Pakistan, The Taliban’s Indispensable Ally
According to a major new study published by the RAND Corporation last week, "individuals within Pakistan's government" are providing assistance to the Taliban and other Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan, and effectively crippling American attempts to stabilize the country. Pakistan's powerful military intelligence service, the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence) is singled out as the key culprit. "Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan," funded by the Pentagon, merely confirms what Chronicles readers have known for years: that the regime in Islamabad is unwilling and unable to act in any manner inconsistent with its Islamic roots and ethos.
The report reminds us that every successful insurgency in Afghanistan since 1979 enjoyed safe haven in Pakistan, and the current insurgency is no different. In addition to the Taliban, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's Hezb-i-Islami and al Qaeda, a myriad of local, tribally-based groups have also found support in Pakistan's centrally administered Tribal Areas and in its North West Frontier and Balochistan Provinces. Weapons, ammunitions and supplies continue to be shipped from this region into Afghanistan. Afghan refugee camps based in those three areas are used to recruit fighters and suicide bombers who target the U.S. and allied forces across the border. Furthermore, Pakistani sources continue to tip off the Taliban about the movement and intentions of those forces and their local Afghan protégés.
The insurgent groups in Afghanistan, according to the study, have acquired solid support and assistance from the global jihadist network, including groups with a strong foothold in Pakistan, such as al-Qaeda. This has enabled them to adapt their tactics, techniques. "Solving this problem will require a difficult diplomatic feat: convincing Pakistan's government to undermine the sanctuary on its soil," report author Seth Jones said in the RAND press release. If we look at the growing list of terrorist attacks and foiled plots in North America and Western Europe, it is evident that plots stemming from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region are the single most important threat to Western security. Eliminating the Pakistan sanctuary bases is one of the study's three key recommendations. It also stresses the necessity for the United States and its allies to develop the Afghan security forces, especially the police, and to improve the quality of local governments, particularly in the country's rural regions.
The report is right to identify and stress the role of Pakistan. It is deficient in failing to outline just how the "difficult diplomatic feat" of "convincing Pakistan's government to undermine the sanctuary on its soil" can be pulled off. The uncomfortable truth is that it cannot be done, and therefore the mission in Afghanistan is doomed.
The long list of Pakistan's proven or suspected links with numerous terrorist attacks in recent years-and notably the 7/7 bombings in London in 2005-illustrate the ambivalent role of Pakistan in the "War on Terrorism." The ability of the establishment in Islamabad to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds has been an affront to all enemies of jihad for years. The myth of Pakistan as a staunch American ally is in need of critical scrutiny, and the RAND report may help debunk it.
The most obvious failure of the government of Pakistan concerns its failure to deliver on the often-repeated promise to control thousands of Islamic schools that teach nothing but blind hatred of the infidel, and produce tens of thousands of potential new terrorists every year. Pakistan remains the epicenter of global jihad, a breeding ground for the new echelons of "martyrs." When pressed, the government announces the closure of some of the schools where "the eggs of the snake of terrorism are incubated," only to let them re-open later. It can hardly be otherwise in a country founded on the pillars of Islamic orthodoxy.
Pakistan's rulers share and reflect the ethos of the first modern state to be established on openly Islamic principles. It suffers from all key defects derived from its origins. For as long as the country's Islamic character is explicitly upheld by the country's powerful generals-a state within a state par excellence-and by its political and social elite, Pakistan cannot evolve into a reliable Western ally, a half-decent democracy, or an efficient economy.
The Bush Administration's subdued response to Pakistan's role as a haven for Islamic terrorists and top nuclear proliferator has delayed the long-overdue reform of the country's institutions, starting with its bloated military. It is still firmly commanded by generals whose loyalties are suspect at best, and often unabashedly Islamist and inimical to Western interests. Yes, some degree of Western cooperation with Pakistan may be unavoidable, just as various Cold War deals with unpleasant Latin American and Asian regimes were unavoidable, but the relationship should not go beyond the pragmatic, give-and-take link based on limited objectives.
The facts surrounding Pakistan's pernicious role in keeping the Taliban and other insurgents groups alive and well in Afghanistan are clouded by inside-the-Beltway denials and the feigned optimism that have characterized Washington's relations with its supposed allies in the Muslim world for decades.
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It seems that we will not be able to stop Pakistan from morphing into an Islamic republic with nuclear weapons and close ties to the Taliban and other terrorist groups. Any bets on New York City surviving the next twenty years?
Mr McCain where does Pakistan rank in your legue of democracies or other islamist regimes the US is propping up?
I think the whole islamic terror threat thing is hyped up. 9/11 was only possible because the US allowed it to happen. I mean months prior to the attack dozens of foreign intelligence agencies gave specific warnings about an impending attack, FBI agents were following some of the hijackers in the US and according to an article written by Greg Palast I think several months prior FBI agents were stopped from investigating Abdullah Bin Laden from the white house who financed there stay in the US through the Benevolence Fund.
Dr. Trifkovic,
It might be clever to say that history does not repeat itself , but ignorance seems to repeat itself over and over again from generation to generation. Old, news, film clips of Mr. Baker telling the jihadist that "God was on their side" during the Soviet excursion and then our own hubris to think we could triumph where so many others had failed using the same or similar technological and military advantages. So much attention on Iraq who did not have anything to do with 9-11, and so little attention to the hell hole that is Afghanistan and Pakistan. So much attention about Iran who does not yet have nuclear weapons and so little on Pakistan who does.
One should hope Ronald Reagan's rhetorical question "Are you better off than you were four or eight years ago ?," is not raised concerning America's foreign policy , or those having shaped it would be shipped off immediately to help fix it --- in the god forsaken mine fields and mountains of Afghanistan or along the bleeding boarders of Pakistan. From the soldiers and Marines I know who have been in both places, the Afghan duty is far worse than Iraq in terms of overall deployments.
Dr. Trifkovic,
The news today that the latest US airstrike in Afghanistan killed 11 Pakistani soldiers who were apparently fighting with the Taliban against our forces, would seem to lend credence to your argument.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7447608.stm
Warm regards.
Dr. Trifkovic,
This news story on the latest US airstrike that killed Pakistani soldiers (who may have been fighting with the Taliban) may lend credence to your argument.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7447608.stm
Warm regards.
Dr. Trifkovic,
If the airstrike yesterday is any indication (11 Pakistani soldiers killed who may have been fighting with the Taliban) your argument has merit. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7447608.stm
Regards,
@3robert reavis
Theres also a famous video of Zbignew Brezinski landing in Pakistan encouraging militants to fight the good jihad.
This is the same Brezinski in a 1998 interview to a Italian newspaper admitting that he concieved the Afghan war by training militants 6 months prior to the Soviet invasion luring them into Afghanistan. He also bragged of encouraging China to support Pol Pot in Cambodia.
In a 1999 interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, Dr. Brzezinski described how the Carter Administration had instigated Islamic resistance in Afghanistan and thus maneuvered Moscow into military intervention. Asked if he had any regrets about the consequences of that operation, Brzezinski was indignant:
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it?
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, giving arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What matters more to world history, the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But isn't Islamic fundamentalism a world menace today?
B: Nonsense! There is no global Islam.
It is my understanding that, even if they had the will to do so, the government of Pakistan would be hard put to squash the Jihadis. They enjoy wide public support, are armed and ornery, and operate in remote tribal areas where the Pakistani military presence is negligible. The Pakistani government will take stern measures against them "when shrimp whistle".
@5Trifkovic
What do you think of Brezinski current policy towards Russia being director of ACPC and all and where it would lead?
Are the Serb majority happy with the status quo and looking towards joining the EU?
This is the poisonous fruit of interventionism.
When I was in Saudi Arabia in 1984, I was told that the Pakistani government had agreed to accept money from the Saudi's for a water and hydro-electric project, 19 years previously, in return for Pakistan accepting and implementing the Sharia Law. The same thing happened in the Sudan. Aid for Sharia. Also the Saudi's I knew at the time was petrified of then Prince, now King Abdullah. One Saudi told me that he would as easlily kill a man as a chicken. Remember, this is the same man who had his daughter executed for fooling around in Lebanon. The Saudi's are the head of the snake.
@9: If the Saudis were overthrown tomorrow, al-Qaeda or some similar faction would doubtless be the head of state, but the longer I'm alive, the more I wonder if perhaps that might not be a blessing in disguise. Among other things it would force the U.S. to deal with the beast seriously.