Download or read book A Review of the 2001 Bonn Conference and Application to the Road Ahead in Afghanistan written by Mark Fields and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Review of the 2001 Bonn Conference and Application to the Road Ahead in Afghanistan written by Mark Fields and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2011 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten years ago in Bonn, Germany, the United Nations Envoy to Afghanistan, Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi, and U.S. Envoy to the Afghan Opposition, Ambassador James Dobbins, led a diverse group of international diplomats and warriors to consensus and charted the political course for Afghanistan well into the decade. The process that led to the Bonn Agreement (Bonn 2001, or Bonn I) reflects the best of U.S. and United Nations statesmanship and was the result of the effective application of military and diplomatic power. Bonn 2001 was successful for five reasons: The U.S.-supported Northern Alliance held the clear military advantage; The U.S. interagency position was effectively synchronized; Dobbins paved the way for success at Bonn by thorough bilateral preparation and consultations with international actors-he met personally with nearly all the international participants and representatives; Brahimi and Dobbins merged their negotiating experience and artfully used multilateral negotiations to meld national interests into cohesive commitments; Bonn Conference objectives were limited and achievable and the U.S. negotiating team was empowered to exercise initiative in pursuit of those objectives. As the Bonn Conference's 10th anniversary approaches, the fundamental challenge is simply stated: how can U.S. national interests in Afghanistan be achieved with fewer resources? This paper answers that question through an analysis of the process that produced the Bonn Agreement in 2001. It offers step-by-step recommendations for U.S. policymakers on how to shape specific conditions in Afghanistan, beginning with Bonn 2011 (Bonn II), for the post-2014 period. Those recommendations include: The United States must demonstrate long-term commitment to Afghanistan in the form of a formal strategic partnership announced at Bonn; Following Bonn, the United States must set conditions for a negotiated settlement through military and diplomatic means: The United States should announce its intention to maintain a reduced military force in Afghanistan well beyond 2014; The United States should fund the Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF) at the present manning objective (352,000) through 2015, then reassess this requirement; The coalition should intensify efforts to kill or capture members of the insurgent Leadership; Bilateral preparation should begin with President Hamid Karzai and the issue of Afghan political reforms. Bonn I was about balancing control of central government offices. Following Bonn II, Afghans should rebalance power between the central government and provincial governments. Insurgents willing to lay down arms could play a legitimate role in local governance; Bilateral preparation should then proceed to Afghanistan's neighbors and Russia, China, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. This paper offers recommendations for dealing with each country in light of Bonn I and events to date. Without U.S. commitment through the end of this decade, Afghanistan will likely fall back into the civil war it experienced in the early 1990s. As fighting spreads, India and Pakistan will back their Afghan proxies and the conflict will intensify. This situation would not only create opportunities for safe haven for extremists, but also invite a confrontation between adversarial and nuclear-armed states. The growing strength of Pakistan's own insurgency and the existential threat it could pose in the future intensifies this risk. The potential for such an outcome runs counter to U.S. and coalition interests. Bonn 2001 began a journey toward Afghanistan's stability and representative government that has demanded great sacrifice by Afghans, Americans, and other members of the coalition. That journey has come far from its humble beginning and requires American leadership and energy to remain on course.
Download or read book A Review of the 2001 Bonn Conference and Application to the Road Ahead in Afghanistan written by Mark Fields and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Day After written by Brendan R. Gallagher and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 379 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since 9/11, why have we won smashing battlefield victories only to botch nearly everything that comes next? In the opening phases of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, we mopped the floor with our enemies. But in short order, things went horribly wrong. We soon discovered we had no coherent plan to manage the "day after." The ensuing debacles had truly staggering consequences—many thousands of lives lost, trillions of dollars squandered, and the apparent discrediting of our foreign policy establishment. This helped set the stage for an extraordinary historical moment in which America's role in the world, along with our commitment to democracy at home and abroad, have become subject to growing doubt. With the benefit of hindsight, can we discern what went wrong? Why have we had such great difficulty planning for the aftermath of war? In The Day After, Brendan Gallagher—an Army lieutenant colonel with multiple combat tours to Iraq and Afghanistan, and a Princeton Ph.D.—seeks to tackle this vital question. Gallagher argues there is a tension between our desire to create a new democracy and our competing desire to pull out as soon as possible. Our leaders often strive to accomplish both to keep everyone happy. But by avoiding the tough underlying decisions, it fosters an incoherent strategy. This makes chaos more likely. The Day After draws on new interviews with dozens of civilian and military officials, ranging from US cabinet secretaries to four-star generals. It also sheds light on how, in Kosovo, we lowered our postwar aims to quietly achieve a surprising partial success. Striking at the heart of what went wrong in our recent wars, and what we should do about it, Gallagher asks whether we will learn from our mistakes, or provoke even more disasters? Human lives, money, elections, and America's place in the world may hinge on the answer.
Download or read book Inside Afghanistan written by Timor Sharan and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-28 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book maps out how political networks and centres of power, engaged in patronage, corruption, and illegality, effectively constituted the Afghan state, often with the complicity of the U.S.-led military intervention and the internationally directed statebuilding project. It argues that politics and statehood in Afghanistan, in particular in the last two decades, including the ultimate collapse of the government in August 2021, are best understood in terms of the dynamics of internal political networks, through which warlords and patronage networks came to capture and control key sectors within the state and economy, including mining, banking, and illicit drugs as well as elections and political processes. Networked politics emerged as the dominant mode of governance that further transformed and consolidated Afghanistan into a networked state, with the state institutions and structures functioning as the principal “marketplace” for political networks’ bargains and rent-seeking. The façade of state survival and fragmented political order was a performative act, and the book contends, sustained through massive international military spending and development aid, obscuring the reality of resource redistribution among key networked elites and their supporters. Overall, the book offers a way to explain what it was that the international community and the Afghan elites in power got so wrong that brought Afghanistan full circle and the Taliban back to power.
Download or read book Coalition Challenges in Afghanistan written by Gale A. Mattox and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2015-12-02 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the experiences of a range of countries in the conflict in Afghanistan, with particular focus on the demands of operating within a diverse coalition of states. After laying out the challenges of the Afghan conflict in terms of objectives, strategy, and mission, case studies of 15 coalition members—each written by a country expert—discuss each country's motivation for joining the coalition and explore the impact of more than 10 years of combat on each country's military, domestic government, and populace. The book dissects the changes in the coalition over the decade, driven by both external factors—such as the Bonn Conferences of 2001 and 2011, the contiguous Iraq War, and politics and economics at home—and internal factors such as command structures, interoperability, emerging technologies, the surge, the introduction of counterinsurgency doctrine, Green on Blue attacks, escalating civilian casualties, and the impact of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams and NGOs. In their conclusion, the editors review the commonality and uniqueness evident in the country cases, lay out the lessons learned by NATO, and assess the potential for their application in future alliance warfare in the new global order.
Download or read book Strategic Forum written by and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 16 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book My Enemy s Enemy written by Avinash Paliwal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archetype of 'my enemy's enemy is my friend', India's political and economic presence in Afghanistan is often viewed as a Machiavellian ploy aimed against Pakistan. Challenging deeply held beliefs about an India-Pakistan proxy war, this work offers a nuanced explanation of India's strategic intent and actions, which is critical to resolving the seemingly unending war in Afghanistan, as well as wider bilateral disputes between the two South Asian rivals
Download or read book The Public Law of Gender written by Kim Rubenstein and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-26 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the worldwide sweep of gender-neutral, gender-equal or gender-sensitive public laws in international treaties, national constitutions and statutes, it is timely to document the raft of legal reform and to critically analyse its effectiveness. In demarcating the academic study of the public law of gender, this book brings together leading lawyers, political scientists, historians and philosophers to examine law's structuring of politics, governing and gender in a new global frame. Of interest to constitutional and statutory designers, advocates, adjudicators and scholars, the contributions explore how concepts such as equality, accountability, representation, participation and rights, depend on, challenge or enlist gendered roles and/or categories. These enquiries suggest that the new public law of gender must confront the lapses in enforcement, sincerity and coverage that are common in both national and international law and governance, and critically and pluralistically recast the public/private distinction in family, community, religion, customary and market domains.
Download or read book Afghanistan Politics Elections and Government Performance written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2009 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the context of a review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan during September-November 2009, the performance and legitimacy of the Afghan government figured prominently. In his December 1, 2009, speech announcing a way forward in Afghanistan, President Obama stated that the Afghan government would be judged on performance, and "The days of providing a blank check are over." The policy statement was based, in part, on an assessment of the security situation furnished by the top commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, which warned of potential mission failure unless a fully resourced classic counterinsurgency strategy is employed. That counterinsurgency effort is deemed to require a legitimate Afghan partner. The Afghan government's limited writ and widespread official corruption are believed by U.S. officials to be helping sustain a Taliban insurgency and complicating international efforts to stabilize Afghanistan. At the same time, President Hamid Karzai has, through compromise with faction leaders, been able to confine ethnic disputes to political competition, enabling his government to focus on trying to win over those members of the ethnic Pashtun community that support Taliban and other insurgents.
Download or read book Rethinking Conflict Resolution and Management written by I. W. Zartman and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-14 with total page 197 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rethinking and revising the established knowledge and practice of conflict resolution and management, this innovative book brings together complementary perspectives to consider what novel approaches to conflict need to be invented after the collapse of the World Order.
Download or read book The Geopolitics of Iran written by Francisco José B. S. Leandro and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-13 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book assesses Iran’s role in contemporary geopolitics. In particular, it examines three main intertwining circles: Iran’s development and political challenges, its relationships with neighbouring countries, as well as its relations with the major global powers — China, the European Union, Russia, and the United States. With contributions from over 20 authors, the book spans such critical aspects of contemporary geopolitics as modern history, natural resources, the economy, the social-political context, and strategic thinking. Particular focus is placed on Iran’s relations with its neighbours - Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Pakistan, and the Persian Gulf States. Furthermore, the book offers both a bilateral and multilateral dimension on how nuclear sanctions imposed on Iran have impacted its strategic planning, from the economic and military perspectives.
Download or read book Exercise of Power written by Robert M. Gates and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the former secretary of defense and author of the acclaimed #1 bestselling memoir, Duty, a candid, sweeping examination of power, and how it has been exercised, for good and bad, by American presidents in the post-Cold War world. Since the end of the Cold War, the global perception of the United States has progressively morphed from dominant international leader to disorganized entity. Robert Gates argues that this transformation is the result of the failure of political leaders to understand the complexity of American power, its expansiveness and its limitations. He makes clear that the successful exercise of power is not limited to the ability to coerce or demand submission, but must also encompass diplomacy, strategic communications, development assistance, intelligence, technology, and ideology. With forthright judgments of the performance of past presidents and their senior-most advisers, insightful firsthand knowledge, and compelling insider stories, Gates’s candid, sweeping examination of power in all its manifestations argues that U.S. national security in the future will require abiding by the lessons of the past, reimagining our approach, and revitalizing nonmilitary instruments of power essential to success and security.
Download or read book Corruption in Conflict written by John F. Sopko and published by . This book was released on 2016-11-23 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report examines how the U.S. government -- primarily the Departments of Defense (DOD), State, Treasury, and Justice (DOJ), and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) -- understood the risks of corruption in Afghanistan, how the U.S. response to corruption evolved, and the effectiveness of that response. The report identifies lessons to inform U.S. policies and actions at the onset of and throughout a contingency operation and makes recommendations for both legislative and executive branch action. This analysis reveals that corruption substantially undermined the U.S. mission in Afghanistan from the very beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom. It concludes that failure to effectively address the problem means that U.S. reconstruction programs, at best, will continue to be subverted by systemic corruption and, at worst, will fail. Figures and tables.. This is a print on demand report.
Download or read book Canada as Statebuilder written by Laura Grant and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2021-08-18 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Canada's statebuilding efforts in Afghanistan are not well documented. After fourteen years of significant investments in humanitarian causes, there are still questions about the impact of these projects and whether they delivered as promised or fell short. In Canada as Statebuilder? Laura Grant and Benjamin Zyla analyze over one hundred and thirty Canadian-led development projects in Afghanistan to illustrate that Canada has a limited capacity to effectively run humanitarian efforts in unstable, insecure, or inaccessible environments. Canadian or Canadian-sponsored development projects were ambitious and highly productive in terms of outputs in the short term, especially in the areas of security, women and gender, health, and education. However, when their outcomes and overall impact are assessed, the authors argue, Canada's record is less impressive. Their analysis contributes to evidence-based discussions of one of Canada's most important foreign policy activities in recent years. Reflecting on Canada's engagement in Afghanistan, Canada as Statebuilder? asks whether Canadian peacekeeping efforts in the region were ultimately worth the economic and human resources invested.
Download or read book Afghanistan and Its Neighbors written by Marvin G. Weinbaum and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 20 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fate of Afghanistan and the success of U.S. and coalition efforts to stabilize Afghanistan will in large measure be affected by the current and future policies pursued by its varied proximate and distal neighbors. Weinbaum evaluates the courses of action Afghanistan's key neighbors are likely to take.
Download or read book Afghanistan written by Kenneth Katzman and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: U.S. and outside assessments of the effort to stabilise Afghanistan are mixed and subject to debate; the Administration notes progress on reconstruction, governance and security in many areas of Afghanistan, particularly the U.S.-led eastern sector of Afghanistan. However, a November 2007 Bush Administration review of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan reportedly concluded that overall progress was inadequate. This mirrors recent outside studies that contain relatively pessimistic assessments, emphasising a growing sense of insecurity in areas previously considered secure, increased numbers of suicide attacks, and increasing aggregate poppy cultivation, as well as increasing divisions within the NATO alliance about the relative share of combat among the nations contributing to the peacekeeping mission. Both the official U.S. as well as outside assessments are increasingly pointing to Pakistan as failing -- either through lack of attention or eliberatestrategy -- to prevent Taliban commanders from operating from Pakistan. To try to gain momentum against the insurgency, the United States is considering new initiatives including adding U.S. troops to the still combat-intense south, possibly assuming U.S. command of the southern sector, and increasing direct U.S. action against Taliban concentrations inside Pakistan. Politically, the Afghan government remains reasonably stable. The post-Taliban transition was completed with the convening of a parliament in December 2005; a new constitution was adopted in January 2004, successful presidential elections were held on October 9, 2004, and parliamentary elections took place on September 18, 2005. The parliament has become an arena for factions that have fought each other for nearly three decades to debate and peacefully resolve differences, as well as a centre of political pressure on President Hamid Karzai. Major regional strongmen have been marginalised. Afghan citizens are enjoying personal freedoms forbidden by the Taliban, and women are participating in economic and political life. Presidential elections are to be held in the fall of 2009, with parliamentary and provincial elections to follow one year later. To help stabilise Afghanistan, the United States and partner countries are deploying a 47,000 troop NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that now commands peacekeeping throughout Afghanistan, including the restive south. Of those, 19,000 of the 31,000 U.S. forces in Afghanistan are part of ISAF. The U.S. and partner forces also run regional enclaves to secure reconstruction (Provincial Reconstruction Teams, PRTs), and are building an Afghan National Army and National Police. The United States has given Afghanistan over $23 billion (appropriated, including FY2008 to date) since the fall of the Taliban, including funds to equip and train Afghan security forces.
