The first bite out of Pakistan is the most to be expected. The army and government of Pakistan are pulling very long faces about the American/British effort in Helmand province, Afghanistan. The lads in command are complaining that the new offensive is driving Taliban and al-Qaeda trigger pullers across the line on a map known as the "border." This, the Pakistanis allege, is complicating their efforts in the FATA.
Well. Golly. Gee. Aw shucks.
As water runs down hill so also do guerrillas seek the line of least resistance. This means that in Helmand province for reasons right or wrong, good or ill, Taliban has concentrated its efforts against the British while giving the American Marines the next thing to a free pass in their advances. It also means that given the choice of facing the combination of disciplined fire power and mobility of the British or American forces, the Heroic Warriors Of The One True Faith would much rather slip across the frontier and take on the paramilitary units of the Frontier Corps and the odd regular Pakistani Army unit in the region.
Rather than whine, moan, bitch and complain about the Taliban doing what they must have been expected to do--take on the weakest opponent--the Pakistani government should dispatch the majority of the regular army to the real fighting front. Sitting on their collective duff and making ugly faces at the Indians across the way does nothing to defeat Taliban nor promote the genuine national security of Pakistan.
The fact that the two Waziristans, North and South, are difficult human and geographic terrain for the Pakistani forces to operate in does not obviate the reality that the people and territory of the Warziristans are the place where war must be waged. The FATA generally has never been brought under effective government control. Nor has the central regime ever done anything substantial to promote perceptions of either existential or functional legitimacy among the tribal population of the region.
These twin failures provided the soil necessary for Islamist jihad of the Taliban sort to take root and flourish. It is the up close and personal ability of Taliban to provide a sense of community identity, administer justice, and squash corruption that has brought recruits as well as provided the extensive passive mass support base without which a guerrilla entity cannot survive for long.
Rather than admit that the years of government neglect of and prejudice against the tribals of the two Warziristans might have been responsible for the rapid growth of Taliban, the Pakistani government again took the self-defeating and irresponsible path of blaming the American Predator strikes on Taliban targets in the FATA for the continuation and growth of Taliban support. The intellectual and moral bankruptcy of this approach is highlighted by developments in the contested area of Dir.
In this area as previously in South Waziristan, a civilian militia, which is to say an ad hoc group of pissed off locals, has surrounded and besieged a Taliban group. To finish the job the locals say they need assistance from the Pakistani army. The requested assistance has not been forthcoming.
Two questions are prompted by this development. One is obvious: why is the government not speeding the required troops to the assistance of the armed and angry locals?
The other is not so self-evident but strikes at the heart of the presumed impact of the icky-poo American Predator strikes. If, as the government insists, the American efforts at remote controlled death were both so inaccurate and ill advised as to turn civilian opinion en masse against the government, then why are the locals in both South Waziristan and Dir rising up angry against the jihadists?
The answer to the second question is simply that the locals finally have had a belly full of Taliban. In particular, the locals have had more than enough of Taliban's willingness to kill civilians. To the locals the suicide bombers along with the Taliban stone-throwing, sword-wielding enforcers of Islamist virtue have exhausted the local's patience with the Virtuous Army of the Prophet.
So, the locals have grabbed their guns and made their displeasure known. They also have asked the government--their government, at least in principle--for help.
The government's ear is deafened by two considerations. The first is the distaste in Islamabad for the idea of tribesmen with guns. The second is the paucity of resources the government is willing to commit to ground combat efforts.
As the war in Pakistan widens, Islamabad is once again playing an old, tired game. The name of the game is extortion. The other player in the game is the United States. The game is played this way: You want us to do something? Well, give us something. Like intelligence, ammunition and, most importantly, you give us Predators.
That's right, policy fans. The Pakistani government wants the same horrid machines that the evil Americans use to complicate Pakistani life by wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians caught in the cross hairs on some video screen thousands of miles away. You see, if we kill our own civilians, no one will mind. If you Yanks kill them, then Taliban will lose.
Gosh, who can fail to be convinced with logic like that? There is no way that Pakistan might want Predators for the same reason the government previously wanted F-16s and other platforms as well suited for counterinsurgent operations as a Baptist minister is for playing piano in a whorehouse? Like to use against the real enemy, India?
At the same time as the government of Pakistan wants us to provide more systems which would be useful against India, it wants us to convince India to cooperate with Pakistan in the "common" struggle against terrorism and terrorists. The time has come to explain the meaning of the word "consistency" to the men of the government of Pakistan. The boys just can't get their story straight.
And, that's a fact, Jack.
While we are at it, there are a couple of other points that diplomat extraordinary Richard Holbrooke might elucidate to the Pakistanis. The first point is that Taliban is the one and only existential threat confronting Pakistan. India is a mythic enemy only. It is a useful outside evil on which the government has pinned so many of its failures past, present, and future.
In point of fact had India really, really wanted to end the Kashmir dispute, it could have at any time of its choosing. The same fact still exists, Pakistan's rudimentary nuclear arsenal to the contrary not withstanding. The continuation of Kashmir as an active diplomatic dispute is testimony to India's unwillingness to use war as its instrument of choice.
The second fact of life which Mr Holbrooke or somebody ought to get through to the state-of-denial afflicted Pakistani government is that Taliban has the initiative. It has the ability to exercise horizontal escalation into Baluchistan. It can use urban terror whenever and wherever it chooses. It can avoid contact with the Pakistani forces in FATA. Or, it can attack from a local position of strength and inflict political will damaging casualties on the government forces.
And, those are facts, Jack.
The final ground truth that must be communicated to the boys in Islamabad is that they have grabbed the tiger's tail. They now have only two choices: Kill the tiger. Or, let the tiger eat them.
Whining, moaning, bitching, complaining, blaming the Americans for actually fighting a war in Afghanistan, seeking to extort Predators, or refusing to commit the majority of their ground combat forces instead of simply bombing from on high or blasting from far away are all simply ways to make damn sure the tiger eats them. Killing the tiger means standing there, facing the beast's claws and teeth--and slitting its throat.
That's the final fact, Jack.
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