In today's Washington Post, Donald Rumsfeld has an Op-Ed
Afghanistan Five Years Later keyed to the anniversary of the start of military operations against the Taliban.
The main point of the article, of course, is to refute all the nay-sayers who predicted failure for the mission and are claiming that it is in trouble today. Rumsfeld accurately lists some genuine achievements. But he accomplishes a deception double play by distorting the meaning of a quotation from President Karzai in order to cover up the administration's biggest failure on Afghanistan.
That failure is the establishment by the Taliban of a safe haven for their command and control, recruitment, training, funding, propaganda, and resupply in Pakistan. There are numerous failings of the Afghan government and of the US effort there, but these failures would not generate a terrorist insurgency without a safe haven across the border.
Rumsfeld writes:
Not all the news about Afghanistan is encouraging. There is, for example, the legitimate worry that increased poppy production could be a destabilizing factor. And rising violence in southern Afghanistan is real.
President Hamid Karzai, speaking with President Bush recently at the White House, acknowledged the difficulties: "Afghanistan is a country that is emerging out of so many years of war and destruction. . . . We lost almost two generations to the lack of education. . . . We know our problems. We have difficulties. But Afghanistan also knows where the problem is."
The problem, he said, is poverty and extremism. Success requires a strong and capable Afghan government that can provide services and opportunities for all its people.
As President Karzai has made clear repeatedly, when he says that "Afghanistan also knows where the problem is," he is referring to a location. That location is in Pakistan.
As Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid wrote yesterday from Kabul in London's Daily Telegraph:
Commanders from five Nato countries whose troops have just fought the bloodiest battle with the Taliban in five years, are demanding their governments get tough with Pakistan over the support and sanctuary its security services provide to the Taliban.
Nato's report on Operation Medusa, an intense battle that lasted from September 4-17 in the Panjwai district, demonstrates the extent of the Taliban's military capability and states clearly that Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence (ISI) is involved in supplying it.
Commanders from Britain, the US, Denmark, Canada and Holland are frustrated that even after Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf met George W Bush and Tony Blair last week, Western leaders are declining to call Mr Musharraf's bluff.
"It is time for an 'either you are with us or against us' delivered bluntly to Musharraf at the highest political level," said one Nato commander.
When I last met President Karzai in Kabul on August 5, he bluntly said that the US and its allies had failed in their responsibility to defeat the terrorist threat to Afghanistan, mainly because of their unwillingness to confront Pakistan.
Pakistan is not supporting the Taliban because it hates freedom or because General Musharraf is "evil," but because of longstanding security concerns that have little or nothing to do with the Bush administration's "war on terror." But the administration's attempt to impose its own misreading on every conflict in the world is undermining our effort in Afghanistan and the security of the United States.
In subsequent posts I will address the Waziristan agreement, narcotics, and other related matters.