family in Iran. From there, they immigrated to a town to the north of Dubai. For the past decade he’s lived half his life in the UAE and half in Japan, and runs a business exporting second hand cars from Japan to the Middle East region together with other members of his extended family.

He recieved very little schooling through his ordeal. Although an advanced speaker of English and Japanese, he could not write any Japanese and only very little English. He took more than a minute to write his short e-mail address on his business card and wrote the letters “h” and “m” backwards.

It’s a weird experience to hear tales of brutal violence from someone who experienced such a traumatic childhood. He had horrific stories that he spoke of with a straight face, looking almost bored, with piercing and unwavering eye contact that disturbed me. One such story he recounted was a mortar attack he and his family survived at age 11. The next day he helped lift dead bodies and body parts into a truck to be taken away to a mass grave. Another story was about a makeshift school he attended in the mountains, where gunman walked in, grabbed several of the oldest children in the room, and brought them away, where they were reportedly drafted into fighting and never heard from again.

He did not have much to say on the future of Afghanistan except that it was bleak. He visited once after the fall of the Taliban and said he would not go back again, and the country will remain poor and chaotic for the next 100 years. The problems? One is education. People have no education and can’t read and are not literate. The other is the different ethnicities. What I took from several minutes of talking on the topic was that the problem was not hatred between ethnic groups, but the loyalty that was exclusive to ethnic groups and clans.

He also said the Taliban were all foreigners. To paraphrase him, they were Russians, Americans, Indians, and especially Arabs who grew their beards and tried to dress like locals, but who were just foreigners with guns who were the guests of the Taliban bosses.

Speaking about his family, he reported that he had relatives in his extended family across the world in Los Angeles, London, Japan, Sydney, and New Zealand, many of whom are naturalized citizens. The UAE does not offer such an easy path to naturalization and limited benefits when he considered getting a UAE passport. He cannot read or write Japanese, not even the phonetic katakana or hiragana alphabets, and thus does not meet the third grade reading requirement to apply for Japanese citizenship (about 400 kanji characters).

One fun fact about renewing a passport at an Afghanistan embassy overseas, which he has done in the UAE and Tokyo, is that the embassy always asks random questions to confirm the true Afghani nationality of the passport holder. Questions such as, “Where was your grandfather born?” and “How long does it take to drive from Kandahar to Kabul?” Apparently, an Afghani passport can be purchased for $20-50 in Afghanistan, and lots of Pakistanis use it to try and apply for refugee status overseas, and the phenomenon is broad enough that embassies check.

That I write this of course means that I’m safely in Dubai. The big local news is that the new metro line opens today. I’ll be back with more on the city soon.

With all the talk of Pakistan and the Taliban being 60 miles from Islamabad (as if they have tank divisions or conventional forces), I’d like to consider just a few things.

1) The Taleban are an insurgent group, not conventional fighters. If they try to become one, they will be decimated by the Pakistan army just as happened for example during the Tet Offensive.

2) From Pakistan’s perspective, support for the Taliban is a hedge against the future withdrawal of NATO from Afghanistan and a slowing or stop of US support. Remember, the US and Pakistan had bad relations since 1989 when the US lost interest and slapped Pakistan with host of nonproliferation sanctions. Pakistan sees the US as an unreliable ally and fair weather friend. Hence, if Pakistan truly does turn on the Taliban and wins, it will inevitably lead towards a situation where the US/NATO accomplishes its mission and leaves. Then Pakistan will be left alone to fight India with no ally in Afghanistan and fewer proxy forces.

India is still seen as Pakistan’s primary threat while the opposite is of course not true.What are the US/NATO’s options here?

With the scheduled closure of Manas Airbase in Kyrgyzstan, and increased attacks on Pakistani supply lines, US and NATO forces have been forced to reorganize their supply chain to troops in Afghanistan. The US and NATO have been canvassing countries in and around Central Asia. I suggested Iran, having earlier said that “Russian bases in Tajikistan preclude any American ones”. Last week, the US and Tajikistan signed a deal for the transit of non-military supplies headed for Afghanistan. I suspect it was the earlier and similar deal with Russia that allowed this progress between Tajikistan and the West, rather than any sort of gesture of independence. Regardless, we’ll take what we can get. Still and all, the problem of no alternative air supply routes remains to be solved.