AMERICA made clear last week that it would attack Taliban forces in their Swat valley stronghold unless the Pakistan government stopped the militants’ advance towards Islamabad.
A senior Pakistani official said the Obama administration intervened after Taliban forces expanded from Swat into the adjacent district of Buner, 60 miles from the capital.
The Pakistani Taliban’s inroads raised international concern, particularly in Washington, where officials feared that the nuclear-armed country, which is pivotal to the US war against the Taliban in Afghanistan and against Al-Qaeda, was rapidly succumbing to Islamist extremists.
“The implicit threat - if you don’t do it, we may have to - was always there,” said the Pakistani official. He said that under American pressure, Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency told the Taliban to withdraw from Buner on Friday.
However, reports yesterday indicated that the Taliban withdrawal was less than total. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people in the district were still at the mercy of armed militants and their restrictive interpretation of Islamic law.
American military and intelligence forces already run limited ground and air operations on Pakistani soil along the border with Afghanistan. But an overt military operation such as that threatened in Swat, away from the border, would mark a major escalation.
Those banging the drums are primarily the new hawks of the administration--Secretary Clinton, General Petraeus, and Admiral Mullen--but it is impossible to believe that they do not speak for President Obama, and that Pakistani government does not believe that either:
These remarks have stung Pakistan. Husain Haqqani, the ambassador to Washington, accused the Obama administration of making it harder for his country to fight the Taliban.
“The US needs to relate its comments to the ground realities in Pakistan instead of the mood in Washington,” he said. “Most Pakistanis are not supportive of the Taliban way of life, but at the same time widespread anti-Americanism confuses many Pakistanis into having a conflicting view.
“We want to turn that view around but the US and its leaders must help us to do that.”
Yeah, that's what we need: a major war in two failed states at the end of a logistical lifeline extending through Iran, Russia, China, and India.
4 comments:
"Yeah, that's what we need: a major war in two failed states at the end of a logistical lifeline extending through Iran, Russia, China, and India."Invading Pakistan would actually simplify & shorten our supply lines considerably, at least once we had control of the southwestern part around Karachi and the roads leading north to the site of the conflict.
Please don't misconstrue this comment as implying that I'm in favor of doing anything other than getting our troops the hell out of that region as soon as possible. I am merely commenting on the logistics.
Pakistan, in the name of a fellow named A Q Khan, has proven to be an unreliable protector of nuclear technology, in that he allegedly sold information to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. He confessed that he did, although later withdrew his confession.
Centrifuges in Iran have been identified as the type that Khan developed.
This raises an obvious dilemma for the Obama Administration wrt the steps that need to be taken to maintain what is left of nuclear technology secrets and to prevent nuclear proliferation from occurring amongst rogue and unstable states.
Obama needs to step forward to justify the military escalation that he is undertaking, otherwise he repeats the mistakes made by GWB and LBJ.
Perry Hood
Got a better idea?
Got a better idea?
Yes: get the hell out of the region.
Which we should have done by 2003 at the latest.
Post a Comment