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About a week ago I rejoindered to a point Christopher Hitchens made about Obama and Pakistan — "American liberals can’t quite face the fact that if their man does win in November, and if he has meant a single serious word he’s ever said, it means more war, and more bitter and protracted war at that" — too glibly. What I should have done was try to think through the conditions under which it makes sense to go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and to balance the risks and opportunities of different strategies of attack.
So I ended up writing an 1800-word reported thinkpiece about it for the Washington Independent. And I’ll be as candid as I can: I am probably too enthusiastic and incautious about attacking al-Qaeda in Pakistan, and I did not expect the sources I consulted for this piece — people with really deep experience in the region and without, for the most part, political overcoloration — to be as hesitant and as measured as they were. I also took pains to articulate Obama’s position as carefully as I should. Because make no mistake: it might be necessary to go after the al-Qaeda senior leadership in Pakistan unilaterally, but it’s not going to be pleasant if we do. This piece is offered in that spirit.
“This is really a damned if you do, damned if you don’t for us,” said one retired government official with extensive experience in South Asia, who declined to be named.
Different experts have different degrees of comfort with the prospect of increased U.S. military activity in the Pakistani tribal areas. “My personal opinion is that ground incursions of American forces in the tribal areas would have a massively counterproductive effect, undercutting any positive effect,” said one retired Army officer with experience in Afghanistan. “The qualifier is that all Americans would accept and support [such action] to get bin Laden and Zawahiri. That level, along with the Taliban — Mullah Omar — would be the exception.”
What do you guys think?
7 Comments
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I’ve been doing some thinking on the the damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t element of this problem. So far, my best idea is that we and the Pakistani government identify and treat the FATA as a breakaway region within Pakistan- call it “Talibanistan.”
The silent assumption that deforms all our policy with regard to al Qaeda and Taliban in that area of Pakistan is that Pakistan’s civilian government or its military have control over the region, when really, they don’t. While it might cause Ali Zardari to lose some face, admitting that the FATA region is essentially now its own miniature failed state, or a breakaway province, would allow him to paint US and Pakistani military operations in the area as occurring not within Pakistan’s true borders.
Invading, occupying and capturing AQ within Talibanistan could then proceed with less threat of destabilizing the Pakistani civilian government. The goal would eventually be to turn the area over to strict control of the Pakistani military, with the local militia and Taliban forces reduced dramatically in military strength.
The biggest problem I have found so far with my own idea is that Ali Zardari and the ISI may simply not be interested in it, and their cooperation is essential. The status quo may be a tightrope for Ali Zardari to walk, but if the Pakistani population didn’t buy the notion that the FATA was somehow fundamentally distinct from Pakistan, and that thus US troops fighting in such a region were in no way trampling Pakistani sovereignty, Zardari would likely be finished.
There are likely other parts of this that need to be fleshed out, and i’m an admitted amateur on the subject of Afghanistan and Pakistan (so I may be fucking up on some obvious factually point), but I don’t see a credible way forward without something that fundamentally changes the framing or perception of any serious US military operations across the border in Pakistan.
/ $.02
Doesn’t this largely depend upon where we think the ISI (and the Army) sits on the issue? If there is a way to gain their support – and apparently buying it doesn’t work – then we should try it and then work our some genuing cooperative approach.
If the more likely scenario is that we can’t gain true cooperation, then I think we must hold out for the big guns and quit going after the small ones. If we actually come up with bin Laden and/or Zawahiri, the response may be fairly muted. I don’t know this, but I don’t feel like the Pakistani’s hold Omar in quite the same contempt – but only because he acutually was a neighbor of theirs.
If we can’t gain true cooperation from Pakistan, and if AQ is undeniably operating out of the frontier, then we have 3 choices – 1)Pakistan is not our friend and so does not need to be treated as one, 2)we simply ignore the AQ in Pakistan and do the best we can at the border and elswhere in the world, and 3) Pakistan IS a failed state and even stronger measures are called for. Whatever they might be.
It is obvious to everyone who reads enough about world events that the leadership of Pakistan – and I don’t mean Zardari – is not fully aligned with the US, and never has been. At some point, diplomacy either works, or it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, we have to choose whether we put up a false front and keep trying (which might be a perfectly good alternative), abandon diplomacy and take matters into our own hands (which could be a perfectly bad idea), or simply wait the bastards out.
What would it take for Pakistan to be the new Iran?
Jake
Hitchens is trying to retroactively justify invading Iraq. Even if Obama does find it necessary to provide a hardcore military response to Al-Qaeda, that doesn’t justify the neocon viewpoint; in fact, it serves as an indictment of it, because the destabilized Middle East that exists today would be a hell of a lot less unstable if not for our doing the PNAC Platoon’s bidding.
Whacking AQ leadership in Pakistan unilaterally sounds like a really good idea until you begin to think it through. The fact is that Pakistan has us by balls because our major supply line for Afganistan is through their country. The reason older military types get conservative about this is that they know that our asses are out on a limb and that the Pakistani Government has the saw.
I was told that I would like this latest piece, and golly gee, I did. That McCain guy (hope he loses) told it true. Do what you gotta, quietly. If any big heads pop up,lop ‘em.
The best idea is to prod the Pakistani government into engaging the insurgents over the next few months. Cash, textile trade agreements, promises of new treaties, bribes for Mr. Ten Per Cent are all likely inducements. We play D along the Afghan border until new troops arrive and use the time to evaluate where the new Pakistani government stands.
Of course, I forgot the most important thing that both yourself and the country should be guided by: WWHD.
There was a time before the Francis Gary Powers affair and the Eisenhower administration when it was considered diplomatic to deny inconvenient incidents and the other government would diplomatically forget.