Pak Dawn, Pak Trutherism
Irony abounds. What $11 billion in US aid couldn’t do, some guys in pajamas with a handful of homemade bombs manage. Pakistan is onside, fighting hard in South Waziristan. It’s dawn over Islamabad as the Pak Taliban’s bombing campaign has united Pakistan squarely against Islamic extremism, and moves the Paks to action. In fact, some guys in Waziristan aren’t just changing the dynamic in Pkaistan. They may, inadvertantly, be changing the entire GWOT dynamic.
We’ll kick off, where else, with Pakistan’s Dawn, reporting from Waziristan: No support for half-hearted effort vs. Pak Taliban
DERA ISMAIL KHAN: The Pakistan government needs to finish off Taliban militants once and for all in an offensive on their South Waziristan stronghold or risk them returning stronger and in greater numbers, residents say.
…
Malik Mohammad Mehsud, another fleeing resident, said people were not willing to support half-hearted military action.
‘If they are serious we are with them, otherwise we cannot risk our lives,’ he said, adding that he feared militant reprisals if the government abandoned the operation, as they have done in the past, or struck a truce with Taliban leaders.
From the mouths of Waziris …
Meanwhile, Ignatius, though he’s sometimes mushy on the GWOT back home in Washington, reports encouragingly from Rawalpindi: “Pakistan fights back.”
If the Waziristan campaign does succeed, it would create an important new dynamic in the region. Rather than a weak Pakistan that doesn’t control its Afghan border, we might see a strong Pakistan that — by securing its tribal areas — can be a more effective partner in neighboring Afghanistan. That would be a big boost for the United States, but to work, it must be labeled “Made in Pakistan.”
All the news reports, some linked below, talk of the worm turning in Pakistan in the wake of multiple bombings. But it’s a complex picture, as the Washington Post notes, in a report that examines the complexity of opinion in India-adjacent Punjab, regarding terrorism that was nurtured by the Pakistani security apparatus as a weapon against India, following attacks in Punjab by said Pak-nurtured terrorist groups. Result? Pak Trutherism. It’s a kind of double reverse Trutherism, where attacks by government-sponsored groups are blamed on foreigners:
Here in Punjab province, political reality is more complex. The region is home to the main opposition party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, and an influential religious party, Jamaat-e-Islami. It is also the base for several militant Islamist groups, such as Lashkar-i-Taiba, that are now officially banned but were once sponsored by the state to fight India and other foes.
As a result, officials here tend to shy away from harsh condemnations. Instead, their explanations for the growing wave of terrorism are a mix of anti-government rhetoric and insinuations that outside forces, especially India and the United States, are conspiring to weaken Muslim-ruled Pakistan, in part by forcing it into armed conflict with local militants.
…
Nationally, public opinion has turned decisively against the tribe-based Pakistani Taliban forces in the northwest. After a series of negotiations failed to rein in the Taliban, the army won praise for driving the group out of the Swat Valley in the summer. Military officials hope to repeat that success in the larger, more intimidating Waziristan region, where they have been fighting for the past week.
Dawn also notes:
The GHQ attack has drawn accusations from several quarters in Pakistan that it was inspired by foreign powers; some have named India and the US among the usual suspects. Such ‘experts’ rarely bother to give any concrete evidence to substantiate their charges, which are based mainly on conjecture.
They can only argue as to which country would want to hurt Pakistan the most: surely it must be India. Since many now see the US as the enemy, it too, in their view, could be the hidden hand behind the attack. In this particular case the leader of the terrorists has been captured alive. An army spokesman has identified him as Aqeel, alias Dr Usman, affiliated with terrorist outfits based in southern Punjab. The terrorists involved in the attack were apparently trained in South Waziristan.
Will the spokesman’s disclosure silence those who see a foreign power behind the attack? Not likely.
Extreme irony alert: Asia Times, “Islamabad dismayed by dithering US.”
LAHORE - As White House officials continue to debate the call of the United States’ military chief in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, for an additional force of 40,000 to win the war against Taliban insurgents in the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, the overall impression in Pakistan is that rather than any decisive victory, the US and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) are now looking for a face-saving exit to leave Pakistan to face the brunt of the fallout - once again.
Unsurprisingly then, Pakistan has been guarded about launching committed strikes against the Taliban holing up in the porous Af-Pak border belts in the past. And, while it has embarked on a 30,000-strong military mission to crush the insurgency in its South Waziristan tribal area following attacks on its security
apparatus in Peshawar, Lahore and Islamabad by suspected Taliban militants, reservations remain.
On these, Dan Twining pertinently asked last month in an encompassing Foreign Policy article [1], “Why should the Pakistani military take on the militant groups that regularly launch cross-border attacks into Afghanistan when the NATO targets of those attacks will soon slink away?” This is the thought that holds the public’s attention in Afghanistan, and particularly in Pakistan.
Good question. Because the indecision, the unwillingness to engage the enemy in a maningful way, the footdragging these days is in Washington.
It’s hurtful, I know, but I’ll let Rove do the honors. WSJ: “Obama Goes Wobbly On Afghanistan”
Mr. Obama’s aides could be worried that by sending more troops to Afghanistan the White House will draw the fury of the left and lose support for its domestic agenda.
That fear is both dangerous and unnecessary. The president can retain liberal support for liberal domestic initiatives regardless of the war. And he can sustain support for the war by assembling a coalition of Democrats who want to win in Afghanistan, Democrats who would reluctantly follow their president— and almost every Republican.
It’s vital that the president build this coalition because without decisive American leadership, international support for confronting terrorism will soon dissipate. The unraveling of Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan might not be far behind.
Mr. Obama is right to ask tough questions about Afghanistan. But he needs to act soon to defend vital American interests in a troubled region that gave safe haven to our enemies before 9/11. Decisive support of his previously announced strategy in Afghanistan is what is required.
Different, but ironically entirely related: Peter Feaver at Foreign Policy looks at the troublesome war Obama didn’t inherit from George Bush … the one with his own military leaders. Feaver nails it.
Topics: GWOT, Obama, Pakistan, Taliban
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:13 am on Thursday, October 22, 2009
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