Turkey steps into the breach left by our lack of strategic imagination

World Bulletin piece via Our Man in Kabul.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Monday the tripartite mechanism between Turkey, Afghanistan and Pakistan would make efforts to hold the Istanbul Forum meeting, one that involves businesspeople of the three countries, in Kabul, Afghanistan. 

Davutoglu held a tripartite meeting with Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmay Rassoul and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi at Ciragan Palace in Istanbul as part of the Third Summit of Heads of State and Government of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-building Measures in Asia (CICA). 

Speaking at a press conference following the tripartite meeting, Davutoglu said that they wanted to contribute to the "normalization process" in Afghanistan by showing that Kabul was not a city in which only security meetings took place but also a city in which economic meetings could take place. 

Turkey will indeed try our patience in its regional ambitions, but there is far more positive force than negative friction created by this push, so I say, bring it on in spades!

Regional powers stepping in to let Afghanistan know it's not on its own once NATO leaves is a very good thing. The more those signals are sent, especially from nations with established reputations of defending their regional interests vigorously, the faster we move the Taliban to a sense of inevitability--as in, the world is coming and it's never leaving, so get used to it.

The more Pakistan goes after the frontier extremists, the more they seem to penetrate Pakistan's interior

The victims of terrorists bury their dead

Economist story that argues the extremists are growing strong in the more advanced areas of Pakistan--in effect, spilling out of the frontier into what most would consider to be Pakistan proper.

Vibe: the more the Pakistan military/security forces go after the extremists (Pak/Pashtun Taliban, Afghan Taliban in refuge, al Qaeda & other militants) in the FATA and NW Frontier Province, the more those groups retaliate by spreading eastward and southward into previously stable areas--returning the favor, so to speak.

Corollary argument is that whenever the same happens, radical elements are driven over border into Afghanistan, something that, as a rule, Islamabad is okay with, because it prefers Pashtun dominance in the north (the "strategic depth" argument).

Upshot being, this is why Islamabad in general likes to take a hands-off approach to the FATA and NW province: the hornet's nest stirred up is bad for Pakistan's usually more stable areas.

Story highlights a recent gunmen attack on the Ahmadis in Lahore.  They are a religious minority often persecuted as heretics by fundamentalist Muslims.  Over 90 were killed, and the shocking events retriggered a debate about how pervasive the Taliban are across the country as a whole.  Gov says there ain't no such thing as Punjabi Taliban, but local police in Lahore argue otherwise, saying they were behind recent Ahmadi assault.

There have always been Sunni Muslim extremist outfits in the settled areas, typically banned yet tolerated (and even supported by Pakistan's ISI [Inter-Services Intelligence]), especially if they proved useful vis-a-vis India in the Kashmir "olive-tree" fight (like the most publicized player, Lashkar-e-Taiba, responsible for the 2008 Mumbai assault).  Conventional wisdom has long said that these groups were distinct from the Taliban in the NW; now many are saying that's no longer true. More and more these groups decry the "foreign domination" of the US, so everything seems to be increasingly mushed together in that nasty "stew" you keep hearing about.

Conclusion of piece:  the more the US pushes Islamabad to work the Taliban issue in the NW, the more likely we end up pushing them to address militants throughout the country.  In short, either a comprehensive element or the usual whack-a-mole selectivity on Islamabad's part will become too apparent to hide from all interested parties.

This analysis falls in with the arguments you see more and more in the community that our focus in South Asia should be Pakistan, not Afghanistan.  That dovetails with my choose-India-first arguments.

Inevitably, I think this is how events are funneled. 

The Obama mistake is choosing Pakistan over India

Reuters wire piece via Our Man in Kabul.

The gist:

The Obama administration is grappling with how to balance India's role in Afghanistan as arch-rival Pakistan also jostles for influence there ahead of Washington's planned troop withdrawal to start in mid-2011.

U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is set to be included on the agenda in U.S.-India talks this week in Washington -- with Delhi seeking clarity over rival Pakistan's role, particularly in reconciliation plans with the Taliban.

The Obama administration has so far sent mixed signals over the kind of role it wants India to play in Afghanistan, leaving an impression at times, say experts, that Pakistan's strategic interests could have more weight.

"I don't think this (U.S.) administration or the previous one knows how to balance our legitimate interests in both Pakistan and India effectively," said Christine Fair, assistant professor at Georgetown University and a South Asia expert.

While U.S. diplomats have praised the $1.3 billion India has pumped into reconstruction work in Afghanistan since 2001, military commanders have voiced concern that muscle-flexing by India could provoke Pakistan and stir up regional tensions.

"Increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions and encourage Pakistani countermeasures in Afghanistan or India," wrote U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, who is in charge of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, in a leaked assessment of the war last September.

The implication of McChrystal's view, said expert Lisa Curtis, was that India's approach was not viewed as helpful and Pakistan's strategic interests were more in play.

"That sent the wrong signal," said Curtis. "The U.S. should instead positively reinforce the political and economic activities of engagement by India (in Afghanistan)," added Curtis, who is with the Heritage Foundation.

"The idea that we would somehow ask India ... to draw back from Afghanistan to placate Pakistan which is still harboring Afghan Taliban leadership is very short-sighted and frankly makes no strategic sense," said Curtis.

Couldn't agree more with the Heritage Foundation:  our long-term bet has to be on India, because it will fuel globalization's advance and consolidation in South Asia--pure and simple.  You dance with them that brung ya.

Giving into Pakistan on the Taliban/Pashtun role in/control over Afghanistan is to buy yourself repeat visits. India represents a more dangerous path, no doubt, and a harder one.

But it's a permanent fix because it includes some solution on Kashmir.

We need India going forward.  Do not forget that under any circumstances.

Pakistan: pre-approved for retaliatory strikes.

Mohammad al-Corey Haim makes an appearance in court.  Add just a touch of success to his efforts and the plans currently being put together inside the Pentagon (would you expect anything less?) would have instantly morphed into operations that involve more than sending our incredibly flying machines to pick them off in onesies-twosies.

The gist:

The U.S. military is reviewing options for a unilateral strike in Pakistan in the event that a successful attack on American soil is traced to the country's tribal areas, according to senior military officials.

Ties between the alleged Times Square bomber, Faisal Shahzad, and elements of the Pakistani Taliban have sharpened the Obama administration's need for retaliatory options, the officials said. They stressed that a U.S. reprisal would be contemplated only under extreme circumstances, such as a catastrophic attack that leaves President Obama convinced that the ongoing campaign of CIA drone strikes is insufficient.

"Planning has been reinvigorated in the wake of Times Square," one of the officials said.

At the same time, the administration is trying to deepen ties to Pakistan's intelligence officials in a bid to head off any attack by militant groups. The United States and Pakistan have recently established a joint military intelligence center on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar, and are in negotiations to set up another one near Quetta, the Pakistani city where the Afghan Taliban is based, according to the U.S. military officials. They and other officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity surrounding U.S. military and intelligence activities in Pakistan.

The "fusion centers" are meant to bolster Pakistani military operations by providing direct access to U.S. intelligence, including real-time video surveillance from drones controlled by the U.S. Special Operations Command, the officials said. But in an acknowledgment of the continuing mistrust between the two governments, the officials added that both sides also see the centers as a way to keep a closer eye on one another, as well as to monitor military operations and intelligence activities in insurgent areas.

Obama said during his campaign for the presidency that he would be willing to order strikes in Pakistan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a television interview after the Times Square attempt that "if, heaven forbid, an attack like this that we can trace back to Pakistan were to have been successful, there would be very severe consequences."

I do love the way that woman speaks the truth without apology.

Honestly though, this possible dynamic makes me question the entire lets-choose-Pakistan-over-India logic of this administration.

We are letting others drive our strategy, others who have our worst outcomes in mind.

Grafting an old fight on a new fear: jihadists chase fads too

WAPO story by way of WPR's Media Roundup on how a jihadist leader in Pakistan is stoking fears on India's upstream control of rivers.

Gist:

The latest standoff between India and Pakistan features familiar elements: perceived Indian injustices, calls to arms by Pakistani extremists. But this dispute centers on something different: water.

Militant organizations traditionally focused on liberating Indian-held Kashmir have adopted water as a rallying cry, accusing India of strangling upstream rivers to desiccate downstream farms in Pakistan's dry agricultural heartland. This spring, a religious leader suspected of links to the 2008 Mumbai attacks led a protest here of thousands of farmers driving tractors and carrying signs warning: "Water Flows or Blood." The cleric, Hafiz Sayeed, recently told worshipers that India was guilty of "water terrorism."

India and Pakistan have pledged to improve relations. But Sayeed's water rhetoric, echoed in shrill headlines on both sides of the border, encapsulates two issues that threaten those fragile peace efforts -- an Indian dam project on the shared Indus River and Pakistan's reluctance to crack down on Sayeed.

It also signals the expanding ambitions of Punjab-based militant groups such as the banned Lashkar-i-Taiba, founded by Sayeed, through an issue that touches millions who live off Pakistan's increasingly arid land.

Pakistan's water supply is dwindling because of climate change, outdated farming techniques and an exploding population. Now Pakistan says India is exacerbating its woes by violating the treaty that for 50 years has governed use of water originating in Kashmir.

India denies the charge, and its ambassador to Pakistan recently called the water theft allegations "preposterous." International water experts say that there is little evidence India is diverting water from Pakistan but that Pakistan is right to feel vulnerable because its water is downstream of India's.

The underlying reality is that there's no real evidence for the charge, but plenty of circumstantial conspiracy-style "evidence" and a triggering event/perception of climate change to fuel local fears.  The jihadis are drawn to any potential cause celebre.  Why?  To control through disconnection requires you blame the world for all your woes.

The real truth:

Politics aside, experts say, Pakistan's water situation is reaching crisis proportions. As the population has grown over six decades, per-capita water availability has dropped by more than two-thirds. About 90 percent of the water is used for agriculture, making it an economic lifeline but leaving little for human consumption.

Inefficient irrigation and drainage techniques have degraded soil and worsened shortages, forcing many small farmers to pump for groundwater. A severe electricity crisis means most rely on diesel-powered pumps, but fuel prices are rising, said M. Ibrahim Mughal, head of Agri Forum, a farmers' advocacy group.

So you ask yourself:  does Pakistan suffer from too little globalization (my diagnosis) or too much (the jihadis' charge at its most generalized level)?

None of these problems are insurmountable, but population growth plus outdated ag practices equals a disaster that must be blamed on outsiders.

The ally we rely upon to save our bacon in Afghanistan

NYT story about Pakistan's vibrant and debilitating conspiracy culture.

America competes with India and Israel as the source of all perceived woes and indignities and injustices in Pakistan--in addition to the wider Muslim world.

This is the country we're betting on to make our withdrawal from Afghanistan work.

Americans may think that the failed Times Square bomb was planted by a man named Faisal Shahzad. But the view in the Supreme Court Bar Association here in Pakistan’s capital is that the culprit was an American “think tank.”

That is seriously infantile thinking from a group one would assume represents the best thought leadership in the country.

But it appears to be perfectly acceptable public dialogue inside Pakistan.

“When the water stops running from the tap, people blame America,” said Shaista Sirajuddin, an English professor in Lahore.

The problem is more than a peculiar domestic phenomenon for Pakistan. It has grown into a narrative of national victimhood that is a nearly impenetrable barrier to any candid discussion of the problems here. In turn, it is one of the principal obstacles for the United States in its effort to build a stronger alliance with a country to which it gives more than a billion dollars a year in aid.

The crux of the problem:

It does not help that no part of the Pakistani state — either the weak civilian government or the powerful military — is willing to risk publicly owning that relationship.

One result is that nearly all of American policy toward Pakistan is conducted in secret, a fact that serves only to further feed conspiracies. American military leaders slip quietly in and out of the capital; the Pentagon uses networks of private spies; and the main tool of American policy here, the drone program, is not even publicly acknowledged to exist.

The sad truth is that we are limited in our interactions with Pakistan to the tools and methods employed by that regime in its governance of the country.

The alternative is India, which has its own psychological peculiarities, like any long-abused colony.

But there are nothing in comparison, and virtually all of India's internal evolutions are trending in the right direction--unlike Pakistan, which seems to be regressing by the day (despite its bright future of just a few years ago).  Some of that dynamic, stretching back decades now, can certainly be blamed upon the United States.

But it would appear that we are past the point of reason with this "ally."

We will be played for fools by Pakistan--and by China by extension

From a WAPO article: 

A man who guided Shahzad from Karachi to the country's northwest, Pakistani officials say, was arrested this week at the mosque, which is affiliated with Jaish-i-Muhammad. The al-Qaeda-linked group is one in a mosaic of domestic jihadist organizations that were created or cultivated by Pakistan's intelligence services to antagonize Indian troops in the disputed region of Kashmir but have gone increasingly rogue.

U.S. officials say they are worried about these militant groups based in Punjab province, many of which are banned but still operate freely. The most prominent among them is Lashkar-i-Taiba, suspected in a deadly 2008 siege in Mumbai. The group has changed its legal name, but its leaders remain free.

Some elements in Pakistan's security establishment continue to view such groups as assets against India, and Punjabi politicians court them for political support. It is uncertain whether Pakistan would take aggressive action against the organizations, even if they are found to be definitively connected to the Times Square bombing attempt.

We are being held hostage to this fight.

And given the choices, why note choose India and force China to step up more and deal with Af-Pakistan?  Or should we fund all the security (or lack thereof) and let China build the ports and dig the mines?

The "what if?" counterfactual on the Times Square bombing

Mohammad al-Corey Feldman, according to Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update"; a "clean skin" according to AG Eric Holder. 

The bomb-training unit that supposedly prepped Faisal Shahzad was previously targeted by CIA drones, so there's that sense of payback.

The counterfactual to consider:  What happens if a max death count ensues?  Say, maybe a couple hundred bodies?

Well, first off, Obama is mercilessly targeted by the GOP in the usual, turnabout-is-fair-play mode.

Second, the Obama administration is required to make a big show of bombing the hell out of the direct links back in Pakistan.

Third, the US puts on a big show of calling Pakistan on the carpet.

Fourth, the US announces some sort of strategic review of our approach to NW Pakistan.

Fifth, we move according to the decisions of that review, and Pakistan counters with its own charges, moves, and diplomacy--likely to involve the Chinese?

Put the death total at a lot higher (better, bigger bomb and it works) and you just turbocharge that whole process.

But when the event fails, everybody breathes a sigh of relief--especially the Chinese!

And yet, if we move into the many-and-small-attacks world, every once in a while they will be successful, and so we'll need to get used to that, and develop some sense of proportional response that doesn't unduly freak out ourselves, the host nation, or its allies.

Esquire's Politics Blog: 5 Missing Links Between the Times Square Bomber and Pakistan, Connected

My first post to Esquire's group blog.

As useful idiots go, Faisal Shahzad is proving himself in all directions: the naturalized terrorist who stirs up anti-immigrant fervor; the ex-pat who puts Pakistan back on America's hot seat, the screw-up bomber who almost escapes President Obama's grasp only to be Mirandized (the horror!) upon arrest, the sleeper jihadist who scores a global media bonanza for his handlers back in Waziristan (not a fake name), and the super-talkative detainee still spilling his guts to the G-Men. This numskull's got something for damn near everyone. Hell, I even feel sorry for BP, fortunate as it was to have 53 hours and 20 minutes of semi-relief from non-stop media glare.

Read the rest at Esquire.com's The Politics Blog.

 

I got the heads up last night around 6pm and turned 725 in around 9pm. Was feeling decidedly under the weather (allergens are death right now in Indy), which is why it took so long. Still, fun to be included in this new group blog at Esquire.