Rubes Versus City Slickers

A few years ago the US military started hiring cultural anthropologists and embedding them in combat units in Afghanistan.  The idea was a better appreciation of cultural mores would make for more sensitive and effective use of combat power--that we could avoid the negative consequences of door kicking and mosque invading which had produced a wave of backlash in much of Iraq.  This notion was a good one and did have some real benefits for US effectiveness.

But, it was too limited.

In Afghanistan as in Iraq before as well as in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, even Turkey and Syria today, there is a much larger problem involving the anthropology of culture.  It is a dynamic with which we Americans are--or should be--quite familiar.  In our own history this particular dynamic was in large part responsible for such events as Prohibition.  It is also responsible to some degree for the more recent "culture wars" which have been so much a feature of our politics.

The phenomenon is the divide which separates folks who live in urban environments and those who dwell in remote, often rugged, always sparsely populated, and usually relatively impoverished areas.  In Afghanistan or Pakistan, it is the gulf separating the hill people from the urbanites.  In Libya, it is the distinction between the ethnics of the western mountains and the coast dwellers.  Elsewhere, it is the age old tension between subsistence and marginal farmers on the one hand and those who have migrated to the cities for the opportunities which are believed to exist there and only there.

Throughout the developing world, in all continents, in countries as far removed in geography, culture, and governmental styles as China and Mexico, Russia and Indonesia, the same dynamic is at work.  Often, the work is destructive of social and, more importantly, political harmony.

There is a set of characteristics by which the hill people, the subsistence peasants, the "exiles" of remote and rugged regions define themselves in opposition to those of their fellow citizens who live in the cities.  We Americans have seen the same definitions of self and opponent in our own recent past.  There is nothing different with the far away folks in Afghanistan and the host of other countries where the destructive tension scars the social, cultural, and political landscape.

At the risk of some over simplification, the people who live far from the seductive attractions and entrancing visions of wealth existing in the cities see themselves as more moral, more honest, more honorable, more truly human than their opposites in the city.  The rubes understand themselves to be the last vestige of honor, honesty, integrity, and religious morality.  They also see themselves as being under constant, unremitting attack by the corrupt, immoral, irreligious forces of urban life.

The rubes see the cities as vast moral swamps.  They understand the goal of urbanites to be that of attracting and perverting the sons--and more particularly, the daughters--of rural purity.  The rubes fear the appeal of the cities, the seductions of wealth, bright lights, loud music, open sexuality.

For their part, the urban dwellers, whether a century or more ago in the US or today throughout the developing world, view the rubes with disdain.  The hill people, the peasants, are all seen as rude, uneducated, unsophisticated, backward looking, fear ridden, clingers of the past, chained by religious superstition.  The rubes are dismissed as the last of a deservedly dying breed.

The two groups stare at each other through prisms of distortion--or the crosshairs of a telescopic sight.  Each distrusts the other.  Each views the other as irredeemable.  The city slickers are convinced that the rubes are hopelessly outdated, ignorant, superstitious, hung up on irrelevant concepts such as personal honor.  For their part, the rubes are certain that all city slickers are pervasively corrupt, purveyors of moral degradation, apostles of apostasy, and generally as exploitative, manipulative people given to enriching themselves at the expense of their moral betters.

As a general rule, over time the rubes are willing to strike a bargain with the city slickers.  The basis of the tacit agreement is simple: You city types just leave us alone and in return we will do the same for you.

Rarely do the rubes seek to replace the city slickers as the source of collective government.  Rarely do the rubes seek to impose their social and cultural mores on the urban population by either politics or force of arms.  To this extent the American experience of Prohibition or the more recent political activities of conservative, predominantly rural origin Christians constitute exceptions to the general experience.

In a similar way the emergence of violent political Islam is also an exception to the historical norm of "you leave us alone and we will leave you alone."  The primary appeal of violent political Islam has been to threatened rubes.  The threat may be as direct as an attempt by the urban based central government to extend its sway over the remote regions or it may be the more indirect but pernicious one of inducing the young of Rubeland to emigrate to the cities.

The hill dwelling tribesmen of Afghanistan or Pakistan's FATA are not necessarily more violent by inherent nature than others of their nationality.  Rather, they see and have seen themselves as under threat from the dishonorable, corrupt, irreligious people of Kabul or Islamabad.

The situation was not different in the US a couple of centuries ago.  The Scotch-Irish who moved to the rugged and remote frontier of the eastern mountains did so not because they were inherently of a greater man-against-nature mentality than Americans who lived in the flatlands of the coastal regions.  Nor did they and their descendants remain in the far distant hollows because they were inherently antisocial.  Neither did their more recent exemplars violently resist the incursions of mine owners, state governments, or federal "revenoors" due to some inbuilt streak of cussedness.  No.  They wanted to be left alone.

To the well intentioned outsiders of urban America, the hill dwellers of Appalachia may have appeared to be hopelessly backward, trapped in endless generations of poverty and deprivation, "clinging to their guns and Bibles" (to use the formulation of a noted and successful presidential candidate) due to personal fear of progress and change.  And, to some small extent, the impressions--at least those of poverty and deprivation--might have been true.  But, far more important was the self-belief of moral purity, the upholding of time honored traditions and values.

The folks of Appalachia were quite willing to accept some of the benefits offered by larger American society such as electricity, better medical care, economic opportunity, better housing, better nutrition.  But they were not willing to take the benefits if these were offset by participating in systems both tangible and otherwise which were antithetical to basic beliefs and values.  It took American social engineers generations to find the right approach, the proper mix, the best way to include the hill people without destroying with unacceptable rapidity the values and norms which had long sustained these people.

This is also the challenge in Afghanistan, the FATA, and other parts of Pakistan.  It is the same in the other countries currently facing collapse and failure.  Put simply, the trick is that of extending the good things of modern life to the rubes without pulling the rug of tradition, traditional values, norms, and mechanisms from under their feet.  Change is acceptable as long as it is neither too fast nor too shattering in extent.

It is the rock of time upon which the grand ship of nation building must flounder.  This is the case in Afghanistan.  This is the case in Pakistan.  Insisting on a rapid and complete penetration of the land and life of the rubes by the city slickers and their foreign supporters can only promote resistance--violent resistance.  The insistence upon extending the "corrupt" and "irreligious" systems of the city into the mountain heartlands of the rubes can only result in a more ardent embrace of those ideas--in particular the religious--which make armed opposition legitimate.

The most basic war being waged in the vast arc of countries from Afghanistan to Tunisia is not between Islam and infidel.  Nor is it between the adherents of violent political Islam and those of a more secular persuasion.  It is not even a conflict between modernity and the warm certainty of the past.  Rather it is the war between the traditionally oriented "exiles" of the hills and the city slickers.

In this war of culture, the city slicker (which includes the US government)is  its own worst enemy.  A prime characteristic of the city slicker is impatience.  For the city slicker, particularly the American, the cliche, "Time is money," constitutes an imperative.  But, to the rube, time is eternal.  Time is something the rube possesses in great quantities.

The key to success in an insurgency is contained in a simple historical reality.  The side which can afford time and accept casualties will win over the side which must save both time and lives.

What this confluence means is both easy to understand and bitter to accept.  From Afghanistan to Tunisia and at all points in between, the city slickers of the West are doomed to lose.  For the insurgent rubes, powered by the force of both the past and the ideology of religion, a line from an old Rolling Stones song applies, "Time is on my side."

Once Again It's "Strategic Review" Time For Afghanistan

While there is none of the delay and pseudo-drama of last year's "debate" over the Big Question of "Whether Afghanistan," there are definite and deep currents of difference regarding how well the US is doing in whatever it is purportedly doing in Afghanistan.  There is the ongoing contretemps between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and the US--particularly General Petraeus--over where American and other NATO or ISAF troops should be doing what.  And, not surprisingly there is the usual highly credentialed panel of self-designated experts damning the entire effort and the Obama ordered escalation as a total failure.

As if that were not a sufficient number of conflicting chefs to spoil the soup, the Pakistanis, which is to say the Army and Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has come roaring back demanding that Karzai enter into a power sharing agreement with Taliban and the Haqqani network without delay.  It borders on the ironic that the proposal set forth by Pakistani Army Chief of Staff Asfaq Kiyani is simply a more robust form of the conclusions drawn by the twenty-three academics, journalists, and former government officials.  Far less ironic and far more honest is the implicit admission by General Kiyani that Pakistan is and has been working both sides of the street in Afghanistan.

At the same time the Kiyani proposition underscores the major message of Karzai.  For years now the oft derided (by senior American diplomats and policy makers) Afghan president has argued that without ending the Pakistani support of Taliban, the Haqqani network, and al-Qaeda or sealing the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan hermetically, there will be no end to the war.  It is for this reason that Karzai has repeatedly and stridently demanded that the US and others deploy their combat power along the border rather than stage nocturnal raids on isolated Afghan homesteads or stage forcible entries into Afghan cities and towns.

While the US and its allies have seen the war in Afghanistan as one of counterinsurgency, Karzai and some others in both the Afghan government and military have seen it as one of an interstate nature.  The truth is that the war is a hybrid.  The war is an example of a very rare sort of conflict, the partisan war.  In a partisan war the combatants may be organic to the society under stress but do not have sufficient capabilities on their own to continue the war successfully.  The continuation of combat depends upon a direct cross-border supporter.

In the past century the best examples of partisan war are to be found in the several resistance movements in occupied Western Europe during World War II.  In none of the countries under Nazi domination could the domestic, organic resistance forces have accomplished the goal of ejecting the occupier on their own.  The French, the Dutch, the Danes, the Norse all relied not only on outside support from the Western Allies to continue their struggle but needed the outsiders to actually do the heavy lifting of killing Germans and destroying Germany.

The wars in South Vietnam contained partisan features when the North decided to answer the challenge of Operation Rolling Thunder by supplying and supporting the indigenous insurgents.  The partisan nature of the war became clear when Northern forces directly entered the war in sizable numbers thus relegating the insurgents to a supporting role at best.

While it is unlikely in the extreme that Pakistani forces will cross the border into Afghanistan, there has never been any lack of evidence regarding the degree to which Pakistan supports Taliban and others.  Nor has there been any doubt but Pakistan has established and controls the agenda behind the fighting in Afghanistan.  As a consequence, characterizing the war(s) in Afghanistan as a mixed state involving both insurgent and partisan features is the most accurate way of defining the war and the operational doctrines necessary to bring it to a successful (from the perspectives of Kabul and Washington) conclusion.

Ending the war will be a two stage process.  The first stage is that of hostilities termination.  The second consists of conflict resolution.  The first is primarily military in its accomplishment.  The second, the final stage, is completely political in nature.  It has been evident that the US at its senior decision making levels has never taken a firm grip on this reality.

Despite the impressive credentials of the "experts" and the cogency of their argument, their conclusion is fatally flawed at least in part.  The Obama ordered escalation has provided the manpower necessary to take the war directly to the insurgents.  The result has been a transfer in initiative from the Taliban to the US and its allies.  The increasing pressure on the insurgents has constricted both their ability and will to operate.  Even the resort to civilian casualty producing tactics such as the escalating employment of IEDs attests to this.  The Karzai decried nocturnal raids by Special Forces units and Afghan partners has done much to disrupt the organizational integrity of the Taliban and Haqqani network.

The overall effects of the offensive operations have been attenuated severely by the existence of the cross-border sanctuary in the Pakistani FATA.  Further attenuation has resulted directly from the on-going support and assistance provided by ISI and the army.  As long as these partisan war features continue, so also will the war.  It is just that simple.

The Predator and Reaper strikes against Taliban facilities and personnel in the FATA are not sufficient to offset the Pakistani assistance.  While these strikes send a nice number of trigger pullers and a small group of leaders to the Big Mo and seventy-two virgins, the net effect is not crippling to the Taliban and Haqqani network.  Crippling requires an end (or a serious reduction) of Pakistani support.

One can understand Karzai's frustration.  He has seen the problem for years with great clarity.  He has spoken and written to his American partners about it with force and moral courage.  At the same time he must deal with the internal political fallout from the nocturnal raids as he must with the collateral casualties of air strikes or artillery bombardments.  His political enemies (and he has many other than the insurgents) use every grievance real and pretended which results from a raid or air strike against him.  This has to become a real drag after a few years.

Karzai is a nationalist first and foremost.  This means he has to be treated as the head of a sovereign state.  Even when he is tossing one of his many hissy fits, he must still be treated with the respect which he believes he is entitled to and which demonstrates to the Afghan people that he and they are sovereign, respected, dignified, not the puppets and lackeys of foreigners.  General McChrystal understood this.  It is not at all evident that General Petraeus does so as well.

The matter of interpersonal relations factors directly into the problem of gaining Karzai's support for the current approach rather than attempting the utterly impossible--sealing the Pakistani border the air tight level which would be necessary to stop effective Pakistani support.  Karzai must be brought carefully on board.  He must be shown why even the advanced technology available to the US is not up to the task of securing the border.  At the same time he and his people must be given more approval rights with respect to the controversial nocturnal raids.  Again, this requires very careful handling and a willingness to forgo a raid or two in deference to local (and militarily irrational) considerations.

At the same time the US has to put pressure on the Pakistanis.  The new Pakistani "peace plan" gives adequate base to do so.  They have admitted they have the juice with Taliban and the Haqqani network.  They have effectively entered a guilty plea to Karzai's accusations.  Use it to get the ISI and army to turn the spigot down if not all the way off.

The reduction of support need not happen overnight to be effective.  It can be a process rather than an event as even a slight diminuation of Pakistani support will be reflected quickly by a degradation of insurgent combat capacity and will.  Coupled with a modest decrease of outside support and access to the sanctuaries of the FATA, the current offensive efforts (including the nocturnal raids) will prove effective in hostilities termination within a politically reasonable period (twelve to eighteen months.)

At this point--the point of hostilities termination which, to err on the side of accuracy, is more a process than an event--the politically oriented matter of conflict resolution takes over.  Importantly, as it the Afghans who must all live together in the years to come, the conflict resolution portion of the effort is almost entirely an Afghan owned procedure.  The nature and extent of power sharing is up to the Afghans alone--even if we are not pleased with the result.

It is true that problems of governance and governmental legitimacy are in play even before hostilities are terminated.  It is one more unpleasant ground truth that this is a matter for Afghans in which we outsiders play a limited role.  The degree of acceptable corruption is an Afghan matter not an American or European one.  As noted in a previous post bribery, graft, and corruption of both a political and economic nature are internal matters.  It is up to the locals to say how much is enough as well as to define what might be called equality of opportunity to be corrupt.

The way in which the several tribes, linguistic groups, and religious communities define political legitimacy, judicial independence, openness, and transparency or even fundamental honesty in government will be messy, convoluted, and probably throughly unpleasant when viewed from a Western perspective, but that is the way life is lived--get a grip on it.  Afghanistan is not, repeat, not, a contemporary Western polity and society in the making.  And, it never will be.  We have to get a grip on that as well.

Pace, experts, but we are not yet losing in Afghanistan.  The Obama escalation is not yet a failure.  Provided we do not make the fatal mistake we did in Vietnam of trying to take over both war and government, we will not lose, not militarily at least.  Provided we allow the Afghans to be effective stakeholders, we can actually reach a reasonable facsimile of winning--again at least through the hostilities termination phase.

To do this we need to keep on with our current operational doctrine.  We need to do a better job of bringing Karzai on board.  Most of all we must, repeat, must, lean on Islamabad to start the process of tamping down the partisan war aspects of the conflict.  Left to their own military and psychological resources, the organic insurgents can not hope to win.  Their only hope is to end the hostilities and seek the best accommodation in the conflict resolution process.

The road to peace in Afghanistan runs, in major part, through Islamabad but not in the way the Pakistani army and ISI hope.  The zealots in those two organizations must be brought to realize that without abandoning their duplicity in Afghanistan and getting right with Washington, they will lose access to the great American cash cow.  Since the Chinese will not play the same sort of obliging game which we have, this means they will be left very high and dry while still facing their own homegrown existential threat.

Survival is the name of the game for the men in Islamabad.  We just have to make certain that they understand it depends on the way in which they continue to play the game in Afghanistan.

The Alternative Reality Called Pakistan

One collateral benefit from the WikiLeaks diplomatic traffic data dump has been the "real time" confirmation of deep Pakistani involvement with the Taliban in Afghanistan.  While no sentient person well oriented in time and place has ever doubted the umbilical connection between the jihadists and the government, army, and intelligence service of Pakistan, there is something quite comforting in reading the assessments of qualified diplomatic observers.

The Paks were caught with their hands very deep in the cookie jar.  Rather than acting the part of the career criminal caught red handed and acknowledging that the pinch was a fair one, the Pakistani ruling elite in and out of uniform has behaved rather like a first time crook issuing denials that make Richard Nixon's famed "I am not a crook" declaration appear honest in comparison.  Indeed, the movers and shakers of military Pakistan have followed the old, disreputable approach of making counter-accusations.

To be effective, the counter-accusation gambit must be plausible.  It has to have some semblance of believability. The Pakistani effort fails this basic test.  The Paks have taken the road leading to an alternative universe by stating categorically the documents leaked are pure "disinformation" meant to discredit the government and military of Pakistan.  In the alternative reality of Pakistan, these products of the US Foreign Service are a "conspiracy" mounted by hostile forces within the US government.

The Obama administration might be wishing it too could join with Pakistan in the alternative universe given that the players of mood music inside the Beltway have been making reassuring noises about Pakistan's commitment to the joint effort against "extremism," which now seem more off key than ever in the context of the diplomatic cables.  How anybody, even one of those denizens whose brains have been damaged by too much rarefied Washington air, can really, really believe that Pakistan is and has done anything other than support Taliban in Afghanistan while doing the minimum necessary for national survival against the Pakistani equivalent boggles the mind.

Pakistan has defined its national interest in terms of a Forever War with India in which Afghanistan has represented the chimera of strategic depth.  That is why Pakistan created Taliban twenty years ago.  That is why Pakistan not only supported Taliban but gave timely warning to Osama bin Laden regarding incoming cruise missiles.  It is why Pakistan, again acting through the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), linked with the Haqqani network.  It is why to this day ISI and the army assist, support, and protect both Taliban and the Haqqani network.

The notion that Afghanistan represents strategic depth is as false as the driving imperative of the Forever War against India.  Both hallucinations are,  however, central to assuring the army's pride of place in Pakistan.  Both are the sole reason the army and ISI can continue to glom onto the sizable share of Pakistan's national resources, which has been the standard for generations now.  Without the fictions of Indian hostility and the centrality of Afghanistan to Pakistan's need for strategic depth, the army and ISI would not have the perceived moral authority to take so much of the public pie that the country as a whole is endangered by the resulting paucity of capacities to deal with very real, very pressing problems.

A key, perhaps the key, source of revenue for the army and ISI is the money paid by the US to ensure cooperation in the "joint" struggle against violent political Islam.  The extortion racket practiced by Islamabad requires keeping the war in Afghanistan perking along while somehow convincing the US that the army is doing all it can do against the areas of the FATA which provide necessary bases and support for Taliban and the Haqqani network as well as the remnants of al-Qaeda.

The release of the cables will (hopefully) make the duplicity so necessary for the extortion to continue a bit more difficult to maintain.  In this context the US government is facing a challenge of corruption far more serious than the attention grabbing graft in Afghanistan.

There is no doubt that the continued existence of cross border sanctuaries in Pakistan's FATA along with the aid and comfort provided by ISI have been and will remain crucial to both Taliban and the Haqqani network. If the FATA were to be closed or interdicted with greater efficiency than is the case presently, the pressure placed upon the trigger pullers of Islam by the US/ISAF forces would prove effective in undercutting both the ability and will of the jihadi to carry on the war.  It would lay the pavement on a genuine road to conflict resolution as well as the more limited goal of hostilities termination.

Since the documents have come out, the Obama administration can do the same.  There is ample basis for the administration to tell Islamabad in essence, "They've got the goods on us now.  Time for you to get damn serious or those highly moral Republicans in Congress will pull the plug on the money machine."

This approach, of course, requires some cooperation from the Republicans.  As the war in Afghanistan not only started under a Republican president but, far more importantly, was fought ineptly with too few resources and too grandiose a set of goals by that president, the GOP has a stake in seeing the war brought to a successful conclusion before 2012.  Doing this is impossible unless the FATA is shut down--with or without the cooperation of the Pakistanis.

Pakistan's genuine national interest including the survival of the government as currently constituted demands both the suppression of their domestic jihadis and the ending of the war in Afghanistan.  The same considerations apply to the continuation of the American money flow.  Unless and until the lads in Islamabad come to realize that here in the real world the cash cow will stop spouting as long as the army sits on its collective butt regarding the FATA, there is no chance of the US achieving even the minimal necessary strategic goal of not losing in Afghanistan.  The same ground truth apples to the domestic violence brought by the Mighty Warriors of the Koran in Pakistan.

The appeals of the alternative universe of disinformation and conspiracy may have some sort of emotional appeal to the Pakistan government, army, and ISI, but are so transparently false that they should be dismissed by the Obama administration with the contempt it merits.  Beyond dismissal, the Obama crew must insist the Pakistanis live in the same world as the rest of us--or face the inevitable and inevitably bad consequences of their tergiversation.

Perhaps as a warm-up exercise, the Obama administration can take on Turkey given that the Islamist leaning AKP regime in Ankara has done the Pakistanis one better alleging that the Israelis are behind the entire WikiLeaks episode.  Surely scotching that ploy and requiring the Turks to choose sides with greater accuracy should not be beyond the capacity of the administration and Secretary of State Clinton.

Rather than just seeing the leak as an embarrassment or a major disaster, the administration should see it as an opportunity to use a bit of honest, coercive diplomacy with respect to two troublesome "allies."  By doing so, the Obama "Team" cannot only retrieve some success from a defeat, but exploit the consequences to suit our policy needs.

Try it, people, you have nothing to lose except defeat.

In Afghanistan We Are Winning--Except When We Are Losing

The difference a week makes!  Only seven or so days ago the Geek posted on how even the war hating folks at the WaPo grudgingly admitted that the US and its allies were compiling a record of success against Taliban and the Haqqani network.  Alas!  The WaPo must have gotten its facts wrong.  Or so it appears today.

Along with other MSM, the Leaders Of The Washington Press now takes the position that the US is not making any real progress in Afghanistan.  Sourcing the new stance to the usual unnamed people in "US intelligence agencies," the latest party line is so dismal that one gets the impression it is all over excepting the Taliban victory parade.

The British have taken a more nuanced (confused?) view of the situation.  The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, is under the impression that "progress" is being made.  Her Majesty's senior military figures are marching in the gloom parade, averring that the US/NATO/ISAF/Afghan national forces have "failed to inflict significant damage on Taliban."

It is self-evident that both interpretations cannot be accurate.  So, how to parse the contradiction?

The we-are-losing camp predicates its stance on several factors.  One is the resilience of the Taliban and Haqqani network, their ability to absorb casualties in the upper and middle rank leadership and not lose either political will or operational capacity.  The other is the existence of cross-border sanctuaries in the FATA providing ample space and time for recovery, resupply, and retraining.

As context it must be noted that both factors--inherent resiliency and cross-border safe-havens--have played critical roles in previous counterinsurgency operations.  Of the two there is no doubt but the self-organizing capacities of insurgent groups coupled with the imperative that defeat is existential in nature has provided the staying power of insurgencies from the American War of Independence on through to the contemporary events in Afghanistan.  The importance of cross-border sanctuaries is more debatable.

It has often been argued, for example, that the closing of the Yugoslav border by Tito to the Greek Communist guerrillas was critical in their defeat.  A closer examination shows that this thesis is untenable, that the Communist insurgents were actually beaten by a combination of their own political ineptitude and the growing competence of the US assisted and trained Greek National Forces.

The British success in the twelve year long Emergency in Malaya has been credited in large measure to the absence of external sanctuaries for the Communist insurgents.  While it is true that the "Bandits" of Malaya had no readily available safe havens, the actual cause of British success was their superior operational level doctrine, tactics, and the skill of their troops in the bush.

Critics of the American war in South Vietnam both at the time and retrospectively have attributed the US defeat to the ability of the Viet Cong and Peoples Army of North Vietnam to use safe areas in Cambodia and Laos for supply, unit restoration, and concentration centers.  American efforts to block the logistics routes through these countries both by air and land were not successful.  So, the critics have concluded, the enemy had unbeatable advantages with the result that the Americans and their South Vietnamese clients were defeated.

That analysis grossly oversimplifies a defeat which arose from many causes.  But, like other unicausal hypothesis, it is easy to understand and has the added advantage of displacing responsibility for failure from the Americans (their approach to fighting the war as well as their goals) to outside factors.  The worst that can be said of the American way of war in South Vietnam according to this view is that we were too kind, too gentle, too restrained.  We should have expanded the war to include the sanctuary areas and, if we had, we would have won.

The evaluation of the current conflicting views--are we winning or losing?--must be considered in terms of these past understandings.

Of the two factors referenced by the advocates of we-are-losing, it is easy to dispatch the one of insurgent resolve and resilience.  It is true.  It is also not all that relevant.  The irrelevance is indicated by the existence of preliminary conversations between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.  Because Taliban is a loose assemblage of many different self-organizing groups, it is almost inevitable that some of the groups will have concluded that the degree of pressure and risk currently exerted by the US and its partners is too great for the potential rewards.  Thus, some have concluded that inclusion in the government structure through talk will provide all the requisite benefits without the risks.

Self-organization is thus both a strength and a weakness for insurgent entities.  It allows for great resilience under pressure.  At the same time it makes the path from violence to talks easy and attractive if the status quo power opts for power sharing while its military forces apply prolonged, unacceptably high pressure.

This leaves the question of the safety zones of the FATA.  There is no doubt that the insurgents enjoy a great advantage in having immediate and very convenient access to a high degree of safety right across the border in North Waziristan and other Agencies of the FATA.  It is not clear,  however, that the advantages are such as to constitute a war winner.

The US would like Pakistan to bite the bullet and move into North Waziristan.  The Obama administration has put great effort into convincing Islamabad to do its heavy lifting.  The efforts have failed.  Absent troops on the ground, the UAV campaign against Taliban and the Haqqani network will have only limited success.  The Predators and Reapers have killed a gratifyingly large number of insurgent leaders and trigger pullers.  The net positives of the campaign have been highlighted by the disapprobation expressed by UN officials and others of the you-Americans-don't-fight-fair crowd.

Even if by some miracle the Pakistanis were to move into the safe haven zone(s), the amount of benefit which would accrue is an open question.  As recent events have shown, the Pakistanis are ready, willing, and eager to allow the insurgents ample opportunity to leave the "threatened" area and relocate elsewhere.  The same would be expectable in any future operations.

Even with this in mind, it is to the advantage of the Obama administration as well as the governments of other countries exposed in Afghanistan to assure that a mighty moan is made regarding the sanctuaries of the FATA.  If nothing else, it allows the pinning of the tail of failure on the donkey of Pakistan.  In a more positive vein, the "leaks" from "US intelligence agencies" provide more pressure on Islamabad.  Looking ahead, should the Republicans do as well next Tuesday as projected, there will be more resistance in Congress to large foreign aid checks made payable to the government or army of Pakistan.

The administration can (or at least should) wave the Republican club in the direction of Islamabad.  "You want the money?  Well, you had best produce some results.  Fast."  This sort of (un)diplomatic language is easily understood by the extortionists in Islamabad.  It is, after all, the same game the Pakistanis have played for decades--only in reverse.

But, with all that, where does it leave us?  Are we wining or losing?

The short--and accurate--answer is: both.  Militarily we are winning in one very important sense.  The US and its partners hold the initiative on the battlefield.  A simple but highly accurate way of measuring who holds the initiative is comparing the number of friendly initiated contacts in comparison to the number of hostile initiated ones or those of a meeting engagement sort.  For most of the past year, the balance has swung to the US and its associates.  The swing has been most impressive in the past six months.

Another useful metric is provided by the nature of the tactics and operations used by the insurgents.  Over the past several months the insurgents have relied increasingly on indirect attacks on soft targets.  Roadside bombs, suicide bombers, and similar methods have been employed preferentially against civilians.  Other than when forced to do so by friendly forces, the insurgents have avoided force-on-force engagements.  This is not the sign of a confident enemy--or one of particular competence.

The losing occurs on the Afghan government side of the picture.  Put bluntly, the central government has not been able to provide services or even a credible presence in most of the territory cleared by military operations.  As a result there is no confidence on the part of the local populations that the insurgents will not come back as soon as the Americans or other foreign forces depart.

Confidence in the staying power or even the basic legitimacy of the central government is also eroded by the persistent corruption and systemic inefficiency of the central government.  This is worsened by the central government's extreme reluctance to see effective local instruments develop.

Continued failure on the part of Kabul in these critical areas will render all military successes irrelevant.  Indeed, the patterns of failure exhibited by the central government would render meaningless even the most successful Pakistani operations in the FATA.  In a way that is sublimely ironic, a hypothetical Pakistani military operation which resulted in the complete shut down of the safe harbors in the FATA would simply see the insurgents relocate to the Afghan side of the border.

The takeaway is just this: We are winning--except where and when we are losing.  But, the reasons pumped out as to why we are losing are not accurate.  They may not be bogus per se, but they are misleading.

Insurgent resilience is a given in every insurgency.  Cross-border sanctuaries are nice, but not war winners in and of themselves.  Most importantly, when night falls what matters is not simply the balance of success in battle but rather the capacities and perceived legitimacy of the government.  If either of those last features are absent or severely lacking, the war has been won by the insurgents no matter what the god of battles might have declared..

Pakistan Wins Some--And Loses Elsewhere

Operation "Path to Salvation" has been working surprisingly well in South Waziristan. The Pakistani army has cleared the majority of cities and moderate sized towns in the region, squeezing the ever-retreating Taliban into mountain refuges. The pressure will continue for a few more days until the snow brings active operations to a near halt.

Behind the advancing army the Pakistani government has been attempting to address the problems of (re)establishing effective government, gaining functional legitimacy, and providing basic services. So far the Army's part of the clear-hold-build operational concept has been working better than the government follow-on. However, the government must be given credit for making the attempt--and succeeding to some degree.

The success of the Army in South Waziristan more than its previous operations in Swat show that it is a more capable counterinsurgency force than most (including the Geek) thought it to be. It is possible, even probable, that the Army learned from Swat. That being the case it must be given credit for a very rapid assimilation of the lessons learned.

The readiness of the Army to maintain a presence in cleared territory resembles its previous behavior in Swat. The probability of a long term Army presence in South Waziristan has been boosted by the announcement by the Interior Minister ten days ago that additional forces are being deployed in the area. This decision will help assure that the local population believes that the government will stay and keep the Taliban survivors at bay. It will also provide an effective matrix for the development of an enhanced capacity local defense and constabulary force.

Powerfully assisting the success of the operation to date has been the local population's disenchantment with Taliban. Until two years ago the Taliban was very popular within South Waziristan. But, as was the case with the Afghanistan Taliban and the Islamist jihadists in Iraq, the Taliban in South Waziristan proved to be their own worst enemy. The excesses of repression, the love of flogging, stoning, maiming and killing people for "religious" malfeasances soured the locals. Also turning the locals against the jihadists and their expansive view of Shariah was the prohibition of fun.

So far the indications point to the Pakistani Army and, more importantly, Air Force having killed relatively few civilians. Care in targeting is part of the reason. Another, larger factor was the increased employment of foreign manufacture precision guided munitions. As a result of the smaller non-combatant butchers' bill, the locals have been very welcoming of the incoming Army and government personnel.

The intelligence collection and usage of the Inter-Services Intelligence and Army has also improved markedly over the Swat operation. The reasons are obscure but probably focus on two considerations. ISI has sources within Taliban. The Taliban command, control, and communications systems rely on cell phones including those with a "push to talk" capacity, and this means the commo is wide open to interception and exploitation.

While Path to Salvation is not to its end yet, the Pakistanis deserve a strong thumbs-up for their success to date. As long as the locals (and the larger Pakistani population) continue their support of the operation it is probable that the military and government will not quit before a reasonable approximation of suppressing Taliban in the Agency has been accomplished. Then, of course, it will be necessary to repeat the processes in other parts of the FATA.

One of the non-FATA places where the Army and government will have to employ their newly developed counterinsurgency skills is Balochistan. The sparsely populated, economically underdeveloped but resource rich area of Balochistan is currently the venue of a three way contest.

The belligerents are the Baloch separatists, Islamist jihadists including both al-Qaeda and Taliban, and, of course, the central government. While the Islamist jihadists are recent and not particularly welcome arrivals, the separatists have been active since the days in 1948 when the infant Pakistani Army conquered the previously independent Balochistan.

Since then, a sporadic, usually very low intensity defensive insurgency having the goal of establishing a (re)independent Balochistan has been underway. In recent years the insurgency has been chronic as well as having grown in intensity.

Over the past eight years the situation in Balochistan has grown increasingly perilous from the point of view of Islamabad. The turbulence surrounding the aftermath of the US led invasion of Afghanistan spilled heavily into Balochistan with results which both benefited the indigenous insurgents and brought the Islamist jihadists into the mix.

The provincial capital Quetta has become a vital center of support operations including the movement of drugs, arms, personnel, and money to and from Afghanistan. The US believes that assorted Taliban and al-Qaeda heavies have been hiding out in Quetta or nearby. The Pakistani government denies this, of course.

It is the US conviction that a number of "WANTED--Dead or Alive" figures are in Balochistan which propelled the recent request by Washington that Islamabad allow an expansion of our UAV shoot-to-kill operations into Balochistan. This request has perturbed the Pakistani government greatly as it suspects our long range intentions regarding the province.

A leading political figure in the Baloch separatist movement, Hyrbyair Marri, has stated publicly that the goal was an independent, secular Balochistan. He has noted rather pointedly that the secular orientation of a new state of Balochistan would fit well with the policy objectives of the US and other Western nations. He drew a sharp distinction between Islamic Pakistan and the nature of a secular state as is proposed for Balochistan.

Marri's position outraged the Islamist jihadists of Taliban and al-Qaeda with the result that violence of the Muslim on Muslim sort has increased. This has exacerbated further the ethnic and linguistic tension between the native Balochs and the Punjabi Pakistanis.

In any event the government is currently in third place in the race for supremacy between the three contestants. There is no real probability of this changing in the near- to mid-term. The ground truth is simply that the Islamabad government has neither functional nor existential legitimacy in the eyes of the Baloch population. While some Baloch adhere to the Islamist jihadists of Taliban, this will change if the Islamist jihadists continue to rely upon the attacking of soft, civilian targets or insisting on a version of Shariah which exceeds Baloch desires.

It is the presence of the Baloch insurgency which provides the best basis for a Pakistani alliance with Iran. The latter country has its own Baloch problems as was dramatically shown not that long ago with the attack on a meeting of Revolutionary Guard heavyweights.

It must not be overlooked that Afghanistan has a bull in the herd as well since the Baloch presence extends into that country--including Helmand province where the British and US Marines have been engaged in a prolonged and far-from-bloodless operation. When joined with new forces from the recently authorized Obama Surge, Helmand and other provinces adjacent to Balochistan will become more battle torn with the result that a refugee surge into Balochistan can be anticipated.

The further destabilizing of Balochistan is what bothers Islamabad most of all when the implications of the Obama Surge are considered. Any new turbulence will make the job of containing the insurgency all the more difficult, not to say impossible.

There is an irony in play which concerns Islamabad. Even as the Army suppresses Taliban and the government extends its writ into the FATA, the probability of losing the very rich area of Balochistan becomes more and more elevated. At the end of it all the Pakistani government faces the strong likelihood of exchanging the mountains of FATA for the oil and natural gas laden flatlands of Balochistan.

No wonder the lads in Islamabad are not really happy campers right now. There is no way in which a victory over Taliban in the FATA makes up for losing Balochistan.

Well, that's tough. History shows that the Pakistanis had their chance in Balochistan. And, that they blew it.

A Whole Twenty-five Minutes?

Reportedly President Obama spent the best part of a half-hour in a face-to-face with General Stanley McChrystal while aboard Air Force One. It was truly generous of the Nice Young Man From Chicago to dedicate that much of his life to the man running the single most important, and potentially failed war, the US is involved in today.

After his strong statements at the International Institute For Strategic Studies in London the other day, there is no doubt where the general stands on either the nature of the desired strategy for Afghanistan or the number of combat troops needed to implement it with sufficient effectiveness. Now, there should be no doubt in the President's mind about what the General thinks is necessary if failure is to be prevented. (Video conferencing would not have allowed McChrystal's intensity to have emerged in full. You need to be up close and personal to experience that.)

The nitty-gritty of all the palaver over the re-assessment of our strategy and goals in Afghanistan boils down to a choice between one of three alternatives: a counter-insurgency such as the General desires, a pull back to counter-terrorism directed against al-Qaeda as proposed by Vice-President Biden, or a modified counter-insurgent approach which diminishes the focus on building a Western style nation-state in the country.

There is no need to base our appreciation on what happened to the British or the Soviets when they tried to occupy Afghanistan as some "experts" did in their appearances before Sen John Kerry's Foreign Affairs committee. Neither historical example has any relevance to what either General McChrystal has proposed or the lessened form represented as the third option above.

The repeated calls for a re-focusing of our efforts to the civilian side of the counter-insurgency approach with an emphasis on institutional make-overs, economic development, and the establishment of a rule of (presumably not over polluted by religion) law under an independent judiciary are wide of the mark. Indeed, they are not really relevant to either the removal of the Islamist jihadists of Afghanistan or the establishment of a stable internal regime.

Yes, everybody in Kabul--and elsewhere--would like to see a dollar torrent pouring over the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan. Just as the Pakistanis want to see ever more of Uncle Sam's greenbacks greening their country. The reality is that while everybody wants money, the money is of no relevance to solving the basic political and social questions in either country.

This cold reality is quite evident in Pakistan where the increased US aid budget has been met both by howls of derision from politicians and complete apathy by the population which still distrusts the US as a partner in the local counter-terrorist campaign. In Afghanistan, money would be no more the root of all solutions than it has been in Pakistan.

The basic context of the human terrain in Afghanistan--the terrain on which the war will be won or lost to the degree that any interventionary operation "wins"--is deeply fragmented. Schisms exist in language, ethnic composition, tribal affiliation, and school of Islam followed. The role of a tribal leader, or a religious one for that matter, is to be the nexus of a self-organizing system at the local level. Even if a more or less secular form of "nationalism" were to emerge in Afghanistan as it has under Maliki's shrewd political sponsorship, it would be of an indigenous, self-organized sort.

Self-organizing systems can emerge in any context. However, the more peaceful the context, the safer people feel, the more likely it becomes that the self-organizing process will continue up from the local to the regional and finally to the national level. The most critical component of General McChrystal's strategic concept is its emphasis on insulating the civilian population from violence whether at the hands of the Islamist jihadists (as is most likely) or the Afghan national forces and their foreign colleagues.

With bodies, both foreign and domestic, interposed between the violence of the jihadists and the life of the uncommitted civilian majority, the process of self-organizing can begin and continue. The result after some time will be a stable Afghanistan--provided the foreign experts on nation-building stay out of the way. What eventually emerges from the self-organizing capacities of the Afghan civilian population--particularly tribal, religious and other leaders may not be to the delight of Western proponents of the 21st century liberal, pluralistic, secular nation-state--but it will be of Afghan manufacture and thus stable.

Perhaps it won't be noise free, but there has been no significant period of Afghan history in which internal violence has been totally absent--save during those years of foreign invasion and occupation. Even then there were internal conflicts which would have facilitated the foreign dominance had the outsiders shown the wit to use it effectively.

In so far as outside money and expertise are relevant to accomplishing either counter-insurgency or counter-insurgency lite (the third option above) it should, no, must, be provided at the local level according to the self-perceived needs of the local self-organized groups. It must not be "a gift from the American people" or a dictate from the remote and distrusted denizens of Kabul, but a tool needed by the self-organized local group(s) and put into their hands, and their hands alone.

Far more important than outside money or advice is the perceived willingness and ability of both foreign and Afghan national force personnel to stand between the black turbans of the jihadists and the soft targets of the civilian population. To establish the necessary trust and confidence which precedes effective self-organizing, it is utterly essential the security forces actually be there, be on the ground, up close and personal, effectively countering the jihadists and their violence. Beyond simply "being there," it is essential that the forces be there over time, time sufficient for both trust and self-organizing to reach the critical tipping point that turns non-commitment to commitment, if not to Kabul, at least to the idea of peace in every local valley.

A close study of Vietnam shows that where security forces were present and effective, and the outside assistance was provided strictly according to locally perceived needs without any attendant strings, the local valley became both peaceful and anti-Viet Cong, anti-North Vietnam. Admittedly these peaceful valleys were few and far between, but that should be no shock given the wrong-as-a-cat-barking American strategy and operational doctrine.

General McChrystal seems far more attuned to the realities on the ground than were the guys running the Vietnam War debacle. Providing that he receives the necessary troops and is able to evade too much emphasis on the centralized creation of a nation-state from the resistant human terrain of Afghanistan, there is a very real chance that the US and its allies will achieve the minimum necessary strategic goal of "not losing" as we have in Iraq.

"Not losing" in Afghanistan will be a very serious (but not fatal) blow to the global Islamist jihadist movement--just as "not losing" has proven to be in Iraq. "Not losing" in Afghanistan would be the outcome of counter-insurgency lite (the third option above) as the similar approach has demonstrated in Iraq. Taken in conjunction with Iraq, "not-losing" in Afghanistan would not be the beginning of the end of the global conflict with Islamist jihadism, but it might prove to be the end of the beginning.

Anything less, as in the politically appealing Biden Option of enhanced counter-terrorism in the FATA of Pakistan, would constitute a defeat for us and a shot of steroids for the Islamist jihadist movement everywhere. Anything more than counter-insurgency lite such as unlimited nation building would also be a defeat. A defeat because it is a task beyond accomplishment in a timely nature.

Rarefied discussion of strategy accompanied by pouring over Burn-Before-Reading level secret intelligence assessments may be great fun for the Deep Thinkers around the White House, Foggy Bottom, and the Five Sided Wigwam By the Banks of the Po-to-mic, but it is not particularly useful. Or necessary. There are only three options. Only one has the chance of bringing the minimum (and maximum realistic) strategic result of "not-losing."

It is time for the gab fest to end. It is time to make it march, because the good guys in Afghanistan are quite minus on minutes. It is time for decisive leadership. It is time for the Nice Young Man From Chicago to realize that the war in Afghanistan is worth more than twenty-five minutes. It is more important than even the 2016 Summer Games.

So, How's It Going In Pakistan?

From the perspective of the MSM, the government and army of Pakistan are either serious about winning against Taliban or not. An excellent recent example of the latter view is found in Time. A rare representative of the contrary is to be seen in the NYT.

Parsing what is happening in Pakistan is not unlike being a Kremlinologist in the days of the Cold War. Context is everything. In Pakistan the context consists of several equally important features right now. One is the state of play in the Pakistani government as it attempts to balance the power of pervasive nationalism against the appeal of Islamism. Another is the in-built fear and loathing directed against India. A third is the need to preserve the Army as both the only national institution and the bulwark against the presumed Indian threat with the need to at least stifle the Taliban insurgency. The final piece of essential context is the nature and internal dynamics of Taliban following the removal of Baitullah Mehsud.

The Pakistani government or at least its judicial system took a stance for the power of nationalism when it defied the ongoing US pressure over A.Q. Khan. The court ordered the removal of all restrictions on the life of Khan. While not as emotionally infuriating as the recent "compassionate" release of the convicted Lockerbee bomber, the lifting of all limits on Khan does not please the US. From the perspective of Islamabad this is good.

The Pakistani government is quite happy to receive money from the US and other countries which is furnished with the presumption it will go to stabilization efforts in the FATA. More than this is rejected by Islamabad. Again, this is both good and necessary from the perspective of the government which recognizes far more than do foreign chattering and academic classes that nationalism is the best, perhaps the only, palliative for a bad case of latent Islamist jihadism.

Frictions with India over the Mumbai bombing and the judicial aftermath have not decreased. Hiding behind the requirements of judicial process (nationalism again) the Pakistanis have been less than expeditious or determined in their investigation and prosecution of citizens alleged to have been involved in planning and executing the attack. Not even the issuance of a "red notice" by Interpol has impressed the Pakistani authorities. So little were the Pakistanis impressed by Interpol's action that they rejected the so-called Sixth Dossier, which will not improve the state of relations with India.

The Indian government was probably equally unimpressed with the troop shuffle conducted by the Pakistani Army on its border. By the time all the trucks had stopped rolling, three battalion equivalents had been withdrawn purportedly for the planned offensive in the FATA, but these had been replaced by four. Shell games to the contrary notwithstanding, the Indians remain Pakistan's "main enemy."

Without sufficient troops the chance of a genuine "offensive" into the Waziristans is improbable in the extreme. The Army is unwilling to take losses. Period. The government agrees. Period. There will be no ground offensive worthy of the name. Air strikes will continue. They are sufficiently "manly," low risk and, what the hey? might kill some Talib trigger-pullers.

Beyond that, the approach of Islamabad in the post-Baitullah Mehsud days will focus on dividing if not really conquering the component groups of Taliban. Some will be (literally) bought off. Others will be offered "truces" or even "peace treaties" exchanging modified Shariah and local autonomy for renunciation of violence. Others, Islamabad hopes, will be neutralized by the threat of American UAV attacks.

While it is plausible to impute cynical motives to the Pakistani government having adopted this strategy, there are also sound reasons. One is the role of Islamism in Pakistan, its Army, and, last but far, far from least, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI.) Islamism with or without the concomitant jihadism can be and has been a useful tool for ISI and is approved of in many parts of the nation, government, and military.

Another realistic justification for the non-campaign campaign against Taliban is found in the nature of the beast. Taliban is not a monolithic entity. It is a collection of local groups formed around a leader from the disaffiliated and Islamist leaning members of the society around him. Each group is independent. There is agreement amongst the groups on the goals and motivations, but none exists nor is necessary regarding means, methods, and tactics. The personality of Baitullah Mehsud allowed him to forge a degree of tactical alignment which others will have very great difficulty recreating.

This implies that each Taliban component must be dealt with in terms which are relevant to the cultural, social, economic, and personal relationship soil from which it has emerged and from which it receives daily nourishment. There is no "one size fits all" approach which has the slightest chance of succeeding. This includes a military offensive.

Force will be necessary but not sufficient to achieve even a "tame" Taliban. The ISI has more than sufficient contact with the assorted Taliban components to achieve the minimum operational goal of reducing the violence, if it chooses to use the opportunity. This remains to be seen.

The more-or-less in touch with reality number two in al-Qaeda may well be misreading the current situation with Taliban and the Pakistani Army. His latest production warns the "crusaders" and "apostates" of dire consequences should the offensive be pursued. On the upside, the Islamist jihadist blowhard agrees with most US observers that Pakistan is the primary battleground. But, where his side has no choice except fighting (if suicide bombings can be accurately labeled as fighting), the Pakistanis do not have to fight very much or very hard.

Given that the Talib fighters are members of a species of self-organising system and the personality of the leader is the locus around which self-organisation occurs, it is only necessary to "turn" the leader from following jihadism. The leader can be suborned into dropping jihadism from the group's agenda. He can be killed if he does not.

In the early mid-period of the US involvement in South Vietnam, the Quang Ngai Special Platoon Program was oriented toward this kind of action. Often, even quite often, the results were surprising in the number of people who changed sides and the low, even very low, body count.

A similar approach was undertaken with equal success by the Americans and locals in suppressing the post-WW II Huk Insurrection. In Malaya the British did the same during the long years of the Emergency. The lessons are there. Perhaps the Pakistanis have learned them. Time will tell.

In any event it is quite premature to characterize the Pakistanis as having tossed in the cliched sponge. The endgame may not be all that the US might wish, but there is a good likelihood that it will be sufficiently robust to provide a good measure of stability to the FATA and, thus, to the border with Afghanistan.

That's enough in this sort of war.

What Did You Expect? An Easy Fight?

More out of Pakistan, which confirms some of the points made in yesterday's post regarding the unwillingness of the government of that country to redeploy significant elements of its regular army to the fight against Taliban. As previously written, this situation will remain unchanged unless and until the Pakistani government can bring itself to trust that India is not going to attack the moment the army is fully engaged against the Islamist jihadists.

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.