Winning the War in Afghanistan

[davidbfpo]

Wilf,

The BBC story has a couple of telling phrases:

Pakistan's army has said it will launch no new offensives on militants in 2010, as the US defence secretary arrived for talks on combating Taliban fighters.

Army spokesman Athar Abbas told the BBC the "overstretched" military had no plans for any fresh anti-militant operations over the next 12 months.

The Pakistan army is overstretched and it is not in a position to open any new fronts. Obviously, we will continue our present operations in Waziristan and Swat.

This is IMHO reflects a Pakistani appreciation on the ground, which appears to have been hinted at recently - taken from another thread on Waziristan:

I was bemused to learn from a Pakistani military contact, who has visited the FATA recently, that he was reading 'The Frontier Scouts' by Charles Chevenix-Trench and learning that the old methods did indeed offer an answer to today's problems.

Or it is a return to the previous policy in the Musharraf era of 'stop, start'. Not sure about that, but as a BBC reporter commented - taken from US policy & Pakistan thread:

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.

I have not noted any recent reporting on the public mood, although as the attacks are increasingly in the cities, not the FATA, one would expect public opinion to meander.