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... Um.. oh yes they did
A just-published news report has prodded Londonstani out of a work-enduced coma:
The Christian Science Monitor reports today (24th) that the Pakistani authorities have moved against the Afghan Taliban leadership based in Pakistan (dubbed the Quetta Shura)
"In total, seven of the insurgent group’s 15-member leadership council, thought to be based in Quetta, Pakistan, including the head of military operations, have been apprehended in the past week, according to Pakistani intelligence officials.
Western and Pakistani media had previously reported the arrest of three of the 15, but this is the first confirmation of the wider scale of the Pakistan crackdown on the Taliban leadership, something the US has sought."
As the CSM rightly asks; 1 Why is Pakistan doing this now, and 2 Does it significantly damage the Afghan Taliban?
"The crackdown may to be related to efforts by some Taliban leaders to explore talks with Western and Afghan authorities independently of Pakistan, the UN official said"
There has already been much reporting of the politic-ing behind efforts to talk to the Taliban - including the use of the good offices of former Afghan Jihadis who have long since hung up their AKs (like Abdullah Anas). But this changes the game. The Pakistani on-going operation in Waziristan was delayed as the Pakistani army cut deals with Afghan Taliban leaders (among others) so as to limit the fronts it would have to fight on. Might these arrests, which look to be more than a cosmetic exercise, basically equal a declaration of war against the people it built up and then protected for so long. That is a pretty serious shift in policy.
A recent article in The New Republic about General Keyani, the Pakistani army's chief of staff, comes to mind. Michael Crowley thinks Keyani sees that American and Pakistani interests (as viewed by Keyani) are aligned and suggests that Keyani was just getting round to this move all along. But Pakistan's key interest in Afghanistan centres on making sure the people who run the place like Islamabad more than New Dehli. The only Afghanis likely to feel that way are the Taliban. How does arresting their leadership sheltering in Pakistan make them feel warm and fuzzy about Keyani's men? And how does it make them want to conduct any future potential talks with the allies through Pakistan?
As for damaging the Taliban:
“This really hurts the Taliban in the short run,” says Wahid Muzjda, a former Taliban official turned political analyst, based in Kabul.
"You can arrest Mullah Baradar, but there are many Mullah Baradars out there,” says Mr. Zaif. “The commanders are replaceable. The fighters on the ground will keep fighting.”
Seems the jury is out on that one.
UPDATE: Fixing The New Republic writer's name first name and updating headline
Londonstani: Do you know
Londonstani: Do you know what type of arrest it was?
Was it all-guns blazing, storming with SF or negotiated surrender? Thats pretty crucial to know, wether theyre hanging upside down right now w. interesting electrodes to their body, or sipping tea in a military high sec. compound. I can see both scenarios taking place in Pakistan.
I don't at this stage. I
I don't at this stage. I think that might come about over the next couple of days. An ear will be to the groundhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/wor
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/interactive/2010/feb/24/hamas-murder-sus...
I agree with the health dose
I agree with the health dose of scepticism in this post and comments. Is it plausible to think that fully half of the 15-member council was so relaxed as to allow themselves to be taken by surprise? Is that the kind of situational awareness that has kept them alive thus far? And if they were not taken by surprise this whole chain of event begins to looks very different. I suspect there is much more to this story - and that it isn't nearly as triumphalist as many pundits would like to pretend.
Wouldnt it be even more
Wouldnt it be even more triumphalist if this was a beginning to the end of the war through negotiations?
Fnord, it's probably more
Fnord, it's probably more like a pause. If there are negotiations at all. It may be that Pakistan just had enough and are really going after them. I wonder if we'll ever know.
So do we think this guy
So do we think this guy should go to Afghanistan, or stay in Iraq?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfTIUfDO304&feature=player_embedded
Pakistan probably cares more
Pakistan probably cares more about India and views the Taliban as their most likely post-war asset in Afghanistan - who else will want to have anything to do with them?
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1945666,00.html
But while Pakistan is aggressively tackling its domestic Taliban, it has consistently declined to act against Afghan Taliban groups based on its soil — because it sees the Afghan Taliban as a useful counterweight to what it believes is the dominant influence in today's Afghanistan of Pakistan's arch-enemy, India. Unless India can be persuaded to take steps to ease tensions with Pakistan, some suggest, Pakistan will not be willing to shut down the Afghan Taliban. - Dec 2009
In any case, that's a central motivating factor in the decisions made by the Pakistani military & political class - so, the question is, have they been reassured about India?
Indian influence has expanded after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and toppled the Taliban — it had been a longtime supporter of the Northern Alliance, the anti-Taliban coalition that dominated the Karzai government, and it poured hundreds of millions of dollars of aid into supporting the new regime. That's left many in Pakistan raising the specter of Indian encirclement — a concern noted by U.S. General Stanley McChrystal in September, when he said that "increasing Indian influence in Afghanistan is likely to exacerbate regional tensions."
Are there economic factors as well? Some reports indicate an increasing proportion of India's heroin is from Afghanistan - and of course Pakistan is also a main export route for Afghan heroin. Claimed links to the trade include everyone from the Taliban to Karzai's relatives to the Pakistani ISI to 'engineering firms' to NATO-allied Afghan warlords - so it seems that there are economic consequences of Indian vs. Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. A confounding factor, anyway. (Afghan opiates are also being smuggled through to India via Pakistan, and India's new pharmaceutical industry may be converting them into Oxycontin, Percocet, etc.)
This current I-P struggle in Afghanistan goes all the way back to 2003, and is directly linked to the "reconstruction projects":
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0912/p07s01-wosc.html
Too bad the U.S. neglected Afghanistan in 2003 in favor of military adventurism in Iraq, huh?
We didn't neglect it, we
We didn't neglect it, we pursued a holding action. Don't sneer because that's what were going to do again 18 mos from now after we shithammer them for awhile and wear down their power. Which is what we did from 2001 to 2008.
We responded to a long term thorn in our side upon whom the shelf life had expired, under false premises provided by same long term thorn. The idiot (Saddam). We then found ourselves there with AQ our core enemy making it their main effort, and Wallah they lost there, badly. With the luck that God consistently only bequeaths on drunks, little children and the United States we may be about to extricate ourselves with honor and no small victories. Keep our fingers crossed.
We also tried to get our allies both NATO and the Mayor of Kabul off their @sses, with marginal success until recently. The grounds for such success as we may achieve were not all miraculously laid in the last year.
We will have little or negligible effect on the Heroin Trade from that region, unless we suddenly clone Andrew Jackson and put him in charge. Based on his record of course he'd immediately hang anyone suspected of trading with the enemy, also putting offending villages and tribes to the sword. I'd put in a grant to get some stimulus money for the cloning project but I'm waiting to see how our elections go...
Pakistan takes out Quetta
Pakistan takes out Quetta Shura top leadership, Kandahar offensive on the horizon.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/02/201022618258686515.html
This has been a long time coming.
Tanhks for the insight. It
Tanhks for the insight. It brings light into the dark!
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