The US & others working with Pakistan

[davidbfpo]

Mike F,

Many of the issues and the dismay you showed earlier have been seen in previous threads on Pakistan.

I simply don't think her words helped, hence my suggested phrasing. It would be interesting to know how direct, robust other envoys have been in private, Richard Holbrooke and Admiral Mullen to name two.

Funding the Pakistani conventional military has hardly helped Pakistani national security, but then such a concept is not embedded in the civilian part of Pakistan. Others elsewhere, including David Kilcullen have advocated switching funds to the national and provincial police.

Just thought, out of all these US$ how much has ended in the ISI budget? I am sure some of the support has been in cash. That would be weird.

davidbfpo

[tequila]

DAWN is about as pro-Western a publication as one can find in Pakistan, and a leading voice against militancy.

Here is an article about Secretary Clinton's outreach in Pakistan.

During an interview broadcast live in Pakistan with several prominent female TV anchors, before a predominantly female audience of several hundred, one member of the audience said the Predator attacks amount to 'executions without trial' for those killed.

Another asked Clinton how she would define terrorism.

'Is it the killing of people in drone attacks?' she asked. That woman then asked if Clinton considers drone attacks and bombings like the one that killed more than 100 civilians in the city of Peshawar earlier this week to both be acts of terrorism.

'No, I do not,' Clinton replied.

Earlier, in a give-and-take with about a dozen residents of the tribal region, one man alluded obliquely to the drone attacks, saying he had heard that in the United States, aircraft are not allowed to take off after 11 pm, to avoid irritating the population.

'That is the sort of peace we want for our people,' he said through an interpreter.

The same man told Clinton that the Obama administration should rely more on wisdom and less on firepower to achieve its aims in Pakistan.

'Your presence in the region is not good for peace,' he said, referring to the US military, 'because it gives rise to frustration and irritation among the people of this region.'

At another point he told Clinton, 'Please forgive me, but I would like to say we've been fighting your war.'

A similar point was made by Sana Bucha of Geo TV during the live broadcast interview.

'It is not our war,' she told Clinton. 'It is your war.' She drew a burst of applause when she added, 'You had one 9/11. We are having daily 9/11s in Pakistan.'

[davidbfpo]

The NYT has a comment:

It is extremely rare for an official of Mrs. Clinton’s rank to say publicly what American politicians and intelligence officials have said in more guarded ways for years. The remarks upset her hosts, who have seen hundreds of soldiers and civilians killed as Pakistan has taken on a widening campaign against militant groups that have threatened the country from its tribal areas. But her skeptical comments also gave voice to the longtime frustration of American officials with what they see as the Pakistani government’s lack of resolve in rooting out not only Al Qaeda, but also the Taliban leadership based in Quetta, and a host of militant groups that use the border region to stage attacks on American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/wo...html?ref=world

There's also the NYT editorial: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/op...jP2r9LoM3GUMBg

davidbfpo

[Jedburgh]

NBR, 13 Nov 09 Pakistani Partnerships with the United States: An Assessment

This essay assesses the relationships between the U.S. and different elements within Pakistan's political and military leadership in the context of ongoing regional counterterrorism and counterinsurgency efforts....

[davidbfpo]

Jedburgh,

Good catch, with some good points: on making US civil aid more visible; aid to the police (qualified by their corruption); better info ops (pointing at the success of the BBC World Service) and the standard better COIN kit and training for the army.

Nothing exceptional, except the description of Pakistan's political parties and their stance on shared issues - that is excellent.

[davidbfpo]

From a new analysis on Pakistan, from a Reuters summary:

Pakistani society is likely to become more Islamist and increasingly anti-American in the coming years, complicating U.S. efforts to win its support against militant groups, a report released on Tuesday said.

The report, which looks at Pakistan over a one-to-three year time horizon, rules out the possibility of a Taliban takeover or of it becoming the world's first nuclear-armed failed state.

"Rather than an Islamist takeover, you should look at a subtle power shift from a secular pro-Western society to an Islamist anti-American one," said Jonathan Paris, who produced the report for the Legatum Institute, a London-based think tank.

Paris forecasts that Pakistan is most likely to "muddle through," with its army continuing to play a powerful role behind the scenes in setting foreign and security policy.

The actual report summary says:

Pakistan today faces five main challenges:

1. Threat of fragmentation and the loss of state control over various territories that undermine the integrity, sovereignty and solidarity of the country;
2. Security and terrorism throughout the country;
3. Economy;
4. Governance issues including corruption; and
5. Rebuilding the Pakistan Brand.

The Pakistani state has shown itself to be both the source and recipient of instability, but it has also been remarkably resilient. This Report analyses the prospects for Pakistan over a one to three year time horizon. It looks at economic, political, security, and bilateral issues. There are three possible scenarios for Pakistan over this relatively short time horizon; Pakistan probably will avoid becoming a “failed state” and is unlikely to find a “pathway to success” but, as Pakistan confronts a myriad of vexing challenges, the most likely scenario is that it will “muddle through”.

Link to report (as yet un-read):http://www.legatum.com/newsdisplay.aspx?id=2926

[davidbfpo]

In a recent book launch for 'Pakistan; eye of the storm' (3rd edition) in London, Owen Bennett Jones, a former BBC World Service correspondent in Pakistan, commented that - in summary:

The US$20 billion in aid had very little appreciation or understanding amongst Pakistanis. Public opinion which supported the military action in the Swat Valley could just as rapidly rebound and the military simply thought for fifty years the FATA was uncontrollable. Public support for the military campaign would last three to four years. Finally he'd never met a Pakistani Army officer who was not convinced the Afghan Taliban would win.

As regards who is in control of ISI, he replied - in summary:

that it was under military control, citing the reversal inside a day of placing them under Interior Ministry control. Secondly the ISI-administered Kashmir policy of helping nationalist groups attack Indian forces was government policy and clearly had been "turned off & on" when required.

[davidbfpo]

Moderators Note

Clearly this thread is closely related to threads on Afghanistan and the spillover effect. See recent post on one thread:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...t=7128&page=32

[omarali50]

This is a hypothetical question. Purely hypothetical (because I am afraid of what disaster may lie in store for the poor people of the region if this line of thought advances and unexpected reactions and responses run amuck).
I have always wondered what would happen if the US were to turn around, and instead of trying to cajole Pakistan's unhappy army into doing them massive favors, tell them to take care of things as they see fit and wash their hands of the matter? Reserving, of course, the right to bomb or rocket any characters who may be shooting at US troops and taking refuge in Pakistan? how would that unhappy situation differ from the current one?

As an accompaniment to this koan, I will proffer Wittgenstein's quip: Walking through Oxford or something, W asked a colleague why human beings had spend so many thousand years believing the sun went around the earth? his companion said: "because it looks that way". To which W replied "how would it look if the earth went around the sun while spinning on its axis??".
Sometimes it may be useful to rethink our model. In the case of astronomers, what a difference it made in the next few hundred years....

[davidbfpo]

The Indian role in the region and in Afghanistan has appeared before on SWC, with para-military troops being deployed to guard road construction (in 2007): http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=3166 and the feuding IIRC between Indian and Pakistani intelligence agencies.

Clearly Pakistani national strategy is predicated on the No.1 threat being India and another thread looks at the changing US policy towards Pakistan
:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2313

These new items deserve their own thread which I found today, via a Kashmiri website:

a) Britain and US consider asking India to train Afghan National Police, in The Times:

Now, however, India appears to want to play a more active role in Afghanistan largely because it fears that Pakistan will engineer a Taleban takeover when foreign troops leave.

Link:http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6992984.ece

b)India’s Military Intelligence Chief conducts covert visit to Afghanistan

—General Loomba held furtive, yet detailed meetings with Afghan, US and NATO officials
—Delhi plans Afghan military takeover after US/ ISAF pullout
—Indian Military spy master’s stealth Afghan trip conducted ahead of top US defence officials’ India visit
—Holbrook kept Pakistanis busy in futile talks as per Pentagon, Langley plan
—Indian MI boss visited covert Indian troopers’ positions in Afghanistan, met Indian Army instructors of ANA
—Indian government, army resort to cohesive hostile approach towards Pakistan after Loomba’s Afghan trip
—Analysts smell some secret US development in Afghanistan through Indian army

From a Pakistani newspaper :http://dailymailnews.com/0110/18/Fro...FrontPage1.htm

Not sure what is going on here, 'The Great Game' is appropriate. Just before a London conference on Afghanistan too (as per SWJ press review).

Pressure on Pakistan to "stay aboard" the "train"? High risk in my view.

[omarali50]

david,

I am surprised at how you seem to have been taken in by this website. Whatever India and the US are or are not planning, "the daily mail" is the last place you should look for information! All this tells you is what the bright young psyops people in ISI want to say. You can then spend a few hours trying to figure out why some ISI colonel thought this is a good line to take. But relying on this "news item" to figure out what is really happening would be a disastrous error.
Again, I am not saying A is not conspiring with B. How would I know what is goin on. But I can most definitely tell you that this website and the whole stable of "paknationalists", "pakalert", PKKH etc is one big joke. The newspapers turn out to be fictitious. The foreign sounding reporters are non-existent in real life. And the funniest thing is their fondness for giving female names to their "reporters"....you can insert your favorite psychoanalytical bull#### at this point, wondering why the
"paknationalists" are so fond of female pseudonyms...

[davidbfpo]

Omarali,

I am fully aware that ISI has a "hand" in Pakistani new management, but 'The Times of London' too? Unlikely and SWC readers will make their own conclusions aided by both our contributions.

I am aware that India aided the Northern Alliance before 9/11, a relationship that I suspect may linger on. What is interesting is an official Indian role within the ANSF, in this story with ANP training.

As for the 'Christine Palmer' the Pakistani Daily Mail, they did announce this:

The management of The Daily Mail would hereby like to apprise its valued readers that Christina Palmer is a pen name of a very senior Non-Indian journalist. The Daily Mail not like to reveal the real name or actual nationality of Ms. Palmer due to security and immigration threats that she can may face on the hands of Indian Intelligence agencies and other official organizations.

A quick search found some of 'her' reports are strange, so the cautionary note is correct.

[davidbfpo]

Kings College ICSR has an intriguing comment by Stephen Tankel on:http://icsr.info/blog/Lets-Make-a-Deal#comments

Pakistan offered to mediate with Taliban factions who use its territory and have long served as its allies..(later in the article)...if the U.S. does pull back from an Afghanistan where Pakistan has greater influence without rolling up al-Qaeda elements in the tribal areas then it is going to be much more difficult to keep the pressure on..

He comments on a NYT piece I'd missed:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

[omarali50]

Something is going on and obviously we (the general public) have not been told exactly what is going on, so everyone is speculating. My own thoughts are:
1. The US wants to get out of Afghanistan reasonably quicky, but not without establishing a government that can hold the country, that is not dominated by any one regional power, and that will not openly host terrorists in its midst. Pakistan is offering to help arrange an honorable exit and (at least some people in) the US is/are interested.
2. This has set off a definite frenzy of self-congratulatory back slapping amongst the "paknationalist" crowd about how the ISI was right all along, the Americans are going to leave and we hold the cards, aka Taliban and Haqqani sahib and whatnot.
3. The Pakistani army is prone to delusions (maybe all armies are, but in many states their brilliance is restrained by civilians with other priorities) and it will be no surprise if many of them put out propaganda in the morning and then rejoice in the evening when they see the "good news" on their TV sets.
4. But the hard reality is that there is no going back to the good old days of "strategic depth" in Afghanistan. No way, no how. It doesnt matter if some distant American can even be tricked into giving the whole jihadi apparatus back to the ISI to play with....it STILL wont work.
I suspect that the people at the top know this, but everyone else (the officers you are meeting who are one hundred percent sure the taliban will win) has no idea what a contradictory set of positions they are trying to reconcile. On the one hand, the army (and the civilian political establishment) are in no position to become jihadi outcasts from what Chomsky calls "Int com" (the "international community"). In their more deluded moments (very common after 8 pm in any army mess in Pakistan) I have had officers tell me that China and Saudi Arabia will pay our way no matter what because we will keep India in check (China pays for that) and Saudi Arabia pays for needling Iran and sharing the bomb.
Thats total dangerous delusion. First of all, even China (where some PLA types, "strategic thinkers" no doubt, may have such illusions) is not in a position to bankroll Pakistan (and doesnt necessarily want to use them as their pet attack dog against India) and neither is Saudi Arabia. Secondly, the country is on the verge of social and economic chaos as it is, no amount of Chinese or Saudi help will put humpty together again if Uncle Sam is not in a good mood. So, the good old days of arming and training a jihadi army (and then losing track of who you trained) are not coming back and the state has to find a way to coexist more normally with everyone around them. And that means no more hardcore taliban or jihadis. But if they cannot bring back the hardcore jihadis and taliban, then what can they offer? "reconcilable taliban" have less loyalty to Pakistan than Karzai does. Its all an illusion. I dont see them getting anything beyond what was always on offer, a chance to work WITH intcom on THEIR side and against the jihadis. I think the high command knows this by now and that is exactly what they will end up doing. In the end, they will be fighting their dearest Mullah Nazir and Haqqani and Gul Bahadur as well as the current "bad taliban". The army may wish to play both sides, but the jihadis will not oblige.
The problem is that a lot of them (Pakistani army officers) have no "vocabulary" for such an existence (as an anti-jihadi army). The ideological background is all jihadi all the time. Monumental feats of hypocrisy and "compartmentalization" are needed to prevent A from mixing with B and blowing up. THAT is going to to be their problem for the foreseeable future, not how to manipulate a "friendly" regime in Kabul.
5. No one is getting out anytime soon. Underneath all the calculations and manouvering, there is a real clash. Between the irreconcilable jihadis and an international community which cannot afford to live with them running countries, and certainly not with them running nuclear armed countries. It doesnt even matter if the US leaves Afghanistan before the war is settled. There will still be a war. The diference is in how it ends...with existing countries or new arrangements? The first is much much more likely, the second is the worst case scenario and involves very vicious fighting for a long time. Either way, no one is going back to the late nineties. One way or the other (one way being less painful than the other), Pakistan is going to be allied with the US, fighting against irreconcilable jihadis and benefiting from "normal" relations with Afghanistan IF Pakistan can keep the peace on OUR side of the border. Neither India, nor Pakistan will own Afghanistan, and either would be foolish to try.
Who knows, maybe this "competition" is another way the evil imperialists make fools of both countries and get them to buy more weapons and "do more" to help out the elders of Zion? Just kidding. Just kidding.
or at least, that's what it seems to my amateur view....

[davidbfpo]

An unusual headline until one reads on and recalls history. Hat tip to Watandost for highlighting this Charlie Rose interview in a Pakistani newspaper:http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=27658

I wouldn’t allow you to put words in my mouth,” General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command told Charlie Rose of the PBS in an interview when he asked: “So the bottom line is you are satisfied with the Pakistani effort and the Pakistani cooperation and the Pakistani effort to wipe out the Taliban in Pakistan?

[Jedburgh]

RAND, 13 May 10: Pakistan: Can the United States Secure an Insecure State?

....The broad expanse of U.S.-Pakistan engagement shows that both countries hold a fundamentally different hierarchy of goals that each seeks to secure through engagement. Until very recently, Washington has not tried to persuade Islamabad to reorder its goals or at least to be more engaged in helping Washington achieve its goals in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the wider region in exchange for U.S. financial assistance. Yet, until U.S. and Pakistani goals are brought into greater alignment and unless meaningful progress is made in securing critical U.S. interests, Washington may grow increasingly disinclined to lavish Islamabad with financial inducements and may even conclude that Pakistan is an unsuitable partner for some or all forms of U.S. allurements.....

[davidbfpo]

A thoughtful opinion article by Professor Paul Rogers, who IMHO has an ability to look at the difficult issues and succinctly write.

Opening paragraph:

The new pattern of United States military attacks in the AfPak borderlands is fuelling ever-greater hostility on the ground. The arrest of a presumed Taliban militant in New York is one of its symptoms. The long war is recharging itself.

Ends with:

The consequence may not always be incidents such as the Times Square bomb. But the conditions that sparked this attack will have a steadily accumulating effect. This will confirm the unwinnable nature of the war, but also do something deeper: reinforce even further the fundamental difference in outlook and understanding between Washington and Waziristan.

Link:http://www.opendemocracy.net/paul-ro...an-far-enemy-0

Not an easy ending.

[SWJ Blog]

ISI "Directly" Funding Taliban?

Entry Excerpt:

Pakistan’s ISI Military Intelligence Accused of Directly Funding Taleban - Jeremy Page, The Times.

Pakistan’s military intelligence agency directly funds and trains the Afghan Taleban and is officially represented on its leadership council, according to a report by a British academic. The study, published by the London School of Economics, also alleges that Asif Ali Zardari, the Pakistani President, met Taleban leaders imprisoned in Pakistan and promised them early release and future support.

Pakistan dismissed the report by Matt Waldman, a Harvard fellow who interviewed current and former members of the Taleban, as “baseless” and “naive”. A spokesman for the Pakistani Army said that the state’s commitment to opposing the Taleban was demonstrated by the number of soldiers killed fighting on the Afghan border. Western officials and analysts have often accused elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency of supporting the Afghan Taleban, even as its army combats the Pakistani Taleban on the northwestern frontier.

However, Mr Waldman’s report goes further, arguing that support for the Afghan Taleban is “official ISI policy” and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. “Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude,” the report says. “There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign,” it said. “Without a change in Pakistani behaviour it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan Government to make progress against the insurgency.” ...

More at The Times.

Link to report: http://www.crisisstates.com/download/dp/DP%2018.pdf

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[Jedburgh]

ISI "Directly" Funding Taliban?

CSRC, 11 June 2010: The Sun in the Sky: The Relationship Between Pakistan’s ISI and Afghan Insurgents

Many accounts of the Afghan conflict misapprehend the nature of the relationship between Pakistan’s security services and the insurgency. The relationship, in fact, goes far beyond contact and coexistence, with some assistance provided by elements within, or linked to, Pakistan’s intelligence service (ISI) or military.

Although the Taliban has a strong endogenous impetus, according to Taliban commanders the ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the movement. They say it gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies. In their words, this is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky’.

Directly or indirectly the ISI appears to exert significant influence on the strategic decisionmaking and field operations of the Taliban; and has even greater sway over Haqqani insurgents. According to both Taliban and Haqqani commanders, it controls the most violent insurgent units, some of which appear to be based in Pakistan.

Insurgent commanders confirmed that the ISI are even represented, as participants or observers, on the Taliban supreme leadership council, known as the Quetta Shura, and the Haqqani command council. Indeed, the agency appears to have circumscribed the Taliban’s strategic autonomy, precluding steps towards talks with the Afghan government through recent arrests.....

[omarali50]

What I find unbelievable is the notion that this could all happen without the US knowing about it. Obviously the US and its allies know how much contact ISI does or does not have with the taliban. IF this report is true and yet the US and allies are paying Pakistan regularly then they must have some other plan in mind. I mean they cannot just be fooled....