October 25, 2010
Powell meets with Pakistan army chief
Another tea leaf? Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell held a private meeting with Pakistan's powerful army chief of staff Gen. Ashfaq Perveiz Kayani in Washington last week, Powell's spokesperson confirmed to POLITICO.
Powell had a private meeting with the Pakistani military leader on October 21st, Powell's spokesperson Peggy Cifrino said.
Kayani was in town for a meeting of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue.
Powell and Kayani discussed "matters pertaining to peace and stability in the region and security situation," Pakistan's GEO TV reported.
Meantime, Pakistani Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar met with Powell's longtime associate and friend former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as well as with former Clinton-era Defense Secretary William Cohen, Geo TV said.
President Barack Obama dropped in on some of the U.S.-Pakistan Strategic Dialogue on October 20th, after meeting with his full national security team on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama told the Pakistani leaders he planned to visit Pakistan next year (he visits Pakistani rival India next month).
Some South Asia hands wondered if Powell might be serving as something of a back-channel for Obama to the Pakistani military chief. While departing National Security Advisor Jim Jones has played the role of a presidential envoy to Pakistan and other countries for Obama, his White House send-off party was last week.
Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had a good working relationship with Kayani's predecessor, former Army Chief of Staff and later Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, including from his time as George W. Bush's Secretary of State, a former U.S. South Asia hand said. The U.S.-Pakistani relationship often relies heavily on contacts between the U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Pakistani army chief.
Current chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen also has developed a tight working relationship with Gen. Kayani. But Bob Woodward's Obama's Wars portrays Mullen as having a somewhat more strained relationship with the Obama White House.
One South Asia hand posited that part of the portrayal may be due to the fact that Mullen did not appear to talk to Woodward for the book. (But some episodes in the book do seem to be informed by Mullen, by my reading.)
Whatever the case, Mullen formally refused a signed copy of the book that Woodward had sent him.
On Oct. 9th, "Mullen dispatched 'a senior aide to my house to return the signed copy,'" Woodward told the Washington Post's Al Kamen. "The aide offered 'no explanation of why the book was being sent back,' Woodward said, nor did he 'claim there were any inaccuracies. The chairman just plans not to read it.' The book's spine was uncracked."
Woodward’s book meantime portrays Powell as consulting with Obama from time to time, including about his policy to Afghanistan and Pakistan and navigating his relationship with the military. Woodward describes Powell writing an e-mail to then ISAF Commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal when the White House felt that McChrystal was trying to box the president in by publicly lobbying for more U.S. troops.
Another potential sore point as portrayed by Woodward is that Mullen initiated the recommendation that Obama replace the four-star Gen. David McKiernan serving as ISAF commander with McChrystal -- only after the new Obama adminstration had already completed its first Afpak policy review in the spring of 2009 and agreed to send some 17,000 more U.S. troops which McKiernan had requested.
Shortly after McKiernan was subsequently fired and McChrystal took over as the commander in Afghanistan, the White House learned that McChrystal would be asking for as many as 40,000 additional U.S. troops.
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