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Seeking alliances with more moderate Taliban elements against al-Qaeda is not a new idea in the Afghanistan-Pakistan context, but until now it has typically drawn a skeptical response from U.S. officials who regularly cast doubt on the wisdom of Pakistan's pursuing such agreements. So the news last weekend that President Barack Obama was entertaining the same idea, to reverse what he described as a war in Afghanistan that the U.S. was losing, was greeted with some raised eyebrows in the region. However, his suggestion was welcomed by Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, who has been advocating...
...deal that would make a difference. The model for Obama's suggestion, of course, is Iraq, where the U.S. managed to pacify Anbar province by recruiting most of the local Sunni sheiks, who had previously been part of the insurgency, to wage a common fight against al-Qaeda. But Obama admitted that the Iraq strategy is hardly an easy fit. "The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex [than Iraq]," he said. "You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes ... [which] sometimes operate at cross-purposes. And so figuring all that out is going...
...Indeed, far more of a challenge than Obama even acknowledged. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was led by foreign jihadists, making it easier for the U.S. to turn locals against the organization, particularly when they chafed under al-Qaeda's imposition of strict Islamic law. But in Afghanistan - particularly in the south, where the insurgency is strongest - the militants are natives. In Iraq, an established and functioning government could offer sheiks who switched sides a credible alternative center of power, whereas in Afghanistan, the government is generally perceived to be corrupt, weak and unable to provide security. In Iraq, moreover...
...explosives belt and riding an explosives-laden motorcycle targeted recruits outside Baghdad's Police Academy, leaving some 28 dead. The spike in violence comes as the U.S. prepares to reduce its troop numbers here from 140,000 to 128,000 by September. It also follows Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's attempt to cobble together a semblance of pan-Iraqi political solidarity. He has made an overture of reconciliation to low-level former members of the Baath Party, which ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein. It was explicitly not offered to Ezzat Ibrahim al-Douri, Saddam's former Vice President...
...Tahseen al-Sheikaly, a government spokesman for the Baghdad Security Plan, said the renewed violence was in response to al-Maliki's reconciliation efforts as well as U.S. President Barack Obama's plan to withdraw all combat troops by next year. "It appears all these things are not welcomed by Iraq's enemies, and so they are disturbing the security situation," al-Sheikaly said. "But when such pockets of terrorism do something, we follow them and we capture them. In the next few days, you'll hear that we've captured the people who have done these things...