By December up to 75 percent of U.S. military supplies for Afghan War will not be shipped through Pakistan

Passengers boarding a Tashkent-bound train in Termez, the Uzbek station nearest the Afghan border, June 25. Soon trains from here will be going to the Afghan cities of Hairatan and Mazar-i-Sharif.

Photo: Maksim Yeniseyev

As recently as 2009, the U.S. military moved 90 percent of its surface cargo through Pakistan ... Today, almost 40 percent of surface cargo arrives in Afghanistan from the north, along a patchwork of Central Asian rail and road routes that the Pentagon calls the Northern Distribution Network. Military planners said they are pushing to raise the northern network’s share to as much as 75 percent by the end of this year.

Whenever I feature an entire report from a news organization rather than quoting a few paragraphs I have strong reasons for doing so, as with the following Washington Post report.

In this case I want to direct your attention to the amount of space that the Washington Post gives to complaints about the human rights abuses of Russia-friendly nations in the northern supply network. I observe with bitterness that if, during the past decade, the U.S. Department of State and "human rights groups" had invested a fraction of the effort in criticizing Pakistan's regime and human rights abuses as they've done in criticizing such nations, the U.S. effort in Afghanistan not to mention Pakistan's human rights/democracy activists would be in much better shape than they are today.

I have the same feelings about the slowness with which the U.S. military has devised alternate transport routes. If only the U.S. public had known as early as 2007 that its tax dollars were going toward helping Pakistan's military murder U.S. troops, it would have raised such a hue and cry that by 2009 -- when the "reset" of U.S. relations with Russia finally allowed the U.S. military to begin using former Soviet republics as alternate supply routes -- there would have been no U.S. supplies transported through Pakistan since then.

That would have given the U.S. a huge tactical advantage in the Afghan War -- one that it threw away with its almost exclusive reliance on Pakistan as a supply route. And the advantage would have helped save God Knows how many Afghans and NATO forces from being killed and maimed by Taliban working under the direction of Pakistani military advisors.

The State Department wasn't interested in tactical advantage; it was interested in expansion of its power. Thus, it found in the success of the PRT (Provincial Reconstruction Team) approach in Iraq a way to increase its budget by applying the approach to Afghanistan. State also saw a bonanza for its contractors (and thereby another avenue to increasing its budget) by pushing for increased USAID projects in Pakistan.

All this meant State had to blind itself to the fact that Pakistan is a state sponsor of terrorism, a democracy in name only, and the primary enemy combatant against NATO forces in Afghanistan. Not to mention the fact that State's pushing for nation building efforts in Pakistan and Afghanistan added to the huge amount of non-military stuff that NATO convoys had to haul through Pakistan.

Read USAID's April interview with General John Allen -- now the head of ISAF and U.S. forces in Afghanistan -- for an idea of whether State has turned over a new leaf since the U.S. public learned that Pakistan is conducting a covert war on the United States. When pigs fly will State return of its own cognizance to being only a foreign office.

With regard to the WaPo report's discussion about the poor condition of the railway system in Uzbekistan -- see this June 29 report from Central Asia Online (not to be confused with Asia Times Online) titled, Uzbek-Afghan railway to start running in July. Note that the Asian Development Bank financed much of the vital railway project. And the WaPo report mentions that in February Uzbekistan announced that it had received $218 million loan from Japan to upgrade the line to the Afghan border.

If you ask why the World Bank -- still a U.S.-led organization despite China's great influence there -- didn't finance such loans, go ask the Pentagon and U.S. Department of State to speed-dial their buddies in the 'Get Russia' crowd for the answer. You might also ask State whether any USAID funds ever went to helping Uzbekistan upgrade a portion of their railway system so that U.S. military supplies could be more reliably shipped via that route.

More a logistics nightmare than a "miracle" but by gum the routes skirt Pakistan

Source: National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. By Gene Thorp - The Washington Post

See the following report at the Washington Post website for source links.

U.S. turns to other routes to supply Afghan war as relations with Pakistan fray

By Craig Whitlock
July 2, 2011
The Washington Post

The U.S. military is rapidly expanding its aerial and Central Asian supply routes to the war in Afghanistan, fearing that Pakistan could cut off the main means of providing American and NATO forces with fuel, food and equipment.

Although Pakistan has not explicitly threatened to sever the supply lines, Pentagon officials said they are concerned the routes could be endangered by the deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan relations, partly fed by ill will from the cross-border raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

Memories are fresh of Pakistan’s temporary closure of a major crossing into Afghanistan in September, resulting in a logjam of hundreds of supply trucks and fuel tankers, dozens of which were destroyed in attacks by insurgents.

While reducing the shipment of cargo through Pakistan would address a strategic weakness that U.S. military officials have long considered an Achilles’ heel, shifting supply lines elsewhere would substantially increase the cost of the war and make the United States more dependent on authoritarian countries in Central Asia.

A senior U.S. defense official said the military wants to keep using Pakistan, which offers the most direct and the cheapest routes to Afghanistan. But the Pentagon also wants the ability to bypass the country if necessary.

With landlocked Afghanistan lacking seaports, and hostile Iran blocking access from the west, Pentagon logisticians have limited alternatives.

“It’s either Central Asia or Pakistan — those are the two choices. We’d like to have both,” the defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating Pakistan. “We’d like to have a balance between them, and not be dependent on either one, but always have the possibility of switching.”

U.S. military officials said they have emergency backup plans in case the Pakistan routes became unavailable.

“We will be on time, all the time,” said Vice Adm. Mark D. Harnitchek, deputy commander of the U.S. Transportation Command, which oversees the movement of supplies and equipment.

In such an event, however, the military would have to deliver the bulk of its cargo by air, a method that might not be sustainable; it costs up to 10 times as much as shipping via Pakistan.

“We’d have to be a little bit more mindful of what we put in the pipe,” Harnitchek said.

The Defense Department is already boosting the amount of cargo it sends to Afghanistan by air. To save on costs, the military is shipping as many of those supplies as possible to seaports in the Persian Gulf before loading them on planes bound for the war zone.

As recently as 2009, the U.S. military moved 90 percent of its surface cargo through Pakistan, arriving by ship at the port in Karachi and then snaking through mountain passes, deserts and remote tribal areas before crossing the border into Afghanistan. The Pakistan supply lines are served entirely by contractors instead of U.S. military convoys and are vulnerable to bandits, insurgents and natural disasters.

Today, almost 40 percent of surface cargo arrives in Afghanistan from the north, along a patchwork of Central Asian rail and road routes that the Pentagon calls the Northern Distribution Network. Military planners said they are pushing to raise the northern network’s share to as much as 75 percent by the end of this year.

Obama administration officials said they are negotiating expanded agreements with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries that would allow for the delivery of additional supplies to the Afghan war zone. Washington also wants permission to withdraw vehicles and other equipment from Afghanistan as the U.S. military prepares to pull out one-third of its forces by September 2012.

By shifting the burden to Central Asia, however, the U.S. military has become increasingly reliant on authoritarian countries, prompting criticism from human rights groups that the Obama administration is cozying up to dictators.

For instance, more than one-third of the northern-route cargo passes through tiny Azerbaijan, a country saddled by “pervasive corruption,” according to the State Department’s annual human rights report. U.S. defense officials also say the northern supply lines would not be possible without the cooperation of Russia. One new route runs through Siberia.

The biggest potential choke point, however, lies in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet republic that borders northern Afghanistan. It previously had kicked the U.S. military out of the country after Washington complained about the killing of hundreds of protesters in 2005.

But as the United States has deepened its involvement in Afghanistan, relations with Uzbekistan have warmed up again. Today, more than 80 percent of supplies shipped along the Northern Distribution Network pass through the country.

Expanded supply lines

The northern routes were developed in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration. Since then, the U.S. government has expanded the network into a spiderweb of supply lines.

Some start at Baltic seaports and run through Russia and Central Asia by rail. Another key line picks up traffic on the Black Sea and funnels it through the Caucasus region. One winding truck route begins at a U.S. Army depot at Germersheim, Germany, and ends, an average of 60 days later, at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. As with the Pakistan routes, the deliveries are all made by contractors.

“If you look at what we’ve done there in the last two years, we look at it more or less as a logistics miracle,” said Alan F. Estevez, the Pentagon’s principal deputy assistant secretary for logistics.

There are two big limitations, however, on what the Pentagon can ship through Central Asia. First, supplies are generally restricted to food, water and construction material; ammunition, weapons and other “lethal” cargo are prohibited.

Also, the routes are strictly one-way. Nothing can be shipped back out of the war zone.

U.S. officials said they are trying to negotiate deals with several countries to remove those restrictions. That will be crucial as the United States withdraws 33,000 troops from Afghanistan over the next 15 months, military leaders said.

Perhaps the most vital section in the northern network is a rail line that crosses south through Uzbekistan and over the Amu Darya river to reach Hairaton, Afghanistan. About five out of every six cargo containers travel this route.

“In reality, Uzbekistan is really at the center of all these routes,” said Alexander Cooley, a Barnard College professor and an expert on U.S. military relations in Central Asia. “They’re certainly in the catbird seat. And they know it.”

The final leg of the Uzbek rail line, from the city of Karshi to the Afghan border, underscores how the U.S. military has been forced to rely on rickety routes to sustain its troops.

In November 2009, U.S. embassy officials in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, were warned by a confidential source that the tracks were brittle and at risk of fracturing if trains carried more than half their usual loads. On top of that, the Soviet-era locomotives carrying U.S. cargo were not designed to cross steep mountains; engineers had to apply the brakes almost constantly as they moved downhill.

“By the time the trains have descended from the mountains, the wheels are glowing red hot,” the embassy reported in a diplomatic cable. The source, an engineer, said he was “appalled by how long it takes to transport anything by rail in Uzbekistan” and that he refused to take the train for fear of a crash.

The cable, titled “Uzbek Rail: Red Hot Wheels to Afghanistan” and obtained by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, concluded that “a train wreck is possible in the literal sense.”

U.S. military officials said they knew of no accidents or safety problems on the 200-mile rail segment. In February, Uzbekistan announced it had obtained a $218 million loan from Japan to upgrade the line to the Afghan border.

Human rights concerns

Uzbekistan has been assailed by human rights groups for repression under President Islam Karimov, who has ruled the country since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Freedom House, a Washington-based advocacy group, ranks it as one of the nine worst countries in the world for civil liberties and political rights.

From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. military relied on an Uzbek air base as a hub for combat and supply missions to Afghanistan. U.S. forces were evicted from the base after Washington pressured Karimov to allow an international probe into the deaths of hundreds of anti-government protesters in the province of Andijan.

Since 2008, however, Washington has steadily worked to repair relations. A stream of U.S. military leaders and diplomats has visited Tashkent, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in December and Denis McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, in late May. Uzbekistan, in turn, has reopened its railroads, highways and airspace for U.S. cargo.

Thomas M. Sanderson, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the Obama administration has continued to raise human rights concerns with Uzbekistan but that the Afghan supply routes usually take precedence.

“There is no doubt about it. We are there for one primary reason, and that is to enable our operations in Afghanistan,” said Sanderson, who has studied the Northern Distribution Network.

State Department officials said they do not hesitate to press Uzbekistan to improve its human rights record. When Clinton visited Tashkent, they noted, she made a point of meeting activists and calling for the release of jailed journalists.

“We’ve made a real effort to try to engage Uzbekistan on human rights and in trafficking persons, and in some cases there’s been some progress,” said Robert O. Blake, assistant secretary of state for South and Central Asia. “This is something that’s in their own interest to do, to allow greater freedom of religion and greater freedom of expression.”

Diplomatic cables, however, show Uzbek officials have not hesitated to demand U.S. restraint on human rights in exchange for cooperation on the supply routes.

In March 2009, shortly after the State Department gave an award to an Uzbek human rights activist, Foreign Minister Vladi­mir Norov made an “implicit threat” to suspend deliveries to Afghanistan, according to a cable signed by Richard B. Norland, the U.S. ambassador in Tashkent at the time.

An angry Karimov also complained to Norland personally.

“Put yourself in my place,” Karimov told the ambassador, according to the cable. “Would you trust me if I had done this?”

In that cable and others to Washington, Norland counseled the Obama administration to check its public criticism of Karimov to maintain the viability of the supply lines. In advance of a visit to Tashkent by a senior State Department official, Norland advised using “private, but frank diplomacy” to cajole Uzbekistan rather than “more openly coercive measures.”

“Uzbek pride often gets the better of rationality and officials here will think nothing of cutting off their nose to spite their face,” Norland added in a July 2009 cable.

What Pentagon, State Department, U.S. and other civilian NATO leaders could learn from Tabatha Coffey's lessons in hair salon management

I refused to watch "Tabatha's Salon Takeover" reality series on Bravo cable TV during its first two seasons.

"It's about hair," I snorted.

This just goes to show that one should never be a snob when casting around for solutions to problems in the U.S. defense and foreign policy establishments. As I learned when I finally caught an episode it's not really about the hair, which is also the title of Tabatha Coffey's just-published book.

The book is part memoir (she started working in the hair salon business when she was 14; she's now 41), part self-help guide, and part business management manual. It's that last which makes the show a 'must watch' for anyone running a small business start-up of any kind -- and indeed for anyone who wants to learn to be a better boss and leader.

I talked a friend, who also has no interest in hairdressing, into watching an episode. After he saw Tabatha in action he said admiringly, "She's Rommel."

I don't know enough about Erwin Rommel to say whether he would be the right comparison in the military sphere but after watching re-runs of several of the shows, I can see why my friend said what he did; she does indeed demonstate traits that I think are common to all great generals.

Tabatha's job on the show is to turn around failing hair salons; this invariably involves teaching the salon owners to be better bosses and the staff to be better employees (and better hair stylists). Given that she only has one week to rescue a troubled salon her leadership is consistently a tour de force.

The show's producers probably weed out the candidates with serious psychological problems although some salon owners that Tabatha encounters have personal issues that are at the root of their failing business; in such cases Tabatha has to juggle what's in essence an intervention with rescuing the business end of the salon. However, the majority of the failing salons are owned by people whose skill at hair styling allowed them to build enough of a clientele to open their own salon, but who don't have sufficient business experience and skill at managing employees. The upshot is that the salons run into financial trouble.

As the unpaid bills pile up and the owners' face bankruptcy they become a walking textbook of the Boss From Hell: blaming their mistakes on the staff, starting a cold war with the staff or morphing into petty tyrants -- or flipping to the opposite pole and trying to be a pal to the employees.

Such tactics naturally engender the classic employee responses to such treatment, which range from outright mutiny, to insubordination, to subtle sabotage, to a bunker mentality, to running riot, to loss of confidence and pride in their work and place of employment.

And for their part, many of the stylists employed in the salons have only their time at an American public high school and trade school as their guide to professional behavior. Such employees have no military service experience to help them forge self-discipline in a business setting, no experience with working in a corporate setting to teach them a standard of professional conduct. And many of the stylists demonstrate only the most tenuous grasp of the concept of customer service.

So Tabatha often walks into a kind of human zoo, with each stylist doing his or her own thing, and resenting any critique on the argument that they're artistes and must suffer no dampening of their free spirits.

(If this situation sounds faintly familiar, reference the Afghan War. And start with the early days of the U.S. invasion, which saw Vice President Dick Cheney take it into his head, without consulting the Commander-in-Chief or CENTCOM -- or anyone, for that matter -- to arrange an airlift out of Afghanistan for Pakistani military personnel. The personnel had been overseeing Taliban fighting against Afghans working on the U.S. side. That airlift of a few Pakistani officers morphed into an air bridge that allowed God Knows how many Taliban and al Qaeda commanders to evade capture in Afghanistan and skip out to Pakistan.)

From all that chaos Tabatha has to wrest order before she can persuade the owner and employees to follow her recommendations for transforming a failing salon into a profitable business. She does this first by taking command through the sheer force of her personality, then instilling respect for her leadership through her insightful questions and comments to the staff and owner, by teaching the employees the importance of respecting the owner's authority and conducting themselves in a professional manner, and by instilling or rekindling pride among the employees in their profession. She also inspires the owner and staff to build esprit d'corps and teaches the salon owner the ropes of good management.

If you ask, 'She does all that in a week?' -- all that and much more, although she has longer than a week to assess each salon's personnel situation and business model. She also provides technical advice on developing a successful small business model and specifically a hair salon model. Plus, she oversees a physical overhaul of the salon via improved decor and floor layout and new equipment, which the producer provides the salon for free. And she identifies the strengths and weaknesses of each hair stylist's technical skills and provides training and recommendations to improve the skills..

Before you wonder if she also walks on water, she does have a few things going for her when she embarks on a rescue mission:

> The candidates for a salon makeover are truly desperate for help; the owners are so deeply in debt that several not only stand to lose the salon but also their house, which they've mortgaged to the hilt in the attempt to keep the salon's doors open. Thus, the owners who contact Bravo to request that she rescue their salon are highly motivated to follow Tabatha's recommendations. They view her as the court of last resort.

> Tabatha Coffey is a superstar in the hairdressing world. Her technical expertise and creativity as a hair stylist and success as a salon owner are known to every person in the business.

> At least by the second season of "Tabatha's Salon Takeover," it's now in its third), the people she helps have followed her show and, so they're aware of her success at identifying and correcting a salon's problems, and thus they're weighted to at least listen to her recommendations.

> Her unannounced, highly theatrical entrance into the salon is calculated to produce shock and awe in the staff. Up that point the staff are rarely aware of how bad the salon's finances are. So just the mere appearance of the famous Tabatha at their salon clues the staff that the salon is about to crash and burn, which means they're facing the prospect of joblessness. That sobering reality, in addition to all the above is enough to give Tabatha a big advantage in the first hours of her salon takeover.

She also has one surprising advantage up her sleeve, which I think can make her more effective than many advisors who are hired to turn around failing small businesses: she is openly and famously a lesbian. While inspecting a closet in one salon she quipped, "This is the first time I've been in a closet in years."

What this means is that the staff and employees can't argue that the discipline she imposes will turn free-spirited artistes into Stepford Wives. And they know that her fame as a hair stylist is based on the unique, tailor-made hair style she creates for every client instead of wreaking a cookie-cutter fad haircut on them.

Tabatha Coffey's life is a demonstration that creativity and individualism can get along just fine with a highly disciplined, professional approach to business.

Yet much of the drama of the show arises from human nature in the raw. Despite the owner's desperation and respect for her reputation, and even after Tabatha has had the owner watch footage of a day in the salon, which shows in merciless detail the owner's failings as a boss, some of the owners fight her tooth and nail before they'll improve their attitude and behavior. Or they fight her in a passive way, by nodding like bobble-heads at every recommendation but continuing on as before. It's here that one can see in Tabatha the qualities that make for a great general. Consider two great generals;

Given the universal respect that Temujin commanded among his officers by the time he became known as Genghis Khan, it can surprise students of his life that for years his forging of Mongol tribes into an army was like herding cats. The other tribal leaders considered that they knew more about warfare than he did, if only on the basis of being older, and to a man they were very independent-minded.

It was much the same for General Eisenhower while he served as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War Two. He was dealing with gigantic egos, all of which believed they knew the best way to wage a war.

In short, no matter how desperate the salon owners, and despite their agreement to cede their authority to Tabatha for a week, they are commanders of their own little army, so to speak. Thus, Tabatha's greatest challenge is to help the owners transform from bad commanders into good ones without breaking their fighting spirit or asking them to strip themselves of their uniqueness. Because she approaches the salon makeover from that vantage point the show is an incredibly valuable teaching aid not only for businesspeople but also for military officers.

However, it's Tabatha's insights about mission drift that I find particularly applicable to the efforts of the U.S. military and State Department in Afghanistan. If you ask how a hair salon could suffer from mission drift -- you can't believe some of the situations she's encountered.

There was the owner who decided that the best way to shore up flagging business was by creating a singles' bar atmosphere in the salon and getting the customers, employees and himself drunk every day. Try to imagine what a drunk hair stylist can do to a client's hair while wielding a bottle of hair dye and scissors.

There was the owner who determined that the way to profits was to offer coupons for free and discounted haircuts and hair coloring work. At the point Tabatha arrived there were 40 different coupon programs, which had turned the salon into a kind of direct mail operation with stylists stuffing coupons into envelopes for much of the day, which took them away from their styling duties.

On the day that the Bravo hidden cameras were turned on in the salon they showed a woman, lured in by a coupon, sitting in a chair for two hairs waiting to be served before she gave up and left -- then being chased in the parking lot by the receptionist, who'd been too busy stuffing envelopes to notice that no work had been done on her hair, and who demanded that she pay up for her hair cut.

Those of us who remembered the brutal turf war between Pentagon and State in the wake of 9/11 were overjoyed about the successful teaming of David Petraeus and career diplomat Ryan Crocker. Their experience, technical expertise, and close cooperation helped work wonders in Iraq.

But by the spring of 2009 it was obvious that the Afghan campaign was suffering from mission drift. It was substituting policing actions and haphazard attempts at nation building for warfare, on the rationalization that this was good population-centric counterinsurgency (POPCOIN) doctrine.

The problem was that unlike Iraq, Afghanistan does not have a true insurgency -- not in enough measure to warrant heavy reliance on POPCOIN tactics. Instead, Afghanistan has a proxy war being orchestrated by Pakistan's military.

And yet in the attempt to win hearts and minds among illusory insurgents, the NATO troops were ordered to act in the manner of police serving in the most sophisticated community outreach programs in American big-city police forces. This approach caused unnecessary deaths and maiming to NATO troops and Afghan civilians, and by the summer of 2009 it was causing what was termed by several observers as low troop morale.

What was happening among the troops was worse than low morale. It was a growing hatred among the troops for the Afghans they were protecting, and who were setting IEDs as soon as the troops turned their backs on them. What was happening was a growing contempt for the military authority. For many NATO soldiers serving in Afghanistan, military service had come to have no meaning beyond keeping each other alive within their individual units.

The attitude of the troops was mirrored among many Afghans; they came to hate the troops and to believe that NATO wasn't serious about defeating the Taliban. And so, from a sense of self-preservation, they began tolerating the Taliban who returned to rule their regions and cooperating with them.

The arrival of Gen. Petraeus as the supreme commander in Afghanistan, once he got all his ducks in a row, reversed some of the worst aspects of the situation. But by then the U.S. Department of State was increasingly acting according to its own lights in Afghanistan with the encouragement of Robert Gates -- a U.S. Secretary of Defense who has been promoting an approach to warfare that relies heavily on theories of 'third-world' development, as found in organizations such as the World Bank.

It's an allover situation that Tabatha Coffey would instantly recognize as mission drift and a destroyer of the leadership authority that is the backbone of any successful group enterprise.

State is not a development institution. Yet State's deep involvement in development since it virtually took over USAID, coupled with its direct involvement in nation building efforts in Afghanistan, has increasingly muddied the waters of its diplomatic mission. And it's placed State on the defensive regarding complaints about the development initiatives in Afghanistan, which even include charges of corruption arising from dealings with contractors.

Meanwhile, the discipline that was evident in the Petraeus-Crocker alliance and their respective teams at State and CENTCOM collapsed in Afghanistan. One reason for this is that the Iraq operation was clearly run by one country -- the USA -- while the Afghan operation represents more of a group effort. This has translated into the nation-building aspect of POPCOIN being shared by several governments and the development contractors favored by major governments in NATO. Discipline has broken down because of this with entire areas of the war not under clear lines of authority.

One way to clarify the lines of authority would be for USAID to be absorbed into an American reconstruction and development bank (ARDB) along the lines of the regional development banks in Asia, Europe, Latin America, and so on, and which is clearly separate from State and the Pentagon.

(The creation of such a entity wouldn't interfere with U.S. membership in the World Bank; the major countries that belong to regional development banks also belong to the World Bank.)

An ARDB would put some distance between the U.S. foreign office and development and procurement issues, and between the military and development/reconstruction issues and procurements related to such.

It would also help to better formalize protocols regarding the use of development projects for counterinsurgency operations. Many such projects, including the PRTs (provincial reconstruction teams), were experimental in Iraq. Now that they have a more permanent role in military operations it's time to clearly define the limits of their use in a war setting, and the way they interface with military kinetic operations.

The creation of an ARDB is just one way that lines of authority and responsibility could be clarified; there are other ways, such as expanding the mission of some existing U.S. agencies, including USAID. The basic idea is to create enough of a buffer between State and the Pentagon that foreign policy considerations don't overwhelm the military institution and its unique function.

However, in the case of Afghanistan even the most efficient buffer would only rearrange the furniture in hell, as long as civilian leaders in NATO countries insist on using their troops to fight a situation that doesn't exist.

There's been much discussion about what the success of POPCOIN depends on. Less attention has been given to the core beliefs that support a long-running insurgency. The most fundamental belief shared by insurgents fighting an occupier is that they know better than the interloper how to help their own county. That belief can be changed by effective POPCOIN outreaches to the insurgents, as the Iraq War demonstrated.

But in the case of Afghanistan large numbers of the vaunted insurgents are Afghans in the pay of Pakistan's military/ISI, which is not interested in building up Afghanistan but in holding it back. So there's a serious problem, which POPCOIN theory is not meant to address, when it comes to the point that such Afghans are crying to outsiders that they don't want to torture and massacre their own countrymen but are being ordered to do so by their Pakistani paymasters. (See Matt Waldman's June 2010 paper, The Sun in the Sky: The relationship between Pakistan's ISI and Afghan Insurgents.)

Some in Washington argue that the claims of a proxy war being waged by Pakistan are greatly exaggerated by the Afghans, and fueled by their experience after the Russian pull-out, when Pakistani-backed Taliban ran amok in Afghanistan.

From all I've studied of reports on the situation during the past three years, I don't agree that the claims are greatly exaggerated, but for the sake of discussion assume they are. That would mean NATO is dealing with a very traumatized population. Telling such people that a Pakistani proxy war is in their imagination would only to add to their paranoia.

And there is much in the day's news that would reinforce the paranoia, particularly because Afghans no longer need to be literate to be news hounds, thanks to TV and radio stations that sprang up in the country since the NATO occupation. Afghans with access to such media outlets are closely following news about their country, the NATO war effort there, and Pakistan -- and broadcasting to other Afghanss via cell phone.

At the end of this post I feature quotes from two news reports yesterday, which I picked almost at random, to illustrate why Afghans have good reason to believe NATO is more interested in covering for Pakistan than in backing their country. Such reports are so common that finding them on the internet is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Meanwhile diplomats and military officers from NATO countries heap verbal assurances on Afghans that the NATO countries have their best interests at heart. How would you react to such assurances in the face of evidence to the contrary? I know what I'd do. I'd call for a Tabatha takeover of the NATO command in Afghanistan for a week.

I can hear the excuses: 'But Tabatha our militaries are under civilian control. What can we do when we're ordered to fight a phantom insurgency?'

From my study of her salon rescues I think I can get into the ballpark about how she might reply.

She once explained to a gaudily-dressed group of stylists why so many top stylists wear black at work: because it's the client who's supposed to be the center of attention, not the hair dresser.

Good generals know it's not about them, it's about the soldiers who put their lives in their hands. If the generals' civilian bosses knowingly give orders that force them to repeatedly betray their responsibility to troops, their only recourse in a civilian-run democracy is to resign their command. The most they can then hope for is that the resignations will cause the civilian leaders and those who vote them into office to review the bad orders.

The retort is that we can't go to war with Pakistan. Who said anything about making war on Pakistan? As I've pointed out again and again, and as the incident with Dick Cheney and many other incidents and the two reports I quote from below amply illustrate, the first step with Pakistan has never been taken by the US and NATO. The step is to formulate a policy that shows unequivocal disapproval for the Pakistan regime's support of terrorism and then consistently apply the policy so that mixed signals aren't sent to the regime.

And if the civilian leaders in the United States and other NATO countries cannot grasp the benefits of clear policy consistently applied, they really do need to tune into "Tabatha's Salon Takeover" and take notes.

Now to quotes from the two January 25 reports I mentioned above:

Pakistan has "disastrous year" for human rights in 2010: HRW

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (Reuters) Taliban violence and religious extremism grew in Pakistan in 2010, with the government doing little to improve the situation and often making things worse, Human Rights Watch (HRW) said on Monday.

In its World Report 2011, the New York-based rights organization said militant violence was fostered by the passive acceptance of persecution of religious minorities and had active help from some elements of the intelligence agencies.

"Taliban atrocities aren't happening in a vacuum," said Ali Dayan Hasan, senior South Asia Researcher for Human Rights Watch, "but instead with covert support from elements in the intelligence services and law enforcement agencies."
[...]

The second report:

White House, NATO Hold Up Afghan Force Size Increase
By Viola Gienger

(Bloomberg, January 25) The White House and NATO are holding up a decision on increasing the size of Afghan security forces because of their concerns over the cost and possible objections from Pakistan, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin said.

Levin said he urged President Barack Obama at a White House event yesterday to approve an increase in the goal for the number of Afghan soldiers and police officers to 378,000, beyond the current plan to field 305,000 by October. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Army General David Petraeus, the top commander in Afghanistan, have all recommended the increase, Levin said.

“I urged the president strongly and with very direct words that this needed to be done,” Levin told reporters at the Capitol in Washington today after returning from a week-long trip to Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen. The decision is necessary “to enhance the possibilities of success of our mission and to speed up the reduction of our forces,” he said.

The coalition fighting in Afghanistan, led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, aims to turn back the Taliban and build an Afghan army and police force to take over from the foreign troops. Obama plans to begin a U.S. drawdown in July, and officials have said that training is on schedule to meet the current goal of 305,000 Afghan forces in the field by October.

The Pakistan Factor

In addition to the concerns over cost, the U.S. may be considering objections from Pakistan to having so many Afghan troops across the border, Levin said. Such an objection would be “interesting,” considering that Pakistan has often blamed Afghanistan for not controlling the flow of fighters over its border.

“They can’t have it both ways,” Levin said. “If they want the Afghans to take greater responsibility on their side of the border to stop the flow, then they should not object to the Afghan security forces being enlarged.”

Pakistan wants to help Afghanistan achieve “stability and lasting peace,” said Imran Gardezi, a spokesman for the Pakistani Embassy in Washington.

“It is the sovereign right of the government and people of Afghanistan to determine the size of their national army and police,” Gardezi said in an e-mail today.

“Pakistan has offered its cooperation in training Afghan national army and police personnel.”

Considering Many Factors

The White House is considering many factors in determining the ultimate strength of the Afghan force, including costs and quality as well as quantity, an administration official said on condition of anonymity because the decision-making process isn’t public.

Navy Captain John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen, and Oana Lungescu, a spokeswoman for NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, both declined to comment.

“There is ongoing discussion, but no decisions have been made,” said Marine Corps Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.
[...]

Translation of the sound of chirping crickets emanating from the offices of Rasmussen and Mullen: They didn't expect Carl Levin to announce to the public that they were considering complaints from Pakistan's military that Afghan military and police forces were getting too big.