Asia-Pacific Archive

John A. Nagl, 42, is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He is a retired Army lieutenant colonel, a veteran of both Operation Desert Storm and the current conflict in Iraq, and was one of the writers of the Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. He is also the author of “Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife,” published in 2005. In that book he uses archival sources and interviews to compare the development of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice in the 1948-1960 Malayan Emergency with the strategy used in the Vietnam War. Urs Gehriger of the […]

Yesterday, I linked with arithmetic snark but without comment to TX Hammes’ Small Wars Journal post on the broadening of the Afghanistan War into Pakistan. It’s a very important piece, because it points out the danger of seeing Pakistan exclusively through the lens of our own tactical needs in Afghanistan, while ignoring the fact that for Pakistan, managing the Taliban (whether in Afghanistan or its own tribal areas) is part of the broader strategic calculus of its rivalry with India. Hammes argues that until we develop a strategy for handling this broader regional architecture, our efforts in Afghanistan (which he […]

In the last 12 months, events in Pakistan have developed at a frenetic pace. In October 2007, Benazir Bhutto returned to her homeland following years of exile and was greeted as a savior by millions of followers. Just two months later, in December, she was assassinated in an attack whose authors have still not been identified. Shortly after that, the political decline and fall of her rival Pervez Musharraf began. First the general lost the parliamentary elections, then his post as head of the army, and finally the presidency itself. Earlier this month, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, Asif Ali […]

Afghanistan + more U.S. troops – a plan = Conventional Wisdom Bad idea.

The U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear agreement may still have to clear the U.S. Congress, but Indian firms and industry groups are already celebrating the Nuclear Suppliers Group’s decision this month that effectively gave the agreement a green light by waiving a ban on the country engaging in nuclear trade. The U.S.-India Business Council, which has lobbied hard in support of the bilateral agreement that followed a joint statement in 2005 by President George Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, described the waiver as “a historic step forward for India and the world,” while the Confederation of Indian Industry said it […]

KOTA KINABALU, Malaysia — Philippine troops have launched surprise attacks on rebel strongholds in the country’s south as authorities brace themselves for an upsurge in violence expected once Ramadan is over. Military officials claimed at least 25 rebels were killed in weekend fighting after government troops went on the offensive in the rebel-held territory. Wire services also reported one government soldier was killed. However, independent sources said the fighting was of a much lower intensity than was seen in August, when ferocious rebel attacks left scores dead and caused 160,000 people to flee their homes as Christian villages were torched. […]

It seems like Afghanistan specialist Kip is the latest anonymous, third-person analyst to sign off over at Abu Muqawama. But before leaving he dropped two posts, one questioning the actual numbers behind the recent announcement of troop increases there, and another supporting the widening of operations to the Pakistani side of the frontier: Kip thinks the apparent decision to overtly undertake commando operations in Pakistan is a positive step. There is simply no way to win in Afghanistan without going after sanctuaries in Pakistan. I agree with the second sentence, if not with the first, even if Kip goes on […]

Jeffrey Lewis of Arms Control Wonk on the NSG’s India waivers here and here. Apparently no side deals were cut to get some of the last holdouts in Vienna on board for the waiver, although informal assurances were given that no one had any plans to transfer sensitive dual use enrichment technology to India. Essentially, the deal was approved despite the fact, or perhaps because of the fact, that neither the NSG holdouts nor India received any formal guarantees that their red lines wouldn’t be crossed. I’ve got mixed feelings about the deal in general, since I find both the […]

Nikolas Gvosdev makes a good point. Dealing with Pakistan’s military hasn’t necessarily been straightforward these past seven years. They’ve got their own agenda, and haven’t been afraid to pursue policies — both overt (ie. negotiated peace deals with Pakistani-based Taliban) and covert (ie. support for Afghan-based Taliban) — that are at odds with American interests. But at least they couldn’t use claims of democratic legitimacy as cover. Now with the return of civilian rule in Islamabad, we’ve got to consider the possibility that not only are we not going to get what we want from the Pakistanis, but that they […]

As Judah points out, the problem of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border region is beginning to get some attention. There are two basic ways to fight the Pakistani Taliban who are using that country’s border region (Baluchistan, and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas mostly, as I understand it) as a safe haven from which to undermine the Afghan government and attack U.S. troops. One is to launch raids from Afghanistan using special operations forces, drones and other air assets, which U.S. forces appear to be doing more and more of. The other is to put troops on the ground in Pakistan. Putting […]

The question of what to do in Afghanistan (and alongside it, Pakistan), is beginning to get the attention it deserves. So far, the default answer is converging on sending more troops, with little real thought as to where they’ll come from and the resulting problems that will cause. Some will apparently be cycled in from a drawdown in Iraq. But the Iraq drawdown, as formulated so far, is going to come at a snail’s pace, with the possibility of it being halted or reversed as conditions on the ground dictate. Barack Obama fleetingly addressed the issue in his Berlin speech […]

BANGKOK, Thailand – Just inside the barricades surrounding Bangkok’s besieged Government House, a newspaper photo spread taped to a tarpaulin shows the grisly scene that erupted there early last week: police in riot gear squaring off with gangs of protesters in red and yellow; a man shooting a slingshot into the crowd; another grimacing while blood oozes from his face and head. But more than a week after that clash between supporters of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej and the opposition People’s Alliance for Democracy, which killed one and wounded more than 40, the mood has lightened among protestors. The indecisive […]

It’s admittedly been a while since I wrote about Iraq, which is a testament to the ways in which that conflict has become a mature stabilization operation. Twenty-three U.S. soldiers dead in August is twenty-three too many. But the security gains since January 2007 are enormous and game-changing. I was opposed to the Surge when President Bush announced it, I’ve been skeptical of the weight it’s been given as a causal factor of the decline in violence, and I remain unconvinced that it has accomplished its ultimate strategic goal of ensuring that Iraq’s ethnic, sectarian and factional conflicts are resolved […]

MAZAR-I-SHARIF, Afghanistan — The kinds of tourists you meet in Afghanistan are not quite the same as those you’d be likely to meet on the Costa del Sol. First of all, there are fewer of them, far fewer — perhaps only a few hundred a year. But if it can be said that Costa del Sol tourists share at least one trait in common (a love of the sun), today’s visitors to Afghanistan share something else: curiosity, perhaps with a dash of recklessness. While post-invasion Afghanistan has never descended into the kinds of violence and anarchy seen in Iraq, it […]

I haven’t gone through the NSG’s India waiver, but I’m skeptical of the value of an agreement that both sides seem to think supports their mutually exclusive positions. The key sticking point was whether India would be guaranteed an uninterrupted enriched uranium supply in the event of, say, a resumption of nuclear weapons testing. India says yes, the NSG says no. Says Jeffrey Lewis at Arms Control Wonk: One of the two parties is wrong. I am not eager to find out which. The agreed upon solution seems to be that everyone will do their best to make sure we […]

If you haven’t already read Dexter Filkins’ NYT feature on the Pakistani tribal areas (via Small Wars Journal), do so now, before the “Invade Pakistan” chorus swells. As Filkins’ reporting makes clear, there are multiple layers to the power struggle going on there, and the complexities of the competing rivalries make the debate Stateside seem simplistic at best. Within the Pakistani leadership there’s a civilian-military split, and within the military there’s an ISI/fundamentalist faction that’s not necessarily integrated into the chain of command. Within the tribal areas, there’s a Taliban-traditionalist split that includes both homegrown rivalries as well as foreign […]

Although widespread fighting in Georgia has ceased, the war’s diplomatic repercussions continue to ripple throughout the region. One major concern in Washington is that Russia’s successful military intervention in Georgia will intimidate other former Soviet republics to, if not bandwagon with Moscow, at least distance themselves from the United States to avoid antagonizing a newly belligerent Russia. It is therefore no accident, as Russian Prime Minister Vladmir Putin likes to say, that U.S. Vice President Richard Cheney visited Azerbaijan last week. Cheney travelled to Baku even before arriving in Georgia and Ukraine, whose governments have been engaged in more acute […]