On March 19, Pakistan's government gave a briefing to the country's top military officials.

The topic of this high-level meeting was not the Taliban's takeover of the Tirah Valley, fresh tensions with Afghanistan, or other urgent national security matters. Rather, the briefing-delivered by the commerce secretary to the army, air force, and navy chiefs-was about tightening trade ties with India.

This issue has been a priority for Pakistan's civilian and military leadership alike since November 2011, when Pakistan announced its intention to extend Most-Favored Nation status to India (New Delhi granted this privilege to Islamabad in 1996). The decision was rooted in the realization that the potential benefits of a formal trade relationship with India-lower prices and variety for consumers; bigger export markets for producers; more employment for the masses; and greater revenues (currently lost to smuggling and other informal trade) for the government-were too immense to pass up.

Since then, both countries have continued to give strong indications that they intend to make their trade relationship a close and formal one. Last year, Pakistan abolished its positive list of goods that could be imported from India, and replaced it with a shorter negative list of items that couldn't be imported. The two capitals also launched a new integrated checkpoint at the Attari-Wagah border crossing (which serves the only land route for Pakistan-India trade), and concluded a landmark visa agreement that loosens travel restrictions.

This year, even after political relations took a plunge following a series of deadly exchanges along the Line of Control in January, the desire for trade cooperation remains strong. In recent weeks, each nation's ambassador to Washington has publicly affirmed-one at Harvard, the other at CSIS-the imperative of a strong trade relationship. Just days ago, Islamabad's envoy to New Delhi assured an audience of Indian and Pakistani businessmen that "we want trade normalization and there is a roadmap for that."

However, despite these encouraging signs, trade normalization remains a work in progress. Pakistan had pledged to phase out its negative list by the end of last year-thereby bringing the two countries closer to a fully operational MFN regime-yet today it remains in place.

So why the holdup?

One commonly cited explanation is the resistance of Pakistan's powerful agricultural interests, who fear the consequences of heavily subsidized, cheap food products coursing into Pakistan-particularly those, such as bananas and oranges, which Pakistani farmers already produce in abundance. Predictably, last November, the president of the Basmati Growers Association warned that his members faced "economic suicide." And the head of Farmers Associates Pakistan (a lobby group) threatened to literally block Indian agricultural products from entering Pakistan.

However, a new Wilson Center report on Pakistan-India trade, edited by Robert M. Hathaway and myself, presents a more complex picture. Some food producers actually relish the prospect of acquiring foodstuffs from India, because they believe such products will be of higher-quality then their own, and hence generate greater profits. Another surprising source of support is the textile industry, which believes it can capture major shares of the Indian market. Pakistani home textile and bed ware manufacturers have already explored joint venture options with Indian partners.

There is, however, strident opposition from other sectors. The pharmaceutical industry fears that India's surfeit of raw materials and large economies of scale will marginalize Pakistani products, while the chemical/synthetic fibers sector worries that India will dump its large fiber surplus in Pakistani markets. Our report also highlights opposition within the automobile industry. Manufacturers are anxious that Indian car parts will flood Pakistani markets and devastate local industry, and fear that Pakistani parts exports will suffer because Indian car makers prefer domestically manufactured parts. Islamabad has given in to the car industry's protectionist proclivities; the sector has nearly 400 items on the 1,209-item negative list-far more than any other sector.

Another likely reason for the MFN delay is politics. Security and territorial disputes have a historic habit of contaminating Pakistan-India trade relations at the most inopportune of times. In 1965, the two countries went to war over Kashmir, bringing an abrupt end to a promising period of commercial ties (in the preceding 18 years, the two nations had concluded 14 trade facilitation agreements). Banks in both countries were seized as enemy properties, and customs officials at the Wagah border crossing were the war's first civilian prisoners of war.

Nearly 50 years later, a more subtle dynamic is at play. Last June, an Indian government official lamented that momentum for trade normalization had slowed because Islamabad was linking trade to progress on the territorial issues of Siachen and Sir Creek. It's a lament that highlights a major obstacle to Pakistan-India trade normalization-because it exposes a major disconnect in each country's motivations for pursuing normalization.  

Back in April 2012, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar proclaimed that trade normalization would "put in place the conditions that will enable Pakistan to better pursue its principled positions" on territorial issues. Some observers, however, believe that New Delhi sees stronger commercial relations as an end in themselves. India-at least up to now-has demonstrated no interest in making the territorial concessions that Pakistan hopes closer trade ties will bring about. Islamabad likely understands this disconnect, and is hesitant to consummate MFN because it fears that the Pakistani public would, in time, perceive the move as a sacrificing of political and territorial issues for purely material gain.

Our report, drawing on the views of its eight contributors, offers 15 recommendations aimed at addressing these challenges to normalization. Several suggest how to get Pakistanis to embrace trade as a good thing in of itself. For example, Pakistan's media-a powerful influence on public opinion-should amplify the advantages of bilateral trade by spotlighting the positive sentiments of consumers and producers. Other recommendations focus on how to keep political/territorial issues from sabotaging trade ties. Both sides should remain committed to the Composite Dialogue-a formal process of ongoing bilateral talks that began in 2004 and encompass a wide range of topics, including territorial issues. Additionally, trade should be divorced from developments within the security realm. This means that New Delhi should not impose punitive trade measures or close its borders if Pakistan-based terrorists attack India.

The report also underscores the imperative of acting quickly to cement trade normalization-because global economic developments make doing so a virtual necessity. Rich-country trading partners of India and Pakistan are facing economic slowdowns, and Europe's financial crisis is contributing to diminished exports. Now is therefore the ideal time for India and Pakistan to more robustly tap into each other's markets. To that end, our recommendations call for the implementation of trade-facilitation measures that accelerate the path to normalization.

These include loosening transit restrictions (India and Pakistan restrict each other's ability to use the other's territory to reach third countries); enhancing trade route efficiency (this can be done by improving the quality of roads and railways, and by removing restrictions on the type and size of trucks and train cars); and establishing new private oversight institutions-including a dispute resolution mechanism-to guide the bilateral economic relationship. The emphasis here should be tackling non-tariff barriers (from long waiting times at border crossings to rejections of bank-issued letters of credit) that make many exporters-especially Pakistani-reluctant to pursue cross-border trade.

In recent days, Islamabad has refused to provide a timeframe for completing trade normalization, other than some vague assurances that the negative list will be phased out after this spring's elections. According to Pakistani insiders, such statements are genuine. All political parties in Pakistan fully endorse trade normalization, argue these observers, and whatever the composition of the next government, it will be determined to move forward.

For the sake of regional peace, let's hope so. A new National Intelligence Council study contends that trade may be the only way to keep South Asia peaceful over the next 20 years-because it's the most realistic strategy to dramatically boost employment in Pakistan, and thereby to reduce the prospects for youth radicalization and a new generation of militants who terrorize both Pakistan and India.

So while trade normalization has great potential payoffs for India and Pakistan, it also matters immensely for the rest of us. In the words of one of our report's contributors, "the entire world has a stake in peace in South Asia."

Michael Kugelman is the senior program associate for South Asia at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. He can be reached at michael.kugelman@wilsoncenter.org and on Twitter @michaelkugelman

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s latest vague and controversial anti-U.S. remarks were puzzling to many people both inside and outside Afghanistan, as they implied that the United States is inadvertently colluding with the Taliban.  Despite the fact that he later accused the media of misinterpreting his comments and tried to clarify his remarks during a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Kabul, his comments generated a lot of noise, confusion, and varied interpretations by political commentators.

The most popular interpretations explained that Karzai’s bizarre remarks were likely aimed at cementing his patriotic image.  Others believed his comments were attempts to rebuild his legacy as he nears the end of his term in office.  Some speculated that they were a result of “bad advice” from his political cronies.

All of these interpretations may have shades of truth to them, yet there is another unnoticed nuance to Karzai’s remarks.  Karzai is displaying his influence over the U.S. because of two important matters: peace talks with the Taliban and the 2014 presidential elections.

With regard to the peace talks, Karzai wants to take the lead on the process, undermine any existing secret negotiation channels that have excluded him, and at a minimum, reduce Kabul’s dependence on Pakistan’s cooperation for the success of any future peace talks.  Having felt excluded from the “secret channels” allegedly opened by the United States to hold negotiations with the Taliban, Karzai also wants the Taliban to know that approaching the Americans for peace talks will end up nowhere if his government is not involved.  

To be able to dominate the political landscape, Karzai needed to showcase his power and authority to the Taliban and counter the militants’ long-running accusations that he is a “powerless” “puppet” of the Americans and that he does not have authority over major decisions in the country  So he staged the recent political drama by ratcheting up his demands on the transfer of the Parwan Detention Facility from the U.S. military to the Afghan government and the expulsion of U.S. Special Forces from parts of Wardak province.  He also stepped up his anti-U.S. rhetoric to ensure his demands were met despite widespread opposition from influential political and social groups in the country.  To add weight to his demands, he even involved the Council of Religious Scholars, a body widely considered to be a tool for advancing Karzai’s personal political goals.  While he achieved both demands, it was a political gamble that brought Afghan-U.S. relations to their lowest point in the last decade.  Yet for Karzai, the end result was that he managed to display his authority and influence over a major international player, though it has yet to produce any breakthroughs in terms of holding direct talks with the Taliban.

The second issue on Karzai’s mind is the 2014 presidential election.  He is constitutionally barred from running for another term, and the Afghan president knows well that his survival and his family’s and clan’s statuses in post-2014 Afghanistan depend on whomever becomes the next leader of the country.  Karzai’s anti-U.S. rhetoric and what it achieved will reinforce his position as a “Kingmaker” in the upcoming elections.  This is likely to mobilize powerbrokers around him and make it easier for his handpicked candidate to win the election because in Afghanistan, the perception of power is more important than actual power.

For Karzai, having a handpicked successor who ensures the continuation of his and his family’s interest and political survival is more a matter of necessity than choice.  This is because, in the incredible tale of Afghan history, many rulers of the country and their families have either been brutally killed or have faced permanent exile in foreign lands.  This unfortunate historical precedent has become even more prominent as five out of nine Afghan leaders and their immediate families have been murdered since the Communist revolution in 1978.  For Karzai, the stakes are even higher if he loses power or if he becomes politically irrelevant.  After all, members of the Karzai family and tribe have enjoyed incredible riches and political domination of southern Afghanistan over the last 12 years, sometimes at the cost of other tribes and political rivals.  Since 2001, his relatives and tribe have ruled the south of the country–where Afghan kings have historically hailed from–more like the Sopranos of Kandahar than the Kennedys of Afghanistan.  

With the Afghan election date fast approaching, the United States should expect more such erratic statements from Karzai.  But they should also understand that Karzai’s anti-U.S. statements neither reflect nor speak for the wider Afghan public view of the United States.  In fact, Karzai was taken aback by the harsh criticism he faced from majority in the country, including members of his own government.  This backlash stemmed from the anxiety that has gripped the country over the widespread belief that a premature withdrawal of the U.S.-led NATO troops will mark the beginning of a civil war in the country.  Many Afghans see their leader’s frantic and bizarre statements as not only damaging to the national interests of the country, but also further throwing the country into the arms of Afghanistan’s two rapacious neighbors: Pakistan and Iran. 

Najib Sharifi is the Director of Afghanistan New Generation Organization—a youth empowerment body based in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Ahmad Shafi is an Afghan journalist and a former NPR producer.

There is talk of civil war in the mountains of Khost, the fields of the Helmand River Valley, and on the streets of Kabul. With 2014 looming, Afghans, journalists, diplomats, and military officers alike are wondering what the future holds for this troubled country straddling the Hindu Kush.

Will there be civil war or not? In a recent report I co-authored with Scott Bates for the Center for National Policy, we pointed to civil war and the related problem of security force fragmentation as two of the biggest risks Afghanistan faces. Dexter Filkins penned a persuasive essay in the New Yorker full of vivid details about the factional and ethnic rivalries within the Afghan National Army (ANA) and among its glut of militias. One of his interview subjects memorably remarked:

This country will be divided into twenty-five or thirty fiefdoms, each with its own government. Mir Alam will take Kunduz. Atta will take Mazar-e-Sharif. Dostum will take Sheberghan. The Karzais will take Kandahar. The Haqqanis will take Paktika. If these things don't happen, you can burn my bones when I die.

Another journalist, Robert Dreyfuss, insists that such dire predictions are foolhardy. Citing Afghanistan's former Ambassador to France and Canada, Omar Samad, he argues that Afghans will look into the abyss, lean back, and compromise.

However, people on both sides of this debate are missing the forest for the trees. This misperception begins with our collective failure to take Afghanistan's history seriously.

We often act and talk as if Afghan history began on 9/11, but our reaction to al Qaeda's attacks was an intervention in a long-standing and still-unresolved civil war.

It began over thirty years ago, when the Khalq faction of the communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the regime of President Mohammad Daud Khan in 1978 and instituted a series of far-reaching radical reforms that sparked rebellion across the country. Against their better judgment, the Soviets occupied the country in support of their beleaguered communist allies, inflaming conflict, which saw seven main mujahideen parties supported by the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and a host of Arab volunteers pitted against the Soviets and the PDPA, who were also divided into two factions.

The mujahideen parties fought each other almost as much as the infidels. The "national" character of these parties was always a screen for a myriad of local conflicts over water, land, tribe, sect, ethnicity, prestige and power. 

The Afghan civil war can be divided into different phases. The first was the nascent period of unorganized rebellion that followed the overthrow of Daud Khan. The second phase witnessed the gradual organization of the rebels into the Peshawar Seven and the introduction of Soviet troops. These troops withdrew in 1989 and the mujahideen parties turned on each other along with various quasi-government militias, marking the third phase. The regime of President Najibullah held onto pockets of the country and Kabul. Then the Afghan security forces buckled as Soviet largess vanished into history. Kabul fell in 1992 and the mujahideen continued to fight each other for supremacy, beginning the fourth phase.  The Afghans looked into the abyss and jumped straight in.

The fifth phase saw the Taliban - a movement led by mujahideen veterans - storm through the south, take Kabul, and come to a stalemate with the Northern Alliance, a coalition dominated by members of Jamiat-i-Islami. The sixth phase began with Western intervention and the toppling of the Taliban regime in Kabul in response to 9/11. And the current phase has witnessed a return to rebellion, with the Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hizb-i-Islami, and Jalaluddin Haqqani's network battling the American-supported regime. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency has reprised its role in the Soviet-Afghan War, now sponsoring and directing rebellion against an American-led coalition.

The leaders of the current rebel movements are rooted in the Peshawar Seven. Taliban leader Mullah Omar fought the Soviets in the south as a part of Harakat-i Inqilab-i Islami. Gulbuddin, an old rival of Ahmad Shah Massoud, has been causing trouble ever since he took to throwing acid at the faces of unveiled women and brawling with rival student activists at the University of Kabul in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His Hizb-i-Islami fought Jamiat-i-Islami and others for control of Kabul in the early 1990s. Haqqani cut his teeth fighting Daud Khan in the 1970s and as a mujahideen commander under Mohammad Yunus Khalis in the 1980s.

And we see the same cast of characters elsewhere. The same mujahideen and government officials who were fighting for God and/or country, selling narcotics, and committing atrocities since the 1970s are some of our closest friends and allies in the war's current phase.

There are differences in scale between these phases in terms of ferocity of combat and destruction, flows of internally displaced persons and refugees, as well as the numbers of casualties. Estimates of casualty and, to a lesser extent, refugee figures in the last thirty years of war vary widely.

In 1978, an estimated 40,000 Afghans were killed, followed by 80,000 in 1979. By 1987, less than a decade after the Soviets entered the conflict directly between 1 and 1.5 million Afghans had been killed in the war. This represents about 9% of the entire Afghan population, which is higher proportionally than the deaths suffered by the Soviet Union during World War II. Losses were more than twice as high among refugees, who were often more vulnerable to attack, disease, infection, and starvation than those who remained in their villages. By the Soviet withdrawal, there were 6.2 million Afghan refugees in Iran and Pakistan.

During the 1990s, estimates of civilians killed range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands as the mujahideen fought over territory. Much of Kabul was reduced to rubble as various mujahideen commanders fought from neighborhood to neighborhood.

In 2001, different tallies claim somewhere between several thousand and 20,000 Afghans were killed as a result of the American-led intervention. Casualties dipped between 2002 and 2005. Since 2006, over 12,000 Afghan civilians have been killed due to the war. Most of these have been killed by the insurgency. These figures were increasing over the last few years, but have dropped in 2012. Regardless, they still pale in comparison to the 80s and likely the early and mid-1990s as well. More than 5.7 million refugees have returned to Afghanistan since 2002, but 2.5 million Afghan refugees remain, mostly in neighboring countries.

But war is not only a balance sheet of death and destruction. It is a political activity in which force is assessed to be an appropriate means by which to pursue political interests.

The underlying political disagreements, factional rivalries, toxic personalities, and Pakistani interventions and proxies that have been driving war in Afghanistan remain unresolved. The modern bureaucratic system that Western technocrats have willed into existence has not sufficiently vested Afghans in non-violent politics. Afghanistan is already divided into fiefdoms. An ocean of money and the American-led occupation force are all that holds them all together. Both will soon get much smaller.

So the question of whether or not Afghanistan will devolve into civil war after 2014 is the wrong one. The civil war will, of course, only continue. The question is, what will the next phase look like and how can we shape it for the better?

The greatest risk and most likely outcome is the fragmentation of the Afghan National Security Forces. The biggest danger is posed by the divisions within the Afghan National Police (ANP) and the Afghan Local Police (ALP) destabilizing the larger security force institutions. Most of the personnel in both of these forces are deployed in or near their home districts.

And like politics, all civil war is local.

The Nahr-e-Saraj police force in Helmand, for example, is divided between competing narcotics thugs, former Hizb-i-Islami fighters, former communists, and their children all of whom share a history of rivalry, murder, war, and hatred that have barely been contained over the last several years.  Different ALP militias in Central Helmand also hail from different factions. Once their special operations mentors withdraw, they may begin to clash with each other, the ANP, and the ANA.

As long as the United States and its allies stay abreast of these factional politics, they can mitigate -- but not avoid -- this fragmentation through proactive in-country diplomacy, firm mentoring, and appropriate mechanisms for the distribution of funding and supplies. ALP militias must be integrated into the Afghan National Police now rather than later. As the ALP force currently stands, it poses an unacceptable risk to the long-term integrity of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF).

The trouble is, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has not been systemically mapping these factional conflicts down to the local level and incorporating this information into their planning. ISAF, the Combined Forces Special Operations Component Command-Afghanistan, the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan, and the US Embassy in Kabul should create a large and mobile cell of officers, diplomats, aid officials, analysts. This cell would be tasked with traveling around Afghanistan and achieving a granular understanding of the local conflicts that are driving the war and threaten to tear the ANSF and the country apart.

What will the next phase of civil war hold? How many will die? Despite the thousands dead over the last decade, the current phase pales in comparison to the 80s and early 90s. Afghans may come to remember the last ten years as the orange slice in the middle of the soccer match. Some in Washington and London have vested hope in negotiations, but there is little evidence for optimism on that front.

Afghanistan is no longer a counterinsurgency problem. Most foreign troops will be heading for the exits over the next two years. Only by taking its politics and history seriously down to the local level will we be able to help ensure sufficient stability as the International Security Assistance Force itself becomes history.

Ryan Evans is a Research Fellow at the Center for National Policy.

As calls for an international intervention in conflict-wracked Syria begin to echo in Washington, it is critical that policy-makers remember the lessons learned in Afghanistan. One recent editorial on the crisis highlighted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's use of a United Nations Security Council brokered peace plan to buy extra time to crush his opponents, the Free Syrian Army.  The plan, pulled together by international envoy Kofi Annan, called for Syria to withdraw troops, tanks and heavy weapons from major urban areas where fighting has claimed over 1000 civilian lives in the last week.   Assad's predictable outmaneuvering of the U.N. drew this response from the Editors:

"The inescapable reality is that Mr. Assad will go on killing unless and until he is faced with a more formidable military opposition. That is why the shortest way to the end of the Syrian crisis is the one Mr. Obama is resisting: military support for the opposition and, if necessary, intervention by NATO."

I think that they are right.  But having participated in an intervention or two in my day, here are a few thoughts to consider before we jump in:

Go in light. 

There will be calls for a large-scale, multinational intervention.  But consider Afghanistan 2001, where 300 U.S. Special Forces and 110 CIA officers - supported by precision air strikes - partnered with the Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban in a matter of weeks.

Or Libya 2011; Operation Odyssey Dawn (U.S. operation) and Operation Unified Protector (NATO) used air strikes and Tomahawk missiles to cover ground assaults by forces opposed to Qaddafi's military.  Duration: months.

The takeaway: a small investment of ground, intelligence, communications and air support can help produce an insurgent victory in a reasonable amount of time.  Special Forces, for example - Arabic-speaking, experts in small unit tactics and calling in precision air support - can act as force multipliers by organizing, training, equipping and supporting the Free Syrian Army to conduct guerilla warfare, subversion, sabotage and intelligence activities. 

Equally important: the fewer American and coalition partners on the ground the better, as it gives the Free Syrian Army and political leaders-in-waiting more legitimacy. After all, this is their war to win.

Go in smart.

Following a Free Syrian Army victory, we can expect some kind of insurgency. Fomented by former al-Assad regime members with external support, this insurgency will include former Syrian military members, elites who have lost position, true believers, and citizens taking advantage of the chaos to address local grievances.

As the Syrian Army's fortunes decline, caches of weapons and ammunition will be squirreled away for future use.

That said, there are 100 things that can be done right now to tamp down those things that will foster a post-conflict insurgency.  And when it starts, there are 100 things that we need to do to put that insurgency to rest. 

Go in cheap.

The U.S. is broke.  In the coming year, the Pentagon, the Department of State and USAID will all suffer huge budget cuts.  And after burning through immense amounts of cash in Iraq and Afghanistan, politicians and citizens alike are going to want this one done on the cheap.

And do not expect our allies to pick up our financial slack.  NATO members are recovering from operations in Afghanistan and a rough economic ride thanks to the Euro crisis.

And that's okay - because going in with wads of money for stabilization, reconstruction and development can distort national and local economies and contribute to corruption.  It is better to have fewer resources, and work to get government and community contributions for proposed projects.   Sometimes less can be more.

Go in with humility.

If the Free Syrian Army pulls off a victory, they will have earned the respect of the world for winning their freedom from a ruthless dictator.

Let's be conscious of shackling and binding the new government with all sorts of Western cultural requirements.

In Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo and Bosnia intervening and international organizations have, at times, forcefully pushed Western ideas, notions and agendas before newly formed governments.  Note that what is important to us will probably be important to them too - but maybe not this year, or the next.  So think about what is immediately possible, and lay down the groundwork for that which is not. 

Go in - but be prepared to walk out

Do not want it more than they want it.  Never become so invested in another country's success that you cannot walk away.

If for some horrible reason the post conflict government participates in Human Rights violations, engages in corruption at levels that could lead to state capture, behaves in other ways that are irresponsible or reprehensible, and refuses to work with donor and supporting nations willing to assist them in recovery, then be prepared to walk away.

What is unacceptable in this day an age is to find your nation or international organization so leveraged by a new government that they can behave poorly and get away with it - because they know that you cannot leave; and that you will refuse to fail.

We do not want to find ourselves supporting a government that is as bad as the one that we helped remove.

Lastly, never take the first step until you know that last.

Do not commit to intervene until an agreement is reached with the Syrian opposition that outlines how the conflict ends and how the peace is to be secured. 

Perhaps an important starting point to the conversation: "what do you/we want Syria to look like in 20 years?"  The answer to that question tells you how to construct your post-conflict situation - and that in turn tells you how to fight your war.

Discuss things like:

- dismissing the Syrian military wholesale or deciding to work with it;

- choosing to form either a strong central government (that may lack capacity) or a federalized state;

- the process for creating a new constitution: timeline, participation, and content;

Essentially, what we want to avoid is rushing to bad decisions that will hamstring efforts to bring Syria back as a full participant in the world community.

Intervention seems to be a possibility.  We have a lot of experience and talent in this arena - let's put it to good use.

Roger D. Carstens is a Senior Research Fellow at New America Foundation.  A former Army Special Forces officer, he is currently in Somalia conducting research for a book that he is writing on counterinsurgency.

Thirty years ago, before there were cell and satellite phones, way before WiFi and drones, news about seemingly obscure wars like Afghanistan came from the plucky reporters who trekked into the heart of conflict to interview rebel fighters in their lair. British-educated Edward Girardet was looking for his "own Spanish Civil War or Vietnam to cover" when he graduated from college, and his reporting from Afghanistan for the Christian Science Monitor during the period of the Soviet occupation from 1979-1989 was a stellar example of the unilateral genre.

He would disappear from view for weeks on end, hike through contested zones with Russian troops very close by en route to the Panjshir valley, where he would interview "the Lion" -- guerrilla leader Ahmed Shah Massoud. To return to his home base in Peshawar he'd search for a Pakistani border post and turn himself in for illegally crossing the border. After tea and a friendly chat with the post commander, he'd be sent off on safe transportation. Girardet's Killing the Cranes makes gripping reading.

Jonathan Steele of London's Guardian also traveled to Afghanistan during the nine plus years of conflict, but he arrived by plane from Moscow, visa in hand, and covered the other side, reporting from the perspective of the Soviet-installed Afghan government and the Russian officials sent to prop it up.

The past is prologue in land-locked Afghanistan as anywhere else, and the challenge for both journalists in writing memoirs of the 1980s is to make the jihad of that era and the power they were fighting relevant to the very different contest now under way.  This isn't an easy task, for the arduous trek through the Hindu Kush will provide the brave, lone reporter at best a slice of events at a certain moment, but it may not have any inherent message for readers 30 years later. It is still tougher for someone who covered the war only from the Russian side, which would seem like a classic case of looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Full disclosure: I've known both authors for decades.

On the surface, there are more than a few similarities between the two periods: a superpower with enormous resources and advanced technology is bogged down in an asymmetrical war with indigenous Islamist insurgents, who survive in large part thanks to backing from neighboring Pakistan, which has an agenda of its own.  The differences also jump out: Pakistan, nuclear-armed, is now working both sides of the street -- facilitating the U.S. warfighting, while backing the Taliban insurgents killing U.S. troops. The added twist is that those insurgents in the past five years have spawned a Pakistani Taliban that seeks the overthrow of the Pakistani state.

Girardet's main contention is that by funneling weapons through Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), which heavily favored the ruthless commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the CIA set the stage for the struggle now under way. "Simply put, it was the U.S. backing of the Islamic extremists in the 1980s that helped produced the current military quagmire in Afghanistan."  Fair enough. But then he takes it several steps further. "The Hyena," as he calls Gulbuddin, never won a battle except against his Mujahidin rivals, and also "may have had dealings with the KGB," which "built him up" through its propaganda. His source for the latter claim is a 1990 research report by a House Republican committee on terrorism, co-chaired by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the champion of the Mujahidin cause. Girardet says the United States provided Hekmatyar at least half a billion dollars in military and financial support. While many of Girardet's claims are factually sound, what's missing is original research, so a reader can judge whether Rohrabacher's claim is true, partly true or a canard.        

The final quarter of the book is a once-over lightly account of the past 20 years, relying heavily on sourcing from non-governmental organizations. Girardet himself long ago started up his own NGO to encourage media coverage of conflicts. But the same initiative which led to a series of excellent guides for reporters covering Afghanistan also advocated involving "credible media, like the BBC and VOA more directly as a means of promoting mediation among the belligerents. This could be through practical information outreach aimed at making fighters and local populations more aware of on-the-ground humanitarian needs," he writes, thereby blurring the line between media and aid organization.

"As with so many foreigners passionately involved with Afghanistan, it has been hard to see what has become of this extraordinary country and its people since war first erupted in 1978," he writes, noting that "many of us have romanticized Afghanistan because of its harsh beauty and poetic embrace."

In December, 2001, the German government asked Girardet to take part in the Bonn conference setting up a transitional government in Afghanistan. He was in a group examining constitutional and legal aspects, a crossing of lines which no staff journalist could do. Girardet then switched hats in his book, criticizing his own work: "Much of what finally emerged from the Bonn accords was a recipe for disaster...equally farcical is the legal system that eventually emerged," thereby denouncing what seems to be his own handiwork.  It would have been valuable to know just how that salami was made.

This is not an analytical book; it lacks source notes; and the case for his conclusion on the last page -- "All I see is a replay of history" -- is thin. For example, he compares Operation Moshtarak, the high profile U.S.-led operation in 2010 to remove the Taliban and the drug trade from a key part of Helmand province, with the Red Army offensive against Massoud in Panjshir.  "Operation Moshtarak had clear parallels with the Red Army-Afghan offensive I witnessed twenty-seven years earlier in the spring of 1982 against the Panjshir.  The push, which involved some twelve thousand Soviet-Afghan troops, was roughly the same size as Marjah's," he says. In 1982, he recalls, reporters were with the guerrillas, slept in the villages, drank tea with the locals. Girardet notes with surprise that the "dispatches from the British and American military fronts of today often seem to be from a different war, with assessments that have little to do with Afghanistan." 

But he should know that the Taliban are not Massoud's Panjshiris; their commanders will kidnap a journalist trying to embed with them, sell him or her to other commanders or hold them for ransom for a year or more. The aim of Moshtarak was to set up civilian control and leave, a far cry from the Red Army offensive.

Girardet also acknowledges that enterprising Afghans are now starting up businesses, cross-border trade is vibrant, newfound wealth has enabled local people to send their children to schools, and education is one of the country's "most dramatic success stories."

Steele's "Ghosts" is a packhorse of a different color, recounting his trips into Kabul in 1981, 1986, 1988 and 1989, but without any reflection or second thoughts.  His sources are largely from the Soviet-backed People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA), with no voice from the guerrilla side except for the much despised Hekmatyar, with whom he had some fascinating exchanges. Even though Steele has returned to the country several times since 9/11, he apparently did not use the opportunity to flesh out his facts.

This is an unabashedly revisionist history of Afghanistan in the modern era.

Steele says a lot of Afghans still admire Najibullah, the Soviet-backed leader who served as president from 1986 to 1992 after heading the KHAD secret police at a time it reputedly arrested, tortured and killed large numbers of Afghans.

"In today's Afghanistan, many Afghans in their late thirties or older look back on the Najibullah period with nostalgia, and his picture is occasionally seen on windshields or bumper-stickers in Kabul.  People remember it as a time of genuine national sovereignty in which a secular and apparently uncorrupt regime was in charge." 

"Some older Afghans even hark back favorably to the Soviet period, when millions of rubles of aid flowed into the country and did not disappear into ministers' or other corrupt pockets in the way it has done more recently under the US occupation." No source given, so just take it on faith.

Ghosts is built around a device that will madden any serious student of Afghanistan: a set of myths supposedly held by the western media and governments.

"One reason why the United States has repeated so many Soviet mistakes is that much of the West's conventional wisdom on Afghanistan rests on myths," Steele writes. "Policymakers and the media peddle an inaccurate view of Afghanistan's history. In this book, I hope to set the record straight."

Chief among these "inaccuracies" is that the defeat the Soviet Union suffered in Afghanistan was a military defeat during nine plus years of guerrilla war. According to Steele it stemmed directly from the failure of the Soviet project to modernize the country.  The defeat "was political, not military," he writes. "Moscow's attempt to safeguard the PDPA program of radical reform in one of the world's poorest and most conservative countries had run into the sand." But this was a historic defeat for the Red Army too, for the collapse of political support for its venture in Afghanistan led to the collapse of the Soviet dominance in Communist East Europe.

Steele makes no secret that he opposed the U.S. intervention after 9/11, putting him in a minority at the left-of-center Guardian. He recounts the debate: "The war's opponents (myself included) argued that attacking Afghanistan would provoke anger in many parts of the Muslim world and increase the terrorist risk.  The ‘war' against terrorism was not a job for troops or missiles. It should not really be a war at all. Dealing with terrorists had to be a combination of politics and police."

He says he also argued to his colleagues that Osama bin Laden, unlike Japan during World War II, was not interested in territory, for "his was a war of ideas."

A revisionist perspective sometimes leads to fresh insights and a valuable critique.  But in this case, no example jumps out that is worth citing. What does jump out is that the author, in failing to shoot down the very myths he posits, gives currency to the Soviet myths used to justify the invasion.

Take "myth" number three: "The Soviet invasion led to a civil war and Western aid for the Afghan resistance. " To counter this, he quotes a Russian diplomat "who preferred not to be named" 30 years later after the event. "Soviet officials...believed that holding Kabul, the other main cities and the roads connecting them was enough to keep the Mujahedin at bay and prevent Afghanistan from going over to the Western side."

Another variant is "myth" two: "The Soviet invasion was an unprovoked attack, designed to capture new territory." In actual fact, Steele reports, "the invasion's primary aim was to protect the Soviet Union's southern border and save a revolutionary government that was meeting armed resistance."

The inconsistencies largely discredit the thesis. Was it the threat of Afghanistan going "Western" that led to the invasion, armed resistance against a friendly government, or a Soviet desire to "modernize" Afghanistan?

His debunking is sometimes simplistic. Take the "myth" that the CIA's supply of Stinger missiles forced the Soviets out of Afghanistan. That, according to Steele, is "a right-wing propaganda attempt to manipulate history." 

In the more recent era, his "myths" defy the facts. He calls it a "myth" that the Taliban "are uniquely harsh oppressors of women," and then there is myth 13: "Banning girls from school is a Taliban trademark." He even calls it a "myth" that the West abandoned Afghanistan after the Red Army departed.

The lack of rigorous analysis, far from undergirding, instead raises questions about his major point, which is to plead for Washington to negotiate a "power-sharing" arrangement with the Taliban, though he doesn't define what that would be. He doesn't help his case by saying there's "one enormously important difference" between the record of President Obama with Soviet Party Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev, he says, seriously sought a negotiated exit while the U.S. sought to extend the civil war.

"The lesson for today is clear," Steele says. "This time there must be negotiations.  For the Obama administration to put its weight behind a serious effort to end the Afghan civil war would atone, in part, for the U.S. policy of sustaining and enlarging it in the 1990s."

If you accept Steele's reading of history, this may well follow.  Anyone who doesn't will have to look for a better set of arguments.

Roy Gutman is McClatchy Newspapers' bureau chief for Turkey and the Gulf, based in Istanbul.

The idea of defiance against tyranny and oppression owes a great deal to Hussain ibne Ali, the hero of the battle of Karbala in 680 AD. With just 72 valiant followers and family members, the grandson of Prophet Mohammad faced the military might of the Muslim empire ruled then by a despot, Yazid bin Mu‘awiya. Hussain refused to sanctify Yazid's reign through baya'a (allegiance) and consequently, he and his small contingent were martyred in the most brutal of fashions. The accompanying women and children were imprisoned for months in the dark alleys of Damascus.

On every Ashura, the 10^th day of the Muslim calendar month of Muharram (which fell on December 6 this year), many Muslims all across the world commemorate Hussain's great sacrifice, but tragically the central message ofKarbala appears to evade the broader Muslim thinking today. In Western literature and research on Islam, this episode is often viewed through the lens of certain Shi'a rituals practiced on and around Ashura. It is worth probing why that is so. Even more importantly, it is critical to understand why terrorists and extremists like al-Qaeda andthe Taliban often attack the Ashura related gatherings (as is evident from attacks in recent years in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan), and what is at the core of their disdain of all the things that Imam Hussain stood for.

A brief historical reference is required to understand the context of Ashura.After Prophet Mohammad's death in 632 AD, the expansion of Islam became a global phenomenon, courtesy of a variety of means. Islam was a rising power in theworld, but in the process, the fabric of Muslim society was also being transformed, as the Muslim outlook was gradually influenced by people from various cultures. New elites that were more interested in power and wealth alone started emerging as more influential, and consequently, Islam's emphasis on egalitarianism, justice and equity started getting diluted. A deliberate attempt to imitate the dynastic empires of the Byzantines and Sasanians was obvious to many observers at the time. The distortion of Islamic ideals became a favorite pastime of Yazid and his coterie. The expansion of influence by way of the sword was a hallmark of his times.

Imam Hussain, the spiritual custodian of Islam at the time, staunchly stood against this shifting tide, and his unprecedented sacrifice was intended to shake the Muslim conscience and expose the misleading path introduced in the name of Islam. It was a matter of principle for him - one of human dignity and honor. Challenging the newly introduced monarchical system of government was another important feature of this struggle. In his last sermon before departing from Madina on his journey towards Karbala, Iraq, he made clear his mission: "I seek to reform the Ummah of my grandfather." An armed struggle for that purpose was never his intended route. He believed in conveying the message through love and compassion. It was a message motivated truly by humanity. The great Indian leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi aptly acknowledged this by saying: "I learned from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed."

This was not a mere political battle, though some Muslim historians try to project it that way so as to cover up not only Yazid's atrocities, but indirectly to defend his school of thought as well. The mainstream view, however, both among Sunni and Shi'a Muslims, is very sympathetic toward Imam Hussain. It would be an absolute travesty of Muslim history to call this a Sunni-Shi'a battle. Some writers still do that, either out of lack of in depth understanding, or in a flawed effort to simplify things for a lay Western reader. On the Muslim side, only a handful of controversial clerics project this version.  Still, most Muslims shy away from digging too deep into the matter, and carefully avoid questioning the historical developments leading to the rise of Yazid.

Insightfully, the whole narrative of tragedy at Karbala would have remained unheard of without the tireless struggle of Hussain's sister Zainab ibne Ali, who as an eyewitness of the tragedy propagated details of the event far and wide among Muslims. While in chains, she courageously challenged Yazid's policies on his face in his court in Damascus soon after the battle at Karbala. Many Muslims -- some out of ignorance and others out of bigotry -- avoid appreciating the crucial role of a woman in this grand struggle. Zainab's contribution to fighting for the essence of the Muslim faith was as critical as that of Hussain.

Though Shi'as are often at the forefront of commemorating the tragedy of Karbala, Sunnis, especially those belonging to the Barelvi school of thought in South Asia and almost all Sufi circles in broader Asia and the Middle East, also enthusiastically participate in paying homageto Imam Hussain and his companions. Extremists and terrorists among Muslims want to destroy this element of unity, as sectarianism suits their divisive and violent agenda. Distorting religion to make it dogmatic in outlook and regressive in approach is also what helps them achieve their goals exceedingly well. For them, political power is an end in itself. Hussain's message stands completely contrary to this perspective.

The attack on Shi'a Muslims observing Ashura in Kabul on December 6, which killed 55 people, was a manifestation of the perpetrators' perverse worldview. Next door in Pakistan, where this threat is more pronounced, a heavyprice (in the form of terrorism and violence) is being paid for ignoring the expanding tentacles of religious extremism. Though things remained peaceful on Ashura in Pakistan this year, the Kabul attack was claimed by a splinter wing of a banned Pakistani sectarian group, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi(LeJ). Authorities have yet to uncover solid proof ofwho was responsible. Irrespective of whether the Afghan Taliban was directly involved in this specific attack or not, their policies during the ‘reign of terror' in Afghanistan (1996-2001) indicate that they hold similar views toward those who honor the martyrs of Karbala. Taliban massacres of ethnic Hazara Afghans (of whom the vast majority areShi'a Muslims) in the late 1990s are a case in point.  The curse of sectarianism has inhibited spiritual growth of many Muslims.

The remedy to the malady lies in mainstreaming the message of Karbala both within the worldwide Muslim communities and among those who are interested in deciphering the foundational themes of Islamic discourse. At a higher level, Hussain's message of defiance against oppression and personal sacrifice for the cause of humanity is applicable for a broader audience for generations to come.

Dr. Hassan Abbas is a Senior Advisor at the Asia Society and the editor of Watandost blog. He is based in Washington D.C.

ISLAMABAD -- After a team of helicopter-borne U.S. Navy Seals stormed a compound in the densely populated Bilal Town neighborhood in the Pakistan Army town of Abbottabad, Osama bin Laden was dead. Pakistan was notified after the operation. The U.S. Congress and citizens alike are dumbfounded that America's archenemy was hiding in the plain sight of the Pakistan military and intelligence rather than in the mountainous frontier of the tribal areas. Former President George W. Bush famously declared that the United States would smoke him out of his cave.

However, Abbottabad is far from a cave. The small city is about a three hour drive from Islamabad, reached through roads that trace the modest altitude climb. The town is a hilly and verdant spot where many Pakistanis retreat for the summer when the plains are scorching. It's near some of the famous hiking spots such as Natiagali. Abbottabad is covered in most guidebooks for Pakistan, including Lonely Planet. Most notably, the hill-town is also home to Pakistan's Military Academy and indeed, Bin Laden's massive, albeit non-luxurious, lair was a mere kilometer from this prestigious institution and the security that accompanied it.

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Will Pakistan go the way of Tunisia and Egypt? Are we on the verge of witnessing throngs of discontented Pakistanis storming the streets of Islamabad and Karachi seeking an end to a wobbly democratic regime with an ever-attentive military establishment keeping a tight leash on its extraordinary privileges?

It's not completely fanciful. Some key similarities do exist between Pakistan and Tunisia and Egypt. Obviously, they are predominantly Muslim countries, they have all experienced long periods of authoritarian rule, they have significant military establishments, and they are all U.S. allies to varying degrees. Despite the willingness of their political elites to work with the United States, especially on the "war on terror," significant segments of their populace remain either hostile toward or suspicious of the United States.

These common features might well lead some to conclude that Pakistan could be on the precipice of a political upheaval, and indeed, Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, was recently forced to defend against the comparisons. Despite these seemingly compelling similarities, it is unlikely that Pakistan will witness a societywide political uprising that will challenge the existing political order.

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Wearing army fatigues and a red cap, Zaid Hamid is perhaps Pakistan's best-known television personality. The strategic affairs expert, who coined the term 'Hindu Zionist' to describe the hypothetical Indian and Israeli nexus against Pakistan, has become a household name across the country for his conspiracy theories on economic terrorism and Indian-U.S.-Israeli plotting. His Facebook page currently has a following of 66,000, among them students of expensive schools and even pop singers and fashion designers. Whether it is explaining Taliban militancy, Pakistan's ever-present electricity crisis, Blackwater's involvement in planning terrorist attacks, or plans for the U.S. to take over Pakistan's nuclear weapons, conspiracy theorists call the shots in Pakistan.

Pakistan's booming television industry, allowed to operate by ex-dictator Gen. Pervez Musharraf, helped lead to his downfall. The country's vibrant Urdu press, which outsells its English-language counterparts in most areas of the country, also helps shape public opinion, with its small army of retired military officers and civilian officials dominate the opinion pages to air their misgivings and concerns. It seems that anti-Americanism on the op-ed pages sells to Pakistanis, who are among the most anti-American people in the world.

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