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Schmidle on Mehsud
August 9, 2009 | Posted by Abu Muqawama - 2:36pm | 10 Comments
Nick Schmidle -- one of my favorite commentors on Pakistan -- warns us to not get overly excited about the assassination of Baitullah Mehsud and, to my mind, gets his conclusion exactly right:
Now the hard part begins. Since the CIA has demonstrated its ability to pinpoint "high-level targets," it will want to go after other top Taliban leaders in Pakistan, such as Maulvi Nazir in South Waziristan and Jalaluddin Haqqani in North Waziristan. But Pakistan's military and security establishment perceives both men, who focus their fighting in Afghanistan and not in Pakistan, as national security assets more than threats. And there's no magic drone strike to fix that.
Right on Abu Muqawama.
Right on Abu Muqawama. Jalaluddin Haqqani in particular has been a major help to Kashmiri militants . . . which is not something the ISI Directorate or Pakistani Army will forget anytime soon. This is a major reason by the Punjabi Taliban fights alongside Haqqani more than they fight alongside Hekmatyur and the Quetta Shura Taliban.
Would love to know more about Maulvi Nazir's connections to the ISI and Pakistani Army. I am sure McChrystal must have a lot of intelligence regarding this.
On a previous thread someone asked for evidence that Pakistan was close to an AQ linked takeover before 9/11. To clarify, I meant that AQ linked operatives were starting to infiltrate some parts of the Pakistani security establishment. Haqqani, Lashkar e Toiba, Jaish e Mohammed, Sipah-e-Sahaba/Lashkar e Jhanvi (both anti Shia outfits) were some indications for this. So was the wire transfer to Mohammed Atta a month before 9/11 by the ISI. The firing of the ISI director LTG Mahmud_Ahmed soon after 9/11 was another piece of evidence. This was the man who put Musharraf into power in 1999. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmud_Ahmed)
For more info on this subject, consider reading Gerald Posner's book: (http://www.posner.com/why_america_slept.htm)
In my view, arguably the largest single challenge in the global conflict with extremists is to facilitate Pakistan becoming a prosperous successful free democracy with a strong civil society that is capable of resisting extremists, internal and external. This is by no means the only challenge or even a majority of the challenge. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and Sudan are also important.
There's no magic COIN fix
There's no magic COIN fix for that either.
I think the big challenge in
I think the big challenge in and around AFPAK is the formation of a stable economically viable government for Pakistan.
Yet the likelihood of that government being overly sympathetic to the aims of the West remains slim.
However if the US can focus on bolstering the Pakistani’s in an effort to ensure economic viability, leaving aside for a while the formatio of a non corrupt and demographically enabled democracy, then it can ensure that Pakistan starts to lift itself up out of the dust of the past 10 years.
A stable Pakistan, with employment opportunities means less and less able bodied men pulling the triggers on AK’s in the border.
This still presumes that he
This still presumes that he is actually dead. While possible, I also think there are several alternative possibilities such as a claim made by Pakistan to get the U.S to back off, a claim made by U.S officials who need to show some sort of success, and even a claim made originally by Baitullah Mehsud himself to cause confusion.
Interesting article on the
Interesting article on the Mehsuds...
Fighting the 150-year war
Colonial Britain could not tame Afghan tribes; likewise the US will fail
By Anthony Paul , Senior Writer
http://www.straitstimes.com/Prime%2BNews/Story/STIStory_416396.html
some extracts:
"During a visit I made to Pakistan last year in the wake of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's assassination, a Pakistani friend handed me a most arresting document: an old pamphlet first published in Lahore in 1901, Report On Waziristan And Its Tribes. 'This will make your work easier,' he said wryly. 'Just copy what's in this, changing only the dates.'"
" The 1901 report revived an interest that I have long had in old works about mayhem in these borderlands. Recently I added to my library a work by Dr C. Collin Davies, a veteran of the Third Afghan War of 1919 and of operations in Waziristan in 1921-22. In the preface to The Problem Of The North-West Frontier 1890-1908, Dr Davies acknowledged help from his son, one Major B.C. Davies, who had himself served on the frontier.
The book reported that while other tribesmen had been pacified by removing them 'from their original habitat', the 'turbulent Mahsuds' (he used an earlier transliteration of their name) had resisted all such efforts.
'Though ignorant, illiterate and superstitious, the Waziri is so vain and obstinate that he can never imagine himself to be in the wrong,' wrote the good doctor, in a burst of the imperialist's customary lofty judgment. 'He knows no law but his own passions and desires. Treacherous and dogged in the pursuit of vengeance, he will not scruple to kill even a woman or a child.'"
Jihad in Afghanistan:
Jihad in Afghanistan: Defending Muslims or Defending al-Qa'ida?
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