The run up to Kazakhstan’s chairing of the OSCE [Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe] means that we’ll probably see more human-interest stories like this one.  Nazarbaev was in Italy to sign some deals [more on this later], and stopped in to visit the Pope in the Vatican.  They exchanged pleasantries, Nazarbaev got some new medals, and the Pope got a replica of the pyramid of inter-religious harmony that stands in Astana.

Nazzy B and the Pope, 2getha @ last!

Vladimir Socor, in an interview at NewEurope, reminds us not to get our hopes up for the dawn of a new era under Kazakhstan’s stewardship.  I’m confident that most of Registan’s readership probably was not guilty of that.

As for the deals signed by Nazarbaev, they include this mammoth Memorandum of Understanding with Finmeccanica.

One specific provision of the MoU with the Samruk- Kazyna fund — it is an industrial and financial state holding company — is “the establishment of a working group to analyze Kazakhstan’s changing needs and the business opportunities for Finmeccanica Group companies,” Finmeccanica said in a statement.

Within the context of the MoU, KazEngineering and SELEX Galileo signed a cooperation agreement for the development of civil and military applications. The agreement provides for the use of SELEX Galileo electro-optics systems to upgrade the T72 tank for use by the Kazakh armed forces and for foreign markets, Finmeccanica said in its statement.

One assumes a lot of money is going to come from a deal like that, and that was exactly what Berlusconi, Italy’s aging leader, had to say.

The Italian prime minister, praising Kazakhstan’s “great natural resources and huge demographic growth” at a meeting with Nazarbayev late on Thursday, added with a smile that the latter “demonstrates the great vitality of all Kazakh males”.

Yikes!

Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi praised the virility of Kazakhstan’s men during a visit to Rome by its president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, saying this was the reason for the former Soviet country’s population growth.

The comment by the 73-year-old Italian leader, who often boasts of his own virility and has been in trouble for hosting parties with prostitutes, came at a meeting with Nazarbayev that Berlusconi said sealed business deals for “billions of dollars”.

Le Francais over at Ink Spots usually have some good insights on things I know nothing about. This time, I actually know something about. Gulliver is talking about how an alarmist!!! report says that 75% of Americans 18-24 are unfit for military service. This is arguably true or false, I don’t know, and that’s not my point. But this line caught my eye.

Really I just wanted to say that I think it’s pretty freakin’ weird to be talking about early childhood education, parenting guidance, mental and nutrition services, and so on as matters of national security.

He kind of hits on one of the main points I want to make on this blog. Education, parenting, and mental/nutrition services ARE issues of national security. When the state isn’t able to provide access to these things, then it becomes a failed state.

I’m not suggesting that the US is a failed state, but I am wondering why things that are problems here are not seen, necessarily, as problems THERE. It isn’t like the leadership of the Taliban, IMU, etc. are against education, parenting, and mental/nutrition services. They just have a different way of providing different services than the United States would particularly like. This brand of terrorism is revolutionary, not reactionary. They are seeking to create their own society in the gaps that have been left by the state. Society is not purely politics and military in the United States, and it isn’t in Afghanistan or anywhere else under the blue sky. And I know about PRTs and HTTs, but even these are part and parcel of the United States’ war effort.

I just listened to a lecture by Nazif Shahrani that I stole from Ghosts of Alexander on the standard “How America screwed up the fight in Afghanistan” bit. Except it’s not a standard bit. One of the things that he said that stuck out to me the most was that 9/11 was viewed as a military problem, not a justice problem, not an economic problem, not a cultural problem. Just a military one. Terrorism is not an issue that can be addressed solely through military means. The Bonn Agreement and current drama surrounding the government of Aghanistan paints a pretty stark picture. Military and political agreements are not going to be enough to solve the sort of problems that terrorism causes in any practicable way. I think the one thing that can be taken away from the War on Terror is that it is so much more (and so much less) than a War that “war” really isn’t the most honest term.

Afghanistan is a failed state. Pakistan is getting there. Similar things could be said about Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, to varying degrees. None of these countries are able to supply the education and social services that their people need. This isn’t a problem that can be solved by USMil or USAID, it needs a wholly different way of looking at the problem.

Shahrani hammers home that focusing on the locality is key when building up a state. He would, being an anthropologist and all, but I wholly agree with him, and am working on a post about this later. But the reason I link to BLDGBlog and DesignObserver is because I am genuinely curious to what results would come out of asking architecture and design students, “What would you do in order to build stability in Afghanistan?” I’m sure some wholly unique and entirely useful ideas could come out of that, ideas that political and military types wouldn’t necessarily think of.

It’s why Greg Mortenson represents an entirely different way of looking at the same issues that ISAF do. And of course, he’s a bit pie-in-the-sky at times and the NGO industry is a whole other ball of wax to be dealt with (starting with their security constrictions, as I’m sure people in the field can talk about more than I), but it’s at least different. And plus, he reads Registan. And in just the academic arena, there are plenty of people who have lots to say, of course. I’d just also be interested to see lots of ideas on how to solve the issues of terrorism that come out of places that are not think-tanks.

If people are looking for unique, different, ideas on how to solve the problems ailing Central Asia, and Afghanistan in particular, they ought to look outside of what the military or political structures can offer. Good ideas have come out of those sectors, of course. But that doesn’t mean that good ideas can’t come out of anywhere else.

In response to continuing threats to its international staff in the wake of the tragic attack on a UN guest house in Kabul it now appears that a decision has been made to withdraw about six hundred UN international staff from Kabul.  The details of the move are not clear yet, nor is its permanence, but the messaging is unmistakable; “hit us hard and we will turn tail.”

I fully understand the thinking behind this decision, and I sympathize with the responsible parties who have to consider the threat picture and take measures to manage the risk of operating a civilian mission in a warzone.  Unfortunately, I think this decision has far greater negative implications than positive ones.  While appearing a sensible response to give the UN a chance to review the living arrangements of its staff, I think it fails to take into account the impact it will have on the enemy – as all good strategic thinking needs to.

Therefore the insurgents responsible for the attack are now told in no uncertain terms that if they want to send the UN scampering out of Afghanistan, thus reducing tangible international support for the Karzai government, they just have to engage in a few more savage attacks of this nature.  In the cruel arithmetic of war they are very likely to see the great impact their low-cost attacks can thus have.  Even if the move turns out only to be temporary, the already-scarred and bruised prizefighter that is the UN in Afghanistan has exposed his glass jaw.

The UN plays an important role in country and to operate in a much reduced capacity when the mission calls for increased human and materiel resources will be a serious setback for the Afghan project.

The politics of hydrocarbons in Central Asia has been a regular ballroom lately, with strange partners pairing up and then dancing apart.

The dance begins in Denmark, to which country Vladimir Putin has just pledged to increase the flow of gas:

We are grateful to the Danish Government for giving permission for the construction of the Nord Stream gas transmission system through Danish territorial waters and part of the Danish exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea.

We greatly appreciate this prompt and sound decision on the part of our colleagues. It is an example of a measured, politically unbiased approach towards energy issues and energy cooperation in Europe.

Bringing this gas transmission system into operation will ensure additional energy supplies to the main European consumers, including Denmark, which will receive 1 billion cubic metres of gas annually through the Nord Stream system. This volume may be increased threefold in the future.

Europe should have some cause to be glad that the Danes have become Russia’s new dancing partner: Ukraine’s refusal to dance with Russia left Europe cold, literally and figuratively. But hard feelings about the dance card could still hurt, and Russia isn’t over Ukraine just yet.

The tangle of the dance in the north has been enticing Europe to the south, where it has been hoping to revive the Nabucco project. It has asked for a dance with Turkmenistan, but other partners may cut in before the dance can get underway.

Before the Turkmen could really get going with Europe, another dance whirled out of control — Armenia cut in while Azerbaijan and Turkey were dancing, and now Azerbaijan is mad. Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan have had their own dance going for a while, but Azerbaijan’s tantrum is threatening to end the party altogether. And so the whole dance could be off just as the Turkmen arrived.

Today in asia times on line there is the claim that the US/NATO persuaded Abdullah Abdullah to quit the second round of the Afghan election.

If that weren’t enough, they also make the claim that the US has agreed that the Pakistani Army will mediate between the US and the Taliban to find a (face saving) way for all NATO forces to, well, cut and run.

I really can’t vouch for the veracity of this story, but the fact it is reported means some group or other must believe it, and that is, to my mind, worth noting. Particularly as rumour seems to count for as much as evidence in this part of the world.

Furthermore, the same issue has this story regarding the likelihood of a rise of a new nation called Pashtunistan.

Taken together, I think that it probably means a fairly significant Pashtun grouping really believe they can get their own state out of this whole thing.

There is also the implication that the civilian Pakistani government is being marginalised (to the benefit of the Pakistani military). Again, this need not be true, but if enough people start believing, it will probably become true.

What, for me, doesn’t add up is the role of the Pakistani military. If they encourage or allow an independent Pashtunistan, even Balochistan, what will Pakistan be left with? The Punjab and Sindh? Does any powerful group ever choose to give up that much power?

Eight years after the routing of the Taliban and the real pursuit of al Qaeda, but with both still alive and dangerous, is a distinction between the two groups operationally relevant?

Coupled with the the debate on whether to commit more forces to a full-on counterinsurgency, there has been a side discussion as of late over a basic assumption: whether there is any longer any substantial difference between the Taliban and al Qaeda. The significance should be obvious: as ISAF and the U.S. prosecute the war against one, can the other be handled separately? And if so, can we just pick them off from 15,000 feet, like we do in Pakistan?

On the one hand, it is easy to see that they are, to some extent, quite distinct. Al Qaeda serves as an symbolic figurehead for several extreme fundamentalist organizations, from the Caucuses through Central Asia and the Middle East and to the Horn of Africa. The Taliban, by comparison, is a parochial and inward looking religious-political movement that at first blush has little meaning outside of the Afghanistan-Pakistan Pashtun areas.

Aside from theoretical questions of identity, this distinction may point to an exploitable rift. A bit better job is done over at Jihadica, which provides some internal chatter to back up such a claim. Stephen Walt at FP comes right out and prescribes a way forward when he says that “if there is considerable potential for division among both the leaders and even more among their followers, then a strategy of divide-and-conquer makes more sense than a long and costly counterinsurgency campaign that gives them every reason to stay united.” Somehow, I remain doubtful that they’ll ever be divided quite so much.

On the other hand, and to my own view, is that the revolutionary nature of the Taliban means it won’t really stop even should it succeed in Afghanistan. It expanded beyond traditional Pashtun territory, attempting (and largely succeeding) to subdue the Tajik north, the Hazara middle, and Aimaq and Farsiwan west. It has already advanced toward Islamabad, turning on its once and present patrons.

Indeed, Peter Bergen suggests a Taliban-al Qaeda merger. Brian Glyn Williams has noted more than once, most recently on Charlie Rose, that the Taliban of 2009 is not what the Taliban was in 2001; it’s now more dangerous and more transnational. And if we are to trust the words of al Qaeda’s brain itself, Afghanistan was “an incubator” where the global movement would start; it would be naive to think that the Taliban wouldn’t spread with it.

Perhaps, then, the argument is purely academic. Of course there is a distinction between the two; ultimately, al Qaeda simply sees Afghanistan as a convenient battleground state, but could gladly otherwise write them off (sort of like how American politicos see New Hampshire). The Taliban is intensely focused on Afghanistan, because as a Pashtun phenomenon it sort of ceases to exist outside of that context. However, the two are so conveniently symbiotic they can be treated as one: Al Qaeda could scarcely find a more appropriate home, and the Taliban has overwhelmingly benefited from the international attention, fundraising, and support from Islamist fellow travelers.

How should ISAF and/or U.S. policy proceed? Certainly a counterterrorism-only strategy will do little to the Taliban, as they are not “just terrorists”. And a counterinsurgency strategy is a painfully slow, if not outright ineffective, way to pursue al Qaeda. Apart from just a safe haven, allowing the Taliban to continue while fantasizing that al Qaeda won’t be able to use the mechanics of both an actual state and a revolutionary movement to further its agenda is pure folly. The mini-state described by David Rohde would become a real state — again — and everything that goes along with that, like a claim to territorial integrity, police authority within one’s borders, and a monopoly on legitimate violence, would all come rushing back. Imagine a global terrorist group with those advantages.

The answer is not easy, and I don’t claim to have it. But using the argument that “the Taliban isn’t our enemy” is not a basis for formulating our strategy.

At the recent RIC (Russia, India & China) summit (reported here) there was not much by the way of progress on some sort of common strategy for Afghanistan.

Seems that Russia, in particular, and China are fairly keen on some sort of common front on the war. India, on the other hand, is too suspicious of China, and too focussed on a strategic relationship with the US to go forward.

While I am unconvinced the Obama administration would be terribly worried about some sort of common agenda between these nations of Afghanistan, there probably are some corners of the US security establishment that would not be too keen.

For my money, the bottom line is the US/NATO/West would probably be delighted if somebody else anybody else would take up some slack.

Even if it were to save just one life,  shorten the deployment by just one day.

Let’s try something different today. A big part of some folks’ frustration with getting involved in Central Asian happenings is that they have a difficult time jumping in to the deep-end of the subject matter that gets covered here. To remedy that, I’m going to try to explain some trends in energy policies within Central Asia…using lyrics of Bob Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues.

The Man in the Coon Skin Cap / In the big pen / wants eleven dollar bills / you only got ten
Any of the large energy projects that are going to, by definition, require a whole lot of investment. None of the -stans would be able to drum up enough capital by their own governments alone. They are all just branded as more-or-less inept, blundering, kelptocracies by people who are ignorant of the area. And this won’t change without the opportunities that real investment will afford. But the IMF-esque sources of money tend to come with the sorts of conditions that can cripple a developing country. Check that link…note how the astute writer notes that Central Asia is between South Asia and East Asia. Unfortunately, the IMF has really put the screws to the folks they want to help. In their 2009 projection, they note that “In contrast [to the rest of the countries], Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan are projected to register robust growth in 2009…” So the three countries with the least IMF support are the ones weathering the global depression the most. Hmm. Fortunately, China, India, the Aga Khan Foundation, and Iran would be more than ready to fund projects that the IMF won’t.

Maggie comes fleet foot / Face full of black soot / Talkin’ that the heat put / Plants in the bed but
China’s pollution is pretty much the stuff of legends at this point. Any project they get a part of in Central Asia will likely be gargantuan, but it’ll also lead to who-knows-what sort of consequences. I’m actually returning from an energy conference where one of the keynote speakers praised that “China is a country run by engineers while America is a country run by lawyers.” That statement can be parsed in many ways, but it does sort of explain some of the more awkward parts of China’s Central Asian policies. Who knows what would happen if policies like that started happening in the Fergana Valley. But as glaciers melt and the Fergana becomes that much more fertile, especially relative to the rest of Central Asia), it could become the Next Big Economic Region.

You don’t need a weather man / To know which way the wind blows
OK, this is sort of a stretch, lyrics-wise, but Central Asia is home to some of the flattest stretches of the flattest land on Earth. As such, it makes a pretty good sandbox for emerging wind-power technology. Mongolia has gotten a pretty decent start, but its a country with low energy usage…it can support those sort of possibilities. It will be really interesting to see what happens with Uzbekistan’s experimentation with wind power. It’s another country that is a pretty big energy importer (as well as water importer) for the region that badly needs to diversify. Wind power is too expensive to be practical now, but I’m open to anyone who could prognosticate the future of wind power in Uzbekistan better than I. Again, depending on the practicality of wind power, it could become just as important as hydropower is for Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Any frame of energy independence for the steppe states would seem to change future relations between the water importers and exporters as related to dam-building.

Lookin’ for a new fool / Don’t follow leaders / Watch the parkin’ meters
Carbon Sequestration is the new big thing in the energy world. Or at least was at the energy conference, which was led by Big Coal…sequestration allows them to keep doing what they are doing without any changes, just burying stuff and hoping it will go away (just plants are not enough to sequester the sort of CO2 being thrown up there). But even experts are skeptical about it, mostly because nobody has any clue whatsoever at what the long-term effects are of shoving noxious gasses far underneath the surface. Central Asia is a long way from US Voters, though, and projects like this get serious consideration…because what’s the Tien Shan from New York? If the opportunity comes to get a sweetheart deal from some corporation in exchange for the opportunity to do carbon sequestration in the Kazakh or Turkmen gas fields, I would be skeptical, to say the least. Unless this turns out wonderfully or something.

The pump don’t work / ‘Cause the vandals took the handles
It’s not related to Central Asia per se, but it’s worth quoting John Robb’s fuzzy math at length:

ROI (return on investment) for Nigeria’s MEND. Four years of attacks that disrupted one million barrels a day of production (on average) = ~ 1.4 billion barrels disrupted. Direct costs at an average price of ~$70 a barrel and a $20 extraction cost to Nigerian kleptocrats and their corporate allies = $70 billion. Impact of the loss of 1 m barrels a day on the world, assuming a ~$10 premium due to the loss and ~80m barrels a day of global output = $800 m a day or $1.17 trillion. Loss of global economic output due to the premium = ~.5% of $50 trillion global GDP = $0.75 trillion. Total cost = ~$2 trillion. Cost of attacks = ~$1 m. ROI = 200 million %.

ROI = Return on Investment. MEND essentially costs the global economy $200,000,000 for every $1 they spend. I’m sure that the Taliban/Haqqani/IMU/what-have-you have numbers similar to that in their accounts…maybe I should just ask Abu Walid al Masri. At that rate of return, this is less of an insurgency, more of a social and economic revolution.

So hopefully that’s some stuff to chew on, and it should be enough fuel for many blog posts down the road. But one of my favorite quotes about historiography is Philip Roth’s “The terror of the unforeseen is what the science of history hides, turning a disaster into an epic.”

The study of Central Asia is just so fascinating because there are so many open-ended questions that could be answered in a hundred different ways. The young people (myself included) of all educational, ethnic, national, or whatever backgrouns who are getting in on the bottom floor now have the opportunity to do incredible things in the region.

Just when you thought the Afghan elections saga couldn’t get any more farcical, it does. The second-biggest fraudster of the August 20 polls has pulled out of the November 7 run-off for ‘lack of transparency’. Meanwhile another presidential wannabe, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, had the gall to say

“We see that happen in our own country where, for whatever combination of reasons, one of the candidates decides not to go forward…I don’t think it has anything to do with the legitimacy of the election”

Clinton’s statement is disingenuous. How can the international community, which is responsible for (prematurely and idealistically) forcing ‘democracy’ onto Afghanistan, now condone a series of behaviours that blatantly undermine it? Regardless of how much fraud there was, a run-off between the top two presidential candidates is mandated by the Afghan constitution. So it had some legitimacy. Now, there’s not even that flimsy pretext. Whatever happens next, it ain’t gonna be legal. Not that the Afghans have ever cared much about legalities. But it all seriously undermines what little credibility the government had left – and that has serious implications for pretty much everything else going on in Afghanistan (suddenly those shady shadow governors are beginning to look squeaky-clean in comparison).

The best of the worst solutions would be a Loya Jirga – but it would have been even better several weeks ago before all those ballot papers got printed and before the song and dance started about how great the run-off really is for the country.

Anyone out there got any bright ideas on how we convince the Afghan people now that democracy is a good and just system worth striving for?

As the U.S. leadership in Washington debates its options in Afghanistan, other actors in the region are actually doing something. And when it comes to influence ops, Iran is Doing It Right.

The White House is reluctant to throw another 40,000 troops it may not actually have to spare at a conflict it may not actually have the domestic political support to continue. Yet the insurgency, primarily the Taliban, has no problems dedicating as many fighters as it can recruit. Adding to that, while it may be argued that it does it poorly or without regard to our modern concept of human rights, it certainly “builds civilian capacity” through sharia courts and illegal taxation. On the Coalition side, we write formal proposals for CERP projects, throw money at contracts where the majority of funding is spent on western consultants, and rebuild Kandahar twice over — while leaving much of the rest of the country, especially quiet places like Bamiyan, to pay the “Peace Penalty“, suffering silent neglect.

The consequence of this lack of presence on the Coalition side and the constant presence of the insurgents is that Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) has little influence outside of Kabul. ISAF’s influence only reaches as far as a 5.56 mm round or close air support – which is to say, not all that far when the insurgency’s influence, defined not just by force but by their ability to interact much more effectively with the population, reaches much farther than a 7.62 mm round or an IED.

That does not translate into “Taliban everywhere GIRoA is not”. Indeed, stepping into the vacuum without antagonizing anyone too much is Iran, who has helped turn Herat into what is sometimes referred to as the Dubai of Afghanistan. I recently spent some time in Herat, and the 24 hour electricity, flood of inexpensive goods, and subtle references to Persian places (e.g., businesses named Alborz this and that) are all indicative of who has paid for this renaissance.

Unlike most of my American colleagues, I don’t think this is a bad thing. In fact, this is influence ops at its best. The city is clean and peaceful compared to my usual home in Kabul. And if we’re judging effectiveness, actually delivering on promises and creating something useful for the people does a hell of a lot more than an official radio spot or leaflets dropped into empty wilderness from several thousand feet up. Why they do this has some westerners wringing their hands; there is great concern that Iran has operatives in western Afghanistan who are waiting to make trouble.  More likely they’re keeping tabs on their neighbor, something to be expected. But even if it would prefer a weak neighbor, Iran still has an interest in making sure that the people directly on the other side of the border don’t make trouble.

My recent experience showed just how well they’re doing. I arrived at the tiny and comically run airport and watched Italians walk behind a thick armored door. Yet outside I was quickly surrounded by kids who spoke Dari with a Persian accent, and when I got to my hotel – traveling on smooth roads and passing working streetlights! – Persian music television was on the large flat panel TV in the lobby. Later, as a friend and I wandered the city, it was obvious that Westerners like us were fairly alien creatures. The real work was done through old fashioned capital investment: new shopping malls (sadly, at the expense of much of the Old City), thriving restaurants, reconstructed mosques, and a Citadel under renovation – the last thanks to the Agha Khan Foundation.

One evening, my friend and I met a young Herati who was eager to practice his English, and I was looking to practice my Farsi. We went to his house for dinner; he apologized profusely for his poverty, which was strange considering my friend and I had seen far worse back in the U.S. He had reliable electricity, a computer, and a television, the last tuned to Persian news and later music television. The discussion naturally turned to language, culture, and education, while dancing lightly around politics. He had a copy of the official ISAF-produced paper sitting on his floor, but it was already clear that most of his news came from Persian TV. Here was a shining example of Iranian cultural and economic power – and by comparison, the weakness of GIRoA’s.

If the U.S. creates “coalitions of the willing” and is expanding ISAF beyond NATO anyway – Singapore, I’m looking at you – perhaps it’s time to consider partnering more with Afghanistan’s neighbors besides the Pakistanis – who have long been less than reliable allies. Such a move would be a major shift in U.S. policy, as the long standing hostility between the two governments makes any cooperation difficult. But this, along with other issues (law enforcement, drug interdiction, trade) make the Iranians natural allies when seen in the light of rebuilding not one, but two of their neighbors.

Or if not, at the very least we can steal their good ideas.