The Times of London talks about the large roster of foreign fighters in Pakistan's tribal belt. They serve as shock troops that consolidate al-Qaeda's local control over the tribes in Pakistan, and also conduct operations in Afghanistan.
"First-hand accounts from locals in the lawless areas of Pakistan close to the Afghan border, combined with those of Pakistani officers in the region, suggest that there is no shortage of Islamic foreigners willing to join the fray. Britain claims that these fighters are still the source of 75 per cent of terror plots against it.
Among this disparate group are al-Qaeda's Arab fighters, with a reputation for being well heeled and well mannered; Uzbeks from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), regarded as tough, rough and poor; and the Punjabis of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), viewed by their hosts as arrogant but militarily competent."
That said, Islamic paradise has its drawbacks. If we're clever enough to exploit them. Right now, we're doing the exact reverse:
"It's because of them that the army has come to our land and destroyed our homes," one local tribesman said. "Because of them our businesses are wrecked. Because of them we live as internal refugees.
"I've met ordinary people who say that they'd even welcome Israel or India if they helped us get rid of these Arabs and their friends."
Well, this was interesting. Just a couple weeks ago, another IPCC scandal revealed that Himalayan glaciers wouldn't be melting away by 2035, as claimed. More like, uh, 2305. Maybe. The whole controversy, and process by which this grossly unsubstantiated claim became very financially beneficial to the people making it, was aptly described as "nice work if you can invent it." So, why was the material in the IPCC report? Well, this pretty much sums up the IPCC as politics, not science:
"In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Dr Lal, the co-ordinating lead author of the report's chapter on Asia, said: 'It related to several countries in this region and their water sources. We thought that if we can highlight it, it will impact policy-makers and politicians and encourage them to take some concrete action.'It had importance for the region, so we thought we should put it in.' "
Just let that statement sink in for a bit.
Now, the real expert whose contrary (and correct) glacier work IPCC chair R.K. Pachauri blackballed as "voodoo"science wants an apology. And the Indian government has decided that science is too important to be left to the IPCC. Environment minister Mr Jairam Ramesh, who notes that while some glaciers are shrinking, others are advancing, had an announcement:
The New yorker has an article from Seymour Hersh (yeah, I know) called "Defending the Arsenal: In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?"
To me, the title falls into the "Duh, of course not" category, especially as you lengthen the time horizon. Some of the folks I talk to say the best hope for Pakistan is a losing civil war that takes a while, because then there might be time and space get key bomb materials/ components out. Now throw in all the Muslim states that have informed the IAEA they're starting nuclear energy programs, and the odds of a nuclear war in my lifetime closely approach 1.0.
I suppose this may come as news to some of the uneducated readers of the New Yorker, who know only what their college professors and the New York Times have deigned to tell them. If so, Hersh may have done a service.
Interesting to see one of the principals in Hari's "Renouncing Islamism" piece indirectly referenced in Hersh's article, though...
Jamal Afridi of the "realist" (read: diplomatic establishment) Council on Foreign Relations pens an analysis of Pakistan's relationship with China.
Will the sharp upturn in relations between the USA and India, begun under President Bush, prompt Pakistan to push for even closer ties with Beijing? Pakistan certainly values its relationship with China, but like most large-small relationships, the value isn't fully reciprocated. After the Uighur protests, China is growing more concerned about Pakistan's locus as a center of gravity for Islamonazis, and worry that more Uighurs could begin finding their way there. So there's a bunch of complicating concerns and interests. Most interesting passage:
"China is well aware of the threat it faces if it becomes too involved in counterterrorism efforts within Pakistan," says Garver, "and that means taking a more cautious and calculated approach--at least publicly--in strengthening Pakistan's secular institutions against the Islamist challenge. This may partly explain why China has been quite comfortable in encouraging the United States to engage more with Pakistan: to take the heat off of China."
So, Al-Jazeera (yeah, I know) commissions a poll from Gallup in Pakistan. 2,600 people across the political spectrum, in all 4 Pakistani provinces. Might be methodologically flawed for all I know, but doesn't look like it to casual inspection.
And the question is which is the greatest threat to Pakistan - India, the Taliban/Al-Qaeda who are waging an internal civil war in Pakistan, or the USA.
The Associated Press reports that after a Taliban attack on a mosque (so what else is new?) left 33 worshippers dead and dozens more wounded during prayers, tribesmen of the Haya Gai area of Upper Dir district (Pakistan, near Swat province), decided they'd had it. Up to 1,600 tribesmen joined a lashkar (citizens' militia is the translation, but it's more like a Wild West posse on steroids). They promptly cleared 3 villages of Taliban, demolished the homes and "offices" of Taliban fighters, and were fighting in 2 more villages.
The mosque attack was the culmination of growing tensions with the locals, but the fact that the Pakistani Army is on the offensive next door in Swat also played a big role. Despite all the b.s. about those undefeatable Adghan/Pashtun tribesmen, al-
Qaeda and the Taliban have done a very fine job of exactly that in Pakistan. Village leaders and imams who quibble are killed, entire tracts of territory have been turned over to foreigners who run them as Emirs, and the youth are indoctrinated in hate and inducted into the Taliban's fighting forces. The net effect is the Taliban always have more soldiers than any given village or tribe, just enough local backing through native sympathizers to prevent a completely united front, and a deserved reputation for cruelty and brutality. Local tribal leaders weigh the odds, and the stakes, and the Taliban win.
The Boyd/Petraeus "swordlessness" approach may work here, but it requires a very strong and dependable outside military force on site, that can (a) Overmatch the Taliban's advantages in the short term; and (b) Be counted on to stay, in the local tribes' timeframe of "stay" which is a generation or more.
Pakistan is looking more dangerous and precarious by the week. The only Muslim country in the world with an arsenal of nuclear weapons is now threatened by a ferocious and rapidly expanding Taliban insurgency. The most retrograde Islamist army on earth has conquered territory just a few hours’ drive from the capital. Though this discouraging outcome wasn’t inevitable, it was at least likely. As Robert Kaplan pointed out in an insightful essay in the current issue of Foreign Policy magazine, “the Taliban constitute merely the latest incarnation of Pashtun nationalism.” And ethnic Pashtuns live on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “Indeed,” Kaplan adds, “much of the fighting in Afghanistan today occurs in Pashtunistan: southern and eastern Afghanistan and the tribal areas of Pakistan.”
Take a look at two maps. The first shows the geographic breakdown of Pakistan’s patchwork of ethnicities. You’ll notice that ethnic Pashtuns live in the notoriously backward and violent northwestern frontier provinces. Their region extends deep into Afghanistan and covers the southeastern part of that country. These two regions – which are actually a single region with a somewhat arbitrary national border between them – are where most Taliban activity has been concentrated since the United States destroyed their regime in Afghanistan. A second map shows the breakdown of areas in Pakistan currently under Taliban control. You’ll see, when you compare the maps carefully, that almost all areas that are either Taliban-controlled or Taliban-influenced, are Pashtun.
The Taliban are more than an expression of Pashtun nationalism, of course. They represent a reactionary movement that idealizes the simplicity and extreme conservatism of 7th century Islam. By burnishing this ideology, the Taliban is able, absurdly, to attract support beyond its Pashtun base.
The ethnic component, though, is a formidable one. It all but guaranteed a certain degree of success by the Taliban in all of “Pashtunistan,” in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan. Yet all the while, the ethnic map imposes constraints, if not limits, on how far the Taliban can expand.
They were able to seize power in most of Afghanistan before 2001, although the “Northern Alliance” — made up primarily of ethnic Tajiks – managed to hold out until Americans arrived and smashed the regime in Kabul. Since then, the Taliban have had a harder time operating outside “Pashtunistan.” “The north of Afghanistan,” Kaplan writes, “beyond the Hindu Kush, has seen less fighting and is in the midst of reconstruction and the forging of closer links to the former Soviet republics in Central Asia, inhabited by the same ethnic groups that populate northern Afghanistan.”
Read the rest in Commentary Magazine.
The ongoing failure of Pakistan's government continues to gather steam, and al-Qaeda continues to advance. TIME Magazine:
"The move by Taliban-backed militants into the Buner district of northwestern Pakistan, closer than ever to Pakistan's capital of Islamabad, have prompted concerns both within the country and abroad that the nuclear-armed nation of 165 million is on the verge of inexorable collapse. On Wednesday a local Taliban militia crossed from the Swat Valley - where a February cease-fire allowed the implementation of strict Islamic, or Shari'a, law - into the neighboring Buner district, which is just a few hours drive from Islamabad (65 miles, separated by a mountain range, as the crow flies)....
Meanwhile courts throughout the Malakand division, of which Swat and Buner are a part, have closed in deference to the new agreement calling for the implementation Shari'a, law. "If the Taliban continue to move at this pace they will soon be knocking at the doors of Islamabad," Maulana Fazlur Rehman, head of one of the country's Islamic political parties, warned in Parliament Wednesday. Rehman said the Margalla Hills, a small mountain range north of the capital that separates it from Buner, appears to be "the only hurdle in their march toward the federal capital," The only solution, he said, was for the entire nation to accept Shari'a law in order to deprive the Taliban of their principal cause."
Pakistan gets all of the attention these days, because (a) it has nukes; and (b) its territory has become al-Qaeda's primary global base, as that organization wages an insurgency that aims to topple Pakistan's government, as well as Afghanistan's.
On India's eastern flank, the Islamization of Bangladesh has also been covered here. But that is not not the country's only problem.
The recent mutiny of their Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border troops offered one glimpse into the state's other problems, and incidentally highlights the low likelihood of successful long-term resistance by the government to any sort of dedicated insurgency.
That's more India's strategic problem at the moment than it is America's. But other countries around the world make important decisions, India is one of them, and it's good to keep an eye on these things.
The Times of India reminds us of Pakistan's slow-motion fall before an Islamist urgency:
"Barely 48 hours after Pakistan President Asif Ali [JK: "Mr. 10%"] Zardari warned that Taliban was "trying to take over Pakistan'', his government appeased the ultra Islamic extremist group by signing an agreement on Monday with pro-Taliban leader Sufi Mohammad to impose Islamic law, sharia, in Swat in return for a 10-day ceasefire by the Taliban.
Swat is just 80 miles northwest of Islamabad. Over the past few years, Tehrik-i-Taliban, the local Taliban outfit there led by Mullah Fazlullah - better known as Mullah Radio because of his illegal FM channel - has gained virtual control over the area. More than 200 girls' schools have been destroyed in a campaign against female education, music shops have been burned, tens of thousands have fled their homes, government offices been ransacked, while the security forces have grudgingly conceded that the government is fighting a losing battle.
The 10-day pause in hostilities, during which Mullah Radio would monitor the rollout of Islamic law in Swat, is not expected to lead to a longer peace.... The agreement for imposing sharia will cover Pakistan's northwest Malakand area under which Swat valley comes. Malakand is a regular part of Pakistan, not the wild tribal area that runs along the Afghan border. Critics fear that the concession to hardliners here would spur demands elsewhere in the country for sharia."
The practical message? After losing any pretense of control over Waziristan and tribal areas, the government is now beginning to lose control over other areas of Pakistan to an entrenched guerilla army led by al-Qaeda. The current government was touted as being able to forestall that collapse, but instead appears to be accelerating it.
Update...
Robert Kagan, Washington Post:
"We don't think the world's great nations and countries can be held hostage by non-state actors," Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said yesterday. Fair enough. But what is the world to do when those non-state actors operate from the territory of a state and are the creation of that state's intelligence services?"
Robert Kagan is dreaming about a UN that will act to place Pakistan's hinterlands in the equivalent of receivership. His question is correct, but his own piece acknowledges why there's no hope of success for the proposed remedy. Whatever the real plan is, it had better be able to leverage failure on that front.
Meanwhile, the "realists" at the Council for Foreign Relations have an article advancing a plan that has about 8-10 moving parts, each of which needs to succeed. The mathematically literate can surmise the odds. "From Great Game to Grand Bargain: Ending Chaos in Afghanistan and Pakistan" has a list of conditions that flag it as kind of stupid - but the hell of it is, they may well be on the right track anyway. Their suggestions:
Well, this is the first Winds Guest Blog to come via Facebook. Hillary Levin talks about her murdered friends Rivky and Gabi Hholtzberg, who ran the Chabad Lubavitch house in Mumbai ("Nariman House"). It was freed by India's National Security Guard "Black Cat" commandos via helicopter assault, but not before several of its inhabitants were tortured and murdered. This is her memory of her remarkable friends, and what they brought to the world.
Guest blog by Hillary Lewin
Many of you first heard of the Holtzberg family four days ago when news of the Mumbai hostage situation emerged. I feel compelled to write this letter, because I want the world to know who Rivky and Gabi Holtzberg were in life and to tell you what I witnessed of their accomplishments in their brief 28 years on earth. While I am devastated by their death, I am thankful that my life and so many others were touched by their purity, friendship and spirit.
Before I entered the Chabad house in Mumbai, I thought, "What kind of people would leave a comfortable and secure life in a religious community to live in the middle of Mumbai; a dirty, difficult, crowded city?" As I got to know Rivky and Gabi over the course of this past summer, I understood that G-d creates some truly special people willing to devote their lives to bettering the world.
