How the Kabul Embassy Attack Could Affect the Region | Newsweek International

Change We Can’t Believe In
Fareed Zakaria 5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
Finally, we are told, the Pakistani military has gotten serious about the threat that militants pose to its country. The Army is now fighting back for real, sending troops to dislodge the jihadists who had spread out of the Swat Valley. We hear this from Pakistani commanders, of course, but also from civilian leaders as well as from U.S. officials, including the secretary of defense, Robert Gates. In an interview with me for CNN, Gates said, "I think the movement of the Taliban so close to Islamabad was a real wake-up call for them."
POINT OF VIEW
Where Pakistan is Winning
5/2/2009 12:00:00 AM
Pakistan is under siege. Late last month the Taliban, empowered by a peace deal struck with the government in the Swat Valley, advanced perilously close to Islamabad, where they remain, shooting it out with Pakistani troops. Some pundits have started predicting the nation's collapse, and many Pakistanis are joining the call to abandon ship. Yet the situation is not actually as dire as it seems. While the military is barely holding off the extremists in some places, in others it has recently notched up a string of surprising successes—victories that offer a way forward for the nation as a whole.
POINT OF VIEW
Defining Victory Down
Rajan Menon 3/14/2009 12:00:00 AM
President Barack Obama's decision to send 17,000 more troops to Afghanistan will push the United States deeper into a quagmire, since the mission is undefined, the U.S. economy is spiraling downward and America's NATO allies won't send more combat forces. Moreover, the proposition that more firepower will roll back the Taliban is dubious. There will be 60,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan by year's end, and even with help from the Afghan National Army and the International Security Force—most of whose members are not engaged in fighting—that is not enough to cover a nation of 33 million people, spread out over 647,500 square kilometers. At the post-surge peak in Iraq, there were 140,000 U.S. troops trying to secure a smaller population of 28 million, in an area only two thirds as large. In Kosovo, the multinational coalition numbered 50,000 at its height; Afghanistan's population is 16 times bigger and its area is 60 times larger.
Holbrooke’s Dayton II?
Michael Hirsh 2/19/2009 12:00:00 AM
In his heyday as a negotiator in the 1990s, Richard Holbrooke was known as "the bulldozer." When Bosnia's civil war looked intractable, Holbrooke brought all the parties to Dayton, Ohio, where he essentially locked them up until they arrived at a deal. Later, as United Nations ambassador, Holbrooke managed to patch things up between two groups almost as hostile to each other as the former Yugoslav factions were: Republicans in Washington and U.N. bureaucrats in New York. In each case, stagecraft was a big part of his strategy: orchestrating grand meetings that would force hostile factions to talk at length in the same room.
INTERNATIONAL
A Turnaround Strategy
Fareed Zakaria 1/31/2009 12:00:00 AM
In May 2006 a unit of American soldiers in Afghanistan's Uruzgan valley were engulfed in a ferocious fire fight with the Taliban. Only after six hours, and supporting airstrikes, could they extricate themselves from the valley. But what was most revealing about the battle was the fact that many local farmers spontaneously joined in, rushing home to get their weapons. Asked later why they'd done so, the villagers claimed they didn't support the Taliban's ideological agenda, nor were they particularly hostile toward the Americans. But this battle was the most momentous thing that had happened in their valley for years. If as virile young men they had stood by and just watched, they would have been dishonored in their communities. And, of course, if they were going to fight, they could not fight alongside the foreigners.
COVER STORY: AFGHANISTAN
Obama’s Vietnam
John Barry 1/31/2009 12:00:00 AM
About a year ago, Charlie Rose, the nighttime talk-show host, was interviewing Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, the military adviser at the White House coordinating efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "We have never been beaten tactically in a fire fight in Afghanistan," Lute said. To even casual students of the Vietnam War, his statement has an eerie echo. One of the iconic exchanges of Vietnam came, some years after the war, between Col. Harry Summers, a military historian, and a counterpart in the North Vietnamese Army. As Summers recalled it, he said, "You never defeated us in the field." To which the NVA officer replied: "That may be true. It is also irrelevant."