No Hope for Negotiations in Cairo; No Hope for U.S. Mission in Afghanistan

The ceasefire in Arsal between the ISIS-led jihadis and Lebanese Army quickly broke down yesterday. Arsal is a Sunni town in the Bekaa Valley that is home to several refugee camps filled with people who have fled the war next door in Syria. Two of the refugee camps were reported to have been set ablaze by "indiscriminate artillery fire."

The ceasefire negotiations between Israel and Hamas are getting underway in Cairo. David Kirkpatrick has an interview, "A Part of Hamas Negotiates, and Another May Fight Again,"
with Hamas bigwig Mousa Abu Marzook that is worth reading if only to get a sense of the futility of these bargaining sessions. Israel and Egypt are operating in lockstep. Their position is adamant: No easing of the blockade unless Gaza is demilitarized. Abu Marzook is equally adamant: Hamas' military wing, the Qassam Brigades, will remain. Abu Marzook is going to try to sell the idea of political and military separation. On the one hand, the Palestinian Authority will return to Gaza to administer the territory as the political power; while on the other, the Qassam Brigades will act as a national guard:

[A]fter more than 1,600 Palestinian deaths in Gaza from the Israeli attacks over the last month, Mr. Abu Marzook said Tuesday that Hamas had won a victory just by surviving and argued that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel had failed to achieve any of his goals. Mr. Abu Marzook said Hamas had gained popularity, remained able to fire rockets at Israel, and could re-establish its network of tunnels under Gaza. 

For agreeing to the cease-fire, he argued that Hamas should receive relief from the blockade on its territory. “The Palestinians should gain something out of these battles,” he said. “They want the siege to end; they want all the gates to open.”

That is a nonstarter with Israel and Egypt while Hamas controls Gaza, but Mr. Abu Marzook said Hamas was prepared for the unified government to take over, including assuming responsibility in Gaza for security and the borders.

He acknowledged that some tensions remained. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah, have parallel payrolls of employees to run Gaza. 

“Two people on one chair is very difficult,” Mr. Abu Marzook said. “Now it is our duty to resolve this problem and make a real unity Palestinian government.” 

But he brushed off past concerns within Hamas about the possibility that the loyal presidential guard of its chief rival, Fatah’s leader, Mahmoud Abbas, might take positions in Gaza.

I don't see Israel and Egypt coming anywhere near this. The Palestinian Authority (PA) is widely unpopular, while support for Hamas has grown significantly since Israel's invasion. Abbas is a joke. PA rule in Gaza would be cosmetic. The real power would be Hamas, something Israel and Egypt will not accept. In the past, the United States might have had enough leverage to get the deal Abu Marzak suggests done, but no longer. The U.S., it appears to me, is not calling the shots but rather tagging along. The Saudis are driving events in the Middle East. This means Hamas gets nothing. So we're looking at a situation where Hamas will have to accept a return to the status quo ante, the blockade, or it will have to start sending rockets into Israel again. Not a very palatable choice.

Matthew Rosenberg and Helene Cooper have a useful postmortem, "U.S. General Is Killed in Attack at Afghan Base; Others Injured," of the green-on-blue attack at the Marshal Fahim National Defense University in Kabul that killed U.S. Army Major General Harold Greene who "had been dispatched to Afghanistan to help the Afghan military address one of its most potentially debilitating weaknesses: an inability to manage soldiers and weaponry."

The story by Rosenberg and Cooper provides a reminder to anyone who is paying attention of why U.S. involvement in Afghanistan will end in failure. Any vestigial U.S. force that remains in the country, assuming that the deal Kerry struck for a recount and power-sharing government between the Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah camps holds (and that is highly unlikely), will be there as a training force. But how can you train people if you hunkered down in your bases for fear of your life?

Yet the shooting was a blunt reminder that discipline and vetting remain a challenge, and rogue Afghan soldiers and policemen remain a threat, despite a sharp drop in insider attacks since 2012, when the violence peaked and dozens of coalition service members were killed by Afghan counterparts. 

With foreign troops having largely ceded their front-line role to Afghan forces in the past two years, training and advising Afghans is one of the few crucial roles still played here by the coalition. American soldiers largely stay out of the Taliban’s line of fire, but they must still maintain close contact with Afghan soldiers and policemen. Foreign forces have few options for protecting themselves, short of cutting off contact with the Afghans. 

But that would make the training mission impossible, as General Greene, 55, most likely knew.

*** 

The attack occurred around noon and sent shock waves through the coalition command and Afghanistan’s defense establishment, bringing nearly all other work to a halt. In the immediate aftermath, Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the commander of coalition forces, ordered all foreign advisers and trainers out of Afghan government ministries and back to their bases.