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Tag: middle east
Biden Afghanistan

Why Biden May Stay In Afghanistan After All

The U.S. mission in Afghanistan is nearly old enough to buy a beer, having gone on since 2001. Two presidents, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, promised it would come to an end, but the war outlasted them both.

Trump's administration negotiated a deal with the Taliban that committed us to leave by May. That obligation was conveniently scheduled for after the 2020 presidential election, making it Joe Biden's problem. Biden said at his news conference last week, "It's going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline." But when asked if our troops would still be there next year, he said, "I can't picture that being the case."

Really? He served as vice president under Obama, who campaigned on a promise to get out within 16 months. Running for reelection in 2012, Obama promised to end our involvement by 2014. Trump made similar promises, which were equally empty.

If Biden can't picture our forces staying into next year and beyond, his imagination is failing him. There are powerful reasons to think they'll be in Afghanistan in 2022. Also in 2023. And 2024. And ...

The first reason is that there are far bigger political risks in leaving than staying. Our departure could lead to an expanded war between the Kabul regime and the Taliban, the defeat of the Afghan army and the return of the Taliban to power.

No president wants to have to answer for what could be the grim aftermath of our departure. Biden can remember the 1975 debacle following our withdrawal from Vietnam, when U.S. embassy staff in Saigon evacuated in helicopters as desperate Vietnamese took to the sea in rickety boats to escape. For the time being, the easiest way to avoid an embarrassing outcome is to stay.

This will be particularly true next year, with Democrats facing midterm elections that could give Republicans control of Congress. Critics of our endless presence in Afghanistan — a group that includes me — may take hope from polls indicating that most Americans would like to get out sooner or later. But that sentiment carries little weight.

The great majority of people rarely give any thought to Afghanistan. There are no protests against it or citizen lobbying campaigns to end the war. It gets minimal attention from the news media. Our troop levels are low — 3,500 — and no American has been killed in combat in more than a year.

None of these facts justifies a mission that has no prospect of success regardless of how long we stay or what we do. But Biden is shrewd enough to see that maintaining the status quo won't cost him votes, while pulling out could.

Another reason he is likely to go along with an extension is that his administration is staffed by creatures of the "Blob" — the network of establishment foreign policy experts who favor an expansive U.S. role in the world and resist every effort to pull back even from failed interventions.

His Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, supported the Iraq War as well as Obama's intervention in Libya. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was an aide to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and chief foreign policy adviser for her presidential campaign. She favored both wars.

Biden's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is a retired four-star Army general. In his presidential memoir, Obama recalled the resistance of the Pentagon brass to pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan. These officers were, he wrote, products of "a U.S. military that prided itself on accomplishing a mission once started, without regard to cost, duration, or whether the mission was the right one to begin with." Austin didn't get where he is by being a bold nonconformist.

Biden will probably keep slogging away in Afghanistan as long as the basic status quo holds. Assuming the Kabul government and its military can stave off defeat, delaying our departure makes political sense.

But it won't enhance our chances of success. If you don't know the answers on an exam, getting an extra hour or day to finish it won't help. It only postpones the moment when you have to confront the truth.

Bush left that moment to Obama, who bequeathed it to Trump, who passed it on to his successor. Biden is likely to conclude that 1) whoever leaves Afghanistan will bear the blame for the outcome, and 2) it won't be him.

Steve Chapman blogs at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chapman. Follow him on Twitter @SteveChapman13 or at https://www.facebook.com/stevechapman13. To find out more about Steve Chapman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com

Pentagon Denies Trump Claim That Saudi ‘Paid’ For US Troops

Pentagon Denies Trump Claim That Saudi ‘Paid’ For US Troops

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Donald Trump is the most explicitly transactional of modern presidents, and it’s gotten him into trouble. His offering of support from the U.S. government to Ukraine in exchange for a personal favor — an announcement of investigations into his political rivals — wound up making him the third American president to be impeached.

And in an interview with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham last Friday, Trump revealed he was engaging in another explicit quid pro quo — not, apparently, for a personal favor, but corrupting nonetheless — with Saudi Arabia.

“We’re sending more [troops] to Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia is paying us for it,” Trump said. “I said ‘Listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you. But you’ve got to pay us.’”

This is pretty much as direct a quid pro quo as you can get — an offer to do something on the condition of getting paid. And since what is supposedly being paid for is U.S. military personnel, critics argued that Trump was turning American forces into a de facto mercenary army.

“He sells troops,” said Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) on Twitter.

Trump even went further with his claim, saying the payment was already sent to “the bank,” though he didn’t specify which bank, and Ingraham didn’t press him.

“They’re paying us,” Trump said. “They’ve already deposited $1 billion in the bank.”

According to a statement from the Pentagon to Vox, however, none of this is right.

It said the Defense Department “has engaged Saudi Arabia on contributing to US activities that support regional security and dissuade hostility and aggression,” and that the country had agreed. However, it doesn’t look like any money has actually changed hands, as the Pentagon said that “discussions are ongoing to formalize these contributions.”

The Pentagon also pushed back on the quid pro quo Trump laid out, without calling him out directly.

“Contributions of this nature do not lead to the deployment of additional US forces, and they do not drive DoD to take on new missions or responsibilities,” it said.

What’s left unknown is who is really telling the truth. Trump lies all the time, of course, but sometimes he has accidental bouts of candor. And administration officials often shade the truth, or contradict the known facts entirely, in an effort to avoid the horrifying implications of Trump’s claims. Regardless, Trump seems to want people to think the U.S. military is up for sale, which is terrifying enough on its own.

Did Israel Play A Role In Targeting Iranian General For Assassination?

Did Israel Play A Role In Targeting Iranian General For Assassination?

This article was produced by the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Last October Yossi Cohen, head of Israel’s Mossad, spoke openly about assassinating Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the head of the elite Quds Force in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

“He knows very well that his assassination is not impossible,” Cohen said in an interview. Soleimani had boasted that Israel tried to assassinate him in 2006 and failed.

“With all due respect to his bluster,” Cohen said, “he hasn’t necessarily committed the mistake yet that would place him on the prestigious list of Mossad’s assassination targets.”

“Is Israel Targeting Iran’s Top General for Assassination?” I asked last October. On January 3, Soleimani was killed in an air strike ordered by President Trump.

Soleimani’s convoy was struck by U.S. missiles as he left a meeting at Baghdad’s airport amid anti-Iranian and anti-American demonstrations in Iraq. Supporters of an Iranian-backed militia had agreed to withdraw from the U.S. diplomatic compound in return for a promise that the government would allow a parliamentary vote on expelling 5,000 U.S. troops from Iraq.

The Pentagon issued a statement confirming the military operation, which came “at the direction of the president” and was “aimed at deterring future Iranian attack plans.” The Pentagon claimed that Gen. Soleimani was “actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.”

Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, under indictment for criminal charges, was the first and only national leader to support Trump’s action, while claiming that Trump acted entirely on his own.

“Just as Israel has the right to self-defense, the United States has exactly the same right,” Netanyahu told reporters in Greece. “Qassem Soleimani is responsible for the deaths of American citizens and other innocents, and he was planning more attacks.”

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed retaliation for the general’s death, tweeting that “Iran will take revenge for this heinous crime.”

Soleimani was the most capable foe of the United States and Israel in the region. As chief of the Quds Force, Soleimani was a master of Iran’s asymmetric warfare strategy, using proxy forces to bleed Iran’s enemies, while preserving the government’s ability to plausibly deny involvement.

After the U.S. invasions of Iraq, he funded and trained anti-American militias that launched low-level attacks on U.S. occupation forces, killing hundreds of U.S. servicemen and generating pressure for U.S. withdrawal.

In recent years, Soleimani led two successful Iranian military operations: the campaign to drive ISIS out of western Iraq in 2015 and the campaign to crush the jihadist forces opposed to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. The United States and Israel denounced Iran’s role in both operations but could not prevent Iran from claiming victory.

Soleimani had assumed a leading role in Iraqi politics in the past year. The anti-ISIS campaign relied on Iraqi militias, which the Iranians supported with money, weapons, and training. After ISIS was defeated, these militias maintained a prominent role in Iraq that many resented, leading to demonstrations and rioting. Soleimani was seeking to stabilize the government and channel the protests against the United States when he was killed.

In the same period, Israel pursued its program of targeted assassination. In an effort to thwart Iran’s nuclear program, Mossad assassinated at least five Iranian nuclear scientists, according to Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman. Yossi Melman, another Israeli journalist, says that Mossad has assassinated 60-70 enemies outside of its borders since its founding in 1947, though none as prominent as Soleimani.

Israel also began striking at the Iranian-backed militias in Iraq last year. The United States did the same on December 29, killing 19 fighters and prompting anti-American demonstrations as big as the anti-Iranian demonstrations of a month ago.

Now the killing of Soleimani promises more unrest, if not open war. The idea that it will deter Iranian attacks may come to rank with George Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” in the annals of American folly.

“This doesn’t mean war,” wrote former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, “it will not lead to war, and it doesn’t risk war. None of that. It is war.”

The Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Jarida reported two years ago that Washington had given Israel the green light to assassinate Soleimani, as Haaretz recounted:

“Al-Jarida, which in recent years… [has] broken exclusive stories from Israel, quoted a source in Jerusalem as saying that ‘there is an American-Israeli agreement’ that Soleimani is a ‘threat to the two countries’ interests in the region.’ It is generally assumed in the Arab world that the paper is used as an Israeli platform for conveying messages to other countries in the Middle East.”

Trump has now fulfilled the wishes of Mossad. After proclaiming his intention to end America’s “stupid endless wars,” the president has effectively declared war on the largest country in the region in solidarity with Israel, the most unpopular country in the Middle East.

Jefferson Morley is a writing fellow and the editor and chief correspondent of the Deep State, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has been a reporter and editor in Washington, D.C., since 1980. He spent 15 years as an editor and reporter at The Washington Post. He was a staff writer at Arms Control Today and Washington editor of Salon. He is the editor and co-founder of JFK Facts, a blog about the assassination of JFK. His latest book is The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster, James Jesus Angleton.

White House Gutted Staff Overseeing $1B In Iraq Aid

White House Gutted Staff Overseeing $1B In Iraq Aid

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

Iraq is one of the top recipients of American assistance, and the U.S. foreign aid agency manages more than $1 billion in projects there, including funding for Iraqi religious minorities pushed by Vice President Mike Pence. But increasingly, the agency doesn’t have people on the ground to make sure the money is being well-spent.

The U.S. Agency for International Development has been forced to cut nearly 80 percent of its non-Iraqi staff in Iraq in the last year, even as the agency funds large, ambitious and complex aid projects there. A critical government watchdog report released this week said USAID officials reported the cuts “have had significant adverse effects” on the oversight and management of grants.

As ProPublica detailed this month, Pence’s office has pressured USAID to support local groups representing Iraqi minorities, particularly Christians. The watchdog report released this week said, in the context of the staff reductions and uncertainty, overseeing local groups “is particularly challenging given that awards to local organizations require increased involvement.”

One small charity that recently received a USAID grant and primarily serves Christian Iraqis has no full-time paid staff and no experience with government grants.

Overall, the report notes that USAID now has no staff based permanently in Iraq to oversee $430 million in basic humanitarian aid, such as food, safe drinking water and medical services. USAID officials manage the funding remotely via phone calls, reports from implementers and temporary visits, the report said.

As a result, “staff are only able to engage in the bare minimum coordination” with the rest of the U.S. government, the Iraqi government and the international community, USAID staff told the inspector general.

In May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ordered a partial evacuation of U.S. personnel in Iraq in response to concerns over threats from Iran. The ordered departure has been controversial, and diplomats have criticized what they view as a gutting of core diplomatic functions in Iraq.

That decision, combined with an earlier State Department move to shrink the USAID mission, reduced the agency’s non-Iraqi staff from 26 at the start of the 2019 fiscal year to six by this fall, the report said. Some of those officials relocated to Washington, while others transferred to Germany.

USAID, the State Department and Pence’s office did not respond to questions. In response to the prior ProPublica story, a USAID spokeswoman said local grants in Iraq follow all federal regulations and have empowered those groups to respond to “grassroots needs.”

The report, which covers the period between July 1 and Oct. 25, was jointly prepared by the inspectors general of USAID, the State Department and the Pentagon.

The watchdog report said the Pompeo-ordered departure had been extended through Nov. 9, citing reports of violence and threats to diplomatic personnel. In July, Foreign Policy reported that the lower staffing levels are being treated as permanent.

USAID manages $1.16 billion in assistance in Iraq, spanning development, humanitarian aid and stabilization efforts, according to the report.

That “large portfolio,” coupled with the staff reductions, “create uncertainty as to how programs will be overseen remotely,” the report said. “Uncertainty around staffing levels also raises questions about USAID’s continuing ability to effectively oversee its high-priority, high-risk portfolio.”

U.S. assistance in Iraq includes over $400 million for religious and ethnic minorities targeted by the militant group Islamic State. That has been a major priority for Pence, as well as for conservative Christian groups and vocal communities of Iraqi Christians.

A new component of that effort was announced by USAID last month: $4.1 million to six local Iraqi organizations. ProPublica previously found that political appointees played a significant role in the latest awards.

The awardees included two groups that had been rejected by career officials for separate grants in Iraq in 2018. One of the groups, the Shlama Foundation, is a small charity that primarily serves Christian Iraqis; it will receive $1 million over two years. It has no full-time paid staff and no experience with government grants, a Shlama board member, Ranna Abro, previously told ProPublica.

Shlama did not respond to a request for comment this week, but Abro said previously that it is capable of handling the work, and that USAID had “fully and completely reviewed our capacity and is releasing the funds in small, manageable amounts based on deliverable outcomes.”

USAID has exacting requirements for its funding, requiring groups to provide extensive background and financial information. Small organizations often are less equipped to fulfill those requirements and need particularly close oversight from agency officials, experts on foreign aid said.

The watchdog report addressed the latest awards to local Iraqi groups, and it said their structure “relies on in-country expertise from USAID personnel to train local organizations on the requirements of receiving U.S. funding.” It added: “According to USAID, this is particularly challenging given that awards to local organizations require increased involvement.”

The report also raised questions about the effectiveness of some of USAID’s efforts toward Christians and other minority groups in Iraq.

For instance, one major USAID goal in Iraq has been to encourage the return of Christians, Yazidis and other groups to their homes in northern Iraq, which they fled after Islamic State took over swaths of the country. Last year, USAID administrator Mark Green said the agency was “committed to creating the conditions so that these communities can return safely to their ancestral lands.”

But officials have acknowledged relatively modest returns on the effort thus far. In September, senior USAID official Hallam Ferguson said the returns of persecuted religious minority groups to their homes still “lag far behind” other displaced groups in Iraq.

“We are struggling against tectonic forces in Iraq,” including decades of government neglect and discriminatory policy, more than 15 years of sectarian strife and unchecked local armed groups, Ferguson said in testimony to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.

According to the watchdog report, USAID officials have said that obstacles in Iraq cannot be resolved without more diplomatic engagement, made far more difficult by Pompeo’s drawdown. The report cited disputes between local Iraqi political leaders that had allowed a “vacuum of governance” to develop in Sinjar, an area of Iraq that includes many religious minorities.

“The longer these barriers remain in place, the more significant the questions grow about the potential effectiveness of these assistance efforts,” the report said.