Pakistan: plenty of half-full glasses
Tuesday, December 29, 2009 at 10:23PM BRIEFING: "Pakistan's crises: Front line against the Taliban; Fighting this hydra-headed enemy is only the most obvious of the many deep problems afflicting Pakistan," The Economist, 28 November 2009.
Nice overview of the recent military efforts in the FATA.
Upside: General Ashfaq Kayani seems intent on crushing the Pakistani Taliban.
Downside: he evinces no such commitment regarding the Afghani Taliban hiding on his side of the make-believe border.
Not much new in that.
Now, the bad news:
Underpinning the army's reluctance to go after the Afghan Taliban, whose leaders are said to reside in Pakistan's city of Quetta, has been its belief that America and NATO will fail in Afghanistan.
Pakistan's military is okay with this outcome, because American failure in Afghanistan is seen as a zero-sum outcome for Pakistani influence, meaning--most importantly--a decline of Indian influence.
Pakistan's free media is preaching an anti-Americanism just as virulent as that officially espoused in neighboring Iran . . . In Peshewar's stricken bazaars, many blamed the recent blasts on foreign spies--American, Russian, Indian or Israeli.
And you wonder why I've long stated my preference for making India happy in whatever we do inside Afghanistan. I mean, what have we got to lose? Assuming you don't buy into the notion that anybody with a nuke gets whatever they want.
Time to get more mature on the subject.
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