* Second Vice President Mohammad Karim Khalili (April 20-22)
* Minister of Finance Dr. Omar Zakhilwal (April 21-26)
* Governor of the Central Bank Mr. Abdul Qadeer Fitrat (April 21-26)
* Minister of Commerce and Industry Mr. Wahidullah Shahrani (May 7-8)
* Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. Rangin D. Spanta (May 6-8)
* Minister of Defense General Abdul Rahim Wardak (May 6-8)
* Minister of Interior Mohammad Hanif Atmar (May 6-8)
* Minister of Mines and Energy Mr. Mohammad Ibrahim Adel (May 12)

And then the embassy says that Spanta, Wardak and Atmar will “join their Pakistani counterparts and U.S. officials for a second round of trilateral discussions on the new U.S. strategy towards Afghanistan and Pakistan.” So, off by a day. I’ll just be over in the corner picking up the pieces of my career.

The Obama administration, according to The New York Times, is going to give Wardak more than what he said he wanted — a force ultimately sized at 400,000 soldiers. Building, training and equipping a competent army of that size is an enormous task. For perspective, the active-duty U.S. Army is presently around 514,000 soldiers. Understandably, The Times reports there’s some sticker shock:

[E]ven members of Mr. Obama’s national security team appeared taken aback by the cost projections of the program, which range from $10 billion to $20 billion over the next six or seven years.

By comparison, the annual budget for the entire Afghan government, which is largely provided by the United States and other international donors, is about $1.1 billion, which means the annual price of the program would be about twice the cost of operating the government of President Hamid Karzai.

The takeaway from that shouldn’t simply be that the program is expensive. It should be that the security challenges in Afghanistan are so immense that a massive Afghan army is necessary. In the absence of an army like that, there are two alternatives: send way more American and NATO troops than in the recent plus-up; or begin a withdrawal — and if you withdraw without competent indiginous security forces, you’re inviting a vaccuum to be filled by the insurgency. The Times quotes Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, as saying “The cost is relatively small compared to the cost of not doing it — of having Afghanistan either disintegrate, or fall into the hands of the Taliban, or look as though we are dominating it.”

What The Times doesn’t report — probably because the Obama administration doesn’t know — is how long it will take to go from 86,000 troops to 400,000. If it’ll take until 2011 (and supposed to take until 2013) to get to 134,000, is it safe to assume that five more years is a conservative estimate to reach the new goal? Indeed, a question worth asking is whether there’s a danger in trying to train too many troops too quickly, since the experience in Iraq with the training mission should have instructed the United States in the folly of throwing people into uniform with a few weeks of training and calling them an army. For all the talk about the length of the Iraq war, which enters its seventh year today, the Obama administration has evidently decided that the Afghanistan war will grind on for much longer.

“Mullah Omar has given the green light to talks,” said one of the mediators, Abdullah Anas, a former friend of Osama bin Laden who used to fight in Afghanistan but now lives in London.

A source negotiating for the Afghan Government confirmed: “It’s extremely sensitive but we have been in contact both with Mullah Omar’s direct representatives and commanders from the front line.”…

“A big, big step has happened,” Mr Anas said yesterday. “For the first time, there is a language of … peace on both sides.”

While stranger things have happened, representatives from the Afghan government told reporters in Washington a few weeks ago that they don’t seek reconciliation with Omar and his al-Qaeda-aligned Quetta Shura Taliban council. Instead they seek defeat. Assuming that line is the true government line, Omar would have to swear allegiance to the post-Taliban constitution before the government would think about dealing with him instead of arresting him. Which they might not even consider at all, since they said his crew was guilty of terrible crimes. (As they are.)

But who knows. Positions change, especially if there might be a reasonable prospect to end the war. Still, that’s doubtful. The Taliban are in possibly the best position they’ve been in since they were driven out of Kabul in 2001. Why would they seek peace now, particularly a peace on the Kabul government’s terms?

“Taliban are in a strong position now but that doesn’t mean they can control the state,” [Anas] said. “They are well aware that it’s a different situation to 1996 when they swept to power because Afghans saw them as bringing peace.”

Again, consider that unverified until further reporting emerges.

The U.S. goal in Afghanistan must be to protect Kabul’s fragile government from collapsing under pressure from the Taliban — a goal that can only be achieved by securing Pakistan’s cooperation, increasing substantially the size of Afghanistan’s national security forces and boosting economic aid in the region, according to senior military and intelligence officials. …

Broadly speaking, the Obama administration was expected to endorse a doctrine of counterinsurgency that has military and civilian components and that scales back U.S. expectations for Afghan democracy and self-sufficiency. A main theme is the premise that the military alone cannot win the war, officials said.

The review was expected to focus on containing the Taliban and the proliferation of lesser-known militant groups, providing a greater sense of security and stability for Afghan civilians and increasing the size and proficiency of the Afghan armed forces.

Any news report that speaks about “scaling back” any expectations in Afghanistan is likely to distress the Karzai government, which two weeks ago dispatched a bevvy of cabinet ministers to Washington to plead against doing just that. But — again, presuming that this report is definitive — the Obama administration is giving them substantively much of what that Afghan delegation argued for: a warfighting strategy that emphasizes the security of the population; a bolstered effort to train the Afghan security forces; and increased development aid. The missing piece here that the Afghan delegation argued for is an emphasis on providing better governance . But even though The Associated Press’ story doesn’t say it, it’s hard to imagine that counterinsurgents like Gen. David Petraeus or Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy would be putting forward a counterinsurgency strategy that didn’t have a governance component. So the Afghan delegation’s circle appears to be squared.

That, however, raises the question of how much the goals actually have been scaled back, or whether the Obama administration truly does have clear goals in mind. We’ll be able to judge that in fuller detail when the strategy is announced — possibly as early as next week, according to the Associated Press. But it appears for the moment that the Obama administration is looking to eliminate jihadist safe havens, “containing” the Taliban — and I don’t know what that means, particularly if getting rid of the safe havens is the goal — and settling for a stable Afghan government. And there’s no contradiction between using counterinsurgency means to a counterterrorist objective.

“This is not a militia, not an Arbakai,” Atmar said, referring to a traditional tribal volunteer security force, at a breakfast meeting for the press with the Afghan ministerial delegation that’s in town this week to advise the Obama Af-Pak strategy review. “This is not arming people outside the formal government structure.” Instead, he vowed, the APPF would be “part of the police force, but without the mandate of the police” to perform law enforcement functions, though the APPF would wear police uniforms and guard installations likes schools, roads and public buildings. “This frees assets from the police for community policing,” Atmar said. He also claimed that the APPF would amount to “accelerating” the disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of militias.  Atmar’s ministry runs the program.

Atmar acknowledged that the upper house of the Afghan parliament has passed a resolution condemning the program — which is proceeding in pilot form in Wardak Province — but urged patience. Some of his countrymen “are behaving against the [counsel] of our famous proverb, ‘Don’t take your boots off before you see the water,’” Atmar said. “Don’t pass resolutions before you see the water. Don’t pass resolutions that will have no relevance whatsoever.”

Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta (Afghan Embassy, NATO)

Two key Afghan officials, in Washington for discussions with the Obama administration about the future of the Afghanistan war, urged the U.S. against scaling back its ambitions in Afghanistan.

Speaking at gatherings convened by two think tanks close to the administration, Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak and Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta warned against reducing support for what Wardak called “a strong central government.” The Obama administration is currently reviewing policy options for the seven-year long war, and several administration officials have urged refocusing U.S. efforts on core interests like eradicating safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban, rather than creating what Defense Secretary Bob Gates has derisively called a “Central Asian Valhalla.” The Obama administration has expressed impatience with Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai over governmental corruption; and Karzai recently likened relations with the new administration to a “gentle wrestling match.”

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Both men met yesterday at the White House with senior administration officials, including ret. Marine Gen. Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security advisor, and the leaders of the administration’s ongoing Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy review, former CIA official Bruce Riedel, Undersecretary of Defense Michele Flournoy and Amb. Richard Holbrooke. The review is designed to shape the future of U.S. policy toward the two countries wracked by Al Qaeda-supported insurgencies. Delegations from Afghanistan and Pakistan are in town this week to lend their input to the review.

Spanta told an audience at the Center for American Progress Thursday morning that he implored the review to emphasize support for Afghan “security, sustainable development, and good governance.” A “reductionist” approach that focused just on counterterrorism operations “is bound to fail,” he said. He indicated that the Obama strategy review focused many of its questions on security issues in Afghanistan. “I would link what we discussed with our American colleagues with the need for a Democratic Afghanistan,” Spanta said.

Wardak gave a feisty and somewhat combative address at a panel sponsored by the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, the think tank that Flournoy co-founded in 2007. He accused the media of painting a “gloomy picture” of Afghanistan and ignoring “the improvement across all sectors of government.” (A report released today from the centrist Center for Strategic and International Studies warned that the people of Afghanistan “experience deteriorating security and a worsening economic situation.”) Reiterating his desire for a “long-term partnership” with the United States, Wardak said his primary strategy for security in Afghanistan would be the accelerated development of the Afghan National Army from nearly 86,000 soldiers currently to 134,000 by 2013, and to gradually phase the the army into “lead[ing] the fight independently” of U.S. and NATO troops. He did not give timetables for the transition.

Saying that 2009 would be “critical,” Wardak predicted that “this year, the Afghan National Army’s performance will exceed your expectations, as more operations will be led by the [army] and it will take more responsibility for more provinces.”

Wardak mirrored Spanta’s comments about abandoning broader aims in Afghanistan, but added a darker undercurrent. “Changing course, embracing a strategy of containment or abandoning the approach of a strong central government” would amount to “falling into the trap the enemy has laid,” he said.

Similarly, Spanta backed Wardak in urging Americans to support funding for the development of the Afghan security forces. Putting Afghans in the lead for security missions is “the precondition [for] acceptable security in Afghanistan,” an approach endorsed by Defense Secretary Gates and Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who recently signed an accord with Wardak to better integrate Afghan Defense Ministry planning in the design of U.S. operations.

In one case, Spanta went further than Wardak in publicly calling for reconciliation with insurgents not tied to Al Qaeda. “We have the responsibilty to support and help them come back to Afghan society,” he said, claiming that “there is no difference between us and our allies,” a remark seeming to indicate that the Obama review team agrees on the need for widespread insurgent reconciliation. Asked by The Washington Independent what percentage of the insurgency was reconcilable, Spanta that the “It’s hard to give a percentage but we know it is a remarkable [proportion], if some entities in our neighborhood allow it,” seeming to suggest that Pakistan, where senior Taliban leadership is believed to operate, is hindering reconciliation efforts.

While the Obama administration may narrow its strategic goals for the Afghanistan war — Obama has said that eradicating safe havens for Al Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan and Pakistan would amount to success — a host of recent reports from administration allies have said that the sort of robust support for Afghan development and governance efforts that Spanta advocated are the only way to achieve such counterterrorism objectives. The progressive National Security Network made the case last week that such care for the needs of Afghan civilians would be necessary to cleave the population from the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies, as did a paper last month from the Center for a New American Security that was co-written by Vikram Singh, now an adviser on Afghanistan and Pakistan to Undersecretary Flournoy.

Indeed, at the Center for American Progress — run by John Podesta, who chaired the Obama team’s transition into office — Spanta made an ideological case for continued U.S. commitment aimed at the ascendant progressive community. “We require and urge all like-minded progressive and democratic voices” to give “support and solidarity to democracy in Afghanistan,” he said.

For the Afghans: Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak, Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, Ambassador to the United States Said Jawad, and U.N. Ambasssador Zahir Tanin. I think intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh might have been there, but I’m not sure.

For the Obama administration: National security adviser Jim Jones; Former CIA official Bruce Reidel, chairman of the strategy review; Special Envoy to Af-Pak Richard Holbrooke and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, the co-chairs of the review; and representives from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Vice President Biden.

What did the Afghans tell the Americans? More on that later.

What’s interesting is that since this draft apparently went from Afghan Defense Minister Abdul Rahim Wardak to a NATO diplomat in Afghanistan on Jan. 10, the Pentagon has gone a fair way toward quietly endorsing its principles. Defense Secretary Bob Gates emphasized putting an “Afghan face” on U.S. military operations. Two weeks ago, Wardak penned an accord with Gen. David McKiernan, the U.S./NATO commanding general in Afghanistan, that integrated U.S.-Afghan planning for operations “throughout all levels,” according to a spokesman for U.S. and NATO forces I talked to.

Coordination will take place from the Afghan government with General McKiernan’s staff and down throughout all levels involved in the planning and execution of operations. This especially includes the units involved. This coordination will help strengthen the  ability of the combined forces to shape and clear areas of terrorist and militant concentration and enable opportunities to assist ANP [Afghan National Police] to protect the Afghan people and key infrastructure.

It’ll be interesting to see if this works as planned. I watched a mission go pear-shaped in Paktia Province in September when Afghan police withdrew support for a U.S.-backed raid on a Taliban operative’s house after U.S. troops wouldn’t let the Afghan policemen loot the place. Getting Afghan security-force buy-in to the plans is one thing, but unless the corruption of the frontline Afghan units gets dealt with, the plans may not survive first contact with something shiny, lucrative and pocketable.