Washington's New Idea: Get the Tribals Riled Up
For a roadmap of what not to do in Pakistan, read today's Pakistan piece by Steven Meyers, Eric Schmitt and David Sanger in The New York Times. Dick Cheney and Condi Rice are justifiably worried about Pervez Musharraf's grip on Pakistan stability given the rise of militant Islamic groups in the country's northwest, and the growing foothold by Taliban forces and pro-Taliban civilians. What they are considering: beefing up covert U.S. activity in the region, including the tribal border areas.
I know these areas fairly well from my own travels there over the last couple of decades, and I hope that someone is informing the administration of its folly. Very little in the tribal areas is "covert." The tribal chiefs, plus every family in their villages, are likely to know of the presence of increased U.S. forces even before their boots hit the ground. That's the kind of place this strip of land is. The tribal areas are also among the best-armed places in the world, and the people there don't like uninvited outsiders all that much, which is one reason why the Pakistani Army has fared so poorly there. So an uprising could very well follow.
Advice: If you know where Osama Bin Ladin is, just tell the Pakistanis. That's how Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Ramzi bin al-Shibh were captured after all.
Labels: cheney, musharraf, nwfp, osama bin ladin, pakistan, u.s. forces
7 Comments:
Not to mention this is an attempt to deliberately "export Anbar" to Pakistan, as if the two areas are analogous enough to confer some sort of definitive action. I don't understand it, though—as you note, the areas are seriously closed off to outsiders, tend to be xenophobic, and from an outsider's perspective it's damned hard to tell the difference between myth and reality because all too often the two are intermingled.
The main problem, however, is twofold: the Anbar arising was spontaneous and internal (we didn't intervene until much of the "cleansing" of Al-Qaeda cells had already taken place), and there are far deeper reasons for the Pashtunistan unrest than a lack of American security guarantees or economic aid.
I explored a couple of these issues here.
Josh, thanks for that link.
The suggestion of American intervention in the tribal zones reflects, as you say, a mind-boggling misunderstanding of the region. If it were that easy, the Pakistanis themselves would have succeeded there long ago (and the British before them).
Simply put, the tribals have to see it in their (voluntarily reached) benefit to see the foreign interlopers on their way, and to moderate the home-grown Talibanization.
In that sense, it is Anbar, which couldn't have happened any other way than the locals deciding on their own, without U.S. prodding.
Thanks Josh and best, Steve
"In that sense, it is Anbar, which couldn't have happened any other way than the locals deciding on their own, without U.S. prodding."
Unfortunately, as the USG sees it, Anbar was a result of the beating the Sunnis there were taking at the hands of both the US Marines and AQI. So with the USG self-deluded about the cause of peace in Anbar, you can expect them to try to export the delusion to the Utterly Unadministered Tribal Areas.
So much anymosity in this thread aimed at our success in Anbar. It's kinda telling, that many of the contributors to the conversation here are projecting their hopes for an Anbar failure onto an non-existent plan for occupation of tribal Pakistan. Such is the derangement here, that some would go so far as to argue that Anbar was well on it's way to healing itself without the "surge". I find that hard to imagine since just 3 months ago the media meta-narrative was that Anbar would be ground zero for a protracted Iraqi civil war.
So the question remains: What has changed within the last three months?
I think it might be worth pointing out that complaining of anonymity from an pseudonym is kind of silly.
That being said: who said anything about hoping for an Anbar failure? On my blogs I've been blunt that the success we've seen so far has been wonderful, though it needs to be tempered with the very real fact that it is fragile, and the surge did not achieve its objective (which was to create space for the political process in Baghdad to move forward). I'm not pulling any of this—the caution of the disappointment over the lack of progress in Baghdad—out of my ass, I'm pulling it from General Petraeus, who has remained sober and even-keeled throughout.
Anbar WAS on its way to healing before the surge. It is well documented the uprising against AQI began in 12/06 as a backlash against the brutal methods of AQI... if not by those damned liberals in the media then also by groups like Strategy Page and STRATFOR. We stepped in at a critical moment and supported and encouraged a ground-level movement to reject extremism, at least its most toxic form. That's a wonderful thing.
My argument is not that Anbar is failing (it isn't, and I wouldn't be happy if it did), but that it is not analogous to Pakistan. Yet Anbar is what CENTCOM is explicitly alluding to whenever it discusses the idea behind arming the tribes of NWFP.
I guess I should ask a counterfactual: why focus on the politics of Anbar, which are outside this discussion, instead of the many ways in which an American military presence in Waziristan is a bad idea, and evidence of continued (I would argue willful, though that is its own discussion) strategic ignorance at the top?
A dumb question: is anyone really talking about a stepped-up permanent ground presence of US forces in FATA? That strikes me as insane. However, an increase in HUMINT (read: spreading more money around FATA) and Hellfire strikes off of Predators strikes me as the most logical way to "increase US covert activity" in the tribal areas. Otherwise, I cannot even begin to fathom the basic logistical and operational complications such a move would imply: where would US ground forces (in numbers above squad level) in Pakistan get resupplied from? Where would they get fuel from? Just look at the logistical tail that's required even to support the relatively small SAF fire bases on the Afghan side of the border, and it makes me wonder whether anything other than either incursions or squad-sized air insertion missions is feasible.
-david
Thanks for the response Josh..
I actually wasn't complaining about "anonymous" postings. Check my lead sentence, I think i used the word "anymosity" it's prolly mispelled so I get what i deserve.
As for the rest of your argument, I have to conceed. I think you're right.
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