The rise of nation building

Ok, last post Afghanistan or Pakistan for a while. Promise.

Today, I had the pleasure of meeting James Dobbins. He was former special envoy to Afghanistan and spoke at the New America Foundation about the lessons he learned while engineering the Bonn Agreement, which established the Afghan government following the US invasion and was a foundation for their new Constitution. His discussion leant itself toward more technical aspects of political development and nation building but allow me to summarize two of his more interesting points regarding the current situation in South Asia.

The Pakistani government regards the current conflict in FATA as a problem between the US and extremists NOT as a problem between Pakistan and extremist militants.

I have said something to this effect before. A large part of this sentiment stems from Pakistan's longstanding support of separatist rebels in Kashmir. The country has a history of harboring extremist groups that may benefit Pakistan at some point (and the Taliban serves to counter Indian influence in Afghanistan).

The current icy relations with Iran are a result of misguided confidence in Iraq.

This sounds controversial. Conventional knowledge says Iran has been adversarial since Khomeini came to power. Not true. Iran has played an instrumental role in the reconstruction (and financial support) of Afghanistan and wanted to be heavily involved in development efforts. By shunning Iranian attempts to aid in reconstruction (when they were willing to capitulate to a host of US demands), the Bush administration seriously miscalculated their position. Seeing quick "success" in Afghanistan and hoping for the same after a quick military takeover of Iraq, Rumsfeld's belief was that once surrounded by two functioning democracies, built from the ground up by the US and allies, Iran would be forced to meet ALL US demands. Well I don't need to remind you that's not quite how events unfolded.

These were two of the more interesting and provoking stances Dobbins took but the entire event is worth checking out.