Fareed Zakaria Travels to Foggy Afghanistan Posted by Patrick Barry

Fareed Zakaria enters the Afghanistan foray to take a crack at his own version of what the U.S. strategy should be, and in spite of the pretty bad misquote of Admiral Mullen (Hint - "In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must"), it's worth reading.  I'm not sure you will see anything new here in terms of policy (5 principles - using COIN effectively, bolstering Afghanistan's Gov't, getting the timing right, talking to the Taliban and pressuring Pakistan), but Zakaria has good insights into how these recommendations cohere:

Afghanistan is a complex problem, and progress will be slow and limited. But we need to stabilize the situation, not magically transform one of the poorest, most war-torn countries in the world in the next few years. It will help immeasurably if we keep in mind the basic objective of U.S. policy there. "My own personal view is that our primary goal is to prevent Afghanistan from being used as a base for terrorists and extremists to attack the United States and its allies," said Secretary of Defense Robert Gates last week. That is an admirably clear statement.

It is not that we don't have other goals—education, female literacy, centralized control of government services, drug eradication, liberal democracy. But many of them are objectives that will be realized over very long stretches of time, and should not be measured as part of military campaigns or political cycles. They are also goals that are not best achieved by military force. The U.S. Army is being asked to do enough as it is in Afghanistan. Helping it stay focused on a core mission is neither cramped nor defeatist. It is a realistic plan for success.

One thing that is somewhat absent from Zakaria's analysis is a region-wide diplomatic strategy.  Yes, he sort of gets at it by stating that, difficult as it may be, reducing tensions between India and Pakistan is central to stabilizing Afghanistan.  But the truth is that Afghanistan has come to contain a much broader, and more diverse set of regional challenges than Zakaria's piece acknowledges.  Some examples of this are Iran's activities in the region, especially among the Tajik population, and the evidence that Russia's policy of projecting influence includes taking greater ownership over affairs in the former Soviet satellite states to Afghanistan's north.  If there is any hope for rescuing Afghanistan, it is going to hinge on taking all the regional players, whose agendas up to this point have sharply diverged, and aligning them in support of a common goal.  And that is a very, very tall order.

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As far as I know Fareed Zakaria says the Mumbai terrorists were probably targeting Indians, not westerners.He doubts an al-Qaeda connection....