The Race Down The Tube--Which Country Will Win?

In an excellent piece in the Jamestown Foundations Terrorism Monitor, Hassan Abbas dissects the increasing loss over the seven Tribal Agencies by the Pakistani government. It is well worth a careful reading. http://mail.google.com/mail/?auth=DQAAAHgAAAAPFJhzd4Tq1IRsqILlyiDcGKJ3HlJUcPcXmTd1Hmua78fQGMk4YDG2dApnConq87C3FPjN27yqnbuyTJr8H3WjZJddXsDELFx29l-D_wF-H0ZI9UCNP6JqskpYporZ3rmCUVY8mgU-qHNkOgTdDK7JZJILS-RmaBg0w9l-zUA1Ig&shva=1

The increasing effectiveness of Taliban and Taliban-like groups in establishing authority over these Agencies (which include North and South Waziristan) has been highly worrisome. Taken in conjunction with the evident demoralization of the Pakistani army units operating or based in the Agencies, it is a strong sign of a failed state in the making.

That's bad news. Very bad news.

But, there is another related factor.

Afghanistan. Or, to err on the side of accuracy, the capacity of the Afghan National Army.

General Dan McNeill, the American commander of the 35,000 troops of the NATO force operating in Afghanistan has warned that the impressive gains made against anti-government forces in recent months can be lost without significant improvements in the Afghan army. So far, the Afghan national force has shown little ability to hold territory or protect civilians against Taliban.

Rather wistfully it seemed to the Geek, General McNeil commented to Reuters, "It would be nice if the Afghan national security force could hold it (the Helmand River valley, a Taliban heartland and prime opium producing area), then there is less of a chance that we'll have to do it again." http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2007-09-28T102516Z_01_L28295682_RTRUKOC_0_UK-AFGHAN-GENERAL.xml&src=nl_uktopnewsmid

The "it" referred to is the tough job of slogging through Helmand again, shooting Taliban and assorted foreign jihadists off the mountain tops along the way. This is a type of war which shows counterinsurgency at its worst. Hard yomps, hard combat, civilians littering the battlefield, and insurgents hiding in the homes of the uncommitted has been the name of the game.

Only an effective Afghan national army and a reasonably legitimate Afghan national government can prevent a replay of the past weeks and months in Helmand.

Taliban has been heaved onto the ropes militarily during the offensive sweeps by US and NATO forces as well as by the few relatively competent and motivated Afghan units. This conclusion is buttressed by the shift in Taliban tactics last spring from actions directed against foreign military forces first to those with Afghan police and military units in the crosshairs and then to suicide bombing of soft civilian targets.

Taliban quickly found out that the intentional killing of civilians was even more counterproductive than inadvertent or collateral killing such as results from US or NATO airstrikes. With the death of Terrorist-in-Chief, Mullah Abdullah, Taliban literally went back to the mountains and their heartland in Helmand on the border with Pakistan.

There has been well-rooted reason for guarded optimism about the "regime change" in Afghanistan. That is true as long as Pakistan, and, more specifically, the Tribal Agencies can be left out of the equation.

Leaving either out of the mix is impossible. Anyone who does is not well oriented in space and time.

As the British well understood during the years of the Raj, the Northwest Frontier, that is the area now known as the seven Tribal Agencies, is the key to Afghanistan. Effective control of the Northwest Frontier made domination of Afghanistan a possibility. Without it, Afghanistan is open to all comers.

Pakistan is the portal to Afghanistan. Like all portals it can be either open or closed. Right now, the door is open to Taliban and its cognates. Right now, the door is closed to us and our allies.

As long as the Tribal Agencies are more under the sway of Islamists and only under the control of the Pakistani central government in name only, there is no long term hope of successfully achieving the goals established by the "regime change" in Kabul.

Get a grip on this less-than-heartening reality.

There are very real limits to what the US or other Western powers can do in Pakistan. Right now neither more pressure nor more inducements will help the current regime in Islamabad. General Musharraf may have the necessary votes to be elected as president. That does not mean he has widespread support among the population.

Musharraf may have moved supporters into the crucial positions of Deputy Chief of Staff and head of Interservices Intelligence. That doesn't mean his writ runs far or deep within either the army or ISI. Both are heavily laden with Islamists or sympathisers with Islamist ideology.

Admiral Fallon, the Commander-in-Chief of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which has military responsibility for Northwest Asia and the Persian Gulf, said recently that the increasingly bellicose rhetoric concerning Iran was "unhelpful." He has a wary eye on Pakistan.

He (and we) have to. Pakistan is teetering politically, socially, and ideologically on the edge of collapse. A Musharraf "victory" in the upcoming election won't change that. At least not right away.

Should Pakistan collapse, should it become another failed state, the challenges for the US and others will be immense. Not only would the failure of Pakistan make all the efforts and blood spent in Afghanistan nugatory, it would assure that Afghanistan went down the Taliban tube.

On the upside, the failure of Pakistan as a functional state would assure that the US administration wouldn't have to worry about the Iranians making atomic bombs or enriching uranium. Pakistan already has both. A collapsed Pakistan would allow nuclear leakage right quick.

Nature may abhor vacuums, but political vacuums attract the ambitious.

No one has ever accused the mullahocracy in Tehran with lacking ambitions.

What does this mean to us?

Among other things, the possible (even probable) Talibanization of Pakistan means that the US will need a larger ground combat force than it possesses at the moment. Perhaps it is the contemplation of unpleasant looming possibilities that has propelled SecDef Gates to urge the funding of a larger army in the very near-term.

Robert Gates is a supreme realpolitiker. He must be worried by the impending reality he sees.

If Gates is worried, so is the Geek. You should be too.