Frustrations of the Westphalian Model of Sovereignty

President Karzai expressed some frustrations with the Westphalian model of sovereignty in dealing with the Taliban:

"BreakingNews>
Afghan Pres. Karzai asks at news conf: Why is NATO unwilling to hit Taliban bases in Pakistan?"

In the AfPak region, Westphalian Sovereignty is, frankly, no more than an abstract concept. Tribalism, ethnic territorialism, and warlordism cut up the landscape. The line between Afghanistan and Pakistan is very arbitrary (see the ethnic map and map of "Pashtunistan").

Karzai wants NATO to take the fight to the Taliban, and believes the most effective military targets are in Pakistan (which makes sense--the Taliban keep more secure bases in the relatively safer region). Karzai is actively challenging the Westphalian model.

He's not the first to do it. Woodrow Wilson challenged the old European concept of territorial stability by suggesting that "a people" should have autonomy (though what defines "a people" is a vague concept, at best). The Israelis have constantly struggled in Lebanon where they have an enemy of extremist Hezbollah, but attacking Hezbollah in its own base means going to war with "Lebanon," where there are many neutral parties and even some allies.

Many Pashtuns want a "Pashtunistan," and many Baluchis want a "Baluchistan." Creating these areas would re-set the Westphalian territorial boundaries in the Afpak region to something more ethnically sensible, though obviously Pakistan and Afghanistan have little interest in giving up these large territories (unless they become so troublesome to hold onto that they are let go). The geopolitical need to hold onto them is relatively powerful, especially for Pakistan.

The Western dedication to the Westphalian Model may become a big contributor to the fall of the Afghan state, should it fall. But right now, the West has few alternatives. There is not another viable alternative to take Westphalia's place.

An Afghan Exit Strategy

A conference in Kabul was held today about the international exit strategy from Afghanistan. A few things came out of it:

1) There's a goal date for Afghan Army leadership of every province in the country for 2014. Karzai and international forces are agreed on it (though it's non-binding).
2) The US will still keep drawing down forces in 2011. It will probably start slow--it's not the optimal time to draw down, but Obama has domestic promises he'll need to keep.

That said, let's think about the strategy itself.

First, what's the minimum goal of ISAF? To prevent an al-Qaeda (or other anti-Western international terror force) from taking hold. Certainly, if the Taliban takes over Afghanistan (or controls a large portion of it in a stable way), the risks of this will be very high--the war will be a failure.

The more control that the Kabul government has over Afghanistan, and the weaker the Taliban is, the higher the chances a pro-Western stable equilibrium will arise. Thus all the focus on state-building.

But at the end of the day, Afghanistan does not even have to be as strong and stable as Iraq to be a "success." That said, they're very different situations--Iraq was mostly a sectarian civil war, and Afghanistan is mostly an ideological insurgency (a la Vietnam, as much as that's a scary thought).

The strategy suddenly sounds a lot like the Petraeus strategy in Iraq. It includes:
1) Get the troops out onto the ground. Have them standing side-by-side with Afghani soldiers as patrollers in the streets. This not only trains the Afghani soldiers, but helps keep NATO soldiers looking like the good guys.
2) Focus on handing over one province at a time. Kabul will need to slowly and gradually develop its statecraft. Readers from 2006/2007 may remember Foggofwar's close tracking of the progress of province handover. I continue to believe this will be an important performance indicator. The strategy will allow NATO to continually consolidate troops into more and more troublesome provinces, as "easier" provinces are taken by Afghani troops. The "easier" provinces will provide areas to build experience for the Afghani Army, so that veterans can be cycled to "tougher" provinces that fall under Afghani control after stints in these "easier" provinces.
3) A focus on aggressive raids. The trick here will be to continually deny safe haven to the Taliban. Special forces should be employed at night to make it as scary for the Taliban to sleep as it is for pro-Western collaborators. Constant raids in Iraq against al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups went a long way in eliminating the actual insurgent part of the war.

Some new parts of the strategy:
1) A high reliance on Pakistan. The US needs to continue to be very diplomatic with the Pakistani people. Luckily for the US, it has managed to make drone bombings in northwest Pakistan enough of a status quo that it doesn't seem to be making the Pakistani people angrier. The US will almost certainly be sending special ops to assist Pakistan in offensives in Northern Waziristan and other hot spots to deny the Taliban cross-border support and organization. We'll continue to stress here at Foggofwar the importance of making sure there aren't "safe zones" for the Taliban to fall back, regroup, heal, resupply, organize, command, communicate, etc. It must be made into a fractured and confused force if it can be broken.
Pakistan also has a fair amount of success in breaking the Pakistani Taliban, though the Pakistani Taliban is generally considered to be "softer" and less experienced than its Afghani counterparts (who have been fighting a tough guerrilla war for most of the last 25 years). That said, lessons can be learned by the thoroughness of the Pakistani offensives.
2) Dealing with supply problems. Iraq really had few supply problems for the US. Basrah, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia all provided easy entry points for supplies. As news of attacks on NATO supply convoys in Pakistan/Afghanistan suggests, NATO must sometimes operate with fewer supplies than it would like. This can easily hamper offensive efforts.

That said, conditions in Afghanistan are currently terrible. Roadside bombings in Q1 2010 are double those in Q1 2009. June was the deadliest month in the 9-year war for ISAF forces. A previous post of mine suggests that this may be a better sign thatn one would immediately think, but it does indeed still risk running ISAF (or parts of it) out of Afghanistan. For every country that breaks and peels away, the Taliban strikes a victory.

They also have control of most of the southwest of the country--it's a big territory with a fair number of people. Getting potential sympathisers to work with the Afghan government will require such a massive and sustained disruption of Taliban operations there that they cannot hunt and kill the sympathisers at night--one of their most effective terror tactics.

Going forward, NATO will have to keep drone missiles, special ops, and the occasional small offensive in the Pashtun region (along with brilliant cooperation with Pakistan into the north) as it consolidates northern provinces under Afghani government control, in order to prevent the Taliban from mobilizing into a full offensive itself. As the Afghani Army grows, NATO will need to prepare a full invasion force--prepped by special operations, spearheaded by the Marines & Army, and then garrison by massive numbers of Afghani police and army, to take control of the Pashtun region. It will need to be huge, swift, and incredibly costly.

The exit strategy is a tough one. This is a much more difficult war than Iraq ever was. Ultimately, it will depend on being able to win over parts of the Taliban, and breaking the top-level leadership to prevent sufficient collaboration by the various Taliban factions for a full takeover.

The McChrystal Pinch

McChrystal's comments to Rolling Stone are unacceptable in a General of the Untied States Army. Period.

Now that that's out of the way:

Life is not quite so easy for President Obama as firing McChrystal. One of the hero-geniuses of the US pulling the Iraq War from the brink (just behind Petraeus), McChrystal is an extremely valuable military asset to the US Army, and would be tough to lose.

After his recent successes in Iraq, he has an incredible loyalty in US troops. He's one of a very few people who has Karzai's trust and respect. And, generally speaking, he commands extremely competently.

The risk of canning McChrystal is that the Afghanistan war could, quite really, fall apart at the seams without him. Like Petraeus for Bush, McChrystal may be President Obama's last best hope at winning this war.

The risk of not firing him, of course, is that President Obama would be allowing an insubordination in a General not seen since MacArthur. He would appear weak domestically and abroad. He would set a terrible precedent in the future. McChrystal clearly lacks respect for the current civilian executive branch of the United States--does that make him less effective? Will his subordinates be less effective for knowing it?

But what's more valuable? Which price can the United States afford to pay for McChrystal's comments? President Obama has been stuck with many unenviable decisions in the last year and a half. This may be his toughest.

(For what it's worth, I'm not sure what my recommendation is.)

The Alternative Perspective on Karzai

Sven Ortmann, one of my favorite (and non-American, to boot) foreign policy bloggers, gives the rosier interpretation of Karzai's recent lashings against the US, which has some validity.

My only qualm with Ortmann is that I think the content that Karzai chose to squabble over is significant--in general, his challenges to the US are when it acts to undermine his consolidation of personal power, as far as I can tell, and I think that's more dangerous than what happened in Iraq.

NATO's Persistent Karzai Problem

It's tough propping up a government when said government seems to want to fight you every step of the way.

Hamid Karzai has gone on a recent bender of accusations against, in particular, the United States, but also the UN and NATO in general. The particular meat of the accusations is that Western powers have "meddled" unjustly in Afghan elections, undermining the legitimacy of said elections and giving the Taliban a political talking point (specifically, the most recent rants mention the throwing out of 1/3 of the votes for Karzai in the first round of presidential elections).

The accusation is probably rather preposterous, but I might be wrong. Either way, the lower house of the Afghan parliament unanimously (that being everyone) voted against Karzai's decree that the UN can no longer hold 3/5 majority of the electoral fraud commission--instead, Karzai would himself appoint the entire body. Unfortunately, the upper house (1/3 of which are hand-picked by Karzai) decided that, procedurally, they could not vote on the matter within a year of the elections. Unfortunately, this means the decree will stand. for the indefinite future.

This isn't the first worrisome think Karzai has said about his relationship with the West. Recently, a visit by Ahmedinejad prompted Karzai to call him a "brother" and otherwise generally cozy up to Tehran. Karzai occasionally has fits about throwing out the Western occupiers, despite his dependence on them to keep his government afloat.

Karzai is, no doubt, a very frustrating character for the West. Somehow, the US has managed to build a relatively rosy relationship with a country that it is illegally invading and drone-missile-attacking to squash a Taliban force that said country has some interest in maintaining (this, of course, being Pakistan), but has not managed to keep on good terms with the tinpot dictator it's trying to support. I'm not quite sure whether Clinton has muttered the words, "Well, if you really don't want us..." but Karzai might just understand that the US (and in particular, the administration) has so much to lose that unilateral withdrawal is just not an option--and if that's the case, Karzai has a great bargaining position, despite his relatively flaky power.

It's not actually all that uncommon for a propping state to have trouble keeping its client state's leadership in line. al-Maliki has been a mostly excellent partner to work with, but this is the exception. The US and UK often fight bitterly with Israel; the US leadership groaned famously over the Saigon government in Vietnam, the KMT/GMD in the Chinese Civil War, etc.

But the question that comes to mind is this: why should Karzai be such a darn pain the butt? What incentive does he have to make the lives of the US leadership as difficult as he does? Wouldn't his life be easier if he wasn't publicly ripping into his supporters? Can't we all just get along?

Well, as you probably know, Karzai's in a pretty tricky position. As much as he loathes the Taliban at a very personal level, Afghanistan is obviously a very long way from being a Taliban vs. anti-Taliban kind of show. All those pesky warlords, tribes, ethnic groups, and what have you make Iraq look like Disneyland in terms of being able to reach a unified consensus and build a unified state.

At the end of the day, Karzai's got to make a lot of rather unsavory people happy enough that they won't directly challenge his claim to power. He's also got to build legitimacy with the general population, so they'll throw support behind him directly (meaning that the other power players in Afghanistan also have to side with Karzai to keep their own popularity and legitimacy). Karzai's in a rather precarious position.

And so, of course he's going to be rather cross when a little election fraud here and there (which he may not have even ordered personally) gets dragged out of the gutter and displayed for all to see--it's going to cast a whole lot of doubt on his personal legitimacy that he probably believes would not be cast if everything looked peachy. At the same time, of course he's going to get friendly with the Iranians--Iran and Afghanistan share a border, and Afghanistan's got a non-trivial Farsi-speaking minority that Karzai needs in his opus-coalition in order to keep power.

And it makes sense that Karzai would call Clinton right after to apologise--there may be a frustrated understanding that Karzai has to look tough against the US in order to try to build legitimacy among (the winnable) tougher nationalists or Islamists, and to show that he isn't implicitly condoning the prevailing impression of election fraud (without selling out the ground-level loyalists that worked so hard to stuff ballots and intimidate voters--such a rebuke would seem like an implicit betrayal).

So the guy's in a pretty tough position. Combine said position with a truly maniacal obsession with defeating the Taliban, a slightly-bigger-than-healthy paranoia, and a penchant for micromanaging that verges on power-obsession, and you've got the Karzai we know and groan today.

But what can be done about it? Well, this is the tough part. Ultimately, the leadership positions of Afghanistan need to be shored up without turning them into tyrants in order to do so.

The big win is probably going to come in developing the Afghan army. When regular folks in Afghanistan see the friendly neighborhood soldier keeping them safe and helping them out, there will be a lot more state buy-in. This can, in theory, be done in time (the New Iraqi Army was mostly built from scratch after the US de-Ba'athification... but it was tough). Furthermore, said army will make the local warlords a decreasingly viable alternative and decreasingly important force in the new Afghanistan.

Second, NATO has to show that the Taliban is a losing alternative. To this end, first, NATO needs big, flashy, high-profile victories in places like Marjah (which haven't yet been delivered, because they are militarily difficult). Second, NATO needs to win the PR war by showing that the Taliban are actually baby-killing extremist nutbags, and won't make life better for the average Afghani. Somehow, this is easier said than done.

Finally, the local police & administration need to be developed. This will be toughest of all. As you've probably heard a bunch, Afghanistan is not used to having any sort of serious central authority. Current administration is underpaid and corrupt, either selling out the central government for cash (usually from the Taliban) or thugging on locals to help prop up their warlord, or even the state. (Step one here is clearly to use our vast sums of wealth to start paying police officers more, and hire cross-functional accountability officers).

But it's going to be tough. Karzai's going to continue to be a problem for the West, and the West is going to have to live with it and work with it, or lose Afghanistan. But the friction between Washington and Kabul shows that we've got a very, very long way to go.

Afghan Election Gets Key Legitimacy Boost

In an approximately-simultaneous announcement, the Independent Election Commission of Afghanistan declared that no candidate in the election attained 50% of the real ballots cast, and Karzai rather generously agreed to the run-off.

The agreement is an about-face from his previous stance, which implied that he would dispute results that did not provide him an outright win. This, of course, would have been disastrous. Karzai may have, in fact, just facilitated the only route possible towards long-term governmental legitimacy in Afghanistan (though by no means, of course, did he guarantee it).

A number of obvious reasons are likely behind the decision:
1) Incredible international pressure, from NATO and the UN.
2) Fear of backlash, from Abdullah supporters and anyone else disaffected by fraud.
3) Hopes for increased legitimacy and popularity, by showing generosity and magnanimity.

Apparently, the run-off is scheduled for November 7th--only a bit over two weeks away. This will be necessary to make sure the elections are completed before Afghanistan's harsh winter hits, but will make logistics for ISAF, the UN, and Afghanistan's government incredibly complex.

More importantly: will Abdullah gain enough votes to make this a serious challenge? Karzai winning in the second round (with his cooperation) is certainly better than a "stolen victory" scenario, but it's unclear whether that can be avoided in the second round. Certainly, those working for Karzai have shown a ruthless desire to win (far beyond their desire to promote democracy). Will the scandal over the past weeks deter them from trying again?

It's unclear whether there is much hope to hold on to for this election. But if it should be "free and fair" and, most importantly, convincing, then the government may gain a new "boost" in confidence necessary to help the US "surge" in Afghanistan have a lasting effect.

Ambivalence, Indecision, and Defeat in Afghanistan

Barack Obama is in perhaps what will be the toughest spot of his presidency.

With poll numbers slipping, independents fleeing, his touted healthcare bill staggering, the economy sputtering, and other domestic mayhem, Obama might be hoping right now he could fall back to a solid foreign policy base.

But the decision to remove the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic is proving more controversial than once thought. His tripartite summit with Abbas and Netanyahu was a flop. Iraq is struggling enough to make headlines, and he has no answers. The Afghanistan election was a disaster, and now, as more American boys die on the field and signs of Taliban dominance increase, Obama is faced with a nasty choice that he didn't want to make yet.

General Stanley McChrystal (head of ISAF and the US Military's lead man on the AfPak region directly under Petraeus' command over the entire Middle East) has publicly called on the president to make a choice: Go big or go home. That is, send more troops, or quit. The current path will only lead to failure. I'm inclined to agree with the General.

The General claims that the current troop count in Afghanistan is simply insufficient--the US is spread too thin and losing. Obama, despite his initial popularity with the US's allies, is finding himself without the clout to request more troops from Australia, England, Germany... certainly not former Soviet Bloc countries (who were so generous to President Bush) after the missile shield debacle (which, to its credit, is supported by the non-partisan and sage-like Secretary of Defense Robert Gates).

The General, who is trusted despite not being particularly well-known, has given Obama a great public challenge in a time when his leadership is being questioned and the risks he is currently running in policy have become much higher and much more unlikely than he was hoping. The domestic roadblocks he's hitting now (which seemed unfathomable after he swept the election) make risks in foreign policy all the more politically difficult.

But politically, the choice that Obama has to make may be a loss either way. Support for more troops in Afghanistan is less than 50%, and if he should send more and casualty rates should continue to increase, and defeat should follow, Afghanistan will become Obama's Vietnam. If he should pull out now, the United States will be overcome with a similar sense of defeat and humility, and the GOP will be able to spend years questioning his wisdom as Commander in Chief.

The risk that President Bush took by appointing Petraeus in Iraq and "doubling down" in a situation where the country wanted to pull out must be appreciated. But Bush, an idealogue, understood that his party was likely to lose the election either way, and was able to act with a strange sense of futile freedom. The risk happened to pay off, and Petraeus' military genius was given the time it needed to shine. But the problem in Iraq, in a strange way, was easier to fix, if not more simple.

In Afghanistan, a corrupt dictator has arose to replace the paladin saviour of the country--and both men go by the name Hamid Karzai. No longer can the US simply back the "legitimate" government against the evil Taliban--the government has begun to lose its legitimacy. Without any legitimacy or moral high-ground in the central government, the US has nothing to fight for, and should leave. But, in a period of domestic political turmoil, admitting defeat would be politically catastrophic.

The election is not over yet. The Independent Election Commission has not yet, in fact, declared any winners in the campaign. UN intervention could lead to a second round of voting, in which Abdullah has a chance of winning, and (hopefully) cleaning house--with Kabul's legitimacy restored, Obama can take McChrystal's advice and double-down, as Bush did in Iraq... and hope that the investment pays off before the 2010 elections, lest the struggling Democrats suffer a slaughter similar to the 1994 turnover. Obama would surely take much of the blame.

If Karzai manages to hold onto power and award the cronies that helped him clutch to it, the game may be over. But this outcome is not assured yet.

For Obama, politically, the right choice certainly seems to be to wait, under the guise of his administration conducting a "strategic review" of the situation. But how long can this wait? How long can he delay before his ambivalence turns into a very loud and public liability? Surely, he is pressing for the IEC to hurry up and make a decision, but the second vote won't happen until late October, should it happen. Strategic ambivalence must wait until then.

But unless Obama has a series of decisive decisions lined up to react to the outcome of the election, he will be stumbling into doom. His foreign policy inexperience is starting to show, as he finds that rhetoric and hope cannot alone drive success in an international anarchy of realist, idealistic, and skeptical foes.

In Afghanistan--the US's deepest foreign policy investment--indecisiveness for too long will spell disaster. The political machinations of reality are coming to a head, and a decision to go all in or cut our losses must soon be made. The decision rests on one man: expect it soon.

And Now For Disaster

Karzai reached 54% of the vote in the preliminary announcement this weekend, though the IEC continues to cite dozens of cases of fraud.

Those tribal leaders that complained earlier? Karzai apparently took 100% of the votes in that district. Oops.

The West is cautiously calling for recounts, and possibly re-votes. The right answer here is to declare that the election was too marred to determine a winner, and have a run-off between the two candidates, though it begs the question: can more oversight be brought into the process? Or will Karzai (and/or his goons) steal this one, too?

If Abdullah leads a protest (and I'm not saying he shouldn't), an Iranian-style situation might arise... except that the Afghan state has extremely limited security powers, and the protesters will have Kalichnikovs. Things are going to get worse before they get better, if they do.

Afghan Election Update

With about half of all votes counted, Karzai has 45.8% of the vote, a slight tick downward from his earlier lead when 35% of votes were counted. This will be a nailbiter.

The IEC chairman said that the 5th or the 6th is the date we should be eyeing for results to come in. Until then, the fraud allegations have caused confidence in the election, domestically and abroad, to plummet. If confidence can't be built back, Karzai (or whomever was involved) may have handed the Taliban their biggest victory of the war. In Kandahar province, tribal leaders are publicly accusing aides to Karzai's brother (the provincial leader of Kandahar) of shutting down polling booths and shipping in ballots from elsewhere, all marked for Karzai (these tribal leaders had decided to endorse Abdullah). Kandahar province is predominantly Pashtun; such an accusation suggests that whatever unrest may come of a Karzai victory (if, as is almost certain, it is believed to be rigged) will lead to unrest in Pashtun regions as well as elsewhere.

Things are looking bad. I can't help but worry that ISAF has created a monster. US and EU envoys are considering their response to the election results. The IEC, it appears, has the power to declare the election broken and force a run-off, which the US and EU appear to hope to persuade, should the numbers work out for Karzai.

But whether things will go better the second time is a bleak question. It appears now that Karzai is much more interested in maintaining his position than his legitimacy, and such an incentive (for a man with as much power as he has) is dangerous.

"Too Close to Call"

Well, my predictions from yesterday are looking to be quite wrong.

Early results, released today as announced, put the two leading candidates in what is nearly a dead tie; Karzai has 41% and Abdullah 39%. Only 10% of the votes have been counted, and it's unclear which 10% (it's almost certainly not random). Special Envoy Holbrooke said that it's way too early to call whether this election will go to a run-off, and he's right.

It begs the question: what the heck was Karzai's finance minister thinking? It seems difficult to think that he is right in his assessment of the vote count (and that the Independent Election Commission is reporting some tiny, skewed subsection of the vote despite knowing more). If he's wrong, does he know it? Does he have some flawed source? The announcement continues to trouble me.

More updates as we hear them.

A Dirty Win for Karzai?

Partial election results are not due to be released by the Independent Election Commission (IEC) until Tuesday, but a very late Monday announcement by Finance Minister Zakhilwal claimed that Karzai has won the election with a whopping 68% of the vote. If this is actually true, it might appear to be such an enormous number as to guarantee the consent of the Afghan people despite all the intimidation and corruption.

But I fear this election is not going to end cleanly or easily no matter what happens. There are 3 likely scenarios: outright Karzai victory, outright Abdullah victory, and toss up leading to a runoff. I talked about the consequences of an Abdullah win or a run-off in my last post.

But the Finance Minister, while out of line, is likely correct about the official vote count (he is otherwise very much sticking his neck out for seemingly little gain). But while Afghan polling was neither extensive nor accurate, it certainly seemed like this would be a much closer vote as of two weeks ago. And, further, low turnout in the southern Pashtun regions (due to Taliban intimidation) was likely to hurt Karzai, not help him. A 24% increase in polling for Karzai over that two week period seems highly unlikely.

And all of this, of course, is starting to look frighteningly like the Iranian elections. Abdullah, whose reformist slant and underdog attitude are reminiscent of Mousavi, is claiming "widespread fraud" in the vote, in the form of inflated counting, ballot-stuffing, and intimidation; he claims further that such extensive fraud may well change the election outcome, implying that there would have at least been a runoff had the vote been fair.

The announcement by the Finance Minister comes a few hours after the UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan supported claims of irregularities and urged that dozens of complaints be dealt with, as they are potentially outcome-changing. The announcement might be an attempt to instill decisive victory in the minds of the Afghani population to steal the initiative from a potentially messy review or recount process.

At this point, the legitimacy of the election may be beyond saving. Abdullah cannot be faulted for claiming fraud if the allegations are true (and they likely are), but a lack of legitimacy is likely to damage the government and can potentially lead to violence. It is difficult to undo the damage of most fraud without a second vote of some sort, and such a thing is not only highly uncommon, but is logistically a nightmare; further, it's unclear a second vote would be any better. For ISAF, it's time to dig in and prepare for unrest. Whether some semblance of trust and confidence can be imparted into the Karzai government when it (almost certainly) receives a victory announcement tomorrow is unclear and grim. And without the confidence and trust of the Afghani people, the central government is going to be unable to stick.

The Afghani Election So Far

The Afghan elections did not meet the catastrophic failure of total disruption and violence that many officials feared. That hurdle, at least, was cleared, and most people are carefully avoiding entertaining the idea that most of the Taliban (remember they are not always a united front) did not care too much about the elections. That is not to say that there was not violence; there were rockets, there were roadblocks, there were mortars. But they were sporadic and isolated--had the Taliban been bent on preventing the elections from happening, much more noise would have been made.

But that's only one hurdle. Turnout was apparently significantly lower than the last election, especially in the south, probably due largely to Taliban intimidation tactics. This southern area is dominated by Pashtuns, where Karzai seeks much of his support to beat Abdullah. Whether this disparity in turnout will affect the election, and whether it will call legitimacy into question, is unclear.

Other problems include complaints of ballot-stuffing or other issues of corruption. Karzai's power over Afghani bureaucracy is massive, and has led to a great deal of corruption and graft in normal government functions, and is almost certainly going to leak into the election, even if Karzai himself does not intend to cheat.

Beyond that, the Independent Election Commission (IEC) has to deal with inflated versions of normal election problems, like hanging chads.

But the votes are indeed being counted. Both Abdullah and Karzai have claimed victory, but the IEC has said that it's too early to tell. A Voice of America survey of three polling districts in Kabul put Karzai ahead in 2 of them, and Abdullah ahead in one, and neither with a majority. Ghani and Bashardost were in 3rd and 4th--Bashardost was unable to leap past fourth place even in his own district of Kabul.

Karzai will fare better in the south, and Abdullah better in the north. Karzai's primary disadvantage will be the low Pashtun turnout, but he makes up for this by a number of deals cut with warlords and other local leaders in the north. It should be a close race, and I think a runoff is likely.

Unfortunately, a runoff will be a logistical nightmare of the same magnitude as this election. The Taliban will be able to pose a similar threat, the US will probably have to spend another $250 million on it. If Karzai or Abdullah win outright, there will at least be a sigh of relief that the mess is over for a few years. That said, an outright Kazrai win would likely lead to a number of calls of corruption, irregularity, etc, and hinder reconciliatory efforts across the country.

Should a runoff occur, the two big bargainers will be Bashardost and Ghani, whose support should be able to deliver key slices of vote. I predict that they'd be more likely to support Abdullah, who shares their anti-corruption message, but Karzai is a great negotiator with a lot of power, and could sway them to his side. Should Karzai lose, his supporting warlords will have also lost, and will have little in the way of loyalty to the new government. Whether Karzai can or will convince them to get in line will be worth keeping an eye on.

More updates as we get them.

(P.S.: Congratulations and thanks in particular to the US and UK troops that have, for the past two months, helped prepare southern Afghanistan for an at least semi-functional voting experience. The impact on the local population is likely to be critical.)

Perils in Placing Too Much Hope in Afghan Elections

A low-order analysis of the coming Afghan election (which is about the best you'll be getting out of me today) suggests that no likely result is going to have particularly positive outcomes for the anti-Taliban coalition, despite the increasingly bulky bunch of eggs being stuffed into the election basket by the ISAF.

Recent polls put Karzai in a decisive lead with 44%, though failing to get 50% would lead to a runoff. In second is former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah with 26%; in third, Ramazan Bashardost with 10%; and in fourth, Ashraf Ghani with 6%.

So let us first assume that the vote goes relatively smoothly, despite Taliban attempts to disrupt it. If Karzai wins, Afghanistan has a status quo problem. He is not a terrible president, but he is often arbitrary, his government is corrupt and dysfunctional, and he has apparently alienated much of his former Pashtun support in the south (he is the only all-Pashtun major candidate). Worse, he is being seen as selling out women's rights: he is executing the implementation of a law that allows Shiite men to deny food to their wives, should their wives not be satisfying them sexually (among other things). The implementation of the law is likely to boost his support among some of the 20% Shiite population of Afghanistan. Once the golden boy of the anti-Taliban movement and its Western allies, Karzai has fallen to the point of receiving but an exhausted shrug from those former allies with whom he is not currently cutting deals. Communication difficulties throughout Afghanistan and other barriers to entry for other candidates are probably large contributors to Karzai's current poll popularity.

Dr. Abdullah Abdullah is half-Pashtun, but spent the Taliban regime fighting with the Northern Alliance, and is therefore unlikely to win over many fence-sitting Taliban supporters simply by being elected. His current campaign mimics that of President Obama in rhetoric, and he has clearly set himself up as a sortof "change" candidate, with governmental corruption being his highest campaign issue ("security" is not listed as an official issue, but this may in large part be due to the fact that Abdullah knows better than to think it is a simple lack of will to fight that is keeping the Afghani security forces from winning). He is certainly likely to take Mr. Karzai to a runoff, but whether he'll win is unclear even to pollsters. And whether he can pull Afghanistan together is equally unclear. He does not have the loyalties of many tribes and warlords that Karzai does--and if they cannot be kept in line as the Afghan state develops, they will become as dangerous as the Taliban. And while a change in face might bring some temporary honeymoon to negotiations with the Taliban, they are unlikely to balk on their demand that negotiations occur only after foreign troops have left the country.

The other two candidates are very unlikely to make it to the runoff, which is a shame, because they're quite incredible men. They're both very well-educated technocrats that have detailed plans on how to create structures and incentives to eliminate corruption. Bashardost and Ghani have both won my heart: Bashardost's campaign office is a small tent outside of Kabul's parliament, and he's got a reputation as a charismatic, hot-headed crusader for transparency and political rights. Ghani is talkative and is apparently at times overbearing, but this is largely because he has so many intelligent things to say that he must say them quickly, lest he run out of time. As the former planning and finance ministers, respectively, their attention to detail grossly outstrips their more strongman-style rivals. But, again, they are very unlikely to win.

And, again, this assumes that the Taliban's relative quiet over the past few weeks has not been in preparation for a devastating and coordinated attack on the elections. Should the elections be significantly disrupted, the winner will face incredible legitimacy problems, despite the best of possible intentions. Thursday shall be a tense day. But the Taliban have largely let election commission workers set up and prepare without harassment, which means they may well not try to disrupt the elections themselves. The Taliban are more interested in gaining popularity for themselves than instilling temporary chaos. 90% of polled Afghans declared their intention to vote, which means a significant disruption would likely stir anger amongst otherwise-friendly Afghan people. The Pakistani Taliban's PR disaster has probably taught the Afghani Taliban that discretion is often a key aspect of a winning strategy.

We'll keep you updated on how things go on Thursday when we know.

NATO May Be Out of Afghanistan Sooner than Thought

Afghan President Karzai is starting to become war-weary--as is his populace. His re-election is coming up, and he's starting to become emboldened about his sovereignty thanks in large part due to the negotiations between the US and Iraq in Baghdad. Karzai has asked for a timeline for foreign troop withdrawal--but interestingly, he asked the UN Security Council Delegation, not NATO.

Karzai's frustration is understandable. NATO Counter-Insurgency (COIN) operations are often heavy-handed and humiliating for Afghan citizens, most of whom are much more pro-government than many of the folks in Iraq. Despite this (or perhaps because of it), much of southern Afghanistan remains in control of the Taliban. As the Army COIN manual states, the more force that is used in COIN operations, the less effective the force is.

Because the US has very limited operational ability in Pakistan, and Pakistan has been impressively inept at squeezing the Taliban itself, much of NATO (which has no operational capability in Pakistan at all) concentrates its efforts on rooting the Taliban from Afghan villages. The consequences of this, at minimum, are war-weariness. Worse consequences include insurgency formation.

Such a declaration by Karzai is likely quite scary to a US that believes its reputation can't afford a recapturing of Afghanistan by the Taliban. And surely, Karzai doesn't want to timeline his own government into overthrow and his own family into the gallows. It's not what he's looking for--Karzai is a smart, shrewd politician, and his idea has some tricky potential.

So, why a timeline? Looking like a Western colonial tributary is a terrible way to gain legitimacy for your state among the average Mohammed. Remember, Afghanistan is a state of Muslims, has almost no economy to speak of, and very little ability to project power throughout its mountainous terrain. It needs a sovereign legitimacy in the eyes of its people to counter the Taliban--luckily, the Taliban's previous brutal regime alienated such a large proportion of the population that they will not have unanimous support.

But a Taliban opposition will always exist. And yes, they are rather extremist Muslims, but they are not themselves al-Qaeda. They allied with al-Qaeda to keep control. Karzai has a plan to drive a wedge between them. Karzai will make a political deal with members of the Taliban that are willing to openly reject al-Qaeda and accept the Afghani Constitution. For many Taliban, these aren't huge concessions to give in exchange for some military relief--it will be easier to sleep at night knowing that American missiles are less likely to whack them in the middle of the night.

Getting the Taliban to buy into the government has the potential to be akin to the Sunni Awakening. The Sunnis that the US was dealing with in Anbar province were allied with al-Qaeda, extremist in nature, and quite happy to kill civilians. To think that the Taliban cannot be dealt with for these reasons is overly simplistic and idealistic. Smart negotiations can not only keep many Afghani Taliban from making life worse, but they may (given enough incentive) help to hunt down al-Qaeda and cut off cross-border support from Pakistan. Afghanistan is the kind of place where these local militias are a natural steady state, and the government is unlikely to do well by trying to apply thumbscrews to disarm them. Certainly, it is better to ally with them; if the economy can grow, regional divisions will fade in the long-term.

Can a state live with a large extremist Islamic minority? Certainly--even if it's not easy. Saudi Arabia has is Wahabbis, Egypt has its Muslim Brotherhood, Lebanon has all sorts of extreme minorities, as does Iraq, and Jordan has lots of Palestinian refugees to deal with--there is some variation in their success, certainly, but they can hold it together with this model if they negotiate well. It's hard to beat extremism out of a population with a hammer.

On the other hand, the war in Afghanistan is not being won, and the Afghanis are taking quite the brunt for it--as are NATO soldiers and taxpayer dollars. But!

NATO should not encourage reconciliation and peace talks only after it withdraws. NATO troops should act as peace enforcers, trainers, and facilitators to the deal. The US should help forge the Afghani government demands and goals, including Afghani army oversight of any local militia operations.

Like in Iraq, the first thing that needs to happen is a creation of serious security--which at this point probably cannot be done without a peace and reconciliation agreement with parts of the Taliban. Like the Sunni Awakening in Iraq, this will have a payoff of not only reducing violence from these groups, but turning guns against the serious dead-enders.

Once security has been established, long-term political deals need to be made. This is a highly complex process that should be able to bring in many Taliban in the south of Afghanistan--for the right price. Afghanistan will have to be tough and keep power-sharing from overwhelming the Afghani democracy, but minority protections and limited autonomy are common provisions in civil war termination.

If the political deal holds, then economic development and administrative distribution will be the priority of Kabul--but these will be much easier if it's not fighting a war. With a growing economy, working healthcare and garbage collection, more electricity, better roads, and (importantly) fewer doors getting bashed in by foreign infidels, regime security is likely to get a lot better in the long-term.

NATO should be open-minded enough to Karzai's idea to try and support initial talks with the Taliban--testing the water to see what their demands are can't hurt. The US and Afghanistan alike have been taking a beating over the past 7 years, and frankly, things are getting worse. Luckily, Gen. Petraeus is now head of CENTCOM, and his experiences in Iraq should provide him with great wisdom into how to best design the proper carrots and sticks for Afghanistan's Anbar-like southern rural extremists. Hopefully the US will look for a way to deal with Afghanistan that is a bit more effective than continuing to beat its head against a brick wall.