Pakistan is arguably our most important ally in the Afghan theater to combat extremism there and around the world. It is also, arguably, our worst enemy. It is the epitome of Cold War intelligence and counter intelligence activities.
Pakistani Intelligence: Best friend and worst enemy
Pakistan ISI, US CIA: Bad Marriage that no one can leave
Pakistan denies involvement in India Embassy bombing
US Officials: Pakistan Intelligence behind bombings
Pakistani ISI: Who's in Charge?
Suggest reading the timeline for the vaunted Afghanistan Oil Pipeline. Pakistan has had both a physical security reason and an economic reason for having a government in Afghanistan that was friendly. A pipeline from the Caucus Nations through Afghanistan to Pakistan's ports would have netted them significant revenues for leasing land and ports, transportation and taxation on revenues. However, Pakistan sees its physical security, such as maintaining Kashmir as a puppet territory and a cushion against possible invasion from India and keeping Afghanistan from becoming an Indian ally in their rear, as much more important than any economic benefits from stability in the region and equal to, if not more important than its relationship with the United States.
Kaplan: Karzai Should not Antagonize Pakistan
India and Pakistan have been duking it out for decades (even centuries if you go back to the Mogul period of India or the invasion of the Moguls and the Persian Safavids)
Pakistan Politics Effect American Efforts to Attack Al Qaeda and Kill Bin Laden: The Clock is Ticking
Pakistani Intelligence: Best friend and worst enemy
I was going spend significant time writing why this is a wholly untenable alternative and explain it in simple, plain terms. But there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. An August 2007 PrincipalAnalysis on precisely this - cause and (adverse) effect in sharing target intelligence with Pakistan - is precisely the round peg for today’s round hole presented by Prime Minister Gilani.Pakistani Intelligence Like Woman With Many Lovers [Or, why they play footsie with America while trying to maintain their terrorist friends - we're in a global war while they are still subject to regional realities. Realities, apparently, we have yet to determine how to alleviate]
From American Power Play In Pakistan: al-Qaeda Abandons Camps After US Intelligence Shared with Pakistan on August 13, 2007: [read more]
Facing a hostile and huge India to its east, Pakistan doesn't want to see Afghanistan allied with India to its west, and many Pakistanis think the U.S.-backed regime of Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai tilts toward India .
"Nobody in Pakistan wants to see America win," said Hamid Gul , a retired general who's a former director-general of the ISI. "That would spell danger to Pakistan in the long run. They, America, want to make us subservient to India ." [snip]
Beyond the historic fears about India lie deep Pakistani suspicions about America. The fear, fueled by the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan , is that once the U.S. pacifies Afghanistan , Pakistan would be next.
Pakistan ISI, US CIA: Bad Marriage that no one can leave
It is like a bad marriage in which both spouses have long stopped trusting each other, but would never think of breaking up because they have become so mutually dependent.Afghanistan claims Pakistan behind India Embassy bombing [probably the most amusing part of the article is the claim that the Pakistan ISI was "once" the backer of the Taliban - they still are; if you think our intelligence leaks were egregious, imagine being the government of Pakistan]
Without the I.S.I.’s help, American spies in Pakistan would be incapable of carrying out their primary mission in the country: hunting Islamic militants, including top members of Al Qaeda. Without the millions of covert American dollars sent annually to Pakistan, the I.S.I. would have trouble competing with the spy service of its archrival, India.
Pakistan denies involvement in India Embassy bombing
US Officials: Pakistan Intelligence behind bombings
The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.Reading Pakistan: Playing Hardball
First, let’s recognize openly right off the bat that it’s not like we just figured out the SIGINT (Signals intelligence). Those doing the listening know what they are looking for and from whom. Even had they missed it on a bad day, after the bombing occurred a solid SIGINT scrub would haev netted this within 24 hours at the most. What this means is that we have been sitting on this - at least publicly. The release of this in the open now is hardball, plain and simple.Pakistan will "probe" bombing
Consider the sequence of events thus far. [read more]
Pakistani ISI: Who's in Charge?
Suggest reading the timeline for the vaunted Afghanistan Oil Pipeline. Pakistan has had both a physical security reason and an economic reason for having a government in Afghanistan that was friendly. A pipeline from the Caucus Nations through Afghanistan to Pakistan's ports would have netted them significant revenues for leasing land and ports, transportation and taxation on revenues. However, Pakistan sees its physical security, such as maintaining Kashmir as a puppet territory and a cushion against possible invasion from India and keeping Afghanistan from becoming an Indian ally in their rear, as much more important than any economic benefits from stability in the region and equal to, if not more important than its relationship with the United States.
Kaplan: Karzai Should not Antagonize Pakistan
In the mind of the ISI, India uses its new consulates in Afghanistan to back rebels in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan, whose capital, Quetta, is only a few hours' drive from Kandahar. When India talks of building dams in Kunar, the ISI thinks that India wants to help Afghanistan steal Pakistan's water. Karzai's open alliance with India is nearly a casus belli for the ISI. So elements of the ISI have responded in kind; they likely helped in the recent assassination attempt against the Afghan president.American Politics Effect Pakistan
In the midst of all this, both Bush and Barack Obama talk simplistically about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. The India-Pakistan rivalry is just one of several political problems in the region that negate the benefit of more troops. As in the past in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we are in danger of conceiving of war in narrow military terms alone, and thus getting the politics wrong.
India and Pakistan have been duking it out for decades (even centuries if you go back to the Mogul period of India or the invasion of the Moguls and the Persian Safavids)
Pakistan Politics Effect American Efforts to Attack Al Qaeda and Kill Bin Laden: The Clock is Ticking
What all this means is that our ability to actively pursue and kill al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists inside their Pakistani safe havens with Pakistan’s cooperation and/or acquiescence may come to a crashing halt very soon. The window is closing. Not on the Bush presidency, but on the Musharraf presidency.
Musharraf purged the ISI of its most radical senior leadership between 2005 and 2006, but didn't have much of a choice regarding the remainder because he would have been left with the same situation in which we found ourselves after Jimmy Carter gutted the CIA -- groping blindly for information about real and potential enemies. The ISI would have been primed for infiltration by India's Research and Analysis Wing, which has capabilities and assets an order of magnitude greater than those of the ISI. Musharraf realizes that the ISI is an external liability, but an internal necessity, and as long as the ISI doesn't side too blatantly with the extremists, it will probably be safe from a major "rightsizing." The ISI Shadows who were my babysitters in Multan made no pretense of being anti-Taliban, but they also *liked* us contractor-parasites on a personal level. One of them took me aside in the chow hall one morning and assured me that, if we were ambushed by terrs and our vehicle was disabled, he'd personally shoot me to prevent me being captured. I told him to give me the gun instead, so I could force *them* to kill me, and he wouldn't be blamed. He gave me a bear hug and said I was a *good* friend. Didn't promise he'd give me the bullet-launcher, though...
The problem we -- as in, "we Americans" -- face is that Musharraf's political control is becoming increasingly tenuous, and we're partly to blame for that by pushing for a "more visible contribution" in the GWOT -- the Pak Army had been conducting very effective, but low-key, anti-al Q COIN in the NWFP, and it was moved southward and the OPTEMPO increased pretty much just to show Washington that Pakistan was serious about being counted as a GWOT partner. That's the move that stirred up the Pushtun hornet's nest for Musharraf.
. . . Islamic radicals have been operating openly in the ISI for three decades, and were put there by the government in the late 1970s, when it was decided that Islamic conservatism was the solution for Pakistan's problems (corruption and religious/ethnic conflicts.) These guys are not just "Taliban spies," but Pakistani intelligence professionals that believe in Islamic radicalism.
. . . The U.S. has told Pakistan that it is fed up with getting screwed around by the ISI, and if Pakistan doesn't clean out the ISI, and shut down Islamic terrorists along the Afghan border, NATO, U.S. and Afghan troops will cross the border and do it.
The Paks have been playing us since Charlie Wilson's time. Pakistan can either exercise sovereignty and extend the writ of Islamabad to the frontier or forfeit their claims. They want to play games, they could end up with a Marine Expeditionary force in Karachi, a new neighbor to their west called the Islamic Republic of Baluchistan, and what used to be called the Durand Line shifting to the Indus.
Convince Pakistan to allow Waziristan and the other troublesome tribal areas to "secede" from Pakistan long enough for the more extreme elements within Pakistan to flock to the new radical Islamic haven. Perhaps even allow troublesome members of the ISI and Pak government to seek asylum and positions of power there, too.
Then, without worrying about the political stability of Pakistant, the US can do what's necessary to confront these people, destroy whatever infrastructure is necessary, kill whoever we must, and then allow Pakistan to reacquire the territory.
. . . peace deals are being signed because the Pakistani government knows that its demoralized soldiers and police have little will to fight, and believe face-saving but impotent peace deals are the only alternative to publicly admitting the truth: the Army, the FC and the Khasadars are incapable of handling the Taliban. Regardless of the reassurances the United States may receive from General Khattak or Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, pervasive morale problems mean that no elements of the Pakistani military will slug it out with the Taliban in ground combat, with the exception of very limited engagements, such as clearing the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) in Islamabad in 2007, or the (now-curtailed) operations in Swat this year. Pakistan’s recent “offensive” against militants in the Peshawar area, for example, grounded to an ineffectual halt in early July 2008 before significant numbers of militants were ever even engaged.
You know, Bill, as I was reading, I was thinking the same thing. Not everything has to be fast and furious. We could have continued to slowly pick off certain folks and disrupted their activities without necessarily forcing all the tribes to start picking sides.
On the other hand, sometimes we need a little distraction and it certainly made the tribes and the terrs start discussing whether they should be fighting the "far" enemy or the "near" enemy. Good way to get a little inter-allied fist fights going on. Not sure if I believe one or the other is best at this time.
Reading considerably about the tribal relations and wars of the past. Very interesting to read where some of the tribes and their names came from.
I think that goes into the territory of "easier said than done". Aside from political realities, there is a matter of geographics and sustaining efforts there over a long haul. Bombing crap from the sky isn't necessarily the best, most accurate and you know how the international press treats bombs that land on "civilians". We'd win physically and sacrifice the propaganda war. Not exactly the way to kill Al Qaeda's ideology around the globe.
And, per my message above, the tribes are not exactly something you want to conquer or own. I think our strategy ought to be how to split the enemy into pieces and make them fight each other. It will keep them busy and, eventually, the tribes will get tired and turn on the outsiders (AQ, Arabs, etc). Reading their history seems to be the best way forward. Let us hope we are working on that.
That will take a bit of doing -- the tribes used to do that very thing until they hit on the idea of an annual jirga, at which they'd agree to arbitrate disputes other than blood feuds. The Taliban immediately announced it would boycott the 2007 jirga, to which the tribal leaders responded, "We didn't invite you in the first place." The Taliban took a page from the Democrat Playbook and immediately reversed course, screaming to the local press that they were being excluded, then launched fatwas at the tribal reps via the national press.
Pakistan's press is a lot like the internet -- a paper may take one editorial position, but its op-ed pages will be devoted to more opposing points of view than John has long guns -- and most Paks actually *read* one or more papers from front to back. I'm not a media expert (and I don't play one on TV), but we're not doing much to counter the Taliban/al-Q propaganda war being waged in the Pak print media, and we have an advantage in that the most influential national papers are the English-language ones.
They may have a yearly jirga to sort out blood fueds, etc, but, from what I'm reading, there is still a considerable amount of "You raid me, I kill your brother, you kill my brother, I kill your father" thing going on, some of it brought on by the association of the terrs as guests of the tribes. We have to figure out how to get that information and start wielding it for a little more moral clout.
then, there is always the "counter" aspect: make them think one or more tribes are supporting our position physically, theoretically or even simply with information about others. You know, some tribe that is nominally a pain in the ass and trying to establish their creds among the other war lords. A little presumed back stabbing goes a long way towards distrust.
They're tribes. They *call* themselves tribes.
And the jirga's the primary reason they've pretty much ceased the traditional reasons for inter- and intra-tribal squabbling, but blood feuds aren't usually a matter for discussion -- they're a matter of honor, and Pushtunwali has the same code of enforcement that La Lek has among the Slavs. We need to prove to the Pushtun that their guests are dishonoring them by their actions, which will relieve them of the host-responsibility Pushtunwali imposes on them. Prove to them that we know their rules and insist that they play by their own rules, too.