The Bugs Bunny "What A Maroon" Award VII

This time around the coveted "What A Maroon!" Award goes to the foreign policy component of the Obama administration.  Rarely has an administration equaled, let alone exceeded the current one's capacity to be totally divorced from the real world requirements of national interest.  While the Obama foreign policy "Team" has tried hard to demonstrate just how far its policies could be removed from either reality or national interest, their handling of Pakistan surpasses all former gaffes.

Hilary Clinton announced the awarding of a two billion dollar package of aid to the Pakistani military.  With an irony far outstripping the merely heavy handed, the announcement came only hours after the same brain trust alluded to the possibility of barring some Pakistani military units from receiving American largess or training due to personnel from these formations having engaged in extrajudicial executions--at least one of which was caught on video.

By law the US government is precluded from providing aid to military forces which grossly violate the laws of land warfare or those governing human rights.  For reasons left unexplained the Secretary of State did not make any reference to the possible sanctions when passing the word of the latest attempt to bribe the Pakistani government and military.

The US government has a long, bi-partisan history of offering bribes to Islamabad.  These bribes have been unsolicited on rare occasions.  More typically the lads in Islamabad--whether in uniform or mufti--make extortionate demands of the give-us-money-or-something-horrid-but-unspecified-will-happen variety.  The US government showing the courage of a rabbit and the intellectual vacuity of a snail always pays up.

And so it is with Ms Clinton and the others of Team Obama.  Even Secretary of Defense Gates, a man normally well known for his realism, integrity, and intelligence has gone along with the grim charade.  This is most unfortunate as it provides a gloss of respectability to a policy which is both indefensible and contrary to longer term US interests in the region.

Bob Gates, after all, was around in the days of the Reagan administration.  He was there when all hands down in the lower levels of the food chain who were both situationally aware and unheeding of careers warned against turning over more responsibility to the Pakistanis in the end game period of the proxy war against the Soviets in Afghanistan.  In those here-there-be-tiger days, the low ranking field hands stated categorically that further Pakistani involvement in Afghanistan would redound ultimately against the better interests of both the Afghans and the US.

The decision makers in and near the Oval trusted the assurances from Islamabad.  They trusted in the power of American bribes.  They trusted in the ability of the Pakistanis to stay bought once we paid their price.

Of course this attitude was unjustified by mere facts, the facts of Pakistani (and Muslim) history, the facts of the ongoing Indo-Pakistani conflict.  Afghanistan was an annoying sideshow.  Pakistan had been pro-US during all the years when the Indians were locked in a love fest with Moscow.  And, the Pakistanis came cheap--or so it seemed way back then.

It is not that the US did not know what Islamabad's ambitions in Afghanistan were twenty years ago.  We knew them as well as we know the current plans harbored by Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the army.  Then as now Pakistan wants to have operational dominance over Afghanistan for reasons outlined in numerous previous posts.

Ignoring Islamabad's plans were part of the bribe in those bygone years.  Similarly, the US had to publicly ignore Pakistan's nuclear hopes--until Islamabad pushed the "Fire!" button.  Even then, presented by an accomplished feat, the US rejoinders to this act of obstreperous nuclear proliferation was mild, not to say weak of knee.  Another part of the never ending bribery.

An unreasoning fear of just what the Pakistanis might or might not do has rendered the Islamabad extortion plot all the more effective.  It has forced our silence over the policies in Afghanistan.  It has forced our acceptance of their nuclear capacity without measurable cost to the proliferator.  It has cost us literally billions of dollars.

To date the positive results have been so close to zilch that an electron microscope would be necessary to detect them.  The negative consequences are far more evident.  They include among others: Taliban, the A.Q. Khan network, the origins of the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the stoking of Indo-Pakistani tensions, the support of terrorism in Kashmir and elsewhere, and the emboldening of advocates of violent political Islam .

Whew!

With that record it is hard to find any real world based justification for the latest bribe.  It comes hard on the heels of two previous handsome gratuities--the seven plus billion dollar multi-year civilian aid program and the enormous flood rescue and reconstruction effort.  In return for this set of payments, totalling well over ten billion dollars, the US must plan (hope?) to get something in return other than that mythical quality, "good will."

The US expects (wishes?) that in return for these commitments the Pakistani government and military will undertake two critical actions.  One is simply that the army will get off its collective duff and take the war to the final redoubts in North Waziristan.  The other is that neither ISI nor the army nor the government will attempt to derail the tentative talks between elements of Taliban and the Karzai government.

The talks which have been admitted to by both Afghan and US officials are in their earliest and most delicate stages.  The talks are underway in response to the success of the US/ISAF/Afghan national forces campaigns to date, particularly that near Kandahar.  (Even the NYT had to admit that we were having real success there, much to its chagrin.)

Taliban, or, more accurately, elements of Taliban are seeing that the better alternative is a political settlement giving them a role in Afghanistan's future.  Intentionally, Mullah Omar has been excluded from the talks along with others of high rank and under the control of ISI.  The position of many even in the Quetta Shura is that Omar's day has come and gone.  There is also a wide spread realization that too many in Taliban and other insurgent groups have suffered too much and too long not for Afghanistan and the Afghan people or even Islam but rather for the agenda of Islamabad, the ambitions of ISI.

In short, nationalism has conspired with battlefield realities to convince more than a few in Taliban that the time to give peace a chance is upon them.  The Karzai government, nationalist to the core, could not agree more.  Beyond that the Karzai government (and at least some in Taliban) know the US and its Western partners will be leaving.  Perhaps leaving soon.

They also understand perfectly that Pakistan is not leaving.  Pakistan is quite willing and able to use any and all means to control Afghan affairs for its own purposes and reasons.  No good Afghan is willing to accept that.  As has been the case before, nationalism trumps the "universal" nature of Islam.  The Pakistanis have ridden the Prophet's Horse too long and too hard.

Still the ISI and other Pakistan players have the potential to play the spoilers role.  There is no doubt but many in the army as well as the civilian government would be willing to do just that.  It is important to the US, our allies, and the Afghans that Pakistan not stop the talks or halt the move to peace in some other way.

Enter the bribe.

It won't be enough.  The Pakistanis will not abandon their goal of having operational dominance over Afghanistan any more than they will abandon their constant building of new and better nuclear systems.  Both are central to their anti-India focus.  While the specter of India may be a phantom now, it is the phantom which will not vanish with the coming of day.  Fear and loathing of India is not simply the only justification for the army's existence at its bloated and expensive level, it is the existential foundation of Pakistan.

It does not matter that there is no reality behind the black myth of India, its existence is central to the continued existence of Pakistan.  Should Pakistanis ever come to grips with the unpleasant truth that Muslims in India not only do not live at some disadvantage compared to their Hindu neighbors but actually have a present standard of living as well as future prospects which exceed those of most Pakistanis things might change.  But, absent that level of a sanity attack, nothing will alter for the better.

Not that anything so banal as reality will beat myth enhanced by generations of internally directed propaganda and reinforced by religion.

Pakistan will try to stop the talks.  Similarly, the army will not move with effectiveness against North Waziristan.  Moving against ones own clients is not in the cards. Or, so dictates the voice of reality.

The bribes will not work.  They will only encourage more demands, more extortion, more reluctance to offer more than minimal compliance to US policy requirements.

Admittedly, the latest bribes come with some thin, slight strings.  The conditions are enough to cause howls of protest from the ever-so-sensitive nationalists of the army and government.  They are not sufficient to have any benefits from the American perspective.

Mental illness, it has been said, exists when a person repeats the same unsuccessful efforts irrespective of experience.  The same might be said of governments, which, after all, are mere assemblages of individuals.

Or, they might just get the "What A Maroon!" Award.

A Pair Of (At Least) Two Bowl Problems

As everyone familiar with the Master of Baker Street knows, the great detective was given to characterising his little problems by the number of bowls of shag which must be smoked before the correct solution might emerge. Those of the two bowl variety were above average in difficulty, sort of like a reverse two and a half with full twist in pike position off the low board.

Comes now North Korea and Afghanistan in unorchestrated symmetry each with a two bowler. (This must ruin the post-success celebration in the Erdogan Dictate Affair. NATO didn't blink and the Turkish PM received a face-saving way to back off.)

Actually, as the Geek thinks about it, the North Korean problem is closer to three bowls and the Afghan one closer to a single albeit very full bowl. Let's go with the tougher of the two first.

The Geek has to admit a more than sneaking admiration for the Commissars of Pongyang. No bunch, not even the mullahs of Tehran, have shown greater skill at sneering in the direction of the UN Security Council. The Dear Leader and his coterie have far surpassed all other regimes of whatsoever political stripe in pursuing national self-interest in the face of robust, continued opposition by the US and its associates, Japan and South Korea.

The US has drawn yet another line in the diplomatic sand. SecState Clinton and other members of the Obama administration have promised "consequences" after the Northerners launch their new, (hopefully) improved ICBM. The threatened "consequences" will undoubtedly follow the track blazed by the "consequences" imposed by the Security Council after the Pyongyang bunch pushed the Go-button on their nuclear test a few years back.

This means yet more economic sanctions.

The last time around the economic sanctions were as ineffective as pissing on a forest fire. The same crude judgement is appropriate even in advance as regards the next Security Council turn to bat.

The last time the implementation of the sanctions was left up to the individual member-states. This sort of non-enforced enforcement was the best which would sneak past Russia and China. Even if Russia continues in its current charm offensive, not much more can be expected in the near future.

The Chinese have a realistic view of the North Korean regime. In the informed view from Beijing harsh measures are ineffective in altering North Korean behavior. Certainly the historical record extending back to 1950 bears that out.

The Chinese believe, rightly or not, that they continue to have influence in Pyongyang. Beyond that, the integrity of North Korea as a buffer state is important to Beijing. That was true in the early Fall of 1950 and remains such today.

The two countries have been in a formal alliance for just shy of sixty years now. It is slightly possible that Beijing will be able to use that symbolic anniversary as a platform to nudge Pyongyang into a more cooperative stance in the Six Power Talks.

The Six Power Talks, particularly the verification of the North Korean nuclear declaration given last year, is far more important to the Chinese (and in highest probability the Americans) than the launch of an ICBM test bed. While even the most optimistic prediction for the Six Power Talks does not include Pyongyang relinquishing its current plutonium stockpile, it is not illegitimate to expect an accurate accounting of the amount of plutonium made and that on hand currently so as to assuage proliferation anxieties.

The Six Power Talks are not worth sacrificing on the alter of Security Council resolutions. The Chinese have taken this view. In all probability Russia has as well. It is debatable at best that the Kremlin is willing to fritter away the last of its diminishing influence on the Hermit Kingdom of the North in pursuit of the delusion of "punishing" Pyongyang.

If that mythical beast, a regime of tough, enforceable economic sanctions, is off the table of reality, what is left?

Military action? That's a real non-starter. And, the Denizens-in-Charge of the Hermit Kingdom know it. The issue at hand is not worth going to war over. No one is eager for a war, looking for an excuse a la Jenkin's Ear to start one.

It has been suggested that the US simply shoot the missile down. This could be done hypothetically as being a measure taken to "enforce" earlier Security Council measures. Such an action might have been in the world view of the W. Bush administration but would not comport in the slightest with the new policy matrix of the Obama administration. Dear Leader and his crew undoubtedly understand this.

Realistically, the probability for negative consequences, particularly any of a truly painful nature, range between nil and none. The probability of positive consequences coming is, regrettably, rather high.

Caught with no credible capacity to coerce, the US and its partners, Japan and South Korea, as well as its sometimes collaborators, China and Russia, have only inducements to offer. Bribery under whatever euphemism you prefer has a long and not completely dishonorable history in the practice of diplomacy.

In an important matter--and getting an accurate handle on the degree of intellectual or material proliferation the Northerners have or can engage in is important--the ends justify the means. A bribe, if it works to gain the necessary end, is completely justifiable. If the bribe does not work or if the recipient does not stay bribed, then the effort has failed. The other side has been more canny or resolute than our team.

So it goes in the whacky world of international politics.

Now for Article 132 of a draft law passed by the Afghan parliament. The language in question has effect only on the Shia minority of the population. That minority constitutes somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent. It is important to the electoral chances of President Karzai when the polls open next August.

Stripped to its essentials it requires that women unless ill in a way which would be exacerbated by the act of intercourse must provide sexual services to their husbands no less than once every four days. To Western eyes and ears this constitutes a species of marital rape.

Not that many years ago, less than twenty to err on the side of accuracy, there was scarcely a jurisdiction in the US where a man could be charged with spousal rape--even if the couple were living separately. The same legal context prevailed generally throughout the West.

Norms and the law have changed in the US as they have elsewhere to give due and proper regard to the autonomy and prerogatives of the wife even when sharing a bed with the guy. It is not surprising that reaction to Article 132 has been rapid, negative and virtually universal in Western countries.

The Article and the reaction bring into a very sharp focus the fundamental fissures in current policy for our efforts in Afghanistan. There are two in particular which have been highlighted in the past forty-eight hours.

The first, stated as a question is this: Is Afghanistan a sovereign country or not?

The second, also stated as a question is this: Is the mission of our and allied forces in Afghanistan one of defeating Taliban and al-Qaeda as a potential short term threat to our interests or is it building a modern nation-state with liberal institutions?

Both are digital questions. Each must be answered such that one and only one alternative is operative. Choosing one absolutely disallows the other. It's either zero or one, on or off.

Afghanistan is sovereign. Even Canadian Prime Minister Harper, who is High Minded even by the standards of High Minded Canada acknowledges that. Even Mr Harper admits that being sovereign means that the Afghan parliament can pass whatever legislation it wants and the president can sign it if he is of such a mind.

PM Harper qualified his admission with a statement to the effect that the Karzai government must understand that the assorted foreign assistance forces are present in Afghanistan because there are certain underlying and presumably shared understandings of human rights and kindred subjects. This position has been echoed without the bluntness of Harper's remarks by other Western leaders and highly placed officials.

The nature and extent of these presumptively shared assumptions is intimately connected with the second question: what is the goal of the war? As the Geek has argued in previous posts, a critical key to success in counterinsurgency is the existential and functional legitimacy of the government under attack. Intervenors, and keep a grip on the fact that we and our allies are just that, must refrain from any actions which serve or might serve to undercut the perceived legitimacy of the government. At the best the intervenors must take actions which serve to support the perceived legitimacy of the government.

If our goal is, as the Obama Strategy maintains, the limited one of defeating Taliban and al-Qaeda, then we must support (or at least appear to do so) the government even when it takes actions which are repugnant to some extent. This does not mean that we cannot argue to Karzai and the parliament that Article 132 may impair their legitimacy in the eyes of the population. But, if we do that, the basis must be factual not artificial. It must be documentable that the Article hurts the government with the majority to an extent which outweighs the help it may provide with the minority.

Beyond making that argument, any huffing, puffing and hyperventilating from the outsiders will simply undercut the government and hand the old but highly effective tool of linking the government to the "foreign occupiers" as a present to Taliban. Making threats, no matter how couched, how muted, how indirect to the effect that obnoxious measures such as Article 132 will result in a slackening of support for the government is a counterproductive measure.

If the American and allied forces mission in Afghanistan is more expansive than the defeat of Taliban and al-Qaeda and includes the end of nation-building with the goal of creating a liberal, pluralistic, democratic state from the congeries of ethno-linguistic groups collectively constituting the Afghan population, then Article 132 is irrelevant. We have failed already. It is time for buying a mass of one-way tickets back to the world.

From any real world perspective the only task for the US and its allies in Afghanistan is the defeat of Taliban and al-Qaeda. Any other task is doomed to failure. And, the attempt to add on tasks to the main mission assures the main mission will fail.

If our goal is what President Obama announced it to be: securing the US and the West from future terror attacks launched from Afghanistan, then get on with it.

The rights of Afghan women are important. So is the security of the United States and the West generally. Even the High Minded have to make a choice as to which has the greater priority.

Another Return of the Ruff-Puffs

For those of a certain age and youthful experience the term "ruff-puff" may mean something. For most the words need some explanation.

During the Vietnam War the US proposed and implemented an idea which was very good in principle but spotty at best in application. The concept focused on the creation of local, part-time volunteer forces comprised of residents in a given village or geographic area. These forces were officially called the Regional Forces and Popular Forces. The unwieldy bureaucratic term was rapidly transformed to "ruff-puffs."

This term carried a negative connotation. Most Americans in-country were of the view that the poorly trained and inadequately armed village militias were of no military utility. At the same time the government of South Vietnam was opposed to the creation of the ruff-puffs because it feared the presence of armed peasants who might show their displeasure with the less-than-legitimate Saigon regime by either joining with the Viet Cong or just plain shooting at Saigon's troops and tax collectors.

Actually the ruff-puffs showed a surprising capacity to resist the incursions of both the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese units. This capability was greatly enhanced when the Marine Corps in the First Corps Tactical Zone in the northern most part of South Vietnam had the very bright idea of embedding a Marine squad with the ruff-puff unit in a number of villages.

When the concept was tested it was shown to be quite successful. The Marines had the training, teamwork and personal firepower necessary to stiffen the will and ability of a village militia to stop even Main Force Viet Cong units from exacting supplies, manpower and intelligence from the protected area.

The Marines also had the capacity to call in assistance, both air and ground, if the threat force proved too great to be effectively countered. This ability was of almost immeasurable importance.

There was another, completely unplanned, benefit brought about by the presence of a Marine squad in any given village. This benefit did much to assure both the loyalty and the will-to-combat of the villagers.

The unforeseen benefit?

The Marines were hostages to American good behavior. In practice this meant the village and its fields were immunised against air strikes. No zoomie with an attitude or bad target coordinates would grease the village and its people. No free fire zone would suddenly grow to engulf the village as long as the Marines were present.

If keeping the Marines meant not shooting the much despised and usually corrupt district and provincial officials, that was a small price to pay. The panjandrums of Saigon breathed a long and quite audible sigh of relief.

The new combination of ruff-puffs and Marines went by the name of the Combined Action Platoon Program. It was a success. A big success.

And, as is often the case with good ideas in the military, the success of the CAP program assured its ultimate failure. The program was expanded rapidly. Too rapidly. Command and control suffered. Unit coherence was compromised. Quality control and assurance was eroded.

Even with its later less than splendid record, the CAP approach had much to recommend it. The residual institutional memory of CAP was in part behind the first Concerned Local Citizens and Awakening Council efforts in Iraq.

Nearly forty years later a similar, but far from identical effort started in Iraq, in Anbar province. The Concerned Local Citizens and the Awakening Councils were not analogous with the CAP program. Indeed, in many critical ways, the CLC/AC paradigm was quite different from the earlier model.

In one very, very important way the CLC/AC approach was identical with the CAP program particularly in its early days. The Concerned Local Citizens and the Awakening Councils were effective in denying areas and people to the insurgents. Like the CAPS of an earlier war, the CLC and the AC served to undercut and marginalise the various insurgent entities.

For years now both practitioners and historians of counterinsurgency have urged the development of a CAP type program in Afghanistan. The absence of such a program with its emphasis upon locals taking responsibility for the protection of the local peace constituted a very important missing link in the attempt to restore Afghanistan to the ranks of fully functional states.

Finally, almost too late, the US has announced the commencement of a program to arm and train local village militias. The announcement underscored the "long tradition" of Afghan peasants defending their homes and fields against invaders.

Well, duh. The Deep Thinkers at State and Defense just now find that out?

No. The prickly nature of Afghan peasants has been long known--particularly by those outsiders who have to deal with the man in the adobe or stone hut or the merchants in some wind swept and dusty bazaar.

This knowledge was a factor militating against the formation of an Afghan version of CAP.

Another, more important factor was the recognition that this sort of local militia would become a manpower drain on the overstretched US and NATO forces. But, with the advent of more US ground troops this consideration becomes less compelling.

However, as the Marines found out in I Corps forty years ago, a squad here and a squad there adds up pretty damn quickly to a lot of combat power spread about in very small packages. So very careful monitoring of the utility of this expenditure of boots is required. Cost-effectiveness measurement of a relentlessly honest (and realistic) nature is the sine qua non of success.

The final and most important reason why the Afghan village militia concept has been so slow in coming is simply the Karzai government. Karzai and his colleagues in the sham national government are quite painfully aware of how much the majority of the population detest the Kabul regime.

Karzai and many in his imitation government are members of the ethno-linguistic minority. While the boys in Kabul might get away with that if the regime inclined itself toward honesty and efficiency, both of these virtues elude them.

Not surprisingly, Karzai and his cohorts have been flat opposed to arming more citizens. The Geek doesn't blame them. Guns are a well demonstrated corrective to illegitimate government.

Apparently, Karzai has accepted the proposition that unless he risks the guns of the villagers, the guns of the Taliban are going to get him for sure. The Geek guesses the crooks of Kabul have taken the position that a risk is more acceptable than a certainty.

Village militias will not in themselves win the war against Taliban. But without the armed peasants, willing and able to deny freedom of movement, action and exaction to Taliban and its ilk, there can be no semblance of peace in Afghanistan.

The minimum necessary strategic goal for the US (and its allies) in Afghanistan is "not losing," It is assuring that Taliban and al-Qaeda and others of the Islamist/jihadist sort cannot claim an armed victory over the "Crusader states." Afghanistan will not quickly become any sort of model democracy let alone a secular state. That species of goal must be abandoned. Speedily.

The announcement that the US will organise and support a village militia program is an important indicator that realism has set in both in the field and in Washington. The increase in American (and wishfully, NATO) boots on the ground are an important, necessary but not sufficient step in the direction of implementing a realistic view in Afghanistan. Another highly necessary but, perhaps not sufficient, step is putting guns in the hands of the locals.

The next step will be strengthening both the resolve and ability of the villagers to impose and keep peace in their particular valley. This means we must take the best of the CAP program and improve upon it. In this case as in so many others involving war, history is the best and most certain guide.

We have the history. Do we have the wit and will to use it?

Karzai Calls It Like It Is

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

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

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

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

The reasons don't matter. Only the results.

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

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

The commonality?

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

Get a grip on this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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