Matthew Yglesias » Giant Bomb in Pakistan

Sep 20th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

Giant Bomb in Pakistan

Blew up the Islamabad Marriot and killed over forty people. This kind of thing is obviously distressing. But it strikes me that if Pakistan-based militant groups start turning to these kind of attacks, rather than to doing stuff in Afghanistan or the remote frontier regions, that the bulk of Pakistani opinion will almost certainly turn in favor of harsher measures against them which could, ultimately, improve the prospects for some U.S. policies.

Comments
41

41 Responses to “Giant Bomb in Pakistan”

sjw Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Let’s hope so. The alternative–the government collapses and a fundamentalist regime takes over, or slightly less bad, a coalition government that includes a fundamentalist partner comes into power–is quite scary. The possibility of Pakisan going haywire cannot be dismissed lightly.
fostert Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
That’s very optimistic, Matt. It is also possible that Pakistani opinion might turn against the already shaky government for not being able to control the situation. The government might fall before they have a chance to get the situation under control. Who takes over then is anyone’s guess. But I’d bet on another military coup. I’m convinced that Pakistan is basically ungovernable.
hilzoy Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
This has already happened to some extent. They have been bombing places for a while, and are not popular at all. The main reason it hasn’t happened more is opposition to the US.
kafka Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I know this is off topic, but you ought to care even it Matt doesn’t:

FROM: http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/

Here are some of the provisions of the draft version of the bailout bill, from the NYT. For full draft and commentary do the above link.

Sec. 2. Purchases of Mortgage-Related Assets.

* Authority to Purchase.–The Secretary is authorized to purchase, and to make and fund commitments to purchase, on such terms and conditions as determined by the Secretary, mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States….

Sec. 8. Review.

* Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

* entering into contracts, including contracts for services authorized by section 3109 of title 5, United States Code, without regard to any other provision of law regarding public contracts;

Sec. 6. Maximum Amount of Authorized Purchases.

The Secretary’s authority to purchase mortgage-related assets under this Act shall be limited to $700,000,000,000 outstanding at any one time

There you have it. Your money will be spent per the decisions of Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs and NOBODY ELSE. His decisions will final and not subject to any kind of review, judicial recourse, or “any other provision of law regarding public contracts”. The $700,000,000,000 is just for starters

There’s your democracy folks. And the GOPocrates will come together and pass this. Buy hey! They’ll still bicker about gay marriage! All is well.
Ivan Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
Congrats Matt, you know absolutely nothing about Pakistan and yet are confident enough to pull random speculation about political fallouts out of your ass. You now qualify to go write a blog for the New Republic.
David Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I stayed at the Marriott on a visit to Pakistan last year. Hotel is the emblem of the West, and the U.S. in particular, in Islamabad. Attack is a major escalation and shift of tactics away from prior attacks mostly targeting the Pakistani security apparatus. Certainly a response to U.S. cross-border attacks, and one that will conveniently further split the new administration and the U.S. No upsides from this in the short run.
Displaced Canuck Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
I agree with David. American chain hotels are symbols of American dominance in many parts of the world and the general Pakistani population may think they are better targets for bombings than there own army or government officials.
Henry Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
It depends on who is being targetted in the Marriott explosions. If it’s Pakistanis or fellow Muslims then it might turn popular sentiment against the fundamentalists. If it’s Westerners though, particularly Americans, then I don’t think too many Pakistanis would be upset especially when you remember what’s going on now in the Northwest.
James Robertson Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Wait, I thought the liberal line was that harsher measures were a way to make things worse?

So is it some magical property of the West that makes harsh measures by us bad, while those used by others are ok? Or is this yet another example of Matt being unable to keep track of his own politics for more than 5 minutes?
rapier Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
From what I have gathered, which isn’t much, well as much as McCain I suppose, the general public in Pakistan is quite hostile to the crazies. But while they have a democracy that hostility hasn’t translated into action for obvious reasons. The military and the intelligence services run their own games no matter what the civilian government does, during those periods when there actually is a civilian government.

In a place so poor and backwards and desperate democracy isn’t the whole answer by a long shot. I don’t want to be a Pollyanna about it.
Sid Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
My friend gets haircuts or rather, got his haircut regularly there when he went, so its a place that is regularly frequented by many, even “middle-class” Pakistanis, although it is popular among Westerners obviously. I’m still waiting for Hector and his anti-Muslim South Asian rant.
Sid Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 2:26 pm
Congrats Matt, you know absolutely nothing about Pakistan and yet are confident enough to pull random speculation about political fallouts out of your ass.

And yet, his visits to the halal carts in Manhattan makes him more of an expert than McCain on Pakistan.
DivGuy Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
But it strikes me that if Pakistan-based militant groups start turning to these kind of attacks, rather than to doing stuff in Afghanistan or the remote frontier regions, that the bulk of Pakistani opinion will almost certainly turn in favor of harsher measures against them which could, ultimately, improve the prospects for some U.S. policies.

I think you’ve got this backwards. Just as the 9/11 attacks were a sign of the weakness of Al Qaeda, and their desperation to improve their fading standing among reformist and revolutionary groups in the Middle East, if Pakistani militants have turned to large-scale terrorism, they’re likely losing the battle for hearts and minds.

The stated goal of the 9/11 terrorists was to start a war that would radicalize more everyday Muslims and draw them to Al Qaeda’s side. So long as Pakistan and the US don’t respond with even greater violence, the marginalization of radicals in Pakistan should continue.

(And, yes, while I’m dreaming of proportionate American and Pakistani response to terrorism, I’d like a pony.)
DivGuy Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Wait, I thought the liberal line was that harsher measures were a way to make things worse?

So is it some magical property of the West that makes harsh measures by us bad, while those used by others are ok?

This is incoherent even for you, James.

MY’s argument is that these harsh measures used by Pakistani radicals will likely turn the population against them, because harsh measures have significant blowback effects.

He holds a very clear anti-”harsh” measures (hey, you’re the one who drew the analogy between large-scale terrorism and American “harsh” measures, not me) stance – they are a bad thing morally, and a bad thing tactically because they produce a strong negative response among the majority of the population.
James Robertson Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
It’s not incoherent at all. Matt seems to think that a harsh response by the Pakistani government will be positive. He never, ever thinks that a harsh response by a Western government will be positive – not US, not Europe, not Israel.

Apparently, Matt’s thoughts on this subject depend on the national origin of the harsh party.
Kolohe Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
But it strikes me that if Pakistan-based militant groups start turning to these kind of attacks, rather than to doing stuff in Afghanistan or the remote frontier regions, that the bulk of Pakistani opinion will almost certainly turn in favor of harsher measures against them which could, ultimately, improve the prospects for some U.S. policies.

So, if more Pakistanis start dying, it’s better for the U.S.? Damn, I thought I had a cynical, Machiavellian, view of US foreign policy.
Kolohe Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
And maybe it’s because I just saw V for Vendetta for the first time yesterday, but I would think that increased terror operations in the Pakistan ‘heartland’ as it were, would only be good for those opportunists that are good at seizing power – who always seem to have fascistic tendencies.
Kolohe Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
One last follow-up to 17: I mean, isn’t this how Musharraf seized and maintained power all those years?
Kolohe Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
for reals this time, last one:
Frack, how do you think W got re-elected?
Buddha Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Way off base, Matt. If the Pakistanis turn against the militants, that doesn’t mean they’ll turn to us. They are quite capable of hating both parties simultaneously.

What the Pakistanis want in their heart of hearts is money with no strings attached, and proxy wars in India and Afghanistan. They’ll work with whoever will give them that.

Hi, China!
Freedom Fry Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
If this is what we get with democracy in Pakistan, I say bring back Musharraf or any benign dictator for the matter.
Sid Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 10:47 pm
What the Pakistanis want in their heart of hearts is money with no strings attached, and proxy wars in India and Afghanistan. They’ll work with whoever will give them that.

This would be rather hilarious, if not for the fact that this kind of thinking is rather pervasive. Pray tell, friend, from what are you presuming to know “what Pakistanis want?”
Richard Steven Hack Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
If Matt would get off his ass and have an email address that works, he could be reading the emails I used to send him every night on the issues of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then he might not sound like a moron when he posts on those subjects.

Try these, Matt, and get some clue:

In Pakistan, sympathy for the Taliban
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI17Df03.html

Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (Taliban Movement of Pakistan) , the umbrella organization for Pakistan’s multiple Taliban movements, seeks to spread its strict Deobandi interpretation of Islam to all of Pakistan.

“They don’t just want to control FATA [the Federally Administered Tribal Areas where they are based], but want to control the entire country,” says Ayesha Jalal, one of the foremost historians of Pakistan who recently wrote a book on the history of jihad in South Asia. The Taliban claim they fight in the name of Islam.

But if the Taliban are judged by actions and not words, their primary targets are ordinary Muslims.

A Taliban suicide attack on the Wah army munitions facility in August killed 70 and injured over 100 more. All those killed were ordinary, working Muslims, as were the people killed by a Taliban suicide bomber when he blew himself up at the casualty ward of a hospital in the city of Dera Ismail Khan on August 19. The Taliban said the attack was justified because the hospital was administering polio vaccinations, something it considers prohibited by Islam.

The nearly weekly attacks on girls’ schools – such as the more than 100 destroyed in Pakistan’s northwestern and mountainous Swat district in the past 10 months – are justified in the same way.

Such acts against fellow Muslims seem unconscionable even to conservative Muslims not affiliated with the Taliban. “The people who planned the assassination attack on me are not Muslim,” declared former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto after she survived the first attempt on her life in October last year. “No Muslim can attack a woman. No Muslim can attack innocent people.”

After the Wah blasts, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani told parliament, “We cannot allow terrorists to challenge the writ of the government.”

Yet the Taliban manage to retain the sympathy of many Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan. A major reason for this is the presence of foreign troops that do not appear to understand the dynamics of local tribal politics. Another is the insecurity that most civilians exposed to the conflict face. When foreign forces kill civilians, the Taliban are able to avoid responsibility for the atrocities they commit.

Long line of occupiers
Pakistan’s political and religious leadership, while routinely condemning their violence, has generally avoided challenging the Taliban’s credentials as a Muslim movement. Many leaders, like the Jamiat-Ulema-Islami’s Maulana Fazal Rehman, prefer to focus on deaths caused by Western forces in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) and Afghanistan. The inescapable message is that the Taliban may not be loved, but the real criminals are foreign interlopers.

This double standard is partially explained by popular antipathy toward the involvement of Western armies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) follow in a long line of foreign armies that have claimed to bring order to the region but have instead killed many civilians while serving their own interests and failing to respect local traditions.

US and NATO attacks have increased in 2008, as have civilian casualties, and US officials recently admitted that their forces conducted what may have been the first US ground assault against the Taliban in Pakistan in early September. NATO forces also stand accused of taking part in the operation in which up to 20 civilians, including women and children, were killed.

Some Pakistanis believe the Taliban insurgency is the latest in a long line of anti-colonial militancy stretching back to the mid-19th century uprisings against British rule. The Pakistan army, in contrast, is seen as an agent of the United States. Former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf exacerbated this perception with his unquestioning support for US intervention in the region. Under Musharraf, the US established a massive air base near Quetta, just south of NWFP, from which it launches air strikes in Pakistan and Afghanistan with impunity.

Nor have people forgotten that Pakistan was the conduit for America’s proxy war with the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. That war developed the infrastructure that the Taliban now uses to prosecute its war. Moreover, Pakistan’s war with the Taliban in the NWFP has displaced up to 300,000 citizens. US and NATO missile strikes have also displaced tens of thousands of people. This has helped nurture sympathy for the Taliban at a time when many Pakistanis feel besieged by the US and India, an old rival that’s developing greater regional power.

Another factor is that the conflict isn’t merely between the Taliban and the armies of Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and NATO. That conflict is but one strand of a complex web of conflicts that includes militant groups either supported or opposed by Pakistan’s military establishment, and rival tribes involved in regional disputes that have been co-opted into the wider conflict, such as the inter-tribal and sectarian clashes currently occurring in the Kurram Agency region of NWFP.

The lack of clearly distinguishable friends and foes has made it difficult for both Pakistan’s politicians and the general population to single out the Taliban for the atrocities they have committed. As a result, many in Pakistan live in denial of the existence and motives of Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan. “There is no Tehrek-e-Taliban-Pakistan,” says Asif, a musician from Lahore. “This is a civil war [but] they don’t want to tell people that.”

Others like Mahmoud, a Karachi rickshaw driver, are openly supportive of the Taliban. “They are holy warriors, true Muslims,” he said. To people like Mahmoud, the Wah suicide attacks were justified. The people killed or injured “deserved their fate for serving the interests of America and the Jews. The [Pakistan] army has killed so many in [NWFP] and in the Red Mosque [during a Pakistan army siege that killed many hundreds including women and children] … according to our faith, those who do not obey Islam are no longer Muslim and it is lawful to kill them.”

Growing understanding
But such sentiments don’t go unchallenged. Many understand the Taliban as a violent, extremist organization whose targeting of girls’ schools and civilians is inimical to the sub-continent’s traditionally moderate Muslim traditions.

“Islamic faith spread [in the sub-continent] through the Sufi tradition [of] inclusiveness, embracing local traditions and religious concepts,” notes Pakistani historian Jalal.

A large demonstration took place in Wah after the suicide attacks and shops closed the next day, also in protest. In several parts of NWFP, people are forming armed squads to take on the Taliban. The tide may be starting to turn against the Taliban, much as it did for Islamic militants in Algeria during the 1990s.

Without adequate political leadership, eradicating sympathy for the Taliban may prove more difficult than eradicating their hideouts in frontier Pakistan. But as long as NATO and the United States continue unilateral strikes in Pakistan that kill civilians, the real battle – for hearts and minds – will be lost.

Mustafa Qadri, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, is a freelance journalist from Australia reporting from Pakistan. His website is mustafaqadri.net.

Smiling’s over
Pakistan’s new president is a clone of Musharraf
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2008/09/14/6762186-sun.html

Money Quotes:

Zardari’s first major policy statement was a vow to continue waging the so-called “war on terror” in northwest Pakistan. His choice of the Bush administration’s terminology was a clear message to Washington that he intends to pursue the hated policies of disgraced former U.S.-backed dictator, Pervez Musharraf. Pakistan will continue to dance to Washington’s tune.

In fact, Zardari seems set to inherit the ills of Musharraf’s failed regime. Pakistan is bankrupt, with only 60 days of foreign exchange left to import fuel and food. Half its 165 million people subsist on under $2 daily.

Infusions of $11.2 billion in U.S. aid since 2001, and tens of millions in covert payments, rented the grudging services of Pakistan’s armed and security forces, and halfhearted co-operation of its government.

But 90% of Pakistanis oppose the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, which they, like most Europeans, see as a modern colonial war to secure U.S. domination of Central Asia’s energy. They despised Musharraf for sending 120,000 Pakistani troops to fight pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen in northwest Pakistan, killing thousands of civilians in the process, and for enabling the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

Now, Zardari, who was helped into power with Washington’s financial and political support, appears set on the same course. Considering only 26% of voters support him, Zardari is heading for major trouble.

Zardari’s refusal to reinstate justices of Pakistan’s supreme court purged by Musharraf is a slap in the face of democracy and further evidence of his fear of indictment over serious corruption accusations that dog him. Widely known as “Mr 10%” from when he was minister of public contracts, Zardari denies any wrongdoing, insisting these charges were politically motivated.

Plans by the U.S. to launch ground attacks inside Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal zone (known as FATA) have ignited a new crisis. Zardari apparently has approved more U.S. raids against his own people. But Pakistan’s powerful chief of staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, says the nation’s 650,000-man armed forces will not tolerate U.S. violation of its borders. The stage is set for possible head-on clashes between Pakistani and U.S. troops.

Whether Canada will be drawn into fighting in Pakistan’s tribal areas is uncertain. The Harper government’s former defence minister rashly called for Canadian troops to invade Pakistan.

ATTACKING TRUCKS

Truck convoys, upon which the U.S. and NATO depend for fuel, water, and munitions, face increasing attacks by Pakistani pro-Taliban groups as they make their way up to the fabled Khyber Pass.

A vicious cycle is now at play. The U.S. pays Pakistan’s armed forces to attack pro-Taliban tribesmen along the border, and aid the U.S. war in Afghanistan. U.S. and Pakistani warplanes bomb Pashtun villages in FATA.

Furious Pashtuns retaliate by staging bombing attacks against government targets (aka “terrorism”). The government and U.S. launch more attacks as Pakistanis demand their government stop killing its own people.

Musharraf was detested as an American stooge. If Zardari continues Mush’s failed policies, he also will meet the same fate.

The U.S. is about to kick yet another hornets’ nest by ground attacks on Pakistan. Unable to crush growing national resistance to the U.S.-led occupation of Afghanistan and secure planned pipeline routes, the frustrated Bush White House is launching a new conflict when it lacks the soldiers or money to subdue Afghanistan.

Spreading the Afghan War into Pakistan is perilous and foolhardy. It threatens to destabilize and tear apart fragile Pakistan, just as the U.S. has dismembered Iraq. A fragmented Pakistan could tempt India to intervene. Both are nuclear armed.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
William Lind gets it. Yglesias doesn’t.

Why Obama Is Wrong
by William Lind
http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=13473

A few weeks ago I wrote a column explaining why Senator John McCain is wrong on Iraq. In contrast, Senator Barack Obama is largely right on Iraq. Whether he would follow through on his plan for withdrawing U.S. troops is another question. The Democratic foreign policy establishment is no less Wilsonian than its Republican counterpart, and once it has used antiwar voters to gain power it will want to show them the door as soon as it dares.

But if Obama is right on Iraq, he is wrong on Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. His prescriptions for each are so close to the policies of the Bush administration that if McCain is McBush, Obama appears to be O’Bush. It seems many voters’ desire to climb up out of the Bush league altogether is doomed to frustration.

On Afghanistan, Obama wants to send in more troops and win the war. But more troops doing what U.S. troops now do – fighting the Pashtun and calling in airstrikes on anything that moves – guarantee we will lose the war. As was the case in Iraq, the first necessary step is to change what our troops are doing. From what I have seen, Obama has said nothing on that score, probably because his position on Afghanistan is mere posturing intended to show he will be “tough on terrorism.”

Obama’s position on Pakistan is even more dangerous. In August of 2007, Obama called for direct U.S. military action in Pakistan, with or without Pakistani approval. Speaking to the Woodrow Wilson Center, he said, “If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.” President Bush took Senator Obama’s recommendation this past July, authorizing such actions.

This is an example of the classic strategic error of sacrificing a more important goal to one of lesser importance. Not even outright defeat in Afghanistan would do America’s interests as much damage as would the disintegration of the Pakistani state and the transformation of Pakistan into another stateless region. The state of Pakistan is already dangerously fragile, and actions such as cross-border raids by American troops will diminish its legitimacy further. No government that cannot defend its sovereignty will last. Ironically, if Pakistan collapses, so does our position in Afghanistan, because our main logistics line will be cut. In effect, Obama wants to hand al-Qaeda and the Taliban a double victory.

In June of this year, Obama spoke to the annual AIPAC conference. What he said there about Iran put him once again firmly in the Bush camp:

“As President, I will use all elements of American power to pressure Iran. I will do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon….

“There should be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action to defend our security and our ally Israel. Do not be confused.

“Sometimes there are no alternatives to confrontation. If we must use military force, we are more likely to succeed and have more support at home and abroad if we have exhausted our diplomatic options. That is the change we need in our policy.”

In other words, the change we need in our policy is to offer a bit more diplomatic kabuki before we attack Iran.

As I have said repeatedly and will keep on saying, an attack on Iran could cost us the whole army we have in Iraq. It could set the region on fire, from Afghanistan to the Nile. It could create an oil crisis with severe economic consequences at a time when the world economy is tottering. It is, in short, madness. But it is also what Obama promised AIPAC.

Here we see the central reality of American politics shining through the smoke and mirrors. America has a one-party system. That party is the Establishment Party, and its internal disagreements are minor. Both McCain and Obama are Establishment Party candidates. They agree America must be a world-controlling empire. Both men are Wilsonians, believing we must re-make other countries and cultures in our own image. Neither man conceives any real limits, political, financial, military or moral, on American power. McCain and Obama vie only in determining which can drink more deeply from the poisoned well of hubris, around which, unremarked, lie the bones of every previous world power.

Such is the “choice” the American people get in November.

This is also why Obama is wrong.

Vested Interests Drove New Pakistan Policy
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=13474

The George W. Bush administration’s decision to launch commando raids and step up missiles strikes against Taliban and al-Qaeda figures in the tribal areas of Pakistan followed what appears to have been the most contentious policy process over the use of force in Bush’s eight-year presidency.

That decision has stirred such strong opposition from the Pakistani military and government that it is now being revisited. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan Tuesday for the second time in three weeks, and US officials and sources just told Reuters that any future raids would be approved on a mission-by-mission basis by a top US administration official.

The policy was the result of strong pressure from the US command in Afghanistan and lobbying by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and the CIA’s operations directorate (DO), both of which had direct institutional interests in operations that coincided with their mandate.

State Department and some Pentagon officials had managed to delay the proposed military escalation in Pakistan for a year by arguing that it would be based on nearly nonexistent intelligence and would only increase support for the Islamic extremists in that country.

But officials of SOCOM and the CIA prevailed in the end, apparently because Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believed they could not afford to be seen as doing nothing about bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the administration’s final months.

SOCOM had a strong institutional interest in a major new operation in Pakistan.

The Army’s Delta Force and Navy SEALS had been allowed by the Pakistani military to accompany its forces on raids in the tribal area in 2002 and 2003 but not to operate on their own. And even that extremely limited role was ended by Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in 2003, which frustrated SOCOM officials.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose antagonism toward the CIA was legendary, had wanted SOCOM to take over the hunt for bin Laden. And in 2006, SOCOM’s Joint Special Operations Command branch in Afghanistan pressed Rumsfeld to approve a commando operation in Pakistan aimed at capturing a high-ranking al-Qaeda operative.

SOCOM had the support of the US command in Afghanistan, which was arguing that the war in Afghanistan could not be won as long as the Taliban had a safe haven in Pakistan from which to launch attacks. The top US commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, worked with SOCOM and DO officers in Afghanistan to assemble the evidence of Pakistan’s cooperation with the Taliban. .

Despite concerns that such an operation could cause a massive reaction in Pakistan against the US war on al-Qaeda, Rumsfeld gave in to the pressure in early November 2006 and approved the operation, according to an account in the New York Times Jun. 30. But within days, Rumsfeld was out as defense secretary, and the operation was put on hold.

Nevertheless Bush and Cheney, who had been repeating that Musharraf had things under control in the frontier area, soon realized that they would be politically vulnerable to charges that they weren’t doing anything about bin Laden.

The July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the signal for the CIA’s DO to step up its own lobbying for control over a Pakistan operation, based on the Afghan model – CIA officers training and arming a local militia while identifying targets for strikes from the air.

In a Washington Post column only two weeks after the NIE’s conclusions were made public, David Ignatius quoted former CIA official Hank Crumpton, who had run the CIA operation in Afghanistan after the Sep. 11, 2001 attacks, on the proposed DO operation: “We either do it now, or we do it after the next attack.”

That either-or logic and the sense of political vulnerability in the White House was the key advantage of the advocates of a new war in Pakistan. Last November, the New York Times reported that the Defense Department had drafted an order based on the SOCOM proposal for training of local tribal forces and for new authority for “covert” commando operations in Pakistan’s frontier provinces.

But the previous experience with missile strikes against al-Qaeda targets using predator drones and the facts on the ground provided plenty of ammunition to those who opposed the escalation. It showed that the proposed actions would have little or no impact on either the Taliban or al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and would bring destabilizing political blowback.

In January 2006, the CIA had launched a missile strike on a residential compound in Damadola, near the Afghan border, on the basis of erroneous intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahiri would be there. The destruction killed as many 25 people, according to local residents interviewed by The Telegraph, including 14 members of one family.

Some 8,000 tribesmen in the Damadola area protested the killing, and in Karachi tens of thousands more rallied against the United States, shouting “Death to America!”

Musharraf later claimed that the dead included four high-ranking al-Qaeda officials, including al-Zawahiri’s son-in-law. The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock reported last week, however, that US and Pakistani officials now admit that only local villagers were killed in the strike.

It was well known within the counterterrorism community that the US search for al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan was severely limited by the absence of actionable intelligence. For years, the US military had depended almost entirely on Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, despite its well-established ties with the Taliban and even al-Qaeda.

One of the counterterrorism officials without a direct organizational stake in the issue, State Department counterterrorism chief Gen. Dell L. Dailey, bluntly summed up the situation to reporters last January. “We don’t have enough information about what’s going on there,” he said. “Not on al-Qaeda, not on foreign fighters, not on the Taliban.”

A senior US official quoted by the Post last February was even more scathing on that subject, saying “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then.”

Meanwhile, the Pakistani military, reacting to the US aim of a more aggressive US military role in the tribal areas, repeatedly rejected the US military proposal for training Frontier Corps units.

The US command in Afghanistan and SOCOM increased the pressure for escalation early last summer by enlisting visiting members of Congress in support of the plan. Texas Republican Congressmen Michael McCaul, who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, declared on his return that was “imperative that US forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and al-Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan.”

In late July, according to the Times of London, Bush signed a secret national security presidential directive (NSPD) which authorized operations by special operations forces without the permission of Pakistan.

The Bush decision ignored the disconnect between the aims of the new war and the realities on the ground in Pakistan. Commando raids and missile strikes against mid-level or low-level Taliban or al-Qaeda operatives, carried out in a sea of angry Pashtuns, will not stem the flow of fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan or weaken al-Qaeda. But they will certainly provoke reactions from the tribal population that can tilt the affected areas even further toward the Islamic radicals.

At least some military leaders without an institutional interest in the outcome understood that the proposed escalation was likely to backfire. One senior military officer told the Los Angeles Times last month that he had been forced by the “fragility of the current government in Islamabad,” to ask whether “you do more long-term harm if you act very, very aggressively militarily.”
Richard Steven Hack Says:
September 20th, 2008 at 11:37 pm
And here are the results:

Tribesmen to fight US if incursions continue
http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20089\18\story_18-9-2008_pg7_9

3,000-strong jirga accuses Kabul of misleading US about Qaeda presence in FATA
By Iqbal Khattak

PESHAWAR: Every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman will fight US forces on Afghani soil if their incursions into South Waziristan continue, a 3,000-strong jirga ruled on Wednesday.

The jirga consisting of pro-government tribal elders and pro-Taliban clerics was held in Wana.

“Each and every Ahmedzai Wazir tribesman, be young or old, will take up arms against the US and fight alongside the Pakistan Army,” eyewitnesses told Daily Times, quoting pro-Taliban Noor Muhammad reading a unanimous resolution at the end of the jirga.

The resolution came hours after US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen met the Pakistani political and military leadership in Islamabad to defuse tension between the two countries following the September 3 US-led ground assault in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

“We will take the war to Afghanistan to confront the Americans,” the resolution said.

Tribal elders said on condition of anonymity that clerics developed differences over the time to deliver the resolution, adding Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) clerics had wanted to delay the resolution until JUI-F chief Fazlur Rehman returns from Umra. “Other clerics opposed the delay, saying the US needs urgent response,” the tribal elders added.

Kabul: The resolution also accused Kabul of ‘misleading’ the US forces about the presence of Al Qaeda in South Waziristan. “Let it be clear to the Americans that the Kabul regime is misleading them. Tribesmen have no business to do with Al Qaeda,” the resolution stated. Jirga members lauded Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Kayani’s statement to defend the country against foreign aggression, and reprimanded the political leadership for its ‘soft stand’ on the issue.

The jirga demanded a more active political administration, suggesting military actions in FATA should require the political administration’s approval. The jirga participants said they wanted a true implementation of the collective responsibility clauses of the Frontier Crimes Regulation.

The political administration has become ineffective after the Pakistani military started doing operations in FATA following the September 2001 attacks in the US.

US pushes Pakistan towards the brink
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI18Df01.html

Money Quotes:

The decision to make public a presidential order of July authorizing American strikes inside Pakistan without seeking the approval of the Pakistani government ends a long debate within, and on the periphery of, the George W Bush administration.

Democratic presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama, aware of this ongoing debate during his own long battle with Senator Hillary Clinton, tried to outflank her by supporting a policy of US strikes into Pakistan. Republican Senator John McCain and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin have now echoed this view and so it has become, by consensus, official US policy.

Its effects on Pakistan could be catastrophic, creating a severe crisis within the army and in the country at large. The overwhelming majority of Pakistanis are opposed to the US presence in the region, viewing it as the most serious threat to peace.

Why, then, has the US decided to destabilize a crucial ally? Within Pakistan, some analysts argue that this is a carefully coordinated move to weaken the Pakistani state yet further by creating a crisis that extends way beyond the badlands on the frontier with Afghanistan.

Its ultimate aim, they claim, would be the extraction of the Pakistani military’s nuclear fangs. If this were the case, it would imply that Washington was indeed determined to break up the Pakistani state, since the country would very simply not survive a disaster on that scale.

In my view, however, the expansion of the war relates far more to the Bush administration’s disastrous occupation in Afghanistan. It is hardly a secret that the regime of President Hamid Karzai is becoming more isolated with each passing day, as Taliban guerrillas move ever closer to Kabul.

When in doubt, escalate the war – this is an old imperial motto. The strikes against Pakistan represent – like the decisions of president Richard Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger to bomb and then invade Cambodia (acts that, in the end, empowered Pol Pot and his monsters) – a desperate bid to salvage a war that was never good, but has now gone badly wrong.

It is true that those resisting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) occupation cross the Pakistan-Afghan border with ease. However, the US has often engaged in quiet negotiations with them. Several feelers have been put out to the Taliban in Pakistan, while US intelligence experts regularly check into the Serena Hotel in Swat to discuss possibilities with Mullah Fazlullah, a local pro-Taliban leader. The same is true inside Afghanistan.

After the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, a whole layer of the Taliban’s middle-level leadership crossed the border into Pakistan to regroup and plan for what lay ahead. By 2003, their guerrilla factions were starting to harass the occupying forces in Afghanistan and, during 2004, they began to be joined by a new generation of local recruits, by no means all jihadis, who were being radicalized by the occupation itself.

Although, in the world of the Western media, the Taliban have been entirely conflated with al-Qaeda, most of their supporters are, in fact, driven by quite local concerns. If NATO and the US were to leave Afghanistan, their political evolution would most likely parallel that of Pakistan’s domesticated Islamists.

The neo-Taliban now control at least 20 Afghan districts in Kandahar, Helmand and Uruzgan provinces. It is hardly a secret that many officials in these zones are closet supporters of the guerrilla fighters. Though often characterized as a rural jacquerie they have won significant support in southern towns and they even led a Tet-style offensive in Kandahar in 2006.

Elsewhere, mullahs who had initially supported Karzai’s allies are now railing against the foreigners and the government in Kabul. For the first time, calls for jihad against the occupation are even being heard in the non-Pashtun northeast border provinces of Takhar and Badakhshan.

The neo-Taliban have said that they will not join any government until “the foreigners” have left their country, which raises the question of the strategic aims of the United States. Is it the case, as NATO secretary general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer suggested to an audience at the Brookings Institution this year, that the war in Afghanistan has little to do with spreading good governance in Afghanistan or even destroying the remnants of al-Qaeda? Is it part of a master plan, as outlined by a strategist in NATO Review in the Winter of 2005, to expand the focus of NATO from the Euro-Atlantic zone, because “in the 21st century NATO must become an alliance … designed to project systemic stability beyond its borders”?

As that strategist went on to write:

The center of gravity of power on this planet is moving inexorably eastward. As it does, the nature of power itself is changing. The Asia-Pacific region brings much that is dynamic and positive to this world, but as yet the rapid change therein is neither stable nor embedded in stable institutions. Until this is achieved, it is the strategic responsibility of Europeans and North Americans, and the institutions they have built, to lead the way … [S]ecurity effectiveness in such a world is impossible without both legitimacy and capability.

Such a strategy implies a permanent military presence on the borders of both China and Iran. Given that this is unacceptable to most Pakistanis and Afghans, it will only create a state of permanent mayhem in the region, resulting in ever more violence and terror, as well as heightened support for jihadi extremism, which, in turn, will but further stretch an already over-extended empire.
ali eteraz Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 1:53 am
matt.

this summer i began writing a column in a pakistani paper. you can go on my site and follow the link. and while i haven’t really touched on the subject of militancy in my pieces, i have been following the whole pakistani news sphere very closely, and a great, great majority of pakistanis ARE ALREADY against militancy, both inside FATA and in Pakistan mainland. the paper i write for publishes 6 opinion pieces per day plus two editorials. i’d say that that about 60% of these are devoted to militancy in some way.

In fact, all those people who said that Pakistanis would turn against the militants once Musharraf was gone were right.

Having said that, I think the problem with your post is: WHICH US policies.

If you’re talking about US raids into Pakistan or even FATA, forget it. It’s not going to happen. Zardari may be US bought — see e.g. the Swiss and Polish prosecution against him being dropped and his $66 million in assets restored — but he still has to deal with the fact that the average Pakistani is extremely nationalistic, especially in relation to the big powers, especially if they are Western powers.

the pakistani govt/military has also been doing a good job with the propaganda war.

for example, the government said that b/c of the holy month of ramadan they wouldn’t attack the militants but if the militants attacked the govt promised to go after everyone including their families. (i believe this was interior minister rahman). as you can see, this attack occurred in ramadan. it makes me think that it was not tehreek e taliban but a foreign group (al-qaeda).

the government has also begun calling the pakistani soldiers that die “martyrs.” this takes away the romanticism that the militants assign to their missions and creates theological equivalency.

anyway i could go on.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 7:20 am
And here’s why the Marriott was hit:

Senior CIA officers were target of Islamabad blast
http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/india-news/senior-cia-officers-were-target-of-islamabad-blast_10097943.html

September 20th, 2008 – 10:13 pm ICT by ANI -

Islamabad , Sept 20 (ANI): Several senior officers of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who are reported to be currently visiting Islamabad were the target of the blast at the Marriott Hotel which took place here tonight.

Well placed sources said that Marriott Hotel is usual hotel choice of the US officials and it seems that militants tipped off that certain high level US intelligence officers were currently staying at the hotel.

While no confirmation was available but Pakistan sources said it was clear that the explosion was aimed at specific targets based on a tip off.

At least twenty people were killed, and scores others seriously injured, when an explosives laden truck rammed into Marriott Hotel here today.

Over 50 people have been admitted in the local hospitals.

The powerful explosion caused fire in many parts of the hotel besides damaging the buildings around the hotel. (ANI)

US Marines may have been target of Marriot attack: Officials
http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?artid=juyqYsIgb8k=&Title=US+Marines+may+have+been+target+of+Marriot+attack:+Officials&SectionID=oHSKVfNWYm0=&MainSectionID=ngGbWGz5Z14=&SectionName=VfE7I/Vl8os=&SEO=islamabad,blasts,marriot

IANS
20 Sep 2008 11:07:00 PM IST

ISLAMABAD: US Marines staying at the Marriott Hotel may have been the target of Saturday’s suicide attack that killed more than 60 people, security officials said.

They said that about 30 Marines were staying at the hotel and were scheduled to leave for Afghanistan early Sunday morning.

The Islamabad administration said that 40 people were killed and about 100 injured in the blast but eyewitnesses and hospital sources say that more than 60 people were killed.

One official said that the American security personnel were in Pakistan for the just-concluded visit by the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen.

But another source said that they had come to Islamabad Friday and were scheduled to leave for Afghanistan on Sunday morning.

“We believe that they can have been the target of the suicide attack,” a senior security official told IANS. Otherwise, “we don’t find any other reason for such an attack”, he added.

The sources said that soon after the blast, US embassy officials reached the spot and were seen looking for the Marines who, according to the sources, were staying on the fourth floor of the hotel which was among the worst affected as the entire hotel turned into a blazing inferno with orange flames and thick smoke billowing out of its windows.

Besides the Marines, the staff of Saudi Airline and a number of foreigners was also staying at the Marriot.

Police sources said that the dead include three Koreans, two Saudis and one American. Among the injured are some foreigners, including some Americans who were shifted to the hospital inside the US Embassy. Unconfirmed reports also said that a senior US security official was among the injured.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 7:21 am
And here’s more reasons:

Strike at ‘den of Western decadence’
On the day Pakistan’s President condemned terrorism, militants gave a deadly response
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/21/pakistan.terrorism1

The target of yesterday’s lethal and devastating attack in the heart of Islamabad should not come as a surprise. The Marriott hotel has always been in the sights of militants. For a long time it was the Pakistani’s capital only luxury hotel, and remains the favoured haunt of the capital’s Westernised elite. It stands only a few hundred metres from the National Assembly, opposite a compound of ministers’ residences and next to the new offices for Pakistan state TV. An attack on the Marriott is an strike to the heart of the Pakistani state and the perceived elite of a nation of 173 million people.

Along with power, the Marriott symbolises something else for ultra-conservative Islamic lobbies: Westernisation and its concomitant ‘moral decadence’. The swimming pool where expat women swam in bikinis; the sports bar in the basement where alcohol was served; the lurid stories of debauchery that circulate and even the internet centre all contributed to making the Marriott a target of choice.

So did the political situation. Two major elements have come together. First, the accession of a new President, Benazir Bhutto’s widower Asif Ali Zardari, who is known to be relatively pro-Western and spoke yesterday about his determination to stand together with the international community in the fight against terrorism. Zardari comes from a Pakistani political tradition that, though it has made its accommodations with extremism, is largely seen as secular.

The second factor is a sudden upsurge in activity in the violence-wracked tribal agencies along the frontier with Afghanistan, involving highly controversial raids into Pakistani territory. Not only have there been major Pakistani army offensives in recent weeks – as well as formal and informal truces with various extremist elements – but the new escalation that has come along with recent incursions into Pakistani territory by American soldiers based in Afghanistan hunting al-Qaeda figures will have made a major strike into Pakistan more attractive for the militants. Men like Baitullah Mahsud, the most prominent leader of the Pakistan Taliban, believes the ‘infidel’ government in Islamabad needs to be punished for its support for the West – whatever the rhetoric from the capital. The fiercely proud and independent identity of the Pashtun tribes of the border regions fuses with a very contemporary international ‘jihadi identity’. Globalised Islamic radicalism thus radicalises and legitimises a local cause.
Hector Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 10:01 am
Re: I’m still waiting for Hector and his anti-Muslim South Asian rant.

Since you asked….

I see no reason why this attack should make the Pakistanis any more sympathetic to the American cause. Did the attack on Madrid make the Spanish any more sympathetic to the Iraq war? Quite the opposite. The point of at least some kinds of political terror, is to _terrorize_, and to make the populace feel that they have less to fear if they give in to you than if they continue to oppose you. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t. It worked when the United States sponsored terrorism against the Sandinista regime in the ’80s, after all…..the Nicaraguans “voted” out Ortega’s government because they thought it was the best way to end right-wing terrorism. And it’s quite possible it could work in Pakistan as well.

I remain convinced that only the Army can effectively keep Pakistan out of Islamist hands, and that it was criminally irresponsible, bordering on treasonous, for the ‘democratic’ parties to insist on the end of military rule.
Michael Pugliese Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
William Lind, cited above, is quite a far right loon on other subjects close to his heart. Alleges that K-12 education in the USA has been taken over by teachers indoctrinated in Frankfurt School Herbert Marcuse Neo-Marxism. Google, “william Lind” “Cultural Marxism, ” for his screeds against what the Nazis called Kulturbolshewismus, “Cultural Bolshevism.”
Michael Pugliese Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 1:49 pm
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=20089\21\story_21-9-2008_pg3_6
VIEW: Pakistan on the brink —Ahmed Rashid

Zardari’s first tasks are to deal with the faltering economy and get a grip on the war against terrorism while satisfying international concerns. So far he has not much to show

For the past seven years, the Bush administration studiously ignored the Afghan Taliban and Al Qaeda leadership gathering in the tribal areas of Pakistan, and now scrambles to make up for lost time. US elections are looming, and facing the humiliating prospect of Osama bin Laden outlasting a two-term presidency and even expanding his reach, President Bush has pushed the Pentagon into a do-or die-hunt for bin Laden. Whether the search for an “October surprise” for the election succeeds or not, the radical threat is now beyond easy military solution.

It’s a sign of desperation that on September 16, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen was in Islamabad meeting the Pakistan army chief General Ashfaq Kayani, his boss Secretary of Defence Bob Gates was in Kabul, while Pakistan’s newly elected President Asif Ali Zardari was in London begging Prime Minister Gordon Brown to get the Americans off his back and deliver aid to a beleaguered country rather than angry ripostes.

Pakistan is at the centre of a gathering firestorm engulfing south and central Asia in the most volatile confrontation since 9/11. Pakistan, Afghanistan, the US and NATO all bear heavy responsibility for the crisis. President Bush had neither the inclination nor urge to do right by Afghanistan, despite pleas by President Hamid Karzai to eliminate cross-border terrorist strikes from Pakistan and effectively rebuild the country. Senior US officers serving in Afghanistan say they begged the White House and the State Department for action in 2006, but Bush was cosy with Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf and Iraq occupied US attention. Meanwhile, veteran John McCain flails in effectively playing the national security card against Barack Obama because Republican policies failed to secure the homeland against future Al Qaeda attacks.

The Pakistan military and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) saw Bush’s lack of attention as a free pass to re-engage the Taliban as a Pakistani proxy force. As outlined in detail in my book, Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, the army hedged its bets against possible US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan or danger of India becoming too influential in Kabul, by moving pro-Pakistan Afghan leaders into Kabul and carving out a dominating position in Afghan politics.

Until this year, Pakistan appeared to be winning the game. Then the Afghan Taliban launched an unprecedented offensive against US, NATO and Afghan security forces, attempting to paralyse the country by cutting all major roads to urban centres, thereby depriving the people of supplies and Western forces of fuel and ammunition — 80 percent of which is trucked through Pakistan — and killing aid workers so what little development work is taking place comes to a grinding halt.

Catching the Pakistan military off guard was dramatic growth of the Pakistani Taliban. Pakistani Pashtun tribesmen in the border region were quickly radicalised by their Al Qaeda guests. Last year, Pakistani Taliban militias developed their own political agenda — to Talibanise northern Pakistan and create a new “sharia state” that would lead to the balkanisation of Pakistan.

The Pakistani Taliban now control all seven tribal agencies that make up the autonomous region bordering Afghanistan called the Federal Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). They have spread across the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) through brutal terror tactics and threaten large towns. Poised on the borders of Punjab, the largest province, they’re joined by Punjabi and Kashmiri extremist groups.

US forces in Afghanistan launch almost daily attacks against suspected Al Qaeda hideouts in FATA and also target Afghan Taliban leaders such as Jalaluddin Haqqani. Pakistan’s military first denied the strikes, then virulently protested them. However on September 3, US Navy Seals put boots on the ground in FATA to demonstrate US seriousness and perhaps to also blackmail Pakistan to own up to US missile strikes and gain greater cooperation from the army. As a result, the army now says it allows US missile strikes despite public anger over Pakistan losing its sovereignty.

The army’s policies over the past fateful seven years led to Pakistan losing much of its territorial sovereignty. Heavily armed militant groups run wild, crime is rampant, paramilitary and police morale has plummeted with a stream of desertions. The country is in the throes of an economic meltdown. Foreign exchange reserves have halved in the past three months to less than US$8 billion, inflation runs at 25 percent, power shortages cripple industry and agriculture, and massive unemployment fuels a resentful populace.

Musharraf resigned, replaced by the ever-controversial Asif Ali Zardari, widower of Benazir Bhutto and leader of the country’s only national party in the country, the Pakistan People’s Party, winning elections with overwhelming support from the three smaller provinces of NWFP, Balochistan and Sindh. But Punjab, with 65 percent of the country’s 160 million people, remains out of his hands, run by rival Nawaz Sharif, who refuses to take the terrorist threat seriously and befriends right-wing Islamic parties. Cleavage between the smaller provinces and Punjab has never been greater.

Zardari’s first tasks are to deal with the faltering economy and get a grip on the war against terrorism while satisfying international concerns. So far he has not much to show. Since the new PPP-led coalition government took office in February, it’s been locked in interminable battles with Sharif. If Zardari continues on those lines, Pakistan is sunk. Promising economic aid and demanding ISI reforms, a lame-duck Bush administration cannot rescue Zardari.

Zardari needs to develop a partnership with the army to fight the terrorists, but so far the army lacks strategy or coherence — one day bombing villages in FATA, the next day announcing ceasefires and offering compensation to militants. It has failed to protect the people of FATA — some 800,000 of a population of just 3.5 million have fled the region since 2006 — terrified of both the army and the Taliban.

The army has still not made the necessary strategic U-turn, giving up on the Afghan Taliban leadership who live in Balochistan. The ISI still attempts to separate the favoured Afghan Taliban from the disfavoured Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda. But the truth is that all operate under a common strategy and guidelines set by Al Qaeda. The aim for Al Qaeda is to use the coming months to take serious territory in the NWFP where it can re-establish safe bases and training camps it once had in Afghanistan.

The American answer is to send more troops to Afghanistan — 4500 are due to arrive soon and another 10,000 by next year — and pressure Pakistan. However the solution no longer lies in a single country. The Taliban are now a regional problem and the next US administration must generate a regional strategy that encompasses Iran, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and the five Central Asian republics.

Western forces cannot win in Afghanistan without dealing with Pakistan, but the military will only change its colours when it feels more secure vis-à-vis India, which has warm relations with President Karzai and the Tajiks in northern Afghanistan. Likewise Iran, now arming groups in Afghanistan, needs to be addressed directly by the Americans. Going back to the UN Security Council to get a new mandate for a major regional diplomatic initiative, coupled with a massive regional aid programme and widespread public information campaign that portrays the Western coalition as a regional problem-solver rather than a warmonger, are the needs of the hour.

However, the issue is whether the next US president, Europe and NATO will have the courage and the will to take the bull by the horns and attempt something new rather than continue with a policy that has clearly failed.

Ahmed Rashid is the author of Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, and a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. This article originally appeared in the Yale Global magazine and is reprinted with permission. Copyright 2008, Yale Centre for the Study of Globalisation
Richard Steven Hack Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 10:41 pm
First, William Lind’s attitudes about other subjects are not relevant. He knows the military aspects of these issues and that’s what’s relevant.

As for Rashid’s piece, there are several problems. One, there is no “addressing the Taliban” in Pakistan or Afghanistan until you address the fundamental corruption problems in both countries – and quite frankly, that’s not even possible. And it certainly is not possible for any forces outside those countries, specifically the US and NATO.

What needs to happen is that the US and NATO PULL OUT! Resort to “containment” policies, not “nation building”. NOBODY CAN “BUILD” A NATION FROM THE OUTSIDE! It’s impossible! Let Pakistan and Afghanistan develop in their own dynamic.

The Taliban have repeatedly said they don’t give a damn about the West. That’s an Al Qaeda problem, as far as they’re concerned. Who in the West cares if Pakistan or Afghanistan go Islamic? We didn’t care when Afghanistan did until Al Qaeda attacked the US. But that attack was CAUSED BY US POLICIES!

So let Pakistan and Afghanistan handle their own problems, while the US modifies its policies to remove itself as a target for Islamic extremism. Let the Islamic extremists fight their direct enemies in the Middle and Far East for the next fifty years, while we sit out the fight! That’s a strategy that can work.
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