Center for a New American Security

Inspired by Sean Lee's remark that Walid Junblatt reminds him of Proposition Joe, it occured to me that I need to start using The Wire to explain Lebanese politics more often. For starters, anyone confused by Hizballah's relations to Amal would do well to think of Hassan Nasrallah as Marlo Stanfield and Nabih Berri as Avon Barksdale. The Stanfield crew never really destroyed the Barksdale crew -- they never really needed to. They just fought a series of conflicts and gradually displaced them as time went on. They're all West Side guys, just one crew is leaner and meaner than the other, and those who never grew comfortable with the new power order -- the Bodie's of Lebanon, if you will -- were eventually dealt with.

The IDF is Officer Colicchio.

One of the comments in the post below noted how odd it is that Hizballah even cares about this stupid tribunal given the position of strength the organization enjoys in Lebanon. I agree this makes no sense looking at Lebanon from the outside, but I do not think Hizballah itself sees itself in the same way others see it.

First off, Hizballah's constituency is still the poorest in Lebanon, and until the rise of Musa Sadr in the 1960s and 1970s, it really had no strong political representation. The government in Beirut more or less ignored the needs of the Shia community. Just to give but one example, in pre-war Lebanon, southern Lebanon held 20 percent of the population of Lebanon yet received only 0.7 percent (!) of annual expenditures. Today, thanks to both remittances and more economic opportunities within Lebanon -- not to mention the provision of social services by Hizballah primarily outside the state and by Amal from primarily within the state -- the Shia of Lebanon enjoy a higher economic standing than ever before. But that doesn't mean a Shia Lebanese older than 35 can't think back to when his or her lot in life was a lot worse.

Second, Hizballah's constituency believes -- and not without reason -- that its new-found socio-political standing and seat at the table in Beirut has been won and maintained largely on account of Hizballah's arms. Like U.S. gains in Afghanistan, Hizballah's constituency consider this new respect and representation to be both fragile and reversible. An older Shia can remember the days when the Christians and Sunni trading classes of Beirut and Tripoli dictated their lot in life.

Third, to an outsider, Hizballah looks like the big bully in Lebanon -- which it most certainly is. But from within the organization, all many can see are enemies: Saudi Arabia, Israel, March 14th, the United States, etc. Just because you're paranoid does not mean people are not out to get you, and we know that Hizballah's domestic enemies have conspired with forces outside Lebanon to weaken Hizballah's standing. (Hizballah can also see the way in which the international community, led by the United States, has worked to isolate its primary sponsor, Iran.)

None of this is meant to excuse Hizballah, whose actions since 2000 have run counter to the interests of Lebanon and have caused much suffering for the peoples of both Lebanon and Israel. (I, for one, really wish Hizballah had disarmed and "Lebanonized" -- as some scholars and analysts predicted in the late 1990s that it eventually would.) But it remains a paradox that the organization the rest of the world sees as so strong sees itself as so very weak.

Note to newer readers: this blog mostly covers Afghanistan and Pakistan these days, but it was not always so. I spent from 2004 until 2006 in Lebanon and moved back for most of 2008. I just submitted my doctoral dissertation on Hizballah, too, but have not been back to Lebanon since last fall, so, caveat lector, some of my political analysis may be dated.

Okay, this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy:

In contrast to 2005, Hezbollah’s adversaries — gathered around Mr. Hariri — have fewer options and less support than they once did, emblematic of the vast changes in Lebanon’s political landscape the past few years. While the Bush administration wholeheartedly backed Mr. Hariri and his allies then, President Obama has not pledged the same kind of support. Syria, whose influence was waning in 2005, has re-emerged in Lebanon, and even its detractors here have sought some kind of relationship with it. Most Lebanese also vividly recall the speed at which Hezbollah and its allies vanquished their foes in just a few days of street fighting in Beirut in May 2008.

How, pray tell, is March 14th weaker with an Obama Administration than they were with a Bush Administration? I ask this because it is now an article of faith that March 14th was once riding high when they had the support of the Bush Administration but that they are now weaker because of tepid support from the Obama Administration. This is crazy talk. The May 2008 events, in which Hizballah and its allies crushed March 14th on the streets of Beirut, took place while George W. Bush was still the president. And our response to that unrest? To park the U.S.S. Cole off the coast of Lebanon, only underlining our impotence: in a tough spot, the United States has very few things we can do short of direct military force. So the levers available to policy makers basically amount to a car with two gears: first and fifth, with nothing in between. Unless we want to intervene militarily (like we did in both 1958 and 1983), what else are we going to do? This has nothing to do with the occupant of the White House. This has to do with America's limited influence in a tiny country north of Israel that is peripheral to U.S. interests. I'm all about criticizing this president when he deserves it, but mark my words: opportunists will seize on these events to talk about how America has abandoned her allies without offering ideas for what Obama should do today (or what Bush should have done in 2008) short of intervening directly with military force. In the meantime, shame on the New York Times for reporting on articles of faith and popular perceptions rather than hard facts.

Update: I complain, the New York Times listens. That's the way it happens, readers. I write a critical blog post and BOOM! This happens. Much better, Bobby.

Early this morning, I participated in a discussion of Kim and Fred Kagan's new report on Afghanistan. I'm going to briefly share my comments on the report:

First, despite the unpopularity of the war in Afghanistan, it strikes me that we see a whole lot of agreement about where we're going. Very few people think garrisoning a land-locked state in Central Asia with 150,000 NATO troops makes a lot of strategic sense in the long run, and most people in and around policy-making circles agree that the U.S. and NATO missions in Afghanistan should transition away from counterinsurgency and toward a strategy combining counter-terror activities with a train-and-equip mission. I see the differences begin to emerge in two places:

1. Presentation: For many folks -- whether it be Richard Haass, Michael Cohen, Bing West or Peter Galbraith -- there is this need to talk first about how stupid the war is and how we need to "draw down" before then ... recommending a long-term security partnership with Afghanistan as well as a robust residual force to both target al-Qaeda and associated movments and to continue to train local security forces. (A lot of this strikes me as posturing, though I do not want to insult either West or Cohen want to exempt West and Cohen from that charge. I am reading the former's book at the moment, and the latter is someone with whom I have had more substantive disagreements.) Others, though, have instead just focused on how to get from Point A to Point Z with no need to ramble on about how much they don't like the war. 

2. Substance: There is genuine disagreement about how much -- if any -- counterinsurgency you need to do before the conditions are set for that alternate, less resource-intensive strategy. There is also disagreement about how big a residual force you need, and what you should do about Pakistan and the government of Afghanistan between 2011 and 2014. So there is more room for substantive, reasonable disagreement about Points B through Y. I am, as you all know, in the camp of those who agree with Kim and Fred that you have to set conditions for a new strategy in Afghanistan through NATO-led counterinsurgency operations between now and ~2013. But you can read my own opinions about what we should do in greater detail here.

Second, as far as the Kagan paper is concerned, I had three big(ish) reservations, which should not detract from all the many things I found in the paper with which I agreed:

1. I am much more heistant to champion the tactical gains of 2010. The Kagans, to their credit, acknowledge that the "true test" of the successes of 2010 will be whether or not they have a lasting, strategic effect in 2011. But I would have led with that uncertainty. We simply do not know how significant the security gains in southern Afghanistan are until they have weathered a Taliban counter-offensive in 2011. (And I do not understand why Josh Foust chose to rake the Kagans over the coals for saying it is too soon to tell whether or not tactical successes in 2010 will mature into strategic effects in 2011. Surely this is a quite reasonable thing to say?)

2. I am not nearly as enthusiastic about the ALP (Afghan Local Police) as are Kim, Fred and Gen. Petraeus -- among others. To me, the high-level enthusiasm for the ALP reminds me a lot of the high-level enthusiasm for the AP3 program and other local defense initiatives in 2009 and 2010. In both the former as well as in the case of the ALP programs, it is worth noting that the Special Forces officers actually charged with running the programs were and remain much more cautious about how well these programs will work and whether or not they can be rapidly expanded.

3. I am much more cautious about the situation in northern Afghanistan. On the one hand, I have seen ISAF make the case why many within the intelligence community and think tank community are wrong to sound the alarm over northern Afghanistan so loudly. But given the degree to which intelligent observers disagree about the situation in northern Afghanistan, surely it is wise to gather more evidence before pronouncing all to be well. 

I thought the Kagans made some good observations in the report that make it worth reading, including the observation that hard fighting remains in eastern Afghanistan. I do not think the peoples of the troop-contributing nations (aside from the people of Afghanistan) really understand this. The war is being fought in phases, and assuming -- and this is a huge planning assumption -- that things hold in southern Afghanistan, the bulk of ISAF's efforts will shift northeast up the ring road in 2011 and 2012.

I left the life of a U.S. Army officer in Afghanistan in 2004 to try my hand at social science and picked up a concentration in the Arabic-speaking world along the way. The social sciences gave me the epistemological questions I'm always asking myself -- "How do I know what I 'know'?" -- and the regional concentration made me more aware of what I do not know when looking at another, new region. So I am very cautious -- maybe too cautious, for all I know -- about drawing conclusions on what is taking place in Afghanistan at the moment. (And, goodness gracious, I would have never made the attempt Fred and Kim made to delve into Pashtunwali, but good on them for trying.) But Fred and Kim spent a lot of time in 2010 in Afghanistan, and anyone who dismisses their report out of hand is foolish. I said little at but really enjoyed today's discussion. I'll post a video as it becomes available below.

Here's a question for the readership as we try and wrap our heads around the proposed cuts to the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. (I'm not smart enough to comment on the proposed cuts to the U.S. Navy and Air Force, respectively. Go here for comments on the former.) I was surprised to read this quote from Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Greg Newbold in the Times concerning the cuts to the USMC's Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle:

“We’ll just pray that we don’t have to go into harm’s way in the next 10 years."

Really? I have to confess that Lt. Gen. Newbold is one of my favorite retired general officers. I got to know him when he was serving on our board of directors and really respect his service, integrity and intellect. But the first thing I thought when reading this was, Holy cow, do we really need more forced entry capabilities?

I did the math in my head while riding on the Metro this morning and counted four brigades in the 82d Airborne, four brigades in the 101st Airborne (Air Assault), one brigade (4th) in the 25th Infantry Division (Airborne) and one brigade in Europe, the 173rd Airborne, in addition to the 75th Ranger Regiment. That's 11 brigade-sized elements capable of conducting forced entry operations in the U.S. Army alone. How many airfields are we going to need to seize? And would we have conducted as many amphibious landings in the Second World War if we had rotary-wing platforms as we do today?

My beloved U.S. Army made it through the proposed cuts in the defense budget relatively unscathed, so maybe I should keep my big mouth shut, but if I were a congressional staffer, the above is one of the questions I would be asking.

Readers, please sound off in the comments section of this post -- especially if my thinking is wrong-headed here.

Update: Some great comments here. Over the Twitter Machine, @ndubaz notes that what I am really talking about is forced entry capable brigades. He is correct. Another commenter wonders if I have lost my sanity: of course these brigades are not interchangeable, right? Again, correct. The 75th Ranger Regiment most obviously differs from the others, as does the 101st Airborne from the 82d Airborne. But I lumped all these brigades in for a reason -- the nuances in capabilities will not stand out to your average congressional staffer in the same way they will to, say, one of the many officers who have served in the 101st, the 82d and the 75th. Finally, Gulliver linked to this must-read piece by (Marines) Bob Work and Frank Hoffman. That piece, though, rests on the assumption that "Retaining the ability to project power and conduct landing operations into hostile territory remains strategically important to American global interests." Needless to say, that's an assumption that even folks to the right (or is it left?) of Andy Bacevich might contest -- especially given other capabilities within the ground forces.

Yesterday, I was interviewed by the great Jim Michaels of USA Today concerning news that a tribe in Helmand Province had more or less changed sides. Although the article quoted me faithfully, I feel the need to slightly correct and expand on what I said:

Andrew Exum, a military analyst at the Center for a New American Security, said there are key differences in Afghanistan, where tribal rivalries and drug trafficking complicate the enemy situation.

 

But Exum, who formerly served as an Army officer in Afghanistan, said the agreement reflects the military success that U.S. Marines and British forces have had over the past year in Helmand.

 

According to Exum, the progress on the battlefield has helped build security and convince locals that coalition forces will not suddenly depart. Those factors were critical in convincing Iraqis to join the Awakening revolt.

I do not think what I said does justice to what I was trying -- ineffectively -- to communicate. Now, first off, I know about as much about tribal dynamics in northern Helmand Province as I do Sanskrit. I have spent a grand total of one day of my life in Helmand Province. That having been said, anyone who has read Chapters Four and Five of The Logic of Violence in Civil War will be familiar with the idea that as an armed group's control of an area increases, so too does collaboration. That might be what is happening in Helmand, though I would not go so far as to say this is definitely what is happening or that this process is irreversable. Also, I am not saying that this is what happened in the Awakening, though there is certainly both annecdotal evidence that suggests this was the case and, via Kalyvas, a whole mess of historical data that suggests this kind of phenomenon is normal given the circumstances. 

Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome back to work. For those of you still in the Christmas Cheer, my friend Alex Strick van Linschoten has an appeal up on his blog. This is a worthy cause, so I am cross-posting it in full. Everything that follows from here until the end of the post are Alex's words:

It’s easy to talk in the abstract about war. The dead become numbers, the displaced are statistics, and slowly we begin to forget about the people who live through it all. Afghanistan is a case in point. Tens of thousands of words of commentary are written every day, but very few of these seem to accurately bring these day-to-day particulars across. Earlier this month, I read an article by Josh Partlow in the Washington Post on the situation for those who have fled the conflict in Helmand — U.N.-speak = IDPs — for an area near Kabul City. It was a detailed, movingly-described account of some of these ‘particulars’ of their lives:

“For those who have escaped Afghanistan’s worst violence, some things are hard to forget: the sight of a woman’s hair entangled in the mulberry branches, her legs strewn far away in the dirt. Or the sounds they heard as they hid in an underground hole, counting the bombs to pass the time, praying the American troops would leave. Some of those Afghans have tiptoed in the footsteps of neighbors to avoid the mines. They’ve been hit with shrapnel and tied with flex cuffs, threatened by the Taliban and frightened by the coalition, seen relatives shot and homes destroyed. And so they left Helmand province and made their way to this dirt lot on the outskirts of Kabul, where month by month the settlement expands with those who have come to wait out the war. “In a situation like this,” said Sayid Mohammad, a Helmand native who has spent the past year at the refugee camp, “how could I ever go home?”” [Read the full article here]

There’s nothing new or particularly special about this group of refugees from Helmand, but for some reason this piece said something to me. It’s easy to become passive consumers of the news coming out of Afghanistan, particularly when it’s often so frustrating to read. I first read the article in London, a place where everything is taken for granted: warmth, walking on the snow, heating in the house, electricity, water, you name it. But if you allow your imagination to drift, imagine living away from home, in a place far colder than what you’re used to, in tents and makeshift huts on account of a war taking place in the villages, one that you have seen sweep through with random but seeming deathly certainty and claim your friends and family. For another account of life in the camp, watch the documentary account made by Alberto Arce here.

So I decided together with a long-standing Afghan friend and respected NGO-practitioner — she used to run HAWCA — to try to find some way to contribute to bettering the lives of these refugees at the camp. Orzala explains more:

“We contacted the UNHCR office to find out about the numbers of refugees and how we can make sure that our possible help is going to reach the neediest. Their formal response was, it can happen through government or NGOs working with refugees. A good friend who also is part of an international organisation involved in the field advised small scale donations and funds to go through private initiatives rather than the formal ones. Additionally with my experience in the past, I believe the winter will be over if we follow the lengthy procedures. I visited the site itself a couple of days ago to talk with those living there and also to get a realistic sense of how many people were living there. A representative stated that there were 870 families living there at the moment, and we got an idea of what other organisations were working there as well (Aschiana, the World Health Organization, the Afghan Ministry of Public Health along with Welt Hunger Hilfe). It seems, however, that there is a shortfall in terms of the amount of assistance being provided, as well as the speed that this is happening.”

So in the short-term what we want to do is — at the suggestion of those from the camp, but also an idea Orzala had had beforehand — to raise some money to provide charcoal. People are accustomed to using this in the winter; and it’s neither heavy nor particularly expensive. 50 kilograms of charcoal costs about $20 and so to be able to provide around 20 kg of charcoal to everyone will cost just under $7000. I know it’s easy to just close this page and move on to something different, but I hope you’ll be able to donate something — perhaps $10 or $15 — via the paypal button below so that we can try to ensure that this group of people have at least some warmth to rely on when the snows come in Kabul.

The Economist once called it "enlightened mountain Republicanism." For whatever reason, Tennesseans have long looked to retired Sen. Howard Baker (McCallie '43), a moderate Republican who forged compromise across the aisles until retiring from the Senate to be Reagan's chief of staff after Iran Contra, as the model for how senators should behave. When Republican senators have lurched too far to the populist right, as Sen. Bill Frist did during the Terry Schiavo mess, their approval ratings have plummeted. The same explains why the once admired former Sen. Al Gore lost the state of Tennessee in 2000 after he was perceived to have lurched too far to the left in the 1990s. Regardless, Sen. Lamar Alexander reminded me yesterday why I supported him in his last campaign, and Sen. Bob Corker (Chattanooga City High School '70) locked up my support for his next election campaign. It would have been all too easy for my two Republican senators to have been petulant drama queens about the New START treaty, but instead here is what Sen. Alexander said yesterday:

And here is Sen. Corker:

It almost makes up for Basil Marceaux:

Now that he's in TRADOC he can even wear his beret like a pastry chef:

The World Association of Chefs has named Master Sergeant Mark Morgan of the U.S. Army Rangers as one of the three best pastry chefs in the world, as reported in the local newspaper of Fort Monroe, Virginia, where Morgan is based. He earned the distinction at the recent Culinary World Cup in Luxembourg, where he represented the U.S. culinary team and won two gold medals.

 

Morgan has also been honored in his day job as an Army Ranger. At some point during his six tours of duty--two in Iraq and four in Afghanistan--he was awarded the bronze star. He is currently the aide to General Martin Dempsey, who runs the Army Training and Doctrine Command, also known as TRADOC, at Fort Monroe.

Over the past several days, I have shared both several observations from my most recent trip to Afghanistan as well as a few things I think that policy makers in Washington can do to help the war effort. Today, I am going to return to a few themes I have dealt with in the media and on the blog but in a different format. A picture is worth a thousand words, and maybe these graphic representations, taken from my field notebook, can help explain how I view the conflict.

Most of these graphs were drawn in the course of a conversation I had with Col. Joe Felter, who is one of my heroes. Joe led a platoon from 3rd Rangers in Panama before becomming a Special Forces officer in 1st Group and earning his doctorate in political science from Stanford. (Here (.pdf) is an example of Joe being really smart.)

(Fig. 1) I drew this graph, which will be familiar to many, to illustrate a dynamic that frequently takes place in international interventions. The x axis is time, while the "$" on the y axis represents the financial committment of the international community, and the "C" represents the capacity of the host nation to effectively absorb and administer international aid. As we progress along the x axis, funding drops off while capacity increases, leaving a shortfall toward the tail end of the intervention. The shaded part, meanwhile, demonstrates where corruption, waste and fraud is likely to take place. In Afghanistan, we are in the shaded section of the graph at the moment, which is one of the reasons I wish we could decrease international aid and bank some of it for the future.

(Fig. 2) This represents the "normal" theory for violence in an insurgency. The x axis maps control, and the y axis represents levels of violence. When an area is under the control of either the government or the insurgency, there is very little violence. It's when an area is contested that we have violence. This is one of the reasons why violence can be a poor metric for success or failure. Kandahar, Helmand and Kunar Provinces account for 65% of the violence in Afghanistan, but the former two provinces have arguably been in the process of falling toward government control. Ghazni Province, by contrast, is not that violent these days, relatively speaking, but I think that is in part due to the fact that it is, based on reports, in large part under Taliban control. (Mea culpa, I have admittedly used the lack of violence in northern Afghanistan as part of an argument that things might not be as bad there as reports suggest, but of course there are other things, such as a large Tajik population, that serve to limit Taliban gains. And yes, I do know the Taliban has enlisted support from some Tajiks, but this is limited as far as I can tell. My thoughts on northern Afghanistan are probably a whole 'nother blog post.)

(Fig. 3) This is my big worry for the "normal" theory as it applies to Afghanistan. What if, even after getting an area under the control of the government, we never really pacify it because the behavior of the government itself is in part driving the conflict? Insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan might also distort the normal theory by thwarting security gains. (I should also say something about the fact that the normal theory assumes the conflict is binary and that the insurgency and government are both unitary actors, which is not the case in Afghanistan.)

(Fig. 4) Ignore this. Joe and I were merely discussing some stuff in Iraq that has only minimal relevance to Afghanistan. Oh, and those big blue blocks are where I censored some of my notes, which includes names and phone numbers and such.

Afghanistan Notebook

Sometimes I wish I were just in the "Pointing Out All the Things Going Wrong in Afghanistan" business. Part of my job responsibilities, though, include being in the solutions business. Accordingly, and to mark the release of the much hyped December review, I posted commentary on Foreign Policy last night outlining five concrete ways in which policy makers, legislators and intelligence officials in Washington, DC can help the war effort in Afghanistan. I am going to cross-post the meat of the recommendations below, though you can view the original here. I tried to get a little creative, though I should point out that all of these suggestions grew in at least in part out of conversations I had with folks in Afghanistan this month. (Per usual, I steal all my best ideas from smarter people.) The views expressed below do not represent the views of ISAF, I should hasten to add, though they probably do represent the views of many frustrated civilian analysts and junior officers doing the heavy lifting in this war.

***

1. Cut Funding for the War

This may seem a bit counterintuitive, to say the least. But right now, the massive amount of money flowing into Kabul is fueling the conflict. In a bizarre way, both the Taliban and the Afghan government currently have an interest in perpetuating this conflict: Both parties are making millions of dollars from the aid and development money saturating the country. These funds are distorting incentives and presenting ample opportunities for kickbacks, bribes, and other forms of corruption. It is little wonder Transparency International rates Afghanistan the world's third most corrupt nation.

The United States and its allies should only spend the money in Afghanistan they can properly manage and oversee. They should also focus on developing ways to spend resources more wisely in Afghanistan. One way to do so -- and here any congressional aides reading this should grab a notebook and pen -- would be to allow aid and development funds not spent in one fiscal year to roll over to the next. Well-constructed aid programs, such as Afghanistan's National Solidarity Program, have trusts established that allow funds not spend in one year to be spent later. But within the U.S. government, that's not the case: Money not spent is lost from year to year.

Military officers, for example, are familiar with the concept of the "SPENDEX," where all ammunition not used in the course of the year is fired -- sometimes wildly -- at the end of a fiscal year, so ammunition allotted for the next year is not cut. The same principle applies to aid -- but instead of wasting bullets, the organizations waste dollars. Rather than face the prospect of reduced development funds in the future, development and military officers are under pressure to spend every penny they are given. But doing so simply feeds the Afghanistan's distorted economy, which only benefits the insurgency and corrupt Afghan officials. We must first fix the perverse incentives in our own system in order to fix those in Afghanistan.

2. Compromise on Combat Enablers

Every day, the president is faced with the difficult task of determining how many resources should be expended on foreign engagements when compared with competing domestic priorities. Obama has decided to implement a soft "cap" on troop numbers in Afghanistan, limiting troops deployed to the number he and the Department of Defense agreed upon in the fall of 2009.

At the same time, however, the president and his team should be flexible enough to support the commanders in eastern and southern Afghanistan with the critical "enablers" they need to be successful tactically. More than anything else, our field commanders need more heavy-lift rotary-wing assets in Afghanistan. With a limited supply of helicopters, it is incredible difficult to operate in the mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. The president should commit more CH-47 helicopters to Afghanistan immediately, even if he has to "trade" David Petraeus an infantry battalion in order to keep the overall number of troops more or less the same. The military also needs more intelligence platforms, including drones and observation blimps. Finally, the development of local security programs like the Afghan Local Police could be sped up if more Special Forces A-Teams were committed to the effort.

3. Reinvent, Don't Replace, the Special Envoy

Trying to replace a diplomatic giant like the late Ambassador Richard Holbrooke is a fool's errand. The president should not even try. But he will still need officials responsible for coordinating U.S. policy between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The comparatively low-key acting Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Frank Ruggiero, should keep Holbrooke's team in place to do just that.

As far as the regional "super envoy" job that Holbrooke attempted to fill (with mixed success, it must be said), it might be best left to a respected United Nations diplomat -- such as Lakhdar Brahimi, who had earlier successes enlisting the support of Afghanistan's neighbors. State Department officials and CENTCOM commander James Mattis, along with envoys in Kabul and Islamabad, could then be used to properly allocate diplomatic and military resources between the two countries.

In Afghanistan, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry is likely headed home soon. The president and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton should spend more time searching for his replacement than trying to replace Holbrooke. I'm sure Gen. Petraeus would appreciate an attempt to lure former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker out of semi-retirement and back to the region.

4. Find and Pressure Dual Citizens

Analysts regularly note how difficult it is to apply pressure to corrupt Afghan officials and local power brokers. However, many of these officials possess citizenship in countries other than Afghanistan or have children residing in other countries. To my knowledge, no effort has been made to compile a list of these individuals and use the laws of the United States and other Western countries to prosecute corrupt officials outside Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence agencies should busy themselves compiling this list immediately.

There is a precedent for this approach. Mahmood Karzai, brother of the Afghan president and an American citizen, is currently the subject of a federal corruption probe in New York. Western governments can surely build cases against other Afghan political actors judged to be involved with illicit activity -- or at least use the threat of investigations as a source of leverage over them. For many Afghan power brokers and their families, a Western passport is their escape plan from Afghanistan should the country descend into a chaotic civil war. U.S. intelligence services should pressure these power brokers to act responsibly today by endangering their plans for tomorrow.

5. Go Long

Afghans live in fear that the international community will abandon them. Although the Taliban is unpopular, normal Afghans are just trying to survive, waiting to see how this conflict will turn out. Pakistan, meanwhile, is hedging its bets, supporting proxy actors like the Quetta Shura Taliban and Haqqani Network that might counter Indian interests in Kabul after the United States and its allies eventually withdraw. The insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan are one of the two Achilles heels in the NATO strategy, the other being governance in Afghanistan.

One way the United States might counter both Afghan fears as well as Pakistani predictions is by signaling a long-term military commitment to Afghanistan. As the United States and its allies transition from a resource-intensive counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, we should be prepared to leave behind 25,000 to 35,000 special operations forces and trainers beyond 2014. Afghan leaders, including President Hamid Karzai, have long desired a concrete U.S. security commitment to Afghanistan. Such a residual force will both protect U.S. interests in Afghanistan and Central Asia after the departure of the bulk of U.S. and NATO troops, and will also signal to Pakistan that their strategy of employing hard-to-control violent extremist groups poses a larger long-term threat to Pakistan's stability than it does to the government in Kabul.

***

Finally, if you really can't get enough of my commentary on Afghanistan, here I am on the Diane Rehm Show yesterday. I got a little testy when one guest made some statements about the insurgency without backing them up with hard evidence. But looking back, I really should have apologized for being somewhat rude.

If you are not one of the 500+ people coming to this afternoon's event featuring Bob Woodward, Dave Barno and yours truly, you can watch it live on C-SPAN at 1:30 p.m. or by following this link to the C-SPAN website. Read the report here (.pdf). You will want to watch this event live, because I have just gotten off a plane from Kabul via Dubai, am severely jet-lagged, and just may say some ridiculously crazy stuff. The support staff here at CNAS is trying to determine exactly how much coffee I can ingest between now and 1:30 p.m., so count on me to either fall of the dais or be particularly intemperate/amusing in my remarks. (Oh, and I have not trimmed my beard in a month. Nate said I could not henna the thing, but I think it would have been awesome if I had.)