Karzai Calls It Like It Is

After years of denial, pussymouthing and semi, hemi, demi-clandestine action, Afghan president Hamid Karzai has finally told a bitter and very real truth. It's about time someone did, since the direction of the so-called "good war" is at stake.

Get a grip on this: If the US and NATO are not to lose in Afghanistan, the war must be carried to the Taliban/al-Qaeda base areas in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan.

When the US and NATO rushed to invade Afghanistan, remove Taliban from power and (in a maximal goal) apprehend the al-Qaeda command and control group, the presence of border sanctuaries in Pakistan's remote, mountainous and barely governed FATA was ignored. Perhaps this was because the current administration did not want to take the time and spend the political capital necessary to assure there were enough boots on the ground to limit egress from Afghanistan to Pakistan. Perhaps it was because Washington did not want to unduly pressure the Islamist leaning Pakistani military and intelligence services.

Perhaps it was because the Rumsfeld run Defense Department really, really, really believed that "shock and awe" would so stun the recipients that they would merely cower waiting to be arrested. Or, perhaps it was because the Rumsfeld Crew of Neocon Ninnies just wanted to make sure we had the force available for the real war--the invasion of Iraq.

The reasons don't matter. Only the results.

Even as US and allied forces including Afghan combatants entered the Tora Bora region, the Pakistanis were removing their Taliban and al-Qaeda clients. In at least some cases they did this while our men watched.

If one considers successful and unsuccessful counterinsurgency campaigns, a specific commonality of both stands out. It's not winning the hearts and minds of the uncommitted. It's not killing insurgents faster than they can replace their losses. It's not even the presence or absence of advanced technology weapons and equipment in the hands of the counterinsurgents.

The commonality?

Sanctuaries. Convenient cross-border and relatively immune from effective attack areas for rest, resupply and training.

Get a grip on this.

In the Greek Civil War following World War II, the Greek government became successful only after Josip Tito closed the borders between Yugoslavia and Greece while the Greek National Army with the addition of US support was able to interdict the Albanian and Bulgarian borders with Greece.

In Malaya the twelve year long British effort to counter the communist Chinese insurgents was made possible by the simple fact that the "bandits" had no sanctuary. The same can be seen in the contemporaneous success of the US and Philippine national government in quashing the Huk insurgency.

When the US entered the South Vietnamese insurgency, insufficient thought was given to the ready availability of sanctuaries in both Cambodia and Laos. Ultimately these sanctuaries were a far from inconsiderable factor in the inability of the US to effectively counter either the insurgency or the introduction of North Vietnamese forces between 1965 and 1969.

Considering the cultural, linguistic and religious identity of the population on either side of the line on the map constituting the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, it is inconceivable that the US and NATO planners had no coherent program for either sealing the border (a near impossibility) or neutralising the base camps in FATA.

The time to do either with relatively low cost and visibility came and went four to five years ago. Since then the embedded Islamist/jihadist groups in FATA and the Swat portion of the North West Frontier Province have become laws on to themselves. This has occurred dispite the rhetoric eminating from Islamibad and in large measure because the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) continues to support the Islamist entities.

Karzai has finally blown the whistle on the pretense that Pakistan is fighting "Islamist extremists" in the FATA. He has also, in effect, dropped the flag on the Pakistani play that the Frontier Corps is not riddled with Talibanists.

As widely reported, Kazai has threatened to let the Afghan National Army undertake operations in FATA. The Associated Press report gives a representative coverage of Karzai's move. See, http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gFzfzO1J3TT_eqpmvsK7pYkw3H4gD91AM7EG0.

The response from Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which is the Pakistani version of Taliban was not long in coming. See, http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=21827.

The spokesman for TTP, Moulvi Omar, vowed that his fighters would wage war with new resolve and furor. He also, according to the Media Line, telephone interview, called Karzai "sick." His entire statement read, "Karzai is 'sick' and utterly frustrated at Taliban successes in Afghanistan. Taliban has won victory in its resistance against NATO forces, and Karzai's government is confronted with a humiliating defeat."

Sick or not, the Afghan president has issued a challenge. Not just to TTP but to the Islamabad regime as well.

It will no longer do for the Pakistanis' new, democratically elected civilian government merely to assert that it is negotiating only with "moderate" members of TTP or to insist that the Pakistani Army will "vigorously" defend the country's sovereignty or to spew venom accusing the US and its allies of butchering innocent Frontier Corps' personnel.

Karzai's challenge actually demands that the Government of Pakistan stop being mugwumps, get off the fence and decide which side it is on. This possibility probably scares the pants off the current administration in Washington.

It has been whispered around Foggy Bottom, Langley and the Pentagon for years that the Pakistanis were a damn thin and pliable reed to lean any of our policy on. It has been well known and understood for beaucoup years by all except the most dunderheaded of neocon ninnies that the Government of Pakistan was not an ally and never really had been.

Pakistan had been thrown into bed with the US by the concatenation of the Cold War (specifically the objectionable from our perspective "non-aligned" nature of India's policies during the Fifties, Sixties, Seventies and Eighties) and Pakistan's running sore wars with India over the Ran of Kutch and Kashmir. These two factors and nothing else made Pakistan a client state not an ally.

Nor were the US and Pakistan allies during our proxy war with the Soviet occupation forces in Afghanistan. When the Reagan administration allowed control of the mujaheddin to slip from our fingers into those of the ISI, we inadvertently opened the door to both the growth of Islamism and the eventual victory of Taliban.

It's time for those who have whispered in the corridors of power to start talking out loud. Drop the pretense. If we really want not to lose in Afghanistan, we have to back Karzai's play.

It takes more than boots on the ground to not lose a counterinsurgency. It takes moving the boots to the sanctuaries and denying the insurgents any place to hide, any place to take a breath free from fear.