Wingnuts have screeched for years that Iraq is about defeating "militant Islam", and not about determining whether Sunnis or Shia dominate a post-Saddam Iraq. If we withdraw, Al-Qaeda will take over Iraq, we were told repeatedly, again as if Al-Qaeda were a conventional army that takes and holds territory rather than an extremely loose affiliation of irregulars that primarily seeks destabilisation.
Years later, "some senior U.S. military commanders" are 'privately' saying it is Afghanistan and Pakistan that are the Central Front in the GWOT. Wow, I guess when you have a situation where half of Afghanistan and most of the Pakistani Tribal Areas are in the hands of "militant Islam", you just may have something resembling a "front". Is that why we have four times as many troops in Iraq as we do in Afghanistan?
In Iraq, the "Coalition" is largely fictional. The British have left and the remainder of the Coalition troops number in the hundreds per country (at most). South Korean troops seldom even leave their base, and they are one of the "big" contingents at less than a thousand. The rest of the allies mostly just protect themselves at their bases. In Afghanistan, however, the British, Canadians, and Dutch are a significant force. These allies are pushed to the limit, and the Decider relentlessly leans on them to do more and pick up the slack from his own misguided focus on Iraq. The White House has all but blamed them for the failure of Bush's brilliantly optimistic vision in Afghanistan. We're reduced to bragging about girls being able to go to school, where they can grow up in a collapsed economy with warlords as the primary authority, and with an impotent puppet government that seems incapable of controlling the capital. The drug trade is the big economic engine, and areas are 'taken' at high cost only to revert back to Taliban control days after we withdraw. The Afghan government is little more than the new masters of the national shakedown, in which bribes are needed to complete virtually any transaction or travel anywhere. Reconstruction is non-existent, with the vast majority of the money going to pay the salaries and expenses of the administrators, who then blame the lack of security for the lack of reconstruction progress. But girls are now going to school, and that makes it all worthwhile, so smile about the "success".
Meanwhile, Pakistan has seen a de-facto seccession of the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas, with an insurrection that threatens to spread into Pakistan proper. For years, Bush has dismissed this as some kind of aberration, rather than seeing it as the "base" of radical Islam that he continually saw Iraq as. The military knew that the best way to keep their commands and careers intact was to read from the script that the Decider handed them, however disconnected from reality it may be. Afghanistan/Pakistan was offically a sideshow, and those feeble allies of ours had better step up to the plate and kill the "bad guys" or the Decider would stop liking them.
With a strategy that seems to begin and end with the ultra-simplistic "kill the bad guys", the Bush Administration proposed what it saw as the logical outgrowth: send in American troops to Pakistan, and they will kill the bad guys. Apparently the "bad guys" are easily distinguished by their black hats and tendency to twirl their moustaches in a sinister manner, and those silly Pakistani allies of ours, much like those in Afghanistan, were too dumb and feeble to carry out this simple task. So, with the heaving sigh of those who have to do Everything Themselves If They Want It Done Right, GI Joe would move in and Save The Day once again.
The ungrateful Pakistanis, however, didn't want us to "save the day", as we had done in Iraq or Afghanistan. Don't they know who they are dealing with? Do they understand that the Decider might stop liking them if they disagree with him? Don't they want to win? Are they too stupid to jump at the chance at being the next failed state created by Bush?
Apparently so.
Therefore, in the fantasy world created in the White House, it may very well be that Iraq will continue to be the Central Front of Something Poorly Defined and Increasingly Vague. Afghanistan will continue to be a battle that we are perpetually "winning", despite our lousy allies and their inability to take Bush's supreme vision and run with it to Victory. And we will continue to glower at Musharraf and threaten to stop being his friend unless he figures out who the Boss is. And, of course, "militant Islam" will continue to be the "pre-eminent threat of the Century" while somehow simultaneously being perpetually "on the ropes" and "in their last throes". We are always winning, and the danger is always increasing. And nobody sees the contradiction therein.
story from alawsat
US Shift Seen to Pakistan, Afghanistan
27/01/2008
WASHINGTON, (AP) - The Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaeda is posing fresh threats.
There is growing recognition the United States risks further setbacks, if not deepening conflict or even defeat, in Afghanistan, and that success in that country hinges on stopping Pakistan from descending into disorder.
Privately, some senior U.S. military commanders say Pakistan's tribal areas are at the center of the fight against Islamic extremism; more so than Iraq, or even Afghanistan. These areas border on eastern Afghanistan and provide haven for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters to regroup, rearm and reorganize.
This view may explain, at least in part, the administration's increasingly public expressions of concern.
At a Pentagon news conference last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said that while the U.S. respects the Pakistani government's right to decide what actions are needed to defeat extremists on its soil, there are reasons to worry that al-Qaeda poses more than an internal threat to Pakistan.
The Pentagon says it has fewer than 100 troops in Pakistan, including personnel who are training Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps along the Afghanistan border.
The U.S. military has used other means, including aerial surveillance by drones, to hunt Osama bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders believed to be hiding near the Afghan border. Ground troops on the Afghan side sometimes fire artillery across the border at known Taliban or al-Qaeda targets, and U.S. officials have said special operations forces are poised to strike.
In recent days, administration officials have said they would send more U.S. forces if the Pakistani government decided it wanted to collaborate more closely. Still, it is far from certain that U.S. combat troops will set foot in Pakistan in any substantial numbers. On Friday, Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, said his country opposes any foreign forces on its soil.
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story from AP
Top Agents in Secret Trip to Pakistan
Jan 27, 4:19 AM (ET)
By PAMELA HESS
WASHINGTON (AP) - The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from President Pervez Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border, a senior U.S. official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity given the secret nature of the talks, declined to disclose what was said, but Musharraf was quoted two days after the Jan. 9 meeting as saying U.S. troops would be regarded as invaders if they crossed into Pakistan to hunt al-Qaida militants.
The New York Times - which first reported on the secret visit by CIA Director Michael Hayden and Mike McConnell, director of national intelligence - said Musharraf rebuffed an expansion of an American presence in Pakistan at the meeting, either through overt CIA. missions or by joint operations with Pakistani security forces.
Pakistan has been under growing U.S. pressure to crack down on militants in its tribal regions close to the Afghan border, a rugged area long considered a likely hiding place for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and his top deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, as well as an operating ground for Taliban militants planning attacks on coalition forces in Afghanistan.
Several U.S. presidential candidates have hinted they would support unilateral action in the area.
In a Jan. 11 interview, Musharraf told The Straits Times of Singapore that U.S. troops would "certainly" be considered invaders if they set foot in the tribal regions. "If they come without our permission, that's against the sovereignty of Pakistan," he said. "I challenge anybody coming into our mountains. They would regret that day."
South Waziristan is a semiautonomous region where the central government has never had much control. It is home to scores of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, many of whom fled there from neighboring Afghanistan after the U.S-led invasion in 2001.
The border region emerged as a front line in the war on extremist groups after Musharraf allied Pakistan with the U.S. following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Washington has given Pakistan billions of dollars in aid to help government forces battle militants.
Musharraf, who toured Europe last week seeking support for his embattled government, rejected claims that the violence was a sign of a resurgent Taliban. More than 150 rebels and soldiers are reported to have been killed in the region this month alone.
Musharraf in the past has credited cooperation between Pakistani intelligence services and the CIA, both of whom believe that Pakistani militant leader Baitullah Mehsud was the mastermind of the Dec. 27 gun and suicide bomb attack that killed former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.
But the State Department's counterterrorism chief, Dell Dailey, said Tuesday that the Bush administration was displeased with "gaps in intelligence" received from Pakistan about the activities of extremist groups in the tribal regions.
"We don't have enough information about what's going on there. Not on al-Qaida. Not on foreign fighters. Not on the Taliban," he said.
Dailey, a retired Army lieutenant general with extensive background in special operations, said Pakistan needs to fix the problem. However, said the U.S. wasn't likely to conduct military strikes inside Pakistan on its own, saying that would anger many Pakistanis.
Rather than allow an increased U.S. presence, the Times reported that Pakistan and the United States are discussing other joint efforts, such as increased use of armed Predator surveillance aircraft over the tribal areas, and identifying ways the U.S. can speed intelligence information to Pakistani security forces.
The paper said the Jan. 9 trip by McConnell and Hayden came five days after senior administration officials debated new strategies for dealing with Pakistan. It had reported previously that no decisions were made at that meeting of the National Security Council, which included top administration officials, but not President Bush.
The times quoted a senior officials as saying "the purpose of the mission (by McConnell and Hayden) was to convince Musharraf that time is ticking away" and that the increased attacks on Pakistan would ultimately undermine his effort to stay in office.
Time is "ticking away" for Bush, not for Musharraf. The campaign in the tribal areas is unpopular in Pakistan, and also unpopular with the Pakistani troops. Arrogantly, the Bush Administration sees its association with Musharraf as some kind of boost to the Pakistani dictator, when the opposite is true. Musharraf is increasingly seen as a puppet in domestic opinion, much like Karzai in Afghanistan, and any statements challenging Washington simply make Musharraf appear less of a pawn. Nearly all of the foreign leaders that eagerly read off the script that Bush handed them have been removed from power; the exceptions are those countries whose governments are not democratic, or only nominally so. Generally speaking, the way to hang on to power in the last 2 years has been to distance yourself from the Decider while mouthing placating words of support to prevent being "liberated". This will not improve as Bush's lame-duck status becomes more and more obvious. Sarkozy is already doing and end run around Bush in India with their own nuclear deal. The EU is actually wondering out loud what the plan would be after we bombed Iran into oblivion. Russia is defining its foreign policy by what irritates Bush the most. China is giving Bush the rope he needs to hang himself economically by buying the debt created by the Iraq debacle while letting the U.S. take the heat for tackling "militant Islam". The world no longer is mystified and terrified by the Decider; it's snickering behind his back and playing him for a sap.
And how about those billions in aid the U.S. has given to Musharraf to fight the GWOT? Well, most of that has gone into buying weapons systems designed to fight its longtime foe, India. Nobody in the Bush Administration connected the dots when Pakistan bought F-16 fighters from us that these were not really the kind of thing that would help in fighting the Taliban in the tribal areas. Why scrutinise our allies, after all? They're the good guys.
This isn't a case of corruption, as so many dismiss it as. The problem isn't that billions went into somebody's pocket instead of into the GWOT, but rather that it went toward something absolutely counter to our interests in the region, namely a build-up for an Indo-Paki war. A war between India and Pakistan does nothing to advance the GWOT, so why do we finance one?
I am so sick of people saying that this is Pakistan, corruption is endemic, this is how things are done there. We are spending money to make a war more likely, one that is against our interests and is likely to increase China's influence in the region. It's not a case of lining someone's pockets with aid money. It just isn't. It would be better for us if the money did go into some corrupt politician's pocket, rather than being used to foment a regional war.
By the way, this AP story notes that the Tribal Areas are "home to scores of al-Qaida and Taliban fighters". A score is 20. Are we really to believe that there may be as few as 40 "bad guys" in South Waziristan causing all this trouble? Couldn't they at least say "hundreds"?
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