The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraq had been in the works for some time now, and there is one remaining hurdle. It’s a big one, and it’s very important for the sanctity of certain core legal principles in American jurisprudence. It has to do with the immunity of U.S. soldiers.

Legal protection for U.S. troops in Iraq is the most difficult issue still to be settled in U.S.-Iraqi talks on a new security pact, a senior Iraqi official said on Wednesday.

Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih told Reuters in an interview that Baghdad was awaiting a response from the United States on a number of questions and proposals Iraq had put forward regarding immunity and some other outstanding issues.

“(Immunity) is probably the most contentious issue,” Salih said. “There is a history to it. It is very sensitive.”

There have been a number of high-profile incidents involving American soldiers killing or abusing Iraqis since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Iraqis were horrified by photos in 2004 of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison.

In 2005, U.S. Marines were accused of killing 24 civilians in Haditha, west of Baghdad. Most Marines charged in a U.S. military court have had their cases dismissed or been acquitted.

Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident, and the events surrounding Haditha have thus far proven that the Marines were entirely within their rights and rules of engagement in the room clearing operations that fateful day. Continuing:

Iraqi officials say such incidents have colored bilateral talks aimed at striking a deal to govern the U.S. troop presence here after a U.N. mandate expires at the year’s end.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has vowed that no foreigners will receive “absolute” immunity, and said last month that “the sanctity of Iraqi blood must be respected.”

Indeed! No foreigners will received absolute immunity! The U.S. always has the right to try U.S. servicemen under the appropriate laws, but if Maliki’s statement means that Iraq retains some sort of sovereignty over a Soldier’s or Marine’s legal status, such that the U.S. is not empowered to find innocence if appropriate (i.e., Iraq is granted veto over decisions in U.S. courts or given the right to their own court proceedings which must be respected by the U.S.), then The Captain’s Journal questions whether that is a legal arrangement. The U.S. constitution is a guarantor of the rights of all U.S. citizens whether Iraq wants a say or not.  No treaty trumps the U.S. constitution.  It reigns supreme over American laws and citizens.

But there is an even more pragmatic issue regarding jurisprudence. The societies are so different as to be incomparable, leaving one to question whether it is even possible for an American to have a “fair” trial in Iraq. To mention one, recall TCJ article Iraq: Land of Lies and Deceit, in which cited a Hawaii Reporter article on the nature of witness-bearing in Iraq as it had to do with the Haditha case. It is lengthy but very important.

A British case which speaks directly to the credibility of tribal witnesses and to the Islamic tribal tradition of “blood money” collapsed November 3, 2005. On trial were seven British soldiers charged with murder stemming from a May, 2003 incident in Ferkah, Iraq. All charges were dismissed after it became clear that the key witnesses were lying in order to gain “blood money”. The BBC describes the collapse of the trial as follows:

“…it has become clear to everyone involved as the trial has progressed that the main Iraqi witnesses had colluded to exaggerate and lie about the incident.”

Three women had admitted lying about being assaulted by British soldiers and one witness had told the court that Mr. Abdullah’s family encouraged others to tell lies, Judge Blackett said.

Witnesses some distance from the scene “could not possibly have seen what they said they saw”, he added.

And Iraqi court witnesses had used the case to seek “compensation to what were patently exaggerated claims”, he said.

One witness at the court martial, Samira Rishek, a Marsh-Arab who had claimed to have been brutally beaten by the soldiers while she was pregnant, admitted to the court it was a “wicked lie”.

The court heard that Mrs. Rishek, along with other witnesses, was paid $100 a day to give evidence at the trial and that she only agreed to give evidence after being told she would be paid.

BBC correspondent Paul Adams said there was an “underlying sense” that some of the witnesses were “out to try and get something for themselves”.

A number of questions were going to be asked about why the trial had been mounted, he added.

Roger Brice, solicitor for defendant Pte Samuel May told BBC News there had never been a case to answer.

“What the judge has done today is stop the case when the prosecution have concluded… there was never a case for any of the defendants to answer.

“He summed up the fact that the evidence as it came out in these last two months has been one of acknowledged lies.”

Why all the lies for a paltry $100 per day? It makes sense for a tribal person who believes that the blood money system is the way of the world. A February 2, 2004 BBC article explains the workings of the blood money system in a case involving only Iraqis:

On the side of a road in a ramshackle tent tribal elders have gathered for a court case, but it is not an ordinary law court, it’s a tribal court. The case defies logic – one brother has killed another, but the tribe they belonged to is blaming a rival tribe for the killing.

Their argument is that if there had not been a feud with the other tribe, the killing would not have taken place; they are now demanding $20,000 in blood money….

At the tribal court, the discussion is heated, but not about guilt or innocence. Through a complex network of tribal support, both sides know where they stand, now it is just a matter of agreeing the money.

Eventually the price is knocked down to $4,000 and a woman, her value to be determined in later negotiations.

For many Iraqis it’s a system that works, and in a violent region recompense appears much more practical than locking someone away.

The logic in the British case and possibly in Haditha is simple: If the coalition did not have a fight with the insurgents, the deaths would not have occurred. The deaths cause a loss in the resources of the tribe. The tribe cannot file a claim with Zarqawi–he might chop their heads off–therefore it is the coalition that owes blood money. In the eyes of tribal people such as Haditha residents, this debt is owed regardless of who actually killed the 24 people in Haditha or the circumstances of those deaths. The payment of blood money is not an admission of guilt; it is a balancing of tribal obligations.

[ … ]

In Islamic and Arab traditions, blood money is the money paid by the killer or his family or clan to the family or the clan of the victim. It is unlawful for a believer to kill a believer except if it happens by accident. And he who kills a believer accidentally must free one Muslim slave and pay ‘Diyat’ to the heirs of the victim except if they forgive him. The tradition finds repeated endorsement in Islamic tradition; several instances are recorded in the Hadith, which are the acts of the Prophet Mohammad.

The Blood – Money tradition has found its way into legislation in several Islamic countries, including Saudi Arabia, Iran and Pakistan. Some of these countries also define, by lawful legislation, a hierarchy of (cash) rates for the lives of people….

Are lies being told to obtain blood money payments? Some insight comes in this response to the collapse of the British trial by Stephan Holland, a Baghdad-based US contractor.

I’ve been in Iraq for about 18 months now performing construction management. It is simply not possible for me to exaggerate the massive amounts of lies we wade through every single day. There is no way – absolutely none – to determine facts from bulls*** ….

It is not even considered lying to them; it is more akin to being clever – like keeping your cards close to your chest. And they don’t just lie to westerners. They believe that appearances–saving face–are of paramount importance. They lie to each other all the time about anything in order to leverage others on a deal or manipulate an outcome of some sort or cover up some major or minor embarrassment. It’s just how they do things, period.

I’m not trying to disparage them here. I get along great with a lot of them. But even among those that I like, if something happens (on the job) I’ll get 50 wildly different stories, every time. There’s no comparison to it in any other part of the world where I’ve worked. The lying is ubiquitous and constant.

With this understanding of how one people relates to another, how can the U.S. even consider the possibility of relinquishing sovereignty over the disposition of charges against U.S. servicemen? In our judgment, the SOFA is not so important that we must give up our rights to sovereignty over our own jurisprudence. Hopefully, this is a nonnegotiable in the process.

Dexter Filkins of the New York Times Magazine has written a very important article on the state of affairs in the so-called tribal region of Pakistan, entitled Right at the Edge. One particular exchange stands out as indicative of the game-playing by the Pakistani Army over the last four years.

ONE SWELTERING AFTERNOON in July, I ventured into the elegant home of a former Pakistani official who recently retired after several years of serving in senior government posts. We sat in his book-lined study. A servant brought us tea and biscuits.

Was it the obsession with India that led the Pakistani military to support the Taliban? I asked him.

“Yes,” he said.

Or is it the anti-Americanism and pro-Islamic feelings in the army?

“Yes,” he said, that too.

And then the retired Pakistani official offered another explanation — one that he said could never be discussed in public. The reason the Pakistani security services support the Taliban, he said, is for money: after the 9/11 attacks, the Pakistani military concluded that keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars in aid that Pakistan needed to survive. The military’s complicated relationship with the Taliban is part of what the official called the Pakistani military’s “strategic games.” Like other Pakistanis, this former senior official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of what he was telling me.

“Pakistan is dependent on the American money that these games with the Taliban generate,” the official told me. “The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works.”

As an example, he cited the Pakistan Army’s first invasion of the tribal areas — of South Waziristan in 2004. Called Operation Shakai, the offensive was ostensibly aimed at ridding the area of Taliban militants. From an American perspective, the operation was a total failure. The army invaded, fought and then made a deal with one of the militant commanders, Nek Mohammed. The agreement was capped by a dramatic meeting between Mohammed and Safdar Hussein, one of the most senior officers in the Pakistan Army.

“The corps commander was flown in on a helicopter,” the former official said. “They had this big ceremony, and they embraced. They called each other mujahids. ”

“Mujahid” is the Arabic word for “holy warrior.” The ceremony, in fact, was captured on videotape, and the tape has been widely distributed.

“The army agreed to compensate the locals for collateral damage,” the official said. “Where do you think that money went? It went to the Taliban. Who do you think paid the bill? The Americans. This is the way the game works. The Taliban is attacked, but it is never destroyed.

“It’s a game,” the official said, wrapping up our conversation. “The U.S. is being taken for a ride.”

There is another important observation concerning foreigners, tribes and tribal elders.

Waziristan is believed to contain the largest number of militant Arabs and other foreign fighters, possibly even bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri. To be more specific about Jan — to use his name, to identify the tribe he leads, to name the town where he lives — would almost certainly, he said, result in his death at the hands of the militants and Taliban fighters who control South Waziristan.

“There are many Arab fighters living in South Waziristan,” Jan told me. “Sometimes you see them in the town; you hear them speaking Arabic.

“But the important Arabs are not in the city,” he continued. “They are in the mountains.”

Important Arabs? I asked.

“They ride horses, Arabian horses; we don’t have horses like this in Waziristan,” Jan said. “The people from the town take food to the Arabs’ horses in the mountains. They have seen the horses. They have seen the Arabs. These horses eat better than the common people in the town.”

How do you know?

“I am a leader of my tribe. People come to me — everyone comes to me. They tell me everything.”

What about Osama? I asked. Is he in South Waziristan?

“Osama?” Jan said. “I don’t know. But they” — the Arabs in the mountains — “are important.”

The labor it took to persuade Jan to speak to me is a measure of what has become of the area over which his family still officially presides. Since it was not possible for me to go to South Waziristan — “Baitullah Mehsud would cut off your head,” the Taliban leader, Namdar, told me — I had to persuade Jan to come to Peshawar. For several days, military checkpoints and roadblocks made it impossible for Jan to travel. Finally, after two weeks, Jan left his home at midnight in a taxi so no one would notice either him or his car.

Jan had reason to worry. Seven members of his family — his father, two brothers, two uncles and two cousins — have been murdered by militants who inhabit the area. Jan said he believed his father was killed by Uzbek and Tajik gunmen who fled to South Waziristan after the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. His father had opposed them. Jan’s cousins, he said, were killed by men working for Baitullah Mehsud. Jan’s father was a malik, and thousands of Waziri tribesmen came to his funeral: “the largest funeral in the history of Waziristan,” Jan said.

The rise of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has come at the expense of the maliks, who have been systematically murdered and marginalized in a campaign to destroy the old order. In South Waziristan, where Mehsud presides, the Taliban and Al Qaeda have killed more than 150 maliks since 2005, all but destroying the tribal system. And there are continual reminders of what happens to the survivors who do not understand this — who, for example, attempt to talk with Pakistan’s civilian government and assert their authority. In June, Mehsud’s men gunned down 28 tribal leaders who had formed a “peace committee” in South Waziristan. Their bodies were dumped on the side of a road. “This shows what happens when the tribal elders try to challenge Baitullah Mehsud,” Jan said.

We have been ham-handed in the conduct of the campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan. There are seasons in counterinsurgency, and we are almost certainly witnessing the end of tribe in Pakistan. While it might have been possible three or four years ago to have unilaterally acted in Pakistan to destroy the Taliban, and / or to pressure Pakistan to act against them, all of the while incorporating the tribes as was done in the Anbar Province, this is no longer possible. Tribe has been destroyed.

This season is gone, and another strategy must be pursued. This strategy appears to be fully in effect now, cannot rely on the Pakistan Army, and involves aggressive action inside the borders of Pakistan.

American military forces are stepping up cross-border ground attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan on the eve of the seventh anniversary of the attacks of September 11, 2001.

In the last two weeks, the military has begun launching ground assaults in the Pakistani border provinces known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, American intelligence and military officials said. The region is believed by American and Pakistani intelligence to be hosting the leadership of Al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden.

While American special forces and military contractors have conducted raids in Pakistan, such actions were rare and required Cabinet-level approval. In July, the leadership of Central Command, which oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was given the sole authority to approve ground assaults in Pakistan. Late last month, the American military began launching ground attacks in the country on a near daily basis, depending on local conditions and intelligence, according to a military official who requested anonymity.

These small raids won’t be enough, but at least the threshold has been crossed. The U.S. is now taking unilateral action inside the borders of Pakistan, as the Pakistan Army won’t carry out its duties to control the region, and the Taliban are using Pakistan as a launching, training and recovery base for its campaign in Afghanistan. As The Captain’s Journal has pointed out before, the campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan is one and the same.

Regular readers of The Captain’s Journal know that we oppose the admixture of the war on terror with the war on drugs. Destruction of cash crops doesn’t exactly comport with the notion of winning the cooperation of the population, and for this reason the most experienced and savvy warriors on earth – the U.S. Marine Corps – refused to engage in it when the 24th MEU was active in the Garmser area of operations (The Marines don’t want to antagonize the local population by joining U.S.-backed efforts to destroy the crop. “We’re not coming to eradicate poppy” … “We’re coming to clear the Taliban”).

The problem, we have always asserted, is the Taliban. Targeting them and their domiciles is the tactic of choice. We have also previously pointed out that poppy is neither really the problem nor the only Taliban target. In Financing the Taliban we pointed out that the Taliban had imposed fixed taxes on traders and businesses, and that this taxation doesn’t stop at the local level. It extends to large industrial operations.

ZIARAT, Pakistan — The Taliban’s takeover in April of the Ziarat marble quarry, a coveted national asset, is one of the boldest examples of how they have made Pakistan’s tribal areas far more than a base for training camps or a launchpad for sending fighters into Afghanistan.

A rare, unescorted visit to the region this month revealed how the Taliban are grabbing territory, using the income they exact to strengthen their hold and turn themselves into a self-sustaining fighting force. The quarry alone has brought tens of thousands of dollars, said Zaman, a tribal leader.

The seizure of the quarry is a measure of how, as the Pakistani military has pulled back under a series of peace deals, the Pakistani Taliban have extended their reach through more of the rugged 600-mile-long territory in northern Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA.

The quarry here in the Mohmand tribal district, strategically situated between Peshawar and the Afghan border, is a new effort by the Taliban to harness the region’s abundant natural resources of coal, gold, copper and chromate.

So in addition to destruction of the farmers’ income through poppy eradication, would the State Department also have us blow the marble quarry to dust and prohibit small family businesses because they are a potential source of income for the Taliban?

A new source of income has now come to light, and it is even more insidious and personal than the sources noted above. Kidnapping.

Taliban, known to trade in poppy to finance their militant activities in Afghanistan and elsewhere, have now found another lucrative source of income – kidnapping.

Such crimes used to be rare and the perpetrators were usually common thugs who stuck close to Kabul. But Newsweek says that has changed in the last couple of years, as the Taliban learned the profitability of abducting foreigners and Afghan businessmen rather than killing them.

Since then, kidnapping has become one of the guerrillas’ main revenue sources, second only to facilitating and protecting the country’s USD 4 billion-a-year narcotics trade.

If only reported ransoms paid are added in some of the highest-profile kidnappings of the past two years, the total comes to more than USD 10 million a year, the news magazine says, cautioning that’s a “deceptively conservative” estimate.

Most abductions and payments are never publicised. The windfall, says the magazine, has helped the Taliban to come back strong from near defeat and the threat of kidnapping has made travel all but impossible in much of the country, crippling reconstruction efforts.

The report says that hostage negotiations routinely start with the insurgents demanding a prisoner release as Taliban commanders seem embarrassed to talk about ransoms. But the talks always come down to money.

Among other things, cash can bribe underpaid prison guards or finance a breakout, like the one in Kandahar this June where at least 350 captured Taliban escaped.

“Nobody no government wants to acknowledge ransoms, but you got to do what you got to do,” says Jack Cloonan, president of the US crisis-management firm Clayton Consultants.

“The truth is, everyone talks to [kidnappers], either directly or through back channels. And everyone pays ransom,” he said.

Foreigners pay best, Newsweek says, but still, most victims are Afghans.

No one knows how many Afghans have been kidnapped by the Taliban, Newsweek says, stressing that until recently the field was a wide-open scramble among local guerrilla bands who kept most of the proceeds for themselves.

This May the organisation’s no two leader, Mullah Bradar, finally issued a set of rules for all Taliban Commanders who are now required to notify to the supreme military council, the shura, whenever a kidnapping takes place; no one but representatives designated by Mullah Bradar may negotiate terms for a hostage’s release or take ransom payments, and at least two thirds of any cash deal must go to the central shura.

A well organized market indeed, this has become. Since we cannot outlaw the existence of people (who would enforce the law?) in order to prevent this from being a source of income, it is most expedient and wise to recognize the problem for what it is. Just as protection of the infrastructure is most effective when its enemies are targeted, so too is stopping sources of income to the Taliban most effective when there is no more Taliban.

General David Petraeus is apparently going to recommend that a Brigade be redeployed from Iraq to Afghanistan prior to the new administration taking over.

A senior U.S. Defense official who has seen Petraeus’ recommendations to the Joint Chiefs, Defense Secretary Gates and President Bush told FOX News the likely brigade to be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan is the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 10th Mountain Division out of Fort Drum, N.Y.

The 3rd Brigade Combat Team is scheduled to deploy in the spring and their training could be shifted to match terrain in Afghanistan instead. The 10th Mountain Division, a light infantry unit, is well suited for such terrain.

Several reports also suggest that Petraeus is also recommending 1,500 Marines also be redirected from service in Iraq and sent to Afghanistan.

The Captain’s Journal has previously weighed in stating that we believe that the campaign will require an additional three Marine Regimental Combat Teams (RCT) and three Army Brigades. We now believe that this counsel was on the low end of the true requirements, and that General Petraeus will be obliged to redeploy much more that he has stated above.

The advisers to President Bush are said to object to the redeployment out of Iraq, and Bush will apparently decide this week. But in the spirit of our previous counsel that we don’t have until next year to bolster forces in Afghanistan, there is a revelation from Operation Enduring Freedom command that convinces us that there won’t likely be a Taliban winter rest this year.

FORWARD OPERATING BASE KALAGUSH, Afghanistan — American troops in Afghanistan will step up offensive operations this winter because insurgents are increasingly staying in the country to prepare for spring attacks, a U.S. commander told The Associated Press.

Maj. Gen. Jeffery J. Schloesser said a 40 percent surge in violence in April and May was fueled in part by militants preparing stores of weapons during the winter, which generally is a slow period for fighting, particularly in snowy Afghan mountainous areas.

“If we don’t do anything over the winter the enemy will more and more try to seek safe haven in Afghanistan rather than going back to Pakistan,” Schloesser said.

U.S. and NATO officials say militants cross into Afghanistan from Pakistan, where they rest, train and resupply in tribal areas along the frontier where the Pakistani government has little sway.

Schloesser estimated 7,000 to 11,000 insurgents operate in the eastern part of Afghanistan that he oversees — a far higher estimate than given by previous U.S. commanders.

He said the U.S. military realized more militants spent last winter in Afghanistan after speaking with elders and villagers who had been pushed out of their homes. The spike in violence in the spring occurred because insurgents were already in position to unleash attacks, though U.S. officials didn’t know it at the time, he said.

“They didn’t have to come over the passes, they were already here,” Schloesser said during an interview while flying in a Black Hawk helicopter Monday to a small U.S. outpost in Nuristan, a province that borders Pakistan.

Kudos to Maj. Gen. Schloesser for this perspective. The Captain’s Journal loves honesty and forthrightness. The Major General understands the need to continue operations, and so does General McKiernan, who doesn’t want to lose the terrain taken in and around Garmser after the Marines of the 24th MEU took it.

Introducing the general to his officers and senior enlisted, company commander Dynan briefs McKiernan on their recent fight against the Taliban, and the improving situation with the villagers.

Weeks later, McKiernan will explain how the problem with Pakistan and the ISI was affecting the local ground war. “There is a continuing issue of the very porous border with Pakistan and it has allowed insurgent militant groups a greater freedom of movement across that border . . . . They have the freedom to move across the border unimpeded and can easily resupply and recruit in Pakistan,” McKiernan told the Associated Press on 9 July. He added that rocket and mortar attacks launched by militants in Pakistan at U.S. and Afghani border outposts had spiked dramatically in May and June.

But today all the Army general wants to do is talk to “his” Marines. The 24th MEU was deployed specifically to Afghanistan in response to Canadian and British calls for additional American troops, and McKiernan uses it as his Quick Response Force, to be thrown into whatever emergency situation arises.

McKiernan asks Captain Dynan for permission to address the Marines of Alpha Company. Surrounded by Leathernecks, the new commanding general speaks quietly to the young men. “You’ve knocked the insurgents, the Taliban, out of the area,” he said. “They had no idea of how Marines can fight. They do now. You’ve given the locals the courage to stand up with us, and that’s what it takes to win down here.”

Pleased by the recognition, the Marines smile and pepper McKiernan with questions, then take turns shaking his hand. As the general and his entourage depart, the men of Alpha Company prepare for their evening patrols, where they will continue to walk through villages, meeting the locals, and letting friend and foe alike know that the Marines have landed.

Marine Corps Commandant Conway predicted that this would happen.

Conway anticipated the Corps’ predicament when the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit and 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines, deployed to Afghanistan this spring, to provide a surge of forces there.

“I said, with all due respect … ‘let me predict something: Commanders will fall in love with the Marines because they will do a great job,’ ” Conway said. “There will be a request for an extension. There will be requests to replace them with other Marines.”

The Marines were, in fact, extended. And if new Marines are to fall in behind those slated to depart in November, a decision would have to be made soon.

That could come in a variety of forms. The 26th MEU departed North Carolina in August for an undisclosed location in the Middle East, while the 13th MEU is slated to push out of Southern California in January.

This is the first time The Captain’s Journal has seen in print the possibility that the 26th MEU might be replacements for the 24th MEU. But if this is going to happen, the decision will be made soon. The 24th MEU is scheduled to return stateside in November. Leaving port in January of 2009 and arriving in February of 2009, doesn’t really do justice to the needs of the campaign, although the 13th MEU might also be in the works for Afghanistan if our counsel is followed.

Either way, Operation Enduring Freedom is in dire need of troops, and the security situation is degrading. Security for the population is a hinge upon which much of counterinsurgency turns, and without adequate force projection, we cannot hope to win the campaign. As we have pointed out, at the height, Soviet General Gromov had up to 104,000 troops, while General Petraeus currently has only 32,500.

The Captain’s Journal has previously discussed the kinetic operations in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) of the Pakistan tribal area, along with the stand down of these operations over Ramadan. It now appears that the entire effort was a high value target initiative.

The Pakistani military has halted operations in Bajaur Agency in the northwest of the country, saying “the back has been broken” of the militancy there.

A military spokesman said that in light of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Sunday, all action would stop, which would allow about 500,000 displaced people to return home. Officials claim that in three weeks of fighting 560 militants have been killed, with the loss of 20 members of the security forces.

The ground reality, though, is that the operation failed in its primary objective, to catch the big fish so wanted by the United States – al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. This would have been the perfect present for Islamabad to give the George W Bush administration in the run-up to the US presidential elections in November.

Pakistan said they had Zawahiri in their sights, but he evaded them. Zawahiri, who has a US$25 million bounty on his head, escaped a US missile strike in January 2006 near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.

The Bajaur operation was a comprehensive joint show of power by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Pakistan forces as they were convinced that the al-Qaeda leaders and other senior Taliban militants were in an area spanning Kunar and Nooristan provinces in Afghanistan and the Bajaur and Mohamad agencies immediately across the border in Pakistan.

NATO and the Pakistani military had hoped that a pincer operation would force their prey to move their base, thereby exposing them. The thinking was that the militants would seek refuge inside Pakistan, where they could be cornered.

The mission began disastrously, though. Two days before troops were ordered from the corps headquarters of Peshawar in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) early last month, news of the impending attack was leaked to the militants and the al-Qaeda leadership was hastily moved. The Pakistani forces also received an unwelcome – and unexpected – reception when they began operations in Bajaur; the militants were armed and waiting …

Pakistan and NATO had placed high store on a successful mission, launching the heaviest-ever aerial bombardment inside Pakistan’s tribal regions – hence the high level of displaced persons. The militants claim that many dozens of paramilitary troops were killed and many captured, along with their heavy weapons and tanks.

The assault continued for several more weeks, but on August 28 during a secret meeting on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, and the chief of the Pakistani Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, it was agreed the Bajaur mission had failed. No key militants had been hit and they had now completely fallen off all radar screens.

The Asia Times can exaggerate the facts from time to time, but in this instance they seem to have gotten the facts basically correct. In fact, an official Pakistan government press release admits the failure of the operations.

Pakistani troops in the country’s tribal areas recently discovered the location of Al Qaeda’s number two but “missed” a chance to capture him, according to the politician who oversees Pakistan’s Frontier Corps.

Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior ministry chief, told a group of foreign journalists that the military obtained evidence Ayman al-Zawahiri’s wife was in the Mohmand agency, near the border with Afghanistan.

“We did raids and traces there,” said Malik, who manages the underfunded front-line forces fighting militants in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province. “Certainly we had traced him in one place, but we missed him. Certainly he is moving in Mohmand Agency and Kunar, mostly in Kunar and Paktika,” referring to two areas across the border in Afghanistan. He did not give specific details of when the raids took place.

Publicly, U.S. officials will not comment on Malik’s claims, but privately senior officials tell ABC News they are skeptical and have seen no evidence that Zawahiri was narrowly missed.

Malik claimed that that “50-60” foreign al Qaeda leaders were currently hiding in Pakistan, and admitted to some frustration over Pakistan’s inability to capture the most wanted terrorists in the world. “Whoever’s it is, his strategy is obviously better than ours,” he said.

Malik’s assertions come despite criticism by the Untied States and some in Pakistan that the military is not doing enough to combat militants along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. This week the army announced it would temporarily and provisionally halt two campaigns against militants for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Historically, Ramadan has been peaceful, and Malik said the Pakistani military would be judged negatively by Pakistanis if it had not stopped the attacks.

If the operations continued, he said, “we will have a bad image as a Muslim state.”

So either the operations didn’t even succeed in coming close to killing Ayman al-Zawahiri (and U.S. intelligence doubts that it did), or they missed him entirely. In either case, they missed him, and the operations – insofar as they were primarily a high value target initiative – failed.

This last statement in the report (Ramadan and their reputation as an Muslim country) is a poor excuse for the stand down in operations in the NWFP, and the Taliban feel no such moral compunction, but the entire report points to a larger problem with the campaign in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is being treated as a counterterrorism campaign rather than a counterinsurgency campaign. While there are new reports every day of a mid-level Taliban commander being killed, The Captain’s Journal doesn’t cover or provide commentary for hits to high value targets or other black operations. The targeting of individuals, while making for intriguing and interesting reading, adds little to the effort to win the population or destroy the enemy.

The Captain’s Journal has long been opposed to the overuse of special operations and the high value target program as an expensive and time consuming initiative that has yielded marginal benefits. Soviet General Gromov had 104,000 troops under his command in Afghanistan (and still lost), and General Petraeus has 32,500. At the moment, NATO and CENTCOM do not have the forces necessary to treat the campaign as a full-orbed counterinsurgency campaign.

This will change, or the campaign will be lost. The recent operations in the NWFP are exemplary of the kind of affects that are seen with repeated and halting starts to kinetic operations, and operations which target individuals: approximately one half million noncombatants are now displaced, and the next time the Pakistan Army needs to conduct operations in the NWFP it will be profoundly more difficult due to the knowledge by the people that it will not redound to success, if history is any indicator of the future.

Special operations cannot win counterinsurgency campaigns. COIN requires infantry in proportions outlined in FM 3-24, and above all, security for the population. Security for the population takes constant contact with both the population and the enemy, until there are no more enemy to cause the insecurity in the first place.

In The British Approach to Counterinsurgency (and in the associated comments), The Captain’s Journal made it clear that while the British had good reason to celebrate the passage of a hydroelectric turbine to the Kajaki dam in the Helmand province of Afghanistan, unfortunately it had to pass through some foreboding terrain, area owned by the Taliban. This is a pointer to larger problems. Indeed, 200 Taliban had to be killed on the way to the dam. This should cause the celebratory mood to pause long enough to consider how the dam, its transmission lines, its operators and the electrical grid in the towns are to be protected. We linked previous articles in which we had discussed these same issues regarding infrastructure in Iraq.

In one such instance, al Qaeda interfered with an irrigation canal simply by shoveling dirt into it. In other instances the electricity grid had proven to be unreliable due to its far flung and widely distributed nature. Killing the Taliban, we argued, is necessary for the protection of the infrastructure. In order to protect the infrastructure, one has to neutralize its enemies. Now, defense analysts and experts are weighing in echoing these same themes.

British forces pulled off an epic mission to deliver a 200-tonne turbine to a dam in the heart of Taliban territory in Helmand, but the $100m project must overcome serious obstacles before it can improve the lives of local Afghans, security analysts said yesterday.

Nearly 5,000 troops were involved in the operation to bring the turbine and other machinery through 100 miles of insurgent strongholds to the village of Kajaki, where it will be used to refurbish an ageing hydroelectric dam.

However, engineers predict it will take months before the dam is running at full capacity, and it will be at least two years before the electricity it generates reaches the 1.8 million intended beneficiaries, who live in remote villages in the Helmand river valley.

Even then, electricity supplies are likely to face disruption from Taliban attacks unless the region is cleared of militants, analysts said.

The area is not densely populated, so the power lines must cover many miles of hostile land to reach the remote villages that are due to be linked up to the dam. British troops in Helmand control an area of only a few miles radius beyond the Kajaki dam, so pylons and substations will have to cross what is now a stronghold for militants operating in the region.

“The power lines coming out of Kajaki are going to be extremely vulnerable to attack,” said Matthew Clements, Eurasia analyst at Jane’s Defence. “The arrival of the extra turbine is a major blow to the Taliban, so they are going to be keen to make sure the project fails.”

[ … ]

“In Iraq we’ve seen that overhead power lines are extremely difficult to protect, and there’s no point generating electricity if you can’t distribute it,” said Paul Smyth, head of operational studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies.

It’s a matter of focus. Although there is no on-off digital switch to stop the insurgency, and although the notions of kinetic operations and infrastructure cannot be completely sequential, still, there must be some basic level of security in order for nonkinetic operations to be successful. Killing 200+ Taliban shouldn’t be seen merely as an effect of the recent British operations in Southern Afghanistan. It should be one of the primary goals.

Beginning with Resurgence of Taliban and al Qaeda where we discussed the Next-Gen Taliban, and going through Interview with Taliban Spokesman Maulvi Omar, for six months The Captain’s Journal has outlined the synthesis of al Qaeda and the new Taliban.  From adoption of suicide tactics to taking a global perspective for jihad in lieu of the nationalistic one, the differences between al Qaeda and the Tehrik-i-Taliban of Pakistan  (TTP) have all but disappeared, with Baitullah Mehsud the most powerful man in the North West Frontier Province as the head of the TTP.

Musharraf wouldn’t publicly admit it, but with his departure at least there is a whiff of honesty in the air concerning the actual state of affairs.

Pakistan’s top security official says the country’s Taliban is a “mouthpiece” of al-Qaida.

“We have certain evidence that there is a close connection, links and that there are similarities between al-Qaida and TTP,” Interior Ministry chief Rehman Malik told reporters in Islamabad, Dawn reported Tuesday.

TTP is the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, which was banned by the government last month after being blamed for a series of suicide attacks, which killed hundreds of people, the report said.

Malik, responding to a question whether Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy to al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden, talks to the TTP, said, “If al-Qaida is to move in a tribal area, they have to look to the TTP” to find refuge, the report said.

“The TTP is a host to al-Qaida and is their mouthpiece,” he added.

Noting that there is evidence of foreign fighters operating in Pakistan, Malik said, “We have also found traces of militants from the Uzbek and … Chinese Islamic movements in the tribal regions.”

Again, this marks a change in position by the Pakistani government.

Pakistani authorities previously sought to draw a sharp distinction between homegrown militants and al-Qaida, which is led by Arabs. But the interior ministry official declared that al-Qaida had morphed into Pakistan’s Taliban movement, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban, which is a copy of the Afghanistan’s Taliban guerillas.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Tehreek-e-Taliban and al-Qaida are the same thing,” Malik said. “They have not only connections, I would say Tehreek-e-Taliban is an extension of al-Qaida. The mouthpiece is now Tehreek-e-Taliban.”

Readers of The Captain’s Journal have heard this for a half a year or more, and while a stand down of operations by the Pakistan Army over Ramadan is not encouraging, at least Pakistan realizes that their very existence is at stake in this war.

The Captain’s Journal would like to see an official U.S. DoD after action report for the Russian campaign in Georgia, but in lieu of that, we offer a brief assessment of the Russian action. First, an assessment by Martin Sieff of UPI (concerning mostly equipment and military materiel).

The effective use of decades-old Russian T-72 main battle tanks in the brief conflict with Georgia again shows how supposedly obsolete weapons can still play a potent and even decisive role in modern war.

The Russian army did not rely exclusively on its 30-year-old T-72s. State-of-the-art T-90 main battle tanks also were identified during Russia’s brief but highly effective five-day drive into the former Soviet republic of Georgia last month.

But the old T-72s, upgraded with explosive-reactive armor, were there, too.

The Russians pushed ahead with overwhelming concentration of force, according to classic Carl von Clausewitz principles, using artillery, tactical air support for ground forces and a mix of older T-72 MBTs and modern ones backed up with overwhelming forces of highly mobile infantry.

Special forces were used effectively to pre-emptively seize potential bottleneck positions in the heavily forested Caucasus Mountains to prevent Georgian forces from slowing down the Russian drive.

In all, about 10,000 troops, still a very small proportion of the Russian armed forces, were used in the operation …

The old Soviet T-55 Main Battle Tank from the 1950s was notorious for its vulnerability to bursting into flame from a direct hit. But to this day, scores if not hundreds of them still do service as shows of military muscle for military dictatorships across sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia.

In the same way, the Russian army has been able to greatly extend the operational life of its old T-72s. Tank for tank, on paper they are no match for the more modern T-90s or U.S. Abrams MBTs.

But when they are launched in operations such as the Russian drive into Georgia, they can still exert more than enough overwhelming force to fulfill the dictums of von Clausewitz.

This has been overlooked and forgotten by Western pundits since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union. The miserable performance of the Russian army in the first Chechen war of 1994-96 confirmed that the army had indeed become almost useless, weak, demoralized and disorganized during the chaotic early years in power of President Boris Yeltsin.

But that was then, and this is now. The Russian army today still could prove no match for the U.S. Army and its NATO allies at the peak of their power, but it doesn’t have to.

The U.S. Army and Marines have been exhausted by their ongoing commitment in Iraq fighting a relatively small but ongoing low-intensity counterinsurgency war against Sunni Muslim insurgents over the past 5 1/2 years.

And the nations of the European Union in general have allowed their conventional forces to run down to an extreme degree since the collapse of communism.

This article belongs in that category of fawning admiration of the mighty Russian bear, an assessment-type that we have rejected. The Captain’s Journal had previously judged that air power was the primary reason for the quick Russian win.

It’s easy to make too much of the Georgian retreat, especially when one considers the force strength by the numbers. Regardless of armor and artillery, the bottom line here is air power. Air superiority doesn’t ensure a victory, and lack of it doesn’t guarantee a loss. But it’s impossible to wage a conventional war against a larger armed forces without at least air equivalence.

We have also cited Ralph Peters, who knows first hand what the Russians had to do to field this force.

RUSSIA’s military is succeeding in its invasion of Georgia, but only because Moscow has applied overwhelming force.

This campaign was supposed to be the big debut for the Kremlin’s revitalized armed forces (funded by the country’s new petro-wealth). Well, the new Russian military looks a lot like the old Russian military: slovenly and not ready for prime time.

It can hammer tiny Georgia into submission – but this campaign unintentionally reveals plenty of enduring Russian weaknesses.

The most visible failings are those of the air force. Flying Moscow’s latest ground-attack jets armed with the country’s newest precision weapons, pilots are missing far more targets than they’re hitting.

All those strikes on civilian apartment buildings and other non-military targets? Some may be intentional (the Russians aren’t above terror-bombing), but most are just the result of ill-trained pilots flying scared.

They’re missing pipelines, rail lines and oil-storage facilities – just dumping their bombs as quickly as they can and heading home.

Russia’s also losing aircraft. The Kremlin admits two were shot down; the Georgians claimed they’d downed a dozen by Sunday. Split the difference, and you have seven or more Russian aircraft knocked out of the sky by a tiny enemy. Compare that to US Air Force losses – statistically zero – in combat in all of our wars since Desert Storm.

As one US officer observed to me, the Russian pilots are neither professionally nor emotionally toughened for their missions. Their equipment’s pretty good (not as good as ours), but their training lags – and their pilots log far fewer flight hours than ours do.

Russia has been planning and organizing this invasion for months. And they’re pulling it off – but the military’s embarrassing blunders must be infuriating Prime Minister Putin.

In a fawning assessment similar to Sieff article cited above, Sebastian Alison with Bloomberg supplies data that undermines the very point that these assessments attempt to make. “Georgia suffered more troop casualties — 215 killed and 1,200 wounded — than Russia, with 64 killed and 323 wounded, according to figures from both governments.”

This is a kill ratio for the Russians of approximately 3.4:1, and a casualty ratio of 3.7:1. This data is appalling given the Russian artillery and air superiority, and doesn’t even come close to matching the typical 10:1 ratio achieved by the U.S. in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Col. Gian Gentile of West Point opines concerning the readiness of U.S. forces to conduct conventional warfare in light of the Russian aggression against Georgia.

Images of Georgian infantry moving under fire and Russian tanks on the attack show that the days of like armies fighting one another on battlefields are far from over.

What does this mean for the US Army? As it considers its role after Iraq, should it be restructured for war and conflict along the lines of counterinsurgency and nation-building, or toward conventional fighting as represented by the Georgian war?

Armies trained to fight conventional warfare can quickly and effectively shift to counterinsurgency and nation-building. Contrary to popular belief, the US Army proved this in Iraq.

Its lightning advance up to Baghdad in the spring of 2003 happened because it was a conventionally minded army, trained for fighting large battles.

If the Army had focused the majority of its time and resources prior to the Iraq war on counterinsurgency and nation-building, the march to Baghdad would have been much more costly in American lives and treasure.

[ … ]

Artillery firing was a critical asset in Russia’s crushing defeat of the Georgian Army.

There are a range of scenarios that might include the US having to engage in heavy fighting. One of them involves a possible failed North Korean state. Focusing on counterinsurgency and nation-building operations will not prepare the Army for such a possibility.

The American Army must do what it takes to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But good counterinsurgency tactics practiced by proficient combat outfits cannot compensate for flawed strategies and policies.

Considering events today in Georgia and the recent past of Israel in south Lebanon, the Army must soon refocus itself toward conventional warfighting skills, with the knowledge that if called on to do so, it can easily shift to nation-building and counterinsurgency as it has done in Iraq.

If it doesn’t, it courts strategic peril.

Perhaps. The Captain’s Journal certainly agrees that we must do what is necessary to win in both Iraq and Afghanistan. U.S. forces also must maintain air superiority over all near-peers, as well as qualifications in the tactics of conventional warfare.

But this assessment should not devolve into the fawning admiration for the “mighty Russian bear” that the cited assessments have. Remember, Georgian troops, lacking air power or artillery, reduced the Russian kill ratio to less than 4:1. Militarily speaking, there is no “mighty Russian bear.” The response to Russian thuggery remains an issue of will rather than military might. Russia intends for Georgia to be the first, not the only, step in its goal of reconstructing the Soviet empire.

We have made it clear that we are glad to have the British as our allies in the war against the transnational insurgency in which we find ourselves. Furthermore, the Brits are able to field enlisted men who are as brave as any warrior on the planet. But fawning – and false – news coverage of British operations doesn’t help to gain an accurate picture of counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. Reader and commenter Dawg observes that the British media has ascribed the victory in Garmsir to the British.

The Captain’s Journal found this source a day or so before Dawg, and sent a rebuke to the editorial staff of the Independent, stating that given the copious data showing that the U.S. Marines retook Garmser from the Taliban, their article was the worst example of journalistic dishonesty we had ever witnessed.

However, that doesn’t mean that the British are not seeing significant combat in Southern Afghanistan. They are, but we have a question as to use of forces and overall strategy.

British commanders estimate that more than 200 Taliban were killed as they tried to prevent the convoy of 100 vehicles from getting the machinery to Kajaki hydroelectric dam where it will provide a significant increase in energy for up to two million Afghans.

The operation has been described as the biggest of its kind since the Second World War.

For the last five days the force has fought through the heart of Taliban territory to push through the 220 tonne turbine and other equipment that included a 90 tonne crane to lift it into place.

With a third turbine fixed at Kajaki it will mean that the extra electricity could double the irrigation output allowing farmers to plant two crops of wheat a year. With a dramatic rise in world wheat prices this could crucially mean that it becomes more profitable than producing opium which would deprive the Taliban of a major source of revenue.

Escorted by attack helicopters, armoured vehicles and men of the Parachute Regiment, the trucks trundled into Kajaki.

For the first 50 miles of its journey from the southern city of Kandahar the convoy was protected by American and Canadian troops. But for the second 50 mile leg through Taliban strongholds more than 3,000 British troops were needed to fight off the insurgents.

Lt Col Dave Wilson, of 23 Engineer Regiment, said the operation was the most significant “route clearance” operation since the Second World War with the sappers freeing the route of mines and improvised bombs.

“It was a huge achievement,” said Lt Col Wilson. “It was carried out through some of the most heavily mined areas of Afghanistan.”

While medics had prepared for casualties, commanders said there was only one wounded among the British, American, Canadian and Australian troops who took part in the operation – a British soldier was crushed when a trailer collapsed on him.

“As a template for the rest of this country, it’s shown that when we want to, at a time and a place of our choosing, we can overmatch the Taliban, no question,” said Lt Col James Learmont of 7 Para Royal Horse Artillery.

The Kajaki dam has been the object of intense combat.

But even this combat intensive effort to get the necessary electrical infrastructure to the dam won’t prevent it from being the object of more combat. If anything, it will probably encourage kinetic operations and an insecure environment, just as it did in Iraq when al Qaeda targeted electricity and water supplies. Observing that “when we want to, at a time and a place of our choosing, we can overmatch the Taliban, no question,” completely misses the point. Spot encounters don’t win a counterinsurgency.

The point is that in order for infrastructure to work, the enemies of that infrastructure must be targeted. The dam won’t long operate if its operators are all killed, or if other replacement parts have to undergo such intensive operations in order to be deployed at the plant. Infrastructure is good, as is good governance. But for these softer tactics in counterinsurgency to be successful, the Taliban must be engaged and killed. The softer side of counterinsurgency might win a lasting peace, but cannot win kinetic operations.

Prior:

The Role of Electricity in State Stabilization

Targeting the Insurgency Versus Protecting the Infrastructure

It wasn’t too many months ago that Pakistani newspapers were unanimously begging for “talks” with the Taliban, that “misunderstood faction” that could be reasoned with if only we would try.  But the Pakistan Army recently stood down on operations against the Taliban during Ramadan.  The Captain’s Journal recently said that the subtitle to this stand-down is that the Taliban won, and the population would be much more cautious in the future siding with the Army, given that the Army has a history of failure to finish the Taliban off. The Pakistan Daily Times has a great editorial on the Pakistan Army halt to operations in the North West Frontier Province, exactly one day after we weighed in on this issue. It is far different from editorials before, and it is quoted extensively below.

The interior adviser, Mr Rehman Malik, has announced that the military operation in the Tribal Areas will be suspended on August 31 in deference to the holy month of Ramazan. That means that for 30 days our army will not fight the militants who have literally taken a large chunk of our territory away. Mr Rehman says it is not going to be a ceasefire, and only he can make sense of this “rider clause”, but we hope that our army doesn’t give up its position of advantage in Bajaur and Swat because of this “deal” in the month of fasting.

The past pattern is stark. “Peace talks” proceeded after sending the army back to the barracks, pulling down the checkposts and returning the territory which should not have been returned. Now Mr Rehman says the army will suspend operations but if the militants start something it will retaliate: “If they fire a single bullet we will respond with 10 bullets”. In the past, this has not happened. It is the militants who fired the ten bullets, it is our men who died, while the politicians kept on saying they wanted “peace talks”. The militants always regrouped and returned with redoubled strength that found no comparable counter-force opposing them.

No one can be blamed for characterising the suspension of military operations in the Tribal Areas as a weak-kneed response to the challenge of internationalised terror. One can’t see how it is going to be different this time. If the operation is suspended, does it mean the troops stay where they are but do nothing when they see the militants getting fresh supplies of munitions and men? Does suspension mean that the troops will go back to their cantonments to fast and say their special Ramazan prayers? If that is going to be the shape of things to come in the next 30 days, who will look after the safety of Bajaur refugees trying to return to their homes?

Ramazan has assumed a great religious importance in our days. Entire cities go into partial suspension of life and work because everyone is fasting. No one wants to work seriously and doesn’t even think it is wrong to violate traffic rules. Will this apply to war also? It has never happened in the past. Some wars are known in Muslim history as “Ramadan wars” because the enemy will not strike according to the Islamic calendar. In fact the enemy will strike most effectively during Ramazan because Muslims are not willing to be active during the fasting month. Let us be frank, the terrorists who kill fellow-Muslims have a poor record as far as observing the holy months is concerned. The militants one faces in Bajaur are the same people who have been killing Muslims during Ashura.

In a way, the 23,000 people who are supposed to return home and start fasting will walk straight into the arms of the terrorists. Already the people displaced by the terrorists have come to Peshawar and are opposing military operations against the Taliban. Their mind is influenced by the past hesitation on the part of the state to take on the terrorists. They simply don’t believe that the state is capable of defending their rights; therefore, to save their lives they are ready to give up their right to shave their beards, to educate their daughters and listen to music, and prevent their sons from being trained as suicide bombers. Hundreds of thousands of people have actually migrated from South Waziristan, Swat and Kurram, and they are so forlorn and desperate to just “live” that they are prepared to accept the tyranny of the Taliban because the Pakistani state cannot or will not protect them.

The state’s response was on the upswing before the fasting month came around. Eighteen Taliban making life miserable in Peshawar surrendered and swore on the Quran that they would not repeat their evil deeds. Of course this means nothing unless the state is dominant. One is conscious of the fact that the state has asserted itself in Swat and Bajaur, but it has not yet established dominance. (It has turned tail in Kurram, of course, where the Shia are being allowed to die.) The right thing to do is to carry on the noble deed of rescuing the people of Pakistan during Ramazan and to think of resting only after the job is accomplished.

We have tried peace talks; we have tried jirgas. Peace talks have allowed the terrorists to reorganise and replenish. The jirgas are no longer real because all the elders who could have talked peace have been killed by the terrorists. Now we can try Ramazan, and after that Eid too in the hope that this will work and the Taliban will vacate aggression and allow the writ of the state to prevail. But if it doesn’t work, we will rue the lesson that there is nothing more damaging for morale than to give up after succeeding partially.

There is something of a tribal awakening in the NWFP, but its numbers are almost certainly overblown, and it will also most certainly fail without the support of the Pakistan Army, just as the awakening in Anbar would have failed without the support of the U.S. Marines. On the same editorial page is yet another similar commentary.

There is no need to say what happened after a “successful” operation in Khyber Agency. Warlord Mangal Bagh was put to flight and is under a deadline to leave the agency. The latest news is that his gang Lashkar-e-Islam has asked the people of Landi Kotal to obey his orders, or else. Mr Bagh has asked the people to voluntarily hoist his army’s black flags on their rooftops or face punitive action. He has asked men to keep beards, cover their heads with caps, and keep their ankles visible to avoid thrashings. A large number of people have bought caps to avoid being killed. Since he is using the FM radio, the sales of radio sets have shot up. People don’t want to miss out on his fresh orders and suffer. Every prayer-leader will have to follow the timetable for five prayers set by Mr Bagh’s army.

It is the same as in Swat and Bajaur. No one dares to speak up against Mr Bagh. But everyone is ready to speak against the state and ask it not to come to their help. This is because the state has gone in and then left the job unfinished. When the state was winning against him, Mr Bagh was laughing on TV. He still owns houses in Peshawar and orders people around in Hayatabad, but the state is not there in Khyber.

In a way, the Pakistan Army is Pakistan’s own worst enemy because of its loss of heart and failure to finish the job in the tribal regions. No one should expect a tribal revolt against the Taliban when the Army gives up every time before the job is finished.