A Second Hand Conjecture

Seems to be an awful lot of “testing” going on.

Mutiny in Georgia!!!

Iran attacks Kurdish guerillas in Iraq with helicopters

Pakistan is melting down!!!

Chinese Ships Come Dangerously Close to American Vessel

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Seth Weinberger picks up Foreign Policy’s “10 Worst Policy Ideas” for Obama and McCain and adds some commentary. What’s immediately striking to me is how few objections FP offers to McCain’s foreign policy proposals. A peculiar thing, if you’re familiar with the doctrinal tilt of the pub. There’s really only one they single out against McCain (League o’ Democracies), the rest is purely domestic politics. By contrast Obama comes in for scorn on four (NAFTA, CAFTA, Pakistan, Iran).

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Belmont Club
We could be forced to entirely revamp our strategy in Afghanistan if the situation in Pakistan continues to deteriorate and the Russians intend to be uncooperative.

There are in fact serious concerns that troops in Afghanistan can be cut off should a hostile regime emerge in Pakistan.

Historically, this area has been difficult to subdue and logistics has been a big part of the problem. Even with today’s technology, supporting a large force through hostile territory would be very difficult. An air bridge could be established but that would take considerable resources. Resources I’m not sure the AF has available. However, I am not an expert in this area.

The ripple effects of losing Musharraf and Russia’s muscle flexing could be severe.

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From the NYT:

American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

The American officials also said there was new information showing that members of the Pakistani intelligence service were increasingly providing militants with details about the American campaign against them, in some cases allowing militants to avoid American missile strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

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Posted first at Registan.net, the web’s best source of news and analysis of Central Asia and the Caucasus.

My friend Jeb Koogler and I co-wrote an op-ed in Thursday’s Christian Science Monitor, titled, “Myths in Al Qaeda’s ‘home’.” This matters tremendously as we ponder what to do (if anything) about the latest round of peace talks. A brief excerpt of our argument:

Given the growing reach of FATA-affiliated militants, it is becoming clear that developments in the tribal areas are central to NATO’s success in Afghanistan, as well as an important factor in the stability of nuclear-armed Pakistan and the security of both Europe and the United States. Yet many Western policymakers and pundits misread current events, espousing views and prescribing policies that are based more on stereotypes than on a solid grasp of the region’s history and culture.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the Pakistani Taliban pose a unique and insurmountable threat, that the Pashtuns are the problem, that the tribal areas are lawless and chaotic, and that the targeted assassinations are an effective deterrent against Islamic militancy. But none of these assertions are accurate.

Although the conventional thinking holds that the Pakistani Taliban and their leader Baitullah Mehsud are a formidable and unprecedented threat to the region, the movement is neither historically unique nor overwhelmingly powerful.

And so on (read the whole thing, natch). I anticipate many will quibble with our argument over targeted assassinations; I welcome any such discussion, so long as it’s kept civil.

Update: Here is another example of how perception can matter tremendously, and how pitiful U.S. planning has been in the area. It takes nine paragraphs of Eric Schmitt quoting a press conference on the problem of foreign militants entering Pakistan until he finds anonymous officials urging caution that the problem isn’t quite as bad as it was sold to the media. He then quotes anonymous officials in Pakistan who complain that things are just harder to do without a friendly dictator to bark orders at. Finally, in the last paragraph of a two-page story, he quotes another anonymous official who complains that U.S. relations with Pakistan are “toxic.” So many anonymous people!

Why is that, do you think? Could it be because the current civilian government doesn’t like that we supported the country’s military dictator through several rounds of stolen elections, the imposition of martial law and the cancellation of the country’s civil liberties? That, after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, we supported him cancelling free press and arresting lawyers who were protesting for the reinstatement of the judicial system, instead of going after Baitullah Mehsud’s group? That, even after Pervez Musharraf’s tenure was clearly over, we insisted on bombing their territory as often as possible before they could have a chance to ask us to stop?

It should be no surprise relations with Pakistan are tense. We are dealing with a popularly elected government that is at least somewhat in tune with its generally poor and generally uneducated population, and is not a disconnected, whiskey-swilling, Oxford-educated dictator. Instead of bothering to learn how we can make U.S. policy congruous with Pakistan’s needs and problems over the past eight years, we just short-cut our way through using an autocracy… and now complain viciously when it is deposed and democracy is restored and we have to actually argue our case. Like it or not, much of the world does not view our cause as self-evidently good and just and righteous—we need to argue that it is so. That we haven’t bothered so speaks legions about how we view the people who live in the areas we invade.

In other words, we are our own worst enemies.

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This book was written entirely in the passive voice. The passive voice was used to avoid assigning causation or personhood to various events. As a result, we learn that places were invaded, people were slaughtered, armies were founded, but no one can say by whom.

Good grief, that is exhausting. How is it a book almost exclusively in the passive voice got past the legion of editors and publishers to become a hardcover history? Seriously, how does that happen? It’s not that Docherty didn’t do his homework, nor is that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about—the history here is stunning, and eye opening even for me (and I’ve read a lot of histories of the area). The subject is a good one; the research excellent. But the writing? Nearly unbearable!

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(photo: Mani Babbar)

After 9/11 widened Al Qaeda’s ambitious war against most of the world, Osama bin Laden described his own axis-o-evil as being composed of “Crusaders, Zionists and Hindus.” But at some point, without anyone much noticing, that seems to have changed for Hindus.

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Published first at Registan.net, this is the culmination of some research I’ve been doing into the nature and history of Pashtun tribal militancy. It draws from a mixture of out-of-print ethnocgraphic and geographic surveys, as well as contemporary news accounts, and tries to make the case that much of the turbulence there is really not unique in an historical sense. As always, comments and discussion is welcome.

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There is a great deal of western unease about the potential cease-fire between some Taliban and tribal militant groups in the NWFP and FATA of Pakistan and the new civilian government. Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-i Taliban and primary suspect in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and sworn enemy of this month’s U.S. friend-of-convenience Maulvi Nazir, has registered interest in a cease-fire in Waziristan.

This is a major step, and indicative of the approach valued by the new civilian government: reconciliation, not confrontation. The usual suspects, namely the U.S., are all a-jitter about the prospect of a peace deal with the militants there. But there really is no reason to feel such deep concern. These sorts of cease fire agreements have a long history in the FATA area, and there really is nothing fundamentally new about the situation. In other words, such deep concern is overblown, and stems more from historical naiveté than anything else.

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Sunni tribal leaders in Pakistan are organizing militias and some are ready to revolt against Al Qaeda. David Montero at the CSM takes a look at the risks and rewards of applying our successful counterterrorism strategy from Anbar, in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas.

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These are the events that can kick off revolutions, civil wars, and even God forbid world wars…

Let’s hope and pray this will be a more bloodless revolution.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,318510,00.html

Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday in a homicide attack that also killed at least 20 others at a campaign rally.

The former prime minister died in Rawalpindi General Hospital, where she had been rushed to surgery after she was wounded in the attack.

There were reports that Bhutto had been shot in the neck as she was leaving the scene of the bombing.

“At 6:16 p.m. she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Bhutto’s party who was at the hospital.

Her supporters at the hospital began chanting “Dog, Musharraf, dog,” referring to Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf.

Some of them smashed the glass door at the main entrance of the emergency unit, others burst into tears. Top party leaders were outside the hospital, crying.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw body parts and flesh scattered at the back gate of the Liaqat Bagh park in Rawalpindi, where the rally was held.

He counted about 20 bodies, including police, and could see many other wounded.

The road outside was stained with blood and people screamed for ambulances. Others gave water to the wounded lying in the street. The clothing of some of the victims was shredded and people put party flags over their bodies.

The bomb went off just minutes after Bhutto spoke to thousands of supporters, and she appeared to be the target of the attack. Farahtullah Babar, the spokesman for her party, said her vehicle was about 50 yards away from blast, which went off as she was leaving the rally venue.

UPDATE (MichaelW): Sometimes co-blogger Joshua Foust comments on the assassination:

While I was certainly no fan of her mad quest for power, Ms. Bhutto did not deserve to be murdered. Her death on its own would be yet another tragic event in Pakistan’s very tortured experiment with democracy; given the modern context, however, I suspect very bad things are in store for the country. Look for Musharraf to crack down again, potentially even on the crazies this time. But kiss the January election goodbye.

Finger pointing will begin shortly as to who’s to blame, with the most likely culprits being Pervez Musharraf or Islamic fundamentalists (or maybe even some combination thereof). Josh is laying his money on the fundamentalists:

The New York Times chimes in with a good background story, noting that Bhutto did not blame her last assassination attempt on Musharraf, but rather the Islamic crazies. Whether we decide to think that gave Musharraf room to kill her is up for grabs; I don’t think suicide bombers are his style. This was a classic Islamic crazy attack.

I may disagree with Josh on any number of things, but you would be hard pressed to find a better analyst than Josh blogging about this part of the world. So his thoughts carry a great deal of weight here IMHO. That being said, it would not surprise me to learn that Musharraf’s security forces had something to do with it, whether by sin of commission or omission.

UPDATE II(Keith):

For continuing updates and other blogger reaction, please hop on over to PJM where they have a running list…

UPDATE III (MichaelW): Apparently our commenting feature is on the fritz, so Josh emailed to the following instead:

Thanks for the plug, guys. Two things:

1) Al Qaeda has indeed claimed responsibility.

2) I’ve been doing a lot more background work, both in a darkly snarky interview at Jezebel and as an update to my post. Unfortunately, this assassination makes a lot of sense, but equally unfortunate is just how awful it is for Pakistan. Getting murdered will prompt revenge killings, and possibly a further crackdown by Uncle Pervy.

In other words, while Bhutto wouldn’t have been good for her country in power, she is far worse dead.

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