Pakistan--Here Today, Gone Tomorrow?

A year ago very few would have answered that question in the affirmative. Now, very, very few would say, "No" to the proposition.

There are some indications that members of the Pakistani economic and business elite have lost faith in the will and capacity of the government to slow, let alone halt and reverse the steady advance of Taliban. The number of families within the elite which has made either preparations for movement out of the country had been increasing at a slow rate since the immediate aftermath of the holiday bombing. Since the agreement with Sufi Muhammad regarding the imposition of Sharia in Swat and coterminous regions, the expatriation of money, the acquisition of real property and other precursors of a high speed move out of Dodge have accelerated.

Taliban has severely challenged the Islamabad government. First, it rejected completely the government's demand for Sharia courts to be integrated with the federal legal system. Then the lads with guns and Qurans took over the Buner district which brings it within sixty miles of Islamabad. The government's response has been, to be charitable, flaccid.

Simultaneously Taliban has been talking and acting as though it has already won. At the very least Taliban spokesmen have been talking the talk of victory. In essence the crew has defied the smart money of the world to bet against them.

The odor of impending Taliban success has drifted into Washington the past couple of days. Its arrival was delayed due to an attack of Willful Denial Syndrome. The chief symptom of this particular Weird Policy Disorder is a constant mental mantra, "Afpak needs Pakistan as a reliable, stable partner so Pakistan cannot be going down the Islamist tubes" repeated so as to block receipt of any stimuli to the contrary.

SecState Clinton and SecDef Gates are still suffering the aftermath of their WDS attack. Both, (but Secretary Gates more than his counterpart from Foggy Bottom), seem to believe that the forthcoming Islamist Extreme Makeover of Pakistan is a greater threat to the Islamabad government than it is to the US and the West generally.

While the Taliban issued Call to Islamism would constitute more than a standard-issue bad hair day for Zardari and the rest of the government, it would be a threat which at the least borders on the existential for the current world political order. Given the Pakistani nuclear arsenal, the Taliban hands on the levers of power would be quite literally existential in its threat to countries as diverse as India, Israel--and the United States.

The problem with history is simply this. History lacks any material presence. There is no "force of history." There is no such thing as "historical inevitability."

But, the forces generated in the past propel the dynamics and nature of current events. The power of the past resides in its capacity to form the perceptions, beliefs and therefor the actions of the people of the present.

Decisions, actions, events of years--even centuries--gone by serve to limit what is conceivable, dictate what is thinkable. The past conditions the present quite simply by taking away options, narrowing the cone of acceptable outcomes.

Derailing the Taliban Express at any time over the past two decades, in the roughly twenty years which have elapsed since the Reagan administration handed over responsibility for the endgame in our Afghanistan proxy war with the Soviets to the Pakistanis, would have been difficult to the point of impossibility. The reasons for this bleak conclusion have been given in previous posts.

Suffice it say that the senior decision makers of USG did not comprehend what they were told about the depth of Islamist penetration of the Pakistani military and intelligence services. Neither did these men understand the implications of the Pakistani focus on India and the perceived need for strategic depth in that confrontation.

The off the wall strategists of the W. Bush administration were equally blind to reality. Rumsfeld and company did not appreciate the absolute necessity of decapitating al-Qaeda and Taliban rather than merely wounding the two groups. They did not appreciate the implications of the obvious close laison between Pakistani agencies and the fugitives from our invasion. They did not comprehend the continued focus on India on the part of all Pakistani military figures--including those who had taken supreme political power. They were willfully obtuse regarding the expenditure by Pakistan of the billions in aid which the US provided in a sorely misguided effort to buy cooperation and stability in Islamabad.

Now the US is reduced to the sorry state of hoping (pretending) that a few billion more bucks with added requirements for Pakistani compliance is going to knock the Taliban Express off the tracks. SecState Clinton and the House Foreign Affairs Committee are of the (public) view that the five plus gigabucks will prove sufficient leverage to assure Islamabad will both comply with our appeals for "partnership" and possess the necessary wherewithal to promote its functional legitimacy as a government.

The Clinton-Congress conversation was intended to put added pressure on the Zardari government at least to cause it to revisit the peace agreement in Swat. This may also have been the intent behind Secretary Gates remarks to the media covering his visit to Camp Lejeune. We, along with some opposition politicians in Pakistan, have viewed the agreement with Sufi Muhammad through the prism marked Great Alarm.

The lack of concern within the Pakistani government was expressed well by Prime Minister Gilani. Let's listen in.

In case peace is not restored, then naturally the mandate is the provincial government - they will discuss with the jirga, with all of the political forces of their province, they will discuss with Sufi Muhammad. And if the provincial government decides otherwise or if peace is not restored, certainly we have to review our policy

Perhaps the problem is one of English as a second language. Perhaps not. But, to the Geek at least, there is no ringing call for Islamabad's supremacy here. No tocsin for maintaining the structural integrity of Pakistan's government or constitution.

But then, perhaps PM Gilani has no worries about a Taliban takeover. He may be a closet Islamist just waiting for the chance to let his true flag fly. Or, being a member of the elite, he may already have an alternative residence in an up-scale gated community backed by a Swiss account and a first-class ticket out of Islamabad.

It is all well and good to talk the talk of "partnership" and sing paeans of praise to the Pakistani government. It is necessary to bloviate at length about our new "Afpak" strategy. After all there is some slight chance these will payoff. There is always the rather realistic hope that Taliban will shoot itself in the foot with its all-too-typical outrages conducted under the banner of Sharia, of Pure Islam. The zealots of Islamist True Belief might yet defeat themselves.

The real task for the Deep Thinkers inside the Beltway now is that of developing a threefold "OnlyPak" plan. The three major features of this plan have to be (1) neutralising the Pakistani nuclear capacity; (2) Decapitating Taliban and al-Qaeda so as to attenuate its threat potential for some years to come; (3) Planning the punitive expedition which will have to be mounted after the Islamist jihadists leave their Pakistan-Afghanistan safe harbors and strike somewhere, anywhere in the world.

It is not a pretty option to contemplate, this "OnlyPak" plan. But, the realities of the past as expressed in the actualities of the present give us few, if any other rational choice. We gotta get a grip on it.