President Barack Obama with Afghan President Karzai and Pakistani President Zardari during a trilateral meeting at the White House.

U.S. President Barack Obama met with leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan on Wednesday to discuss the growing threat of the Taliban.

Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner considers the signficance of the three-way meeting and the challenges facing President Obama going forward. 

The Obama administration held a mini-summit yesterday with the civilian leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. An Associated Press report quoted Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said it was a “breakthrough meeting,” telling reporters the sessions covered trade, water sharing, military training and anti-corruption drives, among other issues.

It is unlikely that this was a breakthrough meeting.

The visits by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari had only limited significance, and anything those two leaders could say would have little impact on the larger problems at hand.

Certainly, there would be no reason to speak negatively or disparagingly of either leader — that would do no more good than to assume that the meetings with President Obama and administration officials accomplished much. But a breakthrough would mean that all three had figured out how to solve their problems.

Zardari is an elected civilian president, the first civilian since the military under Parvez Musharraf ceded power under mighty criticism. Zardari is in the presidential chair as a result of the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto, who was killed on Dec. 27, 2007 after being encouraged to return to Pakistan from exile. Neither the United States nor the Pakistani military or police were able to cushion her from the bomb attack.

Zardari is said to have little, if any, sway with the Pakistani military, which for the time has responded to U.S. pressure and is fighting Taliban militants. There are predictions that perhaps half a million refugees will flee the areas of those battles. And there are well-placed military analysts in the United States and elsewhere who think that even if the Pakistani military has the stomach to fight and keep fighting extremists, the resulting battles would harden support for the Taliban in the poorest parts of the country.

Karzai faces his own problems. Warlords govern large fiefdoms in his country, and his power is limited, at best, to Kabul, the Afghan capital. The Taliban, chased from power in 2003, are extending their reach throughout the country; Karzai faces challenges in upcoming elections and he has clearly heard President Obama question his ability to fight corruption, or even leave the grounds of the presidential palace to govern his country. No assurance he might give Obama, and no pledge of U.S. military aid —  which will arrive with or without Karzai — is particularly germane to the larger issues of stability in that part of the world.

President Obama needs to do something convincing and new in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He is the commander-in-chief, and when the U.S. military accidentally kills Afghan civilians as it did this week, he will have trouble in protecting his reputation as the anti-Bush in international relations. His secretary of state, besides saying the meetings with the Karzai and Zardari were “breakthrough,” made references to civil action measures — a hint of the military doctrine of winning over “hearts and minds” in the midst of low intensity warfare. That theory is coherent, but it doesn’t necessarily lead to gains and breakthroughs that can be measured in weeks and months.

There comes a point after you’ve bought a new spread with broke-down fences, after you’ve repaired the place and patched the holes, you’ll call it your own. The Obama administration hasn’t gotten there yet, but let’s describe the damage for what it is.

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user The Official White House Photostream under a Creative Commons license.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai was meeting Wednesday with President Obama.

The leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan were set for a three-way meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, to discuss how to combat the growing threat of the Taliban. 

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is also dealing with the repercussions of an errant U.S. bombing attack that killed dozens of civilians in Afghanistan.

Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner writes about Karzai’s changing relationship with the U.S. under the Obama administration. 

For an informative, disturbing look at the problems of American diplomacy in Afghanistan, a Washington Post profile of Afghan President Hamid Karzai written by Rajiv Chandrasekaran is required reading.

Rajiv, a colleague at the Post when he was Baghdad bureau chief and I was on the foreign desk, wrote the best-selling book, “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone.” He breaks down the dysfunctional elements of American operations in Afghanistan the same way he did in Iraq.

Not surprisingly, we see Karzai, who was meeting Wednesday with President Obama, as an indecisive man with little franchise, often under the thumb of the Bush administration. President Bush dealt with Afghanistan by starting a war in Iraq instead. He dealt with Karzai, in part, by sending Zalmay Mamozy Khalilzad, an Afghan-born diplomat, as the U.S. ambassador after having been ambassador to Iraq.

Khalilzad and top American officials used strong-arm tactics, often falling short in controlling the axes of meaningful change.

Rajiv writes:

“Khalilzad was far more than an ambassador. U.S. diplomats described his role as the country’s chief executive — with Karzai as the figurehead chairman — for the 19 months of his ambassadorship.”

“By his own account, Khalilzad ate dinner six nights a week at the presidential palace, where he met with Karzai and his advisers into the evening. No significant decision was made by Karzai in that time without Khalilzad’s involvement, and sometimes his cajoling and prodding, the diplomats said.”

We also learn that Karzai and Bush had biweekly video chats, with Bush apparently thinking the personal touch would help deal with the militias and drug lords rampaging outside Karzai’s palace gates.

None of the hobnobbing brought success in stabilizing Afghanistan or catching Osama bin Laden, or stopping the corrupt system that allows Afghanistan to corner the market on the opium poppy industry. 

Just after President Obama came to office, Vice President Joseph Biden informed Karzai in person that the era of presidential hand-holding is over.

Rajiv reports that President Obama has little patience for Karzai. Obama, we are told, thinks Karzai “has been inside the bunker” too long.

“Obama advisers believe the relationship that Bush developed with Karzai masked the Afghan leader’s flaws and made it difficult to demand accountability.”

“The classified version of the recent White House review of Afghanistan strategy, according to two officials who have read it, criticizes Karzai. “It takes him to task for not meeting even the most basic Afghan expectations,” one of the officials said. “The implication is clear: Karzai is not our man in this upcoming election.”

Rather than one-on-one video conferences, Karzai gets a 20-minute meeting and a three-way meeting with President Obama and the president of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari.

Beyond the body language, Karzai will supposedly have at least a minute to mention U.S. air strikes on Tuesday in which more than 100 people died. The International Red Cross reported that women and children were among the dead.

A cold dose of reality reminds us that war and peace go beyond personalities. We haven’t seen yet how the United States will come up with a viable plan to make things better.

- Peter Eisner

U.S. troops in Zabol province, Afghanistan.

As the threat from Taliban and al-Qaeda insurgents increases in Afghanistan, the United States wants to double the size of the Afghan security forces — the army and the police. See more about the plan, which is awaiting President Obama’s approval: U.S. plans to upsurge soldiers and police in Afghanistan.

Worldfocus editorial consultant Peter Eisner, the former deputy foreign editor of the Washington Post, discusses reviewing policies in Iraq before committing to a new war strategy in Afghanistan.

Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama hammered away at the failure of George W. Bush for having engaged the wrong enemy when he launched the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It is too early to say how he will deal with what he considered the real fight in Afghanistan.

Sometimes overlooked is the policy review initiated by General David Petraeus even before President Obama took office. Petraeus called together dozens of intelligence experts and others to come up with a plan. These analysts, along with Petraeus and the president himself, are well aware of the old saying about Afghanistan — it is “the burial ground of empires.”

So while the president plans to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, we still haven’t heard the results of the policy review. It would be hard to think that President Obama would commit hundreds of thousands of combat troops to the fight, risking a quagmire worse than Iraq, even Vietnam.

But we may be hearing early signs of a policy, especially in the words of Vice President Joe Biden. He implied last week that the administration is looking for ways to win over the hearts and minds (and the pocketbooks) of people drawn to the Taliban cause.

At a news conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels last week, Biden said the United States has learned in Iraq to promote progress by working with local governments, and not through battlefield victories.

Biden said “There’s only one way, and that is to engage — engage in the process, looking for pragmatic solutions to accomplishing what our goal is; that is an Afghanistan that is, at minimum goal, is not a haven for terror and is able to sustain itself on its own and provide its own security.”

- Peter Eisner

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Army.mil under a Creative Commons license.

Geneive Abdo, a former journalist based in Iran and now an analyst with the Century Foundation in Washington, joins Martin Savidge to discuss Khatami’s decision, how his victory would theoretically transform Iran-U.S. relations and Vice President Joe Biden’s statement that the United States is willing to talk to Iran.

A protester in Sacramento, Calif., holds a sign criticizing dependence on Saudi oil.

Saudi Arabia is the world’s top exporter of oil, and the country has thus figured into U.S. energy policy, foreign policy and security considerations. Now, as the U.S. prepares to usher in a new administration, both presidential candidates are trumpeting plans to decrease dependence on foreign oil.

Contributing blogger Bernard Haykel, professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University, examines how Saudis perceive the American election.

See Haykel’s previous interview with Worldfocus about a U.S. raid in Syria, and watch Gideon Rose of Foreign Affairs Magazine speak about global fascination with the U.S. election.

Saudi angle on U.S. elections

The Saudis have been remarkably tight-lipped about the U.S. presidential election and about whom they favor among the candidates. Their reticence can be explained, in part, by their bewilderment at the choice.

They don’t know what to think of the real possibility that a young and charismatic black candidate might win. Senator Obama represents the joker in the deck, although they also have a sense that in terms of the pillars of U.S. policy in the Middle East (i.e., oil security and Israel’s security) little will change regardless of the election’s outcome. In other words, they feel the regime’s survival is assured because of the importance of oil.

Historically, the Saudis have favored Republicans for the following reasons: 1) a shared social and economic conservatism and a visceral anti-Communism; 2) the closer ties that Republicans are thought to have to the oil companies and the weapons industry, which represent the two domestic constituencies of, and therefore lobbyists for, the Saudi government in the U.S. political system; and 3) a highly personal (anti-institutional) form of political engagement in foreign affairs, especially in the Middle East. The Saudis like the current President Bush on a personal level, and he appears to relish the all-male gatherings in Saudi Arabia, as can be seen during his last trip to Riyadh in January.

The royal family’s objection to G.W. Bush’s policies have to do with what they perceive to be his impulsive and rash behavior as well as his high-stakes style in foreign policy. On the whole, the Saudis were not in favor of the invasion of Iraq because they were worried of the instability that this would create in the region. The Saudis are, if anything, conservative and don’t like to gamble their survival on military campaigns unless these are absolutely necessary, as in the 1991 Gulf war against the Iraqi invader of Kuwait. Instead, they prefer other means, which include financial inducements and fighting through proxies (e.g., Lebanon today).

Based on all the above, I would guess that the Saudis would prefer if McCain were to win. Furthermore, there are indications that they have a strong dislike to Senator Biden, primarily because of his public criticism of the Saudi royal family, its religious policies, and the very form of rule it represents. The Saudis have been relatively discreet about this animus towards Biden, and when it has surfaced, as in an editorial article by Jamal Khashogi in Al-Watan newspaper earlier this year, it has criticized Biden for his plan to divide Iraq into three parts. I believe the Saudis feel that they can proceed with business-as-usual with McCain but not with Biden, who is, paradoxically perhaps, more ideological when it comes to reforming Saudi Arabia’s regime.

To read more, visit the original post.

The views expressed by contributing bloggers do not reflect the views of Worldfocus or its partners.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user madrigals under a Creative Commons license.