This piece is based on a policy paper by Thomas F. Lynch III entitled "The 80 Percent Solution: The Strategic Defeat of bin Laden's al-Qaeda and Implications for South Asian Security," published on February 3, 2012 by the New America Foundation's National Security Studies Program. To read the entire 30-page paper, please click here.

With the death of Osama bin Laden in May 2011, the United States and Western governments scored a major but still underappreciated victory in the nearly decade-and-a-half-old war against al-Qaeda. Bin Laden's death did not eliminate all of the features of al-Qaeda that make it dangerous as a factor in terrorism internationally. Its role in assisting regional jihadist groups in strikes against local governments and by inspiring "lone wolf" would-be martyrs in acts of violence will remain with us for many years.  Yet the manner in which U.S. intelligence and military operatives found and eliminated bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, was devastating to three of the five most critical features of bin Laden's al-Qaeda:

• Its legitimacy as a core organization capable of choreographing catastrophic global terrorist events;
• Its brand name rights as the ultimate victor should any of its loosely affiliated Salafi jihadist regional movements ever achieve success in a local insurgency;
• Its ability to claim that it was the base for certain victory - much one able to less reestablish a credible unfettered training area for global jihad - in the area most critical to its own mystical lore: Afghanistan and western Pakistan;

Bin Laden's demise also degraded by half - but did not eliminate - the fourth and fifth elements of al-Qaeda's essence: its role as a "vanguard" of a wider network of Sunni Salafi groups and its ability to serve as a key point of inspiration for "lone wolf" terrorists around the globe. As a consequence, the death of Osama bin Laden has produced an 80 percent solution to the problems that this unique terrorist organization poses for Western policymakers.  

This 80 percent solution has multiple, important implications. Globally, it means that al-Qaeda's growing isolation from alternative, nonviolent approaches to political change in the Muslim world must be reinforced - and is best reinforced - with a deliberate and visible reduction in the U.S. military footprint in Islamic countries worldwide. Washington can best isolate al-Qaeda and limit its ability to reclaim relevance in the struggle for reform in the Islamic world by quietly enabling security forces in Muslim states to counter al-Qaeda affiliates while simultaneously providing judicious and enduring support for Muslim voices for nonviolent political change.

Yet the most immediate implications of this historic development matter to the trajectory of U.S. policy in South Asia.  Bin Laden's demise fundamentally alters the current framework of U.S. and coalition strategy in Afghanistan, and challenges the underpinnings of U.S. policy toward Pakistan.

Al-Qaeda's earliest conception of itself - developed in the late 1980s - included the bedrock function of serving as the base for continuing guerrilla warfare in Afghanistan. Its largely Arab and Egyptian core leadership shared a bond forged in the fight against the Soviet Union and felt the victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan to be of Allah's will and making.  Since late 2001, al-Qaeda has shared with the Afghan Taliban a view that Pakistan is the natural location for vital efforts to free Afghanistan from foreign rule - to validate the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan by another successful guerrilla war.      

At the same time, the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda's core leadership have long diverged in goals and aspirations. These differences were papered over by the personal history between bin Laden and key Afghan Taliban figures - especially the late Younis Khalis, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Omar.  With bin Laden's death, the glue that papered over these fissures is gone. His personal oath (bay'a) to Mullah Omar has no analog with Ayman al-Zawahiri or the cohort of Egyptians and Libyans now at the helm of al-Qaeda's remaining core elements in Pakistan. Al-Qaeda may continue to drape itself in the Taliban flag and proclaim allegiance to Mullah Omar, but with bin Laden's death the Afghan Taliban faces one stark certainty. While it shares a loose but important Salafi jihadist credo with al-Qaeda, it remains dependent on all manner of support for its insurgency from elements within and beholden to the Pakistani security services.  Afghan Taliban leaders must calculate their futures based upon this dominant reality. As they do, al-Qaeda's ability to repeat its propaganda performance following the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan - taking credit for any (unlikely) defeat of the United States or any important role in the (more likely) successes the Taliban may have in carving out political space in the country - will wither rapidly.

Absent bin Laden, the risks of al-Qaeda's return to unfettered sanctuary in Afghanistan or western Pakistan have dropped dramatically, while the risks of a devastating proxy war between India and Pakistan - nuclear armed nations that have fought three shooting wars and indulged in several other martial crises since 1947 -- over their relative positions in Afghanistan continue to grow.  Absent the onset of a stark proxy war between India and Pakistan in Afghanistan, Pakistan's military and intelligence leadership will have very little interest in seeing al-Qaeda again set up shop from which to wage a bloody campaign of international terrorism and will utilize the tools at their disposal to constrain this possibility.

American policy must wake up to the fact that the risks of devastating proxy war between India and Pakistan now dwarf the risks of al-Qaeda's return to unfettered sanctuary and recalibrate its diplomatic energies and military priorities accordingly.  The United States must reduce its present focus on killing off every last al-Qaeda affiliated leader or mid-level Haqqani Network operative in Pakistan and pay far more attention to the factors necessary to inhibit proxy war in Afghanistan: a tense but enduring U.S. diplomatic relationship with Pakistan designed to calm its fears that growing Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) will become an Indian-directed dagger aimed at Pakistan's back, and diplomatic engagement with Pakistan and India on an acceptable political and security framework for Afghanistan into the next decade.  NATO force planners then must devise processes to draw down to the residual  U.S./coalition military stabilization forces necessary to stay on for the rest of the decade, enforce this essential Indo-Pakistani framework agreement, and serve as a buttress against points of friction or violence in Afghanistan that could descend into the chaos of a proxy war conflict.   These vital outcomes will require earnest and difficult negotiations with the Pakistanis, Indians, Afghan Taliban, and northern ethnic groups in Afghanistan.   Negotiations focused on these outcomes have not even begun.   It is time that they do.

Dr. Thomas F. Lynch III is Distinguished Research Fellow for South Asia and the Near East at the Center for Strategic Research, part of the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies.  The views expressed here are his own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government.

On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta stated that the United States would take a step back from its combat role in Afghanistan by mid-2013.  Newspapers and news shows alike are reporting that this is a major milestone towards ending our decade long war in this troubled country.

This is a significant announcement - but not for the reasons that one might think.

At the strategic level (where heads of state, Foreign Ministers and 4-star generals play), Secretary Panetta's pronouncement will shock no one.  His statement gives voice to what the International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF) is already doing, namely taking the steps needed to end their mission in Afghanistan on 31 December 2014.  To get from here to there, ISAF will transfer lead security responsibility to the Afghans at the Province and District level in a measured fashion - a process that is already underway.  In other words, NATO is already "pulling back" from combat operations.

Where this statement will have impact is - oddly - at the tactical level, where U.S. Combat Brigade Commanders will be compelled to stop taking the lead in fighting the enemy and instead support their Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) counterparts as they assume battlefield responsibility.

And this is important. It may mean the difference between winning and losing.

Left to their own devices, U.S. Army and Marine Colonels - Brigade Commanders in charge of 3,500 men and often given responsibility for one or more of Afghanistan's 34 Provinces - will relentlessly hunt down the Taliban (or Haqqani Network, etc), only nominally bringing their Afghan partners into the process. 

And why should they?  After all, their bosses usually made them responsible for security, governance, development, and rule of law - rating them on the progress that they make in their "battle space." 

To support the efforts of the ANSF instead would require a Brigade Commander to assume risk, as the ANSF:

- may not be there in great numbers;

- may be lead by corrupt or incompetent leaders;

- may not have the staff or battlefield processes to conduct full scale military, police, and civilian operations across the area of a province;

- may not be exceptionally proficient at military or police operations.

The list goes on and on.

So rather than risk failure (and soldiers hate to fail) many (not all) commanders take on the responsibility of fixing and doing everything themselves.

Don't get me wrong - the Afghans are there - but the weight of success or failure seemingly rests on the back of the U.S. commander.

The problem with this is that if the U.S. Brigade Commander succeeds, he also fails. 

Because in this counterinsurgency, the only way you ever really move towards a "win" is if you enable the Afghans in their efforts to foster security, governance, development and the rule of law in a way that makes their efforts sustainable - meaning that after we leave, the Afghans can secure their gains and hopefully make even more progress.

But to do that, you have to back away and put the ANSF and the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (GIRoA) in the lead. You have to let them feel the weight of the responsibility of success or failure.  You cannot do it for them.

And that is why Secretary Panetta's statement is important.

In the coming year, field commanders will be told that their main responsibility is not to ensure that "they" make progress in "their" province, but rather that they support their ANSF and GIRoA counterparts' progress.  U.S. units will go from being supported by the Afghan military to supporting the Afghan military. 

Nuanced? Sort of.  But to a military commander, this results in a change of mission and a change in mindset.

As an example, it will affect how a commander prepares his forces for their mission in Afghanistan. Instead of conducting pre-deployment training that focuses on unilateral or even partnered combat and counterinsurgency operations, the commander will have to get serious about training for Security Force Assistance (SFA), a mission set that involves training, advising and assisting the military and police forces of a Host Nation.

We may even start to see units arrive in Afghanistan that have been cobbled together to conduct SFA.  These units might include officers and enlisted men who speak Dari or Pashtu and are experienced in training Host Nation forces and delivering critical enablers such as air support, medical evacuation and advanced communications.  (Sadly, the spadework necessary to determine what an effective Advisory and Assistance element will look like has not yet been done.  There are some models in practice that are less than optimal; and there are some rather good ideas floating around out there; but the SFA model that will best allow the coalition to manage the transition from combat to an advisory and assistance role has yet to be solidified.  Expect added pressure to the Department of Defense to figure this out in the wake of Secretary Panetta's proclamation.)

To be sure, there are commanders out there who get it.  At the strategic level, General Allen, the Commander of ISAF, and his team certainly do.  And at the tactical level, I can point to old hands like former Task Force Yukon's commander COL Mike Howard and newer ones like Task Force Duke's COL Chris Toner (both of whom patrolled the environs of Khost Province near the Afghan/Pakistan border) who have taken the steps needed to make sure that the Afghans in their area of operations are prepared to take the lead.  But not all have changed the cognitive gears necessary to ensure ANSF and GIRoA success.

So at the end of the day, the Secretary's announcement may not seem like news to a lot of people who live and breathe Afghanistan.  But his statement is welcomed in that it requires a needed change of mindset for those Brigade Commanders who will be tasked with making strategic statements work at the tactical level.

Roger D. Carstens is a retired Special Forces officer who served in Afghanistan from 2009 - 2011 as the Senior Civilian Advisor on the COMISAF Advisory and Assistance Team.

The title of Ken Ballen's recently released book, Terrorists in Love: The Real Lives of Islamic Radicals, is misleading. I put off buying it for some time because of the title, which implied it would provide a sympathetic view of terrorism and constitute yet another rant against "failed" U.S. counterterrorism policies since 9/11.

However, I have always been impressed with the nonprofit organization run by Ken Ballen, Terror Free Tomorrow, and its solid polling work in Pakistan and other Muslim-majority countries. This compelled me to take a closer look at the book, which I ended up reading on a flight to South Asia last fall.

Terrorists in Love is more than a captivating read. It provides fresh insight into how al-Qaeda and its jihadist allies have manipulated young Muslim men into following a hateful and destructive ideology that kills countless innocents -- mostly other Muslims. We have heard a great deal about al-Qaeda's recruitment and training process from U.S. experts, but Ballen describes the terrorism phenomenon in the jihadists' own words, bringing deeper understanding to the issue.

Through interviews and extensive research, Ballen profiles six jihadists, some of whom eventually renounced al-Qaeda. It is the stories of those who become disillusioned with al-Qaeda and its aimless violence that are the most interesting and that need to be publicized more widely. Indeed, exposing first-hand personal accounts of the contradictions and corruption within the terrorist movement likely will hasten its demise -- a process already underway thanks to the elimination of Osama bin Laden and an aggressive drone-missile campaign in Pakistan's tribal border areas.

Ballen acknowledges in his introduction that there are many different paths to becoming a jihadist and that the individual stories in the book should not be viewed as representative of all radical Islamists. The first chapter is a telling eyewitness account of al-Qaeda deceiving a young man into taking his own life and others. Ahmad al-Shayea is a Saudi who at the age of 19 goes to Iraq to fight Americans, after seeing photos of tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It is a story of disillusionment -- one that many other Muslim men would surely have expressed, had they lived to tell about it.

Ahmad al-Shayea is tricked by two Iraqi fighters into driving a truck loaded with explosives, from which the two Iraqis suddenly jump, just before the bombs go off. Ahmad miraculously survives the explosion, and the rest of the chapter recounts his recuperation at an American hospital in Iraq.

After the ordeal, Ahmad retains his steadfast belief in Islam, but he has awoken to the al-Qaeda lie. He proclaims his desire to go on television to tell other young Saudis that "Al-Qaeda was not for Islam; it was not for humanity." And that, "I am a living example of al-Qaeda's hellfire...I want them to see how al-Qaeda tricked me into killing innocent people."

Terrorists in Love pulls no punches in its depiction of the close relationship of the Pakistan military with jihadist terrorism. In one chapter, Malik -- an Afghan refugee who grows up in Pakistan, joins the Taliban, and has personal encounters with Mullah Omar -- becomes disillusioned with the Afghan Taliban when he discovers its reliance on Pakistan's intelligence agency (run by the Army) for training, weapons and funding. Malik feels ashamed that his organization must rely on an army that also receives support from the Americans. However, instead of abandoning jihad, Malik joins the Pakistani Taliban to attack what he views as the double-dealing Pakistani military.

In the fifth chapter, we become acquainted with a Pakistani jihadist whose father is a colonel in the Pakistan Army. The colonel is disdainful toward Islamist extremists and works for the Strategic Plans Division, which controls Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. His responsibilities include keeping Pakistan's nuclear assets out of the hands of extremists, like his own son. The irony of this complex father-son relationship story brings home the reality of the dangers in Pakistan, where the institution in charge of protecting the country's nuclear weapons also arms and trains the Afghan Taliban.

Ballen concludes from his research and interviews that Muslim communities themselves must develop ways to counter extremism, while also acknowledging that the U.S. cannot afford to be complacent against extremists dedicated to killing Americans. His overall recommendation for the U.S. to simply lead by example is unrealistic, however, especially in light of the democratic revolutions sweeping the Middle East, where U.S. silence could contribute to more bloodshed. America should not retreat from actively promoting democratic ideals in the Middle East, as Ballen suggests, particularly since the principles of liberal democratic governance are a powerful antidote to Islamist extremists' message of intolerance, hatred, and repression.

Ballen's work is well worth a read by anyone seeking to understand more fully the complex and multiple factors that drive terrorism. The reader will have to judge whether Ballen was brave or merely naïve in agreeing to meet with extremists at hotels in Islamabad. But the conversations he recorded from those probably ill-advised meetings are eye-opening, and should help U.S. policymakers develop more finely-tuned messages and policies to fight the ideological battle laid bare in Terrorists in Love.

Lisa Curtis is a Senior Research Fellow on South Asia at the Heritage Foundation. 

The on-again, off-again effort by the Obama administration to begin preliminary peace talks with the Taliban is still struggling to get off the ground. The first move focuses on a statement by the Taliban against international terrorism and in support of a peace process and the opening of a Taliban office in Qatar.  For this the Taliban have called for the release of its prisoners held at Guantánamo Bay.

To garner support for this initiative, the administration's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Ambassador Marc Grossman, has been traveling in the region, including meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, to make sure he is on board. Afghan officials have expressed concern about the possibility of a ‘secret deal' being struck between the Taliban and the U.S.

But that would be unlikely, given the administration's oft-repeated public assurance that it supports an "Afghan-led and Afghan-owned" reconciliation process.  In fact, what is more likely than a ‘secret deal' is no deal at all.

Earlier high-level efforts by the U.S. government to have ‘peace talks' with the Taliban may be instructive.  As Winston Churchill said: "The further back you look, the farther forward you can see."

The Taliban history of negotiating with its opponents reveals little reason for optimism. Striking a deal with its sworn enemies does not appear to be in the Taliban's DNA. Instead, past experience suggests it has adopted the negotiating equivalent of the "rope-a-dope' strategy in boxing -- agreeing to enter the ring, playing for time, evading and avoiding committing itself, letting the opponent wear himself out, then hitting back hard as it had intended to do all the time.

In April 1998, then U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson traveled to Afghanistan to meet with the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, in order to bring them to the table to discuss the possibilities for peace. He also tried to persuade the Taliban either to expel Osama bin Laden or extradite him to the U.S. for his complicity in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. 

In his memoir Between Worlds, Richardson described the outcome: "Flying back to Pakistan that night, I thought, Well, this was a good day's work. Peace talks would get started later in the month, and if they went well, we might get bin Laden after all.  But it wasn't to be. The agreement held for a while, but we quickly learned that the Taliban had no intention of making peace with the Northern Alliance. By early May, a belated spring offensive had begun and the two sides were at it again."

In February 1999 there was another attempt at direct talks with the Taliban.  After the bin Laden-directed bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, I traveled to Islamabad with the State Department's coordinator for counter-terrorism, Michael Sheehan, to meet with Mullah Abdul Jalil, a close adviser to Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar (from 1997-2001 I attended some 20 meetings with Taliban officials). The U.S. government had repeatedly demanded that the Taliban stop giving safe haven to terrorists. Now we told Jalil that the U.S. would hold the Taliban itself directly responsible for bin Laden's actions, and respond accordingly.

Mullah Jalil said that bin Laden was becoming a burden on Afghanistan, but that he was under the Taliban's control and he could not possibly be operating a worldwide network as we suggested. Later efforts were made to provide the Taliban with more information about the U.S. case against bin Laden, but they never responded.

Subsequently the UN Security Council tried to persuade the Taliban to turn over bin Laden.  Two resolutions were adopted, and sanctions were imposed, but, again, the Taliban defied these calls by the international community. On a scale of one to ten on good faith negotiations, the Taliban proved to be a zero.

Are the Taliban likely to be any more accommodating today, specifically the Quetta Shura faction still led by Mullah Omar? Recent statements issued by the "Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan" on January 3 and January 12 suggest not. That was the name the Taliban gave Afghanistan during its rule from 1996 to 2001. The international community never recognized it. The Taliban still stick to it.

Taken together, these statements lay out the Taliban's ‘going in' position for peace talks, including the departure of all U.S. and foreign forces and a continuation of their "jihad" until that goal is accomplished. Also, the movement remains at least in rhetoric opposed to negotiations with the Karzai government (referred to as "the stooge Kabul administration") as well as acceptance of the Afghan constitution.

Administration officials say that while they are under no illusion about the chances of success in opening direct talks with the Taliban, they are convinced that a political settlement is the only solution to the war. But they also need to be convinced that the Taliban is serious about a future for Afghanistan that is not a return to the days of the "Islamic Emirate." 

In this regard, several probing questions need to be asked of Taliban representatives during what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says is "still in the preliminary stages of testing whether [talks] can be successful":

• Do the Taliban accept a political solution to the Afghanistan conflict, and what is their vision of it?
• Do the Taliban have a political and economic plan for the future of Afghanistan?
• Will they accept the international instruments to which Afghanistan has acceded, particularly with regard to human rights?
• Will they honor and enforce the rights of women, minorities and ethnic groups?
• Will they respect the role of shuras (tribal councils): local, provincial and national?
• Are they willing to support and abide by internationally acceptable mechanisms of legitimization, like elections, referendums or tribal consensus?

During the years of repressive Taliban rule, none of these questions could have been answered in the affirmative. Can they be today? 

And, more importantly, what concrete steps can be taken by the Taliban to demonstrate that they will abide by their declarations and assurances in the future?  A good, measureable place to start for the Taliban to establish their bona fides would be an end to all suicide bombings in Afghanistan. Other confidence building measures would need to follow.

Another quote by Winston Churchill that relates to opening up direct talks with the Taliban is one of his most famous: "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war." It is axiomatic at this point that the conflict in Afghanistan will not end by military means alone. And the search for a political settlement must reach out to all parties -- but with eyes wide open.

Karl F. Inderfurth is a Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  He served as assistant secretary of state for South Asian affairs in the Clinton administration (1997-2001).

Afghanistan policy, like Vietnam policy before it, has taken on a life of its own, impervious to ground truth. The simple reality is that "peace talks" with the Taliban have no chance whatever of a positive outcome from the perspective of U.S. policy. Just as it did in Vietnam, the United States has been fighting the wrong war in Afghanistan with the wrong strategy from the very beginning.

In Vietnam, the United States was ideologically hell-bent on fighting a war against communism, and shaped its strategy accordingly. For nearly a decade in Afghanistan, the United States has insisted on fighting a secular war, a counterinsurgency, against a religious movement.  However, our enemy in North Vietnam was not fighting a war for communism, and in Afghanistan our enemies are not fighting an insurgency. They are fighting a jihad, and no South Asian jihad in history has ever ended in a negotiated settlement. And this one will not either.  There is no overlap between the way insurgencies and charismatic religious movements of this archetype in the Pashtun belt end.  Insurgencies by definition have both political and military arms. Regardless of what they have learned to say, the Taliban does not.  One hundred percent of the  movement's leaders are Muslim clerics. After fighting a second war in Asia the wrong way for almost a decade, the United States is now again desperately seeking a way out of the quagmire from within the wrong set of potential outcomes.

The primary reasons why "peace talks" are delusional are three fold:  First, there is no"Taliban" in the sense the proponents of talks envision it. To believe so is cultural mirroring at its peak.  Second, the enemy is interested in pre-withdrawal concessions, not a settlement, in an alien culture in which seeking negotiations to end a war is surrender. To believe otherwise is simply wishful thinking. And third, no understanding with senior clerics in the Taliban movement has ever out lived the airplane flight back to New York. Like a second marriage, trusting the "Taliban" to keep a bargain is a victory of hope over experience.

First, the best way to understand the "Taliban" is not as a political entity that can carry out negotiations, but as an event in time analogous to the First Crusade.  It is a loose network of military-religious orders which share a common goal, quite similar to the Crusader orders, which  included the Knights Templar, Knights of Malta, and the Knights Hospitaller. The "Taliban" is comprised of similar military-religious orders, including, to name a few, the Haqqani network, the Quetta Shura, the Tora Bora Front, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the Lashkar-i-Taiba, Hisb-i-Islami Khalis, and Hisb-i-Islami Gulbuddin.  Like the crusaders, who shared a common purpose and owed allegiance to the Pope in Rome, the "Taliban" groups share a common purpose and acknowledge the religious supremacy of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Amir-ul-Mumaneen, or "Leader of the Faithful," in Quetta.  And like the crusader groups, the "Taliban" groups have no real "political wing," because in the jihadist mindset now ascendant in the Pashtun region, Islam and governance are not separate entities. The church and the state cannot be disaggregated in this way.

Just as the Knights of Malta did not agree on policy matters with the Knights Templar, and carried out radically different strategies in the Holy Land, so the various groups of the jihad often fundamentally disagree with one another on how to achieve their common goal of establishing religious rule over disputed territory. Each jihadist group has, just as each crusader group had, its own unique and complex internal dynamics. And, just as the Pope was distant from the Holy Land, Mullah Omar is distant physically and operationally from the central battlefields in Afghanistan. The course of events in Afghanistan, as were those on the ground in Acre, Tyre, or Jerusalem, are decided by local dynamics, events, and power struggles -- not by the Pope, and not by Mullah Omar. Just as the Vatican had no practical control over the behavior of the Knights Templar on the ground in Jerusalem, the Quetta Shura has none over the operational activities of the Haqqani Network, the Tehrik-i-Taliban, or even its own local commanders fighting in Afghanistan. Even if one could find bonafide representatives of the Quetta Shura, and not a conartist Quetta cobbler as was the case last time, the Quetta Shura cannot control events in Afghanistan any more than the Vatican could control events in the Holy Land in the eleventh century.

Second, the motives of any such representatives simply do not now and will never coincide with our own. The Quetta Shura has no genuine interest whatsoever in any "peace talks" or negotiations except to gain concessions such as the release of their comrades in Guantanamo Bay. They have fought for almost 20 years for control of Afghanistan and are now within two years of the withdrawal of foreign troops. As the new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) makes unequivocally clear, they have not in anyway changed their intent to retake control of Afghanistan and reestablish their Islamist state. If they had any interest in genuine talks, they would hardly have assassinated Berhanuddin Rabanni, head of the Afghan High Peace Council and the Karzai regime's lead negotiator, last year. 

Furthermore, although the Pentagon has added the imaginary golden fabric of "progress" and the imaginary significance of the "attrition of mid-level leadership" to the emperor's new clothes of peace talks in Afghanistan, both of these are simply fictitious. The reality is, despite all the Pentagon smoke and mirrors, the new NIE shows there has been no sustainable progress in Afghanistan, and the enemy still has a virtually unlimited supply of soldiers and leaders. There are hundreds of thousands of recruits waiting to join the cause in Pakistan, every village has a mullah to lead them on the battlefield, and the madrassas of Pakistan produce hundreds of new militant mullahs every year. They have extensive direct and indirect military support from the Pakistani government and army. And just as the Saigon government was in Vietnam in 1970, the Karzai kleptocracy in Kabul is illegitimate, incompetent, and utterly unpopular in Afghanistan today. As the desertion of a third of the tiny Afghan National Army each year proves, almost no one except Americans and Britons are willing to die for it. On a good day, the Afghan National Army has perhaps 100,000 men under arms.  In a sobering comparison, the South Vietnamese army (ARVN) had more than a million men under arms, including a large, modern air force, in a country one quarter the size of Afghanistan, and it collapsed in three weeks of fighting in 1976. The Taliban, who have studied American military history, fully understand this calculus.

Finally, the last nail in the coffin for "peace talks" is simply pragmatic. The Taliban in its original, unsplintered form, was a notoriously unreliable partner in discussions. In seeking to mediate with its elements between 1996 and 2001, foreign groups representing every interest from health care to oil pipelines to preservation of antiquities found that every "understanding" with the Taliban had completely unraveled before the foreign negotiators had even landed back in New York or London. The Taliban of 1996-2001, which was infinitely more centralized and controllable than it is today, never kept a single such agreement for more than a week. 

In summary, wishful thinking aside, there is no central, political entity called the "Taliban" with whom to negotiate. The enemy is not interested in "peace talks" when they are convinced they have already won a complete victory against a hated and infidel puppet regime and an American puppeteer they now see as weak. And even if all that were not true, today's disaggregated jihadist groups would not and could not keep any bargain which a few members of one crusader order might make in any case. "Peace talks" and hopes of a negotiated solution in Afghanistan are delusional, and American policy-makers should be devoting their time and efforts to managing the coming civil war in Afghanistan rather than weaving any more new clothes for the emperor. In the next phase ofthe war, which will certainly begin when NATO has removed most of its combat power from the country, the United States will face stark political and military choices in determining the modality and extent of its support to the non-Pashtun ethnic groups who will oppose the Taliban's restoration.

Thomas H.Johnson is a Research Professor in the National Security Affairs Department at the Naval Postgraduate School and the Director of the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies. M. Chris Mason is a retired Foreign Service Officer with long experience in South Asia and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies in Washington, DC.

As Yogi Berrafamously put it, "It's déjà vu all over again." Amid a looming budget standoff,a presidential election cycle in full swing, and the popular dissatisfaction ofboth the left and the right, the United States has arrived -- yet again -- at acritical juncture in its war in Afghanistan, with key decisions being debatedconcerning the post-surge scenario and the prospects of political reconciliationwith various militant groups. The tragedy is that, much like its previousiterations, the current round of the Afghanistan debate in Washington isriddled with a staggering number of mischaracterizations. While the Cold Warproduced a cohort of able Soviet specialists, the decade-long war inAfghanistan has so far failed to produce sufficientregional expertise in the United States (this reasonably comprehensive list, for example,identifies just 107 Afghanistan-watchers in the United States).

Consequently, anumber of questionable assumptions about the Afghan people -- concerning theirattitudes to foreigners, their history, their society, and their values -- gounchallenged. Historicalanalogiesand socioeconomicdata are regularly manipulated by various parties to validate their ownbiases and preconceptions, and readingsof Afghan historyare, when not completely erroneous, unapologeticallyWestern-centric. For example, onecommon view that has gainedcirculation among think-tankers, policymakers, and congressional staffersis that a majority of Afghans are inherently hostile to the United States. Yet this viewpoint is not borne out by polling data, however imperfect. Thelast pollconducted by ABC News, the BBC and, ARD German TV, for example, says that nearlyseven in 10 Afghans support the presence of U.S. forces in their country.

Another and perhapsmore damaging misperception is of Afghanistan as the "graveyardof empires": a historically insignificant strategic backwater where greatcivilizations -- inevitably European ones -- ended up mired in ruinous war. Buteven a cursory examination of the region's history makes a mockery of this nowentrenched concept. During his conquests, Alexander of Macedon spent about twoyears solidifyinghis control of what is today Afghanistan and Central Asia, referred to inhis day as Bactria and Sogdiana. In fact, his army chose to reverse its coursein today's Punjab, over 200 miles to modern Afghanistan's east, afterthe Battleof the Hydaspes. The 19th-century British Empire, despitean initial setback, wonsubsequent engagements against the Afghans in its bid to create a bufferzone to British India's northwest. And the defeat of the Soviet military in the1980s was only made possible with American,Pakistani, and Saudi support.

The "graveyard of empires" canard also largely ignores non-Western history. Ancient and medievalAfghanistan was in fact at the heart of a number of major civilizations,including the GreekBactrian states; the KushanEmpire, which was a contemporary of imperial Rome; and, from the 10th to 12th centuries, the Ghaznavidsultanate, whoserulers made regular military forays into the subcontinent. The great MughalEmpire, at its zenith perhaps the most prosperous realm on Earth, had itsfoundations in what is today's Afghanistan, when its progenitor Baburestablished a presence in the region between Kabul and Peshawar. Count, on topof all this, several centuries of sustained Persian rule over the region.

In addition topopular misconceptions of Afghan xenophobia and historical backwardness, argumentsare regularly setforth about theincompatibility of Afghan societywith democracy.Although Afghanistan does have a history of underdeveloped democraticinstitutions, there are many reasons to question this blanket assessment.Definitional problems certainly persist: For many rural Afghans, democracyconnotes unlimited freedoms, rather than responsible and self-determinedgovernance. During the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet forces and their Afghan clientsoften called themselves democrats, further adding to confusion about the termin the minds of many Afghans. At the same time, there are mechanisms -- shuras,jirgas -- that, though hardly Jeffersonian, are analogous to the town hallsthat formed the bedrock of early American democracy. In this year's edition ofthe reasonably reliable Asia Foundation surveyof Afghanistan -- which polled 6,348 Afghans from all 34 provinces -- anoverwhelming 69 percent of Afghans polled say they are satisfied with the waydemocracy works in Afghanistan.

Ethnic politics isanother common source of confusion, with regular calls now heard inWashington for a soft partition of the state, creating a Taliban-dominated "Pashtunistan" separated from a confederation of provinces dominated by ethnicTajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Soft partitions, which were also advocatedin the case of Iraq not that long ago by U.S. Vice President JoeBiden, may appear to be easy and seductive solutions to pacifying complexpost-colonial societies overrun by civil war. But among otherproblems, they present a moral quandary, implicitly (thoughunintentionally) opening the door to ethnic cleansing. A cursory look athistory tells us that the partition of mixed political entities has almostalways been accompanied or preceded by ethnic cleansing or immense sectarianviolence: Consider India, Palestine, Bosnia, or Cyprus. Afghanistan'spopulation is heterogeneous, and given the commitment to establishing apluralistic and democratic state, calls for the country's de facto or de jurepartition appear both irresponsible and impractical.

Just as there areseveral peculiar narratives about Afghan society and history in steadycirculation, thereis also growing skepticism aboutthe United States' abilityto prosecute theAfghanistan war, with enormousdivergences between official U.S. and Afghanperspectives. One reason often cited for limiting the United States'involvement is the financial burden that the Afghanistan war represents in an era ofausterity. But according to the Congressional ResearchService, the war in Afghanistan will cost the United States an estimated$114 billion this year, a mere 3 percent of the federal budget, and a muchsmaller fraction of the American economy. This appears to be a small investmentrelative to the importance to American foreign policy and national security ofgetting Afghanistan right.

Somecommentators make theargument that the Afghanistan war is a sideshow to other forms of securitycompetition, particularly in East Asia -- that, in essence, the continued U.S.involvement in Afghanistan distracts from looming threats to U.S. securityposed by other great powers such as China. This is questionable for at leasttwo reasons. Firstly, other major powers -- including China, India, Russia, andIran, all of whom see Afghanistan as part of their extended neighborhoods -- areclosely watching developments affecting the U.S. position there. Americansuccess or failure will resonate in Moscow and Beijing, as well as New Delhiand Tehran. Secondly, the United States is not confronted with a binary choicebetween prosecuting the Afghanistan war and retaining a military presence againstmajor state threats. The United States has faced multiple security challengesbefore; the resources required to tackle them are quite different from oneanother; and U.S. military resources dedicated to securing Europe and theAsia-Pacific region have been steadilydeclining regardlessof investments in Afghanistan.

Finally, it is widely believed today inWashington that the Taliban enjoy popularpublic support, particularly among the ethnic Pashtun population ofAfghanistan. If true, it is certainly not reinforced by extant survey data. Noris the Afghan public weary of the United States' intensified involvement. Accordingto the Asia Foundation survey, aplurality of Afghans (46 percent) believes that the country is headed in the rightdirection, compared with 35 percent who believe otherwise. What is even moreencouraging, only 11 percent of Afghans have a lot of sympathy for armed opposition groups,half the proportion who expressed similar sentiments two years ago. In that sameperiod, those who have "no sympathy at all" for the Taliban have almost doubledto 64 percent of the population. Despite frustrations with the ability of the currentgovernment to deliver, Afghans express optimism about democracy as a principle,associating it most closely with peace and freedom. The United States, suchpolls clearly reveal, should not fool itself with undue pessimism. Its effortsare gradually beginning to bear fruit.

Currently,Afghanistan's fledgling state, though challenged frequently by security, governance,and development problems, has an elected government and an internationalpresence to contribute to the work of nation-building. Despite the ongoinginsurgency, widespread corruption, and the daily risk of arbitrary orextrajudicial killing, the Afghan people continue to strive for normalcy intheir day-to-day lives and hope for peace and prosperity in the future. Withthat in mind, the pontification of a few pundits and the exigencies ofnear-term politics should not lead to poor or rash decision-making. A balancedview of Afghan public opinion, history, culture, and politics -- and, just asimportantly, of the United States' ability to shape these factors in advancingits national security interests -- is crucial as Washington debates a decisionthat will have important regional and international implications for decades tocome.

JavidAhmad, a native of Kabul, is program coordinator and Dhruva Jaishankar is program officer with the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund of the UnitedStates in Washington, D.C. The views reflected here are their own.

Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz has set off a political firestorm in Pakistan with his claims that he was brokering an offer from Pakistan's civilian leaders to the Pentagon to unseat the leadership of the Pakistani military.

Those accusations forced the resignation on Tuesday of Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, who Ijaz says orchestrated this proposal, which was delivered in a unsigned memo in May to Adm. Mike Mullen, then-U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

Pakistan is a nuclear-armed state that is home to a number of Taliban groups that attack U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan and also is home to what remains of al Qaeda's "core" organization.

Haqqani helped smooth over many tense moments in the important U.S.-Pakistan relationship, including the shooting in January of two Pakistanis by CIA contractor Raymond Davis and the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad in northern Pakistan in May.

To read the rest ofthis article, visit CNN.com, where it was originallypublished.

Peter Bergen is thedirector of the National Security Studies Program at the New AmericaFoundation, where Andrew Lebovich is a policy analyst. They edit the AfPak Channel.

This is part 3 of a series contributed by WORDE researchers as they traveled to the two main theatres of Pakistan's war against the Taliban - Swat and the tribal belt - to explore how civil society is countering extremism at the grassroots level.

In Charbagh, a quiet town in Pakistan's fabled Swat Valley, storefronts perforated by bullet holes are a haunting reminder of how the Taliban insurgency brought militants dangerously close to Islamabad in 2009. Once romanticized as the Switzerland of South Asia, Swat is now heavily guarded by military check posts.

We attended a jirga, or assembly, in the town of Bahrain in Swat to understand how the Taliban came to power and how the locals challenged their reign of terror. According to village elders, the real problem began about twenty years ago, when Sufi Muhammad, the "godfather" of the Swat Taliban, established the Tehreek-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (TNSM - The Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Laws). In 2002 he was arrested for leading 10,000 volunteers from Swat and surrounding districts to fight against coalition forces in Afghanistan, and his organization was officially banned. He was released in 2008, by which time his son-in law Maulana Fazlullah had taken up his cause.

Fazlullah, better known as Mawlana Radio for his broadcasts, targeted the uneducated in remote villages who were unable to distinguish religious conservatism from extremism.  He presented himself as a liberator, exploiting age-old tensions between laborers, farmers, and the rich landowning class.  Many Swatis readily bought into his narrative, and were made to believe that the United States and Pakistan were orchestrating a conspiracy to destroy Islam. According to locals, women in the area donated massive amounts of gold from their dowries to support Fazlullah's purportedly holy cause.

When the Taliban came to power in 2007 they revealed their true colors, embarking on a systematic, violent campaign to wipe out dissent. We were told the stories of countless moderate religious and political leaders who were targeted for speaking out against the Taliban. Revered Sufi leader Pir Samiullah was killed in the town of Matta along with 63 of his followers. He was hung from a tree for four days. In Kabal, Maulana Hamidullah was murdered during his evening prayers after he openly criticized the Taliban in one of his weekly sermons. Hundreds of schools were destroyed. Community leaders who refused to send their children to fight in the jihad were executed. It soon became evident that the Taliban had little to do with Islam.

To counter the Taliban's violent tactics, community leaders chose peaceful modes of resistance. A major anti-Taliban madrasa in Swat financially supported families of scholars who had been killed, and publically honored their late loved ones as fallen heroes. In Malakand, religious scholars organized a peace jirga and issued a fatwa accusing the Taliban of treachery. In Saidu Sharif, public events were organized in mosques to raise awareness that the Taliban were operating against Islamic law. When the Taliban tried to force the elders of Bahrain to sign a declaration in support of the insurgent group, the elders turned around and challenged the Taliban to a public debate on their beliefs. According to a prominent elder, "There was no doubt we would win the debate, so with the support of the entire town behind us, the Taliban relented and let us return to our mosques in peace."

In tandem with these local efforts, the people of Swat set out to raise awareness of the crisis at a national and global level. Zubair Torwali, a social activist from Bahrain, wrote a seminal article, "From Swat with No Love," revealing the plight of Swat in Pakistan's mainstream media for the first time. Others followed suit, and finally, images of the Taliban flogging a teenage girl sent shockwaves throughout Pakistan.

Torwali and other activists also set up Amankaar Tehrik, or "peace movement," to mobilize political institutions to counter violent extremism. Bushra Gohar, a member of the National Assembly of Pakistan from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, convened jirgas of Swati activists and public intellectuals to bring awareness of the problem to policymakers in Islamabad. Meanwhile, religious figures from the frontier region of Pakistan briefed other anti-Taliban religious leaders from across Pakistan during the Istehkam-e-Pakistan Conference in Lahore. Together they pledged their support for military operations in Swat.

As the Taliban drew closer to Islamabad in 2009, the Pakistani military also waged a campaign to win "hearts and minds" in the region. Omar Tirmizi, a young army captain who lost his leg fighting in Bajaur explained how his unit gave their rations to villagers to gain their trust. The response was positive. That summer, with enough political capital and public awareness, the military successfully waged its offensive against the Taliban.  A community activist in Swat explained, "Once the military arrived, we all hoisted white flags on top of our houses to signify our support for the state."

Today, Swat is once again considered safe, and tourists are slowly returning. According to Nasat Iqbal from the government's Social Welfare Organization, women are playing a major role in promoting education and leading rehabilitation projects. In nearby Malakand, the Jamia Subhaniyya Rizvia is building one of the first religious and vocational schools for women in the tribal belt, with accommodations for up to 200 students. There are other signs that people are gradually rebuilding their lives. Vibrant cultural traditions, which had been prohibited by the Taliban's puritanical decrees, are once again being celebrated. A week before we arrived in Swat, Mr. Torwali had co-sponsored the Simam Cultural Festival, attended by thousands.

Swat's success hinged on an integrated approach, which should be replicated at the epicenter of Pakistan's war against extremism, the tribal belt. There as in Swat, civil society actors, including religious and political leaders, elders, and educators, lead daring resistance efforts against all odds. We visited a flagship madrasa within a network of anti-Taliban educational institutions in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). In the surrounding hills, an infamous Taliban commander is waging one of the bloodiest wars in the region. A local educator explained, "When militants began threatening the schools, hundreds of our teachers publically pledged never to allow extremism to enter our campuses." His students established lashkars (militias) and even set up a radio station to challenge extremist narratives. However, given the increasing threats from militants and waning support from the government, these endeavors were ultimately short-lived.

Parallel efforts are being waged by Shi'a Muslim community leaders in FATA to reinforce mainstream Islamic principles of religious freedom and pluralism. According to Dr. Javed Hussain, a former member of Parliament from Parachinar (just across the border from Tora Bora), thousands of members of minority groups have been persecuted by the Taliban since 9-11. Just this summer, community activists from his region organized a major press conference at the National Press Club to demand greater media coverage of the targeted killings in FATA. "There was a time," a local Shi'a leader explained, "when we used to host musical evenings with our Hindu and Sikh neighbors. In the dead of winter, we even housed Christian families in our homes when they didn't have any heating sources." Today, at great personal risk, he affords safe passage for those fleeing the region. He added, "Every morning I think of my mother and pray that she doesn't have to witness the pain of her son passing away." Despite courageous efforts at the grass-roots level, much more is required to mobilize all of Pakistan behind a full-fledged counterinsurgency operation in the tribal areas.

Without ongoing action to counter radical ideologies and support the efforts of moderates, militants could eventually resurface under a different alias. Let's not forget that the Swat Taliban have already done this twice in the last two decades. As we were leaving Peshawar, a prominent poster on the road read, "Allah is our God and Jihad is our way!" This is a chilling reminder that military offensives have to be followed by a sustained campaign to counter Talibanization at its roots.

Waleed Ziad and Mehreen Farooq are leading a project to analyze the role of Pakistan's civil society in countering extremism for the Washington DC-based World Organization for Resource Development and Education (WORDE).

Every night throughout Afghanistan, international forces launch kill/capture raids on Afghan homes. Over the past two years, the use of night raids, particularly by U.S. Special Operations Forces, has skyrocketed-increasing at least five-fold since February 2009, indicating an important tactical shift by U.S. and international forces in Afghanistan. With the withdrawal of international forces approaching, this shift likely foreshadows the future of military operations in Afghanistan. But these operations continue to be marred by weak accountability and transparency, secrecy in targeting, and substantial popular backlash, which will have significant long-term consequences should the United States and its allies remain so reliant on such raids.

My organization, Open Society Foundations (OSF), in partnership with the Afghan organization The Liaison Office (TLO), recently released a report that examines the impact night raids have had on Afghan civilians. We found that International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) reforms, primarily through two tactical directives, have one the one hand resulted in significant improvements in how the raids are planned and executed, resulting in reduced risk of civilian casualties, greater accuracy in selecting targets, reduced property damage, increased use of Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), and more respectful treatment of women during operations.

But our report also found that despite these reforms, improvements have not won much support from Afghans, because they've been overshadowed by the dramatic surge in the number of night raids and perceptions among many Afghans that abuses go unpunished.

Speaking with victims of night raids, a major complaint continues to be accountability. Despite some improvements, ISAF responsiveness to claims of civilian harm from night raids remains weak. Because the vast majority of raids are carried out by U.S. Special Operations Forces -- the least transparent forces operating in Afghanistan -- it's exceedingly difficult to follow up on specific cases of civilian casualties or wrongful detention. In many cases, a strong presumption on the part of ISAF and U.S. officials that night raids are accurate often means that allegations of civilian casualties and targeting mistakes are simply not trusted. Investigations are infrequent, findings are not typically made public, and compensation for victims is, based on our interviews with officials and Afghan civilians, uncommon.

What may in part explain the dismissal of such allegations of civilian harm in night raids is the definition of who can be targeted in such operations. Our report on night raids documents a substantial "widening of the net," which has resulted in the detention of significant numbers of civilians.

In a single three-month period earlier this year 1,900 individuals were detained, most of whom were eventually released, raising questions about whether they should have been detained in the first place. We also documented a number of large-scale detention or "clearance" operations in which multiple compounds or entire villages were cordoned off, and male civilians indiscriminately rounded up for screening and questioning. In October 2010, for example, U.S. Special Operations Forces raided Otmenzey village in Kunduz and detained 80-100 men and boys overnight in a mosque. According to witnesses, they used masked informants and indicators such as beards to pick out individuals for further questioning at a Special Operations detention facility. All were eventually released. To the Afghans we interviewed, this makes night raids look more like indiscriminate intimidation, not specifically targeted, intelligence-driven actions. While intelligence gathering is critical, using night raids to arrest and interrogate civilians without clear justification often causes unnecessary harm or trauma, provoking backlash and undermining international forces' legitimacy.

Targeting policies and practices have profound implications for civilians in Afghanistan. Throughout the country, militants can exercise significant control over people's lives. Many have little choice but to interact with militants, provide food, water or shelter to insurgents living in or passing through their villages. As one man from Kandahar told us, "Our entire district is controlled by the Taliban. There is no government or Americans here. We have to have contacts with the Taliban...they come to our homes and take lunch and dinner by force." But such incidental and often coerced contact with insurgents does not convert civilians into combatants or justify targeting and detaining them in military operations.

This blending no doubt presents international forces with an immense challenge in distinguishing civilians from fighters; yet this difficulty is precisely why a workable, clear, and legally sound definition of who is targetable in operations like night raids is so necessary. But secrecy continues to shroud how precisely targeting works in night raids -- and how individuals are ultimately singled out for detention or death.

There are also serious legal concerns raised by expanded use of night raids, particularly those that detain individuals for intelligence-gathering purposes. Given that night raids are military operations, not law enforcement actions, under international law such force should generally only be used against combatants-not against civilians who aren't members of the insurgency or directly participating in hostilities. Intelligence value alone is not generally sufficient grounds to detain individuals and certainly not justification for launching military attacks on their homes and endangering their lives. This does not mean that the U.S. military cannot detain people, or question those who may have valuable information. However, where those individuals are not clearly combatants, the kind of force used in military operations and applicable Rules of Engagement (ROE) are inappropriate. Instead, law enforcement-style operations and rules of force should apply.

There is also evidence that insufficient consideration is given to alternatives to night raids, such as conducting raids in daytime hours or simply requesting individuals to voluntarily submit to questioning. With Special Forces and intelligence personnel increasingly in the lead, night raids may be a strongly preferred tactic not because of a lack of feasible alternatives, but because it is what these forces are good at. The availability and particular expertise of Special Forces, as well as their relationship to intelligence officials, biases commanders in favor of this tool-leading to an over-reliance on such raids and underestimation of their true costs.

As targeting and detentions broaden, we also found that many view raids as increasingly indiscriminate, arbitrary, and unjust, contributing to popular backlash that is readily exploited by militant groups. Such blowback, especially as it accrues and is inevitably politicized over time, also imperils the legitimacy and credibility of U.S. and international forces, as well as longer-term peace building efforts. Among political leaders in Afghanistan, this blowback exacts an enormous toll on diplomatic relations, undermining progress on key issues like the U.S.-Afghan strategic partnership, which will govern U.S. forces' involvement beyond the 2014 pull-out date.

There is a disturbing parallel between these concerns and those surrounding drone strikes across the border in Pakistan, which have also increased dramatically in recent years. Like night raids, drone strikes are conducted largely in secret by intelligence forces, with little to no accountability and transparency, and making use of an ill-defined, potentially overbroad basis for targeting. Popular and political backlash, most evident in Pakistan, undermine U.S. development efforts and seriously diminish its legitimacy and political capital. As with night raids, recent short-term successes as well as the rapidly developed capacity of the CIA and U.S. military's drone programs may bias decision-makers and lead to systematic underestimation of these kinds of longer-term costs and consequences.

The dramatically expanded use of both night raids and drone strikes foreshadows a troubling, dangerous future for U.S. counterterrorism and counterinsurgency. These tactics bring the conflict directly into the homes of more and more civilians, and as our report on night raids documents, efforts to improve conduct are often overshadowed by the sheer increase in the number of operations as well as continued perceptions of impunity. Despite the fact that violence against civilians is still disproportionately carried out by the Taliban, expanded night raids will almost certainly have an outsized impact on Afghan feelings toward foreign forces. Without stronger accountability, less secrecy, and more creative thinking about how to effectively engage and protect civilians, the long-term impact of such operations will more likely than not undo any short-term tactical gains.

Chris Rogers is a human rights lawyer for the Open Society Foundations specializing in human rights and conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker's Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against Al-Qaeda,traces the evolution since 9/11 of U.S. counterterrorism strategy within themilitary, intelligence agencies, and law enforcement, the results of which are nowat work in combating al-Qaeda and its affiliates worldwide. Schmitt and Shankerdo a thorough job of pulling together all of the bits and pieces of the effortsacross the myriad agencies and departments now dealing with terrorism, and presentingthem in a fast paced, gripping story. The authors personalize the often mundanebureaucratic policy initiatives such as Presidential findings, resources, andauthorities needed to gradually shift our approach to terrorism through thestories of key individuals working on these issues over the last ten years.

The pair further put flesh on the bones of our counterterrorismcampaign by highlighting key milestones such as the raids on al-Qaeda leaders andsafehouses in places like Taji and Sinjar in Iraq. These battlefield detailsshow the reader how policy initiatives and technology developed in Washingtonand elsewhere actually played out on the ground, and how the treasure trove ofintelligence gained from such operations then, in turn, helped our policies shiftand enhanced our knowledge of al-Qaida's operations and leadership.

Shanker and Schmitt describe in detail how people like thePentagon's former Assistant Secretary for Special Operations and Low IntensityConflict (now Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) Michael Vickers and then-JointSpecial Operations Command chief Gen. Stanley McChrystal pushed for the droppingof information barriers and the massive influx of resources that allowed forceson the ground to "find, fix, finish, exploit, and analyze" information gainedfrom the battlefield. This push in turn made the discovery of al-Qaeda's "Rolodex"at Sinjar and their "database" at Taji possible. The information proved sovaluable that it changed our diplomatic approach to countries producingterrorist recruits and harboring facilitation networks. Rather than keeping theinformation gleaned classified, McChrystal:

Decided to break down more walls.He believed that effective pressure could be mounted by sharing the informationwith the countries of origin for the jihadists -- even those countries withwhich the United States had little or no alliance in the struggle. And, evenmore, he thought the pages of the highly classified intelligence findingsshould be thrust into the very public marketplace of ideas to shape theinternational debate on terrorism.

From my own experience commanding Special Forces unitsduring multiple tours in Afghanistan, the authors' description of how themilitary and intelligence agencies grappled with integrating the various "INTs"(signals intelligence, human intelligence, imagery intelligence, etc) islargely accurate. Throughout my tour in 2006 we had to request these assetsfrom the theater headquarters level. However, by my next tour in 2009, not onlywere the various types of intelligence pushed out to my forces in the field,but we had actual representatives from the various intelligence agencies aswell as the FBI attached directly to my command, representing a sea change inour ability to exploit intelligence and target insurgent leadership. 

The pair then turn to how our counterterrorism campaign hasgrown and developed beyond kill-capture missions to executing increasinglysophisticated counter-messaging campaigns, as well as efforts to counter all aspectsof terrorist networks, such as their ability to recruit and train, theirability to raise funds, and the legitimacy of their actions within the broaderMuslim world. The authors are critical of the Bush Administration for itsinitially narrow focus on kinetic missions, the lack of an overall strategy andthe paucity of resources applied to the campaign, and in turn, credit the ObamaAdministration for our now more expansive approach. Yet I would argue, based onmy time in the Pentagon's Office of Special Operations and Low IntensityConflict and later in the White House, that the current, more sophisticatedcounterterrorism campaign is a natural progression that benefitted greatly fromthe trial and error of previous years.   

But setting these details and descriptions aside, perhaps thecentral theme running throughout Counterstrikeis the application of deterrence theory from the Cold war to the issue of counteringterrorism. Schmitt and Shanker do a masterful job of explaining the important elementsof the theory and the problems key Bush Administration officials had with usingtraditional tools to possibly deter a person willing to die for a cause. Theearly post-9/11 thinking was that terrorists did not seize or want to hold territoryin the traditional sense, were not afraid of retribution, and did not have resourcesthey needed or wanted to protect. In keeping with that thinking, theintelligence community's initial focus was to shift resources to fill itsinitial intelligence gaps, while the military focused on enhancing its abilityto kill or capture individual al-Qaeda leaders.

However, Schmitt and Shanker trace how a small group of formerCold War theorists slowly began gaining traction with their idea of a "newdeterrence." Douglas Feith, Barry Pavel, Tom Kroenig and others promoted thenotion that terrorists do indeed have issues they care about, issues that canbe used to pressure individual terrorists and whole groups. The advocates ofthe new deterrence argued that the "terrain" extremist organizations need tohold is the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. In a pivotal briefing toPresident Bush, Gen. James Cartwright, then head of America's nuclear arsenal,applied Cold War-era deterrence theory to terrorism, stating "If you canintroduce ambiguity and uncertainty into the minds of the attacker...if you canremove a certainty of success in striking an objective, if you make the pricetoo high, then you increase the opportunity the adversary will notstrike." 

Furthermore, terrorist networks hoping for large-scaleaction and sustained campaigns need a constant stream of fresh recruits, fundsto operate, sanctuary in physical locations to train and prepare, and to knowthat their efforts will have an effect on the United States or other targets. Isaw these efforts first hand during my participation in the White House's CounterterrorismSecurity Group, where we worked to develop and implement a whole of government --military, diplomatic, intelligence, homeland defense, and development --approach to pressure, deter, and harden against terrorist groups, techniques thatcould indeed minimize the threat in the short term while slowly eroding it inthe long term. Over the course of time, as Schmitt and Shanker accuratelydescribe, we moved our efforts beyond reforming our bureaucracies andintegrating our streams of information to undermining the legitimacy of the extremists'ideology (later known as counter-messaging), disrupting financial flows, andworking through military or diplomatic means with other countries(as well asextending development aid to ungoverned spaces) to deny terrorists thesanctuary they need to operate. 

Schmitt and Shanker, carefully following key individuals inthis process, go on describe how al-Qaeda began metastasizing and reacting toour initiatives by shifting their efforts onto the Internet. The authors giveinsight into enormously complicated issues of military versus intelligenceauthorities and the long-running debates within government about whether todestroy an extremist website facilitating the killing of Americans or continueto monitor the sites for additional information. The authors reference a numberof government sources to describe how we have purportedly gained the ability togo on to radical websites and post information and orders that areindistinguishable from legitimate orders issued by al-Qaeda's leadership,resulting in dissent and confusion among supporters and operators.

Finally, they describe the speed with which the cloak anddagger of counterterrorism on the Web is evolving and changing in chillingdetail. The most dangerous trend to emerge is the recruitment of home-grownfanatics to attack the West from within. Schmitt and Shanker highlight thecases of Najibullah Zazi, Nidal Hassan, and Faisal Shahzad to call attention toal-Qaeda's new dual track strategy of radicalizing individuals in the West throughthe internet to conduct smaller scale and harder to detect attacks with ahigher probability of success while still aiming to repeat a massive 9/11 styleattack.  

*****

Counterstrike willbe a revealing and informative read to the average reader, who may have spentthe last ten years only vaguely aware of simplified terms and governmentclichés popularly used in the media, from "drone strikes," to "intelligencefusion," and "connecting the dots."  Schmittand Shanker effectively bring to life the confusing vernacular that mycolleagues in Washington national security circles use as part of theireveryday speech. The authors also effectively tell the story of ourcounterterrorism campaign by personalizing the struggles of key individuals whorecognized the need to radically change the way our law enforcement agencies,intelligence agencies, the military and our policy-making bodies did -- andstill do -- business. 

Curiously, however, the vitally important issue of detaineeinterrogations and their significant contribution to the counterterrorismcampaign is missing from the book. I was surprised to not see an entire chapterdevoted to the detainee issue, given its centrality to the effort to understandterrorist networks, the important intelligence gained from the capture ofal-Qaeda members and fellow-travelers, and the controversy surrounding detaineetreatment and proper interrogation practices that persists to this day.  In my own experience in eastern Afghanistan in2009, the information gained from detainees -- from that dealing with thecomplicity of the Pakistani Army with insurgent networks to tribal motivations behindindividual support for the insurgency -- was critical to our counterinsurgencyand counterterrorism efforts. In fact, at the strategic level, one of the maindrivers behind the push within the last administration to conductcross border raids into Pakistan rather than kinetic strikes, even with theinevitable diplomatic fallout they caused, was to create the possibility forcapturing key al-Qaeda leaders for the information they could provide. 

Also left unexamined are the hugely significant implicationsof the Arab Spring on al-Qaeda's legitimacy.   Schmitt and Shanker conclude Counterstrikewith a discussion of ‘How this Ends,' and the authors rightly discuss thetransformation of al-Qaeda from being an individual man and highly-ordered butsmall vanguard group to being an inspirational philosophy and a movement. However,I disagree with the authors' conclusion that "you can't destroy the idea of al-Qaeda."The philosophical underpinnings of the organization are currently crumbling inthe midst of peaceful protests in the Middle East rather than the violent jihadit preaches, which by nearly all measures has failed. Most damning is that the protestsmovements have not made the introduction of Islamic law a central point of contention.The much decried corrupt governments in North Africa and the Middle East arefalling one by one, and al-Qaeda is becoming less and less relevant on the ArabStreet. This could be the beginning of ‘How this Ends,' much as perestroika andthe solidarity movement marked the beginning of the end of communism as apopular ideal.    

Overall, the educated lay reader who is going to pick upCounterstrike will find this book to be a well reported, well written dive intothe arcane world of counterterrorism over the past decade. It largely comportswith my own experiences both in the field and in Washington, and is asignificant contribution to our body of knowledge regarding our campaign thusfar in the "Long War" against al-Qaeda and affiliated groups.  

Michael Waltz formerlyserved as a senior advisor for counterterrorism to Vice President RichardCheney and still serves as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer in the reservecomponent. He is currently Vice President for Strategy at Metis Solutions, LLC.

Can we just buy security in Afghanistan?

Read the rest of the article here.

In the wake of the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in a daring raid by U.S. SEALs in the Pakistani garrison town of Abbottabad on May 2, the threat from the Taliban in Pakistan has shown no signs of flagging. An increasingly important element of the Taliban's strategy over the last several years has been to exacerbate sectarian rifts across the entire country, which allows the group to expand its reach, increase the pressure on overburdened law enforcement agencies, and undermine the state's legitimacy and authority.

Read on

While the unfolding disaster at Japan's Fukushima reactor riveted the world, Pakistan quietly observed an important milestone in its own nuclear power program. Pakistan's Chashma 2 nuclear power plant commenced operation and was connected to the electricity grid on March 15, just four days after the earthquake and tsunami struck Japan and initiated what is now one of the worst nuclear accidents on record. Last week, on the eve of his visit to China, Pakistani prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani commissioned Chashma 2 and indicated that China would construct two additional nuclear reactors at the same site. With Pakistanis spending hours each day in the dark due to "load shedding," a euphemism for managed power outages, never has energy been more critical for Pakistan. 

According to figures from the Pakistan Electric Power Company, Pakistan's current electricity supply deficit averages about 3000 megawatts, which is probably enough to power about 3 million households in Pakistan. This shortage exacts a high toll on the Pakistani people, especially in the summer when temperatures can exceed 115 degrees. The more insidious effects of Pakistan's electric shortfalls are economic. The country now finds itself in a catch 22: the moribund economy limits large investments in new or rehabilitated electric generation capacity, but won't register dramatic improvement without more and consistent electricity.

Pakistan's ability to meet its energy requirements indigenously is constrained by the relatively poor quality of its coal, the feast or famine nature of hydroelectric power in a monsoon climate, and the political and security challenges of tapping effectively the natural gas reserves in its Baluchistan province. Pakistan will have to seek energy security through a mixture of external and internal sources. As one element of a long-term plan for energy diversity, nuclear power makes sense for Pakistan, as it does for many states. But it is an ineffective solution to Pakistan's current energy needs.

Read on

Up in the north of England, a trial is being heard against a group of men allegedly at the core of a cell recruiting and radicalizing individuals to fight in Afghanistan. The group, part of an ongoing trickle of people from the U.K. attracted to fighting in South Asia, is notable because it counts amongst its ranks a white convert, the latest in a long line of such individuals who have been drawn to militancy in South Asia. These reports of white converts in the region are naturally of particular concern to Western security services: their capacity to blend effortlessly back into the West makes them highly attractive weapons for groups seeking to launch terrorist attacks.

Back in mid-2009, an older moderate Muslim convert in London told me that his theory behind converts in terrorist cells was that they played a key role as catalysts. The presence of a convert, usually a zealous individual who had moved from a troubled past as drug addict or petty criminal to Islamist extremist, would reinforce the group's internal dialogue and help push them deeper into their militant ideologies.

Read on