During his campaign for the presidency, Barack Obama pledged to deploy more troops to Afghanistan and to take the fight into Pakistan. During the second presidential debate, he said, "if we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out. We will kill bin Laden; we will crush al Qaeda. That has to be our biggest national security priority."
No one should be surprised that missile strikes have been launched under the new president's watch. President Obama was unequivocal in his commitment to go after al Qaeda hiding in the hills between Afghanistan and Pakistan. But is there a better approach?
Over the past several months, U.S. forces in Afghanistan have stepped up attacks against militant sanctuaries in the vast unpoliced region of western Pakistan known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Militants use FATA to slip in and out of Afghanistan and attack U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops. Because Pakistan's Army has proven unable -- and at times unwilling -- to uproot FATA's militant safe havens, U.S. policymakers have grown increasingly vocal about the need to exercise greater latitude and eliminate the havens themselves.
Many of the U.S.-led attacks have been conducted with missiles fired from unmanned aerial drones. But after speaking with tribesmen in Peshawar, FATA's administrative center and the capital of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, one quickly grasps how the collateral damage unleashed by such heavy-handed measures may be adding more fuel to violent religious extremism in this nuclear-armed Muslim-majority country.
During a recent visit to the frontier region, I spoke with several tribesmen from FATA's South Waziristan Agency. They recounted how U.S. missile strikes allow the local Taliban to appear to be a force against injustice and exploit popular resentment. While I was in country, the Pakistan Army was launching a string of military operations in FATA's Bajaur Agency.
In many areas of FATA, relentless Taliban incursions have already led to the complete collapse of civilian and tribal administration. Military strikes appear to be the only viable recourse against the region's shadowy insurgents. U.S. officials point to the successful killing of top al Qaeda militants such as Abu Laith al-Libi last January and chemical weapons expert Abu Khabab al-Masri in July.
While U.S. and NATO forces have the right to respond to threats on its combat forces based in Afghanistan, policymakers must recognize that the fallout from U.S. missile strikes prove tactically problematic for three reasons. First, missile strikes undermine the authority of sitting Pakistani leaders. The August 19th resignation of former army general Pervez Musharraf demonstrated how the burden of assuming a pro-American stance can prove a political liability for "war on terror" allies. Aligning with pro-U.S. policies is one reason why Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's new president, is reviled by many of his countrymen, while opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, who has been openly critical of U.S. actions across the border in Afghanistan, has seen his popularity soar.
A second reason to be skeptical of relying almost exclusively on missile strikes is that they encourage FATA's militants to lash out against their closer enemy, Pakistan, causing disastrous ripple effects that further damage the already weakened country. Suicide bombers are striking Pakistan's large urban centers with increasing frequency and are signals of the spreading insurgency engulfing the Islamic Republic.
The final, and most important, reason to be circumspect about escalating military force in the tribal areas is that it will almost certainly fail. The clans, subclans, and extended families that weave the complex fabric of Pashtun tribal society have endured hundreds of years of foreign invasions. Time and again, Persian, Greek, Turk, Mughal, British and Soviet invaders have discovered these peoples to be virtually unconquerable. Pashtun social values include loyalty (wafa), honor (nang), and badal, the Pashto word for taking revenge. Vendettas, personal and collective, have been known to last for generations. While U.S. missile strikes can certainly extinguish high-value targets, they also trigger collective armed action throughout the tribal agencies.
The dilemma for President Obama is that as long as militants continue to infiltrate the hundreds of unguarded checkpoints along the Afghan-Pakistan border, the security environment in Afghanistan will continue to decline. While Obama is correct to argue that we have no choice but to attack militants inside FATA as long as we remain in Afghanistan, a more judicious approach would be to employ low-level "clear and hold" operations along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier in order to limit cross-border movement and respond aggressively to attacks against troops and civilians. Prying Pashtun tribal support away from extremists will require a concerted military and political campaign that looks more like the strategy the U.S. military belatedly used in Iraq's al Anbar province in late summer 2007. To split Iraqi Sunnis from al Qaeda, U.S. forces employed proven counterinsurgency techniques, such as recruiting indigenous allies, cultivating legitimacy from the local population, and employing minimal use of force. U.S. forces in Afghanistan, working in coordination with Pakistani security forces more familiar with the region's inhospitable terrain and the cultural and linguistic aspects of tribal society, can offer the U.S.-NATO mission a higher likelihood of succeeding.
Obama's national security team must understand that the struggle for FATA would best be waged by bolstering Islamabad's ability to compete with militants for political authority in FATA. If his administration simply increases attacks from pilotless drones, it will only push more wavering tribes further into the Taliban camp.
Malou Innocent is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. She writes on U.S. foreign policy toward Pakistan, China, and the Middle East, and recently came back from a fact-finding trip in Pakistan.
Let the people of POK Kashmir join their brothers in India.
And until that is done...the Pakistan ISI will not stop their AQ support in POK areas.
They are a very well intrenched cultural/society/religious cancer. It's going to take a cocktail of approaches to get this to go into remission.
One thing however is for sure; ignoring the problem (the Clinton Administration tactic) doesn't make it disappear. It only emboldens it to spread it's disease (9/11/01.)
America seeks to involve and commit India to be the regional police force. America wants India to commit troops and resources to Afghanistan and to deal with Pakistan. This is in part because America is developing a corridor from the Caspian sea basin through Afghanist and western Pakistan to the Arabian Sea in order provide oil and gas for India.
So because America has diverging motivations, including committing India permanently as the regional power, America's actions and reactions are suspect. It is suspected in India that the Mumbai attacks were undertaken by a group which was serving America's agenda for India, perhaps through a ISI asset serving American interests.
Whatever the case, Zardari is weak and increasingly dependent upon America. If Zardari appears too weak, he can be unseated by a far more rightwing, if not extreme faction.
that has already been tried as the first alternative. It did not work, remember where the millions of dollars in US aids to 'bolstering Islamabad's ability' went to? (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7158815.stm)
The only reason there are missile attacks inside Pakistan is because US has realized that Pakistani military and government are either unwilling or unable to fight terrorism inside Pakistan. The reason why Musharraf lost his presidency is because he was neither sincere in fighting terrorism nor he was clearly an Islamist.
Where I agree that missile strikes inside Pakistan would not solver the issue, I think pinning the hopes on Islamabad will be even more pointless.
Peace is all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMf9oBpvI0o
"Obama's national security team must understand that the struggle for FATA would best be waged by bolstering Islamabad's ability to compete with militants for political authority in FATA. If his administration simply increases attacks from pilotless drones, it will only push more wavering tribes further into the Taliban camp."
Furthermore, Pakistan's President and the Prime Minister have appealed to the US Government today to stop the drone attacks. USA should strengthen the democratically elected Government of Pakistan. In the comity of nations, thing should work out by employing better non-war strategies.
The fact that he received 10% kickbacks (at least) during his wife's administration may have a little to do with the feelings of his fellow countrymen, don't you think?
"Suicide bombers are striking Pakistan's large urban centers with increasing frequency..."
As I recall, they were doing that well before we fired missiles from unmanned drones into Pakistan. Also from memory, the Pashtun do not accept any authority to have legitimate control over their territories.
"...a more judicious approach would be to employ low-level "clear and hold" operations along the Afghan-Pakistan frontier..."
When did we sign this treaty allowing us to "clear and hold" land in Pakistan with the new Pakistani government? The Pakistan "frontier" can only mean land inside Pakistan itself. This, I am sure, would make the Pakistani civilian population's heads explode. We are already trying to "hold" Afghani frontier lands but that is not where the Al Quaeda types are running to for protection. It is INSIDE Pakistan.
I think I should work for the Cato Institute.
I have read that workers receive around $3 a month for work. Why not hire people at $3 a week or $3 a day? We could organize railroads projects, road and highway building, or maybe even work on that Natural Gas Pipeline they have been talking for years about.
Building their economy and infrastructure would help to take away from the Taliban's stranglehold on the country and the production and sale of Heroin around the world.
Use our soldiers to protect the projects, and make sure the Afghanistan government is the group describing the projects and how they will help the country.
Now, I know this would have been easier several years ago when we had money to blow, like on a war in Iraq, but it is still possible.
Just like in the Video Game! The only solution is to pack-it-up and leave. Let's spend the money creating jobs at home, instead of bombing brides and grooms, and creating terrorists overseas.
Absent that, attacks into the tribal areas only aid our adversary, and may ultimately destabilize Pakistan.
We need to bear in mind that a radical takeover of Pakistan will substantially increase the likelihood of war between the two nations over Kashmir, and a nuclear exchange. That would be a catastrophe on an almost unimaginable scale.
In the end, the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan would be a bitter pill but far less destructive. We and the other western nations seem to have learned how to thwart terror attacks from the sources, so I doubt we'd need to face another 9/11.
Thwart terror attacks from the sources? Honestly, sir, from where did you draw that conclusion? Most the Islamic terrorists have attended some sort of "Terrorist 101" in Pakistan with the full blessing of ISI. If Pakistan/Afghanistan terror cells have to be sanitized, then you need the full cooperation of ISI, which are the true leaders of Pakistan.
Also bear in mind, all the previous US administrations have looked at supporting one group over another based on American interests. It is high time that the US Gov took cognizance of the ground realities and engaged in the region based on socio-economic-geo-politics of the region.
Yours is a typical anti-Pakistani Indian Government and Indian media line and is totally non-problem solving.
By the same token, all of you should be posting anti-CIA messages on all the boards all the time for its role regarding the WMDs in Iraq, thereby diverting the resources to Iraq instead of Afghanistan..
In order to make world peaceful and friendly, we should give suggestions that are rational and implementable.
Yes, I have some idea what the Taliban will do if they re-take Afghanistan, but I'm uncertain we can prevent that, short of the measures I've described. And I repeat, the west has apparently learned how to thwart attacks of the 9/11 sort.
Obviously, the Indian security services need to attain similar results, their performance in Mumbai is acknowledged by the Indian government as incompetent. And India and Pakistan will need to solve the Kashmir problem: their restraint so far has been admirable, and I'm sure even the ISI realizes the consequences of another war. . .
I agree that my government under the idiot Bush has made almost every situation worse, and thoroughly bungled its Afghan response. Now Pakistan faces a large swath of tis territory occupied by the Taliban. The Pakistani army is engaged in a costly and bloody struggle with them -- and few Americans know about this, or appreciate that this is basically our government's fault.
New U.S. bases (even NATO) in central Asia to check the Russians to the north.
A brand new $7.5 billion TAPI oil pipeline is under construction in Afghanistan as we speak to again by-pass Russian influence heading west under current systems.
This is justified considering the fact that the U.S. never was really interseted in going after osama nor defeating their former friends the Taliban with the lack of proper forces in the first place and then shifting to grab oil in Iraq later.
Let's not forget the U.S. gave the Taliban military support to push the Russians out of Afghanistan not too long ago. Do not forget!
However, I do not agree with your assessment of Gen. Musharraf. He paid lip service the everyone, took the greenbacks and handed over a mess to the fractured coalition headed by Zardari. In the méelé, Benazir Bhutto was mysteriously assassinated. She has now become a footmark in that country's violent history.
Unless, President Obama and his team understand the geopolitics of the region, most action would be akin to shooting from the hip. Sure, there will be the occassional lucky shot, but the rest would miss the target by a wide margin.
I hope that the strategy, as suggested by you, to employ the local tribesman would be the best way forward. Throwing more troops or money to buy allegiance would not help the cause. I am sure that, President Obama is smart enough to understand that before employing any half baked policies.