"Mullah Toofan" is a very bad guy whose previous claims to fame have been based on his video performances in the roll of whip wielding thug and Decapitator First Class. His able right arm and skills with sword and knife have made him a feared figure among the Taliban's Mighty Warriors of Allah. His oratorical skills are also of the requisite sort as he has made many mighty threats against both the infidel "Crusaders" and the assorted "apostates" of Pakistan. While he has not yet reached the rarefied levels of Osama bin Laden as an analyst of American culpability in "global warming," he is very good at demanding death to Americans, Westerners, and indigenous perverting backsliders from Islam (as he understands the religion.)
With the official job title of "acting" capo d' tutti capi, "Mullah Toofan" can put his skills of "killing humans as others kill chickens" (as one local villager reportedly described matters) to work on behalf of an armed group which has seen hard times of late. The Pakistani Army did kill a number of Taliban trigger pullers during their less than blitz-like campaigns in Swat and South Waziristan even if it has been reluctant to say the least to continue the move into the sanctuary zone of North Waziristan.
It is highly probable that the new guy will continue the policies of his two predecessors. This means Pakistan will have more suicide bombings, more mass killings, more attacks on even presumably secure, hard targets such as military and police installations. It also means that Taliban will continue to make itself increasingly detested within large segments of the local population. Whether in the FATA or the major cities of the country, the Taliban's willingness to kill has become not a strength but a potentially fatal weakness.
"Mullah Toofan" will also have to deal with the effects of Operation Moshtarak. The US Marines, British Army, and Afghan National Forces are moving in on the Taliban stronghold of Marjah in Helmand province. While the fight will be tough, the end result will see a goodly number of surviving Taliban fighters cross the border into "Mullah Toofan's" territory. Given the nature of Taliban in Pakistan's command and control system, logistics, and overall organizational perturbation, the influx of defeated guerrillas from Afghanistan will be a further cause of overall weakness.
The Pakistani Army and government have long been apprehensive regarding the proposed US/ISAF/ANF operations in Helmand as it would cause a massive flow of turban-topped, bearded Koran wavers into the FATA--particularly North Waziristan. Now that push-comes-to-shove time is upon them, the Pakistani leadership will have to decide whether or not to reconceptualize the cross border movement as an opportunity rather than a threat.
The very best time to land a heavy, perhaps fatal, blow on Taliban in Pakistan is one of confusion and disorder within Taliban ranks. The combination of ever-new senior commanders, loss of many experienced mid-level personnel, past pressure from the army of Pakistan, and the arrival of a mob of defeated (but not necessarily demoralized) Taliban gun slingers beating feet ahead of the "infidels" provides the best possible basis for neutralizing the Thugs For Mohammad as a military force.
If the Pakistani Army (and its government) can show a capacity for movement faster than that of a snail with a hernia and an offensive orientation transcending that of a rabbit, the next four to six weeks could see Taliban put on the ropes as an armed threat to Islamabad. Of course the capacity to move aggressively requires a political will to do so on the part of the government and army alike.
It is legitimate to doubt that sufficient will exists or will exist in the near-term. There are too many Islamists in both the government and army for effective political will aimed at the ending of Taliban in either Pakistan or Afghanistan to take root and flourish.
Along with the presence of Islamists and sympathizers with Islamism there is another factor enervating any effective Pakistani focus on Taliban. That factor is India. More properly it is the apparent inability of the Pakistani elite to get beyond India as the only "enemy" confronting the country. Or, to narrow the focus slightly, the problem is the willingness of many in the political and military elites of Pakistan to risk the continuation of the country in its present form in order to pursue a chimera--the conquest of Kashmir.
Irredentism is a risky basis for policy. More than a few countries in the West have discovered this truth over the years. The astigmatism shown by many individuals in Pakistan regarding Kashmir show that they have not profited by the final failure of irredentism where it has existed before.
Between Islamism and irredentism there is no real probability that Pakistan will take full--or any--advantage from the opportunities being handed them by American Predators and Operation Moshtarak. That, bucko, is the unfortunate truth about our "allies" in the war against al-Qaeda and Taliban.
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