The US & others working with Pakistan

[Backwards Observer]

Don't usually read Dawn, but this opinion piece caught my eye:

Breeding Terror

There is a saying, if you look into an abyss, the abyss looks into you. In our case, there is much truth to it. Since the public flogging of journalists and social workers in the time of the all so much talked about General Zia, our nation as a whole, if it is even justifiable to use the term for Pakistanis, has taken a plunge to greater depths, perhaps never thought before possible.

We have since then managed to kill a leader cum politician in 2007; blown to smithereens countless men, women and children of Pakistan; eaten our own offspring – quite literally; and, killed journalists as well as publicly flogged women in the name of honor; brutally murdered our youth only to hang them upside down on a pole; and left to die kids on road bleeding to their last breath.

Breeding Terror - BlogDawn.com - June 28, 2011.

[carl]

Here is a New York Times story saying that American officials have intel tying the ISI directly to Mr. Shahzad's murder.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/05/wo...html?ref=world

It appears we are starting to turn up the heat on the Pak Army/ISI, if only just a little bit. We shall see if we continue.

[davidbfpo]

Carl,

I read another, no doubt similar report. Will the USA use this information and intelligence through the "usual channels" or go public? Alas after the last major international act of publicity, Sec. of State Powell at the UNSC, I fear it will the "usual channels".

The "usual channels" appear to be military to military, as well evidenced by Admiral Mullen's visits and meetings. So a second option would be to avoid the military links and deal with the elected government instead.

[carl]

David:

I wonder if the "usual channels" might not be a little discredited hence the story and direct accusation in the New York Times. Adm. Mullen has drunk an ocean of tea with Kayani Sahib over years and years to no avail. Perhaps at long last we are trying something different.

[davidbfpo]

A twist to the latest round in open diplomacy, according to this opinion:http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...11/07/05/leaks

[carl]

This story was no unauthorized leak. It was quite intentional and approved at what I would bet was the highest level.

[omarali50]

my comments on this at http://www.brownpundits.com/2011/07/...-care2-causes/

[omarali50]

I think this pretty much seals the deal. We are NOT in Kansas any more...

Asked about media reports that the Pakistani government approved the killing of the reporter, Admiral Mike Mullen on Thursday said: "I haven't seen anything that would disabuse that report."
He said he was "concerned" about the incident and suggested other reporters had suffered a similar fate in the past. "His (death) isn't the first. For whatever reason, it has been used as a method historically,"

[carl]

I don't know Omar. ADM Mullen in the same story also said

'Washington was "committed to sustaining that relationship," he continued.

"But we recognize it's under great stress right now and we need to see our way through it."'

On the one hand the esteemed Admiral says "We don't like what you're doing." On the other hand he says "But we really don't care."

I wish it wasn't so but at the end, it sounds like the same old thing to me...so far.

[Bill Moore]

The ADM is on the way out, the former SECDEF is out, and some of our folks in uniform that consistently pleaded with our nation's leadership to have more patience are out. I hope we can start a new relationship based on reality, verus the way we would hope the Pakistanis are. The American people need to start making their voices heard on this issue, and convince our leaders to stop funding one of the major State sponsors of terror. We need to refuse to be held hostage by a few nuclear weapons. Easier said than done, but the money we're pouring into Pakistan now, at least part of it is being used to support terrorists, insurgents and expand their nuclear program.

Why we do find it acceptable that Pakistan supports terrorists and insurgents that are killing our folks? Why do we find it acceptable they murder reporters who expose the truth? Are we so cowardly as a nation just because they have nukes we can't make the hard right decisions?

Pakistan isn't a failed state, it is a terrorist State, and the sooner we start dealing with it as such the sooner (although not soon) we'll set the wheels in motion for this crisis to be solved.

[Dayuhan]

Are we so cowardly as a nation just because they have nukes we can't make the hard right decisions?

Pakistan isn't a failed state, it is a terrorist State, and the sooner we start dealing with it as such the sooner (although not soon) we'll set the wheels in motion for this crisis to be solved.

I'm not sure we can solve Pakistan's crisis.

In any event the constraint on our action is less their nukes than our dependence on their territory to supply our forces in Afghanistan. As long as we maintain forces in Afghanistan of a size that requires sea/land transport, our options with regard to Pakistan are limited.

If we want a free range of action WRT Pakistan, we have to either phase down our presence in Afghanistan to a point allowing support entirely by air (and thus making us entirely dependent on less than reliable staging points to the north) or work out a deal with the Iranians (fat chance). Geography is fairly emphatic on that point.

[carl]

This quote is from the Washington Post story linked after the quote.

Today, almost 40 percent of surface cargo arrives in Afghanistan from the north, along a patchwork of Central Asian rail and road routes that the Pentagon calls the Northern Distribution Network. Military planners said they are pushing to raise the northern network’s share to as much as 75 percent by the end of this year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...H_story_1.html

Things seem to be changing.

(I found this at Pundita's blog.)

[davidbfpo]

There's a long-running thread 'Supply Routes to Afghanistan' on:http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/...ead.php?t=6386

[Dayuhan]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-al-Qaeda.html

US military aid cuts to Pakistan 'will harm efforts to take on al-Qaeda'

The US has halted $800m in assistance in protest at Pakistan's decision to expel military trainers and in frustration at the perceived slow pace of hitting militant hide-outs in North Waziristan.

However, security and diplomatic sources in Pakistan believe the move will prove counter-productive.

Hamid Gul, a former director of the country's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, said withholding aid would simply turn public opinion more "caustic" and delay any large-scale campaign against militants.

"Why should they go into North Waziristan now? They were making commitments to do it, but these threat, master and slave treatment, this arm twisting, will not work," he said.

The Hamid Gul quote is almost amusing in a dark way. "If you don't pay, we won't fight and we'll say nasty things about you. if you pay, we still won't fight, and we'll say slightly less nasty things about you"... or something like that.

[davidbfpo]

A curious mixture of how personalities and national interests interact, which ends with:

These issues of potentially vital cooperation between India and Pakistan would be difficult under any circumstances, but without a reasonably functioning U.S.-Pakistan relationship based on common interests, they may well be unachievable.

It is often said that Pakistan never misses a chance to miss a chance. If it misses this one, the world will pass it by, and its isolation will only deepen. The same may hold true for the United States. Its influence in the Indian Ocean is slipping as China and India flex their growing economic muscle. It will have to make a course correction as it approaches the end of its military enterprise in Afghanistan. Pakistan is as good a place to start as any, and the two generals, Pasha and Petraeus, might be the right players for the first step.

Link:http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...istan?page=0,0

[davidbfpo]

For Britons and Americans watching the hard-fought progress of our Coalition troops in Helmand, the harsh reality is that Nato could do everything right in Afghanistan and still lose the broader regional campaign against terrorism if Pakistan fails to contain its internal militants. This makes the fight in Pakistan, and finding means to help Pakistanis help themselves, the most important battle in the world.

I relocated this article written in July 2009 by David Kilcullen and cite only the last paragraph as it is fitting; so my emphasis and repetition:

..the fight in Pakistan...the most important battle in the world.

Link:http://www.spectator.co.uk/essays/al...urzon-do.thtml

[Dayuhan]

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articl...ass-extremists

Summary:

Policymakers have converged on economic development as a key to ending terrorism, in the belief that poorer people are more susceptible to the appeals of violent groups. In fact, in Pakistan, the poor are less supportive of militant groups than the middle class.

[Bill Moore]

Here's the scary part, or senior leaders embrace this dogma, yet the facts don't support it, so we have a policy of nation building that has resulted in hundreds of our troops being killed and thousands maimed to pursue armed economic development and economic development isn't the underlying issue for terrorism.

Yet there is no evidence that economic development changes attitudes toward violent militant groups, or even that it is the poor whose attitudes are problematic. A number of scholars, including Claude Berrebi, Alberto Abadie, and Alan Kreuger and Jitka Malečková, have found that people who join terrorist groups are predominantly from middle-class or wealthy families. Public opinion scholarship, such as that of Najeeb M. Shafiq and Abdulkader Sinno, and Mark Tessler and Michael Robbins, suggests that differences in income and education do not explain variation in support for suicide bombing and other forms of violence

.

I remain a strong advocate for providing intelligent economic assistance for a number of reasons, not the least which is humanitarian, but let's not pretend that economic development will address the underlying issues of terrorism. Let's be honest about what economic development can and can't do, and separate it from the terrorism issue except in "specific" situations where it may be relevant. Sadly we have wasted billions of development dollars in war fighting efforts that could have been spent more effectively in nations not at war and produced real results, possibly preventing future wars. Instead we largely underfunded our global interests to surge efforts into Iraq and Afghanistan.

[davidbfpo]

Lt. General and former ISI Chief Assad Durrani has supplied to The Atlantic journal a text entitled 'The ISI: AN EXCEPTIONAL SECRET SERVICE'. Link:http://www.theatlantic.com/internati...inside/242471/

The intermediary writes:

Durrani is not a booster for the Taliban; he is a hard core realist -- and his view is that Pakistan's generals prize the Taliban for its ability to give them "strategic depth". Whether you agree or not, his assessments are very much worth reading in full.

There are some moments to pause when reading, especially when you reach the Epilogue, cited in full:

I do not know what all the ISI knew about Bin Laden's whereabouts before he was reportedly killed, or when the Pakistani leadership was informed about the US operation on that fateful night. But the fact that we denied all knowledge or cooperation -- even though the military and the police cordons were in place at the time of the raid, our helicopters were hovering over the area, and the Army Chief was in his command post at midnight -- explains the Country's dilemma.

The Atlantic intermediary ends with:

The most important takeaway from this fascinating snapshot of the ISI, the Taliban, and Pakistan's view of America and its strategic choices is that Pakistan will never be a predictable puppet of US interests.

[omarali50]

The most important takeaway from this article is that the generals are not under adult supervision and there is no sign that they can be brought under adult supervision. The mess will continue....