South Asia Security Monitor: No. 228

January 28:

North Korean strongman Kim Jong-il’s recent appointment of his eldest son, Jong-un, as his anointed successor has raised speculation about the future stability of the Stalinist state. According to Defense News, the Council on Foreign relations has carried out a study of various possible scenarios for succession, successful and not-so-successful, on the Korean Peninsula. Its verdict? That 460,000 troops would be needed to secure and stabilize North Korea in the event of state failure. Such a takeover, however, could be complicated by possible organized rebellion against foreign military intervention in North Korea – and by the need to secure Pyongyang’s burgeoning strategic arsenal.


January 29:

It appears that Afghan President Hamid Karzai can’t count on Washington to support his bid for a second presidential term. London’s Telegraph newspaper reports that the Afghan ruler, a favorite of the Bush administration, is on the outs with the Obama White House over his failure to reign in national corruption and inability to improve security and the rule of law in the war-torn state. Cumulatively, the paper says, these failings have convinced the Obama administration and its counterparts in Europe that the political and security situation in Afghanistan can not improve if Karzai remains in power.


January 31:

The Atlantic Alliance is in an uproar following the disclosure of a classified document dealing with counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. The International Herald Tribune reports that the memo, authored by General John Craddock, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), reportedly directs coalition forces to proactively target suspected drug traffickers and narcotics facilities. It is "no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective," the IHT reports the memo – directed to the NATO commanding general responsible for Afghanistan – as saying.

Recent negative shifts in Pyongyang’s relations with Seoul – and mixed diplomatic signals to South Korea, China and the U.S. - have led observers to suspect a power struggle may be taking place in North Korea. "I think [North Korean leader] Kim Jong-il is trying to coordinate different views, but these views are definitely competing," Choi Jin-wook of Seoul's Korea Institute of National Unification tells the Washington Times. This conclusion is based on mixed signals being sent to the U.S., South Korea, and China.


February 2:

President Obama’s appointment of Richard Holbooke, the Nobel Prize nominee best known for brokering the Dayton Accords in 1995, as a “special envoy” to South Asia has been praised by many in Washington. But in the region itself, the appointment is far more controversial. The Los Angeles Times reports that Holbrooke’s appointment has given officials in Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan pause, and caused U.S. officials to take pains to define his role more narrowly as that of a “coordinator”. Since his appointment, Holbrooke has spoken out critically against Pakistan’s inability to control extremist groups, leading Pakistani President Zardari to tell the Washington Post that his country “need[s] no lectures on our commitment.”