Afghanistan Archive

Nuclear Pakistan, we are often told, is the Islamic-state equivalent of a Wall Street firm: In geostrategic terms, it is too big to fail. That explains why, even as the Obama administration begins preparing for modest troop withdrawals from Afghanistan this July, it dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Islamabad last week to smooth over bilateral relations with Pakistan’s paranoid regime, which were strained even before the killing of Osama bin Laden. But Clinton’s trip and the Obama administration’s instinctive embrace of Islamabad is a fool’s errand, doomed by history, geography and globalization itself. In fact, the U.S. should […]

The Stuxnet computer worm, WikiLeaks and the social-media-facilitated revolutions of the Arab Spring have already provided ample reason for a high-level U.S. policy on cyber issues. Now the killing of Osama bin Laden has provided an opening for a broader strategic dialogue in Washington, one that includes cyberspace in its proper context. This policy discussion has been a long time coming, and it has now arrived in the form of the Obama administration’s “International Strategy for Cyberspace” (.pdf), which presents concepts and ideals on a cluster of diplomatic, commercial and security issues related to the global information space that the […]

Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rasoul paid a state visit to China last week, highlighting the two countries’ growing ties. In an email interview, Nicklas Norling, a research fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute and the Silk Road Studies Program, discussed China-Afghanistan relations. WPR: What is the history of relations between China and Afghanistan? Nicklas Norling: There have been few links between China and Afghanistan throughout the past century, with Beijing only very recently showing a real interest in engagement. Even though China and Afghanistan share a short border, China’s diplomatic, economic and other ties have hitherto been more significant with […]

There is a profound sense of completion to be found in America’s elimination of Osama bin Laden, and the circumstances surrounding his death certainly fit this frontier nation’s historical habit of mounting major military operations to capture or kill super-empowered bad actors. Operation Geronimo, like most notable U.S. overseas interventions of the past quarter-century, boiled down to eliminating the one man we absolutely felt we needed to get to declare victory. Now we have the opportunity to redefine this “long war” to America’s most immediate advantage. I spot four basic options, each with their own attractions and distractions. Declare victory […]

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh landed in Kabul last week amid renewed interest in India’s trajectory in Afghanistan following the death of Osama bin Laden. Singh, in Afghanistan after a six-year absence, announced a fresh commitment of $500 million for Afghanistan’s development, over and above the $1.5 billion in aid India has already allocated. New Delhi and Kabul agreed that the two neighbors’ “strategic partnership” will be implemented under the framework of a partnership council to be headed by the countries’ foreign ministers. It will entail cooperation in security, law enforcement and justice, including an enhanced focus on cooperation in […]

If the death of Osama bin Laden marks the beginning of the end of the “global war on terrorism,” as Michael Cohen argued in a WPR briefing this week, it will have profound consequences for U.S. national security policy. For the last decade, the fight against international terrorism, as personified by bin Laden, was one of the central organizing principles of American foreign and defense policies. Preventing another Sept. 11 was the rationale for the military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as for a whole host of programs in dozens of countries around the world, ranging from security […]

With the debate raging over whether the Obama administration should release Osama bin Laden’s long-form death certificate, it seems like a good moment to point out that from an intelligence standpoint, we already know way too much about the operation that led to bin Laden’s death. The administration, which so successfully managed to maintain operational secrecy leading up to the mission, seems to have given no thought to the value of secrecy in its aftermath. The most obvious example is the revelation that, in addition to killing bin Laden, U.S. forces also made off with loads of valuable hard drives […]

As details of the successful raid against Osama bin Laden’s Abbotabad compound come to light, it is becoming clear that the assault was the most important, and probably the most successful, operation in the history of U.S. special operations forces. Instead of Air Force bombs or Navy missiles, President Barack Obama opted for the special skills and capabilities of a Navy SEAL team to eliminate the al-Qaida leader. The reason is simple: A bomb or missile might have more easily killed bin Laden, but only special forces could confirm his death, recover his body and capture a trove of materials […]

The United States and Pakistan have sustained a decades-old partnership on the strength of a Cold War alliance and a set of narrow but shared vital interests. However, the relationship has undergone profound changes as a result of the Afghan War, which on one hand has forced the two countries into an awkward but necessary embrace, and on the other exposed deep and potentially irreconcilable differences. At the core of this rift is Pakistan’s duplicitous regional strategy, whereby Islamabad provides critical logistics and intelligence support to America while aiding or turning a blind eye to its extremist enemies. For years […]

The killing of Osama bin Laden in a comfortable neighborhood not far from Pakistan’s capital has again illustrated the fundamentally ambiguous nature of the security relationship between Washington and Islamabad. In the past, Pakistani authorities have played a key role in capturing or killing al-Qaida leaders, mainly because many of the most prominent international terrorists are located on their territory. This has led to suspicions that some terrorists enjoy the support of influential Pakistanis. Bin Laden appears to have had similar protection, an impression reinforced by the fact that his enormous compound was a stone’s throw from Pakistani military facilities […]

The pro-democracy uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East have moved crisis-ridden Pakistan out of the global spotlight. This is unfortunate, because Pakistan’s timid democratic resurgence faces a variety of obstacles, and its stability is more uncertain than ever before. To expect that Pakistan may soon experience a similar democratic transformation is not only excessively optimistic, but also ignores recent history: Pakistan exhausted its own “Arab Street” moment in 2007, when Gen. Pervez Musharraf was forced to resign following demonstrations by a diverse and vibrant civil society movement led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. That was […]

With arguably the most notorious manhunt of all time now over, many are reflecting on the emotional significance Osama bin Laden’s death carries for a generation that has come of age since Sept. 11. With the gravity of the development sinking in this morning, World Politics Review contributor Luke Hunt reminded Trend Lines that what bin Laden did “has dominated and dictated our lives professionally for more than a decade.” Another WPR contributor, J. Edward Conway had this to say: “When I found my way into the U.S. Defense Department after Sept. 11, I was met by a sea of […]

U.S. President Barack Obama was preparing to announce Osama bin Laden was dead when word got out and crowds gathered outside the White House in Washington and at Ground Zero in New York City.

After digesting the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a U.S. Navy Seals team, my first thought was about how his death, and the manner in which it happened, highlights the tension between the visible and the invisible in terms of terrorism and counterterrorism. Terrorism must be tactically invisible in order to effectively plan and carry out attacks, but it depends on the high visibility of those attacks for any strategic impact. In almost a perfect inversion, counterterrorism employs highly visible tactical measures — the kind of “security theater” best-illustrated at airports — to reassure the public, […]

While the death of Osama bin Laden represents the long overdue demise of one man, its impact on the long-term trajectory of American foreign policy is likely to be more profound: Along with bin Laden, so too dies the “global war on terrorism.” This does not mean that there are no longer any terrorists who want to kill Americans and other Westerners. Neither does it mean that al-Qaida will simply disappear overnight. And another major attack could return the U.S. and its allies to a war footing. But bin Laden’s death does mean that the exaggerated role that terrorism has […]