Pakistan: Switching Enemies

Posted by Ed Corcoran

The 1947 partition of the subcontinent was traumatic for both Pakistan and 
India, resulting in hatred on both sides. Kashmir was the focal point of this 
enmity and almost immediately the object of a bitter war with a subsequent partition 
along a line of control which remains to this day. For Pakistan, India was not 
just a hypothetical or potential enemy, but a very real one. The third Indo-Pakistani 
War resulted in the loss of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh); Indian preparations 
with Soviet backing to invade and crush West Pakistan were apparently averted 
only by forceful objections and military moves by President Nixon. The region 
settled into an uneasy peace. India was the clear strategic threat.

Under these circumstances, building a strong Pakistani army was natural and 
necessary, and the decision to “eat grass” if need be in order to 
develop nuclear weapons was certainly understandable. Depending on your point 
of view, economic development was held hostage to military development, or economic 
development was necessarily postponed due to pressing national security threats. 
In any case, economic and social development languished.

Pakistan became a quasi-military dictatorship. For decades it was either ruled 
by strong military leaders, or by weak civil governments fronting for strong 
military leaders. The military became the key economic player in the nation, 
running a widespread network of commercial operations for its own benefit. It 
had a vested interest in maintaining an Indian enemy, the key element which 
justified its dominating position in the nation. Whenever a burst of patriotism 
was needed, it could be quickly generated by raising tensions in Kashmir and 
reinvigorating the specter of the Indian enemy.

 

The army developed what Leon Hadar termed a strong “military-mosque” 
nexus, providing measured support to more radical Islamic groups to reduce their 
potential for internal disruption. Afghanistan, seen as providing strategic 
depth, was threatened by the Soviet invasion, particularly in view of the close 
Soviet ties with India. So Pakistan readily cooperated with the United States 
in undermining the Soviet position. In doing so, the army's Inter-Service Intelligence 
Agency (ISI) carefully controlled the flow of US support to selected groups, 
typically the radical Islamic ones who were most effective against the Soviets. 
When the Soviets left and the United States lost interest, Pakistan supported 
the takeover of Afghanistan by radical Taliban elements. Through the 1990s, 
Pakistan consolidated its position in Afghanistan and significantly expanded 
its missile and nuclear weapons programs. Incursions in Kashmir in May, 1999, 
threatened to escalate into a full scale war with India. Although Pakistan was 
pressured to back down, tensions there remained high. A military coup by General 
Pervez Musharraf on October 12, 1999, closed out with decade with another military 
government in place.

 

By 2000, the army's position had reached a zenith. It controlled the government, 
had a newly acquired arsenal of modern weapons, supported a client regime which 
almost totally controlled Afghanistan, and maintained a high state of tension 
in Kashmir, underlining the immediacy of the Indian threat.

 

This position of strength began to unravel with the World Trade Center attacks 
in September, 2001. Acceding to U.S. pressure, General Musharraf supported efforts 
to dislodge the Taliban and promote a Western-oriented government in Kabul. 
In doing this, he dismantled ties with radical Islamic groups which had been 
carefully built up over a 20-year period. Sections of the army, particularly 
the ISI, resisted these efforts and continued to provide support to radical 
Islamic elements both inside Afghanistan and in the Pakistani border areas. 
The extent to which General Musharraf covertly supported this continued support 
is unclear. But what is clear is that as U.S. attention to Afghanistan dwindled, 
the Taliban regrouped, radical Islamic elements took refuge in the Pakistani 
border regions and from there conducted increasingly effective operations within 
Afghanistan.

 

The situation in the Pakistan border areas became increasingly unstable. Struggles 
with the Soviets and then the Americans radicalized the border tribes; their 
leaders had no interest in being part of a democratic Pakistan, but rather in 
preserving their traditional independence from Islamabad. The existing cooperative 
administration by the army and tribal chiefs was replaced by more radical anti-government 
and fundamentalist control. The United States pressured General Musharraf and 
then the emerging civilian government of Yousaf Raza Gillani to take control 
of the border areas; more recently with some degree of tacit support from the 
Pakistani army or government, the United States has carried out a series of 
missile strikes against the radical elements with Pakistan.

 

With brutal tactics, and support and encouragement from al Qaeda, fundamentalist 
tribal groups in the border area have successfully repulsed army efforts to 
exert control. They have continued to support Taliban activities in Afghanistan 
and have expanded their actions into Pakistan proper. Most notably, they have 
taken effective control of the Swat Valley, negotiating an agreement with the 
Pakistani government to allow local government under Islamic sharia law. They 
have also been directly involved in violent actions within Pakistan proper. 
This includes their apparent organizing of the assassination of Prime Minister 
candidate Benazir Bhutto in December, 2008. Much of the border area remains 
exempt from parliamentary authority. Political reform to incorporate the region 
into Pakistan proper is essential, extending Pakistani election laws and political 
activity to the region.

 

These events have significantly undermined the leading position of the army 
in Pakistani society. Instead of stressing the Indian threat, it has been ineffectually 
conducting an unpopular effort against tribal groups in the border area, undermining 
its position as protector of the nation. It has suffered real casualties and 
real costs while public attention has been diverted from India. A massacre in 
Mumbai in January, 2009, orchestrated by the Kashmir-based Lakshar-e-Taiba did 
bring new attention to India, but also resulted in the Pakistani government 
very reluctantly admitting that Pakistani elements had been involved. Rather 
than building more public outrage against India, the incident underlined the 
ability of radical groups to destabilize the international situation. A following 
suicide attack against a police academy in Lahore in March, 2009, further demonstrated 
the ability of radical elements to destabilize the internal situation in Pakistan./p>

 

The struggle against radical Islamic groups is widely seen as an American-inspired 
effort. For sixty years, the U.S. relationship with Pakistan has been purely 
transactional – the United States provided assistance when it needed Pakistani 
support (particularly against the Soviet in Afghanistan), then turned and pressured 
Pakistan when support was no longer required. The U.S. assistance was invariably 
to the military; the lack of democracy was decried and then ignored. There was 
minimal U.S. attention to Pakistan's own socio-economic development. With the 
attack on the World Trade Center, the United States again needed Pakistani support, 
again provided wide support to a military dictator, again ignored Pakistan's 
own needs. Indeed, there is even a widespread belief in Pakistan that the World 
Trade Center attack was orchestrated by the CIA to promote its anti-Muslim agenda. 
Radical insistence that U.S. actions are motivated by anti-Islamic sentiments, 
reinforced by depictions of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, resonate strongly with 
many Pakistanis. To put it mildly, there is strong public skepticism of Washington's 
motives. So the September, 2008, bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad 
which killed 55 people and wounded more than 200, increased concerns that the 
alliance with the United States is spurring the attacks. At that point, one 
survey showed that 64 percent of Pakistanis considered the United States as 
the greatest threat facing the nation.

 

Yet strategically, there has been a gradual transition as the overall situation 
has morphed to one in which India in no longer the primary threat. India has 
become much more focused on internal development; a real peace is possible. 
But this would seriously undermine vested interests who need the threat from 
India to justify their own position. Internal radical elements have become the 
primary threat to Pakistan itself, a threat to a prosperous, democratic, civil 
Pakistan. But not everybody wants a prosperous, democratic, and civil Pakistan. 
Vested interests in the military are wary of the democratic element, the loss 
of focus on an Indian enemy, and a consequent diminishing of the army's role 
as the protector of the nation. Radical elements draw sympathy for a more dogmatic 
state, and with brutal actions silence many moderates. The main political parties 
focus on domestic squabbles. The current global economic recession further complicates 
this dismal picture by providing few positive examples of what cooperation with 
the West can bring. The public is left with competing ideological views and 
little vision of what Pakistan could be.

 

So India remains the main strategic focus, while actions against radical Islamic 
elements proceed in fits and starts. The public is simply not ready to acknowledge 
that these elements have become the core threat to Pakistan. They are highly 
suspicious of U.S. motives, hopeful that radical elements can be dissuaded from 
spreading violence into Pakistan proper, still very wary of India, and protective 
of Islamic values. It is difficult for the government, especially a weak government, 
to reverse sixty years of strategic orientation to promote befriending India 
and attacking Muslims. So strong government action against radical elements 
in the border area is unlikely. Indeed, it would probably solidify anti-government 
sympathies in the border regions and spread atrocities into Pakistan proper; 
the United States would inevitably be blamed for such violence. This is a situation 
which has developed over decades and will not be resolved by short-term changes. 

 

The core challenge is to develop a vision of a democratic, prosperous Pakistan, 
outline credible steps toward this goal, and provide visible evidence that the 
nation is moving in that direction. Projected U.S. aid now includes a significant 
element focused on domestic development. Such development could not only build 
support for the civilian, democratic government, but could also moderate and 
eventually change the broadly negative views of the West in general and the 
United States in particular. This effect was clearly visible from U.S. humanitarian 
aid after an October, 2005, earthquake in Kashmir; unfortunately that aid was 
soon discontinued without any systematic follow up.

 

The importance of public diplomacy cannot be overestimated, the need to build 
a public opinion which focuses on positive social development and rejects the 
excesses of fundamentalist intolerance and brutality. Radical elements have 
been very effective at building a picture of a rabidly anti-Muslim United States, 
at depicting U.S. actions against radical elements as insults to Pakistani sovereignty, 
and at intimidating moderate leaders – Bhutto's assassination being only 
the most prominent example. And their efforts to provoke India distract attention 
from internal Pakistani challenges.

 

But the radicals have also overstepped their appeal. Brutal attacks,
including the attack on the Lahore police academy (which radicals publicly 
claimed responsibility for) have increased public concern that actions in the
border areas will spread violence into Pakistan proper. But the attacks are a 
two-edged sword, also demonstrating the threat which radical elements pose to 
Pakistan proper and vividly displaying their indiscriminate brutality. Similarly, much 
of the Pakistan public has been appalled by a widely distributed video of the public
flogging by the Pakistani Taliban of a young woman in the Swat Valley.

 

Stabilizing Pakistan and developing effective anti-radical policies in the 
border areas requires a long-term effort promoting Pakistan's socio-economic 
development, strengthening democratic and legal systems, and building a recognition 
that the core threat to a prosperous, democratic Pakistan is no longer India, 
but the extreme radical elements within the country.

Uncertainty About New U.S. Policy Toward Pakistan, Afghanistan

Interviewee:
Anthony Cordesman, Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy, the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington
Interviewer:
Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org


Anthony H. Cordesman, an expert on U.S. defense policy, says President Barack Obama's recent speech on Afghanistan sketches out "what many people feel is the best available strategy." But Cordesman says it will take many months to know how the concepts outlined by Obama--on engaging Pakistan, training Afghan troops, and reorganizing aid--will be executed, how much they'll cost and "whether we could get Afghan and Pakistani support and whether our allies will at least provide more advisers and aid money in lieu of more troops." He also is dubious that Iran is able or willing to do much to help.
When we last talked in September, you said the United States was "winning the war that is unpopular in Iraq, but losing the war that is popular in Afghanistan." Have things changed?
What's been very clear from what President Obama as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretary of defense have been saying is this: Even though they haven't used the term "losing," they do say there is a "stalemate" or "we're not winning." That is an acknowledgement that you are losing. What's changed, if anything, is that Americans now understand the stakes in Afghanistan are awfully big. And while the president's speeches have made the war somewhat more popular, at this moment, many polls show more Americans fail to support the war than support it. So, is it still a popular war? Probably not.
The president last Friday announced a new strategy for Afghanistan that included a couple of notable things: sending four thousand U.S. troops to help train the Afghan army, and making the point that "more moderate" Taliban would be welcomed with open arms. You've been an advocate for some time now of intensive training of the Afghan army. Is this a good thing and is it enough?
The president announced a set of concepts, and they're good concepts and many other people support them. It's important to know that he was in some ways rushed into making decisions because you have to act now if you're going to deal with the 2009 military season in Afghanistan this summer and fall. Out of what he announced, one of the key points had nothing to do with troop training, it was a new focus on diplomacy, particularly regarding Pakistan. Pakistan, if not the key element in the war, is certainly equal to Afghanistan in importance. It will take a combination of diplomacy, aid, and U.S. pressure to bring Pakistan into the war. And what he described for Afghanistan was a policy where there had to be real pressure put on the Afghan government to do its share.

"Pakistan, if not the key element in the war, is certainly equal to Afghanistan in importance. It will take a combination of diplomacy, aid, and U.S. pressure to bring Pakistan into the war."

When you talk about training Afghan troops, it's important to understand the context. It wasn't simply to have more trainers and more Afghan troops. It was to link them to a strategy where we would not only engage Taliban and other jihadists but there'd be enough forces eventually--United States, allied and Afghan--to provide the people who live in forward areas in the countryside with security. That would allow us to bring in economic advisers, strengthen the military component of the provincial reconstruction teams, and provide economic development and jobs. This is what people in counterinsurgency call a "win-hold-build strategy." These are all concepts. Even when we have specifics--like the seventeen thousand additional combat forces Obama announced earlier--nobody said exactly where they're going, how many allied forces will be added.
As to the four thousand trainers, there are reports that many of these will be divided up into small teams that are embedded in Afghan combat units, a technique that worked inside Iraq, but these combat units will also shift their missions--as I said earlier--from simply defeating the enemy to providing local security. The president talked in very vague general terms about the Afghan police, which is one of the high-risk areas. He talked about narcotics changes we're trying to make. He talked about reorganization of the aid effort under Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, who has since pointed out that aid programs run by the United States, the United Nations, and allied and nongovernment groups have been incompetent, corrupt, and almost totally wasteful. So far there has been talk about "reorganization" but with no specifics.
So how would you sum up? Is this a major development or is this a holding action?
I don't think either one. The president has outlined what many people feel is the best available strategy. Now a significant number of the people who worked on these policy-planning exercises had real questions about whether any combination of these techniques would work. Others believe they would. We're several months away from going from the president's remarks to knowing how they'll be executed, when they'll be executed, how much they'll cost, whether we could get Afghan and Pakistani support, and whether our allies will at least provide more advisers and aid money in lieu of more troops.
Let's talk a bit about the Pakistanis. You have a pretty good idea where the al-Qaeda leadership is holed up in Pakistan. You know approximately where the Taliban leadership is. But the United States has its hands tied to a great extent because we can't really send even Special Forces in at this time because of the lack of support for the Americans in Pakistan.
We need to be very careful here. We don't have enough data to send in Special Forces teams. It's easy to talk about this, but we need to remember Special Forces are small, elite human groups. If they run into trouble, and they are surrounded by enemies, as they would be, it's easy to hope for a Rambo- like success, but in the real world, what we might get is a lot of casualties. The problem we face, the one you focused on, a lack of Pakistani support, is very real. It's compounded by a lot of problems: political divisions within the Pakistani government; major political parties which are personality and ego driven, often caring more about themselves than the country; the Pakistani army, which has ties to the Taliban, manipulating them as a way of securing Pakistan's borders and avoiding any debate over the future of the Durand Line [the nineteenth-century border set by Britain separating Afghanistan and British India, a line opposed traditionally by Afghanistan]. You have Islamists in the Pakistan military.

"The whole idea that this [dialogue with Iran] is suddenly going to lead to a "Grand Bargain," that if we could solve all of our problems in Afghanistan, we'd solve our problems with Iran, is a dangerous illusion."

People often focus on the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but we helped build up the Islamist extremists in Pakistan. We persuaded the Saudis to build them up. And when Pakistanis in general feel that Afghanistan is not their war, that we pushed it on them, in all fairness, we need to remember that's exactly what we did. Pakistanis have felt at least until this last year that this was not their war. What changed if anything is that these groups have now killed a Pakistani prime minister [Benazir Bhutto], have attacked civilian targets, and have begun to be a major problem inside Pakistan. That may allow us to change public opinion.
A number of Iranian experts who've been advocating a closer working relationship between the United States and Iran were pleased that Iran was invited to the [March 31 meeting] in The Hague. The Iranians talked there about trying to help stop the drug trade. Do you expect much cooperation from the Iranians?
We need to be very very careful. It's very useful to explore this, but Iran is caught up in other issues--nuclear programs, asymmetric forces in the Persian Gulf, its position on Israel, tensions with the Arab world, its search for influence in the region. There may well be areas of common ground. The dialogue that is conducted on the basis of preserving our interest while finding out how much we could share with Iran makes a lot of sense. The whole idea that this is suddenly going to lead to a "grand bargain," that if we could solve all of our problems in Afghanistan, we'd solve our problems with Iran, is a dangerous illusion. We can hope for progress. We may well get it. It will be slow and incremental. It isn't going to change the outcome of the war. No matter what happens with narcotics in the near term, it is at best a sideshow compared to the issues that really matter.
Of course, the Afghans are having their presidential elections in the summer. What is your view of the Afghan government? Many people have accused it of corruption and being centered only on Kabul.
We need to be very careful. There are really serious problems. We did not properly support the Afghan civil service, bring it into the government we constructed. We put far too much emphasis on how governments are chosen rather than the quality of government. There are good provincial leaders. There are effective ministries or elements of effective ministries in the Afghan government. There are Afghan aid organizations which deserve to be reinforced. But the fact is that Afghan capabilities fall far far short of what's needed to help provide security, provide the level of integrity which Afghans demand. It's much better to say that there's a long way to go than that the situation is universally hopeless.
When do you think we'll begin to see how things are going? By the end of the summer?
I hope that's true, but it may well be the late fall or early 2010. We may see a change not in the sense that we're winning, but that we have achieved stalemate. That may be possible this summer. But setting deadlines there is simply unrealistic.

Daily Pakistan April 4, 2009

Daily Pakistan,Apr 2,2009

U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan

White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group's Report on

U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan

INTRODUCTION

The United States has a vital national security interest in addressing the current and potential security threats posed by extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan. In Pakistan, al Qaeda and other groups of jihadist terrorists are planning new terror attacks. Their targets remain the U.S. homeland, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Europe, Australia, our allies in the Middle East, and other targets of opportunity. The growing size of the space in which they are operating is a direct result of the terrorist/insurgent activities of the Taliban and related organizations. At the same time, this group seeks to reestablish their old sanctuaries in Afghanistan.

Therefore, the core goal of the U.S. must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The ability of extremists in Pakistan to undermine Afghanistan is proven, while insurgency in Afghanistan feeds instability in Pakistan. The threat that al Qaeda poses to the United States and our allies in Pakistan - including the possibility of extremists obtaining fissile material - is all too real. Without more effective action against these groups in Pakistan, Afghanistan will face continuing instability.

Objectives

Achieving our core goal is vital to U.S. national security. It requires, first of all, realistic and achievable objectives. These include:

•

Disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan to degrade any ability they have to plan and launch international terrorist attacks.

•

Promoting a more capable, accountable, and effective government in Afghanistan that serves the Afghan people and can eventually function, especially regarding internal security, with limited international support.

•

Developing increasingly self-reliant Afghan security forces that can lead the counterinsurgency and counterterrorism fight with reduced U.S. assistance.

•

Assisting efforts to enhance civilian control and stable constitutional government in Pakistan and a vibrant economy that provides opportunity for the people of Pakistan.

•

Involving the international community to actively assist in addressing these objectives for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with an important leadership role for the UN.

A New Way Forward

These are daunting tasks. They require a new way of thinking about the challenges, a wide ranging diplomatic strategy to build support for our efforts, enhanced engagement with the publics in the region and at home, and a realization that all elements of international power –

diplomatic, informational, military and economic - must be brought to bear. They will also require a significant change in the management, resources, and focus of our foreign assistance.

-2-

Our diplomatic effort should be based on building a clear consensus behind the common core goal and supporting objectives. To this end, we will explore creating new diplomatic mechanisms, including establishing a “Contact Group” and a regional security and economic cooperation forum. The trilateral U.S.-Pakistan-Afghanistan effort of February 24-26, 2009 will be continued and broadened, into the next meeting planned for early May, in Washington.

The United States must overcome the 'trust deficit' it faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where many believe that we are not a reliable long-term partner. We must engage the Afghan people in ways that demonstrate our commitment to promoting a legitimate and capable Afghan government with economic progress. We must engage the Pakistani people based on our long-term commitment to helping them build a stable economy, a stronger democracy, and a vibrant civil society.

A strategic communications program must be created, made more effective, and resourced. This new strategy will have no chance of success without better civil-military coordination by U.S. agencies, a significant increase of civilian resources, and a new model of how we allocate and use these resources. For too long, U.S. and international assistance efforts in Afghanistan and Pakistan have suffered from being ill-organized and significantly under-resourced in some areas. A large portion of development assistance ends up being spent on international consultants and overhead, and virtually no impact assessments have yet been done on our assistance programs.

We must ensure that our assistance to both Afghanistan and Pakistan is aligned with our core goals and objectives. This will involve assistance that is geared to strengthening government capacity and the message that assistance will be limited without the achievement of results.

Additional assistance to Afghanistan must be accompanied by concrete mechanisms to ensure greater government accountability. In a country that is 70 percent rural, and where the Taliban recruiting base is primarily among under-employed youths, a complete overhaul of our civilian assistance strategy is necessary; agricultural sector job creation is an essential first step to undercutting the appeal of al Qaeda and its allies. Increased assistance to Pakistan will be limited without a greater willingness to cooperate with us to eliminate the sanctuary enjoyed by al Qaeda and other extremist groups, as well as a greater commitment to economic reforms that

will raise the living standard of ordinary Pakistanis, including in the border regions of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, the North West Frontier Province, and Baluchistan.

SUMMARY OF RECOMMENDATIONS FOR AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN

The following steps must be done in concert to produce the desired end state: the removal of al-Qaeda's sanctuary, effective democratic government control in Pakistan, and a self-reliant Afghanistan that will enable a withdrawal of combat forces while sustaining our commitment to political and economic development.

•

Executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

Our military forces in Afghanistan, including those recently approved by the President, should be utilized for two priority missions: 1) securing Afghanistan's south and east against a return of al Qaeda and its allies, to provide a space for the Afghani government to establish effective government control and 2) providing the Afghan security forces with the mentoring needed to expand rapidly, take the lead in effective counterinsurgency operations, and allow us and our partners to wind down our combat operations.

-3-

Our counter-insurgency strategy must integrate population security with building effective local governance and economic development. We will establish the security needed to provide space and time for stabilization and reconstruction activities.

To prevent future attacks on the U.S. and its allies - including the local populace - the development of a strategic communications strategy to counter the terror information campaign is urgent. This has proved successful in Iraq (where the U.S. military has made a significant effort in this area) and should be developed in Afghanistan as a top priority to improve the image of the United States and its allies. The strategic communications plan -- including electronic media, telecom, and radio -- shall include options on how best to counter the propaganda that is key to the enemy's terror campaign.

•

Resourcing and prioritizing civilian assistance in Afghanistan

By increasing civilian capacity we will strengthen the relationship between the Afghan people and their government. A dramatic increase in Afghan civilian expertise is needed to facilitate the development of systems and institutions particularly at the provincial and local levels, provide basic infrastructure, and create economic alternatives to the insurgency at all levels of Afghan society, particularly in agriculture. The United States should play an important part in providing that expertise, but responding effectively to Afghanistan's needs will require that allies, partners, the UN and other international organizations, and non-governmental organizations significantly increase their involvement in Afghanistan.

•

Expanding the Afghan National Security Forces: Army and Police

To be capable of assuming the security mission from U.S. forces in Afghanistan's south and east, the Afghan National Security Forces must substantially increase its size and capability. Initially this will require a more rapid build-up of the Afghan Army and police up to 134,000 and 82,000 over the next two years, with additional enlargements as circumstances and resources warrant.

The international community must assume responsibility for funding this significantly enhanced Afghan security force for an extended period. We will also have to provide support for other Afghan security forces such as the Afghan Public Protection Force. Salaries paid to Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police must become more competitive with those paid by the insurgents.

Over time, as security conditions change, we should continue to reassess Afghan National Security Forces size, as it will be affected by such factors as: the overall security situation, the capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces, and the rate at which we can grow local security forces and integrate them into the overall ANSF structure.

•

Engaging the Afghan government and bolstering its legitimacy

International support for the election will be necessary for a successful outcome. We should do everything necessary to ensure the security and legitimacy of voter registration, elections, and vote counting. The international military presence should help the Afghan security forces provide security before, during and after the election. International monitoring will also be required to ensure legitimacy and oversee Afghanistan's polling sites.

-4-

The overall legitimacy of the Afghan government is also undermined by rampant corruption and a failure to provide basic services to much of the population over the past 7 years. Where Afghan systems and institutions have benefited from high quality technical assistance and

mentoring, they have made great progress. Making such support more consistent with qualified mentors to advise and monitor officials, pushing such efforts to the provincial and district levels, and channeling more assistance through Afghan institutions benefiting from this high quality support will help restore and maintain the legitimacy of the Afghan government.

•

Encouraging Afghan government efforts to integrate reconcilable insurgents

While Mullah Omar and the Taliban's hard core that have aligned themselves with al Qaeda are not reconcilable and we cannot make a deal that includes them, the war in Afghanistan cannot be won without convincing non-ideologically committed insurgents to lay down their arms, reject al Qaeda, and accept the Afghan Constitution.

Practical integration must not become a mechanism for instituting medieval social policies that give up the quest for gender equality and human rights. We can help this process along by exploiting differences among the insurgents to divide the Taliban's true believers from less committed fighters.

Integration must be Afghan-led. An office should be created in every province and we should support efforts by the Independent Directorate of Local Governance to develop a reconciliation effort targeting mid-to-low level insurgents to be led by provincial governors. We should also explore ways to rehabilitate captured insurgents drawing on lessons learned from similar programs in Iraq and other countries.

•

Including provincial and local governments in our capacity building efforts

We need to work with the Afghan government to refocus civilian assistance and capacity-building programs on building up competent provincial and local governments where they can more directly serve the people and connect them to their government.

•

Breaking the link between narcotics and the insurgency

Besides the global consequences of the drug trade, the Afghan narcotics problem causes great concern due to its ties to the insurgency, the fact that it is the major driver of corruption in Afghanistan, and distorts the legal economy. The NATO/International Security Assistance Forces and U.S. forces should use their authorities to directly support Afghan counternarcotics units during the interdiction of narco-traffickers. The new authorities permit the destruction of labs, drug storage facilities, drug processing equipment, and drug caches and should contribute to breaking the drug-insurgency funding nexus and the corruption associated with the opium/heroin trade. Crop substitution and alternative livelihood programs that are a key pillar of effectively countering narcotics have been disastrously underdeveloped and under-resourced, however, and the narcotics trade will persist until such programs allow Afghans to reclaim their land for licit agriculture. Targeting those who grow the poppy will continue, but the focus will shift to higher level drug lords.

•

Mobilizing greater international political support of our objectives in Afghanistan

-5-

We need to do more to build a shared understanding of what is at stake in Afghanistan, while engaging other actors and offering them the opportunity to advance our mutual interests by cooperating with us.

•

Bolstering Afghanistan-Pakistan cooperation

We need to institutionalize stronger mechanisms for bilateral and trilateral cooperation. During the process of this review, inter-agency teams from Afghanistan and Pakistan came to Washington, DC for trilateral meetings. This new forum should continue and serve as the basis for enhanced bilateral and trilateral cooperation.

•

Engaging and focusing Islamabad on the common threat

Successfully shutting down the Pakistani safe haven for extremists will also require consistent and intensive strategic engagement with Pakistani leadership in both the civilian and military spheres. The engagement must be conducted in a way that respects, and indeed enhances, democratic civilian authority.

•

Assisting Pakistan's capability to fight extremists

It is vital to strengthen our efforts to both develop and operationally enable Pakistani security forces so they are capable of succeeding in sustained counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. In part this will include increased U.S. military assistance for helicopters to provide air mobility, night vision equipment, and training and equipment specifically for Pakistani Special Operation Forces and their Frontier Corps.

•

Increasing and broadening assistance in Pakistan

Increasing economic assistance to Pakistan - to include direct budget support, development assistance, infrastructure investment, and technical advice on making sound economic policy adjustments - and strengthening trade relations will maximize support for our policy aims;

it should also help to provide longer-term economic stability. Our assistance should focus on long-term capacity building, on agricultural sector job creation, education and training, and on infrastructure requirements. Assistance should also support Pakistani efforts to 'hold and build' in western Pakistan as a part of its counterinsurgency efforts.

•

Exploring other areas of economic cooperation with Pakistan

We need to enhance bilateral and regional trade possibilities, in part through implementing Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (which were recently re-introduced in Congress) and encouraging foreign investment in key sectors, such as energy. In addition, assisting Islamabad with developing a concrete strategy for utilizing donor aid would increase Islamabad's chances for garnering additional support from the international community.

•

Strengthening Pakistani government capacity

Strengthening the civilian, democratic government must be a centerpiece of our overall effort. Key efforts should include fostering the reform of provincial and local governance in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and the North West Frontier Province. We need to help

-6-

Islamabad enhance the services and support in areas cleared of insurgents so that they have a real chance in preventing insurgents from returning to those areas.

With international partners, we should also promote the development of regional organizations that focus on economic and security cooperation, as well as fostering productive political dialogue.

•

Asking for assistance from allies for Afghanistan and Pakistan

Our efforts are a struggle against forces that pose a direct threat to the entire international community. While reaching out to allies and partners for their political support, we should also ask them to provide the necessary resources to accomplish our shared objectives. They have the same interest in denying terrorists and extremists sanctuaries in Pakistan and Afghanistan that we do. In approaching allies we should emphasize that our new approach is integrated between civilian and military elements and in looking at Afghanistan and Pakistan as one theater for diplomacy.

For the mission in Afghanistan, we should continue to seek contributions for combat forces, trainers and mentors, strategic lift, and equipment from our friends and allies. The U.S. will also pursue major international funding and experts for civilian reconstruction and Afghan government capacity building at the national and especially the provincial and local levels.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan should take the lead in exploring ways that donors could systematically share the burden of building Afghan capacity and providing civilian expertise. As part of its coordination role for civilian assistance, the UN should consolidate requests and identify gaps.

In Pakistan, the U.S. will urge allies to work closely with us both bilaterally and through the 'Friends of Democratic Pakistan' to coordinate economic and development assistance,

including additional direct budget support, development assistance, infrastructure investment and technical advice on making sound economic policy adjustments. Similarly, we should ask them to provide technical advice and assistance in strengthening government capacity, such as improving Pakistani institutions.

Conclusion

There are no quick fixes to achieve U.S. national security interests in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The danger of failure is real and the implications are grave. In 2009-2010 the Taliban's momentum must be reversed in Afghanistan and the international community must work with Pakistan to disrupt the threats to security along Pakistan's western border.

This new strategy of focusing on our core goal - to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually destroy extremists and their safe havens within both nations, although with different tactics - will require immediate action, sustained commitment, and substantial resources. The United States is committed to working with our partners in the region and the international community to address this challenging but essential security goal.

US Claims Pakistan’s ISI ‘Directly Supporting’ Taliban in Afghanistan

Officials Claim ISI Provide Money, Equipment, Planning Guidance to Taliban

Earlier this month, US officials blamed the “really good weather” for the growing number of Taliban attacks across Southern Afghanistan. Today, officials have found a new scapegoat: which is really an old scapegoat since they’ve pinned assorted other security failures on them in the past: Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency.

A largely autonomous intelligence agency within the military, the ISI has been accused of having long-standing ties with the nation’s assorted militant groups, and of being directly involved in an attack of the Indian Embassy in Kabul as well as the November Mumbai terrorist attack.

Now, officials say that the ISI is providing direct support to the Taliban in Afghanistan, including providing money and equipment as well as planning to the insurgency. They even claim evidence that ISI operatives regularly meet with Taliban commanders.

If true, such allegations would be enormously damning to the controversial agency. Yet all too often US officials anonymously make such claims in the media and the evidence behind the claim is never revealed.

Is The Real Change a Massive Escalation Into Pakistan?

The ‘New’ Strategy - Did Obama Expand the War Into Pakistan?

When President Barack Obama unveiled his “comprehensive, new strategy” for the war in Afghanistan it struck many how decidedly old most of the strategy looked. A vague justification for throwing more money and troops at the seemingly endless war, bundled with posturing about how vital the war’s success ultimately would be.

But is that the whole story? Was the much-heralded new strategy just about polishing up the same old escalation in Afghanistan and selling it as a change? Perhaps the real novelty in this plan takes place outside of Afghanistan, in neighboring Pakistan.

Indeed, while they emphasize Afghanistan in public comments about this plan, the white paper (PDF) distributed by the White House on the strategy looks decidedly Pakistan-centric. It calls for “a more capable, accountable, and effective government” in Afghanistan, but promises “a vibrant economy” for Pakistan. It pledges to “disrupt terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan.”

 

While promising “A New Way Forward” (not so coincidentally the working title of the 2007 escalation in Iraq), it seems that all roads lead to Pakistan. The government will be getting billions in new aid, the US is committing itself to fight militants in the area (above and beyond the repeated drone attacks). They’re not even ruling out sending ground troops.

 

So Afghanistan has its new strategy, which is its old strategy with more guys. But maybe the real story here is that President Obama has made the equivalent of a de facto declaration of war against Pakistan’s border regions.