The tee vee has been talking at me over the past few days about how Faisal Shahzad’s botched attempt to detonate a car bomb in Times Square shows that the US system to fight terrorism is failing. Excuse me for being dense, but how exactly did the system fail?

Consider the chain of events. On Saturday evening, Shahzad parked the SUV in Times Square. Soon after, a nearby vendor saw smoke coming from the SUV. He contacted the police. The police swiftly cleared the area and defused the bomb. Subsequently, they traced the SUV to its previous owner and got Shazad’s cell phone number from her. Even though they did not have Shazad’s name, he previously gave the number to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent who had questioned him the last time he returned to the US from Pakistan. The CBP then gave the information to the FBI. Thus, when the police traced the number, they got the name from a FBI database. Because the FBI feared he would leave the country, they put his name on the no fly list and alerted the CBP. The CBP found out he had bought a plane ticket to Dubai. Even if Shazad’s flight had left before the CBP caught up with him, they knew where he was going and thus could have arrested him when he got to Dubai. The entire process from the bomb attempt to Shazad’s arrest took a little over two days.

I am no fan of US anti-terrorism strategies and have mocked them mercilessly on my rants about security theater. Nevertheless, I was quite impressed with how quickly the police/FBI/CBP arrested Shazad. The New York City Police Department also handled the situation extremely well –  Times Square was functioning normally by Sunday morning.

In short, the system seemed to function very well – almost seamlessly, in fact. Yet the tee vee keeps telling me the system failed. Am I missing something here?

From the New York Times:

Female suicide bombers set off huge explosions in two subway stations in central Moscow during the Monday morning rush hour, Russian officials said, killing more than three dozen people and raising fears that the Muslim insurgency in southern Russia was once again being brought to the country’s heart.

I am not posting much these days because USAID’s expectations of what I am supposed to achieve in three weeks in Tanzania are completely unrealistic. So instead of witty insight from me today, you can read this.

I am in Tanzania for a few weeks doing a political analysis of the country for USAID. I read the US government’s Country Assistance Strategy for Tanzania this afternoon. It was a bit maddening:

• Even though Tanzania does not have a problem with terrorism, the country’s problem with terrorism was in the first paragraph.
• Even though Tanzania is politically stable, the first paragraph notes that Tanzania’s (non-existent) problem with terrorism could undermine its stability.
• Even though there are no extremist movements in Tanzania, the first paragraph highlights this non-existent problem.

As a result of Tanzania’s fictional problems cited above, the US assistance strategy is to help fight terrorism in Tanzania – a problem which does not exist. Ugh!

The Washington Post reports that US strategy in Afghanistan includes bribing Taliban foot-soldiers not to fight:

Britain and Japan have agreed to head an international fund, expected to total up to $500 million over the next five years, as part of a broad plan to help lure Taliban fighters away from the insurgency with the promise of jobs, protection against retaliation, and the removal of their names from lists of U.S. and NATO targets.

Bernard Finel focuses on the likely futility of this approach:

…what is the long-term here?  You out-compete the Taliban financially for the loyalty of apolitical fighters. Then what? The reality is that this creates a durable political economy that supports violence and warfare. There is going to be an entire class of people whose well-being depends on continued payments, and who have the ability to extort more money simply by turning back to violence. This is the institutionalization of an extortion scheme.

Exactly. This is going to turn into a game where people join the Taliban just so they can get a payment not to fight. In fact, one would probably only need to threaten to join the Taliban to get into the program. This is going to create an endless supply of people who want handouts.

Moreover, the whole program seems rather pointless. People will only join the program if they believe the US and its allies will be able to defeat the Taliban. If they do not, they have very little incentive to join it. Since the success of the program directly hinges on whether people believe the US can win, why start it? Why not spend the time and money trying to win the war?

I can see some logic of the program because it is likely to weaken the Taliban in the short-term by making it difficult for them to recruit. If it was in the context of a broader, coherent, and credible strategy to defeat the Taliban, I suppose I could support it. But as this article demonstrates, its not clear this is the strategy and even if it were, Pakistan’s opposition to it means the likelihood of defeating the Taliban is very low. On the other hand, if our policy is to negotiate with “moderate” Taliban (whatever that means), it seems to me we do not need the jobs program. In fact, using the lure of jobs might give the Taliban an incentive to negotiate.

I agree with Les Gelb:

McChrystal and the others’ hope is that the United States will be able to outbid the Taliban leadership for the services of some of these fighters. It’s also clear that neither President Karzai nor the Americans will know if this gambit will work until it is tried, and until they see that these fighters do not return to the Taliban’s fold in six months’ to a year’s time.

(Deep sigh) It’s quite sad that 8 years into this war we are still trying to find out what works and what does not. Extrapolating from this means that the US is more likely to defeat the Taliban (or negotiate a successful end to the war) by luck than by strategy.

Dexter Filkins reports on today’s devastating Taliban attack in central Kabul:

A team of militants launched a spectacular assault at the heart of the Afghan government Monday, with two men detonating suicide bombs and the rest fighting to the death only 50 yards from the gates of the presidential palace.

…The battle unfolded in the middle of Pashtunistan Square, a traffic circle that holds the palace of President Hamid Karzai, the Ministry of Justice and the Central Bank, the target of the attack…

With the battle raging, a shock wave rippled from another part of town – a suicide car bomber. His van, complete with a siren and light, was marked “Maiwand Hospital” on its sides and front, so the police let it through. It exploded in Malik Asghar Square, blasting a crater in the street and shaking the ground for a mile.

According to Filkins, the attack was spectacularly successful:

The effect of the attack seemed primarily psychological, designed to strike fear into the usually quiet precincts of downtown Kabul – and to drive home the ease with which insurgents could strike the American-backed government here.

In that way the assault succeeded without question: The streets of Kabul emptied, merchants shuttered their shops and Afghans ran from their offices. Even guards assigned to Mr. Karzai himself came to join the fighting; it was that close.

A representative of the Taliban told Filkins:

…the attack was intended to answer American and Afghan proposals to “reconcile” with and “reintegrate” Taliban fighters into mainstream society. The plan is a central part of the American-backed campaign to turn the tide of the war, and will be showcased later this month at an international conference in London.

“We are ready to fight, and we have the strength to fight, and nobody from the Taliban side is ready to make any kind of deal,” Mr. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, said. “The world community and the international forces are trying to buy the Taliban, and that is why we are showing that we are not for sale.”

There really isn’t much to say here, except the obvious. If the Taliban can strike at will in downtown Kabul right in front of main government buildings, I think there is very little question about which side is winning.

Tom Friedman typically irritates me, especially when he talks about his theory of oil politics (Freedom House just downgraded Bahrain to Not Free, so good prediction there; I noticed you don’t talk much about the country these days, either). Today, however, he reminded me about why I still read him.