Jihad Factory Nation/State

Nishan E Hader!

For over four decades Pakistan has been a breeder and sponsor of Islamist terrorists.  20 designated terrorist organizations operate in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, while seven are based in Pakistan.  These wars will not end until the U.S. and like-minded states shut down Pakistan, as the foremost producer of Jihad Inc.

The wars against Islamist militants inimical to secular democracies will not end until the West and its genuine friends forge the will to shut down the factories and sanctuaries that generate and sustain the most abominable strains of Salafi-Wahhabi jihadists.

For over four decades Pakistan has been a breeder and sponsor of Islamist terrorists.  20 designated terrorist organizations operate in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, while seven are based in Pakistan.  These wars will not end until the U.S. and like-minded states shut down Pakistan, as the foremost producer of Jihad Inc.

For over four decades Pakistan has been a breeder and sponsor of Islamist terrorists.  20 designated terrorist organizations operate in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region, while seven are based in Pakistan.  These wars will not end until the U.S. and like-minded states shut down Pakistan, as the foremost producer of Jihad Inc.

It is clear that, if we hold what we have, in how the NATO Coalition approaches the complex strategic interaction in Afghanistan and Pakistan, it will continue to pay the butcher’s bill in Afghan and Coalition blood for the next 15 or 30 years.  Dig a hole, fill a hole, dig a hole—the U.S. and its partners in Afghanistan will continue to abide a strategic stalemate, just as they have done for the last nearly 16 years.  

When facing an insurgency compounded with terrorism, if the counterinsurgents are not winning, they are losing.  The insurgents win by not losing.  Our side has won many battles and succeeded in many actions, but this means nothing when facing a stalemate stemming from strategic asymmetry.  Pakistan’s perfidy is the main reason for this.

The costs stemming from Pakistan’s treachery has been high in blood spilled, resources spent, and the number of years at war.  Pakistan’s deliberate deceit and our continued hopefulness that the Pakistani security elites can be our friends will lead to more of the same over the next 15 years without a major change in how we see and respond to Pakistan.  It would be hard to imagine a worse friend, and it boggles the mind that after attacks on 9/11 and before 9/11, with Pakistan’s direct or indirect complicity, the U.S. would choose to ally with the only country on the planet with its capital city named after Islam, the country that has played the singularly significant role in creating Islamist terrorists over the last four-plus decades.

Continuing to pay out money to Pakistan for its support in the war against terrorists while Pakistan, the enemy, is employing and sustaining its Taliban proxies and other militants to kill and maim Afghan and Coalition partners is strategically bankrupt.  If unchanged, the war in Afghanistan and wars like it against Islamists will end badly.