Pakistan, the US and Afghanistan - things are getting tough

Pakistan is a weak nation, one in which the central government does not control all of its' assumed land area or all of its' internal institutions. The Pakistani Army is probably more powerful than the civilian government, and the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) agency, ostensibly an agency of the Army, is very probably more powerful than either the civilian government or the Army itself. The Obama White House has rather clearly decided that the ISI obstructionism has gone on long enough.

(Reuters) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and top U.S. military and intelligence leaders delivered a tough warning to Pakistan on Thursday to cut suspected ties with militant groups which have upset relations between the uneasy allies.

Clinton led a heavyweight U.S. team at talks in Islamabad to

press Pakistani counterparts on U.S. accusations that Pakistan assists militants who launch attacks on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border and increasingly threaten U.S. interests.

"The meeting lasted for four hours. It was extremely frank, the discussion was very detailed," a senior U.S. official said after the meeting, adding that more discussions were planned for Friday.

The visit by Clinton, CIA director David Petraeus and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, was a sign that Washington is determined to get its message across amid rising tensions among three key players in the Afghanistan war.

The meeting included Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, the powerful army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, and Lieutenant-General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, who heads the Inter-services Intelligence (ISI) agency which U.S. officials have singled out for its alleged support of militant groups.

Earlier on Thursday during a visit to Kabul, Clinton said it was time to send a "clear, unequivocal message" to Pakistan that it must step up efforts to broker an end to the decade-long war in Afghanistan and crack down on safe havens used by militants.

"They must be part of the solution and that means ridding their own country of terrorists who kill their own people and cross the border to kill in Afghanistan," Clinton said.

It's clear that Pakistan's cooperation is going to be necessary to resolve the US combat situation in Afghanistan, and the leaders of the ISI are aware of that. They are depending on that fact to keep the US from punishing Pakistan as a nation for the bad behavior of the ISI. The message from Secretary Clinton is clearly part of the process of ramping up the pressure on Pakistan.

All we are seeing is what each side is willing to tell the media. The US may be ramping up the pressure, but Pakistan has both India and China sitting on its borders threatening it. With those two nations as immediate threats, the US is going to have to really ramp up the pressure to even be noticed. So I do not envy Secretary Clinton in delivering the message that the US has had enough. I'm glad she is doing it, though. It is necessary.

Richard Holbrook and the war in Afghanistan

The war in Afghanistan is too expensive for America to sustain and must be brought to an end in a way that lasts. Richard Holbrook knew this and was working to make it happen when he died last December. The end will be achieved through negotiations, not through military actions, and the end will be based on making Pakistan - not Afghanistan - a safer and more stable nation. Stability in Afghanistan is simply unattainable. Pakistan is the key.

But the Pakistanis do not view America as a reliable ally. They well remember that America simply abandoned them in 1989 when the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and they are not going to trust America again.

Nicolas Kristoff has taken Richard Holbrook's notes and published an op-ed about what Holbrook thought America needed to do about the war in Afghanistan.

Vali Nasr, a member of Holbrooke’s team at the State Department, puts it this way: “He understood from his experience that every conflict has to end at the negotiating table.”

Nasr says that Holbrooke’s aim for Afghanistan was “not cut-and-run, but a viable, lasting solution” to end the civil war there. If Holbrooke were still alive, Nasr says, he would be shuttling frantically between Islamabad and Kabul, trying to take advantage of Bin Laden’s killing to lay the groundwork for a peace process.

To do that, though, we have to put diplomacy and development — and not 100,000 troops, costing $10 billion a month — at the heart of our Afghan policy. Holbrooke was bemused that he would arrive at a meeting in a taxi, while Gen. David Petraeus would arrive escorted by what seemed a battalion of aides. And Holbrooke would flinch when Petraeus would warmly refer to him as his “wingman” — meaning it as a huge compliment — rather than seeing military force as the adjunct to diplomacy.

As for Pakistan, Holbrooke told me and others that because of its size and nuclear weaponry, it was center stage; Afghanistan was a sideshow.

“A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan is essential,” he noted, in the musings he left behind. He believed that a crucial step to reducing radicalism in Pakistan was to ease the Kashmir dispute with India, and he favored more pressure on India to achieve that.

Holbrooke was frustrated by Islamabad’s duplicity. But he also realized that Pakistan sheltered the Afghan Taliban because it distrusted the United States, particularly after the United States walked away in 1989 after the Soviet pullout from Afghanistan. And renewed threats of abandonment won’t build trust.

Steve Clemons provides an excellent explanatory comment on Holbrook's views, particularly an analysis of how the American experience in Vietnam should be compared to the current experience in Afghanistan/Pakistan. It's important to remember the differences in how America entered Afghanistan compared to how America entered Vietnam. Vietnam was entered through a long series of decisions which led to 500,000 American troops in country. That was an outcome that would never have been accepted if it had been proposed initially when Eisenhower sent 1,000 soldiers to Vietnam.

In constrast, America was directly attacked out of Afghanistan because of the government of the Taliban and their honored and protected guests, al Qaeda. After 9-11 the American people in a very bipartisan reaction sent troops into Afgnistan. This was a major difference.

Holbrooke thought that the war in Afghanistan was too heavily militarized. It must end, and when it does it will be ended through negotiations. Those negotiations will be based on civilian diplomacy with the military as only a support to the process. With the war as heavily militarized as it is today (under Obama) it will be very difficult to even begin significant negotiations, let alone use them to end the war.

It is really important to remember that a successful conclusion for America in Afghanistan will be achieved through the center of political gravity in that area - in Pakistan. As highlighted above, “A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan is essential”. America, and especially the American Congress, sees Pakistan as an unreliable ally. How could the Pakistani government claim to be an ally to America and yet be obviously protecting bin Laden in the military garrison town of Abbotabad?

But it was America's abandonment of Pakistan in 1989 when the Soviets left Afghanistan that drives the Pakistanis to support al Qaeda and the Taliban. Those organizations will be there in South Asia long after America cuts and runs and Pakistan will have to deal with them. The Pakistani leadership recognizes that America is a short term ally who is not reliable in the long run.

This is one reason why the militarization of the Afghanistan war is so important. America is spending $10 billion a month on the military in Afghanistan. This is simply unsustainable and will stop, more likely sooner rather than later. This drives the ultimate solution to the war in South Asia into a civilian negotiation and will drive America out of the region as a military force. That seems obvious.

We need to take the lessons that Richard Holbrook would be teaching if he had not died last December. Everything drives the events in Afghanistan/Pakistan towards non-military negotiations. There will not be a military solution.

During those negotiations “A stable Afghanistan is not essential; a stable Pakistan is essential” That tells us who matters in the negotiations. People who can destabilize Afghanistan re much less important than those who can destabilize Pakistan. In order of priority from the top down that is top members of the Pakistani military, leaders of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) and then members of the Pakistani government.

The bin Laden Seal Team was prepared to fight their way out of Pakistan

In an interesting article the New York Times today wrote

WASHINGTON — President Obama insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

In revealing additional details about planning for the mission, senior officials also said that two teams of specialists were on standby: One to bury Bin Laden if he was killed, and a second composed of lawyers, interrogators and translators in case he was captured alive. That team was set to meet aboard a Navy ship, most likely the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea.

Mr. Obama’s decision to increase the size of the force sent into Pakistan shows that he was willing to risk a military confrontation with a close ally in order to capture or kill the leader of Al Qaeda.

Add this to the fact that Pakistan was not trusted with the news that American troops were going into Abbotabad to get bin Laden and that someone in Pakistan has released the name of the U.S. CIA chief of station in Pakistan to the local press in retaliation for the raid on Abbotabad and it's pretty clear that Pakistan and the U.S. are not on very good terms right now.

Very probably this demonstrates that there are major elements inside Pakistan who support the Taliban and al Qaeda and oppose the U.S. The government of Pakistan does not fully control Pakistan so it does not speak consistently.

Bin Laden dead! ABC News has video of the compound.

OK. The reports are that Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by a Navy Seal Team operating with the CIA as the result of years of Intelligence gathering and analysis.

Several points seem very important.

• This is a large compound, reputedly the largest building in the neighborhood.
• The compound is located abut 1000 feet from the Pakistani Military Academy and roughly 150 kilometers (about 90 miles) north and west of the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.
• The Pakistani military is considered a state within a state in Pakistan. The degree to which the military follows orders from the civilian government is very questionable. Very important things to consider:
  • The Pakistani military controls the Pakistani nuclear weapons.
  • The Pakistani Interservices Intelligence organization (ISI) is essentially a military organization.
  • I am no expert in Pakistan. Take the following as speculation.
    • As a nation Pakistan was created when the British drew the borders as they withdrew from India. The name, Pakistan, is made up and the area was actually a variety of tribes whose primary similarity was that they all shared Islam. The result is a nation-state that is unified primarily by religion (Islam) and by fear of invasion from its neighbors (India, China and Afghanistan.)
    • The Pakistani military would appear to be the central national institution of Pakistan rather than the civilian government.
    • This year Pakistan has complained about the American use of armed drones to attack Taliban members who were operating across the border from Pakistan. This is somehow connected to the fact that the American CIA Chief of Station was forced to leave Pakistan early this year. It is also connected to the arrest of the CIA contractor Ray Davis.

From ABC News via Talking Points Memo:



 



While the death of bin Laden is great news, everything surrounding this event raises questions. The relationship between the United States and Pakistan is extremely uncertain. But since the Mumbai Terrorist attack was planned inside and launched from Pakistan there should be no doubt that Pakistan as a nation is a questionable ally to America, to India and to Afghanistan.

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Anyone reading this should keep in mind that I am NOT an expert on Pakistan. I have no information that I have not obtained from the news media and from personal study on how nation-states are unified. I offer my speculations primarily as questions to be further explored.

A glimpse into the U.S. - Pakistan relationship

Remember Raymond Davis, the "consular employee" in Pakistan who was arrested and is being held by the Pakistanis for killing two armed individuals who apparently tried to kill him? Obviously it is a lot more complicated than that snippet of a story. It is at the core of the very explosive set of disagreements between the United States and Pakistan. emptywheel at firedoglake has an excellent analysis of what has recently been published on the subject.

Davis appears to be a spy of some sort, perhaps a contractor but now claimed by the CIA in Pakistan. Were the two men he shot security agents from the Pakistani ISI? Was Davis collecting targeting information on the Taliban in Northwest Pakistan? Was there a connection between the fact that American drone strikes in North Waziristan ended four days before the shooting Davis was involved in? Did John Kerry really ferry Davis' backup team out of Pakistan when Kerry returned from Pakistan? Those individuals were apparently supposed to protect or rescue Davis and failed to do so. According to ABC they are now back in the U.S. and the Pakistani authorities really want them.

For details go read emptywheel's article. It doesn't have all the answers, but it brings to light a lot of very interesting questions.The commenters add a great deal more information.

The Pakistani ISI it part of the South Asia problem

The recent problem in which the American CIA station chief in Islamabad was "outed" and forced to leave the country, probably by members of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, is just part of the South Asia problem. The arrest and convictions of David Coleman Headley, an American who participated in the Mumbai terror attack, has provided a great deal more information about the relationship between the Pakistani ISI and the terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Pakistan's powerful intelligence service has been accused for years of playing a "double game:" acting as a front-line U.S. ally in the fight against terror while supporting selected terrorist groups which serve Pakistani interests.

Now, for the first time, there is a detailed inside account of how that game is played. The U.S. investigation of the 2008 Mumbai attacks [1] has built a strong case that officers in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) collaborated with the Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group in the plot that killed 166 people, six of them Americans. U.S. and Indian investigators say their understanding of the ISI-Lashkar alliance is drawn from the confessions of David Coleman Headley, an American convicted of participating in the Mumbai plot, as well as documents, phone records and electronic eavesdropping.

Officials from both countries say they are persuaded that ISI officers recruited and trained Headley in spying techniques and gave him money and instructions to scout targets in Mumbai and elsewhere. Headley has told investigators that a Pakistani Navy frogman helped plan the maritime attack on Mumbai, according to a 119-page report recounting his interrogation this year by Indian authorities. The report, which was obtained by ProPublica, quotes Headley as saying his Pakistani intelligence handler took part in a discussion about a subsequent Lashkar plot to attack a Danish newspaper -- information that Pakistan did not share with Danish authorities.

In essence, U.S. and Indian officials say, Headley was more than a terrorist: He served as a Pakistani spy.

During the period that ISI officers allegedly helped Lashkar plan to kill Americans and Jews in Mumbai, the intelligence service was working closely with the CIA and U.S. military in counter-terrorism efforts and Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was pledging his support for the U.S. campaign against militants in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials deny any link to Lashkar and point out that hundreds of ISI officers have died in clashes with militants. They accuse India of politically motivated distortion in the report on Headley's interrogation.

"It is a stereotype, a Pakistan-specific version of an Indian interrogation," said a Pakistani official who requested anonymity because of the sensitive topic. "The Indian version is totally distorted and fabricated as there was no involvement of the ISI whatsoever. Nor did any serving official interact with Headley or any of the perpetrators."

But U.S. investigators see much of Headley's account as credible, U.S. officials said. The investigators believe his main handler, a man identified only as Major Iqbal, was a serving member of ISI and one of several Pakistani intelligence officers who had contact with Headley, according to U.S. officials.

The Obama administration has expressed frustration with Pakistan's failure to bring to justice the suspected masterminds of Mumbai and to rein in Lashkar, the ISI's longtime proxy army against India. Recent intelligence shows Lashkar remains intent on striking the West, according to a U.S. official who requested anonymity.

While the civilian government of Pakistan denies that the ISI was involved in the attack on Mumbai, their denial has to be recognized as necessary because if they failed to deny the ISI involvement then they would be admitting that the Pakistan government is so weak that it cannot prevent rogue elements of the ISI from attacking Pakistan's neighboring countries. Admission of that weakness could easily attract internal opponents to try to replace them. The same dynamic applies to the public complaints the government makes about the American drone strikes against the Taliban in North Wiziristan even though elements of the government are said to be providing targeting information to the Americans in order to guide the drone attacks.

My previous articles on Pakistan are

• CIA Chief in Islamabad reportedly exposed by Pakistani ISI
• US reported to be considering expanding operations inside Pakistan

US reported to be considering expanding operations inside Pakistan

Reuters reports that U.S. Commanders are considering expanding U.S. special operations activities inside Pakistan..

The U.S. troops in Afghanistan are reported to be gaining control over previously Taliban controlled portions of Afghanistan, but Taliban leaders and fighters have a reasonably safe sanctuary inside neighboring Pakistan. The government of Pakistan is not going after those Taliban, so U.S. commanders are talking of doing it themselves.

The following analysis is mine. As indicated in the previous post, I have no credentials that give me any special qualifications to perform this analysis, nor do I have an information that I have not provided links to in this and the previous post.

The leak of the identity of the U.S. CIA station chief in Islamabad may have been the initial public example of the battle between the CIA and the ISI. The Pakistan government over the weekend denied that the ISI had anything to do with that leak, but what would they say? We did it?? It seems reasonable that the leak that led Reuters to post this report is the next stage in bringing that conflict into the public and putting additional public pressure on the ISI, the Pakistani military and on the Pakistan government.

As indicated in today's Reuters story, the U.S. and its NATO allies are all discussing leaving Afghanistan beginning next Summer. But as long as the Taliban leaders are sitting fat, dumb and happy in Pakistan next door and the Afghanistan government cannot control anything outside of Kabul then for the U.S. and NATO to leave means the Taliban will swoop in and regain control over all the territory they had previously held. Unless...

An escalation on the weak point in the battle for Afghanistan - Pakistan - is a very rational move to be making at this time. Either the U.S, will have to carry out the threat to go into Pakistan or the Pakistanis are going to have to clean out the Taliban on their territory themselves.

The next step in this will happen quite soon. No telling what it is or what we will see in the media, but it has to happen soon.

CIA Chief in Islamabad reportedly exposed by Pakistani ISI

The Indian English-language on-line newspaper The Hindu today reported that the CIA station chief in Islamabad had to leave Pakistan in a hurry because his cover was blown. The leak was suspected to have come from the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Jonathan Banks was identified as the head of the CIA’s Pakistan office, in a lawsuit filed against the United States’ secretive spy agency by a resident of North Waziristan. The resident, Kareem Khan, was said to have filed the case against the CIA and Mr. Banks for their role in organising drone strikes that killed his son and brother.

The legal case brought by Mr. Khan called for murder charges to be brought against Mr. Banks and the CIA, and also reportedly said they should be executed for their crimes. Mr. Khan’s lawyer was quoted by the Guardian saying he had obtained Mr. Banks’ name from Pakistani journalists.

While Pakistan was quick to deny any involvement in leaking Mr. Banks’ name, U.S. officials were quoted as saying that since he had been identified publicly Mr. Banks “had received a number of death threats,” and they “strongly suspected” that the ISI had a hand in the leak.

[...]

Intelligence officers here were also quoted by the New York Times as saying that the leak may have been in retaliation for a civil lawsuit filed in New York City last month implicating the ISI chief Ahmad Shuja Pasha in the Mumbai terror attacks of November 2008.

The incident laid bare the deep and growing mistrust between the U.S. and Pakistani spy agencies even as U.S. President Barack Obama made a speech this week in which he warned that “terrorist safe havens within their borders must be dealt with.”

That's the news as reported from India. I am no expert on Pakistan, but my reading of news reports over recent years has often included statements that the Taliban in Afghanistan was a creation of elements of the ISI and that some elements of the ISI still support the Taliban.

The removal of the military dictator Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in 2008 allowed a civilian government to be put into place and returned Pakistan to more of a nation under the rule of law. But the civilian heads of government do not appear to have control of all elements of the government and certainly do not have control of all of the territory that is generally recognized as part of the nation of Pakistan. Politically, from what I can tell Pakistan has both a strong fear of its neighbors, resulting in a demand for military power, but that the same time a surprisingly strong desire for a democracy operating under the rule of law.

The core of the problem is often described in the American media as centered on the conflict between Pakistan and India over control of the disputed the state of Kashmir. A quick review of the Wikipedia article on Pakistan suggests that is much too simplistic. In the period since Pakistan became independent in 1947 that nation has constantly been at war or defending its borders on all sides. Briefly, during this period Pakistan has fought wars against India, against China and has fought against aggression from Afghanistan. It is no surprise then that Pakistan has the 7th largest military in the world. Nor should it be a surprise that the ISI would set up and support the Taliban to weaken any Afghanistan government. A strong government in Afghanistan would appear to threaten Pakistan. Since Pakistan faces both China and India on other borders it would be very much to their military advantage to ensure that Afghanistan remains militarily weak and politically divided. However, the Taliban in the Province of Wizirastan are reported to be a threat to the civilian government of Pakistan. The military elements of Pakistan may not consider the Taliban as much of a threat. Since the Taliban are religious extremists, they are unlikely to have much interest in a secular government under the rule of law.

Then there are Pakistan's nuclear weapons. In the threatening neighborhood where Pakistan exists it is no surprise that they would do almost anything to become stronger in a military sense. From the point of view of their neighbors, though, the threat of a nuclear war between Pakistan and India is unthinkably dangerous. (That's assuming such a war would not create a world-wide nuclear winter.) America considers the control of those nuclear weapons by the religious extremist terrorists of the Taliban or al Qaeda to be unthinkable. That remains a major motivation for America to continue to fight against the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and using drone attacks, inside nominally Pakistani territory. Since those drone attacks display the weakness of the current government as well as the inability of the Pakistani military to control the Taliban reliably but at the same time but at the same time weaken the Taliban in Pakistan the mostly negative public response to those attacks is quite reasonable. A government publicly known to be weak draws attackers.

With all of these threats to Pakistan what is really surprising is the effort the Pakistanis are putting into recreating and maintaining a democracy that operates under the rule of law. But the fear of attack from any of their neighbors is very likely a major cause of the weakness of the civilian government since that fear encourages people who want to return to a military-controlled government. That fear also strengthens extremist religious factions, to include those focused on the dispute over Kashmir. So it is organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba which planned and conducted the Terror attack on Mumbai, India in 2008. It seems very likely that Lashkar-e-Taiba has support from some of the military factions inside the Pakistani government and from significant elements of the public.

In short, the entire region including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Northern India and Southwestern China is politically highly unstable. The instability makes it susceptible to disruption by religious extremists, but it is the political instability that is creating and attracting the religious extremists and allowing them to operate. The religious extremists are a symptom of the problems rather than their cause.

That said, elements of the ISI which dislike the interference by the Americans (who for the most part seem to not understand the situation) are unsurprisingly upset about the American drone attacks on elements of the Taliban operating inside Pakistan. Leaking the identity of the Islamabad CIA station chief looks a lot like a statement from Pakistani hardliners to the Amricans to tell them to back off their pressures.

The recent death of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke who reputedly understood this part of the world may leave American diplomacy in the hands of conservative Ugly Americans who think that American military power can solve such problems. Whether that is the case or not, it certainly reflects the reputation that Americans in Asia have had as being ignorant ham-handed clueless cowboys since the Vietnam era.

This is a highly speculative article based on news reports, Wikipedia and my own unresearched opinions. The statement in The Hindu stating that the CIA chief in Islamabad has quickly left Pakistan is probably reasonably accurate. The attribution of the leak to the ISI seems reasonable, but doesn't have the same likelihood of being true since the source is not attributed. The rest of this is a collection of facts from Wikipedia (the history found there is probably quite accurate) and my speculations built on those reported facts. We all know that Wikipedia is not an authoritative source, but it usually provides a decent overview of any subject.

Anyone who has better information is requested to leave a comment.

Abdul Khan describes how he started the Pakistani nuclear program

This is a report by an interview on Pakistani TV conducted with Dr. Abdul Khan who is the father of the Pakistani nuclear program.

It was started because of the Indian nuclear weapons test and because Pakistan was especially concerned about their security after East Pakistan revolted in 1971 and became Bangladesh. It was sped up because Pakistan was supporting the military activities of the Americans in Afghanistan at the time of the Soviet takeover.Khan also discusses the relationship between Pakistan and both North Korea and Iran. He would not discuss nuclear technology transfer to either of those countries, however.

The existence of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program is a major reason why the American military is currently in Afghanistan.

Dr. Khan's interview is quite illuminating. It's only about 10 pages.

The War in Afghanistan and Northwest pakistan can be won

America's real fight in Afghanistan is against al Qaeda fighters and the leaders who direct and supply them. Al Qaeda is allied with and supporting the Taliban attempt to retake control of Afghanistan. This is a movement largely motivated by an extreme fundamentalist version of Islam, which provides the basis for the alliance between the Taliban and al Qaeda. The alliance allows al Qaeda to conduct its worldwide mission, while the Taliban protect them and use al Qaeda expertise and resources to retake control of Afghanistan.

The U.S. and NATO forces are succeeding in driving the leadership out of Afghanistan. So they are taking refuge in Northwest Pakistan. This has led the Taliban to try to strengthen their control of territory in Pakistan. This puts the Pakistani nuclear weapons in danger of being taken over by radicals who are likely to either use them or sell them to terrorists.

The Pakistan Army has redirected some of its resources^* away from Pakistan's border with India and gone after the Taliban in the Swat valley in the Northwest region. They appear to be having some success against the Taliban. The New York Times reported yesterday:

American officials say they are seeing the first evidence that dozens of fighters with Al Qaeda, and a small handful of the terrorist group’s leaders, are moving to Somalia and Yemen from their principal haven in Pakistan’s tribal areas. In communications that are being watched carefully at the Pentagon, the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency, the terrorist groups in all three locations are now communicating more frequently, and apparently trying to coordinate their actions, the officials said.

Of course, this will increase the need to create more effective governments in Yemen and especially in Somalia. In the age of terrorism^**, such failed states cannot be allowed to become refuges for the bandit and insurgent groups who operate using assymetric war against the rest of the world. With the stronger motivation of those nations possibly being too weak to remove them then perhaps those weak nations will be able to get the assistance they need to become more modern and effective states. All of that is going to be required to win the war against terrorist tactics and the insurgents who use them. But with greater success in Pakistan, we (meaning the modern industrialized nations of the world) may be getting there.

Now the Pakistani pressure on the Northwest Pakistan refuges together with the targeted predator strikes on the insurgent leadership based there is forcing them to look to move elsewhere. So some al Qaeda leaders and fighters are leaving Pakistan and moving to Somalia and Yemen.

The solutions will result from the effects of many nations all using diplomacy, trade policies and limited military actions. The quite rapid progress in the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater clearly demonstrate the greater effectiveness of the Obama administration methods over the go-in-alone military-oriented methods of the Bush administration.

[A note: "NATO extends anti-piracy mission off Somalia". This is, of course, related to the battle against al Qaeda and its Taliban ally.]

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^* This raises a number of questions. The Pakistani government is quite weak, having only limited control over the Army. The Army itself still sees the great threat against Pakistan to by India. The biggest symbol of the conflict between those two nations remains the Kashmir conflict, so the Pakistani Army is loath to take any resources away from focus on India and Kashmir. In fact, the Pakistani Army assisted the growth and combat by the Taliban as a way to maintain control of the Pakistani border away from India.

A major reason for the Terror attack on Mumbai, India by terrorists from Pakistan is surely intended to cause the Indians to increase military pressure on Pakistan.

So has the incursion of the Taliban into Pakistan proper convinced the Pakistani Army to take resources away from defense from India to deal with the more immediate threat to Pakistan? Has there been effective diplomacy between Pakistan and India to give the Pakistanis the belief of a reduced threat from the Indian borders? One hopes the U.S. has brokered such diplomacy, since an American guarantee of Indian promises adds credibility to the Indian promises. British guarantees are probably very effective there also.

As I say, there are a lot of questions raised by the Pakistani attack into the Swat Valley.

^** John A. Nagle in his excellent book on counter-insurgency Learning to eat soup with a knife points out that the growth of insurgency and terrorist tactics since WW II is not surprising. It results from the loss of Imperial control over much of the world along with the wide spreading of cheap and effective small arms and bomb technology and supplies. The tactics have grown as communications technology has developed. The result is that the problems that are resulting in terrorism have to be dealt with as civil-military political problems with the primary focus on political solutions rather than on military ones. Neither the American culture nor its military deal well with this kind of problem. In spite of long experience with irregular warfare, the military has never easily adapted to this environment.

The capture of the surviving Mumbai terrorist

Here is the story of how the one surviving Mumbai terrorist was captured.



Juan Cole presents some additional data on current relations between India and Pakistan, as well as a bit of background on Lashkar-e Tayiba. In spite of the fevered imaginations of many in the press, there are no indications of troop movements in either Pakistan or India, and Indian officials say they have no intention of attacking Pakistan.

Veteran terrorism correspondent Richard Sale reveals that some of the Lashkar-e Tayiba, a largely Punjabi group, had been fighting the US in Iraq in recent years. If any these attackers were Iraq War 'veterans,' that would help account for their sophistication and guerrilla training.

Pakistan is offering to set up a joint inquiry with India into the attacks.

Juan Cole approves of the way the Indian government is handling the Mumbai terror incident.

India's leadership is showing remarkable cool and proceeding deliberately, which is a good sign. If any group of ten fanatics can go about provoking a war, we are going to have a lot of wars.

Quite true.

An update and some informed background on the Mumbai terror attack

ABC News provides an update on the investigation into the Mumbai terror attack, and Juan Cole gives some good background on the region and the reasons for the conflicts. First, apparently the Indian Intelligence was warned of an impending terror attack by sea into downtown Mumbai. Second, NSA trackbacks from the sim cards out of cell phones carried by the terrorists apparently lead to Lashkar-e Tayiba in Pakistan. This appears to have many of the earmarks of a rogue terrorist operation, however. It may be more a demonstration of the weaknesses of both the Pakistani government and the Indian government than anything else.

U.S. intelligence agencies warned their Indian counterparts in mid-October of a potential attack "from the sea against hotels and business centers in Mumbai," a U.S. intelligence official tells ABCNews.com.

Intelligence agencies warned Indian counterparts of potential attacks in Mumbai.

A second government source says specific locations, including the Taj hotel, were listed in the U.S. warning.

One month later, Nov. 18, Indian intelligence also intercepted a satellite phone call to a number in Pakistan known to be used by a leader of the terror group, Lashkar e Taiba, believed responsible for the weekend attack, Indian intelligence officials say.

The Indian intercept also revealed a possible sea-borne attack, the officials say.

The chairman of the company that owns the hotel, Ratan Tata, told CNN that security was temporarily increased following a warning.

Tata told CNN Sunday that the enhanced measurers were later eased and, in any case, "could not have stopped what took place."

Since Friday, U.S. intelligence agencies have been tracking the phones and SIM cards recovered by Indian authorities from the Mumbai terrorists leading to a "treasure trove" of leads in Pakistan and several possible connections to the United States, officials say.

Officials say one of the cell phone SIM cards may have been purchased in the United States but would not provide any more details because of the ongoing nature of the investigation.

The phones also include the same Thuraya satellite phone intercepted in November by the Indian spy agency RAW, the Research and Analysis Wing, which runs an extensive electronic intercept operation.

NSA, the National Security Agency, has the technical means to retrieve all calls made from satellite and cell phones in the south Asia region.

Officials say one of the phones recovered was a Thuraya satellite phone.

"Once we have the number we will be able to know everyone who was called and where the calls were made from," one former intelligence office says.

A US counter-terrorism official says all leads continue to point Lashkar e Taiba, a Kashmir separatist group with strong ties to al Qaeda.

From Juan cole's Informed Comment:

The Indian counterpart of the CIA, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), intercepted a cell phone call on November 18 to a number in Lahore, Pakistan, known to be that of a Lashkar-i Tayiba handler, saying that the caller was heading to Mumbai. They later found the phone itself on a hijacked Indian fishing boat, which the attackers had taken over to camouflage their approach to the port.

The sole captured LeT operative, Kamal, is said by the Indian press to be from Faridkot village near Dipalpur Tahsil in Okara District of Pakistani Punjab, southwest of Lahore [I saw one article, which I can no longer retrieve, in which the Indian press mispelled the tahsil or county as Gipalpur]). This is such a remote and little-known place that even Pakistani newspapers were having difficulty tracking it down).

Kamal is said to be telling Indian security that he and the others trained in camps in Pakistani Kashmir. (The original princely state of Kashmir, largely Muslim, is divided, with one third in Pakistani hands and two-thirds in Indian; India joined its portion to largely Hindu Jammu to create the province of Jammu and Kashmir.)

Juan cole continues with a good summary of the history of the Kashmir conflict and the Lashkar-e Tayiba. Then he ends with this statement:

The Mumbai attacks were not the first of this scale on an Indian target by the LeT.

If the Pakistani government does not give up this covert terrorist campaign in Kashmir and does not stop coddling the radical vigilantes who go off to fight there, South Asian terrorism will grow as a problem and very possibly provoke the world's first nuclear war (possible death toll: 20 million).

The civilian government that has recently taken over Pakistan is weak. If it puts too much pressure on the military too quickly, it risks another coup and destabilization. But the training camps in Azad Kashmir must be closed.

India, Pakistan, and the Obama administration need to do some serious diplomacy on Kashmir, and try to settle this major global fault line before the 10.0 earthquake finally hits.

This description demonstrates some of the complexities involved in the India/Pakistan relationship. They will need U.S. and British help, but both nations will have to tread very carefully.Both the initial terror attack and the resulting government reactions are parts of the battle for control of public opinion. Improperly handled the government reactions can end up causing the terrorists to win and the governments of both Pakistan and India to come out in the end much weaker. But handled properly the governments can end stronger and the the terrorist groups can find themselves losing the public support that allows then to exist and operate.

The India - Pakistani rapprochement is even more important now

Shuja Nawaz writes in the Washington Post that the Mumbai terror attack appears to be likely to derail the recent moves towards a rapprochement between the governments of India and Pakistan. A number of other news reports echo this. But is this apparent common wisdom in the press accurate?

Pakistan has a new government in place since last April, and the terrorists in Pakistan have been attacking there also. Most noticeable was the recent bombing of the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad in September. Both Pakistan and India have suffered numerous smaller terrorist attacks in recent years.

Terrorism is a form of asymmetric warfare. It is being used by Political practitioners of Islamism to take down both the governments of Pakistan and India.

The first function of every government is to provide social stability. It is this function of providing a stable society that terrorists use to attack and delegitimize the existing government. The purpose of the terrorism is to weaken the government to the extent that it is forced to accommodate the otherwise unacceptable demands of the terrorists and possibly even to allow the terrorists to take the government over.

The governments of both Pakistan and India are under direct, violent attack by an alliance of terrorist groups often working together. Such attacks do not always delegitimize a government. Sometimes attacks like that in Mumbai and the earlier one on the Marriot in Islamabad can strengthen a government as people and organizations which otherwise would be competing with each other rally around the government to protect the nation. The single greatest failure of the Bush administration was to squander the opportunity to rally all Americans and much of the world around the American government after 9/11.

The attack on Mumbai is very probably an effort to derail the recent efforts of both the Pakistani and the Indian governments to reach a rapprochement. The Mumbai terrorists appear to have started their attack from Karachi, Pakistan, hijacked a boat, and come into Mumbai from the sea. The Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI)has elements which have supported terrorist organizations which attacked India trying to dislodge Indian control of the disputed Indian state of Kashmir. Similar ISI elements appear to be supporting the Taliban in their efforts to retake control of Afghanistan. Pakistan's government clearly does not control all the territory that is generally internationally agreed to be part of Pakistan, nor does it control all the elements of the government itself. It is exactly the type of poorly controlled nation and unstable government most susceptible to the pressures that the terrorists are applying.

The current President of Pakistan, Asif Ali Zardari, has been trying to gain greater control over the ISI and remove it ant the military from active politics since becoming President in April. He recently disbanded the political wing of the ISI which is reported to have spied on Pakistani politicians in order to intimidate them and rigged national elections. This follows his earlier failed attempt to place the entire ISI under the control of the Minister of Interior instead of under the control of the military.

Zardari's recent efforts to reach a rapprochement with the India government may be in part an effort to lower tensions between the two nations so that the Pakistani people will feel less need for the Army to take over the government again as it has numerous times in Pakistan's 60 year history. If tensions with India are lowered, then Zardari has a better chance to take control of the uncontrolled parts of Pakistan like North and South Waziristan, provinces in which the indigenous people are supporting the Taliban and al Qaeda.

It would be no surprise to learn that the Mumbai terrorist attack was a push-back against Zardari's efforts to rein in the Pakistani military and the ISI.

If that's the case, then the government of India needs to help strengthen Zardari's government by not threatening Pakistan and instead working towards the rapprochement. Threatening Pakistan will have the perverse effect of strengthening the Pakistani military and weakening the civilian government. It is the general weakness of the Pakistani government which is the greatest threat to both India and Afghanistan.

Both the governments of India and Pakistan need to highlight their shared need to defeat the terrorist attacks by the groups which have been attacking them. By showing that they are fighting a shared enemy, they can take advantage of the "rally around the attacked government" effect.

By showing their respective publics that each government is under attack and is asking the help of the other to help defend itself from attackers based in the other’s territory, it will become more difficult for the terrorist groups to appeal to the people with a claim that their respective government is being propped up as a puppet by an outside government. It is this appearance of being an outside government propping up an unpopular local government that will be the greatest restraint on any U.S. involvement in the rapprochement between those two nations. No government today wants to appear to be a puppet government supported by the U.S.

This looks like a useful strategy for strengthening the existing governments in South Asia and making them more resistant to the kind of terror attacks that have recently occurred in both Mumbai and in Islamabad. Neither nation can accept that the other is providing a place to launch terrorist attacks on it, either with or without government support. An effective rapprochement between the two governments can give both of them assurance that the other government is not directly supporting attacks, while the strengthening of both governments so that they are able to minimize rogue elements and control their territory will allow the each government to have greater trust in other. The overall result will be to bring about the stability that is always the first function of government.

The Mumbai terror attack, likely intended to drive a wedge between the governments of India and Pakistan to weaken them both, could have the perverse effect of drawing the two national governments closer together and strengthening them both. But as Bush's total failure to use the world-wide desire to help America after 9/11 clearly demonstrates, the direction public opinion takes depends a lot on how the governments of Pakistan and India act.

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Addendum 12/01/2008 11:09 am CST

The problem in Pakistan is that the national government does not have sufficient control over the various groups and tribal areas to prevent terrorist groups from using Pakistan as training grounds and staging areas for attacks. Many such groups have taken control of parts of the government itself, the ISI apparently being infiltrated. But the current central government is attempting to gain control of its nation, which is a reason why the terrorists are attacking inside Pakistan as well as outside.

That's why it is dangerous for outsiders, even angry Indians reacting to the terrorist events in Mumbai, to accuse Pakistan of sending the terrorists to Mumbai without very strong evidence. India cannot take control of Pakistan and solve the problems there. That has to be done by the Pakistani government. Accusing "Pakistan" of "sending" the terrorists weakens the government. That is why the Rapprochement between to governments of Pakistan and India MUST be strengthened to deal with the terrorist groups. That means that the Pakistani people must be encouraged to support their government at the same time that the government of Zardari must be supported in its efforts to root out the terrorist elements within rogue elements of the government, all without making the Zardari government look like a weak puppet installed by outsiders to "straighten out" Pakistan.

With that in mind, look at the complicated reactions of the Pakistani People to the Mumbai terror event as described In Time.

Most Pakistanis reacted with horror to news of the Mumbai killing spree starting Wednesday, having lived through equally devastating attacks on their own soil. But that initial sympathy quickly gave way to hostility as the focus of blame landed on Pakistan — a knee-jerk first reaction, rather than one based on any solid evidence. "It is a tragic incident, and we also felt bad about it as Pakistan is going through the same problem," says Abdur Rashid, a 67-year-old retired government servant in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. "But it was really unfortunate to see that even before the operation [to clear out the attackers] was finished, the Indian government stated that Pakistan is involved. It sounds that the entire incident was concocted to punish Pakistan."

On Sunday, Indian media began reporting that the only attacker captured alive, a Versace-T-shirted 21-year-old by the name of Ajmal Amir Kamal, was Pakistani, and that he had identified all his fellow militants as being trained by the banned Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba. Pakistanis are suspicious of these claims. "There is simply not enough evidence at this point to blame Pakistan," says Najam Sethi, editor of the English political weekly, the Friday Times. "No statement made under duress can be counted as 100% fact, and you can imagine the conditions under which this confession was made."

However, Sethi adds, "the Pakistan connection certainly can't be ruled out. These attackers were not hijackers negotiating with hostages. They knew they were on a suicide mission, and you can certainly find a lot of suicide bombers in the tribal areas." At the same time, the attackers clearly had a local connection, he argues, because out-of-towners could have had the intimate knowledge of the layout of Mumbai and of the targets to have caused so much carnage.

Amir Rana, an expert on Pakistani terrorist groups with the Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, says he has heard some troubling reports, but says that no accusations should be leveled before a thorough investigation is completed. He cites several recent terrorist attacks in India that were initially blamed on Pakistan, only to have investigations later reveal that the perpetrators were aggrieved Indian Muslims, and in at least one case, Hindu extremists. Early accusations such as these, he worries, may only impede the close cooperation between the two countries necessary to resolve the issue.

"What we may actually be seeing here is an incident of transnational terrorism," he says. "The ideology is shared across borders, from Pakistan to India to Bangladesh." Terrorists these days are just as likely to meet in Dubai to discuss logistics, or in Katmandu to plan strategies. Training can take place not only in the ungoverned tribal areas of Pakistan, but also in Bangladesh, which also faces a mounting challenge from Islamic extremism. Weapons, distributed by a network of arms dealers that supply Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, Indian separatists groups and even Nepal's Maoists, are in easy reach. Neither the weapons, nor the tactics, of the Mumbai attackers point to any one country, says Rana. "For these kinds of attacks there is no need for training camps. There were no heavy weapons or guerilla tactics. The kind of training they needed could have been done in a single room."

IF the Mumbai terror attack was intended to derail the efforts towards rapprochement between the governments of Pakistan and India, (a conditional statement not yet proven, but highly likely) then rash accusations that the attacks were caused by "Pakistan" (suggesting that the government of Pakistan had a hand it the attack and that it was, at the very least, approved at the highest government levels) can serve only to give whoever directed the attack the victory they are looking for.

The People of Pakistan have themselves suffered through terrorist attacks, and as the Time Magazine article shows, were for the most part as horrified at the attacks on Mumbai as anyone else in the world. But the rash accusations that the Mumbai attack was "caused by Pakistan" have already begun to cause a defensive counter-reaction among the Pakistani people. The governments of both India and Pakistan must be encouraged to state that there will be no accusations until a thorough and independent investigation of the Mumbai attacks has been performed, and then both governments need to ensure that those independent investigations are performed without hindrance.

Accusatory statements should not be made by any government, especially governments other than those of India and Pakistan. The U.S. and Great Britain can aid by assisting in the investigations and by certifying their independence, but statements from either the U.S. or Great Britain have to be limited to expressing sympathy and support for the victims and (in muted terms that cannot sound like they are giving instructions - that's something hard for Global or ex-Imperial powers to do) their support of the governments of both India and Pakistan.

The issue of who wins or loses as a result of the Mumbai terror attack is still up in the air. The attack only started the real battle. It is now being fought-out in the court of public opinion, and the final results will be determined by the actions taken by the governments of India and Pakistan. The goal for the end game is that the governments of both India and Pakistan must be seen as strengthened, not weakened, by the Mumbai terror attack.

The example of what NOT to do was provided by the Bush administration reaction to 9/11. The end result of the attacks by 19 individuals on 9/11 has been two on-going wars, a cold war with Iran and an American nation with an international reputation and international support severely damaged by the government approved use of torture, the existence of Guantanamo and it's kangaroo courts which are not restrained by the Rule of Law, and by the events in Abu Ghraib for which no official of any significance has suffered punishment.

India and Pakistan must take advantage of the bad example provided by the Bush administration if they are to succeed in defeating the Mumbai terrorists in the court of public opinion.

Time magazine ends its article with a very similar admonishment which sums up what I have been saying.

Asim Javeid, a 23-year-old student in Rawalpindi, agrees. "The Mumbai attack shows that terrorism is a common threat to both India and Pakistan. Unless both countries join hands and take measures to combat terrorism, we will not be able to defeat this curse."

What's the reason for the terrorist attacks on Mumbai?

As has been all over the news, there has been a series of highly coordinated terrorist attacks largely on landmark hotels in the Indian city of Mumbai. The first reports that were published by American media emphasized the apparent focus on taking American and British citizens as hostages or captives. A shadowy and previously unknown organization calling itself Deccan Jihad is reported to have taken credit for the attacks.

Mark Kleiman offers a speculation regarding why the attacks occurred at this time.

The important context for the Mumbai bombings must surely be the peace initiative launched by the Pakistani President earlier in the week and seemingly moved forward by a meeting of the two foreign ministers yesterday. That makes the obvious suspects the folks who have the strongest interests in keeping India and Pakistan at daggers drawn: the Pakistani ISI (which Zardari had already stripped of its role in domestic politics) has to be the prime suspect, and apparently India has such suspicions. But there's also the Pakistani military, al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Hindu nationalists.

Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent and an expert on terrorism, has said much the same thing.

“There has obviously for many, many years been a type of feelings by India that, say, 150 or so million Muslims who are in the minority are feeling sort of hard done by in terms of the Hindu majority. There are also complaints by Indian Muslims about the way Kashmir is progressing, that enclave, and that is a huge, huge flashpoint. But what’s really amazing is that often, it’s blamed on tensions with Pakistan. And yet, this comes at a time where the president of Pakistan has really made an unprecedented overture to India in terms of trying to warm up relations, trying to secure a lasting peace. And just today, Indian and Pakistani officials were having meetings, and they ended it with a joint declaration that they wanted to co-operate on ending terrorism and combating terrorism,” the terrorism expert said.

The terror attacks may well be a desperate effort to force the governments of India and Pakistan to stop their apparent rapprochement and return to their previous positions of deadly enemies.

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Addendum November 28, 9:40 am CST
Reuters presented some background information at 8:39 am EST Nov 27. They describe two organizations considered likely candidates to have directed the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Indian Mjuahideen. The article briefly describes those two organizations.

For more extensive information, here is the wikipedia entry on Lashkar-e-Toiba and here is the wikipedia entry on the Indian Mjuahideen. As always with wikipedia, consider the references the articles provide and remember that such articles can be manipulated by people with axes to grind.

Reuters offered two inferences which could be drawn from the tactics used:

• WHAT CAN BE INFERRED FROM THE ATTACKERS' TACTICS?
  
  The Mumbai attacks were unusual in that they involved coordinated attacks by gunmen on multiple targets, hostages were taken, and foreigners were specifically targeted.
  
  Several analysts say these tactics point to Lashkar-e-Taiba as being involved. The attacks on symbolic targets designed to gather maximum publicity, and the specific targeting, point to a group following al Qaeda ideology and tactics.
  
  The attacks also show a considerable degree of sophistication, another factor pointing to an experienced group like Lashkar-e-Taiba.
  
  The Indonesian Mujahideen have also surprised police with the sophistication of their attacks, however, although until now these have always been bomb attacks on Indian targets.
  
  In May, the Indian Mujahideen made a specific threat to attack tourist sites in India unless the government stopped supporting the United States in the international arena.
  
  The threat was made in an e-mail claiming responsibility for bomb attacks that killed 63 people in the tourist city of Jaipur. The mail declared "open war against India" and included the serial number of a bicycle used in one of the bombings.
  
  
• WHAT CAN BE INFERRED FROM THEIR DEMANDS?
  
  A man speaking Urdu with a Kashmiri accent phoned an Indian TV station, offering talks with the government and accusing the Indian army of killing Muslims in Kashmir. This suggests the attackers are involved with a Kashmiri group like Lashkar-e-Taiba.
  
  The demands of the Indian Mujahideen -- like their targets -- have always tended to be much more domestic. The group issued an e-mail threat in September to attack Mumbai but directed its anger at the Mumbai police anti-terrorist squad, accusing them of harassing Muslims.
  
  "If this is the degree your arrogance has reached, and if you think that by these stunts you can scare us, then let the Indian Mujahideen warn all the people of Mumbai that whatever deadly attacks Mumbaikars will face in future, their responsibility would lie with the Mumbai ATS and their guardians," it said.
  

Terrorism is always a tactic used by weak organizations to try to delegitimize the accepted government of any nation so that those weaker organizations can either force the government to accept and implement their demands or even cause the government to fall so that the weaker organization can replace it.

In this case the flashpoint is probably the status of Kashmir, the key disagreement between Pakistan and India since the original partition of those two countries in 1947 out of British India. Organizations like Lashkar-e-Taiba, and the Indian Mjuahideen are known to share training and personnel, and are known to be supported by segments of the Pakistani Inter-services Intelligence (ISI). elements of the ISI also provide support to the Taliban operating in Afghanistan out of the northern Pakistani province Waziristan.

All of this lends credence to speculations that the Mumbai terrorist attacks are efforts to derail the efforts of the new government of Pakistan to take tighter control over Waziristan and Pakistan in general. The recent efforts towards a peace initiative recently begun by the Pakistani President and advanced by the two foreign ministers of Pakistan and India are clearly anathema to the Islamic terrorist organizations.

Since the United States and Great Britain can both be expected to encourage the Pakistani President to exert greater control over Pakistani territory and also to work towards a rapprochement between the two nuclear powers - India and Pakistan - the logic behind the Mumbai terrorist attacks and the apparent effort of the terrorists to take American and British hostages appears quite logical. The terrorist attacks appear to be the lashing out by a weak opposition organization as the governments of both Pakistan and India move to threaten their existence and their goals.

Pakistan supporting Taliban in Afghanistan; Shooting at American helicopters

Two interesting news reports.

First, the Army Times reports that Pakistani military helicopters have been flying over the border into Afghanistan and resupplying Taliban base camps.

Second, BBC reports that Pakistani troops have been shooting at U.S. military helicopters "forcing them back into Afghanistan".

Bush, of course, had pinned all the U.S. hopes on President Musharraf remaining in power in Pakistan. Now that Musharraf is gone, the opposition is reacting to their political base by opposing support for the American troops in Afghanistan. It is clear that at least parts of the Pakistani military Intelligence agency, the ISI, still support the Taliban. The ISI created the Taliban during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, using Saudi Arabian money. The Pakistani government has never controlled the borderland officially inside Pakistan but next to Afghanistan, not even when the British government in India was supposedly in control of that territory.

The combat in Afghanistan is more important than Iraq ever was, and if anything, the Afghan and Pakistani relations are more complicated than Iraq was or is. The Bush administration has never done "complicated" well, preferring brute force military solutions which often don't work. If anything, McCain is even less capable of dealing with complicated than Bush is.

Another reason to vote for Obama in November.

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Addendum 9 23 2008 2:10 pm CDT
A real question is how close is Pakistan to being a failed state. The bombing of the Marriott in Islamabad over the weekend certainly leads to that question. According to the LA Times article, that bombing would have taken out the top leadership of the Pakistani government.

On Monday, the government described just how close those militants may have come to dealing Pakistan an almost fatal blow. A senior official said that President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yusaf Raza Gilani and top Cabinet members were supposed to dine together at the Marriott on Saturday night -- but switched venues just before the bombing.

"At the eleventh hour, the president and prime minister decided that the venue would be the prime minister's house," Rehman Malik, the Interior Ministry's top official, told reporters. "It saved the entire leadership."

Malik did not explain what inspired the change in plans. A representative of the hotel later cast doubt on the statement, telling the Associated Press that there were no plans for a government dinner at the Marriott on Saturday.

Malik's disclosure, if true, betrayed the alarming extent to which militants have beefed up their intelligence capabilities and upgraded their planning and operations accordingly.

These recent news reports indicate that Pakistan is having real problems not becoming a failed state.

Obviously the Bush administration has no solution to Pakistan's problems, but the entire Muslim world as well as America and India are effected by it. Both Bush and McCain will look for American military solutions to the problem of Pakistan, while neither can imagine any other possible solutions. But there better be some other solutions. Pakistan is too important to be allowed to fail.

In the meantime, spokepersons deny that U.S. helicopters invaded Pakistani airspace and that Pakistani military fired on them.

DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan - Pakistani troops and tribesmen opened fire on two U.S. helicopters that crossed into the country from neighboring Afghanistan, intelligence officials said Monday. The U.S. denied the report.

The helicopters did not return fire and re-entered Afghan airspace without landing, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to media.

"There was no such incursion, there was no such event," said Col. Gary L. Keck, Defense Department spokesman.

So apparently the events that happened didn't really happen.

That's what the Associated Press reports, anyway. It's a good thing that the AP has such great and objective reporters on their staff - the Republican shill Ron Fournier in Washington, D.C. reporting on the American Presidential election, for example.

Bush has allowed Pakistan to go to Hell in a handbasket

It looks like while playing his idiotic games in Irag Bush has allowed Pakistan to become the most dangerous country in the world, and now will simply hand the problem off the his successor. From the New York Times Asia Edition:

Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.

The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so. [Snip]

The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan. After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said, it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.

¶Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of being sympathetic to the militants.

None of the former intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times agreed to be identified when talking about the ISI, an agency that has gained a fearsome reputation for interfering in almost every aspect of Pakistani life. But two former American intelligence officials agreed with much of what they said about the agency’s relationship with the militants.

So did other sources close to the ISI, who admitted that the agency had supported militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, although they said they had been ordered to do so by political leaders.

The former intelligence officials appeared to feel freer to speak as Mr. Musharraf’s eight years of military rule weakened, and as a power struggle for control over the government looms between Mr. Musharraf and opposition political parties.

The officials were interviewed before the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, the opposition leader, on Dec. 27. Since then, the government has said that Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda are the foremost suspects in her killing. Her supporters have accused the government of a hidden hand in the attack.

While the author of Ms. Bhutto’s death remains a mystery, the interviews with the former intelligence officials made clear that the agency remained unable to control the militants it had fostered.

The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”

ISI ("Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence") has admitted to rigging the election of 2002. They have been an extremely powerful force dominating much of Pakistan, and they have considered India to be Pakistan's greatest enemy, even as the terrorists in the Northwest provinces and Afghanistan have been causing problems.

Go read the entire article to see what a complex mess Pakistan is in, and don't forget - they have nuclear weapons ready to use.

Bhutto assassination tied more closely to Musharraf.

As more details are revealed about the assassination of Benizar Bhutto, it becomes clearer that it was an elaborately planned and well-executed operation involving a large group of people, inside knowledge of Bhutto's anticipated movements and sloppy security conducted by the Pakistan Peoples Party. McClatchy Newspapers provides a more detailed report on what has been learned.

By Saeed Shah and Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy Newspapers

The assassination
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Two new reports on the assassination of Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto on Dec. 27 suggest that it may have been an ambitious plot rather than an isolated act of violence and that the government of President Pervez Musharraf knows far more than it's admitted.

A police officer who witnessed the assassination said a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto's car that day, prompting her to emerge through the sunroof. And a document has surfaced in the Pakistani news media that contradicts the government's version of her death and contains details on the pistol and the suicide bomb used.

The witness was Ishtiaq Hussain Shah, deputy superintendent of the Rawalpindi police. As Bhutto's car headed onto Liaquat Road after an election rally in Rawalpindi, a crowd appeared from nowhere and stopped the motorcade, shouting slogans of her Pakistan Peoples Party and waving party banners, according to his account.

Bhutto emerged through the sunroof of the bulletproof car to wave.

Shah's job was to clear the way for the motorcade. But 10 feet from where he was standing, a man in the crowd wearing a jacket and sunglasses raised his arm and shot at Bhutto. "I jumped to overpower him," he said later. "A mighty explosion took place soon afterwards."

Shah suffered multiple injuries and is recuperating in a Rawalpindi military hospital, guarded by agents of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate.

Who organized the crowd is still a mystery. "I don't know who they were or from where they came," Shah told the Dawn newspaper. "They just appeared on the road."

The investigation
The second report emerged in the Pakistani media, with detailed information about the pistol and bomb. It rejects the government's conclusion that Bhutto died when the force of the suicide blast threw her head against the sunroof lever of her car. Such an impact couldn't have fractured her skull, it said. The government would not confirm the report's authenticity, but a security official verified it to McClatchy. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the subject's sensitivity.

According to the report, which the paper described as a "top agency" preliminary report, a Chinese Norinco pistol, lot number 311-90, was recovered from the scene. An MUV-2 triggering mechanism for the bomb was also found; the same kind of mechanism, with the same lot number and factory code, had been used in 15 previous suicide bombings in Pakistan. [Snip]

Bhutto's Security
Bhutto's own private-security arrangements seemed poor, chaotic and amateurish. Armored cars are not fitted with sunroofs. Hers was modified in Karachi against all safety advice, according to a security company that operates in that city but spoke only on condition of anonymity. After Bhutto's death, her husband made the startling revelation that she'd been guarded by men he'd met in prison.

Government involvement before and after
Although she had escaped a suicide bombing attack Oct. 18, the day she returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile, there was no security cordon around Bhutto as she left the park in Rawalpindi. The crime scene was cleared immediately and hosed down, destroying vital evidence. Doctors at the hospital where she was taken announced the night it happened that she'd died of bullet wounds to the head and neck, but they changed their story the next day. There was no autopsy.
[Titles added - Editor WTF-o]

Even if Musharaff did not himself direct the assassination, it is clear that he and his government do not want the details of how it was conducted to be provided to the public or to the international community.

The two biggest questions right now are how much longer Musharaff will be President, and who will replace him.

Musharraf not expected to last in office

Juan Cole provides further insight on the situation in Pakistan.

The government stonewalling on the issue of an autopsy and the coercion of government employees to toe a pre-determined line, smells to high heaven of complicity. It could be incompetence or stupidity, of course. And the Pakistani military is not all one thing. There is the Inter-Services Intelligence, some members of whom have long ties to Muslim militants. There is the officer corps, etc.

Three further notes: The Pakistan People's Party members and other opponents of Musharraf already were thinking like this before circumstantial evidence emerged that made it even more plausible. I fear their conviction will now be unshakeable, which does not bode well for social peace. It would be a feud.

Second, the physicians would not have had their lawyer speak out about their having been coerced by the military if they thought that Musharraf was likely to continue in office. That is, they have made a bet on a PPP prime minister and are more afraid of being punished by the new government than they are of being punished by the old one. Do they think the old one is about to be overthrown?

And, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, head of the Muslim League (N), called Monday for Musharraf to resign, saying of him, "He is a one-man calamity and the source of all the problems. The country is burning."

Dr. Cole makes a lot of sense here. I find his second point especially compelling. The Doctors really wouldn't have released that statement if they thought Musharraf was likely to last in office.

Apparently Dr. Cole was unaware of the story of that Bhutto was going to meet with Sen. Specter and Rep. Kennedy about the fixed election. Whether true or not, that story will also fit into Dr. Cole's first point. The members of the PPP are not going to believe anything the government says. Either Musharraf resigns or Pakistan is headed towards severe instability, even civil war.

Bhutto assassinated just before revealing the election was fixed

It hadn't seemed reasonable that Musharraf would arrange for Benazir Bhutto's assassination. When it happened, he was going to take the blame, and there did not seem to be enough reason for him to walk into that firestorm. That is no longer true. There was a reason he needed her dead and needed her dead when she was killed. McClatchy News has the story.

NAUDERO, Pakistan — The day she was assassinated last Thursday, Benazir Bhutto had planned to reveal new evidence alleging the involvement of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in rigging the country's upcoming elections, an aide said Monday.

Bhutto had been due to meet U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., and Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., to hand over a report charging that the military Inter-Services Intelligence agency was planning to fix the polls in the favor of President Pervez Musharraf.

Safraz Khan Lashari, a member of the Pakistan People's Party election monitoring unit, said the report was "very sensitive" and that the party wanted to initially share it with trusted American politicians rather than the Bush administration, which is seen here as strongly backing Musharraf.

"It was compiled from sources within the (intelligence) services who were working directly with Benazir Bhutto," Lashari said, speaking Monday at Bhutto's house in her ancestral village of Naudero, where her husband and children continued to mourn her death.

The ISI had no official comment. However, an agency official, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak on the subject, dismissed the allegations as "a lot of talk but not much substance." [Snip]

According to Lashari, the document includes information on a "safe house" allegedly being run by the ISI in a central neighborhood of Islamabad, the alleged headquarters of the rigging operation.

It names as the head of the unit a brigadier general recently retired from the ISI, who was secretly assigned to run the rigging operation, Lashari said. It charges that he was working in tandem with the head of a civilian intelligence agency. Before her return to Pakistan, Bhutto, in a letter to Musharraf, had named the intelligence official as one of the men she accused of plotting to kill her.

Lashari said the report claimed that U.S. aid money was being used to fix the elections. Ballots stamped in favor of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, which supports Musharraf, were to be produced by the intelligence agencies in about 100 parliamentary constituencies.

"They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they were spending the money," Lashari said.

Lashari, who formerly taught environmental economics at Britain's Cranfield University, said the effort was directed at constituencies where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin, so it wouldn't be obvious.

Sen. Specter and Rep. Kennedy need to be put on record regarding whether they had planned to meet with Bhutto and when.

Musharraf will not be believed now no matter what he says or does. Also, Bush had placed everything America had behind him in support of the General, and now that policy has been demonstrated to be utterly ridiculous. So not only is Pakistan a lot more unstable than it was a week ago, the assassination is clearly going to have repercussions here in the U.S. also.

There will be more about the assassination and it looks like it will be sooner rather than later.

More on the Bhutto assassination cover up

Today the New York Times provide more information on the cover up about how Benazir Bhutto was killed.

Athar Minallah, a board member of the hospital where Ms. Bhutto was treated, released her medical report along with an open letter showing that her doctors wanted to distance themselves from the government theory that Ms. Bhutto had died by hitting her head on a lever of her car’s sunroof during the attack.

In his letter, Mr. Minallah, who is also a prominent lawyer, said the doctors believed that an autopsy was needed to provide the answers to how she actually died. Their request for one last Thursday was denied by the local police chief.

Pakistani and Western security experts said the government’s insistence that Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister, was not killed by a bullet was intended to deflect attention from the lack of government security around her. On Sunday, Pakistani newspapers covered their front pages with photographs showing a man apparently pointing a gun at her from just yards away.

Her vehicle came under attack by a gunman and suicide bomber as she left a political rally in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters, and where the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency has a strong presence.

The government’s explanation, that Ms. Bhutto died after hitting her head as she ducked from the gunfire or was tossed by the force of the suicide blast, has been greeted with disbelief by her supporters, ordinary Pakistanis and medical experts. While some of the mystery could be cleared up by exhuming the body, it is not clear whether Ms. Bhutto’s family would give permission, such is their distrust of the government.

Mr. Minallah distributed the medical report with his open letter to the Pakistani news media and The New York Times. He said the doctor who wrote the report, Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, the principal professor of surgery at the Rawalpindi General Hospital, told him on the night of Ms. Bhutto’s death that she had died of a bullet wound.
[Highlighting mine - Ed. WTF-o]

This is further confirmation of BBC's channel 4 news on which I based last nights' post Bhutto was shot - Musharaff's government is lying.

It is interesting that it was the Chief of Police who would not permit an autopsy. This, combined with the complaints made by Bhutto's security chief before her assassination that on three different occasions the police had provided faulty cell phone jammers to her security contingent Makes you wonder who in the government was responsible for Ms. Bhutto;s assassination. Were the security guards who did nothing to prevent the assassination (see the video in yesterday's post ) provided by the police? And why did Musharraf refuse to permit the PPP to hire American or British security guards?

As more information becomes available, it seems very likely that the assassination was conducted by someone in the Pakistani government, and less likely that it was outside terrorists.