Pakistani Army commentary

[Jedburgh]

On this subject, I also recommend Haider Mullick's Pakistan's Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies, published by the Joint Special Operations University in 2009.

[omarali50]

Is there any book that deals with the American end of this disaster? What is the dominant theory? Were all the American policy makers just foolish? or did they have nefarious motives of their own?

[carl]

Omar:

There is no book like that that I'm aware of. There probably won't be for years. To write one people in power right now would have to talk truthfully about their flaws or allow access to source material that demonstrated their flaws. That isn't going to happen easy.

Until then guesses are all we may have. And your guess about the 'romance of the raj' being used as the fulcrum of a grift is one of the best.

[davidbfpo]

Is there any book that deals with the American end of this disaster? What is the dominant theory? Were all the American policy makers just foolish? or did they have nefarious motives of their own?

No, not to my knowledge. Hopefully the long running thread 'The US & others working with Pakistan' may have an answer; it does have 685 posts so may take a while for you to check:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=2313

Have a look elsewhere for Myra MacDonald's writing.

She has just reviewed in RUSI Journal a book by a former Pakistani Ambassador to Washington DC 'Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States and an Epic History of Misunderstanding' by Husain Haqqani.

[omarali50]

Hamid Karzai: Last will and testament...well, not exactly. But an important interview as he is on the way out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We-5RdJxgf0

[MoorthyM]

Is there any book that deals with the American end of this disaster? What is the dominant theory? Were all the American policy makers just foolish? or did they have nefarious motives of their own?

Omar, without first understanding why Pakistan behaves the way it does, your question may not be answered.

The policy-makers have to rely on political scientists such as the likes of Christine Fair. Not to be so hard on Fair, quite frankly, no one has yet to figure out the conundrum called Pakistan. Hence, circumstances and our belief that our Pakistani specialists are credible forced us into foolish policies initially.

Now, at least the policy-makers know that they can't trust our Pakistan experts, as a result the U.S. has no Pakistan policy

[Tukhachevskii]

Pakistan is not a state with an army but an army with a state. Any analysis of Pakistan should begin there IMO. Pakistan ends wherever the army's ability to exert influence ends regardless of the internationally recognised border. Add to that the parralel state of the ISI and its own overlapping, competing and in some cases greater/longer reach and the, if that weren't complicated enough, civilian state apparatus which compete for authoity with the others then you have what can only charitably described as a headache (SNAFU to the locals). Ontop of that thes ovelpping netoks of power intersect at key points. Anyone who thinks "normal" diplomatic relations is possible with that setup is welcome to try. Even figuring out what "Pakistani" national interest depends upon figuring out which "power ministry" (to borrow a phrase from post-soviet analysts) is exerting internal and external pressure. Figuring out the correlation of frorces at any given time may actually be the easy part (), the next step requires a degree of patience and mirror imaged machiavellianism that would confound the most seasoned wheeler-dealer.hardly something western european or even the US democracies with their short attention spans and black and white public diplomacy narrative (good guys/bad guys) can handle. Good luck to anyone who tries.

[omarali50]

I have my first thoughts about both the Fair book and the Carlotta Gall book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...om_search=true

An excellent quick summary of the Afghan war and where and how America went wrong. She presents a very strong case against Pakistan (from the American and Afghan perspective). She does mention some of America's own cruelties and absurdities and does not fail to mention the terrible and tragic "shoot first and ask questions later" aspect of actual military operations (the scene where a translator witnesses his troops pointlessly shoot innocent Afghan civilians is devastating), but she does not provide any insight into WHY the top US decision-makers were so thoroughly fooled. Still, thanks to her book, this question must now be front and center; that the US was taken for a ride is documented in devastating detail.. WHY they allowed themselves to be taken for a ride (or did they really WANT to be taken for a ride because their aims were never the stabilization of Afghanistan?) is left unclear.
I dont know enough about particular Afghan personages to know if her somewhat uncritically positive views of various police chiefs are really accurate, but even if some details are wrong, this is a must read book. And it is hard to see how this will fail to influence future American attitudes to Pakistan...

About Christine Fair's book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/...om_search=true

A thorough and very well documented exposition of the Pakistan army's dominant strategic culture. I think she may slightly exaggerate the unanimity of this consensus. In actual fact the majority of officers are probably thinking far more about their plots and post-army jobs than about the strategic needs of Pakistan, but those who think they are thinking are indeed thinking exactly this.
Her conclusions seem unimpeachable: the army will not reform in return for X or Y amount of money or even minor territorial concessions. Nothing less than the fall of India will be enough. Since that seems less likely than GHQ believes, it is therefore going to be Pakistan that will fight to the end....sad, but most likely true

[carl]

Omar is right. Ms. Gall's is a must read book.

Some of her viewpoints dovetail into things I've read in other books. Her point about the displacement of local strong men leaving a vacuum to be filled by Taliban & Co. matches things I've read in War Comes to Garmser and Little America. She is very emphatic about how badly the errant air strikes and shootings have hurt the fight and hurt Afghans. (The account of the translator Omar mentions is an account of straight up premeditated mass murder in my view. But they were spec ops so it's ok. That's my sarcasm not Ms. Gall's.)

One of the things that she writes I hadn't read before. I had always read that Mullah Omar was a self made man. He saw lawlessness and started the fight against it on his own and things went from there. Ms. Gall writes that what actually happened is that a group of former mujahideen commanders, local strong men, got tired of the chaos down around Kandahar and created an organization to fight it. MO was the equivalent of a squad leader in the employ of one of those strong men, a good reliable fighter and a good man but not too bright . Within a very few months what the commanders created had turned into the Taliban with MO at its head eclipsing everybody else. Ms. Gall didn't actually say it but I think she very strongly suggested MO's rise was the result of ISI machination and he is their creature completely.

The other thing that surprised me is she ends the book on an optimistic note. She seems to say that Afghans dislike Taliban & Co intensely and if given support they will reject them, as in kill them reject them. But they need support to counter the support Taliban & Co receive from Pakistan.

So it is a great book. But like Omar says, even Ms. Gall doesn't have an idea about how we got so thoroughly fooled by the Pak Army/ISI.

[davidbfpo]

Citing Carl in part:

...how we got so thoroughly fooled by the Pak Army/ISI.

Prompted me to recall an exchange with a retired USG decision-maker, who was closely involved in monitoring Pakistan's nuclear developments and in particular the leading scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, known as the ' the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme'. See:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul_Qadeer_Khan

Several times Dr. Khan was outside Pakistan on his missions, with "hands on" access to incriminating evidence and each time those further up the command chain declined to authorise action.

The USG decision-maker IIRC referred to an overwhelming US national interest in the maintenance of at least a friendly Pakistani state, that was not totally opposed to the interests of the USA and allies.

This seems a rather high price to pay given what happened over the conflict in Afghanistan, but as I have posted before Pakistan is far more important than Afghanistan.

Yes an element of being 'fooled' existed, I suspect more of the explanation and blame rests closer to home than the murky corridors of the Pakistani Army/ISI.