Archive for the 'Pakistan' Category

I wanted to put out some preliminary thoughts on current news – the assassination of former (and likely future) Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto – but to do this, I will neglect the sweeping, link-laden and highly sourced analyses that I try to provide.  Instead, my thoughts will be in the ‘stream of consciousness’ style.

It is a sad day for the global war on terror, and the American left, always anxious to lay blame, hasn’t yet solidified its talking points.  Peter Beinart believes that the U.S. administration is somehow to blame because we didn’t push President Pervez Musharraf far and fast enough towards democracy.  Alan Colmes believes that the U.S. administration is somehow to blame because we pushed democracy on a country not ready for it.  Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee inexplicably apologized for the incident, expressing “our sincere concern and apologies for what has happened in Pakistan.”  Inexplicably, that is, unless along with the American left he also feels that the U.S. is somehow to blame for Islamic militancy in Pakistan.

I won’t engage in the omniscient blame game.  But Ambassador Bolton’s concerns are salient when he takes the position that in encouraging Bhutto’s re-emergence on the political scene in Pakistan we “helped to precipitate” the unfortunate events of today, and further remarks that of utmost strategic interest is the safety of the nuclear weapons under Pakistan’s care.  Bolton fails to see how any of this helps the strategic interests of the U.S.

Bolton is not part of the political left, and while I usually agree with him, I take issue with his characterization of these events.  I too, am concerned about the strategic interests of the U.S., and more could have been done after the first assassination attempt on Bhutto’s life (the first day that she returned to Pakistan) to protect her and provide more security.  Bhutto is said to have desired and requested this additional security (and in fact from the U.S. FBI and other assets), and Pakistan is said to have denied this request.  If this fact had been known, then the U.S. administration shares a little of the blame for not pushing hard enough on Musharraf for this protection (and of course, Musharraf is primarily to blame).

However, Bolton is ignoring the long term strategic interests in having Bhutto involved in Pakistani politics.  I have said before that “counterinsurgency in Pakistan begins in Afghanistan and along the Pakistan / Afghanistan border. Unless and until we devote the troops and effect the force projection to let the people in these AOs know that we are serious about the campaign, there will be no success.”  I have advocated more troops in the Afghanistan campaign for the simple reason that not only must we win in Afghanistan, we have an unmitigated opportunity to kill Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan where we are not dealing with issues of sovereignty of Pakistan.  In other words, we have the best of all possible worlds in the current campaign in Afghanistan (similar to the campaign in Iraq, although this is waning somewhat due to Iraqi sovereignty).  We can fight international jihadists with the full approval of the administration and for the most part without the overhead of issues of national sovereignty.

This campaign, once shown to be successful, can then be expanded into Pakistan with the tacit approval of the Pakistani government (i.e., small incursions and concealed operations, expanded to larger operations if the need and approval were forthcoming).  Here is where the administration of Pakistan is important.  Musharraf is likely an American ally only to the extent that he believed Richard Armitage when it was said to him that the U.S. would enjoy his cooperation or Pakistan would be “bombed back to the stone age” (the words as reported by Musharraf himself).  Bhutto, on the other hand, would have been a willing participant in the global war on religious militancy, and is said to have desired international assistance in the Pakistan counterinsurgency campaign: “If Bhutto returns to power this week, Gauhar predicts the U.S. will finally get what Musharraf has refused it: “She will allow NATO boots on the ground in our tribal areas and a chance to neuter our nuclear weapons.”

While Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is said to favor an addition of only 7500 troops to the Afghanistan campaign, hope springs eternal that strategic interests would be seriously evaluated around the globe (e.g., Germany and South Korea) and troop realignments would occur to support both the Iraq and Afghanistan counterinsurgency campaigns.

We must think long term, and Bhutto, because she was a clear thinker, was a long term ally of the United States.  It is a sad day for the U.S. and the global war on terror.  Only time will tell how serious this setback is.  My sense is that it’s very serious.

At the Small Wars Journal Blog there is an article by the same subject title.  This article is by Clint Watts and is another excellent warning to the Pentagon thinkers and planners.  It is commended to the reader, and I supplied the following comment.

I have argued similarly in the post:

The Special Forces Plan for Pakistan: Mistaking the Anbar Narrative

It has become in vogue to characterize the Anbar narrative as the “awakening,” and nothing more than this, as if it was all about getting a tribe to “flip.” To be sure, we needed Captain Travis Patriquin’s observations sooner than we got them, and I have argued almost nonstop for greater language training before deployment and payment to so-called “concerned citizens” and other erstwhile insurgents. You can qualify expert on the rifle range, but if you can’t speak the language, you’re going in ‘blind’ (to play on words).

But just to make it clear, to see the Anbar narrative as all about tribes “flipping” is an impoverished view of the campaign. It’s a Johnny-come-lately view. Hard and costly kinetic operations laid the groundwork for the tribal realignments. Sheikh Sattar had to have his smuggling lines cut and dismembered by specially assigned units conducting kinetic operations in order to ‘see the light’ and align with U.S. forces. Then, a tank had to be parked outside his residence to provide protection against the insurgents in order to keep him alive and aligned with the U.S.

The pundits talk about the tribes, but the Marines talk about kinetic operations inside Ramadi to provide the window of opportunity for the tribes to realign their allegiance:

Marine Staff Sergeant Helps Awaken Anbar

To be sure, the tribal alliance is a large part of the Anbar victory, but force projection (not force protection) was the pretext for the Anbar awakening. We simply cannot do COIN on the cheap. I hope that no one exists who believes that we could have waltzed into Anbar three years ago, without the pretext of force projection, and sat down with the tribes and verbally persuaded them to join “the cause?” Perhaps we could have done it (won) sooner (perhaps two years), and perhaps we could have done it without quite the heavy losses (if we had been prepared for IEDs and snipers a little better), and perhaps it could have been more efficient had we understood the culture and language better. But make no mistake. The strong horse gets the bet. There is no value in weakness in this part of the world. And the Anbar campaign must not be seen as the consequent of any revised strategy or the surge. It did not result from any of this, but was ongoing for three years separate from what happened in the balance of Iraq.

Export the strategy? Of course, but an understanding of the strategy is necessary in order to export it. SF operators and talk didn’t win Anbar. Force projection won Anbar.

COIN in Pakistan begins in Afghanistan and along the Pakistan / Afghanistan border. Unless and until we devote the troops and effect the force projection to let the people in these AOs know that we are serious about the campaign, there will be no success. The troops needed to conduct COIN in this campaign are currently in Anbar, or at Camp’s LeJeune or Pendleton.

Conclusion: This is a good article, and serves as yet another warning to the Pentagon thinkers and planners that there are no strings to pull, no buttons to push, and no magic words to speak. ‘Abracadabra’ plus the right formula just doesn’t work, and leaves us where we were before. COIN requires boots on the ground. How many more warnings will have to be issued?

Force projection + COIN =  A winning strategy.

While the campaign in Iraq continues and the Afghanistan campaign continues to suffer from a lack of adequate force projection, Pakistan remains fertile soil for making jihadists. Concerning the going-forward U.S. strategy for addressing the problem, the New York Times is the recipient of leaked preliminary strategy plans for counterinsurgency in Pakistan.

A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.

If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said. The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the new approach.

The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great success in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a significant American military presence in Pakistan. And it is unclear whether enough support can be found among the tribes, some of which are working with Pakistan’s intelligence agency.

Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks, Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat …

The tribal proposal, a strategy paper prepared by staff members of the United States Special Operations Command, has been circulated to counterterrorism experts but has not yet been formally approved by the commandand headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Some other elements of the campaign have been approved in principle by the Americans and Pakistanis and await financing, like $350 million over several years to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that has about 85,000 members and is recruited from border tribes … Historically, American Special Forces have gone into foreign countries to work with local militaries to improve the security of those countries in ways that help American interests. Under this new approach, the number of advisers would increase, officials said.

There are several analyses of this approach, the two most significant being from John Robb at Global Guerrillas, and Bill Roggio writing for Weekly Standard. First, of the proposed strategy in Pakistan, John Robb customarily notes three problems facing the proposal (without giving any solutions), but then observes:

The use of a plethora of militias to fight a global open source insurgency from Nigeria to Mexico to Iraq to Pakistan is effective within a grand strategy of delay (it holds disorder at bay while allowing globalization to work). Most beneficially, it eliminates the need for nation-building, massive conventional troop deployments, and other forms of excess. Some questions remain: can the US manage something this complex or this messy? Will the rest of the US military/contractors sit idle (and as a result fall victim to budget cuts) while light weight special operations forces (and their allied private military corporations) take center stage?

Note here that Robb points to ‘globalization’ being allowed to work as a solution to the global open source insurgency, while earlier he has pointed to globalization as a catalyst for insurgencies: “9-11 is a great example of how the underlying dynamics of globalization make a radical acceleration in conflict possible. Small groups can now produce results from actions that far exceed anything in history. However, this isn’t restricted to Islamic terrorists. Warfare is evolving is across the board at a rapid rate. I see it everywhere from Brazil to Columbia to Nigeria and Iraq.”

How globalization can be both the catalyst and solution for insurgencies Robb doesn’t say, but his prose gives the impression of well-studied ethereal thoughts full of sound and fury but without concrete application. A review of Robb’s literature leaves the feeling that no solution to any problem in any counterinsurgency campaign can ever be solved and all solutions lead inevitably to failure, or worse, making the insurgency more potent. More telling in his rebuttal to the Pakistan plan is what he doesn’t give as a reason for his opposition to it, i.e., that the Anbar experience was a failure. It wasn’t too long ago that one could find talk of defeat, retreat and redeployment out of Iraq from Robb. It seems that even Robb has now taken note of the successes in Anbar.

Next, Bill Roggio is clearer concerning his opposition to the proposed Pakistan strategy.

The conflicts in Iraq’s Anbar province and Pakistan’s tribal areas are fundamentally different, and while both provinces are dominated by a strong tribal culture, al Qaeda’s draws support in each for different reasons. In Anbar, the tribes and insurgent groups aligned themselves with al Qaeda in Iraq largely because they viewed al Qaeda as an ally in the fight against American occupation. However, they turned on the terror group once it became clear that al Qaeda threatened their very existence. In Pakistan, the Pashtun tribes have by and large openly supported the Taliban and al Qaeda since the groups first formed. The Taliban, with the help of the Pakistan Inter Services Intelligence agency, was born in the Pashtun tribal belts, and al Qaeda fighters and its senior commanders are welcomed among the Taliban supporting tribes there … Also, the counterinsurgency campaign proposed for Pakistan is not at all similar to that executed in Anbar province. In Anbar, the tribes organized to fight al Qaeda only after they realized the error they had made in aligning with them. And the tribes openly fought al Qaeda of their own accord before seeking help from the U.S. Marine and Army units in Ramadi. Only later would U.S. troops play a significant role by nurturing the tribal movement, known as the Anbar Awakening, which ultimately formed the core of local resistance to al Qaeda. The U.S. military provided funding, helped organize local tribal security forces, encouraged the Iraqi government and military to allow Sunni tribesmen to join the army and police, and had the tribal security forces integrated into the military by reorganizing the units into Provincial Security Forces.

Roggio concludes with his prescription for success in Pakistan, and a warning concerning failure based on what it took for the Anbar “awakening” to succeed.

The Awakening was only able to survive the al Qaeda onslaught with the direct support of the U.S. Marines and soldiers based in Anbar. U.S. forces provided protection for the group’s leaders, as well as air support, financing, and communications and other equipment to bolster its efforts … arming anti-al Qaeda and anti-Taliban tribes and bolstering the Frontier Corps without solid support from both the Pakistani and the American military would be a death sentence for any tribe foolish enough to join the fight.

We hold to a slight to moderately different narrative of the Anbar campaign than Roggio does. It is tempting to see the Anbar awakening outside of the context of the U.S. kinetic operations that caused and encouraged it, but this approach is incomplete. Much has been made, for instance, of Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha and his leadership of the coalition of tribes, but it is lesser known and publicized that before this significant tribal leader was turned against al Qaeda and towards the U.S., a unit was specifically designated to conduct kinetic operations to shut down his smuggling lines into Syria, that unit having operated with significant success. Another good example of the pretext for the awakening being U.S. force projection and kinetic operations comes from Marine Staff Sgt. John Costa.

When Marine Staff Sgt. John Costa arrived in Ramadi, Iraq, in August 2006, U.S. troops walked the city streets in daylight at their peril. “The place was one of the worst cities in Iraq, if not the worst. You could not conduct foot-borne operations during the day,” said Costa, who served as a chief scout with the Scout Sniper Platoon, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines. “It would be a like a group of insurgents trying to walk down the main street in Camp Lejeune at 8 in the morning,” he said, referring to the Marine Corps base in North Carolina. “They’re not going to get far” …

“There were multiple buildings that are like five-, six-, seven-, eight-story apartment buildings — huge, and totally empty,” he said. You’d walk into a house and everything’s there: There’s food in the fridge; there’s clothes in the dresser. The people just moved.”

The staff sergeant soon realized why residents had abandoned their homes. Insurgents in Ramadi, a majority Sunni Muslim city, were violently attacking local citizens. In the midst of intense fighting, they extorted shop owners’ profits. They hiked prices at gas stations and skimmed sales revenues …

Costa also dedicated a portion of his time to cracking the insurgents’ methods of communication.

“Generally there was a guy putting up gang signs, which could either send a rocket-propelled grenade through your window or some other attack your way,” said Costa, who began to realize the significance of unarmed people on Ramadi’s streets providing information via visual cues.

You’re watching something on the street like that happening, and you’re like, “What the hell is that guy doing,” he recalled. “And then the next thing you know, insurgents start coming out of the woodwork.”

“Signalers — the eyes and ears of insurgent leaders — informed the insurgent strategists who commanded armed fighters by using hand and arm gestures.” You could see the signaler commanding troops,” Costa recalled. “He just doesn’t have a weapon.”

To curb insurgents’ ability to communicate, Costa decided on a revolutionary move: He and his unit would dismantle the enemy’s communication lines by neutralizing the threat from signalers. Sparing no time, he set a tone in Ramadi that signalers would be dealt with no differently from their weapon-wielding insurgent comrades.

“We called it in that we heard guys were signaling, and the battalion would advise from there,” he said, recalling the first day of the new strategy. “We locked that road down pretty well that day.”

In ensuing weeks, coalition forces coordinated efforts to dismember the insurgent signal patterns entrenched in Ramadi. This helped tamp down violence and create political breathing room, which in turn allowed the forging of key alliances between local tribal sheiks and coalition operators. The subsequent progress was later dubbed the “Anbar Awakening,” a societal purging of extremism by Anbaris that ushered in a level of stability unprecedented since U.S. operations in Iraq began.

This account from Ramadi should be coupled with the recent example of Operation Alljah from Fallujah. The insurgency and foreign fighters (Chechens, Africans, Western Chinese and others) had congregated in Fallujah in the spring of 2007. They were not only in complete control of Fallujah, but were using it to launch terrorist operations into Baghdad. The previous command had declared Fallujah “unwinnable.” Into this debacle came 2nd, Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment, initiating heavy kinetic operations from the outset to find and capture or kill the insurgents. Later, gated communities, biometrics, and concerned citizens neighborhood watch programs were implemented to restrict the access of the insurgents to the population. Governance was accomplished via a return to a concept implemented during the Saddam era: the Muktars, or area leaders/representatives. Tribal sheikhs were all but irrelevant in the most recent Fallujah operations. The Anbar narrative is complex and varied, and includes much more than a tribal leader “flipping.”

Nibras Kazimi, no insignificant observer and analyst of Iraqi culture and politics, has commented of the tribal awakening in Anbar that “tribes are a barometer of power; they swarm around whoever has the upper hand.” It is a hard lesson to learn for the military complex and the public alike regarding the U.S. special forces: they cannot win her wars. They are specialized, have received training in specialty billets, and can be tasked do things that other troops cannot (such as communicate with indigenous peoples with their language training). But in operations in the Anbar province involving Marine snipers, most snipers have been escorted to and from their post by squad-sized and sometimes platoon-sized infantry patrols. Nothing lays metal down range like Marine infantry, and no amount of specialized training can accommodate for the lack of this force projection.

Roggio’s analysis of the differences in tribal beliefs and life in Anbar versus Pakistan serves as a warning against relying too heavily on the tribes as help against a global militancy that has its origins high in the rugged mountains of Pakistan. The tribes in Pakistan are much more fundamentalist than in Anbar. In Anbar, it is not uncommon to find the internet, television, games in the streets and children and adults alike watching soccer. In Pakistan these things are banned in many places. Sheikh Sattar, widely regarded as father of the awakening in Anbar as we discussed earlier, was a chain smoker and would likely have his hands cut off in Pakistan in order to stop his smoking. In Iraq, use of strong Turkish tobacco is the order of the day.

But the problem goes deeper than this. If the Pakistani tribes are convinced that the U.S. is the stronger horse in the region, they might be persuaded to assist the U.S. or even declare themselves allies. But Rumsfeld’s bold new paradigm involved war by special forces and proxy fighters. Airmen guiding JDAMs to target using satellite uplinks, money paid to previously unknown tribal elders, and special forces operators chasing high value targets – these were the elements of the initial phases of the Afghanistan campaign. Yet al Qaeda command escaped, NATO remains involved in counterinsurgency years after toppling the Taliban regime, and the British are proposing negotiations with “moderate” Taliban and withdrawal from some areas.

There is little reason to believe that tribes who are otherwise at least moderately sympathetic to al Qaeda would be persuaded to evict them from the region when the U.S. has shown no will thus far to complete even the Afghanistan campaign, much less enter into one in Pakistan. If nothing else has been learned from Operation Iraqi Freedom Phases II and III, the small footprint model is a losing strategy in this region of the world and fighting this sort of counterinsurgency. Force projection is not merely a catch-phrase. It is the cornerstone upon which counterinsurgency of this kind is built. Along with the Commandant, we have recommended that the United States Marines be deployed to Afghanistan. Regardless of the disposition of this proposal, dispatching “dozens” of special forces operators to Pakistan to court the tribes means the deaths of dozens of special forces operators. It will accomplish nothing, and means the delay of the inevitable showdown with al Qaeda and the Taliban in which force projection will win the day.

We have pointed out that U.S. interests are not served by the continued deployment of troops in Germany, but Gates has called a halt to the reduction of troops in Europe. Hard decisions must be made, and both the strategy and force size in Afghanistan must be revisited. Afghanistan is the starting line for the race to address problems in Pakistan. It is time for the Rumsfeld model to come to an end.

Barack Hussein Obama flexed American muscle a couple of days ago concerning Pakistan.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Only a single word is necessary at this point: disaster.  The incomparable Ralph Peters puts some flesh on the skeleton called disaster.

Here’s why he’s nuts:

* Pakistan is a nuclear power on the brink of internal collapse. Do we really want to drive it over the edge and see loose nukes in the hands of a radicalized military faction – or terrorists?

* The mountain ranges where the terrorists are holed up are vast. The terrain is some of the toughest in the world. An invasion would suck in hundreds of thousands of troops. And a long occupation would be required.

* Even those tribesmen who don’t support the Taliban or al Qaeda are proud and xenophobic to extremes – they’d rally against us. And all of the senator’s bloggers couldn’t stop them.

* The Pakistani military would fight us. Right now, they’re cooperating, at least to some degree – but they’d fight any invader.

* President Pervez Musharraf’s government would fall – probably overthrown by Islamic nationalists in the military and security services. Welcome to your Islamofascist nuclear power, senator.

* We’d also have to occupy a big corridor through Baluchistan, Pakistan’s vast southwest, since we’d lose our current overflight rights and hush-hush transit privileges on the ground.

An army at war needs a lot of fuel, ammunition, food, water, Band-Aids, replacements, etc. (not the sort of things armchair strategists bother about). Afghanistan is landlocked and surrounded by unfriendly states. Pakistan has been helping us keep our troops supplied. And you couldn’t sustain Operation Obama by air. The senator hasn’t even looked at a map.

* Along with giving away the game in Iraq, an invasion of Pakistan would create a terrorist-recruiting double whammy: The Middle East would mobilize against us – and what could we expect after we invaded a friendly Islamic state?

* Our troops are tired and their gear’s worn out. (Obama wouldn’t know, and he doesn’t care.) They’re fighting on in Iraq because they see progress and they have a sense of duty. But does the senator, who clearly doesn’t know any soldiers and Marines, expect them to surrender Iraq – then plunge into Pakistan without a collapse in morale?

* Even setting aside the nuke issue, what would President Obama do when Pakistan, an Islamic nation of 170 million, broke into bits? Would we also occupy Karachi, Lahore and other megacities, after they turned into urban jungles where the terrorist became the king of beasts?

Go after al Qaeda? You bet. Anywhere, anytime. But we’ve got to do it in a way that makes military sense. A general staff recruited from MoveOn.org isn’t going to enhance our security.

The world would be a safer place if we could reverse time to ensure that Abdul Qadeer Khan didn’t exist, but this isn’t possible.  With a nuclear Pakistan, a nuclear India, a radical Islamist part of the population in Pakistan, and a moderately secular and pro-West Musharraf in a tenuous perch as President, this region of the world is a flash point.  It must be handled with soft velvet gloves on an iron fist.  It presents perhaps the most complicated knot of problems any American President will ever face.

While I am no fan of Dick Armitage, the world was safer when, upon nuclear sabre rattling and threats of war over Kashmir several years ago between Pakistan and India (among other disagreements), he took assignment from the President and let both countries know just exactly how the chest butting was going to end.  And then it ended without so much as a whimper or whisper.

Agreements to cooperate and send special forces and Marines (along with Pakistani forces) on targeted raids of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, directed and precise air power, robust kinetic and nonkinetic operations in Afghanistan, intelligence gathering, financial pressure, largesse, and intense and close friendship between administrations — these are the things of victory in this region.  Land invasion is not.  Neither is chest butting.

In further news, we learn that Obama has no plan for the exercise of nuclear power, or he does, or perhaps he doesn’t.  U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday he would not use nuclear weapons “in any circumstance” to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, drawing criticism from Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democratic rivals.  “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, with a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

So he would send U.S. troops into a land where they are likely to take one hundred thousand casualties and inflict a million, and he has no plan if Pakistan invokes the nukes?

One word: disaster.

Barack Hussein Obama flexed American muscle a couple of days ago concerning Pakistan.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

“Let me make this clear,” Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.”

Only a single word is necessary at this point: disaster.  The incomparable Ralph Peters puts some flesh on the skeleton called disaster.

Here’s why he’s nuts:

* Pakistan is a nuclear power on the brink of internal collapse. Do we really want to drive it over the edge and see loose nukes in the hands of a radicalized military faction – or terrorists?

* The mountain ranges where the terrorists are holed up are vast. The terrain is some of the toughest in the world. An invasion would suck in hundreds of thousands of troops. And a long occupation would be required.

* Even those tribesmen who don’t support the Taliban or al Qaeda are proud and xenophobic to extremes – they’d rally against us. And all of the senator’s bloggers couldn’t stop them.

* The Pakistani military would fight us. Right now, they’re cooperating, at least to some degree – but they’d fight any invader.

* President Pervez Musharraf’s government would fall – probably overthrown by Islamic nationalists in the military and security services. Welcome to your Islamofascist nuclear power, senator.

* We’d also have to occupy a big corridor through Baluchistan, Pakistan’s vast southwest, since we’d lose our current overflight rights and hush-hush transit privileges on the ground.

An army at war needs a lot of fuel, ammunition, food, water, Band-Aids, replacements, etc. (not the sort of things armchair strategists bother about). Afghanistan is landlocked and surrounded by unfriendly states. Pakistan has been helping us keep our troops supplied. And you couldn’t sustain Operation Obama by air. The senator hasn’t even looked at a map.

* Along with giving away the game in Iraq, an invasion of Pakistan would create a terrorist-recruiting double whammy: The Middle East would mobilize against us – and what could we expect after we invaded a friendly Islamic state?

* Our troops are tired and their gear’s worn out. (Obama wouldn’t know, and he doesn’t care.) They’re fighting on in Iraq because they see progress and they have a sense of duty. But does the senator, who clearly doesn’t know any soldiers and Marines, expect them to surrender Iraq – then plunge into Pakistan without a collapse in morale?

* Even setting aside the nuke issue, what would President Obama do when Pakistan, an Islamic nation of 170 million, broke into bits? Would we also occupy Karachi, Lahore and other megacities, after they turned into urban jungles where the terrorist became the king of beasts?

Go after al Qaeda? You bet. Anywhere, anytime. But we’ve got to do it in a way that makes military sense. A general staff recruited from MoveOn.org isn’t going to enhance our security.

The world would be a safer place if we could reverse time to ensure that Abdul Qadeer Khan didn’t exist, but this isn’t possible.  With a nuclear Pakistan, a nuclear India, a radical Islamist part of the population in Pakistan, and a moderately secular and pro-West Musharraf in a tenuous perch as President, this region of the world is a flash point.  It must be handled with soft velvet gloves on an iron fist.  It presents perhaps the most complicated knot of problems any American President will ever face.

While I am no fan of Dick Armitage, the world was safer when, upon nuclear sabre rattling and threats of war over Kashmir several years ago between Pakistan and India (among other disagreements), he took assignment from the President and let both countries know just exactly how the chest butting was going to end.  And then it ended without so much as a whimper or whisper.

Agreements to cooperate and send special forces and Marines (along with Pakistani forces) on targeted raids of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters, directed and precise air power, robust kinetic and nonkinetic operations in Afghanistan, intelligence gathering, financial pressure, largesse, and intense and close friendship between administrations — these are the things of victory in this region.  Land invasion is not.  Neither is chest butting.

In further news, we learn that Obama has no plan for the exercise of nuclear power, or he does, or perhaps he doesn’t.  U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday he would not use nuclear weapons “in any circumstance” to fight terrorism in Afghanistan and Pakistan, drawing criticism from Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democratic rivals.  “I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, with a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

So he would send U.S. troops into a land where they are likely to take one hundred thousand casualties and inflict a million, and he has no plan if Pakistan invokes the nukes?

One word: disaster.

In a major expose of the plans of the Taliban, the Asia Times has an article entitled Taliban lay plans for Islamic intifada.

THE PASHTUN HEARTLAND, Pakistan and Afghanistan – With the snows approaching, the Taliban’s spring offensive has fallen short of its primary objective of reviving the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, as the country was known under Taliban rule from 1996-2001.

Both foreign forces and the Taliban will bunker down until next spring, although the Taliban are expected to continue with suicide missions and some hit-and-run guerrilla activities. The Taliban will take refuge in the mountains that cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, where they will have plenty of time to plan the next stage of their struggle: a countrywide “Islamic Intifada of Afghanistan” calling on all former mujahideen to join the movement to boot out foreign forces from Afghanistan.

Some of this is consistent with what we already know.  I have previously discussed the fact that the Taliban were preparing for a major spring offensive, and that they currently had 12,000 fighters and 500 suicide bombers at their disposal.  They claimed that by the spring they would have enough fighters to launch a major offensive against Kabul.  During this period of re-grouping and readying for a major fight, they were planning something more akin to special operations, with small teams crossing the border without identification and staying in Afghanistan for protracted periods of time.  These would be smaller, lighter and more dedicated incursions into Afghanistan than before.  But the real import of the article has to do with the magnitude of the planned operations.  The Taliban intend to launch a country-wide “intifada.”  Continuing with the Asia Times story:

The intifada will be both national and international. On the one hand it aims to organize a national uprising, and on the other it will attempt to make Afghanistan the hub of the worldwide Islamic resistance movement, as it was previously under the Taliban when Osama bin Laden and his training camps were guests of the country.

The ideologue of the intifada is bin Laden’s deputy, Dr Ayman al-Zawahiri, who has assembled a special team to implement the idea. Key to this mission is Mullah Mehmood Allah Haq Yar. Asia Times Online was early to pinpoint Haq Yar as an important player (see Osama adds weight to Afghan resistance, September 11, 2004).

Oriented primarily towards Arabs, especially Zawahiri, Haq Yar speaks English, Arabic, Urdu and Pashtu with great fluency. He was sent by Taliban leader Mullah Omar to northern Iraq to train with Ansarul Islam fighters before the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. He returned to Afghanistan in 2004 and was inducted into a special council of commanders formed by Mullah Omar and assigned the task of shepherding all foreign fighters and high-value targets from Pakistani territory into Afghanistan.

He is an expert in urban guerrilla warfare, a skill he has shared with the Taliban in Afghanistan. His new task might be more challenging: to gather local warlords from north to south under one umbrella and secure international support from regional players.

In signs that the Taliban understand the significance of the GWOT, the extent of the intifada only starts in Afghanistan.  Its reach will be global, and the support of regional players will be sought.

A major first step toward creating an intifada in Afghanistan was the establishment of the Islamic State of North Waziristan in the Pakistani tribal area this year. This brought all fragmented sections of the Taliban under one command, and was the launching pad for the Taliban’s spring offensive.

Subsequently, there has been agreement between a number of top warlords in northern Afghanistan and the Taliban to make the intifada a success next year. Credit for this development goes mainly to Haq Yar.

Haq Yar was recently almost cornered in Helmand province in Afghanistan by British forces. Before that, he spoke to Asia Times Online at an undisclosed location in the Pashtun heartland straddling Pakistan and Afghanistan.

One of the weaknesses in the facist Islamic movement is the heavy reliance on individuals and personalities.  In this case, the Taliban have a real asset that they can leverage.  Haq Yar speaks multiple languages and is trained in guerrilla warfare, and he apparently has non-trivial negotiating skills.  However, his success will be restricted to the extent that he has to remain on-the-run.

Asia Times then shows that they have landed a significant catch.  They have a direct interview with Haq Yar.

Asia Times Online: When are the Taliban expected to announce the revival of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan?

Haq Yar: Well, the whole Islamic world is waiting for the revival of the Islamic Emirates of Afghanistan, but it will take some time. But sure, it will ultimately happen, and this is what the Taliban’s struggle is all about.

ATol: Can you define the level of Taliban-led resistance in Afghanistan?

Haq Yar: It has already passed the initial phases and now has entered into a tactical and decisive phase. It can be measured from the hue and cry raised by the US and its allies. Daily attacks on NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization] forces are now routine and suicide attacks are rampant.

ATol: To date, the Taliban have been very active in southwestern Afghanistan, but traditionally success comes when a resistance reaches eastern areas, especially the strategically important Jalalabad. When will this happen?

Haq Yar: Well, I do not agree that the Taliban movement is restricted to southwest Afghanistan. We have now established a network under which we are allied with many big and small mujahideen organizations, and in that way we are fighting foreign forces throughout Afghanistan. In a recent development, the deputy chief of the Taliban movement, Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani, is now positioned in the eastern zone, including Jalalabad, from where he is guiding attacks on coalition forces. This eastern zone is also part of the Taliban’s stronghold.

ATol: What is the role of bin Laden and Zawahiri?

Haq Yar: We are allies and part and parcel of every strategy. Wherever mujahideen are resisting the forces of evil, Arab mujahideen, al-Qaeda and leaders Osama bin Laden and Dr Zawahiri have a key role. In Afghanistan they also have a significant role to support the Taliban movement.

ATol: Is the present Taliban-led resistance against the US and its allies a local resistance or is it international? That is, are resistance movements in other parts of the world led from Afghanistan?

Haq Yar: Initially it was a local movement, but now it is linked with resistance movements in Iraq and other places. We are certainly in coordination with all resistance movements of the Muslim world.

This last statement is signficant.  The letter from al Qaeda high command to Zarqawi shows a similar sentiment with the desire by Haq Yar for coordination of the “resistance” movements: in spite of assessments to the contrary, they do not want command and control to become too diffuse.

ATol: What is the Taliban strategy with groups like Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Hezb-i-Islami Afghanistan (Khalis)?

Haq Yar: The Hezb-i-Islami of Hekmatyar and the Taliban are fighting under a coordinated strategy and support each other. The leadership of the Khalis group is now in the hands of his son, who is coordinating everything with Maulana Jalaluddin Haqqani.

ATol: What is the Taliban’s weaponry? Is it old Russian arms or they have acquired new ones – and if so, where are they getting them?

Haq Yar: The Taliban have all the latest weaponry required for a guerrilla warfare. Where does it come from? Well, Afghanistan is known as a place where weapons are stockpiled. And forces that provided arms a few decades ago – the same weapons are now being used against them.

ATol: The Taliban contacted commanders in northern Afghanistan. What was the result?

Haq Yar: About one and a half years ago these contacts were initiated. Various groups from the north contacted us. We discussed the matter with [Taliban leader] Mullah Mohammed Omar Akhund and then, with his consent, I was assigned to negotiate matters with the Northern Alliance.

The first meeting was held in northern Afghanistan, where I represented the Taliban. Many individuals from various groups of the Northern Alliance attended the meeting and they all condemned the foreign presence in the country, but insisted that the Taliban should take the lead, and then they would follow suit. Another meeting was held after that in which various individuals come up with some conditions, and there was no conclusion. There was no collective meeting, but there are contacts.

In yet another instance showing the importance of timeliness in the defeat of the enemy, it appears that there might be a swelling of support for the departure of NATO troops.

ATol: What is the role of the tribal chiefs?

Haq Yar: The tribal chiefs have always been supportive of the Taliban and still are. How could they not be? The US bombed and killed thousand of their people and the puppet [President Hamid] Karzai government is silent. All Afghans are sick and tired of US tyrannies and daily bombardment, whether they are commoners or chiefs, and that is why they are all with the Taliban.

Actually, we have also worked on organizing that support. On the instructions of Mullah Mohammed Omar Akhund, I met with tribal chiefs last year and prepared the grounds for this year’s battle [spring offensive], and all tribal chiefs assured me of their support. And now there is support – it is there for everybody to see.

ATol: It is said that the Taliban are now fueled by drug money. Is this correct, and if not, how do they manage their financial matters?

Haq Yar: It is shameful to say that the Taliban, who eliminated poppies from Afghanistan, are dependent on the drug trade to make money. This is wrong. As far as money is concerned, we do not need much. Whatever is required, we manage it through our own limited resources.

ATol: Are you satisfied with the media’s role?

Haq Yar: Not at all. They do not publish our point of view. They never tried to talk to the genuine Taliban. Rather, they go after not genuine people who are basically plants and rejected by the Taliban leadership.

It would appear that there is much more to come in Afghanistan.  Yet another concern presents itself that we have discussed at the Captain’s Journal, and that has to do with the viability and stability of Musharraf’s regime, and the implications for a nuclear Taliban in the event of the fall of the Pakistan government.  The apparent strength of the Taliban makes this concern more salient than ever.

In my post Musharraf Unhinged, I cited reports that Musharraf is asking for help in Pakistan, and that there is strong political pressure to bring the Taliban into politics as a remedy for the violence that has overtaken the Taliban-controlled areas of Pakistan.  In a statement apparently designed to parrot Musharraf’s position, Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist has encouraged the same:

QALAT, Afghanistan U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Monday that the Afghan guerrilla war can never be won militarily and called for efforts to bring the Taliban and their supporters into the Afghan government.

The Tennessee Republican said he had learned from briefings that Taliban fighters were too numerous and had too much popular support to be defeated by military means.

“You need to bring them into a more transparent type of government,” Frist said during a brief visit to a U.S. and Romanian military base in the southern Taliban stronghold of Qalat. “And if that’s accomplished we’ll be successful.”

Frist said asking the Taliban to join the government was a decision to be made by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Sen. Mel Martinez, a Republican from Florida accompanying Frist, said negotiating with the Taliban was not “out of the question” but that fighters who refused to join the political process would have to be defeated.

“A political solution is how it’s all going to be solved,” he said.

At the Counterterrorism Blog (and also in the Boston Globe), Lorenzo Vidino has the following salient comments concerning democracy in Muslim world:

IN RECENT WEEKS, President Bush has delivered a series of major speeches outlining his strategy against terrorism. We have come a long way from the nebulous rhetoric of the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.

The foe is no longer defined as “terror,” which is simply a tool used by a well-defined adversary. The new “National Strategy for Combating Terrorism” acknowledges that America’s enemy is a “transnational movement of extremist organizations . . . which have in common that they exploit Islam and use terrorism for ideological ends.” The report then outlines measures to confront that challenge. While short-term measures such as denying terrorists sanctuary or tracking their funds seem logical , the administration’s long-term strategy is less straightforward.

The obvious cure to the problem is tackling radical Islam, the ideology that motivates terrorists. But the administration believes firmly — almost blindly — that democracy is the right medicine. According to the report, democracy “diminishes the underlying conditions terrorists seek to exploit.” Promotion of democracy is, therefore, the key element in the administration’s long-term approach.

Yet democracy does not always have these healing powers. The administration contends that individuals who enjoy political participation and can freely express themselves are less likely to embrace fundamentalist messages. The truth is that today democratic societies are spawning terrorists no less than dictatorships are.

Continuing with the recent mantra, Musharraf adds to the political blitz by saying:

“They don’t know the realities on (the) ground. They’re not conscious of the reality I’m seeing – the extreme danger of this becoming a people’s movement.”

Frist was clearly referring to the Taliban (rather than the Pashtun tribes), as he told us this directly.  Mushaffar is implying that the Talibanization of the tribes will occur if the Taliban are not brought directly into the political process.

So the logic is as follows:

1. The enemy attacked the U.S. on 9/11 when they were in complete control and responsible charge of the government of Afghanistan.
2. Being in complete control of the government, there was no possibility that the Taliban were under-represented or disenfranchised, so this could not have been the reason or even a catalyst for their attack on the U.S.
3. We have fought the enemy, and he has been driven out but not defeated.
4. The enemy is too numerous and enjoys some degree of political support, and thus they cannot be defeated.
5. The solution to our failure to defeat the enemy is to give the Taliban some power in the political process so that they won’t be disenfranshised; for if they are disenfranchised, they might continue to attack us.

So there you have it.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf made some stunning remarks recently:

Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said on Saturday that the United States and its allies will fail in the “war on terror” without the support of Pakistan and its intelligence service.

“You will be brought down to your knees if Pakistan doesn’t co-operate with you. That is all that I would like to say. Pakistan is the main ally. If we were not with you, you would not manage anything. Let that be clear,” he said.

“And if the ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) is not with you, you will fail. Let that be very clear also. Remember my words: if the ISI is not with you and Pakistan is not with you will lose in Afghanistan.”

Earlier this week, a leaked document from a Britain’s Defence Ministry think-tank accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI, of indirectly supporting extremism in Afghanistan, Iraq and Britain by backing the MNA coalition of Pakistani religious parties.

Musharraf strongly denied the claims.

“From 1979 to 1989 we fought the Soviet Union for you. We won the Cold War for you,” he said, explaining that the Pakistan army and ISI played a part in training the tens of thousands of mujahideen fighters to resist the Soviets.

But after the Soviet withdrawal, the West left Pakistan “high and dry”, he said, leading to the creation of the radicalised Taliban and Al Qaeda from the remnants of the mujahudeen resistance.

In U.S. Dance with Pakistan and Iran Over Nuclear Programs, I pointed out how it would be impossible for A. Q. Khan to have given Iran nuclear technology and equipment without the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) of Pakistan knowing, and perhaps even assisting, in this proliferation.

It is commonly known now that the Pakistan military tired of battling the tribes and Taliban, leading to the autonomy of Waziristan and potentially other provinces.  This autonomy is allowing the Taliban to recruit and train large numbers of troops, as well as launch special operations-size raids across the border.  Now, we learn from India that the ISI was behind the Mumbai bombings, and apparently, India knows a great deal about the details of their involvement.

Musharraf is in under some political pressure in his own country, and the Waziristan accords enjoy support not only in the effected provinces, but in the media as well.

The stunning nature of Musharraf’s comments have to do not with their timing, nor their recipient.  The comments were intended to be heard by both his own people and the international community.  He wants to convince his own people that he is their savior, and the international community that Musharraf’s involvement is essential.

But recent history is showing that while Pakistan is important to the GWOT, Musharraf is increasingly irrelevant to the it, and thus Musharraf’s need to go on the offensive to show otherwise.  The most troubling aspect of Musharraf’s remarks is that either [a] he believes these things, or [b] he doesn’t.  If he believes these things, then he is delusional and mentally unstable and thus his regime is sure to fail, leaving a rogue nuclear state in the hands of Islamic facists.  If he doesn’t believe these things, then Musharraf proves the opposite of what he wants.  He proves that it is so manifestly obvious to the international community that Pakistan is so powerless against the Taliban and the ISI that a massive and embarrassing public relations campaign is warranted.

Musharraf is trying to save his regime, and thus we should be concerned over its viability.  Musharraf essentially said so to the BBC:

“Now, without understanding, everyone blames us for what is happening in Pakistan. It is something that is happening, understand it and help us.”

In Taliban Preparing for Major Spring Offensive, I cited a report that the Taliban were readying for large scale operations against Kabul:

In a recent telephone interview with a Pakistani reporter, senior Taliban leader Dadullah Akhund said he had told local Taliban members to cease attacks in Pakistan but to continue their fight “abroad” against the U.S. military. He said that he had 500 suicide bombers and 12,000 fighters at his disposal and that by next spring the Taliban would have enough force to launch major attacks on Kabul, the Afghan capital.

This might be bluster, but it also might be a revelation of the long range plan for the Taliban.  Either way, it appears as if the interim period will see smaller, lighter and more dedicated incursions into Afghan territory:

In North Waziristan, a ruggedly mountainous region where foreigners are banned, the Taliban are in control and the mood following the peace deal was buoyantly militant. Residents said there was a general expectation that the peace deal with Pakistan’s ruling army will let the militants step up fighting in Afghanistan.

In one village a few miles from the Afghan border, men said Taliban officials have declared that the jihad now will be more organized and disciplined. Men who volunteer to fight must now cross in smaller groups and stay for longer periods – at least 40 days, according to one source. Fighters will be required to hand their identity documents to the Taliban commander in their village to ensure that they will not be identifiable as Pakistani citizens.

This is the tactic of special operations: small units, silent operation, no identification, with sustenance being derived from the land or the people.  It is certainly not the case that these fighters will be the equivalent of SEALs, Delta Force, or Marine Recon, but the point is that this might signal a temporary change in tactics.

If it is deemed too risky to directly attack Waziristan due to instability in the Musharraf regime and the nuclear weapons in Pakistan, then plans must be made for operations of increased intensity along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The Taliban has taken control over Waziristan and is patiently rebuilding their ranks with plans to lauch major attacks into Kabul in the spring of 2007.  Pakistani editorials urge more involvement in politics, and Musharraf denies that any of this matters by discussing Bin Laden rather than the Taliban. 

Musharraf has denied that the Waziristan accord with the Taliban was really an accord with the Taliban, claiming that it was with the tribal leaders.  If so, then it was with the tribal leaders who were left after the execution of more than 200 tribal leaders.  Musharraf is also denying that Pakistan or the intelligence services are aiding terrorism.

LONDON – An angry Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said he would complain to British Prime Minister Tony Blair Thursday about allegations that Pakistan’s intelligence service backed terrorism.

In media interviews ahead of the London meeting, Musharraf denied the allegations in a British defence ministry policy paper, and also said that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was alive and hiding in Afghanistan.

“Absolutely, 200 percent, I reject it,