WAR IN MBER THURSDAY, MODERATOR: Associate Editor. SPEAKER: Gilles. Dorronsoroo

Transcription

1 WAR IN AFGHANISTANN THE DECEM MBER REVIEW THURSDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2010 WASHINGTON, D.C. MODERATOR: Karen DeYoungg Associate Editor The Washington Post SPEAKER: Gilles Dorronsoroo Visiting Scholar, South Asiaa Program Carnegie Endowment

2 KAREN DEYOUNG: Welcome to Carnegie. We re all here to listen to and ask questions about Gilles Dorronsoro s new review on Afghanistan. And those of you who follow Afghanistan closely will have read his previous work. And I think that we can all acknowledge that he s been one of the most prescient and wise and honest observers of the war in Afghanistan, probably spends more time there than anyone else who is not required to be there by government service or for some other reason, and actually talks to people that many of the people who are fighting the war there don t talk to. And thus, I think gives us a much more honest and broad view of what s going on. It s a particularly opportune time, obviously, to hear from Gilles, from his recent trip there and some of the conversations that he s had. The administration is about to well, has already launched its December review. The reports are all in from the various agencies and departments. They are going through them in the White House. They expect to have a meeting of the principals committee and with the president by the middle of this month. And theoretically, this review is to decide whether they need a change in strategy. I think that the verdict is already in on that. They ve already decided that they re not going to have much of a change in strategy. And they talk about tweaking it. I think that this report gives us all room to pause and wonder if that in fact is the correct thing to do. I ll just speak briefly about Gilles. As you all know, he s a visiting scholar here at Carnegie. He told me not to read all this stuff and just to tell you that he s an expert on Afghanistan and Turkey. He s also a professor of political science at the Sorbonne. And so, what I d like to do is have Gilles talk a bit about what s in the report and then I will ask some questions and then hopefully you will have some questions, too, and we can have a discussion about it. Gilles? GILLES DORRONSORO: Thanks. Well, I m going to speak for five to ten minutes very quickly about a few points that I think are important to understand. Let s start with what happened in Lisbon, you know, the NATO summit in Lisbon. So from my point of view, two things are clear. The first is that the Europeans will be out of Afghanistan, whatever the situation on the ground, in the next three years progressively. Ireland, Canada, then Poland, then progressively all the other ones. The French, the Brits it s not very clear what they are going to do. But even if they stay in Afghanistan, it s very clear that they will try to limit the casualties means their military value is going to decrease very quickly. And for the Germans, they don t have a military value, so it s not a problem. (Laughter.) The second element is that on the contrary, the United States is now in an open-ended war, so there is no real deadline, absolutely no deadline in July I am not even sure we ll talk about that. That s my second point, I m not even sure there will be a decrease. But anyway, even after 2014, it s not very clear that you will not have some fighting U.S. fighting troops in Afghanistan. The clear consequence of that is the cost of the war is going to be more and more American. It s the trend since But it s going to be more and more like that. The second point I think is important to notice is that the current strategy, the way it is described, is totally unrealistic. Now, the current strategy is twofold in a way. First, the Taliban are supposed to

3 be weaker next year because of the military operation. And second, [Afghan Prime Minister Hamid] Karzai is going to be stronger the next few years because of the building of the Afghan National Army. From my point of view, these two points are wrong. First, the Taliban are going to be stronger next year. It s already there. It s obvious. They have made huge gains in 2010 in the north and the east. I think the big story of next year is going to be more the east than the north because what we have seen the last, say, three months, four months, around Jalalabad is extremely worrying. And Jalalabad, of course you know the road from Jalalabad to Kabul, is a key road in Afghanistan. And the pressure is going to be much nearer to the capital, to Kabul. The north is going to deteriorate. But somehow, it s not going to be a big story because it s already there. We already know that we cannot take a car from Kabul to Mazar-e-Sharif or to Kunduz, if you are a foreigner, if you are working for the Afghan government, if you are working for an NGO. [In] the last case, if you are working for an NGO, you can go maybe, but with a letter from the Taliban. So for all these reasons, I think the Taliban have the momentum and the trend is extremely good for them because they still have the support of the full support, the active and full support of the Pakistani military. And even if they have tactical failure, they can always come back to Pakistan, rest a little, reorganize, and go back to Afghanistan. So it leads me to my second point. The Karzai regime is going to be weaker next year. Weaker because there is I mean, you have seen the result of the last legislative election in Afghanistan. We are clearly, what I said already last year, in a post-democratic Afghanistan. Karzai is more and more isolated. And the state structure is progressively disappearing at the district level. It s done in the north; it s done in the east. It s obvious in the south. So you don t have a functioning state in Afghanistan. I don t see how you can build an army outside the larger structure of the state. It s not possible to have an army built outside everything, a standalone army. I don t think it s possible. You need a structure; you need a political legitimacy. You need all that. And it s not anywhere possible in the next two or three years. So we are putting a lot of money in the training of Afghan army. It s good in a way for other reasons. But it s not going to basically stop the Taliban. What we can have, the best situation, would be an Afghan national army able to defend a few cities and a few key roads. But if the idea is to be sure that al-qaeda is not back in Afghanistan, of course, it s not going to work because the Afghan national army will never be able to control the border areas toward Pakistan. It s clear. So the idea that you can progressively withdraw from Afghanistan, letting the Afghan National Army do their work, is just not coherent if you think that the main strategic interest to the United State is to avoid al-qaeda back in Afghanistan. In case al-qaeda wants to be back in Afghanistan, I am not sure of all of that. But anyway, if you think that, the current strategy is not working. It cannot work. So these are the two points. Now we ve bet everything on the operation in two provinces: Kandahar and Helmand in the south of Afghanistan. The reason why the U.S. military have chosen to put their main fighters in these points, these two provinces, is difficult to explain in rational terms. It s mostly

4 the sunk-cost trap, if you want. It s mostly because the British were fighting in Helmand that the U.S. military decided that it was important to win there, just not to give some ground to the Taliban. In the case of Kandahar, it s probably the worst place where you should try to fight the Taliban because they are popular. They are seriously popular. And second, there is no Afghan state. There are just some few corrupt officials without any social backing. So deciding to fight the Taliban here means you need a solid political strategy. And we don t have a solid political strategy because there is nobody to work with. And third (inaudible) it s the place where the Pakistani support is the most deficient. From Kandahar to the border, it s two hours by car, okay three hours. The main social and political base of the Taliban is not in the north, near Peshawar or the FATA; it s in Quetta. So to choose to fight the Taliban there, I think, was not a good idea. What s going on, on the ground, is proving that every day. There is no progress on the ground in the sense that even if the U.S. military is able to clear some areas and I am not sure of that in the long term but even if everything goes well on the military ground, military point of view, you don t have anybody to put in these places to administrate a civil servant, for example to help the population, to have a development program, to have an Afghan state. There is nothing. And what we are going to see is a kind of state made in the south. And the Taliban will still be here. They are part of the population. They have the support. And the foreign forces trying to find somebody to talk with which is more and more complicated in Kandahar because the Taliban there have their own counter-counterinsurgency program. And it s a very simple one. They kill everybody who is speaking with the foreigners or even who could speak to the foreigners. It s efficient. It s radical. And it s working very well so far. So for all these reasons I don t want to be too long for all these reasons, what s going to happen next year is quite clear: less Europeans, more Taliban, and Karzai [is] not able to do work. So the logical consequence of that, if I m not wrong, is that the United States will need to put more resources in Afghanistan. That s called an escalation. And we are, since the beginning in the way in this clear trend every year since 2002, we put more troops and more resources in Afghanistan. The total cost is going to be well over $1 trillion by And of course, 2014 is not the end of the war; it s just the minimum you can think of now. And there is no solution, of course. And the cost in strategic terms is going to be huge, because of course Afghanistan is producing more militants, more radical militants, more jihadist groups. It s the perfect playground for these people to fight, to learn how to fight. So I m not very optimistic and maybe we ll address that. Yeah, you ve understood the point, yeah. (Laughter.) I tend to make the point again because I m not sure you understand always what I m saying in English. So you know, I tend to be kind of [a] little heavy. But I think you got the main idea. And the thing is that the situation on the ground is, in a way, not very difficult to understand. So it was very nice of you to say, okay I am not very wise. I am not that clever, [a] bona fide French academic. What I am saying is basically what everybody is saying. It s not very original what I am saying. Go to Kabul and everybody is saying the same thing.

5 So the problem is not in Kabul; the problem is in Washington somewhere. And here we have the timing, the political timing, of Washington politics. And it seems to be extremely difficult to go somewhere in the next 18 months or two years. That s why I m very pessimistic. Thank you. MS. DEYOUNG: Thank you. One of the things that you emphasize in the report is the need to quickly move toward political negotiations with the Taliban. And yet, as I read and listen to you, you ve described them as very much in a winning situation. And I guess my question is, why would they want to negotiate now? What advantages would there be for them? And also, it seems to me from what we hear and what we read that the position of the United States at least, and certainly of the Europeans even more so, is to negotiate. And in fact, they are pushing for that and do see it as an exit strategy. MR. DORRONSORO: Well, maybe [to your] first point, why negotiate now and not wait a few months, because that s [General David] Petraeus s advisors are making the point very often that the idea is [that] you change the balance of power; you negotiate from a position of strength. It s not going to work because the situation is going to be worse next year. So if you want to negotiate, better to negotiate now than in six months or one year because the situation is going to be worse. And maybe the Taliban leadership is going to lose control of a certain amount of command on the ground. That s a possibility. It s not my feeling. But some very knowledgeable people are thinking that right now what the operations in Kandahar are [doing is] destructuring the Taliban. And they are pushing a new generation, the guys who are twenty-five years old, who are much more radical than the traditional shura in Quetta. So here is a real danger. I don t think that the current operation in the south is helping to [reach] a negotiation. I think it s decreasing the probability of a negotiation. The second thing is that I m not sure it s going to work. But I don t see anything else practical, basically. So there are very good arguments pro and con. I will give you a few [pro] arguments. Maybe I m wrong. But I don t see what is wrong with trying. The only real cost of negotiating with the Taliban is in Washington. It s public opinion. It s the Republicans. It s that. It s not on the ground. It s not in Afghanistan. It s not going to be worse because you try to speak with the Taliban. And the third point now is, why should they say yes, no, or maybe? First, we have a clear indication that part of the leadership wants to negotiate. That s off the record. So I cannot give more detail. But there are real signs. It seems that very high-level Taliban are trying to directly contact the Americans. And they want some kind of negotiations. That s the first argument. The second point is that don t forget that the Taliban leadership is under the control of the Pakistani military. And the Pakistani military wants a negotiation. That s clear. They want a well-organized exit of the Western forces from Afghanistan. They don t want a panic. They don t want the humiliation of the coalition and the kind of Vietnam-like or Soviet-like exit. They want something organized. And they want to negotiate. So that s the main argument. Some people would say that it s not possible, that the Taliban are too close to al-qaeda, for example, to negotiate. I don t think so. There is a book that s going to be published in a few months by Hearst publishers, describing the relationship between the Taliban and

6 al-qaeda. And for me, it s what I ve already thought, but in a less articulated way. The relationship is not that close. We have a real opportunity. There is a window of opportunity. We can do it in the next year, the next twelve months. MS. DEYOUNG: But are you saying that the U.S. position the current position, which is that negotiations have to be Afghan-led, that this has to be run by the Afghan government that they should just abandon that and try to negotiate directly? MR. DORRONSORO: Well, I mean, let s be the Taliban for two minutes. Would you like to negotiate yes, okay, a little bit but would you try to negotiate with Karzai? When you want to negotiate, you want to negotiate with your enemies, basically. You want to negotiate with the people who are influential, who have the money, the guns. Karzai has none of that. So why should the Taliban put part of their credibility on [the line in] negotiations with Karzai, when Karzai has no power and when you don t know what the coalition is going to say about these negotiations? It s a risk that, as the Taliban, I would not take. Plus, for the Pakistani army the civilians in Pakistan are not part of the picture. For the Pakistani army, it s very important to have negotiations with the United States because it s a way to recognize the role of Pakistan. Negotiating with Karzai is what? It s negotiating with the guy who is part of the Kabul city. There s no way, no way. MS. DEYOUNG: There increasingly in Afghanistan are non-pashtun, non-taliban figures who very much do not want a negotiation, and have begun to seek out their own allies in those countries in the neighborhood that are similarly opposed to any kind of a power-sharing deal: the Russians, the Iranians, the Indians. How does the United States, as a policy matter, negotiate that? And how do they keep those forces, the former Northern Alliance forces, largely, from rearming and pushing the country back into civil war, with some support from other countries in the neighborhood? MR. DORRONSORO: So two points. First, what s the scenario that people are working on? The idea is and it was suggested by the former U.S. ambassador in India, if I m not wrong the idea is basically that you can work with northern people. The Northern Alliance doesn t exist anymore, but let s say northern political forces. And so you divide the country in two, basically, so north of Kabul, or north of the Salang Pass, you will have people working with the United States Uzbek, Tajik, different ethnicities and these people will accept the presence of foreign bases, of coalition bases. The east and the south will be de facto Taliban land. So I see at least there are plenty of problems with this scenario, but [I see] at least two problems. First, you say that, you put the Taliban in the position of not only being the jihadists and it s a positive term, the representatives of the jihad in Afghanistan but it s also the only representative of Afghan unity. So basically, you re giving the Taliban everything. I mean, politically it s a disaster inside Afghanistan. And I m not sure that even Karzai would work with that. I mean, it s suicide, politically suicidal, because the Afghan people, they have a strong okay, they fight each other, but they have this strong sense of identity as Afghans, you know? And

7 I ve seen that a lot. Maybe they are Pashtun, maybe they are Tajik, but they are Afghan and they prefer to fight each other in the same country (laughter) so to speak. The second point is that this scenario is deeply stupid. Where is the security problem of the United States? It s in the Pashtun areas, or let s say from the Indus to the Azad, all this area. You take the Afghan-Pakistani border and you take 200 kilometers, both sides, and you have really, the problem is somewhere here. Okay, and now you re suggesting to leave this area to the Taliban, or let s say, jihadist groups, and to focus on your forces in the north, where of course there is no problem. What exactly are you going to do with that? It s nowhere. I mean, so if al-qaeda wants to come back in this area, they will. Why? Because the Taliban will not be in charge of a state. It s not going to be a state. It s going to be a de facto situation where you re losing control of everything. And the third argument is that it would have a very destabilizing effect on Pakistan, because basically, saying that, you re redrawing the map. So what about a big Baluchistan in the south, a big Pashtunistan from Indus to the Azad and so on and so forth? So honestly, I don t think it can even work remotely. That s the first one. The second point, to answer your question, is, are people trying to do that? Is it going to work? First, yes, some people are doing that. The former intelligence chief, [Amrullah] Saleh, is trying to do something like that, so he s asking for money [from] the Indians, [from] the Western countries and so on. And he is trying to build something in the north. So some people are thinking about that. I think the Iranians are more subtle than that. They are helping Karzai with the Taliban. They are trying to stay out of trouble. I don t think they will work with that. But yes, some people are doing that. Is it going to work? No. Why? Because there is nobody in the north. The north is not a place where you can have the emergence of a strong military player or political player. The north is more and more divided, fragmented politically. That is why the Taliban are making progress the way they are making progress, because there is nothing. There is nothing. The local strongmen in the north control a few villages it s nothing. It s a very low-key military player. So nobody s going to raise the Taliban. So it is not doable, but just speaking of it is dangerous. That would be my basic answer. MS. DEYOUNG: There were some suggestions before the presidential election in Afghanistan last year that the United States and the Western allies there should push to jettison the political system that they put in place in Afghanistan in late 2001,that in fact this constitutional system [a] strong centralized government, powerful presidency doesn t work there. And that there should be some kind of new Jirga system, and they should try to get these groups together in a way that would result in a de facto power-sharing system. That seems to have gone away with the presidential election, and the Americans, at least, seem to have kind of put all their eggs in the Karzai basket, even realizing that that was a pretty bad option. Should there be another push? Is one way to go at this to, once again, try to establish a different kind of government in Afghanistan? Or has the situation gone so far beyond that that it s not just a viable option now?

8 MR. DORRONSORO: Okay, first point the key weakness of the political system, political framework, institutional framework in Afghanistan was not presidential. It was the lack of political parties. That s the key problem in Afghanistan, and thanks to the experts of the UN, there was no pressure in 2002 to build a strong political-party system in Afghanistan. Basically, think Germany. Germany should have been the model. You need political parties. Why? Because you re in a place that s extremely fragmented, so you need political parties to aggregate the demands to be the go-between [for] the population and the state and institutions. And there is no political party in Afghanistan, except the Taliban, and that is a problem. So that was the key problem. The problem was not what kind of system [there would be]. The second element of the answer is, Karzai has been one of the key elements in the quick weakening of the Afghan state because he was appointing province governors who were extremely, extremely unqualified. That was one of the key problems in Afghanistan. Again and again, it was the same guys. A guy was six months somewhere [else]. He was, almost by himself, starting a civil war. And the Karzai answer was to put him in another province, just to be sure. So that s one of the key problems, not in itself the fact that the system is presidential or nonpresidential. So the problem is Karzai, his personality, the way he s working, much more than something else. The third element of the response is that all that doesn t matter anyway. The new parliament doesn t matter. When people are speaking about a jirga, it s just a way to go around the parliament, and the last parliament was, in a way, not so bad compared with the one we are going to have now. And so the jirga is just a way for Karzai to put his men in, in case the parliament [does] not respond the way he wants. So the jirga are not a solution. And the last element of the response is that the negotiation process must be a way to put that on the table, to find a new leader. Because part of the negotiation process is, who is going to be in power in Kabul? And then we have to get rid of Karzai. Send him to Dubai. He has enough money, it seems. Do something with the people representative, to a certain extent, of the north. Rashid Dostum is not acceptable because he has killed too many people; he has raped too many people. But a leader from the Junbish the party he s more or less in control of could be a part of the negotiation. People from Badakhshan and so on and so on. People from Azahadjet also. Then you can have a negotiation of what kind of state you want. Now, it should be on the table because the idea that the Taliban is just going to give their weapons and just respect the current constitution is just not workable. MS. DEYOUNG: Finally, I wanted to ask you just a little bit about your analysis of what s happening in this country. You seem to posit only two alternatives: one is a major withdrawal next summer, versus the need for the beginning of an escalation. After Lisbon I kind of saw it in a somewhat different way, that de-facto the United States and with strong support from the Europeans has already decided on the kind of phased withdrawal that you ve said has to happen, that there ll be a largely cosmetic withdrawal starting in July and that by setting this 2014 date, they pretty much have committed themselves to a gradual withdrawal. I don t see any support for escalation at all. And I wonder if what you re proposing is, in fact, what s happening now although no one s going to say it. And the fly in the ointment, obviously, is

9 General Petraeus, who I think has very different ideas about what should happen there. And the political question here becomes whether the administration, [whether] there are going to be loudenough voices inside that will say, no, this is not working. MR. DORRONSORO: For the Europeans, we totally agree. I m sure that in the White House, most probably, they are seeing the disaster coming. I mean, it s not reasonable to put $1 trillion in Afghanistan, which is not a place where you have a very, very important national interest when you re trying to curb Social Security because you want to balance the budget. I mean, it doesn t make sense. So from the White House perspective, I think that people are kind of very skeptical about the current strategy. At the same time in this country, it s difficult to get something from the military if they don t want to give it. That s what happened to [President] Obama last year when he wanted alternatives he wanted plan A, plan B, plan C. And actually, he just had one plan, plan A: send 40[thousand], 30 [thousand], or 40,000 men [to] Afghanistan. So there is a problem a deep problem of relationship between the political goal and the military goal in this country. I think that the rationality of the U.S. military is that they don t want to lose. So they are just asking [for] more resources, more resources, and more resources. That s the key problem. And the civilian power has to say, we stop, because it s not rational to send that level of resources in this country. That s one thing. Second thing yes, that s what they think they are doing in Lisbon. But at the same time, if next year the Taliban are much stronger than this year if they gain ground to a point where they are attacking every day the base, bombing every day, rocketing every day the base in Jalalabad or even in Bagram near Kabul, what are we doing to do? Now, the Taliban are extremely close to Kabul. What are we going to do if they take a little city like Ghazni or other cities or what s the insight to that? You cannot say, okay, it s not a problem, we are going to withdraw troops in 2012 because the military situation is going to be a disaster. That s my problem. And the best troops are stuck in the south, so if you have an emergency problem in the east or the north, what are you going to do? That s why I think, yes, the Europeans and the White House, they want to withdraw that they are very clear about that, yes. At the same time, they put themselves in a situation where they could be obliged to send more troops just to contain the Taliban. And the missing piece since the beginning is that you cannot withdraw from Afghanistan without a political deal. That s not very complicated. You cannot withdraw without a political deal. MS. DEYOUNG: Questions. Can you do you have a microphone, and can you just identify yourself and your affiliation? Yes, sir. Q: Yeah, good morning. I m Bob Dreyfuss with The Nation magazine. If what you re saying about the Taliban being under Pakistan control and I know you ve said earlier in other papers that they have a modicum of independence if they ever took power in Afghanistan but in any case, what does Pakistan want? In other words, shouldn t the address for the United States if we want a

10 political settlement be in Pakistan? And if so, what could President Obama say to Pakistan to get them to underwrite a deal, and then what would India s response be? Wouldn t we have to get India to, basically, also underwrite that deal? MR. DORRONSORO: Okay. The first thing is that you have two U.S. policies that are not working well together. One is the containment of China I know, technically, it s not exactly a containment but the idea, basically, [is] that you re playing India against China. That s why the United States made a nuclear agreement with India that was basically giving everything, it was basically written by India. That s why during the last Obama trip in New Delhi, you had these clever moves to [promote a] good relationship with India. And at the same time, if you think Pakistan, Afghanistan all these moves are clear disasters. So today we are in the position where there is, of course, no trust. I m not speaking only about WikiLeaks, but it s part of what we learned. I mean, the level of distrust, that s what we are seeing off the record. But now it s on the record. Nobody trusts nobody. To Pakistan, I mean, it s not going to give one inch to the U.S. military and the U.S. government about support [of] the Taliban. It s there, and it s going to stay there. So how do you deal with these two different policies? One is pro-india, one is the war in Afghanistan. And neither has some kind of Pakistani support. The only way [is] to go out, and to go out, we need Pakistani support. And there, instead of trying to educate the Pakistani leadership, we can have a real discussion about common interests. We want out because it s too costly to stay $120 billion a year just for the United States; it s not reasonable. The Pakistani military wants us out; so far so good. And now, we can have a discussion. What do the Pakistanis want? First, they want the Indians out. And that s the only thing they obsess about, India. Now, it s not rational, it s whatever you want but it s like that. You cannot change anything. And the idea that we can do something about Kashmir is just not going to work now. So we have to deal with the reality. The reality is they want India out. But at the same time, where there is something to negotiate is not about the presence of India in Afghanistan maybe we can say, okay, that India should [do] more south of Afghanistan. The problem is, [has] Lashkar-e-Taiba or the jihadist group been able to strike India from Afghanistan? That s the real discussion because India can live without a strong presence in Afghanistan. India cannot live with [a] jihadist group working against its very legitimate interests from Afghanistan. And then you see that there is probably a common interest here. We as Western countries do not want al-qaeda in Afghanistan. The Indians do not want Lashkar-e-Taiba or [a] jihadist group [there]. And at the same time, I think it s negotiable for Pakistan. Pakistan has trouble controlling these groups. They never controlled al-qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba is largely out of control now. So probably that s the point where you can make a deal. Say we go out, India is basically out of the picture in Afghanistan but at the same time we must be sure that there is no threat coming from Afghanistan. That s the general idea of the negotiation.

11 At the same time, the second answer, I would say, is that Pakistan is dreaming. I mean, it s wishful thinking when they think that they are going to control Afghanistan. They will not control Afghanistan. But to start the negotiation, you cannot say that to the Pakistanis, basically. But [in] the long term, what s going to happen is you will have people in Afghanistan working for Afghan interests, the way they understand it, and not Pakistani interests. But that s something else. MS. DEYOUNG: Yes? Q: Wahid Monawar with Zurich Partners. It appears that there s a lot of conflating notions here. The Afghan people despise the Taliban, the Taliban has no base except in some part of Afghanistan. It appears also that based on the meeting we had last week with Senators [Joseph] Lieberman [I-CT] and [John] McCain [R-AZ], that General Petraeus is doing a great job in Kandahar, especially in Arghandab district. Also MR. DORRONSORO: Arghandab. Yeah. Q: Yeah. And it appears also that during these operations, there have been a few [Inter-Services Intelligence] (ISI) operatives who have been captured in Helmand and in Kandahar, but that has not been revealed. So why should the Afghan people, first, negotiate with ISI if the Taliban are not a political movement? That s my first question. Second, what would be your recommendation for the White House vis-à-vis Pakistan policy? It appears that Pakistan has been getting away with murdering a lot of Americans in Afghanistan. Thank you. MR. DORRONSORO: For the first point, I mean, if they just capture true ISI operatives but they are not very efficient (chuckles), you probably can get a lot more than that. And we should not speak about ISI as a kind of separate entity. ISI is the Pakistani army. So I think it s a dream and of course, the Pakistanis played with that or, you know, people are independent insiders it s not true, basically. The ISI is just part of the military. So yes, the military is supporting the Taliban in Kandahar, yes? Second thing, no, it s not going great. It s a real, deep disaster, especially in Arghandab, on Juy-ye Shadi, all that. It s a disaster. So what s happening right now is that you have a media offensive (chuckles), something like that from Petraeus and his staff to explain that everything is great in Kandahar. All the sources independent sources I have from Kandahar everybody s saying the same thing: it s a disaster. [A] disaster for different [reasons]. First, Arghandab. You know what happened in Arghandab? Basically, the U.S. troops surrounded the place, the district. And then they sent [the] Ahmed Wali Karzai militia inside the district of Arghandab. And the place was closed to journalists for two weeks. And we know what s happening in this sort of situation. And no, it s not going to work because when you clean up Arghandab or Panjway places where the Taliban have very deep support now, especially Panjway what are you doing after? You just keep the soldiers here because they cannot move. If they move, the Taliban are back. You cannot

12 put Afghan civil servants [there] because there is nobody you can trust. Everybody hates Karzai in Kandahar, except the people who are working directly with him and make a lot of money with him. So no, Kandahar is going nowhere. Nowhere. You cannot break the back of the Taliban in Kandahar. It doesn t make sense. Now, because people who are killed in Kandahar, the Taliban who are killed in Kandahar are low-[level] people the important people are in Quetta now, that s [a] problem. And we should be clear that s what happening in Kandahar and in Helmand because in six months, it s going to be back to us with a vengeance. I mean, it s bad. It s really bad. So that s the first part of my answer. The second part is about what should we do with Pakistan? First, we should accept Pakistan the way it is. We should renounce definitively the idea that everything in the world can be just a matter of carrots and sticks. This vision of the world is just self-destructing, you know. Now, Pakistan has [its] own interests, [its] own perception. We could agree that [its] perception of India is just a little crazy. But it s the way it is. If we negotiate with Pakistan, we negotiate on common interests. We cannot shape Pakistan, the way that we cannot shape Iran, these countries with their own dynamics, and it s reality. Now, [that] means what? [It] means [we] find common interests. Stop funding the Pakistani army the way we are doing and get some common interests, which is to say, [the] exit of Afghanistan in a way that is relatively convenient for us and convenient for the Pakistanis. I mean, the idea that you spend billions of dollars funding Pakistan, pray that this so-called I mean, it s even by any standard Pakistan has a real problem of corruption. It s said it s up to the record sending billions of dollars there with an impact that is at best limited. At the same time, I think Pakistan is supporting the insurgents who are killing American soldiers doesn t make sense. That s why we have to withdraw from Afghanistan, because then you can have a real Pakistani policy that makes sense. MS. DEYOUNG: Yes sir. Could someone tell me what time it is? I m sorry. I promised to give Q: 10:20. MS. DEYOUNG: Ten. Okay, thank you. Q: Dennis Kux at the Woodrow Wilson Center. I have two questions. I wonder if you d comment on the Durand Line and whether this is a notional problem or whether it s a real problem between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the second has to do with the electoral system that they use in choosing the parliament. I understood that this was a cockamamie system that was thought up for the earlier parliamentary election. And I think there s only one other country in the world that uses it, a South Pacific island. And I wonder whether this really poses a problem in the election of the parliament in addition to the point you made about political parties, which is a real problem. And I guess it has historical roots in Afghanistan because they re seen as bad. And what would it take to change the parliamentary electoral system and also what would it take to get Karzai to accept political parties?

13 Sorry for the convoluted nature of this. MR. DORRONSORO: It s okay. We ll manage. On the Durand Line, you all know that Afghanistan never recognized the Durand Line as an international border never. Q: Three times they recognized it. MR. DORRONSORO: Yeah, but I ve said they change so, I mean they have recognized it not never. Q: Never accepted MR. DORRONSORO: Never accepted It s recognized concretely as a border because you have a border. Q: They signed treaties that recognize it. MR. DORRONSORO: All right. I mean, we could discuss that but speak to any Afghan, they say no. So that s part of the problem, yes. At the same time, could we make that part of the discussion right now? I m a little bit skeptical. I think it s going too deep. It s exactly the kind of even the Taliban never recognized the border. So it s too complicated, it s too hard in Afghanistan. It s extremely hard to choose, so no. I don t think we should talk about it, I mean, as part of the discussion. The second thing is that you have what I would call a transnational space. Now, I mean, it s a very low level of state control beside the border and the very huge exchanges goods, political parties are moving, and armed militants, of course, that is moving, so it s a transnational space. That s very interesting, a very interesting transnational space. At the same time political parties are Afghan or Pakistanis. They are not both. So, so far, the border is still here it has political meaning. Now, the real problem and that s what I was thinking [about] when I was describing the scenario of dividing [the] Afghanistan north and south the problem that could be terrible if you have the emergence of a transnational political party in the name of Pashtunistan or whatever that would be that would be the end of Pakistan, basically, if the movement was strong enough. So, so far, the good news is that the Taliban want to go to Kabul and the jihadist group in Pakistan are targeting mostly Islamabad. That s not exactly very good news; but the worst [news] would be to have a movement that is fighting to form a new country or to really redraw the borders, that would be much worse. Now, the second element is that the key problem of the election in Afghanistan is that you can have it s one or another you can have 20, 30 candidates in Kabul and just the guy who is elected can have 8 percent of the votes; that s madness. Now, that s madness. And the main responsibility of this mad system is with the foreign advisors in Why? Because you had this huge problem in

14 Afghanistan, what they call the Tanzim political party. It had a very bad reputation because they were part of the civil war in the 1990s so we understand that. Now, at the same time, if you just say, okay, everybody is able to compete in the election, you have 30 people and the guy who is elected is not representative. What s happening in the Ghazni province, for example: The Pashtun were elected and basically they are less than 50 percent of the population [and] all the representatives are Hazaras. So the good thing would have been to say, first, you have two rounds so French-style elections. For the first two [rounds] everybody can go and the second should have the candidates restricted to people belonging to political parties, to strong, national political parties. We forget the parties and we forget that people in Afghanistan are rational. So when you put a lot of rational people together without rules it s a mess; that s exactly what s happening in Afghanistan. Now, and by the way, it s no time to reform that just because [they] cannot vote. So it is under Taliban control. MS. DEYOUNG: Jessica? JESSICA T. MATHEWS: Jessica Mathews with Carnegie. Two questions: One is you ve used Taliban throughout. Are Afghan and Pakistani Taliban now united enough that we can do that? Or are there remaining divisions? But secondly, I agree with you that the strength and the weakness of the U.S. military is the determination to win. But if there is one person in the United States military that you would think understands, fully, the political component of where he is and what he s doing, it s Petraeus. And he s getting, presumably, daily briefings on the situation as you re getting from your contacts on the ground. So explain to us what he s thinking. I mean, he s (laughter) smart, right? He is not blind about the trend on the ground. I find it hard to believe that it is as mindless, as one has to assume, from what you said. MR. DORRONSORO: Yeah. Well, let s start [with] the first question. For now, there is collaboration, tactical collaboration between the Taliban and the Pakistan jihadist groups because they are born by the same people, also, I mean. But at the same time the Taliban are supported by the Pakistan army and they know that there is [a] red line, so you should not attack the Pakistani army. So it s clear that they are remember the Kurds, for example, it s exactly the same kind of situation. You need the support of one state to fight another one; you cannot fight both ways. So they are not going to attack the Pakistani state; they are quite reasonable, they are doing what they have to do in Pakistan but that s it so they are not interfering. There is one exception, to a certain extent Waziristan, south, north Waziristan and places like that where there is more connection between Haqqani and the (inaudible) Arabs or whatever. But if you start negotiating and [the] Haqqani is saying, okay, I don t want to be part of [the] negotiation; you have won, this is a victory. I mean, the Taliban movement is broken, it s huge it s a huge victory so whatever the situation, it s good to negotiate. If [the] Haqqani is saying, okay, I m

15 going to obey Mullah Omar, it s the big prize because you could have a relatively stable border. If he refuses to negotiate, [if he] refuses to be part of the Taliban, you have two different insurgencies, that s good. Well, that is good. I mean, whatever the result is, it s good. And the relationship with al- Qaeda, basically, is not a huge problem. The Taliban, the Afghan Taliban don t have a huge connection of al-qaeda; it s not a problem. What could be the problem is an overreaction if some guy with an Afghan passport is trying to do something crazy in an airport or whatever; even if the guy spent all his life in Pakistan, he has an Afghan passport. And then you will have all this huge overreaction [by] the media and the political system in the United States; that could be a huge problem. But, well, let s hope it s not going to be like that. Second point: that would be my answer. (Laughter.) I do not understand, exactly: What is the Petraeus logic? Because the description on the ground is extremely clear. You cannot win against an insurgency [which has the] full support of the neighboring state. I mean, I don t think there is one example in military history. And you can go to the French war in Algeria. The military, the French won the war but, first, it was supposed to be French territory. There was a huge state structure in there, the war [was] extremely violent. You know, hundreds of thousands of people were killed and the borders were closed. It s huge, I mean. And with that, after a few years of intense fighting, the French army was able more or less to win militarily on the ground. And it was a huge investment. Okay, we are not going to seal the Afghan-Pakistani border (chuckles) for obvious reason. So in military terms there is no way out. You are not going to bribe the Taliban. You are not going to win militarily against them. So the only possibility I see right now is that Petraeus is thinking that next year with a few tactical successes, he will be able to support the negotiation. He doesn t want negotiation now because he thinks that in six months he will be in a better position and I think he says you re wrong about that. And we are going to see that next spring. But saying that, I am just guessing, at the same time Petraeus is saying to everybody especially his European counterparts that the situation is very good on the ground, they are making progress and so on, but I don t see it. MS. DEYOUNG: You know, just to answer your question, there s a good line in your paper (chuckles) [that] talks about this, that the military is a bureaucratic machine oriented toward its own management, not toward problem-solving, and then you say, those in charge still define success in terms of inputs and outputs rather than outcomes. And I think when you listen to the military people, you hear that all the time, they re always talking about inputs, we finally have the inputs. And then they start to use metrics to define the outputs, which are number of people killed, number of streets cleared. But those don t really speak to the outcome; they don t really speak to a transformation in any kind of permanent way to the situation on the ground.

16 I m answering for you MR. DORRONSORO: Exactly that. MS. DEYOUNG: I think we have Q: The interesting is that Petraeus, I don t understand that. He s not an unknown (inaudible, off mike) on this (inaudible, cross talk) MS. DEYOUNG: Well, I think Gilles may be right; he may understand it. I mean, he may just have a different sense of timing about when that political situation should start. I think we have time for one more question. Yeah, back there? Q: I m Clay Ramsay, Program on International Policy Attitudes. And I m actually going to reprise Jessica Mathews question. I agree that I think you re drawing this in bold strokes that put you in a place where you need to develop a psychological account of the American military leadership on the ground. And so taking another tack at it, if we think of recall that Petraeus [has] a Ph.D. in counterinsurgency, [is] surrounded by advisors who are also Ph.Ds. of counterinsurgency to the degree that they are in addition to practitioners, they re theoreticians and they are aware of themselves as making a contribution to military science. And so I m suggesting, might this be an Achilles heel on their part? If you look at the more rarified level of their thinking, there s something they re doing that is producing these blockages in their perception of what s going on, on the ground. MR. DORRONSORO: What you re telling me is that basically academics are in charge of the war MS. DEYOUNG: (Inaudible, off mike) a possibility. MR. DORRONSORO: No, the thing that they have Ph.Ds. is certainly very good but (laughter) as an academic, I m not totally convinced. Well, anyway no, joke about [that]. What was very interesting is that when Petraeus came to Afghanistan he just buried a [General Stanley] McChrystal strategy in two weeks. Now, that s a key point is that we are no more in a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, just for you to know (chuckles) in case you missed the point. It s a very different strategy. It s extremely violent. Actually, the level of operation right now in the south is at a higher level than in Iraq during the surge; now, bombing, night raids, and so on. So clearly, he has a purely military strategy. It s not at all what he did in Iraq, of course, but I cannot understand exactly why. What I can do is describe what he is doing. There is no political strategy in Kandahar. There is no political strategy. Nobody can describe what he wants to do, politically, in Kandahar because in June it was clear that nothing was going to move

17 with Hamid Karzai; there was no idea of reforming the current administration. Helmand, from this point of view, is a mess, so if something is done it s through the U.S. military; it s not locally done. So there is no state structure; we build in the south. So there is no political strategy and you cannot talk with no table. If they talk to you, they are dead very quickly. So I m just seeing that you have a strictly military perspective, killing as many Taliban as possible in the quickest way. The fact that the Taliban have a sanctuary in Pakistan, you have a general deterioration of the situation in all [of] the country. And it s interesting because Petraeus was in Paris one, two weeks ago, and there was a question about the operation in the north and he said, okay, but you know, actually the Taliban are just putting pressure in the north for us to lose our focus in the south which was an interesting answer. First, because so far, he described the insurgency as a series of little groups with no national strategy, [when] after all there is a national strategy. And second, it doesn t answer, really, the problem because next year you re going to have huge pressure in the south and the north and we don t have the troops just to contain the Taliban. So again, yes, I think they are clever. I mean, basically, the U.S. military is the best trained, intellectually speaking and also on the ground; but intellectually speaking, it is the [best] military in the world. But I think they are too big to understand, you know, in a way. When you have this level of bureaucracy, this level of internal managing to do not always conflict, really, but you know, nothing is moving very quickly. Plus, they have this idea to stay the course in the south instead of saying, okay, Helmand is a bad bet so let s work in Kabul where it could have worked in Kabul. A surge around Kabul could have worked. Now, you could have much better security in Kabul with 30,000 troops around Kabul. The population was much more reticent to the insurgency; it was possible to make huge security gains and it would have been, strategically, very important. Now, so I think you have, first, a big mistake; it s the south. And when you are in the south, you can try counterinsurgency; then the next step [is] you re fighting a classical war. Search and destroy, it s Vietnam in the south, it s Vietnam. MS. DEYOUNG: On that note, I m sorry, I think we ve more than run out of time. Thank you, Gilles, very much. MR. DORRONSORO: Thank you. MS. DEYOUNG: That gives us all depressing food for thought. (Laughter, applause.) (END)