Afghan Journal

Pakistan and Afghanistan: strategic allies or sworn enemies?

The armies of Afghanistan and Pakistan exchanged artillery firing across their border this week in which the Pakistan military said it had lost a soldier while several others including civilians were wounded. Newspaper reports in Pakistan speak of at least three Afghan soldiers killed in the clash near Angoor Adda in Pakistan’s South Waziristan region.

It isn’t new, there was a clash last week when an Afghan militia attacked a Pakistan border post in the Lower Dir district, according to the Pakistani media, in which 14 security personnel were killed besides a large number of the Afghan militiamen. 

But the latest flareup at the disputed border is interesting because it comes at a time when Pakistan is not only trying to mend fences with Afghanistan, but is also said to be seeking a three-way strategic partnership involving Kabul, Beijing and itself and keeping the United States out over the long term.

Indeed as the Wall Street Journal reported, Pakistan’s leaders told their Afghan counterpart this month that America had failed them both and that the only durable relationship could be with its two neighbours – Pakistan and China. Pakistan has rejected the report as groundless, but given the strained ties with the United States, it has gained traction, striking a chord among those who are convinced that the United States and Pakistan are on a path of confrontation.    But if Pakistan is seeking to soften up the Afghans, it looks like it has a mountain to climb.  The leak itself of its overtures to President Hamid Karzai is said to have come from Afghan officials keen to remain on America’s side. Besides embarrassing Pakistan, it can only increase the distrust the neighbours have long held for each other.

And on the ground, incidents such as Wednesday when the Afghan army is said to have lobbed 70 shells at a border post near Angoor Adda causing damage to a market there can only increase anger in Pakistan, which is unlikely to accept such aggression from a neighbour considered part of its sphere of influence. It has called for a flag meeting, reflecting the seriousness of the situation.

Last month there was another incident in what Afghan analyst Joshua Foust calls “The  undeclared AfPAK War.” The Pakistani military fired shells in a residential part of Goshta in Afghanistan’s eastern Nangahar province killing a civilian.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan – a list too long

Pakistani journalist Mosharraf Zaidi had a good post up last week attempting to frame the many different challenges Pakistan faces in trying to deal with terrorism.  Definitely worth a read as a counter-balance to the vague "do more" mantra, and as a reminder of how little serious public debate there is out there about the exact nature of the threat posed to a nuclear-armed country of some 180 million people, whose collapse would destabilise the entire region and beyond.

Zaidi has divided the challenges into counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism and counter-extremism.

Counter-insurgency is focused on targeting militants holed up in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the border with Afghanistan, with attention directed most recently on U.S. pressure to tackle militant hideouts in North Waziristan.  Pakistan has resisted U.S. pressure to move faster in launching military operations in North Waziristan, in part because it says it needs time to consolidate gains made elsewhere in FATA -- itself possible only if adequate governance can be introduced into areas cleared by the army.

"Thus far, Pakistan has fought the insurgency in FATA and earlier, last year, in Swat, using two instruments: negotiation, and conventional military warfare, including ground troops and aerial strikes. This is not how you fight an insurgency. That is how you fight India. To use a hackneyed and tired metaphor in Islamabad, you can’t keep using a jack hammer to try and kill agile, determined and poisonous flies. The approach to the FATA insurgency is all wrong," writes Zaidi.

Counter-terrorism covers action to prevent attacks across Pakistan including in its heartland Punjab province. "Repeated and sustained terrorist attacks in Pakistan suggest that the terrorist enterprise in Pakistan enjoys freedom of movement, freedom of procurement, freedom of training, freedom of information and communication, and, quite disturbingly, freedom from the course of law," he says.

"The third challenge is an obvious and unchallenged problem of religious extremism. The epicentre of religious extremism is the institution of the political articulation of faith in Pakistan. This means that physically there is no epicentre here. Religious extremism is a national problem, transcending demographics, class and ethnicity. Of the three problems, religious extremism is the one that has been around the longest, the one that has the deepest roots in Pakistani culture, the one that has enjoyed the patronage of the state, the one that has the demonstrated ability to undermine linear and rational public policy, and the one that will – because of all the aforesaid factors, take the longest to unpack and resolve."

Zaidi's framework is a strong one to use when trying to understand what is going on in Pakistan.

Guest Column: Getting Obama’s Afghan policy back on track

(C. Uday Bhaskar is a New Delhi-based strategic analyst. The views expressed in the column are his own).

By C. Uday Bhaskar

The May 12 summit meeting in the White House between visiting Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his host, U.S. President Barack Obama comes against the backdrop of the mercifully aborted May 1 terrorist bombing incident in New York’s Times Square.

From the barrage of news and commentary that floods various media outlets here in Washington DC, it is evident that the Obama Af-Pak policy unveiled with considerable fanfare last year will be in for detailed and contested policy review.

Immediate U.S. interests apart – including the Obama second term, the stakes for the long-term stability of the entire southern Asian region and the troubled Muslim populace in the scattered diaspora ranging from North America to west Europe are immense and complex.

Afghanistan came into global focus with the tragic enormity of September 11, 2001 when it was under the control of the Taliban and the obscurantist, anti-liberal ideology espoused by this group had earlier impacted India’s security interests in the December 1999 aircraft hijacking episode.

America expanding its undeclared war in Pakistan?

(The car packed with explosives at Times Square)

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has warned Pakistan of  ‘severe consequences” if a future attack on the U.S. homeland is traced back to Pakistani militant groups.

It’s the kind of language that harks back to the Bush administration when they threatened to  “bomb Pakistan to the Stone Age” if it didn’t cooperate in the war against al  Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban following the Sept. 11 attacks.  Pakistan fell in line, turning on militant groups, some of whom with close ties to the security establishment.

In the wake of the failed attempt to bomb New York by a suspected Pakistani American who might have been trained by Pakistan militant groups, the United States seems to have turned up the heat again on Islamabad.

After a year of doling out carrots and trying to build a security relationship mindful of Pakistani sensitivities, the Obama administration has warned its strategic partner that  the U.S. mood could sour if it indeed was proved that the suspected Times Square would-be bomber Faisal Shahzad was tied to Pakistani insurgent groups, the Washington Post said.

Pakistan had done a lot over the past in tackling militancy, but the United States  “wants more and expects more ” Clinton said in a television appearance. The same message was delivered by General Stanley A. McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan to Pakistani army chief General Ashfaq Kayani during a meeting on Saturday, the newspaper reported.

U.S. officials  are privately arguing for a more muscular and unilateral approach towards Pakistan, pointing to an increasingly direct threat to the U.S. homeland  from militant groups based there, the report said.  This could include a geographically expanded use of drone missiles and pressure for a stronger U.S .military presence there.

Taliban reconciliation anyone?

Faisal Shahzad, the Pakistan-born American charged with trying to bomb New York, may have failed in his objective, but one unintended consequence of his act may well be that a plan to reach out to insurgents in Afghanistan has been blown out of the water.

To be sure the Afghan Taliban which is entirely focused on fighting foreign forces in their homeland has nothing to do with the failed Times Square bombing. It is the Pakistani Taliban that claimed responsibility initially and the suspected bomber’s links to the group and another Pakistan-based group fighting Indian forces in Kashmir are being investigated.

But given the alarm that the would-be bomber has caused in the United States, it is hard to see how Afghan President Hamid Karzai can sell his proposal to seek reconciliation with insurgent leaders when he visits Washington next week on what is already looking like a difficult trip.

The space for such a move was always limited but it has shrunk further since last Saturday’s failed bombing. The Pakistani Taliban and the Afghan Taliban are two heads of the monster, writes Jonathan Chait in The New Republic taking issue with the New York Times’s characterisation of the Pakistani Taliban as different from the Taliban  groups that the United States is fighting in Afghanistan.

Chait cites the New York Times’ own reporter David Rohde’s experience while in captivity of the Taliban for seven months to argue that the  militant groups which are gathered in an arc of western Pakistan stretching from the Quetta shura in the south to Waziristan in the north are aiding and abetting each other.

Rhode was kidnapped by the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2008 and found himself in North Waziristan just over the border in Pakistan which he later described as a mini-Taliban state.

“Over the next several days, it became clear to me that our Afghan Taliban abductors had not sold us to the Pakistani Taliban. Instead the two groups were working seamlessly together. When we departed from the area six weeks later for unknown reasons, the coordination between the Afghan Taliban and the Pakistani Taliban was equally flawless. Throughout our captivity, Afghan and Pakistani militants spoke in one voice of their desire to topple the American-backed governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and halt what they saw as the oppression of Muslims worldwide.”

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Pakistan-despite failed NY attack, change will be slow in coming

After the media frenzy following last weekend's failed car bomb attack on Times Square, you would be forgiven for thinking that something dramatic is about to change in Pakistan. The reality, however, is probably going to be much greyer.

Much attention has naturally focused on North Waziristan, a bastion for al Qaeda, the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Afghan fighters including those in the Haqqani network, and the so-called "Punjabi Taliban" - militants from Punjab-based groups who have joined the battle either in Afghanistan or against the Pakistani state.  The Pakistan Army is expected to come under fresh pressure to launch an offensive in North Waziristan after Faisal Shahzad, who according to U.S. authorities admitted to the failed car-bombing in Times Square, said he had received training in Waziristan. Unlike other parts of the tribal areas on the Pakistan-Afghan border, North Waziristan has so far been left largely alone.

But it is by no means clear that the Pakistan Army will be rushed into launching a big offensive in North Waziristan.  It is already stretched fighting in other parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), including in South Waziristan, where it embarked on a major operation last year.  Before starting any new offensive, it needs to be sure it is not going to be attacked from the rear, or become so thinly stretched that it loses hard-fought gains elsewhere.  As one senior military official told me, you have to be very sure-footed, consolidate your gains, and make sure your bases are secure.

That said, even before the failed Times Square attack, the New York Times suggested Pakistan was beginning to weigh the possibility of tackling militants in North Waziristan.  But its decision on timing is unlikely to be dictated by one incident, however dramatic. The Pakistan Army has put considerable energy into improving its image after the tarnishing of the Musharraf years, and is determined to show that when it does launch military offensives, it does so to win. And if there is one thing worse than not going into North Waziristan, it is going in there and losing.

Increased drone missile attacks on targets in North Waziristan are another option. But for drone missile strikes to be successful - taking out militant targets while limiting the civilian deaths which make them so unpopular in Pakistan - you need good intelligence on the ground. The killing in North Waziristan last month of former Pakistan intelligence officer Khalid Khawaja, who reportedly had strong contacts with al Qaeda and the Taliban,  leaves a question mark over whether anyone now has really good intelligence on what is happening there.

Meanwhile, uncertainty over the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is not helping - you can already hear Pakistan Army officers wondering aloud why Pakistan is driving militants out of its tribal areas only for them to escape across the border to live to fight another day. 

Nor are tentative peace talks with India likely to lead to a sudden change in Pakistan's military posture, under which it keeps the bulk of its army on the Indian border.  The Pakistan Army already moved a significant number of troops from its Indian border to fight Taliban militants on its Afghan border last year and is unlikely to redeploy more despite an easing of tensions with India - its army chief is reported to say that the military deals with capabilities rather than intentions.

Killing more efficiently: America’s violin-sized missiles

The CIA is using smaller, advanced missiles – some of them no longer than a violin-case – to target militants in Pakistan’s tribal belt, according to the Washington Post.

The idea is to limit civilian casualties, the newspaper said quoting defence officials, after months of deadly missile strikes by unmanned Predator aircraft that has so burned Pakistan both in terms of the actual collateral damage and its sense of loss of sovereignty.

With the new missiles you are talking of precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare, U.S.  officials say. Last month, a small CIA missile, weighing about 35 pounds, tore through the second floor of a house in Miram Shah, a town in South Waziristan.

The projectile exploded, killing a top al-Qaeda official and about nine other suspected terrorists, the newspaper said. The mud-brick house collapsed and the roof of a neighbouring house was damaged, but no one else in the town of 5,000 was hurt, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed after-action reports.

Besides the obvious gains from such “clean killings”, you are also getting more bang for your buck. The drones were earlier mounted with Hellfire missiles with a 100-pound warhead designed to destroy a main battle tank. To fire such a missile at a car or a compound in the Pakistani northwest is surely overkill, as the military-focused Danger Room blog notes.

A whole range of small missiles are being developed to be launched from the Predator, such as Lockheed Martin’s Scorpion weiging 35 pounds and with a diameter of a coffee cup. It causes far less destruction than a Hellfire, and it can be fitted with four different guidance systems that allow it to home in on targets as small as a single person, in complete darkness.

Very clinical, very precise. There is almost  a seductive element to it and it goes back to the whole debate about trying to make war as cost-free as possible. A painless war ?  But what about the people on  the ground where this great advance in warfare is being played out.

Terror index: Iraq down, but Afghanistan and Pakistan red-hot

Iraqis  are voting today for a new parliament and despite the bombings in the run-up to the election, the over-all trend is down, according to the Brookings Institution. Not so in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theatre, America ‘s other war, which remains red-hot according to a country index that the Washington-based thinktank  puts out for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.  The index is a statistical compilation of economic, puiblic opinion and security data.

It’s quite instructive just to look at the numbers in the three  countries. Weekly violent incidents in Iraq are  about 90 percent less frequent than in the months just before the surge.  Violent deaths from the vestiges of war are in the range of 100 to 200 civilians a month, meaning that mundane Iraqi crime is probably now a greater threat to most citizens than politically-motivated violence, Brookings says in its latest update.

Afghanistan is a different story. In terms of raw violence, the situation is at a historic worst level, with early 2010 levels of various types of attacks much higher than even last year at this time. Some of it is because of the offensive in Marjah in Helmand province and the deployment of U.S. and Afghan troops to parts of the country where they were previously not present,  triggering a militant response.

By way of comparison, the rate of attacks in Afghanistan countrywide is now more than double the level seen in Iraq, the Brookings data shows. The number of civilian deaths is similar, though, mostly because the militants in Afghanistan target security forces  more than civilians. A renewed drive by  U.S. and NAT’O commander General Stanley McChyrstal to adjust war strategy to avoid civilian deaths at all costs may also be making a difference.

Pakistan presents a similar picture  in terms of recent  trends and dynamics, the index shows. “Viewing all the data, the bottom line is continued improvement in Iraq, and more fighting in the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater,” Brookings said summing up the results of study.

Indeed, militants based in Pakistan, despite the security forces’  successful ground offensive in South Waziristan and a spate of arrests of top leaders of the Taliban, remain a clear and present danger to the world outside,  according to another study by the New America Foundation.  

Paul Cruickshank, an investigative researcher focused on al Qaeda, says that in  the majority of the 21 ‘serious’ terrorist plots against the west since 2004, plotters either received direction from or trained with al-Qaeda or its allies in Pakistan.  Here’s a PDF of his study.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Targeted killings in Pakistan and elsewhere : official U.S. policy now ?

One of the things U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ran into last week during her trip to Pakistan was anger over attacks by unmanned "drone" aircraft inside Pakistan and along the border with Afghanistan.

 One questioner during an interaction with members of the public said the missile strikes by Predator aircraft amounted to "executions without trial" for those killed.  Another asked Clinton to define terrorism and whether she considered the drone attacks to be an act of terrorim like the car bomb that ripped through Peshawar that same week killing more than 100 people.

The people of Pakistan aren't the only ones asking that question.  A top UN rights expert has swung the attention back on the drone programme, saying that the United States may be violating international law with the missile strikes.

Philip Aston, the Special Rapporteur on extradjudicial, summary or arbitary executions, said there could be circumstances under which the use of such techniques could be justified in international law, but Washington would have to show it followed appropriate precautions and accountability mechanisms.

The United States will have to be more upfront about its Predator war. "Otherwise you have the really problematic bottom line, which is that the Central Intelligence Agency is running a programme that is killing a significant number of people, and there is absolutely no accountability in terms of the relevant international law."

There is little doubt now that targeted killing is official U.S. policy,  Jane Meyer argues in a detailed piece for the New Yorker.  What is worrying is that the embrace of the Predator programme has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force. "And because of the CIA program's secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war," Meyer writes.The drone programme, for all its successes, has stirred deep ethical concerns. Meyers quotes Michael Walzer, a political philosopher and author of the book "Just and Unjust Wars" that he is unsettled by the notion of an intelligence agency wielding such lethal power in secret. "Under what code does the CIA operate ?" he asks. "I don't know. The military operates under a legal code, and it has judicial mechanisms. "