Central Asia

If you are like most people who heard Afghan President Hamid Karzai's re-inauguration speech, you are wondering about a few choice words:

Here I would like to invite all presidential candidates, especially my brother Dr. Abdullah Abdullah and my brother Dr. Ashraf Ghani, who is present here, to make joint efforts for fulfilling serious national duties and for a united, proud and developed Afghanistan."

Wait, is he making overtures to the opposition? Would Abdullah and Ghani go for it? 

Well, for Ghani's part at least, the answers seems a near-certain no. Speaking as part of a joint FP and Oxfam America event today by Skype at the Newseum, Dr. Ghani responded to queries about Karzai's mention.

What does it mean? That Karzai is interested in having "my name," said Ghani, but "not my ideas." He went on to say that he had "strict conditions" for entering the government, and was "not inclined" to join "unless those conditions are met." 

So, looks like the powering-sharing option is still out. But alas, that should come as no surprise. 

There's nothing more frustrating than reading an article which purports to answer a question that it really dodges. Take, for example, "How to Measure the War," by inveterate Afghanistan and Iraq indexers Jason Campbell, Jeremy Shapiro, and Michael O'Hanlon. One would expect to finish the piece with a better understanding of the metrics that we will use to judge our progress in Afghanistan than after reading, say, Taro Gomi's Everyone Poops. That would be incorrect. 

Instead, the piece meanders inoffensively through thirteen pages, informing the reader that, yes, metrics are important in a counterinsurgency campaign. Yes, they can be misused and suffer from a lack of concrete data. And then there's this: "Unfortunately...metrics will not be up to the job of diagnosing clear and incontrovertible proof of progress or lack thereof in Afghanistan."

That's disturbing news, especially coming from the people who have followed the numbers in Iraq closer than anyone not in a uniform. It's also, thankfully, not particularly convincing. The authors argue that, because the primary measure of success in Afghanistan will be the effectiveness of the Afghan government, this presents a set of metrics which are hard to measure. Well, here are a few metrics to gauge the capability of the government off the top of my head: I would be interested in knowing in what parts of the country the government can collect taxes; how many students regularly attend government-run schools; and where the government can provide regular services, from functioning courts to trash pickup.

Those are just the basics. You can read the Obama administration's metrics for measuring progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan here. I'm sure there are more complicated metrics for a government's capabilities. So how about it, Passport readers? What do you think are the important factors to measure in Afghanistan to determine if the US war effort is worth the cost?

"She Loves You," yeah, yeah, yeah.

Plus, lots more great detail in the third part of David Rohde's New York Times articles on his time as a hostage in Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

We're two installments into New York Times writer David Rohde's five-part epic on the seven months he spent as a hostage of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. And I can't recommend it enough to anyone interested in the country. Here's one fascinating excerpt, from the first part:

Over those months, I came to a simple realization. After seven years of reporting in the region, I did not fully understand how extreme many of the Taliban had become. Before the kidnapping, I viewed the organization as a form of "Al Qaeda lite," a religiously motivated movement primarily focused on controlling Afghanistan.

Living side by side with the Haqqanis' followers, I learned that the goal of the hard-line Taliban was far more ambitious. Contact with foreign militants in the tribal areas appeared to have deeply affected many young Taliban fighters. They wanted to create a fundamentalist Islamic emirate with Al Qaeda that spanned the Muslim world.

Rohde's revelations about his kidnappers themselves are even more interesting. The Times reporter, his driver, and his translator were on their way to interview a Taliban leader, Abu Tayyeb, when their car was hijacked. They were taken hostage by one Atiqullah, who said he had never heard of Abu Tayyeb. A few weeks into his detention, Rohde finds:

In conversations when our guards left the room, Tahir and Asad each separately whispered to me that Atiqullah was, in fact, Abu Tayyeb. They had known since the day we were kidnapped, they said, but dared not tell me. They asked me to stay silent as well. Abu Tayyeb had vowed to behead them if they revealed his true identity. Abu Tayyeb had invited us to an interview, betrayed us and then pretended that he was a commander named Atiqullah. I was despondent and left with only one certainty: We had no savior among the Taliban.

It's gripping, cinematic stuff -- and all the better knowing there's at least something of a happy ending. (Though Rohde is getting raked over the coals in his New York Times Q&A.) 

With detail like this, the articles show the Taliban in all its diversity. Rohde notes that many members of the Taliban are far more religious and radical than they were 8 years ago. But the movement has fragmented and atomized. Rohde notes that his captors were in essence common thieves, not ideological warriors, driven by and even obsessed with money.

That's why initiatives to bribe and negotiate with Taliban leaders, paying them in exchange for security, seem so attractive to me. The sums of money wouldn't need to be great -- there's not much to buy in Afghanistan anyway. Plus, there are only around 10,000 members of the Taliban remaining in Afghanistan, only 3,000 of whom are full-time militants. (Note, for a sense of scale there: Afghanistan is a good-sized country with a population of 33 million.) And the strategy has worked well elsewhere. 

Today, FP's front page has an excellent article from Amjad Shuaib on the crimes and fall of former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. As Shuaib notes,  the Pakistani Supreme Court's decision this past July to declare Musharraf's state of emergency proclamation unconstitutional means "he may be tried for treason -- and possibly executed." 

With that threat hanging over his head, one might expect Musharraf to escape to a remote island hideaway, or at least somewhere where he couldn't easily be found. Not so: instead, according to the Guardian, he's holed up in "an unassuming three-bedroom flat behind the shisha bars and kebab joints of London's Arabic quarter." Unconstitutional seizure of power aside, the only controversy Musharraf is attracting in Britain is his taxpayer/Scotland Yard-provided security detail. And while he lives decently well, the apartment is a far cry from the "Park Lane penthouses" his rival Nawaz Sharif used to own. 

Still, Londoners who don't want the dictator hanging around will get their wish after this week: "he starts a 40-day lecture tour of the US next Tuesday." 

John Moore/Getty Images

Last week, Peter Bergen wrote an optimistic post titled "The Afghan Phoenix" over on the AfPak Channel, giving some counterfactuals to the doom and gloom over the plight of Afghanistan and the U.S. mission there. Five million refugees have returned to Afghanistan. One in six Afghans owns a cell phone. And, he notes, "You were more likely to be murdered in the United States in 1991 than an Afghan civilian is to be killed in the war today." This statistic struck me most, though: "In 2008, Afghanistan's real GDP growth was 7.5 percent. Under the Taliban the economy was in free fall."

I won't argue that Afghanistan's economy was anything other than terrible, and worsening, under the Taliban. It was and remains an impoverished country with a host of profound basic infrastructure and business development challenges -- from the lack of roads to the surfeit of bombs to the high illiteracy rate. It has a massive black-market economy. 80 percent of working-age men are involved in subsistence farming. A woefully high proportion of its population relies on the drug trade.

But I still don't find the 2008 GDP growth figure too much of a reason for optimism. Why? Afghanistan's GDP isn't growing because of booming Afghan production and consumption, or rising wages. Afghanistan's GDP is growing because of all the Americans and other foreigners -- around 65,000 troops and 200,000 nongovernmental workers -- building and buying things there (with dollars, no less), and because of the $57 billion pledged by international donors since 2002.

For an illustration of the phenomenon, see this chart of Afghan GDP in inflation-adjusted dollars, which I made with UN data. The Taliban took over in 1996, and Afghanistan's economy dwindled. The U.S. invaded in 2001, and it boomed. Afghanistan's GDP depends entirely on the armed force in charge. This isn't to say the local commerce supplying the 265,000 relatively flush foreigners in Afghanistan isn't real. But were the United States to drawdown, aid workers and military contractors and commerce would follow. My guess is that much of the GDP growth comes from service-sector jobs, not from new production. 

That's the real issue. Foreign spending in Afghanistan is a good thing for GDP. It's less clear whether it has fostered economically meaningful development. Dollars are all well and good -- but won't do much unless they help create businesses, employment, infrastructure development, and longer-term growth. (This is why Jonathan Zasloff's plan to hand out cash to Afghans wouldn't do much more than stoke inflation.) Whether they can remains the question.

Plus, many worry the U.S. troop presence cannot foster the foreign direct investment, local economic growth, agricultural development, and security and economic paradigm the country so desperately needs. But the U.S. military is hoping so. The civil-military plan by U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and Gen. Stanley McChrystal Laura Rozen posted today mentions the Afghan economy, licit agriculture, cross-border commerce, and reconstruction dozens of times.

Wired correspondent Sharon Weinberger has a compelling investigative piece in the New York Post about the CIA's quest for Russian helicopters to sneak into Afghanistan before the full-scale U.S. invasion. It's a tale of secrecy, corruption, Siberian cold, and credit card rewards.

Here's a bit of Weinbeger's synopsis at Wired's Danger Room:

As with many “black” programs, the contract had elements of craziness: Contracting officials paid the multimillion-dollar contract on a credit card at a local El Paso bar and then used the credit card rebate to redecorate their office; the team traveled under the guise of being private contractors; and the charter crew transporting the group abandoned the team in Russia in the middle of the night.

Ultimately, a five-year investigation into the mission led to the conviction of the Army official in charge and the contractor who bought the helicopters on charges of corruption. The two men, currently in federal prison, are appealing their convictions.

The full article is a thrilling read.

For more of Weinberger's coverage of questionable helicopter contracting, check out her April piece, "How to get a no-bid contract for Russian choppers." Turns out being a middleman in U.S.-Russian arms deals is pretty lucrative. 

When U.S. taxpayers shell out for these kinds of shenanigans, at least we're getting some entertainment value.

Above, Russian Mi-17s in 2007.

SERGEY PONOMAREV/AFP/Getty Images

Nepal has to get some credit for creativity with its public policy.

Following an official's recent suggestion of pocketless pants as a method to reduce airport corruption, the Nepalese government has a new plan. To keep widows integrated into society the government will provide a $650 grant to men who marry them.

The government says that "single women," as widows are known in Nepal, are often neglected by society, particularly in rural communities. The subsidy is supposed to help by reducing the stigma attached to widows, who traditionally lose their status when their husband dies.

Widows and women's groups however, were less than thrilled, and around 200 marched in protest yesterday in Kathmandu (pictured at left) telling the government to reverse its decision.

From AFP: 

Women chanting slogans and waving placards that read "We don't want government dowries" and "Don't put a price on your mother" marched to the government's headquarters to hand over a letter of protest.

The BBC coverage a few weeks ago helps explain the widows' point of view:

Widows like 29-year-old Nisha Swar, whose husband was killed by Maoist fighters six years ago, say the policy of offering payment for remarriage could lead to discrimination.

"Men could want to be with us for the sake of getting the 50,000 rupees. It is like putting a price tag on our head and we are very humiliated by this," she says.

Her friend, 30-year-old widow Poonam Pathak, agrees.

"I feel embarrassed because now anybody walking on the road could say, look, there's a widow! I could get 50,000 rupees if I married her," she says.

So far, the government has defended its decision, but even if it is overturned the publicity is a good sign: at least Nepal is concerned about improving the status of widows.

PRADEEP SHRESTHA/AFP/Getty Images