A suggestion for changing the course of the conflict on the Afghan/Pakistani frontier

[Rank amateur]

To answer Ken's question, the president has a number of carrots and sticks. I believe, "if you don't cooperate we'll bomb you into the stone age," did the trick after 9/11. "If you launch a true counterinsurgency campaign we will give you these things:... If you don't, we will bomb the hell out of your tribal regions" should do the trick. And my point is that if it isn't done things will get worse. Just like they continued to get worse in Iraq until we established population control.

Hi RA,
In a SWJ blog last December titled "Can the Anbar Strategy Work in Pakistan?", Clint Watts illuminated three impediments to separating foreign Jihadis from the tribes:

- "al-Qa’ida has operated in the tribal regions of Pakistan for more than two decades and today it is part of the region’s fabric, not an outsider"

- Ideological fissures are small because "today there is a greater overlap between the Deobandi strain of Islam that the Taliban follows and the Salafism of al-Qa’ida"

- Financial inducements are unlikely to work because the "tribes in Waziristan have already withstood six years of pressure from Musharraf and al-Qa’ida has more than twenty years worth of supply networks in the region"

That's why you need to go into the village en masse, arrest all the foreigners and stay in the village for 15 years: clear and hold.

Open source information indicates that the local Pashtuns in the FATA have reacted badly to the recent US ground and air incursions.

Of course they are. That's COIN 101. If we kill the bad guy, his wife and the rest of the tribe is going to get angry and seek revenge. The only solution is to put so many troops in the village that there is nothing the population can do to get revenge when you kill the bad guy. Then you spend 10 or 15 years trying to win hearts and minds.

That's why the argument we can't afford to do it right so let's do it half assed doesn't make any sense. There is no half assed counterinsurgency. You either establish population control or make things worse by angering the population and increasing the insurgent recruitment rate.