Category: Foreign Affairs

The Saudi-Qatari standoff poses a great diplomatic challenge to Pakistani authorities as they enjoy close economic and geopolitical ties with both Riyadh and Doha. Can Pakistan afford to remain neutral in the conflict?
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif embarked Monday on a one-day visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia along with the country’s army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa and the foreign ministry staff.

The urgency of the trip shows that Sharif faces a tough diplomatic challenge in Riyadh.

Islamabad enjoys cordial relations with both Saudi Arabia and Qatar, but the diplomatic standoff in the Gulf region, which saw Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) sever ties with Qatar, means the Pakistani government now faces a predicament – to choose between Riyadh and Doha.

For now, Pakistani authorities do not want to take sides, but in the coming days, and with Saudi officials’ increasingly belligerent stance toward Iran and its allies in the region – including Qatar – remaining neutral could prove to be difficult.

“Since Pakistan enjoys good relations with Saudi Arabia, Iran and Qatar, we will try our best to resolve the differences between the Arab countries,” PM Sharif told journalists during a recent visit to Kazakhstan.
Pakistan also denied reports that it had sent some 2,000 troops to Qatar’s aid after the crisis erupted.

Foreign Office Spokesperson Nafees Zakaria stressed that “these false reports appear to be part of a malicious campaign aimed at creating misunderstanding between Pakistan and brotherly Muslim countries in the Gulf.”
Besides the obvious diplomatic dilemma, Pakistani authorities are also in a quandary because of their nation’s economic ties with Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE.

The Islamic country receives large revenue from the Pakistani citizens working in the Arab countries. More than 1.9 million Pakistanis live in Saudi Arabia, while the UAE hosts 1.2 million, according to government data. Qatar hosts some 115,000 Pakistani nationals.

“The Pakistani government has close economic ties with Doha. PM Sharif signed a crucial gas deal with Qatar to ease the country’s energy crisis,” Usama bin Javed, an Islamabad-based Middle East expert, told DW.
London-based Pakistani analyst, Farooq Sulehria, says that the largest sum of Pakistan’s foreign exchange comes from Saudi Arabia. “There is a mammoth work force of Pakistani laborers in the Arab countries. It would be ‘suicidal’ to offend the Saudis,” Sulehria told DW.

Diplomatic predicament
Even if the Saudi-Qatari dispute gets resolved through regional and international efforts – the United States and the European Union have urged a quick resolution of the standoff – Pakistan’s long-term problems in relation to the Saudi-Iranian rivalry won’t go away easily. After all, Riyadh’s main concern about Doha is the latter’s alleged ties with terrorist groups that Saudi authorities say are promoting Tehran’s geopolitical agenda in the region.

Saudi authorities have leverage over Pakistan, and they have been persistent in their demands that Islamabad assists them in the Yemeni war as well as a larger regional security alliance led by Riyadh.

Despite parliament’s decision last year against becoming a party to the intensifying Saudi-Iranian conflict in the Middle East, in April Islamabad approved the appointment of Raheel Sharif, the country’s former army chief, as head of the 39-member Saudi-led military coalition. Riyadh says the Muslim nations’ alliance was formed to fight terrorism in the region, but experts point out that it is primarily an anti-Iran grouping. Naturally, Tehran is not part of the coalition.

The Pakistani government has sent mixed signals about Raheel Sharif’s position in the alliance in the past few weeks, especially after US President Donald Trump’s last month’s visit to Saudi Arabia. Media reports claim that Raheel Sharif is contemplating heading back to Pakistan as a result of Washington and Riyadh’s now official anti-Iran posture. But Raheel Sharif’s speculated departure from Saudi Arabia is as much shrouded in mystery and secrecy as was his decision to join the Saudi-led alliance.

“Pakistani armed forces are already part of the Saudi military alliance. This gives Islamabad an opportunity to mediate in the crisis. But it has to be very careful,” analyst Javed said, adding that Pakistan could not afford a prolonged Gulf crisis.

Security analyst Sabir Karbalai suggests Islamabad should take the issue to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a 57-member forum of Muslim-majority nations.

“If Pakistan can’t leave the Saudi alliance, it should put its activities on hold and together with Turkey try to resolve the dispute between Riyadh and Doha,” Karbalai told DW.

But it’s probably easier said than done. With Saudi Arabia-US alliance stronger than ever after Trump’s coming to power in the US, Pakistan cannot afford to cozy up with Iran. In the rapidly changing geopolitical milieu, Islamabad has aligned itself by forging closer ties with China and Russia, but it cannot afford to go all the way against Washington and Riyadh.

Sectarian strife
Pakistan’s intelligentsia and civil society have advised PM Sharif to remain neutral in the Gulf crisis as Islamabad’s support to Saudi Arabia could also increase the Sunni-Shiite tension in the South Asian country. Analysts believe that Pakistan’s Sunni militant groups already feel emboldened by the fact that the nation’s ex-army chief is linked with the Saudi security alliance.

The sectarian strife in Pakistan has been ongoing for some time now, with militant Islamist groups unleashing terror on the minority Shiite groups in many parts of the country. Most of these outfits, including the Taliban, take inspiration from the hardline Saudi-Wahabi Islamic ideology.

For Pakistan’s Islamic fanatics, the country “is already a ‘Sunni Wall’ against Shiite Iran,” Siegfried O. Wolf, an expert at the University of Heidelberg’s South Asia Institute, told DW in an interview.

Experts say that while Pakistan will try to demonstrate its neutrality in the Saudi-Iran regional rivalry, in practice and in terms of policies, its closeness to Riyadh and the hardline Sunni ideology will remain intact. But domestically, this will plunge Pakistan into a bigger security crisis than it is already in.

Additional reporting by Sattar Khan, DW’s Islamabad correspondent.

WASHINGTON, DC: The anger behind Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey on Tuesday had been building for months, but a turning point came when Comey refused to preview for top Trump aides his planned testimony to a Senate panel, White House officials said.

Trump, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had wanted a heads-up from Comey about what he would say at a May 3 hearing about his handling of an investigation into former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

When Comey refused, Trump and his aides considered that an act of insubordination and it was one of the catalysts to Trump’s decision this week to fire the FBI director, the officials said.

“It gave the impression that he was no longer capable of carrying out his duties,” one official said. Previews of congressional testimony to superiors are generally considered courteous.

Comey, who testified for four hours before the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it made him feel “mildly nauseous” that his decision to make public his reopening of a probe into Clinton’s handling of classified information might have affected the outcome of the Nov. 8 presidential election. But he said he had no regrets and would make the same decision again.

Trump’s sudden firing of Comey shocked Washington and plunged Trump deeper into a controversy over his campaign’s alleged ties with Russia that has dogged the early days of his presidency.

Democrats accused the Republican president of firing Comey to try to undermine the FBI’s probe into Russia’s alleged efforts to meddle in the 2016 election and possible collusion with members of the Trump campaign, and demanded an independent investigation. Some of Trump’s fellow Republicans called his dismissal of Comey troubling.

The Trump administration said on Tuesday Comey was fired because of his handling of the Clinton email probe.
Before he axed Comey, Trump had publicly expressed frustration with the FBI and congressional probes into the Russia matter. Moscow has denied meddling in the election and the Trump administration denies allegations of collusion with Russia.

A former Trump adviser said Trump was also angry because Comey had never offered a public exoneration of Trump in the FBI probe into contacts between the U.S. ambassador to Russia, Sergei Kislyak, and Trump campaign advisers last year.

According to this former adviser, Comey’s Senate testimony on the Clinton emails likely reinforced in Trump’s mind that “Comey was against him.”

“He regretted what he did to Hillary but not what he did to Trump,” the former Trump adviser said of Comey.
Clinton has said that the Comey decision to announce the renewed inquiry days before the election was a likely factor in her loss to Trump.

Aides said Trump moved quickly after receiving a recommendation on Monday to terminate Comey from Rosenstein, who began reviewing the situation at the FBI shortly after taking office two weeks ago.

Trump’s move was so sudden that his White House staff, accustomed to his impromptu style, was caught off guard. Stunned aides scrambled to put together a plan to explain what happened.

White House spokesman Sean Spicer ended up briefing reporters about the move in the dark on Tuesday night near a patch of bushes steps away from the West Wing.

Comey, who was in Los Angeles meeting with FBI employees on Tuesday and returned later to Washington, has made no public comment on his firing.

Many questions remained about what caused Trump to move so quickly.

Two former senior Justice Department officials said it made little sense to fire Comey while the Justice Department Inspector General was still doing a review of the FBI’s handling of the Clinton email investigation.

“I take Rod (Rosenstein) at his word that be believed everything in that memo but he must know that it’s going to be used as a fig leaf to fire Comey,” one former official said.

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, told reporters it was her “understanding” Comey had been seeking more resources for his investigation into the tangled Russia controversy.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump had pondered dumping Comey as soon as he took office on Jan. 20, but decided to stick with him.

Trump shrugged off the political firestorm he created with Comey’s dismissal as he met with former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

Asked by reporters why he fired Comey, Trump said, “He wasn’t doing a good job, very simply. He wasn’t doing a good job.”

(Additional reporting by Joel Shectman, Julia Edwards Ainsley and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Caren Bohan and Frances Kerry)

GWADAR, PAKISTAN — Over the last six months, the skyline over the sleepy fishing city of Gwadar has been transformed by machines that dredge the Arabian Sea and cranes that set up shipping berths in what is projected to become Pakistan’s biggest international port.

Infrastructure developments have enabled the hammer-shaped Gwadar peninsula to emerge as the centerpiece of China’s determined effort to shorten its trade route to the Persian Gulf and obtain access to the rich oil reserves there.

A mini-“Chinatown” has appeared, with prefabricated living quarters, a canteen and a karaoke center. After hours, the workers have the grounds to play their favorite game, badminton.

A spokesman for the Chinese team in Gwadar said in an interview that his government had invited employment bids in China, then brought the workers here.

He proudly touted the successful test run conducted by China in November when it used Pakistan’s land route from Kashgar to Gwadar to transport a convoy of 60 containers for export to the Middle East and North Africa.

Prior to that, he said, China had sailed materials through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean to reach Gwadar.

The Chinese propose to cut down that 12,000-kilometer sea route by about one-fourth once they adopt the land route from the northwestern province of Xinjiang to Gwadar.

So eager is China to save on distance, time and expense — and the challenge posed by the U.S. Navy in the South China Sea — that it has weathered Pakistan’s unstable law-and-order situation to build its economic corridor.

Small wonder that the Chinese spokesman omitted an incident — related by locals to VOA — that the test convoy came under fire in Hoshab, Baluchistan, despite protection from a special security force.

Since then, Pakistan has enhanced its 12,000-plus security force to protect the Chinese. That has turned Gwadar into a military zone, with strict checks of vehicles and ID cards, plus an encampment of intelligence officials.

Still, Baluch insurgents use attacks on “soft targets,” like laborers from other provinces, to drive away investors from the China Pakistan Economic Corridor. On April 5, as road workers from Sindh were gunned down in Kharan in targeted killings claimed by the Baluchistan Liberation Front, former army Col. Farooq Ahmed said suspicion fell on militants operating from Afghanistan.

The Chinese, for their part, have taken heart from the security provided by Islamabad to plan ahead. A prefabricated coal plant will be brought from China to Gwadar to fire up its energy needs. Moreover, China will finance Gwadar international airport, according to the spokesman.

Distances inside Pakistan have shortened as the Frontier Works Organization builds a 3,000-km network of roads funded by Chinese investment.

Symbolizing skepticism

Despite Pakistan’s ongoing military operation against the Taliban, sporadic terror attacks are the biggest hurdle to the country’s development. After 9/11, when Pakistan allied with the U.S. in combating terrorism in Afghanistan, militant organizations put down their roots and threatened the nation from inside.

As social indicators fell and Pakistan became one of the world’s most food-insecure nations, it opened its doors to China — one of America’s rivals — to help fight poverty, a key factor in fundamentalism and terrorism.

When U.S. envoy Nikki Haley recently spoke of nations that use their United Nations veto to stop non-state actors from being designated as terrorists, it was seen as a reference to China’s refusal to let Kashmiri militant Masood Azhar be so named.

Pakistani analysts interpreted this to mean the U.S. would move closer to India, even while revisiting ties with Pakistan because of its key role in Afghanistan.

Now the road from Karachi to Gwadar is smooth and empty, with awe-inspiring, wind-carved hills and mysterious canyons that dip into golden sands that run for kilometers along the deep blue-green Arabian Sea. It has enabled locals to rediscover their country — even as some marvel at the speed of construction.

But in a country that suffers from grinding poverty, little industry and high unemployment, the benefits of China’s investment are still hard to sell to the average person.

Gwadar symbolizes the skepticism. A miniscule amount has been spent by Islamabad and Beijing on people’s welfare, including a vocational training center, a hospital and school. The peninsula’s natural beauty belies erratic electricity, scarce drinking water and lack of proper sewerage.

Gwadar Port Authority Chairman Dostain Jamaldini explains to delegations arriving daily from across the country that revenue generation is the key to uplifting the area.

He showed off a huge quadrangle in the center of Gwadar that “can even be seen on Google Earth.” There, he has recommended to Islamabad that a multipurpose lighthouse be constructed to guide incoming ships and generate revenue.

Until that happens, the fishermen who build wooden boats along Gwadar beach will likely lose their livelihood as their shanty homes are removed.

Already, the vacant plots in Gwadar’s Sinjhaar area overlooking the sea have been repossessed by the Pakistan Navy and earmarked for sale to military officials and politicians.

For the well-connected, a real estate boom is on the horizon. Trader Abbas Rashanwala said he waited for years for peace to come to Gwadar. Now his real estate business has taken off, with investors flocking in to buy land.

Many realtors are betting on Gwadar as on the stock market — making deals online or on the phone. Several sit in the Punjab, selling property they have never seen in Gwadar, all on speculation that prices will soon skyrocket.

Meanwhile, China’s investment in Gwadar is helping control maritime crime. Officials tell how traffickers from Africa and the Middle East used to dock on the beach at night to swap slaves for narcotics.

In February, 36 nations, including the U.S. and Russia, participated in the Pakistan Navy’s multinational patrolling of the Arabian Sea in a global recognition of China’s role in making the waterways safer.

Still, China’s emerging role in Pakistan has raised many questions. The most prominent criticism is that China will become Pakistan’s “East India Company” — a metaphor for the British empire’s plunder of India.

Notwithstanding the doomsayers, there also is a readiness to accept that development and peace are inextricably linked to Pakistan’s future.

http://www.voanews.com/a/pakistani-village-gwadar-china-gateway-to-middle-east/3816566.html?src=voa-editor-picks

The US has dropped a massive GBU-43 bomb, the largest non-nuclear bomb it has ever used in combat, in eastern Afghanistan on a series of caves used by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, the military said.

The bomb was dropped on Thursday from a MC-130 aircraft in the Achin district of Nangarhar province, close to the border with Pakistan, Pentagon spokesman Adam Stump said.

Also known as the “mother of all bombs,” the GBU-43 is a 9,797kg GPS-guided munition and was first tested in March 2003, just days before the start of the Iraq war.

The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a press release that the strike was designed to minimise the risk to Afghan and US forces conducting clearing operations in the area.

But the ultra-heavy explosive – equal to 11 tons of TNT with a blast radius of 1.6km on each side – could potentially cause many civilian casualties.

The bomb landed in the Momand Dara area of Achin district, according to district Governor Esmail Shinwari.

“The explosion was the biggest I have ever seen. Towering flames engulfed the area,” Shinwari told AFP news agency.

“We don’t know anything about the casualties so far, but since it is a Daesh [ISIL] stronghold we think a lot of Daesh fighters may have been killed.”

General John Nicholson, the head of US and international forces in Afghanistan, said the bomb was used against caves and bunkers used by ISIL in Afghanistan, also known as ISIS-K.

“As ISIS-K losses have mounted, they are using IEDs, bunkers and tunnels to thicken their defence.

“This is the right munition to reduce these obstacles and maintain the momentum of our offensive against ISIS-K,” Nicholson said in a statement.

ISIL’s offshoot in Afghanistan, created in 2015, is also known as the “Khorasan Province”.

Mark Kimmitt, a retired brigadier general in the US army and former deputy assistant secretary of defense, downplayed the use of the GBU-43, saying it is “just another tool the military has.”

“It allows us to go after deeply buried and hardened structures. It’s good use against tunnels and it’s also good use because it’s going to set off IEDs in the area,” he told Al Jazeera.

Kimmitt said it was not at all certain that “political authorities” were informed of the raid before it was carried out.

“Although the size of the bomb was a bit larger than normal, it was a routine military mission against a routine military target,” he said.

The White House would not confirm whether or not President Donald Trump had authorised the use of the bomb.

“Everybody knows exactly what happened and what I do is I authorise my military,” Trump told reporters.

“We have the greatest military in the world and they’ve done their job as usual. So, we have given them total authorisation.”

US officials say intelligence suggests ISIL is based overwhelmingly in Nangarhar and neighbouring Kunar province, among tens of thousands of civilians.

Estimates of the group’s strength in Afghanistan vary. US officials have said they believe its has only 700 fighters, but Afghan officials estimate it has closer to 1,500.

Western and Afghan security officials believe fighters frequently switch allegiances between armed groups, making it difficult to know who is to blame for violence

BEIJING — With President Xi Jinping safely out of the United States and no longer President Trump’s guest, China’s state-run media on Saturday was free to denounce the missile strike on Syria, which the American president told Mr. Xi about while they were finishing dinner.

Xinhua, the state news agency, on Saturday called the strike the act of a weakened politician who needed to flex his muscles. In an analysis, Xinhua also said Mr. Trump had ordered the strike to distance himself from Syria’s backers in Moscow, to overcome accusations that he was “pro-Russia.”

That unflattering assessment reflected China’s official opposition to military interventions in the affairs of other countries. But it was also a criticism of Mr. Trump himself, who Mr. Xi had hoped was a man China could deal with.

Chinese officials had feared that the two leaders’ 24-hour encounter at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida might be marred by a campaign-style anti-China outburst from Mr. Trump. Instead, it was interrupted by the unexpected missile attack.

Some Chinese analysts viewed the strike’s timing as no coincidence. Mr. Trump wants China to do more to deter the development of nuclear weapons by North Korea, its ally, and these analysts viewed the Syria attack as a reminder to Mr. Xi that the United States could also attack the North, if necessary.

The missile strike on Syria overshadowed meetings that American and Chinese officials described as big-picture conversations on trade as well as North Korea, which stopped short of producing specific agreements.

Both sides agreed that the North Korean threat had reached a “very serious” stage, according to Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson. He said the United States was prepared to take its “own course” if China did not do more to rein in the North.

But the official Chinese account of the talks in Xinhua did not mention North Korea — a burning issue for Mr. Trump, but less so for Mr. Xi. Analysts said the omission was probably intentional, a response to the attack on Syria.

Xinhua’s commentary on the Syria strike also made no reference to North Korea. But it mentioned American missile attacks on Libya in 1986 and Sudan in 1998, and scolded the United States for not achieving its “political goals” in those instances.

“It has been a typical tactic of the U.S. to send a strong political message by attacking other countries using advanced warplanes and cruise missiles,” the article said.

The state-run media offered sanitized accounts of the Mar-a-Lago talks, emphasizing the sweeping green lawns on which the leaders walked and the ornate room where the official discussions took place. Those articles omitted the surprise of the Syria attack, in keeping with the goal of presenting an uplifting account of the two leaders meeting as peers.

Mr. Tillerson told reporters that when Mr. Trump notified Mr. Xi about the Syria strike toward the end of dinner, Mr. Xi expressed understanding, because it was punishment for a chemical attack that had killed children.
The Chinese president very rarely talks to the Chinese or foreign news media, making it almost impossible to determine his opinion about the attack or how he expressed it to Mr. Trump.

But Chinese analysts, whose advice is sometimes sought by the government on foreign policy questions, were scornful of the strike, which they viewed as a powerful country attacking a nation unable to fight back. And they rejected what they viewed as an unspoken American message equating Syria, which has no nuclear arsenal, with North Korea, which has carried out five nuclear arms tests and hopes to mount a nuclear warhead on an intercontinental missile.

“I don’t deny that the United States is capable of such an attack against North Korea, but you need to see that North Korea is capable of striking back,” said Lu Chao, director of the Border Studies Institute at the Liaoning Academy of Social Sciences. “That would create chaos.”

If Syria had nuclear weapons, the United States would not dare attack it, said Shen Dingli, a professor of international relations at Fudan University in Shanghai. “Chemical weapons and nuclear weapons are totally different,” Mr. Shen said. “A chemical bomb kills dozens of people, and the atomic bomb at Hiroshima killed hundreds of thousands.”

Mr. Chen added that many Chinese were “thrilled” by the attack because it would probably result in the United States becoming further mired in the Middle East.

“If the United States gets trapped in Syria, how can Trump make America great again? As a result, China will be able to achieve its peaceful rise,” Mr. Chen said, using a term Beijing employs to characterize its growing power. “Even though we say we oppose the bombing, deep in our hearts we are happy.”

On trade, Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump agreed to a “100-day plan” that Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross said would include “way stations of accomplishment.” American business executives took that to mean there had been no deep negotiations on whether China would further open its markets to American companies.

Business leaders had expected the Chinese to announce investments in the United States that would create jobs, as a way to offset some of Mr. Trump’s complaints about the countries’ trade imbalance. But Mr. Xi made no such offers, at least publicly. According to an account in Xinhua, the Chinese invited the United States to participate in a program it calls One Belt One Road, an ambitious effort to build infrastructure projects across Asia to Europe, for which China hopes it can attract some American investment.

“The Chinese did not want to create the impression that Xi went to the U.S. to make concessions to Trump, that would come across as weakness,” said Yun Sun, a senior associate in the East Asia Program at the Stimson Center in Washington.

In the preparations for the talks, Chinese officials emphasized that they expected few concrete results because they viewed the Florida encounter as a getting-to-know-you session between two big personalities. In that sense, the Chinese prevailed, Ms. Yun said.

“It will be Trump who will have difficulty explaining to his voters what he got from the Chinese,” she said.
Yufan Huang contributed research.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday night that the United States had carried out a missile strike in Syria in response to the Syrian government’s chemical weapons attack this week, which killed more than 80 civilians.
“Tonight, I ordered a targeted military strike on the air base in Syria from where the chemical attack was launched,” Mr. Trump said in remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.”

Mr. Trump — who was accompanied by senior advisers, including Stephen K. Bannon, his chief strategist; Reince Priebus, his chief of staff; his daughter Ivanka Trump; and others — said his decision had been prompted in part by what he called the failures by the world community to respond effectively to the Syrian civil war.

“Years of previous attempts at changing Assad’s behavior have all failed, and failed very dramatically,” the president said, referring to President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. “As a result, the refugee crisis continues to deepen, and the region continues to destabilize, threatening the United States and its allies.”

Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, told reporters Friday morning that the strike “deals a significant blow to relations between Russia and America, which are already in a poor state,” according to the news agency RIA.

Mr. Peskov said the strike did nothing to combat international terrorism. “On the contrary, this creates a serious obstacle for building of an international coalition to fight it and to effectively resist this universal evil,” he said. Fighting terrorism was Mr. Putin’s stated goal when he dispatched the Russian military to Syria in September 2015, though its main effect has been to shore up Mr. Assad.

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said Russian forces had been notified in advance of the strike. “Military planners took precautions to minimize risk to Russian or Syrian personnel located at the airfield,” he said. No Russian aircraft were at the base, military officials said.

“We are assessing the results of the strike,” Captain Davis added. “Initial indications are that this strike has severely damaged or destroyed Syrian aircraft and support infrastructure and equipment at Shayrat airfield, reducing the Syrian government’s ability to deliver chemical weapons.”

The cruise missiles struck the airfield beginning around 8:40 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, and the strikes continued for three to four minutes.

According to Captain Davis, the missiles were fired from the destroyers Porter and Ross in the eastern Mediterranean.

Talal Barazi, the governor of Homs Province, where the base sits, told Reuters early Friday that ambulances and fire trucks were scrambling to respond to fires there.

Administration officials described the strikes Mr. Trump ordered as a graphic message to the world that the president was no longer willing to stand idly by as Mr. Assad used horrific weapons in his country’s long civil war. To do otherwise, they said, would be to essentially bless the use of chemical weapons by Mr. Assad and others who might use them.

“This clearly indicates the president is willing to take decisive action when called for,” Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson told reporters in Florida. He said Mr. Trump had concluded after seeing the results of the chemical attack that the United States could no longer “turn away, turn a blind eye.”

“The more we fail to respond to the use of these weapons, the more we begin to normalize their use,” Mr. Tillerson said, a thinly veiled reference to President Barack Obama’s decision to refrain from strikes in 2013.
Mr. Tillerson added that the United States had not informed Mr. Putin about the coming missile strikes and that Mr. Trump had not spoken with the Russian leader in the hours afterward.

The decision to act came with a swiftness that took observers of the new president by surprise. After being briefed on the chemical attack shortly after it occurred, American intelligence agencies and their allies worked quickly to confirm the source of the chemical weapons, administration officials said.

In Washington the next day, the president convened a meeting of senior members of his National Security Council, where military aides presented him with three options. Officials said Mr. Trump peppered them with questions and directed them to focus on two of those options.

On Thursday, after Mr. Trump traveled to Florida for his dinner with President Xi Jinping of China, he convened what officials described as a “decision meeting” with his top national security aides — many of them with him at Mar-a-Lago, and others on secure video screens from Washington.

After what aides called a “meeting of considerable length,” Mr. Trump authorized the missile strikes before starting the dinner with Mr. Xi.

President Trump retaliated against the Assad government for a chemical attack in Syria that killed more than 80 civilians.

“It was important during the president’s deliberations,” said H. R. McMaster, the president’s national security adviser, to weigh the risk of action against the “risk of this continued, egregious, inhumane attacks on innocent civilians with chemical weapons.”

A military official said the attack was at the more limited end of the military options presented to Mr. Trump on Thursday by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The official said the strike was intended to send a signal to Mr. Assad about the United States’ intention to use military force if he continues to use chemical weapons.

It was the first time the White House had ordered military action against forces loyal to Mr. Assad.
Mr. McMaster said the missile strikes would not eliminate Mr. Assad’s ability to use chemical weapons, but would degrade it. He said the United States military had specifically sought to avoid hitting what it believes is a facility containing more sarin gas at the airfield.

He said the military had also sought to “minimize risk” to citizens of other countries — specifically Russians — who might have been in the area at the time.

The Pentagon on Thursday night released a graphic showing the flight track of Syrian aircraft as they left the Shayrat field on Tuesday and carried out the chemical attack in the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib Province.

WASHINGTON, March 29 — This year, America’s war in Afghanistan will pass a grim milestone as it surpasses the Civil War in duration, as measured against the final withdrawal of Union forces from the South. Only the conflict in Vietnam lasted longer. United States troops have been in Afghanistan since October 2001 as part of a force that peaked at nearly 140,000 troops (of which about 100,000 were American) and is estimated to have cost the taxpayers at least $783 billion.

Despite this heavy expenditure, the United States commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., recently called for a modest troop increase to prevent a deteriorating stalemate. The fall of Sangin in Helmand Province to the Taliban this month is a tactical loss that may be reversed, but it certainly suggests the situation is getting worse. With the Trump administration’s plan to increase the military budget while slashing the diplomatic one, there is a risk that American policy toward Afghanistan will be defined in purely military terms.

Absent from the current debate is a clear statement of our objectives — and a way to end the Afghan war while preserving the investment and the gains we have made, at the cost of some 2,350 American lives. It has always been clear to senior military officers like Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was the American commander in Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011, as well as to diplomats like me, that the war could end only through a political settlement, a process through which the Afghan government and the Taliban would reconcile their differences in an agreement also acceptable to the international community.

The challenges of bringing about such a reconciliation are formidable, but the basic outline of a deal is tantalizingly obvious. Despite more than 15 years of warfare, the United States has never had a fundamental quarrel with the Taliban per se; it was the group’s hosting of Al Qaeda that drove our intervention after the Sept. 11 attacks. For its part, the Taliban has never expressed any desire to impose its medieval ideology outside of Afghanistan, and certainly not in the United States.

The core Afghan government requirements for a settlement are that the Taliban ceases violence, breaks with international terrorism and accepts the Afghan Constitution. The Taliban, for its part, insists that all foreign forces withdraw. No doubt, both sides have additional desiderata, but the basic positions do not seem unbridgeable. This is particularly the case now that the Islamic State has emerged in Afghanistan, in conflict with both the government and the Taliban.

Under President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, the Afghan government has supported reconciliation efforts. And there is no question that ordinary Afghans overwhelmingly support peace, even as most also oppose a return of the Taliban’s brutal regime of the 1990s.

At its heart, the Afghan conflict is between rural traditionalists and urban modernizers, and this has been the case since Afghan Communists seized power in 1978. However, regional powers have also played a predatory role.
Pakistan’s cynical support for the Taliban is merely the most visible of the hedging strategies that various neighbors, including the Iranians and the Russians, have adopted to ensure that they have some armed Afghan faction beholden to their interests. A comprehensive political settlement would remove the security dilemma that drives these counterproductive interventions.

So what is the way forward for an Afghan peace process?

The first step is clear, and has come close to fruition over the years. The Taliban should be allowed to open an office, most likely in Doha, Qatar, to conduct peace talks with the Afghan government. This was very nearly accomplished in 2013, but the Taliban overreached by raising its flag and putting up signs identifying the office as representing the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.” The American government and the Afghan government, under President Hamid Karzai, rightly rejected these trappings of an embassy, and the deal collapsed.

All potential partners, including the government of Qatar, have learned the lessons of that debacle and have every incentive to avoid repeating it. This is an area for quiet diplomacy, led by the United States.

Once talks begin, our government will have to define its position. Even after all these years of fighting, the United States sometimes deludes itself into thinking it is not a party to the conflict; the Taliban believes otherwise. In coordination with our Afghan allies, the United States should be prepared to put on the table the conditions under which we would consider pulling our forces out of Afghanistan. Any withdrawal would have to be phased in response to the Taliban’s living up to its commitments, including guarantees that Afghan territory will never be used to enable attacks on America.

The more difficult aspect of the discussion will be among the Afghans themselves as they address the central issues that have divided them for decades. The American position should be to ensure there is no backsliding from the progress Afghanistan has made on human rights, including women’s rights, and constitutional government.

Since there have been no negotiations yet, it is difficult to assess what the Taliban’s actual demands would be. Their concern about the Afghan Constitution may be simply that they were not a party to its drafting. Like other countries’ constitutions, Afghanistan’s can be amended.

The United States must remain committed throughout to strengthening the Afghan state, including support for the Afghan Army, so that the Afghan government delegation has a strong negotiating position. Any final settlement would have to include the terms under which the Taliban enters the political system under the Constitution, specific arrangements to ensure that Afghan territory would not be used to attack others and regional commitments to end proxy warfare on Afghan territory.

I hold no brief for the Taliban — two of my friends were murdered by the group. It is brutal and indiscriminate in its violence, and its position on women’s rights has rightly been condemned by the international community. But these are not good arguments for perpetuating conflict in one of the world’s poorest countries. That would not only be a disservice to the Afghan people, but would also probably be unsupportable among the American people.
We have a president who believes in the art of a deal. We should negotiate a hard bargain with the Taliban.
Richard G. Olson was the United States ambassador to Pakistan from 2012 to 2015 and the special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan from 2015 to 2016.