December 23, 2009

In Boston Review forum-- on Afghanistan

I have a contribution in this latest Boston Review forum on Afghanistan. The forum is built around a great piece of reporting by Nir Rosen. I wish I'd had more...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:46 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

October 19, 2009

Legitimacy: Who can generate it?

This is a huge question in Afghanistan. It was earlier a huge question in Iraq-- but it turned out that Nuri al-Maliki had a wily (and previusly unrecognized) understanding of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:29 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 10, 2009

Peter Galbraith, oil contracts, and Kurds

Reidar Visser informs us today that the independent-minded US "free-lance diplomat" Peter Galbraith reportedly, from 2004 through 2008, held a five-percent share in the production-sharing agreement concluded between the small...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:56 AM | Fulltext link (26 comments)

October 08, 2009

China and the US in Afghanistan

It's good to put yourself into the shoes of others from time to time. For a while now, I've been trying to imagine the conversations that the Central Committee of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:08 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

October 07, 2009

US-UN power tussle over Afghanistan?

Eight years ago today, the US-- with the help of non-trivial allies like Russia, Iran, and India-- launched its invasion of Afghanistan. Shortly thereafter (though not before) the UN gave...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:47 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

September 27, 2009

Afghanistan: Obama's Vietnam?

There's a rapidly growing discussion here in the US about "what to do in Afghanistan." Some of it is thoughtful, well-informed, and serious. Like this piece by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:53 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

September 21, 2009

Long knives, Washington, Afghanistan, part 2

I've been thinking more about the timing of the WaPo's publication of Woodward's bombshell and the accompanying materials this morning. It seems clear to me Woodward must have had the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:39 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

Long knives out in Washington over Afghanistan

You can criticize Bob Woodward-- and I have-- for the insidery, back-scratching nature of most of his recent journalism. But he still manages to pull out a significant number of...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:39 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

September 17, 2009

Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, "benchmarks"

Excellent analysis, as usual, from Reidar Visser on Biden's latest trip to Iraq. Noting that this is Biden's second visit to Iraq as Vice-President, Visser writes, If anything, what these...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:31 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

September 12, 2009

In 2009, as 2001: US needs Iran, Russia

On September 12, 2001, as US military planners started examining the options they had t counter-attach against Al-Qaeda and its hosts in Afghanistan, they and their colleagues in the State...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:27 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

September 10, 2009

Continuing bad news for US/NATO in Afghanistan

Actually, perhaps trending pretty rapidly toward the truly catastrophic? Joshua Fost of Registan blogged earlier today that "Ghazni Province is falling to the Taliban." (Map and basic info on Ghazni...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:12 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

September 09, 2009

When election results are disputed: Afghanistan, etc

When election results are strongly disputed from within the community they were held in, this represents--obviously-- a deep crisis of power and legitimacy within that community. That's the case in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:17 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

American power has limits? Who knew?

Steve Clemons tells us today that Afghanistan, like Iraq, is sending the impression to the rest of the world that America is at a "limit" point in its military and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:44 AM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

September 04, 2009

Lessons from the Soviet experience in Afghanistan

Someone called Artemy Kalinovsky has just published a thoughtful essay at the AfPak Channel arguing that, for precedents for many of the dilemmas the US military faces in Afghanistan, we...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:07 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

September 03, 2009

Pat Lang on the dangerous, continued rise of 'COIN'-mania

Lang makes some important points here about the distortion of what should be a rational, nationwide discussion about the US military's massive and troubled engagement in Afghanistan. He writes, The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:13 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

September 02, 2009

Afghanistan debate: The missing international ingredient

With amazing rapidity, an extremely serious debate has erupted in Washington over whether the war in distant Afghanistan can be won, and therefore whether it is worth continuing to try...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:29 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

August 21, 2009

Does Afghanistan's election matter? How, exactly?

The only thing that really matters about the presidential election held in Afghanistan yesterday was whether it will generate a nationwide government that has enough political credibility with the country's...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:51 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

August 20, 2009

'Afghanistan worse than Vietnam'

Fascinating post at FP's AfPak channel today, comparing Afghanistan with Vietnam, elections and all. Not favorably for Obama's policy in Afghanistan, it has to be said. The headline said it...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 08:16 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

August 19, 2009

Obama, Afghanistan-- and St. Augustine

Pres. Obama gave a speech to the veterans of Foreign Wars annual convention on Monday in which he spelled out his view of the US's now-declining strategic stakes in Iraq...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:29 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

August 18, 2009

Registan, Bloggingheads (redux), etc

I've gotten into a little argument with Joshua Foust over at Registan, over the chronic problem of the gross under-representation of women at 'Bloggingheads TV'. This is not a new...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:38 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

July 23, 2009

Afghanistan: "Armed nation building"??

The generally sane and realistic military analyst Tony Cordesman published a 28-page paper (PDF) yesterday on the US war in Afghanistan, which to me merely underlined how deeply un-winnable this...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:05 PM | Fulltext link (21 comments)

July 13, 2009

Afghan women call for end of war

I just watched the 11-minute video clip "Women of Afghanistan", from Rethinkafghanistan.com. It is very compelling. At about 6:40 minutes, there's a great short interview with Wall Street Journal correspondent...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:52 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

July 07, 2009

Central Asia moves center stage

The Obama administration is now decisively shifting the focus of US military activities from Iraq to Afghanistan. That war effort has now significantly affected US-Russian relations: In response to sustained...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:32 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

May 08, 2009

Advancing Security and Opportunity -- US Style

The military effort to "advance security and opportunity, so that Pakistanis and Afghans can pursue the promise of a better life" is accelerating in both countries. It sounded good when...
Posted by Don Bacon at 07:28 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

April 27, 2009

China Hand on the bleak prospects for the US in Afghanistan

Longtime JWN readers will know I'm a fan of the analysis that a blogger called China Hand produces on Pakistan and Afghanistan. (He doesn't, as it happens produce much on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:44 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

March 31, 2009

The Devil Made Us Do It

The Devil, like the Lord, works in mysterious ways. ARLINGTON, Wash. (AP) - A woman accused of taking more than $73,000 from the Arlington church where she was an administrative...
Posted by Don Bacon at 12:30 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

March 28, 2009

Play It Again, Barry

I thought it might be interesting to look at two speeches, comparing President Obama's speech on Afghanistan Friday to President Nixon's Vietnamization speech on November 3, 1969. Comparative excerpts follow....
Posted by Don Bacon at 11:55 AM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

March 27, 2009

Problems of the west's extreme casualty aversion, Afghanistan and Gaza

The extreme aversion of the US and Israeli armies to own-soldier casualties has huge and often unintended consequences in the realms of both strategic effectiveness and ethics. This is now...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:15 PM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

February 20, 2009

US war effort in Afghanistan becoming dependent on Russia-- and Iran!

The position of the US/NATO troops in Afghanistan has become far worse in recent months. The root cause (as with the woes of most distantly deployed militaries) is logistics. As...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:29 PM | Fulltext link (12 comments)

February 11, 2009

Great blog posts on Afghanistan, China, from China Hand

I'm in Egypt, I really am, even though I haven't blogged about it much yet. Let's just say logistical challenges and other concerns have reduced my blogging productivity and immediacy...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:08 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

January 26, 2009

Petraeus's serious Russia mistake

Last Tuesday, the NYT reported that US Centcom chief David Petraeus announced that, to support the NATO campaign in Afghanistan, NATO now had "transit agreements for commercial goods and services...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 01:26 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

January 21, 2009

Forging Peace With War

President Obama, Jan 20 2009: We will begin to responsibly leave Iraq to its people, and forge a hard-earned peace in Afghanistan. This peace-forging, in a poor land where the...
Posted by Don Bacon at 11:18 AM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

December 26, 2008

More Warriors Needed

The US Army is currently on track to increase 65,000 people to a total of 547,000 active-duty soldiers next year, up from 482,000 before the current conflicts. There is a...
Posted by Don Bacon at 05:34 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

December 20, 2008

Is there an Islamic Charlie Wilson?

As the US and NATO lose control of surface roads in Afghanistan they are more and more dependent upon air transport and air cargo delivery. According to USA Today: Afghanistan's...
Posted by Don Bacon at 04:16 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

December 16, 2008

Afghanistan: Some dots to connect

The Afghanistan Conflict Monitor does a great job of pulling together reports on breaking developments in that war-wracked country. Here are three consecutive posts from today's front page: Bush Makes...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:53 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

December 15, 2008

NATO trucking woes in Pakistan continue

The Daily Telegraph's Isambard Wilkinson reports that the main trade association for Pakistani trucking companies that haul NATO goods into Afghanistan from Karachi has now decided to halt all NATO...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:40 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

December 09, 2008

NATO's Russian route to Afghanistan

NATO's deputy assistant sec-gen for security cooperation and partnership, Robert Simmons, has been in Moscow pushing forward the plan to open a Russian route to resupply the NATO positions in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:56 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

December 07, 2008

Recruiting for the Enemy

The US occupation forces in Iraq have, from the beginning of the occupation more than five years ago, engaged in the arbitrary imprisonment ("detaining") of Iraqi citizens. As one former...
Posted by Don Bacon at 02:19 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 25, 2008

Karzai wants the foreign troops out, too

So it's not just the US-installed government in Baghdad that is now acting uppity and turning on its former master... Afghan President Hamid Karzai told a team of visiting UN...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:44 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 23, 2008

Rumsfeld, Kagan, and Chalabi in the NYT

I can't believe that the NYT gave a huge chunk of its prime op-ed real estate today to allow war criminal Donald Rumsfeld to offer his views and advice on...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:58 PM | Fulltext link (18 comments)

November 20, 2008

Newsflash! Russia lets NATO trans-ship weapons to Afghanistan

The Kyiv Post reported yesterday that, Russia has granted NATO-member Germany permission to ship weapons and equipment for its force in Afghanistan overland through Russia, the Russian Foreign Ministry said...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:01 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 19, 2008

Logistical impasse for the US in Afghanistan?

Bernhardt of Moon of Alabama has a good short post up today on the huge logistics challenge involved in keeping the US/NATO forces in Afghanistan supplied. He's commenting on this...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:34 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

November 17, 2008

Operation Enduring Failure

Asia is not going to be civilized after the methods of the West. There is too much Asia and she is too old. --Rudyard Kipling It's been seven years since...
Posted by Don Bacon at 12:38 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

November 07, 2008

'China Hand' on extrajudicial killings

The excellent (though sporadic) blogger China Hand has a great new post today tracking the degree to which extensive use of extra-judicial killings has been incorporated into the "standard operating...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:14 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

October 15, 2008

Discussing Afghanistan, UN over at Registan

I am continually amazed at the number of otherwise thoughtful and well-informed Americans who seem to have a deep blindspot when it comes to looking at the record of the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:01 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

October 13, 2008

More on Afghanistan, the unwinnable war

China Hand has posted yet another great round-up of what's been happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan recently. He notes that just about everybody except the US's leading politicians and Pakistani...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:10 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

October 09, 2008

US military admits to larger toll in August hit

So US Central Command has now admitted that the civilian casualty toll from that controversial air-raid in western Afghanistan August 22 was indeed much higher than they'd earlier said. The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:37 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

October 07, 2008

Google Reader highlight #1: Registan

I thought JWN readers might want to check out some of the more interesting things I've been following on my Google Reader recently. So GR highlight #1 today is Registan,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:59 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

September 18, 2008

Af-Pakistan on brink-- of what?

When the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs goes to Pakistan and the Defense Secretary to Afghanistan on the same day, as they did yesterday, you have to know they are...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:12 AM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

September 17, 2008

Turkey mediating between Afghanistan and Pakistan

While its mediation between Israel and Syria continues, Turkey's foreign ministry has now also launched a mediation between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Fascinating....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:57 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

Afghanistan in Canadian election?

Canada has an election coming up October 14, and it seems its commitment to the NATO mission in Afghanistan could be an issue. (Hat-tip Afghanistan Conflict Monitor.)...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:47 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 10, 2008

September 11 and the war in Afghanistan

For many Americans, including many who have seen the war in Iraq as unjustified and unwise, the war in Afghanistan has until now had a very different aura. In the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:55 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

September 08, 2008

Oliver North???

You know there's been this long-running dispute between, on the one hand, the US military command in Afghanistan and on the other, the Afghan government and the United Nations, over...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:45 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

August 04, 2008

Afghanistan: Can NATO succeed?

The more I think about this, the more outrageously-- and tragically-- improbable this appears. Let's review the reasons: 1. NATO is a military alliance. What its members have trained extensively...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:13 PM | Fulltext link (82 comments)

July 19, 2008

Talking of Afghanistan

While Obama is in Kabul, I hope he gets the chance to talk to Rory Stewart, whose recent piece on Time.com "How to Save Afghanistan" has a lot of good...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:59 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

July 14, 2008

Afghanistan's opposition as a peasant-based insurgency, by Bob Spencer

Long-time JWN commenter Bob Spencer sent me the text of a thought-provoking small essay he has written, that takes as its starting point that the opposition movement in Afghanistan can...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:36 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

July 02, 2008

Al-Qaeda redux?

The NYT's Mark Mazetti and David Rohde had an extremely important article in the June 30 edition of the paper, on the bureaucratic chaos and operational failure that have marked...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:30 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

June 27, 2008

Crunch time coming in Afghanistan?

Maybe crunch time is approaching much faster than I had expected in Afghanistan, for US military planners desperately trying to assemble forces to deal with the deteriorating situation there? Today,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:21 PM | Fulltext link (28 comments)

April 28, 2008

Iraq-Afghanistan: The crunch approaching?

George Bush's general approach to dealing with the problems of Iraq and Afghanistan-- as to the many other rapidly mounting challenges that confront Washington both globally and domestically-- has been...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:31 AM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

February 02, 2008

Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan: Bushism in disarray

The past few weeks have not been good ones for the Bush administration's project of establishing firm, pro-western beach-heads in a broad swathe of western Asia from Gaza to Afghanistan....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:57 PM | Fulltext link (18 comments)

December 17, 2007

US military finally has "Dannatt moment" on Iraq/Afghanistan?

The Bush administration finally seems to be waking up to the need to (1) find a more effective policy in Afghanistan, and (2) if necessary, recalibrate its commitments in Iraq...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:06 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

November 07, 2007

The real story in Pakistan/Afghanistan: Taliban rising

Asia Times's Syed Saleem Shahzad has a must-read story on their website Thursday. He writes: While the world's attention focused on the troubles of President General Pervez Musharraf following his...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:50 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

August 12, 2007

How invading Iraq harmed Afghan stabilization

David Rohde and David Sanger have an excellent piece of reporting in today's NYT, in which they go in some detail into exactly how, from mid-2002 on the Bushites' decision...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:34 PM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

August 06, 2007

Bush vs. Karzai

Sometimes a simple pairing of quotes speaks volumes. Case in point - Presidential comments about Iran by Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai and America's George Bush. Yesterday, Karazai appeared on CNN's Late...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 04:31 PM | Fulltext link (19 comments)

May 10, 2007

Legislators in Afghanistan and Iraq now edging off the US reservation

Afghanistan's "Senate"-- that is, the Meshrano Jirga upper house in the country's post-2001 bicameral system-- yesterday backed proposals that call for a cessation of military operations against against the Taliban,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 12:25 PM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

April 18, 2007

When all else fails, blame Iran (Part II)

Matters must be really deteriorating in Afghanistan. Why else would the Pentagon brass now be darkly suggesting that Iranian arms have been "captured," supposedly on their way to the Taliban?...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 11:47 PM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

October 22, 2006

Afghanistan: US big media go AWOL

The news pages of the US MSM have gone completely AWOL on coverage of the rapidly unravelling strategic situation in Afghanistan. (A situation whose strategic importance I started to discuss...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:20 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

October 07, 2006

Rumsfeld, Afghanistan, militarism

So there is Donald Rumsfeld, nearly six years into the Bush administration, and he has still managed to evade all the attempts to even start to hold him accountable for...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:14 PM | Fulltext link (14 comments)

May 30, 2006

"Tajik intifada" in Kabul?

Al-Hayat is describing the demonstrations in Kabul yesterday as a "Tajik intifada"... That piece indicates that Khairkhaneh, the area of northern Kabul where the US military vehicle lost control and...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:49 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

May 29, 2006

Afghanistan-- the spark of an intifada?

The events in Kabul today looked ominously like the events in Gaza that triggered the Palestinians' First Intifada against Israel at the beginning of December 1987. Today, as back then,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:53 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

September 10, 2005

Lest we forget, Afghanistan

Afghanistan was where Osama Bin Laden had his headquarters. The Bushies' first "response" to 9/11 was to take over the country with raw military force, tossing out the Taleban regime...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:56 PM | Fulltext link (7 comments)

January 07, 2005

The "new order" for Afghanistan's children

I received a horribly disturbing email feed today from the IWPR, which has been doing some great reporting from Afghanistan. This report is titled, LIVES SHATTERED BY SEXUAL ABUSE; Authorities...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:36 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

October 10, 2004

Afghan elections--a model?

In this Sept. 25 column in Al-Hayat, I asked: [I]s it possible that the upcoming Afghanistan election-like the one organized under U.S. military control in Vietnam in 1971-is more about...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:03 AM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

July 11, 2004

David Passaro/ Hyder Akbar contd.

The second good piece in today's NYT mag is a short "as told to" piece featuring Hyder Akbar. You may recall that Akbar is the young Bay Area Afghan-American who...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:14 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

January 06, 2004

Democratization as instant coffee?

The NYT has a lovely profile today of someone I have lots of admiration for: the veteran Algerian diplomat (and former Foreign Minister) Lakhdar Brahimi, who has also for the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:36 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)