Not long after 911, then President General for Life Musharraf of the Land of the Pure pleaded with his failing state's trifecta of intolerant militants, Army Cadres and citizens that Pakistan was in a terrible bind. The whole world thought Pakistan totally sucked.Years, billions of bucks, buckets of blood and chaos later Great Satan's chief spy guy pretty much copied and pasted the exPresident General's plea as a caveat:"Four serious accusations were hurled at Pakistan:
A. All the terrorist activity in Afghanistan had its base in Pakistan
B. All the freedom struggle in Indian Held Kashmir was Cross border Terrorism from Pakistan
C. All nuclear proliferation in the world had its source in Pakistan
D. Pakistan is an intolerant militant extremist society "
Yay. Those famously infamous Tribal Zones - FATA or Federally unAdministered Tribal Area. Currently functioning as impact areas for cruise and heckfire missiles, the Mumbai Massacre now has leads to another tribalist area in Pakistani occupied Kashmir."Let me be very clear: Today, virtually every major terrorist threat
that my agency is aware of has threads back to the tribal areas. Whether it's command and control, training, direction, money, capabilities, there is a connection to the FATA."
Just like RAND Corp pointed out a while back, a nation state that cannot impose the writ of state into her different regions and 'FATA's" is tough to defend. Or sympathize with.
Royal Navy Fan and all around smart guy Arthur Herman nails it with
Daemoneoconic Robert Kagan puts a razor sharp point on it too:"The duty of every government is to make sure that terrorists get
them before they can deal them out. Pakistanis will never know peace, or peace with their neighbors in Afghanistan and India, until they finally and ruthlessly root out the terrorists in their midst."
"We don't think the world's great nations and countries can be held
hostage by non-state actors," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said
yesterday. Fair enough. But what is the world to do when those non-state actors operate from the territory of a state and are the creation of that state's intelligence services?
"Reversing decades-old policies of support for these groups mayNo surprise then that an alledged ex one star General of Land of the Pure's psuedo army reckons the threat of intervention would magically provide Pakistan with all the goodies needed to unify the nation.
be impossible for any Pakistani leader, especially when the only forces
capable of rooting them out are the same forces that created them and sustain them."
"This is the time, when nobody is going to come from outside to help us
and we have to unite from within. We must stop killing each other. India is unlikely to indulge in some sort of adventure, but if she does then the world will get a surprise that how Pakistanis from Karachi to Khyber get united with the first practical show of aggression from India.
"This is the golden chance to get united in the face of foreign
aggression. Enough with the fighting of American war on terror. What have gained from it? Nothing and oppositely America is showing so much compassion and harmony with India, who has done literally nothing for America in the war against terror, rather India is behind the Balochistan militancy and other terrorist activities in Pakistan.
Perhaps there is another way to finally unify an artificial state.With the blessing of Allah, Pakistan Army is the guardian of our
borders. They are on their toes, when we sleep and rest assured that Pakistan army is ready to face any aggression and retaliate in befitting manner. India should end this drama now. All those flimsy stories about terrorists coming on boats all the way from Karachi to Mumbai and then creating mayhem so easily."
"Until now, the military and intelligence services have remained more
interested in wielding influence in Afghanistan through the Taliban and fighting India in Kashmir through terrorist groups than in cracking down. Perhaps they need a further incentive -- such as the prospect of seeing parts of their country placed in an international receivership."
Pic "A Slice of Pakistan"
The cross-border clashes could increase diplomatic tension over Pakistan's apparent inability to stop Islamic militants from operating from its territory, and whether forces in Afghanistan have the right to strike back.
ReplyDelete------------------------
adolfo
Promoter
Pakistan is playing both sides at once and one or the other will destroy it.
ReplyDeleteState failure looms for Pakistan as numerous anti -state dynamics weigh in on proceedings. It is akin to the merger of matter and anti-matter, positrons and electrons; the result being aNnIhIlAtIoN.
ReplyDeleteA Pakistani who truly believes that fomenting a crisis with India will rally all factions within Pakistan to unify, is a blithering, deluded fool. A crisis between Pakistan and India is playing right into Al Qaida hands with regards to keeping world attention and action off of Al Qaida and other terrorist orgs working in the tribal zones. Pakistan, heal thyself.
ReplyDeletePakistan and al qaeda was in this together.
ReplyDeleteI blame them both
I like Bob Kagan, Courtney. But his suggestions in that article were the reason why conservatives around the world rallied for an Obama Presidency. Because they can see better than Americans how power has gone to our heads.
ReplyDeleteWe are such a funny and self-centered lot, Courtney. We are persnickity to the day is long about our own sovereignty (our dealings on every matter, great and small, with the U.N. come to mind, here; this is coming from a U.N. skeptic, mind you).
But we use our fears of whatever scares us today, tomorrow, or the next day to pretend like sovereignty only really matters when we say that it does.
It's a dangerous idea. And it plays right into the hands of the Taliban and Al Queda and those groups that can exploit American arrogance and rough justice for their own political purposes throughout the Muslim world, including Pakistan, making it harder, not easier to root these lunatics from their and our midst.
We've got to work with that reliably unreliable Pakistani government to get these guys, that's all there is to it. We've got to respect their borders, as much as is reasonably possible. We've got to respect their sovereignty, their military protocols, their criminal justice system, and all the rest if we want a sustainable solution to this problem.
Everything else, as we saw this summer, produces backlash (what we saw a couple months ago is chump change compared to what we would see when overt circumvention of Pakistani sovereignty if anyone other than Robert Kagan took Robert Kagan seriously on this suggestion) and helps our enemies, which is supposed to be the opposite of what we want to achieve, the last time I checked.
Bob is a good guy. He wants the bad guys to lose. I do too. We all do.
But we've got to be smarter about it than thinking that American swagger is really doing the trick, right now.
It isn't. It won't. It can't.
Genuine multilateral efforts, as much as possible, are needed to elicit the kind of cooperation that we need from our security partners and their populations, all of whose help we need to rid the world of these moral degenerates.
I wish it were easier than that. But as Dick Clarke wrote in today's post, it just isn't. Would be nice if the world was easy to secure. It'd also be done by now, if it were.
Back to drawing board. And to efforts to earn us friends and remove these S.O.B.'s from our midst for good.