January, 2009

Flikr photo by GothPhil used under a Creative Commons license. 

America may not be losing the war in Afghanistan, but it is also not winning. Neither is the U.S. approach in neighboring Pakistan making friends or preventing new recruits from crossing the border to kill U.S. and other NATO troops. What then is the best way to promote peace and security in the greater South Asia region, home to nearly half the world’s population and several nuclear-armed states?

The challenges involved in confronting this threat—which means fighting extremism in both countries, rebuilding governance in Afghanistan, and supporting a weak democratic government in Pakistan—dwarf the past two decades of global state-building activities combined and are too big to be done alone.

For the past few months, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen and U.S. CENTCOM commander General David Petreaus have been leading U.S. government–wide efforts to develop a “comprehensive strategy” to deal with this pressing issue, while President Obama has appointed Ambassador Richard Holbrooke to address the multiple challenges of the region. To succeed, a strategy must have four elements: the innovative use of all the tools of U.S. foreign policy, including development, diplomatic, and military activities; the genuine inclusion of America’s key allies; the coherent engagement of regional powers, including India, Iran, China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia; and most importantly, ownership of the new approach by the people and the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Read full commentary by Karin von Hippel and Rick Barton after the jump or download the PDF.

Daniel Brumberg, Acting Director of the Muslim World Initiative at USIP, has a blog affiliated with the terrific Newsweek/Washington Post collaboration On Faith.

We hear this time and again, but it's true. DoD has a ton of money. State doesn't. And this simple fact can make it difficult for State to "pull it's weight," according to Gary Schaub in the NYTimes. He advocates acknowledging this reality while also trying to put more of a civilian face on things.

In the Washington Post on Saturday, January 24, the PCR report A Perilous Course: U.S. Strategy and Assistance to Pakistan was mentioned as a key influencer in the change in U.S. policy.

From the NYTimes comes this piece on the increasing presence of the Taliban - they "are everywhere the soldiers are not," in southern Afghanistan.

Yesterday, Rick Barton appeared on a KQED feature program on Afghanistan.

While it has been widely reported that the Obama administration is set to approve an increase of up to 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, at least one senior aide to the president is pushing back. From Joe Klein's essay on problems confronting the new admistration: 

Tensions between India and Pakistan came down a notch last week when leaders of the two countries expressed their commitment to “cooperate with each other on the Mumbai attack investigation as well as on counter-terrorism in general” during a telephonic conversation with President Georg

PCR Project Co-Director Karin von Hippel weighs in on terrorism's origins in this segment, sponsored by the Alaska World Affairs Council.

Ashraf Ghani recommends a new Marshall Plan.

From CSIS Burke Chair holder Anthony Cordesman:

There has been a striking lack of meaningful official reporting on Afghanistan.