Here is the latest edition of my column at Foreign Policy:

Topics include:

1) Note to the White House: You don't own Karzai -- he owns you,

2) The Afghan campaign is now about reputation, not terrorism.

Note to the White House: You don't own Karzai -- he owns you

In the March 26 edition of this column, I warned that bargaining with the Taliban for a settlement in Afghanistan would open a fissure between Afghan and U.S. interests. But it should be clear that such a new fissure would join others that are already cracking up U.S.-Afghan relations. What the Obama team needs to determine is whether it can achieve its objectives in Afghanistan while its relations with President Hamid Karzai crumble.

On March 29, the New York Times described another crack in the foundation. According to the story, an angry Karzai, after having been de-invited to meet with President Barack Obama at the White House, invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Kabul to deliver an anti-American speech at the presidential palace. Ahmadinejad's speech occurred while Defense Secretary Robert Gates was visiting U.S. troops in the country.

The piece went on to discuss a lunch meeting at his palace during which Karzai declared that "the Americans are in Afghanistan because they want to dominate his country and the region." According to the article, Karzai asserted that he could reach a settlement with the Taliban but that U.S. officials are preventing that in order to prolong the war and their military presence in the region.

It is expected that Karzai, like any leaders in his position, would wish to demonstrate to his compatriots that he is not a mere crony of a foreign power. But Karzai wasn't shy about delivering a similar message in a November 2009 interview with PBS's Newshour, whose audience includes the Washington establishment: "[T]he West is not here primarily for the sake of Afghanistan. It is here to fight the war on terror.... We were being killed by al Qaeda and the terrorists before Sept. 11 for years, tortured and killed; our villages were destroyed, and we were living a miserable life. The West didn't care nor did they ever come." It appears as if the Obama team should not count on receiving any gratitude from Karzai.

How can Karzai, the leader of an incredibly poor and dependent country, get away with antagonizing the U.S. government? He realized, perhaps before U.S. policymakers did, that the heightened U.S. commitment of prestige in Afghanistan means that the United States no longer has the option of either redefining its mission in a way that would exclude Karzai or of withholding large-scale support for Afghanistan's institutions. With escalation, the U.S. government became dependent on Karzai and not vice versa.

What U.S. policymakers now need to contemplate is whether they can achieve their goals in Afghanistan while relations with Karzai and the government in Kabul deteriorate. The White House needs the American public, not to mention its soldiers, to believe in the Afghan mission. Publicly quarreling with and disparaging Karzai and his government can quickly shatter that belief. Similarly, Karzai's open distrust of America's motives is no doubt a boost to the Taliban's recruiting.

U.S. officials think they have valid complaints about the performance of Karzai and his government. It must seem paradoxical to many of those officials that their leverage over Karzai declined with each increment of U.S. escalation. They'd better quickly accept that paradox if they wish to avoid a debacle.

The Afghan campaign is now about reputation, not terrorism

The March 29 suicide bombings on Moscow's subway system, which killed 39 and injured more than 70, have left Russians wondering what their government will do in response. On April 1, President Dmitry Medvedev arrived in Dagestan with a five-point plan that promised a mixture of "sharp dagger blows," economic development, and the promotion of "morality and spiritual growth" in the North Caucasus region. After nearly two decades of various military campaigns in the region, Russia has pacified Chechnya and the North Caucasus as much as it ever will. But the terrorist attacks in Moscow and elsewhere show the limitations of the Chechen operations as exercises in counterterrorism. Russia's brutal military campaigns in Chechnya may have done little to protect Russia from terrorism. Nonetheless, the wars demonstrated Russia's willingness to forcefully defend its sovereignty, something it no doubt believed was a useful lesson for others to observe.

We can say the same about the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan. As U.S. military forces press on with their campaign -- next stop, Kandahar -- police at home have had to deal with the likes of Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan, attempted airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, and Najibullah Zazi who recently pleaded guilty to plotting to attack the New York City subway system. None of these plots received material support from Afghanistan's badlands. Similarly, even with the campaign in Afghanistan, thousands of police officers in the United States are still required to attend training on identifying and dismantling improvised explosive devices made from common household products. The 9/11 attacks had a connection (along with other places) to Afghanistan. The next terrorist attack on the United States very likely won't -- which may cause many to wonder why Afghanistan is getting so much costly attention.

If the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan isn't really protecting the U.S. homeland from terrorism, what is its purpose? On March 28, President Barack Obama made a quick visit to Afghanistan, where he reminded soldiers that the U.S. mission there is "to disrupt and dismantle, defeat and destroy al Qaeda and its extremist allies.... We're going to deny al Qaeda safe haven. We're going to reverse the Taliban's momentum. We're going to strengthen the capacity of Afghan security forces and the Afghan government so that they can begin taking responsibility and gain confidence of the Afghan people."

Left unsaid is to what measurable standard or duration the U.S. government is to achieve those goals. Ultimately, Obama will attempt to make those judgments. But his answers have to be believed by not only the American public but by much of the rest of the world.

In this sense, the United States is fighting in Afghanistan not against terrorism but for its reputation, for its ability to convince the wider world that it is in control of its affairs and that its power can achieve challenging goals. But this means that the world audience, and not the U.S. president, will decide for itself whether it is convinced about the efficacy of American power.

As it did with the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan, the world audience will decide whether the United States won or lost its war. That audience, and not Obama, will set the benchmarks for success, which the United States will be obliged to meet.

U.S. Looking for Leaders in Afghan Army - Jim Michaels, USA Today.

... After eight years and billions of dollars spent on building Afghanistan's military, coalition officials have concluded a lack of quality leaders is now the biggest obstacle to creating a fighting force capable of standing on its own...

The commander in charge of training the Afghan army into a force capable of taking over for coalition troops, Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, has ordered that development of leadership skills be a top priority.

"It's more important than equipment," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top allied commander here, said in an interview. "It's more important than doctrine. It's more important even than ideology."

And it may be the single most important factor that decides whether the Taliban is defeated and the U.S. military can go home, experts say...

Much more at USA Today.

Via E-mail: Please join American Enterprise Institute Resident Scholar, and Director of the Critical Threats Project, Frederick W. Kagan on Monday, April 5, 2010 from 1:30 to 2:30 pm for a live online video briefing on the terror threat from Somalia. Also contributing to the discussion will be Critical Threats Analyst Christopher Harnisch who will discuss the Somali terror group al Shabaab.

While American efforts to combat international terrorism continue to focus on the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, other regions have become safe havens for militant Islamist groups. This terror threat became a reality when an operative of an al Qaeda franchise based in Yemen tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane with nearly three hundred people on board, on Christmas Day 2009.

Today, a terror threat is growing in Somalia, across from Yemen on the Gulf of Aden. A militant Islamist group called al Shabaab (resembling a hybrid of al Qaeda and the Taliban) has explicitly threatened to attack the United States. This terror group has established radical Islamist administrations that govern large parts of southern Somalia -- more territory than any other militant Islamist group in the world. It operates terrorist training camps, views itself as part of the global jihad led by Osama bin Laden, has dozens of operatives from the United States and Europe, and has followed through on previous threats made against Somali targets. The threat posed by al Shabaab is real and imminent, and Americans should not be surprised if the group tries to attack the U.S.

To obtain viewing information for the briefing, please e-mail katherine.zimmerman@aei.org.

Please e-mail your questions for Fred Kagan and Chris Harnisch during the briefing to either charlie.szrom@aei.org or vrodman@aei.org.

U.S. Campaign to Reform Kandahar is Rife with Pitfalls - David Ignatius, Washington Post opinion.

The coming battle for control of this ancient crossroads city will be the toughest challenge of the war in Afghanistan - not because it will be bloody, necessarily, but because it will require the hardest item for U.S. commanders to deliver, which is an improvement in governance.

Kandahar is the heartland of the Pashtun people - a place of competing tribes and clans, of hidden wealth accumulated from drug trafficking and smuggling, and of notorious power brokers symbolized in the public mind by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the leader of the provincial council and brother of Afghanistan's president.

Reforming the local government is like disassembling a pyramid of pick-up sticks. One wrong move and the whole pile collapses. Yet if the United States accommodates the existing power structure, it will appear to be condoning corruption here - a bad message for the public in Afghanistan and America alike...

More at The Washington Post.

Unruly Clients: The Trouble with Allies - Dr. Steven Metz, World Affairs.

When Congress approved a massive, five-year assistance package for Pakistan in the fall of 2009, much of it earmarked for strengthening the country's military and security forces, Pakistani leaders reacted by immediately biting the hand that was trying to feed them. During a talk in Houston, former President Pervez Musharraf slammed the conditions in the bill, asserting that Pakistan knew better than the United States how to root out terrorists. General Ashfaq Kiyani, the Pakistani army chief, labeled the offer of support "insulting and unacceptable." Members of the Pakistani parliament called the $7.5 billion appropriation "peanuts." Some of this grumbling may have been for show, another example of Pakistan's finely honed skill at extracting more and more money from the United States, but it also reflected a cynicism and sense of estrangement on the part of the Pakistani elites. And in this regard the episode highlights a central flaw in American security strategy: reliance on allies whose perceptions, priorities, values, and objectives tend to be quite different from our own...

Much more at World Affairs.

Via e-mail from Dr. Amitai Etzioni, University Professor and Professor of International Relations at The George Washington University:

Jane Mayer made the liberal case against drones in The New Yorker (October 26, 2009). We provide a blow by blow response here (Joint Force Quarterly) and discuss the issue on Talk of the Nation, here. Everyone is entitled to human rights, but we cannot wait for terrorists to strike before we go after them. And, although little known, the US military has a carefully crafted procedure for determining which drone strikes are allowed and which would cause too much collateral damage.

The onus for avoiding collateral damage altogether is on the terrorists. They have to stop exploiting their status as civilians, stop using civilians as human shields, and homes--as headquarters, as locations to store ammunition and for snipers to ply their deadly trade. (For more, see Security First: For a Muscular, Moral Foreign Policy [Yale 2007] and our website.)

Dr. Etzioni's e-mail requested comments concerning this issue.

Middle East Studies at Marine Corps University is pleased to announce that the audio from the MES AfPak Lecture Series third session, "Afghanistan: War of Necessity or Quagmire" presented by Ambassador Peter Galbraith, is now available at Middle East Studies' Marine Corps University website.

The next lecture in the series presented by Professor Shah Mahmoud Hanifi's entitled "Pashtun Counter-Narrative" is scheduled for 1400-1530, 5 April 2010 in room 164/166 of Gray Research Center, 2040 Broadway St, MCB Quantico. More details will follow for subsequent presentations. This is the fourth lecture in a series entitled "A Multidisciplinary Approach to the AfPak Region and Its People" being hosted by Middle East Studies at Marine Corps University.

In About-Face, Marines Embrace Web 2.0 - Nathan Hodge, Danger Room.

Last summer, the U.S. Marine Corps took a draconian approach to Web 2.0, issuing a sweeping ban on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and other social media sites from its networks.

In an order issued yesterday, the service changed course, issuing guidelines to encourage "responsible and effective use" of social networking technology. "The Marine Corps embraces and strives to leverage the advances of internet-based capabilities," the directive states. "... effective immediately, internet-based capabilities will be made available to all MCEN [Marine Corps Enterprise Network] users."

In addition to opening up YouTube and Google tools, it encourages Marine organizations to create a better online presence...

Much more at Danger Room.

Three recent articles in Special Warfare recommended via e-mail (Hat tip to COL Dave Maxwell):

The Great UW Debate by Colonel David M. Witty.

The Special Forces community has been trying to articulate a definition for unconventional warfare, or UW, for well over 50 years. The pages of previous issues of this magazine are full of articles discussing the definition and scope of UW. The community's failure to clearly state a concise definition of UW to itself, the Army, the joint force, and other government agencies makes it appear that it is at best, doctrinally adrift, or at worst, intellectually lacking. Given the increased emphasis on irregular warfare and the fact that UW is one of the five IW activities, the SF community needs to agree on what UW is or risk losing credibility.

Effective Use of FID: Expands SF Influence by Captain Stephen C. Flanagan.

During the past six years of combat rotations to Iraq, United States Army Special Forces have refined their lines of operation, or LOOs, to meet the ever-evolving challenges presented on the battlefield of counterinsurgency, or COIN. The LOOs directed by combined joint special-operations task forces, or CJSOTFs, in Iraq and Afghanistan have varied greatly over time and have included: targeting enemy networks, conducting tribal engagements, conducting information and psychological operations, conducting combined lethal operations and developing networks of influence. However, one LOO that has remained the constant emphasis for the 10th SF Group in shaping the battlefield in Operation Iraqi Freedom is the conduct of foreign internal defense, or FID.

The Lion, the Starfish and the Spider by Chief Warrant Officer 3 Bruce E. DeFeyter.

Today policy-makers, law-enforcement officials and military leaders struggle to come up with innovative ideas for neutralizing terrorist organizations and their activities. One such idea, not given much thought until after Sept. 11, is attacking terrorist financing structures, methods and sources. Attempting to destroy terrorists by denying them financing or interrupting their money stream is unlikely to succeed as a sole point of effort for at least three reasons. First, organizationally, terrorists are structured to slip behind, around and underneath centralized organizations, rules and bureaucracies. Second, terrorist organizations can conduct operations for literally pennies on the dollar, and any serious effort to interrupt these financially insignificant activities will have serious second- and third-order effects on the larger financial community. Third, even with the thousands of laws enacted and the historically unprecedented cooperation between partner nations, terrorism continues to escalate by nearly every conceivable measure. Bluntly put, counterterrorism financing reform simply doesn't work.