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History > 2016 > USA > International (I)
Students in Karachi, Pakistan,
prayed Thursday for the victims of the Taliban attack
at Bacha Khan University in Charsadda.
Photograph:
Shahzaib Akber/European Pressphoto Agency
Taliban Attack Shows Limits of Pakistan’s Military Crackdown
NYT JAN. 21, 2016
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/
world/asia/taliban-attack-shows-limits-of-pakistans-military-crackdown.html
The Afghan War Quagmire
SEPT. 17, 2016
The New York Times
SundayReview | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Eight years ago, President Obama pledged to wind down the war in
Iraq and redouble efforts to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan. “As president, I
will make the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban the top priority that it
should be,” he said during a campaign speech. “This is a war that we have to
win.”
Lasting peace, Mr. Obama said, would depend on not only defeating the Taliban
but helping “Afghans grow their economy from the bottom up.” He added, “We
cannot lose Afghanistan to a future of narco-terrorism.”
Now, at the twilight of his presidency, these goals are receding further into
the distance as America’s longest war deteriorates into a slow, messy slog. Yet
despite this grim reality, there has been no substantive debate about
Afghanistan policy on the campaign trail this year. Neither Donald Trump nor
Hillary Clinton has outlined a vision to turn around, or withdraw from, a
flailing military campaign.
The war in Afghanistan has cost American taxpayers in excess of $800 billion —
including $115 billion for a reconstruction effort, more than the
inflation-adjusted amount the United States spent on the Marshall Plan. The
Afghan government remains weak, corrupt and roiled by internal rivalries. The
casualty rate for Afghan troops is unsustainable. The economy is in shambles.
Resurgent Taliban forces are gaining ground in rural areas and are carrying out
barbaric attacks in the heart of Kabul, the capital. Despite an international
investment of several billion dollars in counternarcotics initiatives, the opium
trade remains a pillar of the economy and a key source of revenue for the
insurgency.
“It does not appear that the Afghan forces in the near future will be able to
defeat the Taliban,” said a senior administration official who spoke about the
White House’s appraisal of the campaign on the condition of anonymity. “Nor is
it clear that the Taliban will make any significant strategic gains or be able
to take and hold on to strategic terrain. It’s a very ugly, very costly
stalemate.”
The administration’s current strategy commits the United States to keeping
roughly 8,400 troops in Afghanistan for the foreseeable future and spending
several billion dollars each year subsidizing the Afghan security forces. The
goal has been to coax the Taliban to the negotiating table by beating them on
the battlefield, a prospect that now seems remote.
The next American president may be tempted to adopt the Obama policy and hope
for the best. That would be a mistake. At the very least, the next
administration needs to carry out a top-to-bottom review of the war, one that
unflinchingly addresses fundamental questions.
One such question is whether the Afghan Taliban — an insurgency that has never
had aspirations to operate outside the region — is an enemy Washington should
continue to fight. American forces started battling the Taliban in 2001 because
the group had provided safe haven for Al Qaeda, which was based there when it
planned the Sept. 11 attacks. While Al Qaeda has largely been defeated, the
Taliban has proved to be extraordinarily resilient.
Another question is what it would take to bring the conflict to an end — either
by enabling Afghan forces to defeat the Taliban or by bringing them into the
political fold — and whether that is something the United States is
realistically capable of achieving.
This will not be an easy discussion. A precipitous drawdown from Afghanistan may
well have calamitous consequences in the short run, exacerbating the exodus of
refugees and expanding the area of ungoverned territory in which extremist
groups could once again subject Afghans to despotism and plot attacks on the
West.
But American taxpayers and Afghans, who have endured decades of war, need a plan
better than the current policy, which offers good intentions, wishful thinking
and ever-worsening results.
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A version of this editorial appears in print on September 18, 2016, on page SR10
of the New York edition with the headline: The Afghan War Quagmire.
The Afghan War Quagmire,
NYT,
Sept. 17, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/18/
opinion/sunday/the-afghan-war-quagmire.html
A Complicated Alliance With Turkey
AUG. 25, 2016
The Opinion Pages
Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The Turkish military incursion into Syria that started Wednesday
with American air support is about as good an illustration as there is of the
exasperating complexity of Washington’s foreign affairs.
The stated purpose of the offensive is to clear Islamic State militants from one
of their last remaining strongholds and supply lines on the Syrian-Turkish
border. That goal, and getting Turkey more involved in the fight against the
Islamic State, is obviously in America’s interest. But it also adds more
complications.
A major Turkish priority through much of the Syrian conflict has been to keep
Syrian Kurds away from its borders for fear that they will bolster Kurdish
insurgents in Turkey. So in addition to pushing the Islamic State, also known as
ISIS and ISIL, back from its borders, Turkey’s drive to clear the militants from
the border town of Jarabulus is intended to prevent Syrian Kurds, who are
America’s most reliable allies in Syria, from moving into the town.
The competing goals in Syria are only one source of tension that has driven
Turkish-American relations to a new low. The growing authoritarianism of
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has aroused considerable unease in Washington and
other Western capitals, as has his far-reaching crackdown on political foes
after the failed coup last month. Washington’s slow response to Turkey’s demand
for the extradition of Fethullah Gulen, a Turkish cleric, who now lives in
Pennsylvania and is regarded by Ankara as the mastermind of the plot, has only
heightened anti-American feelings in Turkey.
In this welter of conflicting interests, the Obama administration is right to
focus on combating ISIS and on trying to keep relations with Turkey from
deteriorating further. Turkey is home to the Incirlik Air Base, which is
critical to American air operations in Syria. Moreover, Turkey, along with
Russia and Iran, has to be part of any solution to the Syrian civil war.
Vice President Joseph Biden Jr.’s visit to Turkey on Wednesday, coinciding with
the start of the ground operation, was intended to smooth the troubled
relationship. He struck a conciliatory tone by apologizing to Mr. Erdogan for
not visiting after the failed coup attempt, saying nothing in public about the
government’s crackdown, maintaining that the United States took seriously
Turkey’s demand for the extradition of Mr. Gulen and endorsing Turkey’s
insistence that the Kurds stay east of the Euphrates River.
There are those who may have preferred that Mr. Biden say what most American
officials really think: that Mr. Erdogan’s roundup of coup plotters looks like
an attempt to silence any opposition, that Turkey has behaved outrageously in
failing to stop conspiracy theories depicting the United States as a
co-conspirator in the coup attempt, that Turkey has produced little evidence to
warrant Mr. Gulen’s extradition and that Mr. Erdogan’s autocratic behavior is
making him an unreliable ally.
The Obama administration is right to make efforts to keep relations with Turkey
from worsening. Turkey is an important NATO ally in one of the most volatile
corners of the world, and a repository for allied nuclear weapons. Washington
has made clear how highly it regards its alliance with Turkey. But that should
not give Mr. Erdogan carte blanche to violate human rights or suppress his
political foes.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter
(@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this editorial appears in print on August 26, 2016, on page A18 of
the New York edition with the headline:
A Complicated Alliance With Turkey.
A Complicated Alliance With Turkey,
NYT, AUG. 25, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/
opinion/a-complicated-alliance-with-turkey.html
Explosion and Gunfire Erupt
at American University in Kabul
AUG. 24, 2016
The New York Times
By MUJIB MASHAL
and ZAHRA NADER
KABUL, Afghanistan — The American University of Afghanistan in Kabul came under
attack by bomb and gunfire on Wednesday night, in a siege that lasted for hours
as pockets of people trapped on campus tried to escape.
The Afghan Health Ministry said that a security guard was killed in the attack
and that at least 26 people had been wounded.
Sediq Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, said early Thursday
that police operations at the university were completed about 10 hours after the
attack began, though officers remained on campus.
“Two terrorists who attacked the university are killed; the operation ended
almost after 10 hours as there were hundreds of students and all of them were
evacuated,” Mr. Sediqqi said.
He said that the police could not yet provide casualty figures. Later on
Thursday, Fraidoon Obaidi, chief of the Kabul police Criminal Investigation
Department, told Reuters that 12 people had been killed, including seven
students, three police officers and two security guards, and another 44 people
were wounded.
Afghan security forces massed around the campus, a guarded compound in the
western part of the capital, after initial reports of an explosion and gunfire.
From within, trapped people began taking to social media to ask for help and
report what was going on around them.
#AUAF under attack. I along with my friends escaped and several
other of of my friends and professors trapped inside.
— Ahmad Mukhtar (@AhMukhtar) Aug. 24, 2016
The university opened for enrollment in 2006 to both men and
women, and quickly became a prestigious education choice for some of
Afghanistan’s elites, offering undergraduate and graduate degrees taught in
English.
It was praised by senior American officials as a sign of Afghanistan’s bright
future, and as such was an obvious symbol of Western ambitions for the country —
and exactly the kind of symbol the Taliban and other militants have come to
pursue as targets.
One after another, such places — high-end hotels, restaurants frequented by
foreigners, even cultural centers where young Afghans performed arts — have come
under attack, limiting the movement of expatriates in Kabul and keeping the
local population in constant fear of unpredictable violence.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was the second
directed at the university this month. On Aug. 7, two professors — an American
and an Australian, both men — were abducted from a vehicle near the campus.
Officials said they were investigating the case, but there was no public word on
who was behind the kidnapping or the condition of the two professors. Officials
say that most kidnappings in Kabul are conducted by criminal gangs.
As the assault on Wednesday unfolded, several people who were able to escape,
along with other witnesses, gave accounts of people being wounded by gunfire or
being injured while trying to flee.
One man who managed to escape the compound, a 24-year-old who would give only
his first name, Fahim, said that the sound of gunfire sent many students running
for emergency exits. Almost immediately, they heard a loud explosion.
Fahim said two of his friends were hospitalized after getting free: One had
broken a leg as he jumped from a second-floor window, and the other had been
shot in the back.
With electricity cut off by the security forces to restrict the movement of the
attackers, dozens of family members anxiously awaited news of their loved ones
outside the security cordon.
Qudratullah Waziri said his brother, a student, was still unaccounted for. The
last Mr. Waziri heard from him was a phone call in which he said he was
surrounded by wounded people.
“I saw the police just rescue 12 female students in the back of their truck,”
Mr. Waziri said.
An operator at the Kabul police emergency line said calls had come in from
panicking people inside the university who said attackers had infiltrated after
an initial explosion.
But at checkpoints outside the campus, security officials insisted that the
attackers had not infiltrated the perimeter of the university.
Ahmad Jawad, a police officer at the site of the attack, said a car bomb had
exploded in front of a school for the blind that is next to the American
University. He said that the attackers had entered that school, and were firing
at the university from there.
Mohamad Fahim Abed contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on August 25, 2016,
on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: American University in
Afghanistan Is Attacked.
Explosion and Gunfire Erupt at American University in Kabul,
NYT, AUG. 24, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/world/asia/
american-university-attack-kabul-afghanistan.html
America’s Retreat
and the Agony of Aleppo
AUG. 25, 2016
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages
Op-Ed Columnist
Roger Cohen
Sarajevo and Aleppo, two cities once part of the Ottoman Empire,
two cities whose diverse populations have included Muslims and Christians and
Jews, two cities rich in culture that have been besieged and split in two and
ravaged by violence, two cities where children have been victims — 20 years
apart.
What a difference two decades make! Sarajevo was headline news through much of
its 44-month encirclement. NATO planes patrolled the skies to prevent, at least,
aerial bombardment of the population. Blue-helmeted United Nations forces were
deployed in a flawed relief effort. President Bill Clinton, after long
hesitation, authorized the NATO airstrikes that led to the lifting of the
Serbian siege and an imperfect peace in Bosnia. Belated American intervention
worked.
Aleppo lacks such urgency. It’s bombarded: What else is new? How often does the
word “Aleppo” fall from President Obama’s lips (or indeed the lesson-freighted
word “Sarajevo”)? At which dinner parties in London, Paris, Berlin or Washington
is it discussed? Which Western journalists are able to be there to chronicle day
after day their outrage at a city’s dismemberment? Who recalls that just six
years ago Aleppo was being talked about in Europe as the new Marrakesh, a place
to buy a vacation home?
Aleppo is alone, alone beneath the bombs of Russian and Syrian jets, alone to
face the violent whims of President Vladimir Putin and President Bashar
al-Assad.
Oh, yes, I know, when the photograph of a child like Omran Daqneesh is seen, as
it was this month, covered in blood after being dug from the rubble of Aleppo,
the image may go viral just long enough for people to lament the Syrian debacle.
Lament and forget. There’s Donald Trump to think about. Forget the more than
400,000 dead, the more than 4.8 million refugees, and the destruction of a city
like Aleppo that is an expression of millennia of civilization.
Daqneesh, whose brother Ali was killed, is this year’s Alan Kurdi, the dead
Syrian child washed up on a Turkish beach who prompted another ephemeral spasm
of outrage last September.
Today, as then, Aleppo is divided between a beleaguered eastern sector
controlled by opposition groups and a larger western sector controlled by
Assad’s brutal regime. The “cessation of hostilities” of last February has
predictably collapsed. Russia, which moved into Syria last year when it realized
that — come what may — Obama would sit this war out, leads the United States in
a grotesque diplomatic pas de deux going nowhere.
American power has lost credibility in the past two decades. From Ukraine to
Syria, Russia dictates events with impunity. The optimism, perhaps naïve, about
a perfectible world that led to the endorsement by all United Nations member
states in 2005 of the Responsibility to Protect — a commitment to prevent
genocide, war crimes and ethnic cleansing — has died. R2P (its acronym) seems
quaint, a wasted effort in a bygone world. ISIS and jihadi terrorism have
curtailed Western journalists. Attention spans have shrunk as connectivity has
accelerated.
These are some of the changes on the road from Sarajevo to Aleppo. They have
produced a more dangerous, pessimistic world.
Obama has said the Libyan intervention was his worst mistake. He has said he is
“very proud of this moment” in 2013 when he decided to resist “immediate
pressures” and not uphold with military force his own “red line” against the use
of chemical weapons in Syria.
No, Syria has been Obama’s worst mistake, a disaster that cannot provoke any
trace of pride; and within that overall blunder the worst error was the
last-minute “red line” wobble that undermined America’s word, emboldened Putin
and empowered Assad.
As Obama said on Aug. 31, 2013, in announcing his decision to delay military
action and seek authorization for the use of force from Congress: “What is the
point of the international system” if the chemical weapons ban can be flouted?
He also said, “What message will we send if a dictator can gas hundreds of
children to death in plain sight and pay no price?”
The answer is now clear: The dictator Assad will slaughter many more children.
The international system undergirding global peace will become weaker.
Obama did not in fact say in the Rose Garden three years ago that he had
rejected force; he urged Congress to get behind it. With time these events have
blurred to make him “very proud of this moment.”
No outcome in Syria could be worse than the current one. Assad’s bomb-spewing
jets and his airfields should have been taken out early in the war, before ISIS.
The red line should have stood. The consequences for the European allies of
Obama’s let-Syria-fester policy have been overwhelming.
Watch the shattering video by Britain’s Channel 4 about the florist of Aleppo,
the brave man who kept the city’s last flower store open, and weep. Understand
that desperate people still beautify streets with flowers to assert life over
death. The flower-seller is dead, his son’s terrible anguish that of a whole
city.
Aleppo, symbol of failure, symbol of indifference, symbol of American retreat,
should not have been left to bleed.
You can follow me on Twitter or join me on Facebook.
Roger Cohen will be moderating a panel on migration at the Athens Democracy
Forum in September.
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and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on August 26, 2016,
in The International New York Times
America’s Retreat and the Agony of Aleppo,
NYT, AUG. 25, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/
opinion/from-sarajevo-to-aleppo.html
Support for Saudi Arabia
Gives U.S. Direct Role
in Yemen Conflict
AUG. 24, 2016
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI
and SHUAIB ALMOSAWA
WASHINGTON — It was a frenetic Monday afternoon at Abs Hospital
in northern Yemen, with doctors and nurses busily shuttling among the patients
and a maternity ward filled with 25 women expecting to give birth.
The bomb from the Saudi jet dropped into the middle of the hospital compound, a
facility run by Doctors Without Borders, landing between the emergency room and
a triage area for new patients. Nineteen people were killed, dozens were
injured, and a humanitarian group that for decades has braved war zones across
the globe decided it had had enough.
Doctors Without Borders announced in the days after the Aug. 15 strike that it
was pulling out of six medical facilities in northern Yemen, the latest turn in
a war that has further devastated one of the Arab world’s poorest countries and
has bogged down a Saudi military ill-prepared for the conflict.
For the Obama administration, it was another public reminder of the spiraling
violence of a war in which it has played a direct role. American officials have
publicly condemned the hospital bombing — and the bombing of a school two days
earlier — but the Pentagon has given steady support to the coalition led by
Saudi Arabia, with targeting intelligence and fuel for the Saudi planes involved
in the air campaign.
Anger over the Saudi-led campaign and the United States role in the war is
growing in Congress. On Wednesday, it prompted a group of lawmakers to circulate
a letter that asks President Obama to withdraw his request for Congressional
approval for a $1.15 billion sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, until Congress can
have a broader debate about American military support for the Saudis.
The past three weeks have seen an escalation in the conflict in Yemen — and in
reports of civilian casualties — after peace talks among the warring sides broke
down and Saudi Arabia resumed a blistering air assault in areas surrounding
Yemen’s capital, Sana. Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Saudi Arabia on
Wednesday with the aim of brokering a new peace deal, although there is little
optimism about a lasting cease-fire in the near future.
It is now 17 months into a military campaign that began after Shiite rebels,
known as the Houthis, overran the Yemeni capital, forced the government into
exile and began positioning missile batteries close to Saudi Arabia’s southern
border. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have portrayed the Houthis as puppets
of Iran, a charge that American officials view with deep skepticism, even though
they say Tehran has provided the militia with some arms and money.
The Abs Hospital was the fourth health facility supported by Doctors Without
Border to be hit during the war. Teresa Sancristóval, the group’s emergency
program coordinator, said that Doctors Without Borders had given the GPS
coordinates of its facilities to the Saudi military, and that its
representatives had traveled to the Saudi kingdom twice to protest. But the
botched airstrikes continue.
“Words are not enough when 19 people are killed,” Ms. Sancristóval said, adding
that the group can no longer accept assurances from the government in Riyadh
that their airstrikes will become more precise.
“If you don’t know what you’re hitting, then don’t try to hit it,” she said.
Ms. Sancristóval said Doctors Without Borders had pulled approximately 550
personnel from its facilities in northern Yemen, although the group would
continue to provide medical supplies and funding to the hospitals.
When the group announced its withdrawal last week, the Saudi coalition issued a
statement saying it was in “urgent discussions” to broker the medical
organization’s return to Yemen. Ms. Sancristóval said she was unaware of any
substantive discussions.
This month, a Saudi-led investigation into eight separate episodes in Yemen that
had killed hundreds of civilians — including previous strikes that hit Doctors
Without Borders facilities — largely absolved the coalition of the deaths.
The investigation concluded that faulty intelligence was to blame in only one of
the eight episodes, and said that aid groups, such as Doctors Without Borders,
should not station medical facilities near Houthi encampments.
But a spokesman for the investigation, Mansour bin Ahmed Mansour, said in an
interview that investigators did not travel to Yemen and had no personnel on the
ground there to collect evidence. “The circumstances do not allow the team to go
on the ground,” he said.
Speaking of an episode late last year, when a coalition airstrike bombed a
Doctors Without Borders clinic near the Yemeni city of Taiz, Mr. Mansour said
that the coalition had hit a “legitimate military target,” and that the aid
group “should keep these tents away from the locations where there are
militias.”
According to United States Central Command, American military tankers have flown
nearly 1,200 sorties since the war began and refueled more than 5,600 coalition
aircraft — support that is drawing increasing protest from Congress.
Senator Christopher S. Murphy of Connecticut, a Democratic member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, said the Obama administration’s support for the
campaign in Yemen had caused anger to be directed at the United States from
inside the war-racked country.
“We try to maintain some distance from this, but that doesn’t sell inside
Yemen,” he said. “I’m petrified about the long-term prospects of a Yemeni
population that is radicalized against the United States.”
The Saudi-led bombing campaign resumed this month after a monthslong pause for
the unsuccessful attempt to draft a peace agreement. On Aug. 7, more than a
dozen civilians were killed in an airstrike that hit a small marketplace near
the village of Al Madeed, approximately 35 miles northeast of Sana.
Sada al-Othari, a witness who owns a drugstore in the village, said that two of
his customers were killed in the bombing and that there was no military target
in the area.
He gave a graphic account of victims burned beyond recognition and panicked
locals who were reluctant to provide help, fearing a second airstrike would hit
the rescuers — a tactic that the coalition has used during the campaign.
On Aug. 13 an airstrike in Hayden District hit a religious school, killing 10
students and wounding dozens. A representative of Unicef, the United Nations
Children’s Fund, in Yemen decried the bombing. Wounded children were brought to
another medical facility run by Doctors Without Borders.
The day after that attack, a Saudi military spokesman denied that the airstrike
had hit a school, saying the target was a Houthi training camp. The spokesman,
Gen. Ahmed Asiri, said in a statement to Agence France-Presse that the dead
children were just evidence that the Houthis were recruiting children as guards
and fighters.
“We would have hoped,” General Asiri said, that Doctors Without Borders “would
take measures to stop the recruitment of children to fight in wars instead of
crying over them in the media.”
Follow Mark Mazzetti on Twitter @MarkMazzettiNYT.
Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Shuaib Almosawa from Sana, Yemen.
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Twitter,
and sign up for the First Draft politics newsletter.
A version of this article appears in print on August 25, 2016,
on page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Deadly Hospital Bombing
Highlights an Escalating Conflict in Yemen.
Support for Saudi Arabia Gives U.S. Direct Role in Yemen
Conflict,
NYT, AUG. 24, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/world/middleeast/yemen-saudi-arabia-
hospital-bombing.html
America Is Complicit
in the Carnage in Yemen
AUG. 17, 2016
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
A hospital associated with Doctors Without Borders. A school. A
potato chip factory. Under international law, those facilities in Yemen are not
legitimate military targets. Yet all were bombed in recent days by warplanes
belonging to a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, killing more than 40 civilians.
The United States is complicit in this carnage. It has enabled the coalition in
many ways, including selling arms to the Saudis to mollify them after the
nuclear deal with Iran. Congress should put the arms sales on hold and President
Obama should quietly inform Riyadh that the United States will withdraw crucial
assistance if the Saudis do not stop targeting civilians and agree to negotiate
peace.
The airstrikes are further evidence that the Saudis have escalated their bombing
campaign against Houthi militias, which control the capital, Sana, since peace
talks were suspended on Aug. 6, ending a cease-fire that was declared more than
four months ago. They also suggest one of two unpleasant possibilities. One is
that the Saudis and their coalition of mostly Sunni Arab partners have yet to
learn how to identify permissible military targets. The other is that they
simply do not care about killing innocent civilians. The bombing of the
hospital, which alone killed 15 people, was the fourth attack on a facility
supported by Doctors Without Borders in the past year even though all parties to
the conflict were told exactly where the hospitals were located.
In all, the war has killed more than 6,500 people, displaced more than 2.5
million others and pushed one of the world’s poorest countries from deprivation
to devastation. A recent United Nations report blamed the coalition for 60
percent of the deaths and injuries to children last year. Human rights groups
and the United Nations have suggested that war crimes may have been committed.
Saudi Arabia, which began the air war in March 2015, bears the heaviest
responsibility for inflaming the conflict with the Houthis, an indigenous Shiite
group with loose connections to Iran. The Saudis intervened in Yemen with the
aim of defeating the Houthis and reinstalling President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi,
whom the rebels ousted from power. They consider Iran their main enemy and
feared Tehran was gaining too much influence in the region.
Although many experts believe the threat to be overstated, Mr. Obama agreed to
support the Yemen intervention — without formal authorization from Congress —
and sell the Saudis even more weapons in part to appease Riyadh’s anger over the
Iran nuclear deal. All told, since taking office, Mr. Obama has sold the Saudis
$110 billion in arms, including Apache helicopters and missiles.
Mr. Obama has also supplied the coalition such indispensable assistance as
intelligence, in-flight refueling of aircraft and help in identifying
appropriate targets. Experts say the coalition would be grounded if Washington
withheld its support. Instead, the State Department last week approved the
potential sale of $1.15 billion more in tanks and other equipment to Saudi
Arabia to replace items destroyed in the war. Congress has the power to block
this sale; Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, says he is discussing
that possibility with other lawmakers. But the chances are slim, in part because
of the politics.
Given the civilian casualties, further American support for this war is
indefensible. As Mr. Murphy told CNN on Tuesday: “There’s an American imprint on
every civilian life lost in Yemen.”
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A version of this editorial appears in print on August 17, 2016, on page A18 of
the New York edition with the headline: American Complicity in Yemen’s War.
America Is Complicit in the Carnage in Yemen,
NYT, AUG. 17, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/
opinion/stop-saudi-arms-sales-until-carnage-in-yemen-ends.html
Military Success in Syria
Gives Putin Upper Hand
in U.S. Proxy War
AUG. 6, 2016
The New York Times
By MARK MAZZETTI,
ANNE BARNARD
and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — The Syrian military was foundering last year, with
thousands of rebel fighters pushing into areas of the country long considered to
be government strongholds. The rebel offensive was aided by powerful
tank-destroying missiles supplied by the Central Intelligence Agency and Saudi
Arabia.
Intelligence assessments circulated in Washington that the Syrian president,
Bashar al-Assad, was losing his grip on power.
But then the Russians arrived, bludgeoning C.I.A.-backed rebel forces with an
air campaign that has sent them into retreat. And now rebel commanders, clinging
to besieged neighborhoods in the divided city of Aleppo, say their shipments of
C.I.A.-provided antitank missiles are drying up.
For the first time since Afghanistan in the 1980s, the Russian military for the
past year has been in direct combat with rebel forces trained and supplied by
the C.I.A. The American-supplied Afghan fighters prevailed during that Cold War
conflict. But this time the outcome — thus far — has been different.
“Russia has won the proxy war, at least for now,” said Michael Kofman, a fellow
at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.
Russia’s battlefield successes in Syria have given Moscow, isolated by the West
after its annexation of Crimea and other incursions into Ukraine, new leverage
in decisions about the future of the Middle East.
The Obama administration is now talking with President Vladimir V. Putin’s
government about a plan to share intelligence and coordinate airstrikes against
the Islamic State and other militant groups in Syria, and Mr. Putin has thus far
met his goals in Syria without becoming caught in a quagmire that some —
including President Obama — had predicted he would.
But even Mr. Obama has expressed wariness about an enduring deal with Moscow.
“I’m not confident that we can trust the Russians or Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Obama
said at a news conference on Thursday. “Whenever you are trying to broker any
kind of deal with an individual like that or a country like that, you have got
to go in there with some skepticism.”
At the same time, some military experts point out that Mr. Putin has saddled
Russia with the burden of propping up a Syrian military that has had difficulty
vanquishing the rebels on its own.
The Russian campaign began in September, after a monthslong offensive by
C.I.A.-backed rebel groups won new territory in Idlib, Hama and Latakia
Provinces in northern Syria. One problem for Washington: Those groups sometimes
fought alongside soldiers of the Nusra Front, which until recently was
officially affiliated with Al Qaeda.
The offensive took Syrian troops by surprise, prompting concerns in Moscow and
Damascus that Mr. Assad’s government, long supported by the Russians, might be
in trouble.
Some of the rebel groups boasted at the time that powerful TOW antitank missiles
provided by American and Saudi intelligence operatives were a key to their
success. For several years, the C.I.A. has joined with the spy services of
several Arab nations to arm and train the rebels at bases in Jordan and Qatar,
with the Saudis bankrolling much of the operation.
A C.I.A. spokesman declined to comment about any American assistance to Syrian
rebels.
But Lt. Col. Fares al-Bayyoush, a former aviation engineer who heads the rebel
group Fursan al-Haq, said during an interview in May 2015 that his group would
receive new shipments of the antitank weapons as soon as the missiles were used.
“We ask for ammunition and missiles, and we get more than we ask for,” he said.
Yet the advance also created problems for the fractious assortment of rebel
groups, as it allowed the Nusra Front to gain control over more areas of
northern Syria. The Obama administration has officially forbidden any Nusra
fighters to receive weapons or training. But the group has at times shown
greater prowess against the Syrian government forces than the C.I.A.’s proxies.
Moreover, they have shown that they can and will destroy or sideline
C.I.A.-backed rebels who do not agree to battlefield alliances. Moscow cited the
battlefield successes of the Nusra Front to justify its military incursion into
Syria as a campaign to fight terrorism — even if its primary goal was to shore
up Mr. Assad’s military against all insurgent groups, including the
C.I.A.-backed rebels.
The Russians began a rapid military buildup in September, and launched an air
campaign that targeted the Syrian rebel groups that posed the most direct threat
to Mr. Assad’s government, including some of the C.I.A.-trained groups. By
mid-October, Russia had escalated its airstrikes to nearly 90 on some days.
About 600 Russian marines landed in Syria with the mission of protecting the
main air base in Latakia; that ground force has grown to about 4,000 throughout
Syria, including several hundred special forces members.
It took some time for the Russian intervention to have a significant impact on
the Syrian battlefield, prompting Mr. Obama to predict that Moscow might become
bogged down in its own Middle East conflict.
“An attempt by Russia and Iran to prop up Assad and try to pacify the population
is just going to get them stuck in a quagmire, and it won’t work,” Mr. Obama
said at a news conference in October. “And they will be there for a while if
they don’t take a different course.”
The C.I.A. moved to counter the Russian intervention, funneling several hundred
additional TOW missiles to its proxies. One rebel commander, who spoke on the
condition of anonymity because of threats from more radical groups within the
rebel coalition, said in October that his group could at that time get as many
missiles as it wanted.
“It’s like a carte blanche,” he said. “Just fill in the numbers.”
But Russian firepower eventually overwhelmed the rebel groups in the north. By
early this year, attacks by Russian long-range bombers, fighter jets, attack
helicopters and cruise missiles allowed the Syrian Army to reverse many of the
rebel gains — and seize areas near the Turkish border that many thought the
government could never reclaim.
The flow of C.I.A. arms continued, but the weapons proved too little in the face
of the Russian offensive.
Jeffrey White, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer who now studies
Syria at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the Russians had
built a capable intelligence network in Syria, giving them a better
understanding of the terrain and location of rebel forces. That has allowed
Russian troops to call in precision airstrikes, making them more effective
against the rebels.
The mismatch has been most acute in the last several months, with Syrian
government forces, with Russian help, laying siege to the rebel-held parts of
Aleppo. Losing their foothold in Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, would be a
big blow to the rebels.
Syrian and Russian jets have carried out an indiscriminate pounding of Aleppo,
including attacks on six hospitals in and around the city over the past week,
according to a statement by Physicians for Human Rights.
“Since June, we’ve seen increasing reports of attacks on civilians in Aleppo and
strikes on the region’s remaining medical infrastructure,” said Widney Brown,
the group’s director of programs. “Each of these assaults constitutes a war
crime.”
Rebel groups in recent days have made surprising gains in a new offensive to try
to break through Syrian military lines encircling Aleppo, but if it fails,
rebels inside the city will face a choice between enduring the siege or
surrendering.
In recent interviews, rebel commanders said the flow of foreign weapons needed
to break the siege had slowed.
“We are using most of our weapons in the battle for Aleppo,” said Mustafa
al-Hussein, a member of Suqour al-Jabal, one of the C.I.A.-backed groups. He
said the flow of weapons to the group had diminished in the past three to four
months.
“Now we fire them only when it is necessary and urgent,” he said.
Another commander, Maj. Mousa al-Khalad of Division 13, a C.I.A.-backed rebel
group operating in Idlib and Aleppo, said his group had received no missiles for
two weeks.
“We filed a request to get TOW missiles for the Aleppo front,” he said, but the
reply was that there were none in the warehouses.
Rebel leaders and military experts say that perhaps the most pressing danger is
that supply routes from Turkey, which are essential to the C.I.A.-backed rebels,
could be severed.
“The U.S. is doing just enough to placate its allies and partners and says it is
doing something, but does not seek to do what it takes to change conditions on
the battlefield,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International
Institute for Strategic Studies and an Assad critic.
Mr. Putin has achieved many of his larger goals — to prop up Mr. Assad’s
government, retain access to the longtime Russian naval base on the
Mediterranean Sea and use Syria as a proving ground for the most advanced
Russian military technology.
Some military experts remain surprised that Mr. Putin took the risky step of
fighting American-trained and equipped forces head on, but they also assess that
his Syria gamble appears to be paying off.
It is the type of Cold War-era battle that Mr. Obama, in October, insisted he
did not want to enter.
“We’re not going to make Syria into a proxy war between the United States and
Russia,” he said. “This is not some superpower chessboard contest.”
Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt reported from Washington,
and Anne Barnard from Beirut, Lebanon. Karam Shoumali contributed reporting from
Istanbul, Maher Samaan from Beirut, and Steven Lee Myers from Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on August 7, 2016,
on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline:
Military Success in Syria Is Giving Putin Leverage.
Military Success in Syria Gives Putin Upper Hand in U.S. Proxy
War,
NYT, AUG. 6, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/world/middleeast/
military-syria-putin-us-proxy-war.html
The World Reaps What the Saudis Sow
MAY 27, 2016
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Saudi Arabia has frustrated American policy makers for years.
Ostensibly a critical ally, sheltered from its enemies by American arms and aid,
the kingdom has spent untold millions promoting Wahhabism, the radical form of
Sunni Islam that inspired the 9/11 hijackers and that now inflames the Islamic
State.
The latest chapter in this long, sorrowful history involves tiny Kosovo. With a
population of only 1.8 million people, Kosovo has sent more of its young people
per capita than any other country to fight and die in Iraq and Syria. Since
2012, some 314 Kosovars have joined the Islamic State, including two suicide
bombers, 44 women and 28 children. Even Belgium, widely seen as a hotbed of
extremism after the attacks on Paris and Brussels, lags behind it in the
recruitment rankings.
As detailed by Carlotta Gall in a recent article in The Times, Kosovo is in this
position largely because Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf states have spent
years developing and funding a network of imams, mosques and secretive
associations there. And while there is no evidence that any group gave money
directly and explicitly to persuade Kosovars to go to Syria, senior officials in
Kosovo told Ms. Gall that extremist clerics and groups have spent heavily to
promote radical Islamic thinking among young and vulnerable people. “The issue
is they supported thinkers who promote violence and jihad in the name of
protecting Islam,” Fatos Makolli, head of Kosovo’s counterterrorism police, told
her.
The United States and NATO invested heavily in helping Kosovo gain independence
from Serbia in 2008 and establish democracy. That Saudi Arabia should be using
Kosovo as a breeding ground for extremists, or allowing it to be used as a
breeding ground by any Saudi entity or citizen, is a cruel reminder of the
contradictory and even duplicitous behavior of America’s partners in the Persian
Gulf and helps to explain why its relationships with those countries have become
increasingly troubled.
Kosovo, rescued from Serbian oppression after months of NATO bombing in 1999,
has been known as a tolerant society. For centuries, the Muslim majority has
followed the liberal Hanafi version of Islam, which is accepting of others.
Since the war, that tradition has been threatened by Saudi-trained imams, their
costs paid by Saudi-sponsored charities, preaching the primacy of Shariah law
and fostering violent jihad and takfirism, which authorizes the killing of
Muslims viewed as heretics.
Most Kosovars have resisted such proselytizing, and officials in Kosovo say that
support for the United States and the West remains strong. Yet experts point to
a number of reasons the country has been fertile ground for recruitment to
radical ideology: a large population of young people living in rural poverty
with little hope of jobs; corruption and an attendant lack of faith in
government; and, according to a 2015 report by the Kosovar Center for Security
Studies, an education system that does not encourage critical thinking.
It remains unclear why Kosovo’s government, as well as the United States and the
United Nations officials who administered postwar Kosovo, did not act sooner.
The Americans may have erred in assuming that Kosovo’s moderate religious
community would prevent extremism from flourishing.
The 9/11 attacks quickly clarified the dangers. Several Saudi organizations in
Kosovo were closed, and the Saudi government, which appears to have reduced its
aid to Kosovo, now insists that it has imposed strict controls on charities,
mosques and clerical teachings. Even so, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates have increased funding for Islamic hard-liners in Kosovo.
The Sunni Arab states still do not seem to understand the extent to which
extreme versions of Islam imperil them as well. Although the Saudi royal family
relies on the Wahhabi clerics for their political legitimacy, the Islamic State
accuses the monarchy of corrupting the faith to preserve its power. Since 2014,
there have been 20 terrorist attacks in the kingdom, many staged by ISIS.
The Kosovo government, working with the United States, has acted to combat
extremism by adopting new antiterror laws, cracking down on the money laundering
that underwrites radical groups and stepping up police investigations. The flow
of Kosovo’s citizens heading to fight with the Islamic State apparently has
fallen to zero in the last seven months, while the number of Kosovars on the
battlefield is down to 140.
Yet at least two radical imams continue to preach in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina,
and draw crowds of young men. Much work is still to be done to protect the
independence and spirit of tolerance that Kosovo worked so hard to achieve.
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A version of this editorial appears in print on May 28, 2016, on page A16 of the
New York edition with the headline: The World Reaps What the Saudis Sow.
The World Reaps What the Saudis Sow,
NYT, May 27, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/
opinion/the-world-reaps-what-the-saudis-sow.html
What Happens After the Drone Strike?
MAY 25, 2016
The Opinion Pages
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The United States has for years held off targeting senior Taliban
leaders while they were inside Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province, where Pakistan’s
powerful army has long protected them. But President Obama crossed that line by
authorizing the drone strike that killed the Taliban leader Mullah Akhtar
Muhammad Mansour on Saturday. Calling the killing “an important milestone,” Mr.
Obama said he had acted because Mullah Mansour was preparing attacks on American
targets in Afghanistan and had resisted peace talks.
The attack was a sign of American exasperation with Pakistan’s duplicitous game
of working with Washington to combat terrorism while sheltering the Taliban and
its even more hard-line partners in the Haqqani network. The Pakistanis have
relied on the Taliban and the Haqqanis to protect their interests in Afghanistan
and prevent India from increasing its influence there.
After Mullah Mansour replaced Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban leader who died
in 2013, the Americans and Afghans expected that Pakistan’s security services
would persuade him to help negotiate a political agreement with Afghanistan,
which remains the only viable solution to the war. Mullah Mansour instead
rejected peace talks and stepped up attacks on Afghan and American targets,
enlarging the Taliban’s territorial control and further destabilizing Kabul’s
dysfunctional government.
The fact that Mr. Obama has now ordered an attack in Baluchistan, rather than
the border region where Pakistan has tolerated previous American operations,
raises a big question: Does he intend to expand the American mission in
Afghanistan, now focused on training and advising Afghan forces and ensuring
that Al Qaeda cannot rebuild?
There are 10,000 American troops in Afghanistan, a number that is scheduled to
drop to 5,500 by the end of the year. Military commanders appear likely to
recommend against such a reduction. In Vietnam on Monday, Mr. Obama insisted
that “we are not re-entering the day-to-day combat operations” that he declared
an end to in 2014. But he is under pressure in Congress and elsewhere to
significantly step up the fight. That would be a questionable choice for which
he has not yet made a case.
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columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the
world.
Mullah Mansour’s taxi was obliterated from the sky as he returned to Pakistan
from Iran. News reports said he went there for medical treatment, but one expert
told The Times that Iran has been quietly helping the Taliban for several years,
as a hedge in case the militants regain power in Kabul.
Pakistan complained Monday that the strike had violated its sovereignty. But
much like the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 in a Pakistani
garrison town, the attack might not have been necessary had Pakistan cooperated
in the first place and worked with the Americans to defeat the Taliban.
The killing is certain to worsen relations between Pakistan and America, which
are already frayed. Other effects are less predictable. One hopeful possibility
is that Taliban leaders will feel more threatened, making Mullah Mansour’s
successor amenable to peacemaking. Conversely, the Taliban, which now suffers
from internal divisions, could coalesce under a more ruthless leader. A third
possibility is that it could lose fighters to the Islamic State. In any case,
studies suggest that killing terrorist leaders usually does not mean an end to
the violence.
The question to Mr. Obama is whether this killing is merely an end in itself or
part of a strategy to drive Pakistan, America’s supposed ally, and Taliban
leaders to the peace table.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and
Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this editorial appears in print on May 25, 2016,
on page A20 of the New York edition with the headline:
What Happens After the Drone Strike?.
What Happens After the Drone Strike?,
NYT, May 25, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/25/
opinion/what-happens-after-the-drone-strike.html
Obama-Netanyahu Rift
Impedes U.S. Offer
of Record Aid Deal for Israel
APRIL 28, 2016
The New York Times
By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
WASHINGTON — President Obama has proposed granting Israel the
largest package of military aid ever provided by the United States to another
nation, but he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remain deeply at odds over
a figure for the assistance despite months of negotiations.
American officials have balked as their Israeli counterparts insisted on more
generous terms for a new 10-year military aid package that could top $40
billion. The divide, which could have broad national security implications for
both the United States and Israel, is exacerbated by the pent-up animosity
between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, which has been stoked by their radically
divergent views of the nuclear deal with Iran.
“There’s a unique place of pique for the Israelis in certain places in the
administration, and I think that hovers around this negotiation,” said Robert
Satloff, the executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East
Policy. “It’s one of the reasons it’s taken so long to reach a decision.”
Powerful political forces are also at work. While Mr. Obama would like to
burnish his legacy with an unprecedented military aid pact with Israel, some
observers in the United States and Israel believe that Mr. Netanyahu is
calculating that he can reach a more advantageous deal with a future president.
“At the end of the day, it’s a numbers question and a political bet about
whether the Israelis can get something better from the next administration,
which I think would not be a wise gamble,” said Ilan Goldenberg, the director of
the Middle East Security Program at the Center for a New American Security. “I
do think the longer this drags on, the less likely they are to get a deal.”
Israeli officials strongly deny that they are holding out for a sweeter
agreement under a new president. One Israeli official, speaking on the condition
of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment publicly on the
confidential talks, said the Israeli government hoped a deal could be reached
soon with the Obama administration.
At the height of the split over the Iran agreement last year, Mr. Netanyahu
refused to negotiate with Mr. Obama over the terms of a package to replace the
roughly $3-billion-a-year military aid deal that expires in 2018. Now, both
sides say they want a deal, even as the talks approach a fifth month.
“What the United States has committed to do is to ramp up the assistance that we
provide to Israel in a way that would allow Israel to be the recipient of more
national security aid than any other country has ever received from the United
States,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said Wednesday.
“That is an indication of the depth of this country and this administration’s
commitment to Israel’s security,” he added. “Working out the details, though, is
complicated.”
Mr. Earnest said he could not put a time frame on a resolution.
It has long been United States policy to ensure that Israel preserves a
“qualitative military edge” over neighboring countries, on the theory that
because it is much smaller than its potential adversaries, it needs better
technology and training to counter threats. Israel has been the largest
cumulative recipient of American foreign aid since World War II.
Wary of an impasse in the talks, 81 Republicans and Democrats in the Senate
signed a letter to Mr. Obama this week urging him to conclude “a robust new
M.O.U.,” or memorandum of understanding, “that increases aid while retaining the
current terms of our existing aid program.”
They cited “the likelihood that Iran will resume its quest for nuclear weapons.”
Aid to Israel “needs to be increased given the security challenges in the
region,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, who was a principal
force behind the letter, along with Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South
Carolina.
“It’s an important legacy item to leave the U.S.-Israel security relationship on
a strong and robust footing,” Mr. Coons said in an interview. “It would provide
stability, security and predictability for the Israeli people and for America’s
allies in the region to conclude this sooner rather than later.”
Technical discussions about the agreement are being conducted in strict secrecy
by military officials of both governments, and neither side would detail
specific funding levels. But the disputes over money are grounded in more
profound rifts over policy, politics and national security strategy.
While the president views the Iran agreement as having bolstered Israel’s
security — along with that of the United States and the rest of the world — by
restraining Tehran’s ability to develop a nuclear weapon, the Israelis believe
that the lifting of sanctions on Iran has only emboldened a government that
directly threatens them.
“The administration doesn’t want to lose the Iran battle after they’ve already
won it by rewarding Israel with an over-the-top increase in aid,” said Aaron
David Miller, vice president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars.
At the same time, there are powerful incentives for both sides to seek a swift
agreement. For Mr. Obama, the deal would cement his claim to have done more than
any other president to support Israel’s security, while Mr. Netanyahu would come
away with assurance that the countries’ relationship has survived an
extraordinarily tumultuous and partisan period.
“The president and the White House would like to end his term putting the
capstone on his persona as the most supportive of Israel’s security,” said Mr.
Satloff, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The Israelis are
very eager to complete this deal precisely because he is a progressive
president, and having a progressive president endorse this is important for the
bipartisan nature of the relationship.”
Some observers also believe that signing a generous military aid package would
insulate Mr. Obama against accusations of being too tough on Israel should he
decide later this year to pressure it to accept a peace deal with the
Palestinians that embraces a two-state solution. The White House has debated
whether Mr. Obama should do so, in an effort to preserve for a successor the
possibility of a two-state solution.
If the administration takes that approach, Mr. Miller said, “they need to have
laid the predicate that they’ve got Israel’s back on the security piece.”
A version of this article appears in print on April 29, 2016,
on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline:
Obama-Netanyahu Rift Impedes U.S. Offer of Record Aid Deal for Israel.
Obama-Netanyahu Rift Impedes U.S. Offer of Record Aid Deal for
Israel,
NYT, April 28, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/29/world/middleeast/
obama-netanyahu-rift-impedes-us-offer-of-record-aid-deal-for-israel.html
Obama’s Last Chance
to End the ‘Forever War’
APRIL 27, 2016
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages
Op-Ed Contributor
By JENNIFER DASKAL
WASHINGTON — THE United States is fighting an unauthorized war.
Over the past 19 months, American forces have launched more than 8,800 strikes
against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and hit the group’s affiliate in
Libya. The United States continues aerial assaults against Al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula in Yemen, is going after militants in Afghanistan and
Pakistan, and killed more than 150 suspected Shabab fighters in Somalia just
last month.
This war isn’t limited to drone strikes or aerial bombings. It includes Special
Operations forces in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere. This
past weekend, President Obama announced that he would send an additional 250
such troops to Syria.
The primary legal authority for these strikes and deployments comes from the
60-word Authorization for Use of Military Force, passed almost a decade and a
half ago. In the days after Sept. 11, 2001, President George W. Bush asked for
an open-ended authorization to fight all future acts of terrorism. Wisely,
Congress rejected that request, though it did give the president authority to
use force against those responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, Al Qaeda, and
those that harbored them, the Taliban.
Today, the Taliban no longer rules Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden has been killed
and the other key participants in the Sept. 11 attacks are either locked up or
dead. But the old authorization lives on.
The Obama administration has reinterpreted the 2001 authorization to fight not
just those entities referred to in the law, but their “associated forces” and
successor organizations as well. Put bluntly, the United States is relying on an
authorization to fight those responsible for Sept. 11 to wage war against groups
that had nothing to do with those attacks and, in some cases, didn’t even exist
at the time. This expansive legal interpretation empowers future presidents in
dangerous ways.
Mr. Obama, to his credit, recognizes the problem. In May 2013, he said he would
“refine, and ultimately repeal” the 2001 mandate. Last February, he proposed a
new authorization specifically aimed at the Islamic State. But his proposal was
rightly critiqued by just about everyone. Among other problems, it left the 2001
authorization in place, meaning that the proposed authorization would merely add
to, rather than replace, the existing authority. Members of Congress responded
with a range of alternatives, but none made it into law.
With nine months left in office, the administration should now revive these
discussions. Mr. Obama has long warned of the hazards of unbounded war, but the
approach his administration is taking sets the precedent for just that. While
the groups that the United States is attacking must have some nexus to Al Qaeda
and the Taliban, the limits are slippery. The Islamic State, a successor to Al
Qaeda, is deemed covered by the 2001 authorization. What about the Islamic
State’s successors? Their successors?
Such an expansive reading of the 2001 authorization has now been normalized, in
large part endorsed by Congress and, to some extent, the courts.
Future administrations could use this authority as they saw fit. They might act
in a circumscribed manner, precisely and carefully picking targets. Or they
might seek to “carpet bomb” the enemy, as the Republican presidential candidate
Ted Cruz has said he would do. As it now stands, the next president could do so
against an array of yet-unspecified groups.
This is worrisome. There is a good reason the founders gave Congress the
authority to declare war and the president the authority to wage it. The
decision to go to war — even when carried out remotely from the air with minimal
risk to Americans — is simply too important to entrust to a single branch of
government.
To be fair, Mr. Obama is not the only one to blame. Congress has abdicated its
role, choosing to defer to the executive branch rather than take on a
potentially controversial issue. And it would be naïve to think that a Congress
that won’t even consider the president’s Supreme Court nominee is going to give
him a “victory” by approving a war authorization.
But that doesn’t mean the president shouldn’t try. Even if he doesn’t succeed,
he can lay the intellectual and political groundwork for a new authorization,
making it that much easier for the next administration to push forward. He
should propose an authorization to use force against the groups the United
States is actually fighting and insist on a sunset provision so that Congress is
forced to remain engaged.
A new war authorization isn’t likely to change the facts on the ground. Anything
Mr. Obama proposes is going to allow him to use the kind of force he has already
deemed necessary. But it still matters for reasons of good governance,
protecting the balance of power between Congress and the executive branch, and
ensuring that when the nation takes the extraordinary step of going to war it
does so on behalf of and with the consent of the people. This is a legacy issue
that Mr. Obama should now address.
Jennifer Daskal, an assistant professor at American University
Washington College of Law, was counsel to the assistant attorney general for
national security in the Justice Department from 2009 to 2011.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 27, 2016, on page A23 of the
New York edition with the headline: Obama’s Last Chance to End the ‘Forever
War’.
Obama’s Last Chance to End the ‘Forever War’,
NYT, April 27, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/27/
opinion/obamas-last-chance-to-end-the-forever-war.html
A Risky American Expansion in Syria
APRIL 25, 2016
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages
Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
On the face of it, President Obama’s decision to send 250 more
members of the military to Syria to fight the Islamic State may seem like a
small move. The number is a far cry from the 180,000 American troops who were
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan when he took office in 2009.
But there is good reason to be concerned about this expanding mission, which
increases the United States’ involvement in Syria well beyond the 50 Special
Operations personnel there now. In announcing his decision on Monday in Germany,
Mr. Obama said he wanted to capitalize on the recent success the Americans and
Syrians have had in driving the Islamic State out of key areas. The American
troops will be engaged in training and assisting local forces and are “not going
to be leading the fight on the ground,” he insisted.
While American forces will not be leading the ground war in Syria, they will be
involved in military operations and working without proper authorization from
Congress. Unlike the American troops in Iraq, which are fighting the Islamic
State at the request of the Iraqi government, the troops in Syria will be
operating in another sovereign nation with no clear legal right.
Mr. Obama says these new troops will help train local forces. Syrian Kurdish
fighters have proved to be quite capable at reclaiming territory from both the
Syrian government and the Islamic State, but the United States is still
struggling to find a sufficient number of Arab opposition fighters who will be
needed to recapture Raqqa, the Islamic State’s de facto capital in Syria.
It has long been obvious that the best way to defeat the Islamic State lies in
ending the Syrian civil war between President Bashar al-Assad and opposition
forces so that all sides can focus on the terrorists, which Mr. Obama told the
Europeans is “the most urgent threat to our nations.” Unfortunately, a promising
monthlong cease-fire between the Assad regime and opposition forces has begun to
crumble, and with it, faint hopes of resuming negotiations on a political
solution.
Russia, which supports the Assad regime, is America’s supposed partner in
enforcing the cease-fire and pursuing a political solution. Yet it has moved
heavy artillery into position outside of the key city of Aleppo, raising new
doubts about Moscow’s intentions and its commitment to a durable peace.
Mr. Obama’s announcement of an expanded role for American forces came during a
speech in Germany that dealt broadly with the need for European unity and
contained an appeal for the Europeans and NATO to “do more” by joining the
United States in carrying out airstrikes, contributing trainers and providing
economic aid to Iraq.
Defeating the Islamic State requires multidimensional responses, including
improved European intelligence sharing and security cooperation, as Mr. Obama
emphasized. The United States has also opened up a new line of combat by
mounting cyberattacks against the group’s online systems. But increasing the
American military presence in Syria raises serious risks and many unanswered
questions. Chief among them are these: What do more troops mean for American
involvement in the future and how does this war end?
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and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this editorial appears in print on April 26, 2016,
on page A22 of the New York edition with the headline:
A Risky American Expansion in Syria.
A Risky American Expansion in Syria,
NYT, April 25, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/
opinion/a-risky-american-expansion-in-syria.html
Cuba Eases
Decades-long Restriction
on Sea Travel
APRIL 22, 2016
The New York Times
By LIZETTE ALVAREZ
MIAMI — Cuba reversed a decades-old policy on Friday, lifting a
restriction that prevented Cubans from entering or leaving the country by cruise
ship or commercial vessel, according to a statement in the country’s national
newspaper, Granma.
The decision, another softening of Cuba’s Cold War stance toward the United
States, came after a furor in Miami prompted Carnival Cruise Line to announce
that it would delay its inaugural May 1 cruise to Cuba unless the country
changed the policy. Carnival said Friday that the cruise, the first by an
American cruise ship to Cuba in 50 years, would depart as scheduled.
Cuba risked losing millions of dollars in the next year if the cruise line had
been forced to cancel its trips on the Adonia, a 704-passenger luxury ship,
according to an analysis by the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. The
directive, which will take effect on Tuesday, also marked a rare turn of events:
an American corporation persuading the Castro government to alter a policy.
Last month, Carnival became the first American cruise company to obtain Cuban
approval to sail to the island. European and Canadian cruise lines have already
been making the trip.
“We made history in March, and we are a part of making history again today,”
said Arnold Donald, the president and chief executive of the Carnival
Corporation, adding, “We were very positive there would be this outcome and were
proceeding in that fashion.”
Mr. Donald said the company’s negotiators underscored to Cuban officials that
Cuban passengers have long been permitted to fly in and out of Cuba and that the
same policy should apply to sea travel. Cruises are crucial to Cuba’s tourism
sector because they allow for more visitors without pressuring the country’s
already strained hotel capacity.
Starting on Tuesday, the government will also allow Cubans aboard commercial
vessels, including cargo ships, to enter or leave Cuba.
The mayor of Miami-Dade County, Carlos A. Gimenez, who at one point explored
options for a lawsuit against Carnival, praised the resolution.
“This policy change was the right thing to do,” Mr. Gimenez, who is Cuban-born,
said in a statement.
The Cuban government on Friday also hinted at its next move: the possibility of
allowing Cuban-born people to travel to the island aboard recreational boats.
That authorization, the government said, would come gradually and when
circumstances are right.
Cuban-Americans in Miami who support engagement with Cuba have long envisioned
the possibility of taking their own boats to the island, which is 90 miles away
from Florida, to visit family.
Friday’s decision is significant because the Cuban government has long been wary
of sea travel between the United States and Cuba. For decades, Cubans have fled
the island by raft and rustic boats, something that continues today. The
government also feared that allowing Cuban citizens to travel by sea would make
it easier for hostile Cuban-Americans to enter the country and to undermine the
government.
In 1980, after tensions in Cuba escalated as the economy plummeted, Fidel Castro
allowed boats from the United States to pick up Cubans in the port of Mariel.
More than 125,000 Cubans left the island by boat. Most of them were picked up by
relatives, friends or recruits from Miami.
The Cuban government stressed that all passengers and crew members entering or
leaving Cuba must have valid documents to do so. It also needled the United
States, pointing out that American law continues to restrict American tourist
travel to Cuba, although regulations have been eased.
The uproar, which Carnival did not anticipate, began this month when Cubans in
Florida tried to buy tickets for the weeklong voyage. Carnival agents refused to
book them on the cruise, saying that because they were Cuban-born, the Cuban
government barred them from entering the country by sea.
In subsequent talks, the company and the Cuban government tried to find a
resolution. This week, Carnival, which is based in a Miami suburb and is
well-versed on local sensitivities about Cuba, faced a class-action lawsuit by
Cuban-Americans and harsh words from political leaders who expressed outrage
that an American company would discriminate against American citizens. Carnival
initially delayed the trip, but remained optimistic.
“Carnival acted responsibly within the context of a horrific public relations
environment,” said John Kavulich, the president of the trade council.
Pedro A. Freyre, whose law firm, Akerman, represents Carnival, and who was one
of several lawyers to advise the company, said Carnival began working on getting
the directive changed soon after its cruise was approved by the Cuban
government.
Mr. Freyre, who is Cuban-born and supports closer ties to the island nation,
said even he was surprised by the fervor in Miami over the cruise.
“I had been around my community long enough to know that emotions are very deep
here,” he said. “At the beginning, I said, ‘What? Why are people so upset —
300,000 travel every year to Cuba.’ But this one tugged at the heart strings.”
Dr. Andy Gomez, a senior policy adviser for Poblete Tamargo, a law and public
policy firm, said the face-off served as a reminder that Cuba’s thicket of laws
and regulations remained far from business friendly.
But Mr. Freyre said the episode also shows that a more measured approach to Cuba
works best.
“What the Cubans did today is reflect that it’s good to be engaged,” he said.
“You can talk calmly about things instead of shouting at each other.”
A version of this article appears in print on April 23, 2016,
on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline:
Cuba Reverses Longtime Ban on Sea Travel.
Cuba Eases Decades-long Restriction on Sea Travel,
NYT, April 22, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/23/us/cuba-
eases-decades-long-restriction-on-sea-travel.html
ISIS Suicide Bomber in Iraq
Kills Dozens at Soccer Game
MARCH 25, 2016
The New York Times
By OMAR AL-JAWOSHY
BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber detonated his explosive belt at a
soccer game in a town south of Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 31 people,
including the town’s mayor, provincial police officials said.
Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the attack, in the town of
Iskandariya in Babil Province, through the group’s affiliated news agency, Al
Amaq. The Islamic State group controls large areas of territory in northern and
western Iraq, as well as parts of Syria.
The attack, which also wounded at least 71 people, struck a large crowd gathered
for a game between local teams sponsored by Asaib Ahl al-Haq, a powerful Shiite
militia that has ties to Iran and has been at the forefront of fighting against
the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
The game had just ended and a trophy was being presented to the winning team
when the bomber detonated the explosives while in the crowd, the police said.
Sheik Jawad, the head of the Asaib Ahl al-Haq office in Babil Province, said
that at least five top members of the militia had been wounded. “The attack was
carried out to destabilize the confidence between the people and Asaib, and to
take revenge against us after our victories,” he said.
Raed al-Zaidi, a 36-year-old journalist, said his cousin was among those killed
in the bombing. “My cousin was a soccer player, and he wanted to win the final
match but his dream was uncompleted,” Mr. Zaidi said.
The Islamic State also claimed responsibility this month for a suicide bombing
farther south in Hilla that killed at least 33 people and wounded 115. In a
Twitter post at the time, the extremist group said, “The battle has just started
and the coming will be worst.”
On Thursday, the Iraqi military said it had recaptured several villages in the
northern province of Nineveh, backed by American airstrikes, as it gears up for
a campaign to retake Mosul from ISIS militants.
An employee of The New York Times contributed reporting from
Hilla, Iraq.
A version of this article appears in print on March 26, 2016, on page A6 of the
New York edition with the headline: ISIS Suicide Bomber in Iraq Kills at Least
31 at a Shiite Militia’s Soccer Game.
ISIS Suicide Bomber in Iraq Kills Dozens at Soccer Game,
NYT, March 25, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/
world/middleeast/iraq-isis-bombing.html
Time to Rethink
U.S. Relationship With Egypt
MARCH 25, 2016
The New York Times
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
Since the Egyptian military took power in a coup in the summer of
2013, the Obama administration’s policy toward Egypt has been moored in a series
of faulty assumptions. The time has come to challenge them and to reassess
whether an alliance that has long been considered a cornerstone of American
national security policy is doing more harm than good.
When President Mohamed Morsi was overthrown, senior American officials dithered
on whether there was any point in calling a coup a coup and expressed hope that
this would be merely a bump on Cairo’s road toward becoming a democracy.
Later that year when Egypt’s human rights abuses became even harder to overlook,
the White House suspended delivery of military hardware, signaling that it was
willing to attach conditions to the $1.3 billion military aid package Egypt has
treated as an entitlement for decades.
But for the most part, Egypt got gentle scoldings from time to time from senior
administration officials, who were unduly deferential to Cairo.
A year ago, as the Obama administration focused on the fight against the Islamic
State, it resumed delivery of military aid, arguing that the alliance with Egypt
was too crucial to fail.
Since then, Egypt’s crackdown on peaceful Islamists, independent journalists and
human rights activists has intensified. Egyptian authorities appear intent on
putting two of the country’s top defenders of human rights out of business by
freezing their bank accounts after charging them with illegally receiving
foreign funds.
Outraged by the escalating repression, leading American Middle East experts —
including two who served in the Obama administration — this week urged President
Obama to confront President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.
“If this crackdown is allowed to reach its conclusion, it will silence an
indigenous human rights community that has survived more than 30 years of
authoritarian rule, leaving few if any Egyptians free to investigate mounting
abuses by the state,” they wrote in a letter to Mr. Obama. They decried the
arbitrary imprisonment of tens of thousands of Egyptians and the use of torture
and extrajudicial killings, including the recent murder of an Italian student,
that are believed to have been carried out by state security agents.
Administration officials who have cautioned against a break with Egypt say its
military and intelligence cooperation is indispensable. It’s time to challenge
that premise. Egypt’s scorched-earth approach to fighting militants in the Sinai
and its stifling repression may be creating more radicals than the government is
neutralizing.
“We are long overdue for a strategic rethink on who are strong American partners
and anchors of stability in the Middle East,” Tamara Cofman Wittes, a fellow at
the Brookings Institution and a former senior State Department official, said in
an interview. “Egypt is neither an anchor of stability nor a reliable partner.”
Mr. Obama and his advisers may conclude that there is little the United States
can do to ease Egypt’s despotism during the remaining months of his presidency.
That’s not the case. Mr. Obama should personally express to Mr. Sisi his concern
about Egypt’s abuses and the country’s counterproductive approach to
counterterrorism.
Mr. Obama has been willing to challenge longstanding assumptions and conventions
about Washington’s relations with Middle East nations like Iran and Saudi
Arabia. But he has been insufficiently critical of Egypt. Over the next few
months, the president should start planning for the possibility of a break in
the alliance with Egypt. That scenario appears increasingly necessary, barring a
dramatic change of course by Mr. Sisi.
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Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this editorial appears in print on March 26, 2016, on page A18 of
the New York edition with the headline: Time to Rethink Relations With Egypt.
Time to Rethink U.S. Relationship With Egypt,
NYT, March 25, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/26/
opinion/time-to-rethink-us-relationship-with-egypt.html
U.S. Service Members
Punished for Strike on Hospital
in Afghanistan
MARCH 17, 2016
The New York Times
By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
and ERIC SCHMITT
WASHINGTON — The Defense Department has disciplined at least a
dozen military personnel for their roles in an airstrike in October on a Doctors
Without Borders hospital in Afghanistan that killed 42 people, senior military
officials said, but they are not expected to face criminal charges.
The personnel, including officers and enlisted members, were given
administrative punishments, the officials said. The Associated Press first
reported the disciplinary actions Wednesday.
Among those disciplined are soldiers who were on the ground, personnel at the
operations center that oversaw the strike, and airmen. Others involved may also
be disciplined, the officials said.
Administrative punishments typically include letters of reprimand, which can
significantly hurt the ability of a member of the military to get promoted.
The Pentagon is expected to release a report on the inquiry in the coming weeks,
officials there said. Investigators have cited many factors, including
breakdowns in communication between Afghan forces and American Special
Operations forces.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing
action that had not been officially announced by the Defense Department.
According to American military commanders, Afghan fighters who had been sent to
Kunduz to stop a Taliban attack had asked the Special Operations forces for air
support. The fighters are not believed to have had much familiarity with Kunduz,
having been rushed to the city just days before the attack.
At the time of the strike, the Afghans were battling the Taliban in a densely
populated part of the city, and commanders believe that a miscommunication led
an American AC-130 gunship to fire on the wrong building.
A version of this article appears in print on March 18, 2016,
on page A10 of the New York edition with the headline:
U.S. Punishes 12 in Afghan Strike.
U.S. Service Members Punished for Strike on Hospital in
Afghanistan,
NYT, March 17, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/18/us/
politics/us-service-members-punished-for-strike-on-afghan-hospital.html
Mr. Netanyahu’s Lost Opportunities
MARCH 14, 2016
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The dispute over a White House meeting is the latest evidence of the fraught
relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel. It prompted finger-pointing on both sides, but the basic facts are
these: Mr. Netanyahu asked to meet with Mr. Obama during a visit to Washington
for a conference later this week, the White House agreed and then Mr. Netanyahu
canceled.
That Mr. Netanyahu’s government announced this decision in the media rather than
to the White House is not a surprise, considering the disrespect the prime
minister has shown Mr. Obama in the past. It’s hard to understand how that
serves Israel’s interests.
It’s unfortunate that this strange squabble is overshadowing two pressing
issues. One involves the new 10-year defense agreement the two governments are
negotiating, an anchor of their alliance. The existing agreement, which expires
in 2018, provides $3.1 billion a year to Israel, making it the top recipient of
American aid. The even larger issue involves the slow but inexorable death of
the two-state solution for peace with the Palestinians.
When Mr. Obama concluded the nuclear deal with Iran over Mr. Netanyahu’s
vehement opposition last year, he promised to further strengthen the security
relationship with Israel. That was understood to include even more aid and a
renewed commitment to maintain Israel’s “qualitative edge” over other countries
by providing it with more advanced weapons, like the F-35 stealth aircraft, as
well as increased cooperation on missile defense and cybersecurity.
But the negotiations have run into problems. One reason Mr. Netanyahu reportedly
canceled the meeting with Mr. Obama was that he did not want to visit the Oval
Office without having first reached an agreement that he could boast about at
home. He has reportedly asked for a big increase in American aid to more than $4
billion per year, which seems unreasonable. Mr. Netanyahu recently suggested
that he may wait until next year to negotiate the package, presumably because he
thinks he might strike a better deal with Mr. Obama’s successor.
Military aid alone will never guarantee Israel’s security. For that, there needs
to be progress toward a Middle East peace deal. Mr. Netanyahu has never shown a
serious willingness on that front, as is made clear by his expansion of Israeli
settlements, which reduce the land available for a Palestinian state. His
counterpart, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is a weak and aging
leader who has given up on peace. In the meantime, vicious attacks by
Palestinians on Israelis have surged, and the violence is costing lives on both
sides.
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Despite his efforts to mediate a deal and the importance he assigned to that
task at the start of his administration, President Obama may be presiding over
the death of the two-state solution. In a last-ditch effort, administration
officials are seeking ways to keep the vision alive.
There are several options, but the best may be a resolution that puts the United
Nations Security Council on record supporting the basic principles of a deal
covering borders, the future of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, security and
land swaps, but not imposing anything on the two parties.
Before United States-mediated negotiations fell apart in 2014, Secretary of
State John Kerry and his team brought the two sides closer on some issues. The
details have been secret, but Mr. Obama needs to make that progress public; it
could give future Israeli and Palestinian leaders something to build on.
With less than a year left in office and many other international crises to
manage, it is unlikely that Mr. Obama will make another push for negotiations.
But his successor must look for new ways help Israel and the Palestinians make
peace happen.
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Mr. Netanyahu’s Lost Opportunities,
NYT, March 14, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/14/
opinion/mr-netanyahus-lost-opportunities.html
Obama Criticizes the ‘Free Riders’
Among America’s Allies
MARCH 10, 2016
The New York Times
By MARK LANDLER
WASHINGTON — President Obama believes that Saudi Arabia, one of
America’s most important allies in the Middle East, needs to learn how to
“share” the region with its archenemy, Iran, and that both countries are guilty
of fueling proxy wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
In a series of interviews with The Atlantic magazine published Thursday, Mr.
Obama said a number of American allies in the Persian Gulf — as well as in
Europe — were “free riders,” eager to drag the United States into grinding
sectarian conflicts that sometimes had little to do with American interests. He
showed little sympathy for the Saudis, who have been threatened by the nuclear
deal Mr. Obama reached with Iran.
The Saudis, Mr. Obama told Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine’s national
correspondent, “need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and
institute some sort of cold peace.” Reflexively backing them against Iran, the
president said, “would mean that we have to start coming in and using our
military power to settle scores. And that would be in the interest neither of
the United States nor of the Middle East.”
Mr. Obama’s frustration with much of the Arab world is not new, but rarely has
he been so blunt about it. He placed his comments in the context of his broader
struggle to extract the United States from the bloody morass of the Middle East
so that the nation can focus on more promising, faster-growing parts of the
world, like Asia and Latin America.
“If we’re not talking to them,” he said, referring to young people in those
places, “because the only thing we’re doing is figuring out how to destroy or
cordon off or control the malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity, then
we’re missing the boat.”
Mr. Obama also said his support of the NATO military intervention in Libya had
been a “mistake,” driven in part by his erroneous belief that Britain and France
would bear more of the burden of the operation. He stoutly defended his refusal
not to enforce his own red line against Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, even
though Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. argued internally, the magazine
reported, that “big nations don’t bluff.”
The president disputed criticism that he should have done more to resist the
aggression of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Ukraine. As a neighbor of
Russia, Mr. Obama said, Ukraine was always going to matter more to Mr. Putin
than to the United States. This meant that in any military confrontation between
Moscow and the West, Russia was going to maintain “escalatory dominance” over
its former satellite state.
“The fact is that Ukraine, which is a non-NATO country, is going to be
vulnerable to military domination by Russia no matter what we do,” he said.
“This is an example of where we have to be very clear about what our core
interests are and what we are willing to go to war for.”
Mr. Obama, who has spoken regularly to Mr. Goldberg about Israel and Iran,
granted him extraordinary access. The portrait that emerges from the interviews
is of a president openly contemptuous of Washington’s foreign-policy
establishment, which he said was obsessed with preserving presidential
credibility, even at the cost of blundering into ill-advised military
adventures.
“There’s a playbook in Washington that presidents are supposed to follow,” Mr.
Obama said. “And the playbook prescribes responses to different events, and
these responses tend to be militarized responses.” This consensus, the president
continued, can lead to bad decisions. “In the midst of an international
challenge like Syria,” he said, “you are judged harshly if you don’t follow the
playbook, even if there are good reasons.”
Although Mr. Obama’s tone was introspective, he engaged in little
second-guessing. He dismissed the argument that his failure to enforce the red
line in Syria, or his broader reticence about using military force, had
emboldened Russia. Mr. Putin, he noted, invaded Georgia in 2008 during the
presidency of George W. Bush, even though the United States had more than
100,000 troops deployed in Iraq.
Similarly, the president pushed back on the suggestion that he had not been firm
enough in challenging China’s aggression in the South China Sea, where it is
building military installations on reefs and islands, some of which are claimed
by the Philippines and other neighbors. “I’ve been very explicit in saying that
we have more to fear from a weakened, threatened China than a successful, rising
China,” Mr. Obama said.
The president refused to box himself in as a foreign-policy thinker. “I suppose
you could call me a realist in believing we can’t, at any given moment, relieve
all the world’s misery,” he said. But he went on to describe himself as an
internationalist and an idealist. Above all, Mr. Obama appeared weary of the
constant demands and expectations placed on the United States. “Free riders
aggravate me,” he said.
He put France and Britain in that category, at least as far as the Libya
operation was concerned. Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, he said,
became distracted by other issues, while President Nicolas Sarkozy of France
“wanted to trumpet the flights he was taking in the air campaign, despite the
fact that we had wiped out all the air defenses.”
Only on the threat posed by the Islamic State did Mr. Obama express some
misgivings. He likened ISIS to the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” the 2008 Batman
movie. The Middle East, Mr. Obama said, was like Gotham, a corrupt metropolis
controlled by a cartel of thugs. “Then the Joker comes in and lights the whole
city on fire,” Mr. Obama said. “ISIL is the Joker,” he added, using the
government’s preferred acronym for the Islamic State.
Still, Mr. Obama acknowledged that immediately after the terrorist attacks in
Paris and San Bernardino, Calif., he did not adequately reassure Americans that
he understood the threat, and was confronting it.
“Every president has his strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “And there is no
doubt that there are times where I have not been attentive enough to feelings
and emotions and politics in communicating what we’re doing and how we’re doing
it.”
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A version of this article appears in print on March 10, 2016, on page A9 of the
New York edition with the headline: Obama Criticizes the ‘Free Riders’ Among
America’s Allies.
Obama Criticizes the ‘Free Riders’ Among America’s Allies,
NYT, MARCH 10, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/10/world/middleeast/
obama-criticizes-the-free-riders-among-americas-allies.html
The Killing
Field
The New York
Times
FEB. 27, 2016
SundayReview |
Op-Ed Columnist
Nicholas
Kristof
LEER, South
Sudan — THE killing field on the edge of town is marked by skulls and bones
littering the ground, attracting vultures and hyenas.
There is little clothing, for the soldiers stripped the men and boys they
seized. Spines have been sliced in half and clavicles shattered, suggesting that
victims were clubbed to death or hacked apart with machetes. Some of the skulls
might even belong to five staff members of Doctors Without Borders who were
murdered here.
Atrocities happen all around the world, of course. But these were crimes against
humanity committed by “our side” — by the government of South Sudan that the
United States helped to install.
It’s impossible to calculate the death toll, but it seems to me plausible that
as many civilians are dying in the war here in South Sudan as in Syria. One
reason it’s hard to estimate is that many civilian deaths here come not from
bullets or barrel bombs, but from starvation and disease arriving as a direct
result of war and ethnic cleansing.
This is the world’s newest country, midwifed by the United States in 2011 after
a brutal war of secession from Sudan. Yet now the applause has faded, the United
States has mostly moved on and South Sudan has tumbled into a mire of civil war.
Fighters mostly don’t confront each other, for that would be dangerous. So they
kill, rape, rob and torture unarmed villagers. Meanwhile, an international
appeal for humanitarian aid for South Sudan is only 3 percent funded.
I’ve been traveling through some of the areas most affected by fighting, in both
government- and rebel-controlled areas, and they are in ruins that remind me of
Darfur. Villages have been burned, hospitals pillaged, schools closed, boys
castrated and women kidnapped and raped. It is easier to find women and girls
who have been gang-raped than who are literate; in one village, a traditional
birth attendant told me that she had recently assisted with 10 pregnancies
caused by soldiers.
Roads are dangerous and often impassable, and there are no real government
services — except executions.
Leer, a market town, was attacked by government troops in May and pillaged again
by government-backed forces in October. The troops looted a hospital operated by
Doctors Without Borders and the compound of the International Committee of the
Red Cross, leaving part of Leer a ghost town; at night, there is gunfire and the
cackle of hyenas.
I met a 14-year-old boy, Gatluak Top, struggling to be brave after he lost much
of his left leg in an explosion. He will probably lose his leg, perhaps his
life.
What’s wrenching is both the scale of the suffering — more than two million
South Sudanese have been displaced and about three million lack food — and the
fact that much of the catastrophe was caused by a government we helped create.
It’s not that the government is worse than the rebels (who in any case
originally were a faction of the government), but I find it particularly
offensive to see atrocities committed by those we backed.
I’ve known President Salva Kiir for years and rooted for him to succeed. But he
and others in his government (some worse than he is), with help from the rebels,
risk destroying their country.
Kiir is now also cracking down on aid groups at a time when humanitarian workers
(mostly South Sudanese) are the only heroes here, struggling on even though 50
of them have been killed here since the latest civil war erupted just over two
years ago. Kiir also has publicly threatened reporters with murder; sure enough,
seven journalists have been killed in South Sudan over about the last year.
A peace agreement reached last August is the last, best hope, but it hasn’t been
fully implemented. “In the six months since the signing of the peace agreement,
a scorched-earth strategy has continued in which civilians were burned alive in
their homes, their livestock raided and their means of livelihood destroyed,”
Ivan Simonovic, a top human rights official at the United Nations, told the U.N.
Security Council this month.
Continue reading the main story
It’s time for an international arms embargo on South Sudan, and sanctions aimed
at the assets of top leaders on both sides, while greater support is given to
humanitarian organizations and efforts to protect civilians. South Sudan is
running out of money, and that, too, should be used as leverage to force
implementation of the peace accord.
Senior American officials are frustrated and fatigued by South Sudan. But if a
country that the U.S. supported so strongly collapses into genocide because we
didn’t do all we could, that will be part of the Obama legacy. Bravo to the
United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, for visiting the country a few
days ago, because we need an international push to make the peace agreement
stick and create real consequences for committing atrocities.
South Sudan is running out of time.
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When you do, you’ll receive an email about my columns as they’re published and
other occasional commentary. Sign up here.
I also invite you to visit my blog, On the Ground. Please also join me on
Facebook and Google+, watch my YouTube videos and follow me on Twitter
(@NickKristof).
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for the Opinion Today newsletter.
A version of this op-ed appears in print on February 28, 2016, on page SR9 of
the New York edition with the headline: The Killing Field.
The Killing Field,
NYT, FEB. 27, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/opinion/sunday/the-killing-field.html
Taliban Attack
Shows Limits
of Pakistan’s Military Crackdown
JAN. 21, 2016
The New York Times
By DECLAN WALSH
CAIRO — Only a few months ago, Pakistan’s military leaders openly
boasted they had the Taliban on the run. A punishing, yearlong offensive had
ousted the insurgents from their most prized tribal sanctuary. The movement’s
various factions were riven by violent rivalries, and attacks on Pakistan’s
towns and cities had largely ceased.
Then on Wednesday four Taliban gunmen mounted a deadly assault on a university
in the northwestern town of Charsadda, killing 20 people. The attack echoed of a
massacre just over a year ago — when the Taliban killed 150 at a school in
Peshawar — that prompted the military crackdown in the first place. On Thursday,
frustration and concern were welling up across the country.
“We must question how long we can continue to live like this,” said an editorial
in The News, an English-language daily newspaper. “We have heard the rhetoric of
a ‘fight back’ at all costs. But do we have a guarantee of eventual success?”
Part of the answer lies in the Taliban’s continued resilience even when divided
and on the run — and, more broadly, in the difficulties posed by guerrilla
insurgencies throughout the region.
The Pakistani military enjoys authority that would be unthinkable in many
countries. It has upended hundreds of thousands of civilians in the tribal areas
as it has hunted militants and created its own court system that allows the
quick hanging of terrorism suspects, all to public acclaim over the past year.
But all it takes to restart the cycle of fear is a determined commander, a few
willing attackers and a list of accessible targets — all of which the disparate
factions of the Pakistani Taliban retain, along with experience in mounting such
attacks.
Another major factor hampering Pakistan’s chances against the Taliban is the
same one that has bedeviled Afghan leaders for decades: the failure to negotiate
a peaceful settlement between the two countries that would prevent militants
from using their porous borders to destabilize each another.
“To think that we can have a destabilized Afghanistan and bring peace to
Pakistan is just crazy,” said Michael Semple, an expert on militancy at the
Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s
University Belfast.
Certainly, the Pakistani Taliban is no longer the tightly unified force that it
once was, when the movement was commanded from the snowy heights of Waziristan
in the tribal belt by swaggering, publicity-hungry commanders who could call on
a seemingly limitless stream of suicide bombers to hit targets across Pakistan,
including even the army headquarters in Rawalpindi.
The nominal leader of the Pakistani Taliban, Maulana Fazlullah, was a polarizing
figure within the militant movement even from the start. But since the military
began clearing his subcommanders and allies out of the North Waziristan tribal
area, he appears to have even less authority over the Taliban’s factional
leaders, many of them headstrong characters who alternate between cooperation
and violent feuding.
Security officials believe that Mr. Fazlullah and other factional leaders have
fled across the border into Afghanistan, where they have found sanctuary in
remote corners of provinces such as Nangarhar and Kunar.
Less senior Taliban fighters have taken refuge in the region’s towns and cities,
where some have sought protection from allied sectarian Sunni militant groups
such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi.
The army’s anti-militant offensive also reached deep into the southern port city
of Karachi, where paramilitary Rangers have killed several Taliban commanders
who had been hiding in the city’s sprawling ethnic Pashtun slums.
In an interview on Thursday, Faiz ur-Rehman, a Pashtun trader in the city, spoke
of his gratitude after a Taliban commander who used to extort $950 in protection
money from him every month was killed in a security raid. “I breathed a sign of
relief,” he said.
But the Taliban’s Afghan bases have also provided a new mode of operation for
determined commanders such as Khalifa Omar Mansoor, the architect of both the
Peshawar attack in 2014 and this week’s shootings at Bacha Khan University in
Charsadda.
A senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity,
said Mr. Mansoor, 37, was in many ways an archetypal Taliban commander. Schooled
in a religious seminary, he worked for a time as a laborer in Karachi before
signing up to the Taliban in the northwestern tribal belt. He struck out his
own, forming his own group after the Pakistani military drove the Taliban from
Darra Adam Khel, a tribal town known for its artisanal gunsmiths. Later, he fled
to Afghanistan.
A photograph that Mr. Mansoor released of himself after the Charsadda attack
showed a pudgy-faced man with a tangled beard and a woolen cap, seated between
fighters cradling battle-worn Kalashnikovs. His nickname is “Slim,” and,
according to reports, his favorite sport is volleyball.
Little is known about the strength of his forces, but Pakistani officials
believe that he shares resources, including suicide bombers, with some of the
other militant groups. But one Taliban commander, speaking by phone from
Waziristan, said Mr. Mansoor’s high-profile attacks had riled other groups and
caused him to be seen as a threat to the pre-eminence of the group’s overall
leader, Mr. Fazlullah.
Those tensions appeared to surface this week when Mr. Mansoor’s claim of
responsibility for the shootings at Bacha Khan University prompted a public
rebuke from a spokesman for the Taliban’s central command, which criticized his
actions and threatened to bring him before an Islamic court.
Pakistani security officials said they saw the dueling statements as little more
than a cynical public relations ploy on the part of the Taliban. Speaking of
their frustration at Mr. Mansoor’s sanctuary in Afghanistan, they said they had
tried covertly to lure him across the border so that he could be detained or
killed.
Afghan leaders have for years voiced similar frustrations about the freedom
enjoyed by Afghan Taliban militants to organize attacks on Western and Afghan
soldiers from their bases in Pakistan. Now, though, there is a new push to try
to reach a resolution that involves better cooperation by the neighboring
countries.
Last week, Chinese, American, Pakistan and Afghan officials met in Kabul, the
Afghan capital, to discuss how to renew the stalled Afghan peace process. And at
the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, Vice President
Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Secretary of State John Kerry urged the leaders of
Pakistan and Afghanistan to bridge their differences and work for peace.
“The Pakistani military recognize that they need to make peace, but they aren’t
sure if they can persuade the Afghan Taliban to sit with the Kabul government,”
said Hassan Askari Rizvi, a defense analyst in Lahore, Pakistan.
“But with the Chinese and Americans behind it, it might convince the leadership
to get a group ready for talks.”
Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan;
Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud from Islamabad, Pakistan; and Zia ur-Rehman from Karachi,
Pakistan.
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A version of this news analysis appears in print on January 22, 2016, on page A8
of the New York edition with the headline: Taliban Attack Shows Limits of
Pakistan’s Military Crackdown.
Taliban Attack Shows Limits of Pakistan’s Military Crackdown,
NYT, JAN. 21, 2016,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/22/world/asia/
taliban-attack-shows-limits-of-pakistans-military-crackdown.html
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