Bharat Rakshak

Outlook: The Taliban Gains Strength in Pakistan
A Disquieting Acceptance of the Inevitability of the Taliban's Claim to Power

Mohammed Hanif, special correspondent for the BBC's Urdu service and author "A Case of Exploding Mangoes," a novel that skewers the Pakistani military and intelligence infrastructure, was online from Karachi on Monday, April 27, at 11 a.m. ET to discuss his Outlook article about how the Taliban insurgency is gaining strength in his country.

Pakistan Disintegrates

Monday, April 27, 2009 3:19 PM

By: Edward I. Koch

Comment: US commentators missed the point in their assessments of the threat posed by the Pakistani Taliban. The threat to Pakistan is greatest from the fecklessness of the elected government and the ambivalence of the appointed military leadership.

The behavior of Pakistani political and military leaders shows they are not confident that the zealots and militants should be opposed. The future of Pakistan depends on their decision. It is not a certain conclusion that they will decide in favor of moderately secular Islam, instead of government rooted in fundamentalist Islamic fervor. Recent behavior shows the government and the Army in public tend to be supportive of Islamic fervor, irrespective of public statements to the contrary.

Pakistan continues to drift towards an Islamic fundamentalist state. No behavior has shown determination to stop that drift, only to slow it slightly, apparently so that the electorate can get used to the idea.

Emerging Threats

Commentary: Is Pakistan another Iran?


By ARNAUD DE BORCHGRAVE, UPI Editor at Large

A two-page statement sent to CNN instructs fighters to start new attacks against coalition troops and Afghan parliament members, and urges suicide bombers to strike.

The statement was written by Mula Birather, a Taliban chief of at least 12 military groups in Afghanistan.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirmed to CNN that the statement came from Birather.

Birather?

Comment: Pakistan is in the news and the prophets of doom are legion. The state is not failing, but it is suffering from some decisions that have backfired. Chief of Army Staff General Kayani was among those who supported the cession of national authority to the militants and imams in Swat, as a tradeoff for peace and disarmament. When the militants ignored the terms of the deal, and in response to outside pressure, the government has been roused to take some action, primarily to enforce the original deal, thus far.

General Kayani’s warning to the militants on 25 April about extending their “writ” was only about militant expansion into adjacent districts, not about the cession of authority to Swat. There are no big operations for Swat District at this time evident in press reporting.

The start of the Army and Frontier Corps operations supported by air strikes does not signify much of an offensive. For one thing, the preparation time appears to be far too brief to prepare the battlefield with competent intelligence. The purpose, literally, is to force the militants back on the government approved reservation in Swat District.

The government in Islamabad is not in danger of falling to a militant uprising, not for a few years at least. Using terror and the preachings of fundamentalist imams, the militants have been successful in forcing the government to negotiate over local jurisdiction. This process is likely to continue.

The effect of the security operations will be to channel the Islamists to put more pressure on a weak National Assembly to pass more bills authorizing the enforcement of Sharia, and not take the law into their own hands. The result will be the same: the spread of strict Quranic observances enforced by Islamist enforcers, instead of the national or local police. The difference is the spread will be under color of law. That is the primary implication of Kayani’s warning because he has only promised to act so as to back law enforcement, not undo the acts of the parliament.

In instability analysis, the government writ is always weakest in the peripheral areas, in the border marches and among the politically disenfranchised. The Swat District regulations are proof of both wings of this precept.

Second, a weak government always tries to buy time by ceding authority that it has a constitutional right to enforce, provided it has forces it can rely on. This is always an expedient to gain time to marshal resources that will enable the government to rescind the cession later. Pakistan is also proof of this precept.

The emergence of instability directed towards Islamabad in the Pashtun border agencies is not new, but it is a bit more intense. The big difference is in the government and military response to that unrest, which has been unprecedented even for past weak civilian governments. It raises serious but not fatal questions.

The normal response to a de facto autonomy declaration by a district would be to use the Army, not just the paramilitary police forces, to preserve the integrity of the state by force, not to make de facto secession de jure. The government does not seem to have that option.

The Army under Kayani apparently declined to participate two months back because of the likelihood of high losses and its cultural disinclination to shoot Pakistani citizens, according to press reporting. Kayani appears to be a good soldier. About the only justification for Army timidity in the face of a local insurrection is the likelihood that the Army itself would fracture during such operations.


The Army position left the elected leaders with no choice but to try to buy time by creating a temporary power sharing arrangement that would stabilize local law and order conditions in Swat until the government could assess its options and the loyalty of its security forces. That is where we are today.


Today’s operations are mostly a show of force, a demonstration. Pakistan has no joint doctrine; the air attacks are isolated pin pricks that annoy more than suppress the insurgents; there has not been enough time for adequate battlefield preparation. Kayani has not had enough time to rebuild the Army.

Inspector General of the Frontier Corps Major General Khan should get a hero’s medal for taking on the task of upholding the honor and rights of the federal government using his rag tag paramilitary forces.

In sum, the government is a mess, but it is not collapsing or in danger of an Islamist overthrow. Pakistan is not a failed state but it is experiencing another test of its fundamental nature. The problem with international press coverage is that it conflates the darkest and bleakest future for Pakistan with the present. The worst case has not yet arrived, by a long shot.

India, US pit their wits to crack Pak conundrum

April 26th, 2009
By Our Correspondent NEW DELHI

FOR INDIA, the strategic implications of the Taliban overrunning Pakistan are not far to seek.

For one, there is the threat of the Pakistani nuclear arsenal falling into the hands of militants. Brajesh Mishra, a former national security adviser, said in a recent interview to a news agency that if the Taliban becomes powerful, there might be an arrangement with the Pakistani Army, and in such an eventuality there was a possibility of nuclear weapons falling into their hands.

Avigdor Lieberman, in his first interview as Israel’s foreign minister, has told the Russian daily Moskovskiy Komosolets that Iran was not the Jewish state’s biggest strategic threat; Pakistan and Afghanistan are. “Pakistan is nuclear and unstable, and Afghanistan is faced with a potential Taliban takeover, and the combination forms a contiguous area of radicalism ruled in the spirit of Bin Laden,” Lieberman said.

Then there are serious concerns about how a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism in India’s immediate neighbourhood, which could become the nerve centre for propagating Islamic radicalism in the region, will pose a direct threat to the security interests of India.

Talibanisation of the region could encourage militants to foment cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir, aid infiltration, and disturb peace along the Line of Control. It could also rapidly erode state structures in Pakistan. There are enough indications already that the Pakistani Army is facing dissension within its ranks on the question of fighting militants in the region.

Mr Mishra thought a “fractured polity” in Pakistan is a possibility, given fears that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Pakistani Army Chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani might not be in control and that there are elements in the Army and ISI, Pakistan’s external spy agency, who have links with the Taliban.
“At the lower level, there might be many half-hearted soldiers and policemen who feel the Taliban is okay, and working with the Taliban is okay,” he said.

One view is that for a semblance of stability to return to Pakistan, New Delhi must see the problem as its own and deal with it on its own. Another view, not mutually exclusive in relation to the first, is that India should coordinate with some of the major world powers and doggedly persuade the United States and its Western allies to appreciate India’s experience with cross-border terrorism and Islamist extremism.

For a start, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton told a US House Foreign Affairs Committee in Washington last Wednesday that the Pakistan government’s decision to permit the Taliban to impose Islamic law in the Swat Valley posed a serious security threat to the world. She followed it up a day later by telling a House Appropriations Subcommittee that the Barack Obama administration was deeply concerned by the increasing insurgency that is destabilising Pakistan.

Clinton made one other interesting observation: That the US was also partly responsible for the present mess in Pakistan. She said what was happening in Pakistan today was a result of late US President Ronald Reagan’s policy against the Soviet Union’s presence in Afghanistan.

“... It wasn’t a bad investment to end the Soviet Union, but let’s be careful what we sow, because we will harvest,” she said before the panel on Thursday. Clinton went on to suggest that the Pakistani government is “basically abdicating” to the Taliban and the extremists. This is the strongest criticism yet made of Islamabad by the US. Afghanistan’s foreign minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta was quick to welcome Clinton’s recognition of the “source” of the threat in the region. “... the main training centre and protector of terrorists is grouped beyond Afghanistan’s borders,” Spanta told reporters in Warsaw.

RaviBg wrote:After the euphoria, the harsh reality - Brahma Chellaney

...
Seven months after the deal’s realisation, there is no sign of its transformative power. Rather, doubts have arisen over the supposed “global strategic partnership” with America. The policy frame in which Washington is viewing India is not the larger Asian geopolitical landscape, but the southern Asian context. But even on regional matters of vital interest to India, the U.S. has sought to ignore New Delhi or pursue antithetical policy approaches. To the chagrin of Indian neocons — who ingenuously marketed the nuclear deal as a U.S. move to build India as a world power and counterweight to China — Washington has declared that its “most important bilateral relationship in the world” is with Beijing.


...
It was thus no surprise that Mr. Bush left the White House with a solid China-friendly legacy. Today, there is talk even of a U.S.-China diarchy — a G-2 — ruling the world. The naïveté of Indian neocons was astonishing.

...

Take another example. India got no tangible help from the Bush or Obama administration to bring the plotters of the Mumbai strikes to justice, despite providing extraordinary access to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to independently investigate those attacks and even allowing the CIA to serve as a conduit for intelligence exchange with Islamabad. Rather, Washington wants India now to rise above the Mumbai attacks and aid Mr. Obama’s “Afpak” strategy by giving Pakistan a tranquil eastern border through troop redeployments

The U.S. message to India is to forget Mumbai and silently suffer Pakistan’s war by terror — a message reinforced by Washington’s identification of terrorist safe havens only along Pakistan’s western border. Ms Clinton indeed suggested India endure more Mumbais stoically by telling Congress, “So, we do have a lot of work to do with the Indian government, to make sure that they continue to exercise the kind of restraint they showed after Mumbai, which was remarkable, especially given the fact that it was the political season.”

...

On Pakistan — a pawn too valuable for any U.S. administration to stop using for regional objectives — American policy has displayed continuity for long. The fact that Mr. Obama, in his first 100 days, has helped put together $15.7 billion in international aid for Islamabad shows the U.S. resolve not to allow Pakistan to fail — a country where, he admits, “we have huge strategic interests.” But it was Mr. Bush who let Pakistan rake in a terrorist windfall, as he plied it with sophisticated weapons and more than $12.3 billion in funds, notwithstanding the escalating Pakistani-scripted terror attacks in India after 9/11.

...
For years, the U.S. has played to India’s ego and to Pakistan’s craving for funds and weapons. Mr. Bush kept India happy with a grand partnership vision while he pandered to Pakistan’s needs. The very day Mr. Bush announced his decision to sell F-16s to Pakistan — a public slap for India — Washington patronisingly offered to “help India become a major world power in the 21st century.” This was lapped up by Indian neocons as a “tectonic shift” in U.S. policy. Similarly, Mr. Obama massaged India’s ego by declaring that Richard Holbrooke’s mission would stay restricted to the Afpak belt, only to quietly include Kashmir and India in his envoy’s agenda. Now, Centcom chief Gen. David Petraeus has undiplomatically blurted out the truth to Congress that Mr. Holbrooke’s “portfolio very much includes India,” and Mr. Holbrooke and he are in “constant touch” with Indian officials.

...
Today, while India gropes for strategic benefits from the nuclear deal, the U.S. is set to reap non-proliferation and economic benefits once international inspections begin and contracts are signed. It is unfortunate that intense partisan rancour was kicked up in India over an oversold deal, which was pushed through with no public scrutiny, although it thrusts an uneconomical energy choice and carries long-term implications.

By MARK LANDLER and ELISABETH BUMILLER
Published: April 30, 2009

WASHINGTON — The big idea behind the Obama administration’s long-in-the-making policy for Afghanistan and Pakistan was that the two countries are inextricably linked. The key to stabilizing Afghanistan, the White House concluded five weeks ago, is a stable and cooperative Pakistan.

That calculation has been utterly scrambled by the Taliban offensive in western Pakistan, which has forced the United States to concentrate on the singular task of preventing further gains in Pakistan by an Islamic militant insurgency that has claimed territory just 60 miles from Islamabad.

“We’re no longer looking at how Pakistan could help Afghanistan,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation. “We’re looking at what we could do to help Pakistan get through this period.”

President Obama and his top advisers have been meeting almost daily to discuss options for helping the Pakistani government and military repel the offensive. But those conversations are complicated by deepening doubts within the administration about Pakistan’s civilian and military authorities, and by resistance in Congress, which has attached strict conditions to $400 million in American aid to buttress Pakistan’s counterinsurgency capabilities.

On Thursday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates went to Congress to warn that unless American military aid can be accelerated, Pakistan will run out of money to finance operations against militants by the middle of this month.

In asking for more money, Mr. Gates pledged that he would soon provide Congress with specific goals, or benchmarks, to judge future progress in Pakistan. He said the goals would be “pretty elaborate” and fall into three categories: security, development and governance.

After days of rising alarm on the part of American officials, Mr. Gates tried to strike a more sanguine tone, noting that the Taliban move into the district of Buner, near Islamabad, had “set off an alarm bell” in Pakistan.

“I think they have seen the situation in the west as largely of our making as we drove the Taliban out of Afghanistan,” Mr. Gates said of Pakistan’s leaders, “and now they’re beginning to see these guys have designs on the Pakistani government.”

The $400 million being sought by the administration would provide Pakistani troops with night-vision goggles and upgraded equipment for its helicopters, among other things. A senior administration official said this week that Pakistan had agreed in the last month to accept American training of some of its counterinsurgency fighters, but only outside Pakistan, to avoid further nationalist anger.

The plan would involve sending officers of Pakistan’s Frontier Corps somewhere in the United States to train in the guerrilla tactics necessary for fighting militants in the tribal areas. The officers would return to Pakistan and train larger numbers of troops there.

But better equipment and training are only part of the solution, American officials said. Pakistan, they said, needs to shift many more army troops from its eastern border, with India, to the west.

Pakistan has not lost international support. A recent donors’ conference in Tokyo raised $5.3 billion in pledges, including $1 billion by the United States and $700 million by Saudi Arabia. But a senior European diplomat said the conference served only to underscore the disarray in the country, since it was not clear where, or on what, the aid could be usefully spent.

The degree of American concern will be laid bare next week when the leaders of Pakistan and Afghanistan travel to Washington for meetings at the White House and State Department. The so-called trilateral sessions are likely to be dominated by worries about Pakistan, officials said, though Pakistani officials have warned against what they have suggested has been an American overreaction.

“This is not South Vietnam,” said Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. “The Taliban need to be fought, but they’re not about to take over Pakistan and overcome a one-million-strong military.”

American counterterrorism analysts said that militant groups were putting up stiff resistance against the military’s counteroffensive in Buner, and that it was unclear whether Pakistan Army and paramilitary troops would succeed in driving out the militants.

“The security situation is tense, and there are a series of militant networks still in the district,” said Seth Jones, an analyst at the RAND Corporation who visited Pakistan last week. “Until these networks are co-opted or destroyed, however, I am skeptical that the security will permanently improve.”

The administration’s “nightmare scenario,” in the words of one official, is a convergence of the Taliban insurgents in the tribal areas of northwest Pakistan and local militant groups in Punjab.

Such an alliance is suspected to be behind the deadly assault in March on the Sri Lankan cricket team in Punjab’s capital, Lahore, and the bombing last fall of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

“If the Punjabi militants gain ground, if they merged with the Taliban, it would be a terrible problem,” said the official.

A new report on terrorism trends issued Thursday by the State Department provided fresh evidence of the deteriorating security situation in Pakistan during the past year.

The number of attacks against noncombatants in the country doubled to 1,839 last year from 890 the year before, according to statistics compiled for the report by the National Counterterrorism Center. In those attacks, 2,293 people were killed in 2008, compared with 1,340 in 2007.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

“I know of the Petraeus experiment there,” he said. “But we know our Afghans. They will take the money from Petraeus, but they will not be on his side. There are so many people working with the Afghans and the Americans who are on their payroll, but they inform us, sell us weapons.”

He acknowledged that the Americans would have far superior forces and power this year, but was confident the Taliban could turn this advantage on its head. “The Americans cannot take control of the villages,” he said. “In order to expel us they will have to resort to aerial bombing, and then they will have more civilian casualties.”

The one thing that impressed him were the missile strikes by drones — virtually the only American military presence felt inside Pakistan. “The drones are very effective,” he said, acknowledging that they had thinned the top leadership of Al Qaeda and the Taliban in the area. He said 29 of his friends had been killed in the strikes.

Prem wrote:http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.as ... 2009_pg3_4
analysis: Obama’s AfPak quandary —Ashley J Tellis

Whether explicitly admitted or not, these propositions indicate that the United States will not abdicate state building in Afghanistan; will not recognise the Taliban as an acceptable Islamist group in contrast to, for example, Al Qaeda; and will not exit Afghanistan either as an end in itself or to better focus on Pakistan, as some analysts have suggested.

The administration’s reiteration of the need for a “a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan” also implicitly conveys a rejection of all ambiguous strategies of governance, a refusal to integrate an unrepentant Taliban into any Afghan organs of rule, and a decisive repudiation of authoritarianism as a solution to the political problems in Kabul.
And, he needs to jettison those old and tired saws that reconciliation with the Taliban or better counterterrorism performance by Pakistan will be essential for success in Afghanistan; although both may well be true, neither is particularly likely and, consequently, Obama ought to refocus on securing victory in Afghanistan by “hardening” it from the inside out rather than by counting on either Taliban or Pakistani cooperation.

How about getting Pakistan to stand down in its decades-long conflict with India, the secretary was asked.

"All things in due time,'' she [ Hilary Clinton] said.

Obama said the meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was "extraordinarily productive."

May 5, 2009, 10:02 am
Pakistan’s British-Drawn Borders
By Robert Mackey

Pakistan: According to Asia Times Online, following a number of warning messages from senior US officials about the need for a united civilian-military front against extremism, unidentified sources reported that in the next few days Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz leader former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif will accept a power-sharing formula to join the government led by President Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) to fight against the Taliban.

(NW comment: Prime Minister Gilani officially heads the government in the sense of the cabinet; President Zardari has declined to complete the transition back to a parliamentary system, as yet.)

Comment: Nawaz is not a member of the National Assembly and holds no other elective government office. The Supreme Court upheld his disqualification for public office because of a past criminal conviction under the Musharraf era, but that ruling was suspended to avoid civil rioting during the lawyer’s march. Nawaz is thus not yet qualified to join the government except as an appointed official or through some other contrived exception to parliamentary procedure.

For Readers, rumors and unconfirmed reports during the past month have related that some US officials now consider Nawaz Sharif the man who can stabilize the government in Islamabad. If Nawaz joins the government in some capacity, that will be the sign of US actions behind the scenes to try to forge a unified official stance against militarism. Meddling in Pakistani politics carries a high risk of double cross and exposure that risks deepened anti-US sentiment, unless handled with skill not previously demonstrated. A national unity government is not necessarily a solution in Pakistan.

Nawaz Sharif has never supported US policy objectives except when they supported his own political advancement. Once in a position of authority or high office, Nawaz is certain to disavow US support because identification with the US in the present political climate is tantamount to political, and possibly actual, suicide for a Pakistani politician. One difference between Zardari and Nawaz, however, is Nawaz will mean what he says when he denounces US “meddling.”

The Saudis like Nawaz because they consider him an acceptably “moderate” Islamist who can span the gap between the secular and almost sinful PPP and the Pakistani Taliban. That explains Secretary Gates comment today encouraging Saudi support for a stable Pakistan. However, none of these groups – the Saudis, Nawaz or the Pak Taliban – share any of the strategic interests the US has in South Asia. They also seem to be acutely aware of the discontinuity. The Saudi idea of an acceptable Pakistani leader, for example, is a much more devout fellow than the US has in mind, and probably one who would share Pakistani nuclear weapons technology with the Kingdom, for the right price.

The US apparently favors some kind of national unity government, which seems to be a ritual mantra from people who have no experience of a parliamentary system. Generally national unity governments are, at best, temporary power sharing solutions in response to conditions of national emergency from which one or other group will attempt a breakout, irrespective of all other pressing business.

If Nawaz returns to office as Prime Minister at some point, that would not be good news for the US, although the Saudis would be pleased. Nawaz is likely to negotiate with the Islamists with easy terms. The biggest weakness in the national unity strategy is that Pakistani officials do not seem to share the US assessment that Pakistani is facing an existential crisis, but they will go along with the US for any benefits that might accrue.

Supporting the Asia Times report that Nawaz and his party are being rehabilitated is the 5 May report from The News that Prime Minister Gilani is to hold a crucial meeting on 5 May with PML-N President Shahbaz Sharif (Nawaz’ brother) to work out a power-sharing formula in the Punjab. Shahbaz was province Chief Minister prior to the aforementioned Supreme Court ruling, now suspended.

Initially, the meeting was scheduled for Sunday in Lahore, but was postponed and re-scheduled for Tuesday (6 May). Their previous meeting in Lahore last Saturday remained inconclusive as far as power-sharing was concerned, though it was agreed that the PPP would remain part of the Punjab government.

In Saudi Arabia, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday said he wanted Saudi Arabia to help forge a political consensus in Pakistan to deal with the threat from the Taliban, according to the VOA. “The Saudis, in particular, have considerable influence in Pakistan.” The problem is the Saudis do not share the same vision for Pakistan that the US has and have not been frank about the differences.

Swat District: Despite a government curfew, armed Taliban militants were patrolling Mingora, the main town in Swat district, witnesses told Agence France-Presse on 4 May. One resident said Taliban fighters also were taking positions on top of buildings in the town. Tensions were on the rise in the area after the government of North West Frontier Province established an Islamic appeals court for the Malakand district and the Taliban rejected it, saying it had been set up without adequate consultation with the movement.

Buner District: The government announced that the Frontier Corps had established a presence in Daggar, the main town. That means little because the Frontier Corps is not reliable. Some kind of deal almost certainly was negotiated.

Malakand Division, North West Frontier Province: Arshad Abdullah, law minister of North-West Frontier Province, said on 4 May that Pakistani Taliban religious leader Sufi Muhammad is not authorized to appoint Islamic court judges, or Qazis, in the Malakand Division, GEO News reported. Arshad said only the provincial government could appoint Qazis, and that an Islamic court office would soon be set up in Malakand.

The point of including this statement is it is the first indication that the federal Pakistan government is using judicial appointments as a device for taking back some of the authority it ceded by law to the militants. This action represents an admission of error.

The regulation authorizing Islamic law in Swat, however, did not extend to Malakand which covers a major part of the North West Frontier Province. It is not clear by what authority Islamic courts are being set up in Malakand, based on the information in the public domain. It remains a mystery why the Pakistani national government would empower a local religious leader to exercise any problem-solving powers of government in a republic governed by rule of law. That might be a western bias, however.

Sufi Muhammad told the press today that his militant group Tehrik-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Muhammadi (TNSM) is not interested in taking control of Indian-held Kashmir, but is determined to ensure the place of Islam within society, ANI News reported 4 May, citing an interview given by Sufi Muhammad. He also said the Pakistani Taliban is not attempting to set up a parallel government to the Pakistani state, but to ensure that Shariah is the supreme law in the country.

Readers should understand this as Sufi Mohammad explicitly stating that his goal is to convert Pakistan into an Islamist state of strict observance. The basic model is Afghanistan under the Afghan Taliban. That is hardly reassuring. Any one who thinks a zealot’s goals are negotiable is deluded by his own expediency.

Afghanistan-Pakistan: Asia Times Online provided the best explanation why security operations seem to make little progress in eastern Afghanistan. This is the first press recent account of a practice that has been common in Afghanistan since before the British colonial era. Nothing is wasted on the frontier.

According to the ATOL correspondent, the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan National Army (ANA) have an arrangement that applies to all the southeastern and southern provinces, especially in Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Helmand and Ghazni provinces.

Under this arrangement, ANA troops sent on patrol in Taliban regions pay the Taliban to not kill them. The price is usually trade goods: arms, ammunition or rockets, which are reported as having been lost during an encounter with the Taliban. (Note: This practice also was common in Vietnam.)

“When ANA arrests Taliban fighters, the commander demands cash money for their release. If the fighters are Pakistani or non-Afghan, ANA takes a little longer to negotiate a price, but if the fighters are Afghans, ANA personnel will not take unnecessary risks. Either they strike a deal then and there and release the Taliban fighters, or within a few days they hand them over to NATO. The reason is to avoid direct confrontation with the Afghan Taliban and their tribal constituencies, which could cause problems in any prolonged negotiations.“

Under the arrangement, ANA attempted to deal with seven Pakistanis captured in Helmand Province recently, ultimately whose revelations galvanized new US pressure on the Pakistan government. The ATOL report picks up the story as follows.

“Because the seven men were Pakistani, Afghan Taliban leader Mansoor, based in Pakistan, started negotiations with the ANA for the release of his men. ANA demanded US$200,000, Mansoor countered with an offer of 2 million rupees (US$25,000), which was refused. Mansoor then arranged for 10 million rupees to be paid, but since almost 10 days had passed, ANA handed the Pakistanis over to NATO. Under NATO interrogation the extent of the infiltration system and the fact of the arrangement were learned.

Mansoor mishandled the situation on two counts, according to ATOL. First, he did not involve the Afghan Taliban command, meaning Mullah Omar’s Quetta Shura, and secondly, he took too long in reaching an agreeable figure. The revelations from the seven men exposed a “massive” network for supporting insurgency operations in Afghanistan from bases in Pakistan. That resulted, according to ATOL, in the surge in US pressure for a national unity government in Pakistan and serious counterinsurgency operations to attack the Pakistani roots of the network. ATOL commented that the fighters will simply change locations.

Status of the latest operations: no government gains reported in press channels appear permanent. The fighting in Buner, for example, has endured for nearly a week, but the killed and wounded do not indicate any serious gunfights beyond what are normal in the District, meaning when no government security operations are in progress. The government announced today (4 May) that the Buner District operations would end in a week!

Another report said that “security forces” had begun operations in Shangla District to push militants back into Swat. Prior reporting suggested only a handful of militants entered Shangla. It is not clear when “security force operations” became necessary.

The Swat curfew implies the government is attempting to take back security responsibility from the militants and thus restrict their authority to the resolution of local disputes in local Islamic courts. The militants are supposed to surrender their weapons but remain defiant. Under extraordinary US pressure, the Islamabad government is acting to take back incrementally the authority it ceded by act of the national legislature. Thus far it does not seem to be having success.

The Chief Justice. In a case concerning land ownership, Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry proclaimed a doctrine of judicial activism that is likely to unsettle many. In response to a comment that the Supreme Court lacked jurisdiction over a narrow aspect of the land dispute, the Chief Justice said “courts were completely empowered to review laws based on mala fide intention.” He said courts also had ‘absolute jurisdiction’ to interpret laws and the constitution.

“If needed, the Supreme Court can review Article 270-AA of the Constitution under which the 17th Amendment is protected,” observed Iftikhar. Article 270-AA protects Musharraf’s 12 October 1999 military coup. According to its language, the article cannot be called into question in any court or forum of the country on any ground whatsoever. Various political parties have been calling for the 17th Amendment to be withdrawn, and several have also framed drafts for this purpose.

Chaudhry is an activist with a grudge. He has not yet assumed jurisdiction of the laws and constitutional amendments whose overturn could put Musharraf on trial for treason, but today he asserted his right to do so, as the Chief Justice. That is an ominous portent for Musharraf and his acolytes.

The NightWatch operating hypothesis is that Pakistan is heading for a military takeover of government of some kind. General Kayani is Musharraf’s handpicked successor who had to have been sworn to protect Musharraf and the Pakistan Army as a condition for a staff officer to become Chief of the Army Staff.

Kayani will do as his mentor bade him, in the time honored tradition of the Pakistan Army general officer corps. That might keep Chief Justice Chaudhry in check for now, but if Nawaz Sharif should ever become Prime Minister, Musharraf should leave Pakistan and maybe Kayani too.

* OPINION: GLOBAL VIEW
* MAY 12, 2009

Pakistan's Existential Challenge
The trouble for a country defined mostly by what it is not.

ramana wrote:Not really. The King is from Durrani tribe already. So if the top elected post will be a Pashtun due to demographics. Then case closed for the others.

So I think the Karzai offer of VP to Fahim is a good move. Hekmatyar is being offered some seats in the cabinet and personal exile to KSA. Lets see how it pans out. Wish that those killed in Embassy bombing were alive. We need good understanding of the locla dynamics to ensure Indian interests are also served.

My big picture is the need to stabilize Afghanistan from the ill effects of FSU intervention and the TSP led Taliban misadventure leading to 911 and the subsequent US attack on Afghanistan. This stabilization will lead to a strong Pashtun presence there which will assert itself. As Afghanistan is SAARC member India should consider development program to revive the country. Sort of revive the subsidy from Indo-Gangetic plains from Shakuni mama times. The road from Iran is already a step in the right direction.

The second move is to ensure consolidation of East Pashtunistan as an autonomous region of TSP to bring stability to the NWFP and appurtnent areas to address Pashtun nationalism. This has to happen as part of the Af-Pak process. If it happens India should invest in Dera Adam Khel area to outsource small mfg and machining industry via the Iran road.

Once these happen the need to re-make TSP and bring it back from FakAp is on cards.

The Strategic Debate Over Afghanistan
May 11, 2009 | 1805 GMT

By George Friedman

Pakistan: The Daily Telegraph reported the Pakistan Army is planning to begin a new offensive in Waziristan. “The army is planning to go into Waziristan, possibly in June, which will involve huge numbers of troops to establish state control over the area,” an unidentified source said.

The Daily Telegraph report, which was repeated by other Pakistani news services, looks like a leak intend to gauge public reaction to a follow-on to the Swat operations. Once Swat is brought back within the authority of the government, operations will occur in Waziristan. Chief of Army Staff General Kayani said his purpose was to restore the government’s “writ.” His statement of his objective appears to have been carefully phrased.

Pakistan-US. An Australian-born, retired Lieutenant Colonel, counter-insurgency expert said today that Pakistan’s campaign against the Swat Taliban has only a limited chance of success, a counter-insurgency expert has warned. In an interview with the Financial Times, David Kilcullen said the outlook for the operation in Swat is “pretty bleak” given the Pakistan Army’s inexperience and its refusal to accept help from the west. He added that the failure would endanger the international mission in Afghanistan by cutting off NATO supply routes, according to a Daily Times summary of Kilcullen’s interview.

“The Pakistani military has no capability for what we would call counterinsurgency,” he said. “What they are doing in the Swat valley is a conventional offensive ... they need a more sophisticated approach and they need training and assistance, which they are currently refusing. …They will move into Swat, they will fight the Taliban, there will be half a million refugees, there will be immense dislocation. I’m not sure that, looking back on this in six months, we will see any improvement.” Kilcullen said the situation in Pakistan was central to NATO’s Afghan mission.

Comment: By comparing the goal stated by General Kayani and Prime Minister Gilani to the statements by Kilcullen, analysts should readily recognize the logical and analytical flaws in kilcullen’s statements. He has postulated goals for the Swat operations that are not those stated by the top officials of Pakistan, and, naturally found the Pakistanis wanting in not accomplishing his goals.

Yet, the Pakistan Army can and will achieve the goals its leaders have articulated: restore the government’s writ, meaning use force to ensure the Pashtun locals acknowledge the sovereignty of Pakistan. The law establishing a local right to apply Sharia will remain in effect, but with the understanding that it is a legal “privilege” granted by the National Assembly within the legal framework of the Constitution of Pakistan. THAT is what the Swat operations are aimed at ensuring. They are preventing the fragmentation of Pakistan by big mouth exhortations from local Islamic teachers. The Pakistan Army is preventing its enemy from seizing power that the federal government did not authorize.

The Swat imams and Maulanas are to be the objects of military lessons aimed also at other regions. Their adherents are likely to be killed remorselessly by the Pakistan Army as a result of treasonous behavior. The Pakistan Army and Frontier Corps will succeed in this endeavor, though they will not win hearts and minds. They do not seem to be worried about that so long as they obtain compliance with the national law.

The operations are not intended to and will not end tribal unrest in the frontier marches, which has been continuous since the time of Alexander the Great. Nor will they end Pakistani Pashtun support to the Afghan Taliban. More likely they will encourage it, as a safety valve. They will not stop the Pakistani Pashtuns from protecting and harboring foreign fighters, many of whom have intermarried.

Nevertheless, the operations will reduce the violence, restore respect for the central government’s authority, possibly moderate the insanely strict application of Sharia by local authorities, and help stabilize the western border regions. That is a lot.

Readers already know that the government of Pakistan has never been at risk, despite the hyperbole of Western press commentators. On the other hand, US policy makers probably should be cautious about interpreting these operations as signifying Pakistani support for US goals in South Asia. These operations support Pakistani national interests in many complex ways. They will do what they have set out to do, which includes blunting US criticism.

Pakistan-US: Tonight’s good news. The Los Angeles Times and the Pakistan Daily Times reported on 14 May that the US military (not CIA ) has begun flying Predator drones in Pakistan and given Pakistani military officers significant control over targets, flight routes and decisions to launch attacks. US officials said the project was started recently to bolster Pakistan’s ability and willingness to disrupt the non-Al Qaida militant groups active in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

For the US military, the missions represent a broad new role – searching for Islamic militants in Pakistan. This is different from searching for and trying to kill al Qaida leaders who have been the CIA targets since 2001.

Under the new arrangement, US military drones will come under the direction of Pakistani military officials, working with American counterparts at a command center in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. U.S. military drones will be allowed for the first time to venture beyond the borders of Afghanistan under the direction of Pakistani military officials, in support of military operations.

The Pakistanis have yet to use the drones to shoot at suspected militants and are grappling with a cumbersome military chain of command as well as ambivalence about using U.S. equipment to fire on their own people.

Pakistani leaders continue to doubt that the threat from the Pashtun mountain folk is greater than the threat from the Hindus. The Indian national elections have helped reassure the Pakistani leaders that Indian leaders are more concerned with domestic politics than stirring up trouble with Pakistan. (Indian elections results are to be announced on 16 May.)

The timing of the anti-militant operations in Pakistan relative to the Indian elections is critically important for Western analysts to appreciate. Absent the Indian elections, Pakistani military leaders would be much less receptive to fighting Islamic zealots in the Pashtun regions than maintaining full combat readiness and forces along the eastern border.

Note: NightWatch has stressed for Readers the difference between US military drones and those of the CIA. CIA drones evidently will continue to focus on Al Qaida leaders hiding in Pakistan; the military drones will be used to disrupt Afghan and Pakistan Taliban networks and kill their leaders – separate target sets. This will mark the first time US armed drones will have been used against the Taliban in a programmatic fashion since 2001.

Finally, Pakistan will not control or own the US military drones, but it can buy drones from Israel once it has a cadre of officers who can operate them.

Afghanistan: Update. Seven Afghans were killed and another 21 wounded in continuing attacks against government forces on 13 May. One of the attacks was a suicide car bomb attack near a U.S. military base in Khost City, in eastern Afghanistan, Agence France-Presse reported. The bomb reportedly exploded at a gate used by local workers, who were waiting to enter the base. The attack, claimed by the Taliban, was part of a second day of assaults in Khost. ON 12 May Taliban bombers killed nine Afghans. A man who said he was a local Taliban fighter told reporters to expect more strikes in Khost.

The last time Taliban demonstrated the capability to sustain attacks against a provincial capital for more than a single day was last autumn during the attacks against Lashkargah, the capital of Helmand Province. Those attacks were almost amateurish compared to the latest against Khost.