Plan A-Minus for Afghanistan

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. President Barack Obama, “Remarks by the President in Address to the Nation on the Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan” (speech, U.S. Military Academy at West Point, December 1, 2009), http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-address-nation-way-forward-afghanistan-and-pakistan. 2. See for example Robert D. Blackwill, “A de facto partition for Afghanistan,” Politico, July 7, 2010, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/39432.html; and the Afghanistan Study Group, “A New Way Forward: Rethinking U.S. Strategy in Afghanistan” (Washington, D.C.: New America Foundation, September 2010), http://www.afghanistanstudygroup.org/NewWayForward_report.pdf. 3. For public opinion data, see www.brookings.edu/afghanistanindex. 4. General David Petraeus, interview by David Gregory, Meet the Press, NBC, August 15, 2010, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38686033/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/. 5. President Obama, “Way Forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” December 1, 2009. 6. See ethnic maps of Afghanistan based on the Perry/Castaneda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas at Austin, reprinted in Michael E. O'Hanlon and Hassina Sherjan, Toughing It Out in Afghanistan (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2010), pp. 1–18. 7. Bob Woodward, Obama's Wars (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2010), pp. 159–160, 234–236. 8. Bruce Riedel, The Search for al Qaeda: Its Leadership, Ideology, and Future (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2008), pp. 122–124; Antonio Giustozzi, “Conclusion,” in Decoding the New Taliban: Insights from the Afghan Field, ed. Antonio Giustozzi (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), pp. 293–300; and O'Hanlon and Sherjan, Toughing It Out, pp. 58–60. 9. Briefing slides presented to Michael O'Hanlon at Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan/NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (CSTC-A/NTM-A), Camp Eggers, Kabul, Afghanistan, September 10, 2010. 10. CSTC-A/NTM-A briefing slides, p. 44. 11. CSTC-A/NTM-A briefing slides, p. 40. 12. International Crisis Group, “A Force in Fragments: Reconstituting the Afghan National Army,” May 12, 2010, pp. 19–20, http://www.crisisgroup.org/~/media/Files/asia/south-asia/afghanistan/190%20A%20Force%20in%20Fragments%20-%20Reconstituting%20the%20Afghan%20National%20Army.ashx. 13. Although the armed forces include representative numbers of Pashtuns overall, only about 2.5 percent of security personnel come from the south, whereas a more appropriate target would be 10 percent. See CSTC-A/NTM-A briefing slides, pp. 15, 17. Additional informationNotes on contributorsMichael O'HanlonMichael O'Hanlon is a Senior Fellow and director of research at Brookings, coauthor with Hassina Sherjan of Toughing It Out in Afghanistan (Brookings Institution Press, 2010), and coauthor of Brookings' Afghanistan IndexBruce RiedelBruce Riedel is a Fellow in the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings and author of The Search for Al Qaeda (Brookings Institution Press, 2008), and Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of Global Jihad (Brookings Institution Press, 2011). In 2009, he chaired President Obama's review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan