By Michael O'Hanlon – Special to CNN

The Afghanistan war is a slog at best. There is little doubt about that.

Even those of us supporting the mission must acknowledge that it has been slower and harder than expected. The reasons are generally well known, including a resilient and highly motivated insurgency with sanctuaries in Pakistan; a corruption-ridden Afghan government that, by its poor governance, gives sustenance to the Taliban; and mistakes on the part of NATO, which for years pumped too much poorly regulated cash into a country unable to handle it, fueling corruption in the process.

As NATO leaders gather in Chicago this week for a major summit where Afghanistan will be issue No. 1, it is understandable why their citizens are tired of this effort. And with Osama bin Laden dead and other al Qaeda leaders out of the picture or out of the region, the motivation behind the effort seems less compelling to others as well.

Nothing I saw on a recent trip to Afghanistan dispelled the above realities. But I also saw plenty of good that should give us encouragement.

Because we already have an exit strategy to have most NATO troops out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014, no one needs to worry too much about a possible quagmire.

Beyond that, there are good reasons to think that even if this mission cannot achieve its loftiest earlier goals — a strong democracy and a clearly defeated insurgency on our watch — it can likely attain the minimal acceptable requirement: preventing a Taliban return to power and a major al Qaeda presence on Afghan soil.

Here are some highlights of the more hopeful indicators in Afghanistan:

•  Afghan security forces have almost reached their envisioned full size of 352,000, counting army and police. This has been accomplished despite the fact that the Afghan army and police needed to be built as they were fighting. They are now collectively taking at least twice the casualties of NATO forces, participating in at least 90% of all operations and leading some 40% of operations themselves (albeit usually the simpler ones at this point).

•  While the security forces still suffer from political patronage appointments and corruption, the problems are at least being partially addressed. In the east, some 50 Afghan army leaders have been replaced in the last year; 70 police officers were just recently fired in the west for poor performance. The Ministry of Defense has also opened a full criminal investigation into the problems that produced corruption and theft at Afghanistan’s main military hospital last year. To be sure, such efforts could be too little, too late. There are pockets of serious remaining problems, such as with the country’s air force. And some of the firings and hirings raise concerns of ethnic bias. But on balance, the progress is picking up.

•  The Afghan Local Police, a form of armed community watch overseen by NATO troops, is proving its mettle. These lightly armed and locally organized forces are holding their ground in some 80% of all firefights, even when sometimes outgunned by the Taliban, and they are taking the highest rate of casualties of any part of the Afghan security forces. There have been a handful of cases of abuse within this program, and a number of illegal militias are falsely adopting the name Afghan Local Police to disguise their true nature (which is sometimes to attack their neighboring tribes or communities). But U.S. special forces have monitored and worked with the actual forces effectively and stepped in to address problems when needed. The admittedly daunting challenge in the coming months and years will be to keep growing the program while also gradually handing oversight over to Afghan special forces.

•  Politics are breaking out in Afghanistan. The presidential election is still two years away, but new political organizations are forming, electoral reform movements are gaining steam, and everyone is forming their short lists of the most likely candidates for the race — some of them actually serious reformists! For the first time in its history, Afghanistan is preparing for a peaceful transfer of power accomplished by political competition. We do not yet know, of course, if the process will be successful. But there is political energy in the air.

•  Recent Asia Foundation work suggests that the quality of governance is improving at the provincial level. There are still too many bad actors and too much interference from Kabul in the day-to-day operations of regional governments. But by one scale at least, the average quality of governance has improved at least 10% over the last year.

•  A spirit of hopefulness, more than fear, characterized most of those I spoke with in Kabul recently.Worries about ethnic tension and even the prospect of civil war after the NATO departure have grown over time. But the recent signing of the U.S.-Afghan Strategic Partnership Agreement reassures many that they will not be left to their own darker angels — or the mercy of their neighbors — when NATO’s transition is complete.

•  On the anticorruption front, more than 100 companies or individuals (some of them U.S.-based) have been debarred from working with NATO because of suspicions of corruption or association with enemy elements. This overdue effort requires constant vigilance to be sure that companies or individuals that have been debarred once do not simply reorganize under a different name. But NATO is finally on the job on that matter.

Much still needs to be done, of course.

Land reform, and the prevention of land expropriation by corrupt actors, demands attention.

Electoral watchdog organizations need to be strengthened, and means of possible voting fraud need to be reduced, before 2014; otherwise, cheating and scandal could delegitimize the election outcomes and contribute to more ethnic tension.

The international community needs to find leverage — and communicate its willingness to use that leverage — to maximize the chances that good leadership emerges from that election, conditioning future aid and troop levels on the quality of future Afghan governance.

Brookings.com: Tracking Progress and Security in Post-9/11 Afghanistan

The army and police still need to get a lot better. Some of the worst of the worst need to be arrested and tried for corrupt ways.

Pakistan needs to help more. Even if true alliance and friendship are unlikely, we at least need Pakistan to behave like the “frenemy” it once was instead of the antagonist it has more recently become.

But all these points are pretty well known. Less well known is all the good happening in Afghanistan. Whether it will be enough in the end is unclear, but there is a lot to build on.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Michael O'Hanlon.

With France's Francois Hollande taking office, an all-star panel debates "Mr. Normal" and how the politics will reverberate across Europe in this excerpt from the past week's "Fareed Zakaria GPS." Watch the video above.

And is Germany taking too much of the anger? Here's what Josef Joffe, Die Zeit editor, had to say:

ZAKARIA: Josef Joffe, you know that much of the rhetoric and the anger is directed at Germany. The idea is the Germans are forcing all this austerity on Europe, European governments having forced to cut their budgets. It's causing misery, unemployment. It's even causing bigger budget deficits.

But you've sort of defended the German position, isn't it fair to say?

JOSEF JOFFE, EDITOR, DIE ZEIT: Well, I mean, Angela Merkel makes for a nice whipping boy for problems which are deeply rooted in the societies that we've just heard about [France, Greece, Spain]. ...

The problem is that the rest of Europe is ganging up on Germany and that German economic miracle, the export miracle, which everybody is complaining about, has a very simple reason. German unit labor cost didn't rise almost at all. In the last decade, it went up by 35 percent in Italy, same number in the Iberian countries and it went through the roof in Ireland.

One last point, the Irish, who went through the roof, they had 50 percent increase in unit labor cost have now come down to just 25 percent increase. So, in other words, it can be done if you put your mind to it.

So what has been trending there? Talk of "American French Fry Brother" — otherwise known as Jason Loose. (He also goes the Chinese name Lu Jiesen.) The recent graduate from Arizona State is currently in Nanjing.

Jason bought a bag of McDonald's french fries for a homeless woman there, and then he poured her some water. A bystander took photos of the act, and the images have been rocketing around Chinese cyberspace, where someone lovingly called this new hero, "American French Fry Brother."

Besides being popular on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, there's also been coverage in newspapers and on TV.

Why the hubbub over a simple act?

Jason says many Chinese correspondents have told him that Chinese society has grown cold and uncaring, and when China saw someone from outside the country doing a nice thing on their home turf, it struck a nerve.

I have another theory. Maybe the Chinese were desperate for a shred of good news.

By Barak Barfi, Special to CNN

With Middle East heavyweights such as Egypt rocked by instability, Qatar has helped fill the leadership vacuum in the region.

The tiny Persian Gulf emirate has been hyperactive on the diplomatic front, leading the campaign to topple the regime in Libya and now working to do the same in Syria.

Its moment in the sun, however, is likely to be a transient one. The convergence of factors that have fueled its rise are sure to unravel as fallen Arab powers regain their stature. And Qatar lacks the intrinsic qualities that have made perennial regional titans such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Qatar has been able to carve out its sphere of influence through petrodollars and shrewd diplomacy.

The emirate serves as a bridge between the Western world and adversaries such as Iran and the Taliban. Its government-funded satellite news network, Al Jazeera, is the voice of the Arab street. Closer to home, Qatar has mediated between warring regional factions in Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen, and Doha’s doors have always been open to Israelis shunned by their Arab neighbors.

Qatar has also rolled out the red carpet to international organizations and conglomerates.  Prestigious American institutions, such as Georgetown University, and prominent research centers, such as the British Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, have established satellite offices in the emirate.

Yet for all the praise Qatar has received in the international media, its policies have fomented a regional backlash, according to American diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. The Bahraini king told an American official that Qatar’s behavior “is an annoyance.” Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh told U.S. Gen. David Petraeus the emirate was working “against Yemen” and ruled out its participation in a regional conference to rebuild his country. And Somali President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed accused Qatar of supporting the terrorist organization al-Shabaab.

Regional powers such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia can afford alienating neighbors who need their political backing. But smaller nations like Qatar, who have nothing beyond bottomless coffers to entice aggrieved parties, cannot. It is unable to provide the Palestinians the political cover Egypt can to make territorial concessions to Israel. Unlike Saudi Arabia, which is the spiritual epicenter of the Muslim world by virtue of its control of Islam’s two holiest sites, Qatar cannot offer the Palestinians the religious bona fides they will need to concede parts of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Factions that benefited from Qatari patronage have turned on the emirate when they found its demands overly cumbersome or decided it was politically expedient to do so.

In 2009, Israel refused Qatar’s offer to re-establish ties in exchange for cement earmarked for use in Gaza housing projects. Jerusalem’s fears that Hamas would appropriate the cement to build underground bunkers outweighed the benefits of reducing its regional isolation.

Also, Libyans who praised Qatar for its financial aid and political support during last year’s revolution now scorn it for backing political parties that have weakened the rebel government that emerged victorious.

Qatar’s domestic ambitions have encountered similar challenges, rendering it little more than a house of cards. The sprawling Education City, where six American universities have established regional campuses, is a cutting-edge scholastic park. But its facilities are not churning out future generations of Qatari leaders. They are instead exploited by expatriates looking for a subsidized American education. Of Georgetown’s 182 students, only 60 are Qatari.

More culturally sensitive institutions are equally imported. The country’s Islamic museum contains geographically and temporally diverse pieces ranging from Mamluk Egypt to Moghul India. But none of its treasures originates from Qatar, a nation with no significant Islamic history. Al Jazeera, the crown jewel of its empire, is managed by foreigners. Even Qatar’s royal family is imported from Saudi Arabia.

Qatar’s recent ascent mimics those of smaller nations that proliferated in the Ancient Near East. From 1200-900 B.C., regional powers such as Egypt and Assyria were on the decline, leading to what scholars sometimes refer to as the “Era of Small Nations.” As the great dynasties waned, minor Biblical peoples such as the Arameans, Israelites and Phoenicians flourished. King David unified the Israelites, and his son Solomon extended his empire east across the Jordan River.

But after a 300-year slumber, the Assyrians emerged from hibernation to gobble up their neighbors. The kingdom of Israel was destroyed, as were the other minor nations that sprouted up during the interregnum.

Once Egypt and other regional powers recover, expect Qatar to be brushed aside. With little more than wads of cash to entice afflicted factions, the emirate will discover that its influence is as fleeting as the waves that crash under the shadows of Doha’s skyscrapers.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of Barak Barfi.

By Paul Ames, GlobalPost

It was the scenario never to be named — a prospect so terrible that the mere mention of it would conjure up doom and destruction for the eurozone.

In the last few days, however, the risk that Greece could be forced out of the currency bloc has become too real to be ignored. The once-taboo subject has become an unavoidable topic of conversation among Europe’s financial leadership.

“The price would be very high if they decided to leave the euro,” warned German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble before talks Monday with his eurozone partners.

Governors of three central banks have openly raised the option of a Greek exit.

“Technically, it could be managed,” said Patrick Honohan, the Irish governor. “It is not necessarily fatal, but it is not attractive.”

Even Jose Manuel Barroso, the usually cautious president of the European Commission, had a stark warning for the Greeks: “If a member of a club does not respect the rules of the club, it’s better not to remain in the club,” he told Italy’s Tg24 TV last week.

In the corridors of the European Union’s headquarters, the fear now is not only that Greece could be forced out, but that the resultant chaos would spread quickly to Portugal, Ireland, Spain and beyond, causing a collapse of the euro currency and a generalized economic meltdown.

The prospect has more than just Europe worried. For all its problems, the eurozone’s $13.6 trillion economy remains the world’s second largest. Its collapse would risk a global economic earthquake making Lehman Brothers look like a mild tremor.

“This is not just about Europe. There is a possibility that it may spread to the global economy,” Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda told Dow Jones Newswires over the weekend. “This is the biggest downside risk factor for the Japanese economy.”

The doomsday scenario is not yet inevitable, but unless European leaders get their response right, the dominoes could start to fall very quickly.

Greece could be forced into a rerun of its inconclusive May 6 election in mid-June. Polls predict an even stronger showing for the mishmash of Trotskyites, neo-Nazis and other anti-austerity groups whose surge in support triggered the current impasse.

They want Greece to renege on commitments to cut its huge budget deficit in exchange for the 130 billion euro bailout. Germany and other creditors have warned that would lead to a freezing of bailout payments. A bankrupt Greece would then be forced to drop out of the eurozone.

As that prospect draws near, savers facing the threat of exchanging their euros for a much weaker new national currency could spark a run on the banks and send their money to Germany or some other safe haven. Some reports suggest that Greeks have already transferred 250 billion euro out of the country.

Renewed fears over Greece are already having a major impact on other at-risk countries. Portugal’s stock index hit its lowest level since 1996 on Monday, and Italy and Spain both saw rates on their bonds rise to the highest levels this year.

If Greece heads towards a euro exit, creditors would send those rates soaring, casting doubt on the nations’ ability to pay their debts. Savers in Portugal, Ireland and Spain could also take fright and move their money abroad. Shaky banks would implode. G8 economies Italy and France would come under threat.

Saving the euro, at that point, would need a massive intervention by the European Central Bank, backed by increased firewall funding from Germany and other more stable northern European nations. An agreement to share debt burdens or devalue the euro might also be required.

It is by no means certain, however, that skeptical voters in Germany, the Netherlands and Austria would go along with that. The incoming Socialist administration in France and restless political parties in Italy could also rebel against austerity measures, which the northerners are likely to insist upon as part of a new financing deal.

Ireland could rule itself out of any future EU bailouts if its austerity-weary voters reject the EU’s fiscal discipline treaty in a May 31 referendum.

As eurozone finance ministers gathered in Brussels on Monday evening, officials were acknowledging that the risk of a Greek exit — they are calling it the "grexit" — is now as great as at any time since the crisis erupted in late 2009.

But Jean Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister who chaired Monday's meeting, insisted that other EU members were not seeking to push Greece out.

"Nobody was mentioning an exit of Greece from the euro area (in the ministerial meeting). I am strongly against," Juncker said in a news conference. "I don't envisage, not even for one second, Greece leaving the euro area. This is nonsense. This is propaganda."

Given that most Greeks say they want to keep the euro, European leaders are hoping they will return to mainstream politicians if there is a second election in June.

For that to happen, leaders in other European countries might have to take a gamble and intervene directly in the election campaign by making it clear that the vote will be, in effect, a referendum on staying in the eurozone.

"Without a Greek commitment, this (bailout fund) won't work, and this is the responsibility of Greek politicians," said Olli Rehn, the EU's economics commissioner, after the ministers' meeting. "The future of Greece and the welfare of its citizens lie more than ever on the shoulders of Greek politicians."

There is a risk that more foreign lecturing to the Greeks could backfire if voters rebel against yet more outside interference, but the EU is rapidly running out of options if it wants to keep the eurozone together.

Fareed Zakaria talks with British Labour Party politician Peter Mandelson about France's new leader, Francois Hollande. Watch more of Mandelson's take in this web exclusive from this week's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" show.

Last month, two political scientists published one of those rare op-eds that gets the political community talking.

The thesis of the piece was contained in the title: "Let's just say it: The Republicans are the problem."

In case that was not clear enough, the authors elaborated: "We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional." ...

The piece drew its authority from the authors' identity: Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two of Washington's most veteran watchers of Congress. Both men have hard-earned reputations for nonideological independence of mind despite their institutional affiliations: Mann works at the liberal Brookings Institution, Ornstein at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. (Ornstein is a friend of mine, and was a colleague until I was given the heave-ho from AEI in March 2010.)

Now they have backed their provocative op-ed with a new book, "It's Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided With the New Politics of Extremism."

Read more from David Frum about why he thinks radicalization of the GOP is a function of changes, not only in U.S. politics, but also in the U.S. economy.

While incumbent politicians around the world are struggling to hold on, one is thriving so much so that he's been called a king.

I'm talking about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who last week struck a deal to bring one of his main rivals, the Kadima party, into his government. Netanyahu's coalition now commands more than three-quarters of the Knesset — the largest parliamentary majority in Israeli history.

Netanyahu faces no plausible rival as prime minister. So he has an unusual, and perhaps unique, opportunity to use his new power to secure Israel's future.

When pushed on the Palestinian issue, Netanyahu has often cited the constraints of his coalition to explain why he had not taken bolder steps toward resolution. In the past, he seemed to like being restrained: He refused to form a national unity government in 1996 with Shimon Peres, and he refused again in 2009 with Tzipi Livni.

But now he has enough broad support — a big enough base with many moderates — that he could move toward a peace settlement without endangering his hold on power.

What should Netanyahu do next? Read Fareed’s Washington Post column to see what he thinks.

By Mohamed Eljarh, Special to CNN

In less than 40 days, Libya is set to witness the first elections since the ouster of the late Moammar Gahdafi. But are the elections coming too early?

Post-conflict elections should mark the pinnacle point in the recovery and reconstruction of Libya. Libyans and the international community look at the election on June 19 as a milestone toward peace and democracy.

But some studies show history can paint a gloomy picture of elections held soon after bloody armed struggles, when political institutions may be weak or non-existent.

Many believe elections soon after the armed conflict that ended Moammar Gadhafi's regime would foster the promise of peace and democracy. It would show a democratic transition and effective recontruction, which in turn would assure the international community about the stability of Libya. Elections would also help post-conflict Libya attract much needed foreign assistance and investment to help rebuild the country.

Whether elections prompt consolidation or conflict depends in large part on the timing of these elections and the sequence of the processes involved are right.

Skeptics of early elections in Libya argue that voting so soon after the toppling of Gaddafi’s regime would undermine peace and democracy because of the hastily designed or non-existent institutions to facilitate the election process. The preparation for the elections and all its processes have been chaotic, with reports of confusion over the registration process - and even the head of the Higher Elections Commission was recently replaced.

Rushed elections in Libya would also increase the odds that one of the many different factions will reject the results and have the means to return to hostilities. For example, the Barqa Council that represents the region of Cyrenaica is boycotting the elections and is calling for the people in Libya - and particularly in the east - to boycott the elections. The leaders of the Barqa Council are claiming that the National Transitional Council is marginalizing them and the people they represent by going ahead with the allocation of the National Assembly seats to the country’s three regions - 100 for Tripolitania, 60 for Cyrenaica and 40 for Fezzan.

The prospects of premature elections in Libya are especially dangerous, as the elections take place while armed regional, tribal, ethnic and ideological sides remain. For these reasons, early elections in Libya might lead back to hostilities, authoritarian regime or being stuck in transition.

But certain conditions could provide more hope for Libya’s elections.

“Decisive victories, demobilization, and peacekeeping, for example, reduce the probability that negative
reactions to the election results will prompt renewed fighting, while powersharing reduces the likelihood of either side to the conflict opposing the election results in the first place,” according to a 2011 study in the Journal of Conflict Resolution.”

Finally, transition to democracy could have been assured and safeguarded if the general elections in Libya were conducted after achieving two key mandates: 1) Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants; 2) Resettlement of the internally displaced, the repatriation of refugees and reconciliation.

The NTC will need to have a contingency measure to prepare for the scenario of failed or postponed general elections. However, as Libyans always say: From Libya comes the new and the unexpected. So the success of the first elections in more than four decades remains to be judged.

- The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Mohamed Eljarh.

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