CFR Update - Pakistan

Deepening Tensions Between the United States and Pakistan Tensions between the United States and Pakistan increased on Thursday as a U.S. Senate panel voted to further cut aid to Pakistan by $33 million (NYT). The move came after a Pakistani court sentenced Shakil Afridi, a doctor who assisted the CIA in tracking down Osama bin Laden last year, to thirty-three years in prison for committing treason. Diplomatic relations between the two countries were already strained at a NATO summit earlier this week when they failed to reach an agreement on re-opening a NATO supply route between Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the same time, CIA drone strikes in northwestern Pakistan persisted for a second day on Thursday, despite vocal opposition by Pakistani officials. Analysis "While Afridi's sentencing may not be tied directly to Washington's alleged snub to Zardari in Chicago, there is no doubt that the harsh punishment was approved at the highest levels of government to make a point to both the U.S. and to Pakistani citizens. It's clear that the government wanted to make an example of Afridi," write Newsweek's Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai. "America's larger strategic goals in South Asia have justified engagement with a difficult partner in Islamabad, but Pakistan would be foolish to take America's support and patience for granted. The U.S. has other options in the region. With very few friends, Pakistan does not," says this Wall Street Journal editorial. "His sentence is likely to renew the debate on what constitutes patriotism and treason in this (joint) war against militancy. Much of the discourse is bound to focus on the hatching of a conspiracy of which Dr Afridi's fake vaccination scheme was a part. While the proponents of this view would have some justification to question a unilateral U.S. operation on Pakistani soil of which Pakistan was not informed, other aspects of the debate should be considered," says this editorial in Dawn, a Pakistan-based newspaper

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NightWatch Update

South Korea-North Korea: North Korea's human rights abuses should be dealt with more urgently than its nuclear or missile programs, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak said Wednesday. Lee made the comment when he met a group of US lawmakers including Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said presidential spokeswoman Lee Miyon.

Comment: It is not clear whether and how much the government in Seoul is committed to pursuing human rights abuses in North Korea, but it is a vulnerability that the North is not well prepared to counter quickly. The nuclear and missile programs are long established issues for debate about which North Korea has well defined positions.

Human rights abuses can be of a different order, if the South Korean policy strategists get creative. The usual complaint against North Korea is that it has a large system of prisons for political prisoners and their family members who usually are worked to death.

A more telling accusation is that North Korea cannot feed its population, manifest in reports of executions for cannibalism. North Korea also has an insufficient supply of basic medicines, including aspirin. Health care in North Korea is not a government responsibility outside the large cities.

A carefully crafted pressure campaign on these and similar issues stands a good chance of catching the North off guard, skirts military concerns, and establishes a basis for dialogue. The North Koreans care for their children, sick and aged populations as much as any other Asian society and culture. All of these populations are under stress because of famine or near famine conditions plus the chronic lack of health care resources.

North Korea: North Korea appears to be technically ready to carry out a third nuclear test, an unnamed South Korean official said 23 May. Pyongyang will use its political judgment in deciding whether to conduct the test, the official said.

Comment: There is little context for this South Korean leak in open source materials. Last month the senior Chinese Leadership made it absolutely clear to a visiting North Korean Party official that no Chinese strategic interests are served by another North Korean nuclear test.

The limited but important political behavioral indicators suggest a North Korean nuclear test is not likely at this time.

China-Philippines: Update. China has deployed more ships to Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea. As of Monday night, there were five Chinese government ships -- up from three -- and 16 fishing boats in the area, the Philippine foreign department said.

Egypt: On the first day of the presidential elections, the huge turnout persuaded election officials to extend voting hours. At the close of this Watch, no reports of early returns are available.  The election proceeded with no serious security incidents reported. Results are expected on Sunday.

 

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CFR Update

Egyptians Vote in Presidential Election Egyptians are going to the polls today in the country's first democratic presidential election (WSJ), a direct result of the popular uprising that overthrew longtime leader Hosni Mubarak last year. Of the thirteen candidates, the four main contenders are Amr Moussa, a liberal secularist and former official in the Mubarak regime; Ahmed Shafiq, a former air force commander; Mohamed Morsi, the candidate of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood; and Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, a moderate Islamist. A runoff between the two leading candidates is expected in June. Analysis "The group's internal discipline is being called into serious question. A Morsi defeat--particularly at the hands of presidential competitor Aboul Fotouh, himself a Brotherhood defector--could spur a major internal split. The most difficult question is what the group would do if Aboul Fotouh faced, say, former foreign minister Amr Moussa in the second round. Brotherhood leaders, although they won't say so publicly, strongly prefer a Moussa presidency," writes Shadi Hamid for The Atlantic. "His vision of Egypt as an Islamic democracy run by technocrats rather than ideologues has prompted comparisons to Turkey and created an aura around Abou el-Fotouh as Egypt's Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It has also helped him win some disparate endorsements, from the arch-conservative Salafi party on one side of the political map and from Tahrir leftists on the other, including Ghonim himself," writes Newsweek's Dan Ephron. "But what does Moussa's success say about the state of Egypt's politics? The word 'revolution' has been thrown about for the past 16 months to describe the upheaval in the country; a victory by the 75-year-old veteran of internecine battles within Hosni Mubarak's regime and the old Arab order suggests something closer to a course correction. Moussa, for better or worse, is not the culmination of anything approaching a revolution," writes David Kenner for ForeignPolicy.com. "The next president of Egypt will likely be subject to a new kind of politics in which demands from below can no longer be deflected, bribed, or beaten into silence," writes CFR's Steven Cook.

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NightWatch Update

Afghanistan: Comment: The NATO leaders agreed to transfer combat operations to the Afghan Army by mid-2013. Only one news commentator recognized this as coded language for accelerating the end of the NATO military commitment to Afghanistan, 18 months early.  An unidentified US general hastened to put the best face on the early withdrawal decision by insisting to the press that US forces would continue to fight the Taliban until the end of 2014. However, that is a decision for the Commander-in-Chief and the President overruled him. This fight ends a year from now.

Another news service reported an American official as taking bets on how long the Karzai regime would last after US combat forces left in 2014. Wrong question.

The relevant question is how long can the Karzai regime survive after all combat operations are turned over to Afghan forces? If the Afghans won't fight, there will not be enough NATO forces to hold Kabul for long.

As reported in other editions of NightWatch, the Soviet-backed client, Najibullah, survived for three years after Soviet combat forces withdrew. That is the measure of merit.

The Soviets equipped their Afghan clients with the same equipment Soviet forces used. They did not draw down stockpiles of obsolescent equipment to outfit their Afghan allies. Two reports this weekend relate how deeply the Afghans resent being treated as second-class allies, equipped with outdated gear US forces do not use. If these accounts are accurate, as they appear, they explain the increased fratricide among so-called allies.

The next year will be unpleasant and dangerous for any NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. The good news is nobody wants to be the last man to die in this conflict.

Syria: Interior Minister Major General M. Ibrahim Shaar appeared on state-run television on the 20^th to refute Free Syrian Army claims that he and five other top military and security officials had been assassinated. The FSA claim was carried by al Jazeera among other news services.  Some of the other officials who supposedly are dead are Assistant Vice President General Hassan Turkmani, Defense Minister Dawood Rajha, and the President's brother in law and intelligence chief Asif Shawkat. All of these men are alive.

Comment: One of the fundamental rules of information operations is to not make claims that can be audited and evaluated independently. The Syrian opposition's web postings are not credible and the people making the postings are rank amateurs.

 

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CFR Update - NATO Summit

Top of the Agenda: NATO Summit Overshadowed by U.S.-Pakistan Rift The United States and Pakistan failed to reach an agreement to reopen a NATO supply line (NYT) from Pakistan through Afghanistan ahead of a crucial NATO summit that got under way in Chicago yesterday. U.S. President Barack Obama refused to meet with his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, unless a deal was reached. The two-day summit--to which Pakistan was invited at the last minute in the hopes of securing a deal over the supply routes--is focused on winding down NATO's decade-long war in Afghanistan. Pakistan closed the routes after a U.S. airstrike killed twenty-four Pakistani soldiers along the Pakistani-Afghan border in November, exacerbating already strained relations between the two countries. Analysis "The alliance continues to confront fundamental questions about how it should define its role and mission in the twenty-first century, and whether its member nations have the political will and capacity to fulfill its mission. In particular, countries are ambivalent about whether the alliance should continue to conduct operations outside the North Atlantic, or limit missions to member nations' borders," writes CFR's Stewart M. Patrick in this Expert Brief. "This week in Chicago, Obama will announce the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Afghanistan by next summer. He will, in effect, be conceding defeat: the Taliban remains strong; the Hamid Karzai government looks inept and corrupt; the country appears headed for civil war. Al Qaeda may be weaker than it was three years ago, but not because of America's wildly expensive counterinsurgency effort, which has proved a massive bust," writes the Daily Beast's Peter Beinart. "It's the realization that the Taliban will remain very much alive and kicking after NATO leaves that has prompted Obama to press upon Karzai the need to engage with greater urgency in reconciliation talks with the Taliban--and also to implement electoral reforms to diminish corruption and make elections more transparent," writes TIME's Tony Karon

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