Your Thoughts on Pakistan and the Taliban

[parishioner]

What do you think about Pakistan's new offensive against the Taliban?

[Belmont31R]

What do you think about Pakistan's new offensive against the Taliban?



Pakistan is too weak to do much again the jihads in the tribal regions, and they won't let us in. Its an open festering sore that is never going to heal.

[M4arc]

While the main government of Pakistan might want to do something about the Taliban the ISI is very, very sympathetic towards the Taliban. Heck, they even put them in power as a way to control Afghanistan so they didn't have a change of heart after 9/11/01 and are now willing to help us or see a strong Afghanistan government in place.

I don’t know what the solution is but I’m certain it’s not going to be simple. The way they operate in that part of the world, the ISI, the Tribal regions…good God it’s a nightmare!

[rickrock305]

a good source for info and insight into the region...

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/authors/malcolm-nance/bio/

[mike30]

I had a chance to discuss it with locals in Punjab (central Pakistan) yesterday. They were educated professionals. Common opinion – Taliban in Pakistan is very different from the one in Afghanistan. Many members are Chechens and Tadjiks, not Pakistani. Any small armed group claim to be Taliban since the name is popular since Soviet – Afghan war. Now public opinion is changing after recent Taliban attacks on Muslims toward more support of army operations.
I can also add that in my very non-professional opinion security situation changed to worse comparing with what I saw 3 years ago

[RogerinTPA]

I had a chance to discuss it with locals in Punjab (central Pakistan) yesterday. They were educated professionals. Common opinion – Taliban in Pakistan is very different from the one in Afghanistan. Many members are Chechens and Tadjiks, not Pakistani. Any small armed group claim to be Taliban since the name is popular since Soviet – Afghan war. Now public opinion is changing after recent Taliban attacks on Muslims toward more support of army operations.
I can also add that in my very non-professional opinion security situation changed to worse comparing with what I saw 3 years ago

Very interesting point and good post Mike30.

It is in there best interest to defeat them. The question is, do they (the Pakistani Army) have the endurance and fortitude to finish the job.

[mike30]

Thank you, rharris2163

What I see of Pakistan army, they do have desire to win this one. Army owns a lot of property, especially fertilizer plants. The current situation started to interfere with business.

[armakraut]

Pakistan has an interesting dynamic. The army owns large portions of the most profitable industries, they make everything from firearms to packaged rice. The other elements east of the Indus are of no real consequence and have as much power as the military will let them. West of the Indus is another story, most people I met over there wanted nothing to do with Afghanistan or strict religious law. There was a highly vocal minority that did want (for lack of a better term) sha'ria law imposed, maybe 1/10 or 1/20. These people give shelter to Taliban types to no end, much the same as the communists here will always harbor and support communists no matter how much they swear to liking this country. If you're a religious muslim, you know and speak arabic already, and you can harbor al qaeda easily. Because al qaeda is saudi, the money will always flow like you can't believe, if you're on a akm/RPG/4runner/naan/c4 based budget it must be something close to limitless.

The Pakistani military might roll with anyone who shows an ability to run the civil side of things, IE make the same mistake the Iranian military made, or the Imperial Russians made. There's no dealing with people who's primary interest is your deeply personal business, lifestyle, or habits.

There are a few ways to win in that Area. The british strategy of limited punitive raids and containment might still work against rebellious tribes, but that's not long term. Soviet total war strategy failed like nobody's business. Newt Gingrich had a good idea, just build a shit load of really nice roads all over the tribal areas so they couldn't hide from the modern world, I'd rather have some nice roads built in my area though. You could try to create and prop up a Pashtun state, and either put the punjab back into India, or break it away. Pashtuns have many good qualities, and many bad ones. At least they believe in guns, minimal government, and making a buck.

If it was me, the cheapest thing to do would be to unilaterally destroy the ability of these crazies (or potential crazies) to have and maintain nuclear weapons, and then bug out. Even if this meant using some of ours on Iranian and Pakistani sites, not to borrow from aliens, but there are ways to reasonably guaranteed a diminished nuclear capability. Cheaper still would also be to turn Europe around by beating back the crazies in their own countries. We could also fund Israel to annex and populate quite a lot of territory. These things would frustrate al qaeda to no end and increase our lot. We know what pisses them off, not that we're willing to engage in it.

I don't like seeing US citizen soldiers being used as diplomatic props with one hand tied behind their back. They aren't police. Long, drawn out conflicts are rarely beneficial to anyone. If the Pakistanis and Afghans don't want to be under sha'ria, then they'd better step up with or without our help. They aren't a bunch of zealots and have as much to lose under the Taliban as we would under communism. IE everything and anything that means anything. It would be a poor mark on the Pashtuns if history recorded they successfully resisted every single invasion except one by some saudi fundies and poorly armed local boobs.

[Belmont31R]

Pakistan has an interesting dynamic. The army owns large portions of the most profitable industries, they make everything from firearms to packaged rice. The other elements east of the Indus are of no real consequence and have as much power as the military will let them. West of the Indus is another story, most people I met over there wanted nothing to do with Afghanistan or strict religious law. There was a highly vocal minority that did want (for lack of a better term) sha'ria law imposed, maybe 1/10 or 1/20. These people give shelter to Taliban types to no end, much the same as the communists here will always harbor and support communists no matter how much they swear to liking this country. If you're a religious muslim, you know and speak arabic already, and you can harbor al qaeda easily. Because al qaeda is saudi, the money will always flow like you can't believe, if you're on a akm/RPG/4runner/naan/c4 based budget it must be something close to limitless.

The Pakistani military might roll with anyone who shows an ability to run the civil side of things, IE make the same mistake the Iranian military made, or the Imperial Russians made. There's no dealing with people who's primary interest is your deeply personal business, lifestyle, or habits.

There are a few ways to win in that Area. The british strategy of limited punitive raids and containment might still work against rebellious tribes, but that's not long term. Soviet total war strategy failed like nobody's business. Newt Gingrich had a good idea, just build a shit load of really nice roads all over the tribal areas so they couldn't hide from the modern world, I'd rather have some nice roads built in my area though. You could try to create and prop up a Pashtun state, and either put the punjab back into India, or break it away. Pashtuns have many good qualities, and many bad ones. At least they believe in guns, minimal government, and making a buck.

If it was me, the cheapest thing to do would be to unilaterally destroy the ability of these crazies (or potential crazies) to have and maintain nuclear weapons, and then bug out. Even if this meant using some of ours on Iranian and Pakistani sites, not to borrow from aliens, but there are ways to reasonably guaranteed a diminished nuclear capability. Cheaper still would also be to turn Europe around by beating back the crazies in their own countries. We could also fund Israel to annex and populate quite a lot of territory. These things would frustrate al qaeda to no end and increase our lot. We know what pisses them off, not that we're willing to engage in it.

I don't like seeing US citizen soldiers being used as diplomatic props with one hand tied behind their back. They aren't police. Long, drawn out conflicts are rarely beneficial to anyone. If the Pakistanis and Afghans don't want to be under sha'ria, then they'd better step up with or without our help. They aren't a bunch of zealots and have as much to lose under the Taliban as we would under communism. IE everything and anything that means anything. It would be a poor mark on the Pashtuns if history recorded they successfully resisted every single invasion except one by some saudi fundies and poorly armed local boobs.


Just my poor assessment but it seems to be we are trying to put a square peg through a round hole....meaning we are trying to force Afghans into a central government whereas they are a very tribal and segregated country. People in tribes have never been out of their small region, and then we expect them to pay some sort of homage to a government far away, and give up the sovereignty they do have to this government. This government as proven inept, and corrupt.

To me we should be dumbing down the role of the central government, and reverting back to the system they were using of localized governance. Seemed to work the best for them, and I think the Afghans would be more appreciative of our efforts.

Kinda funny but they need something like we had in the late 1700's...a dumbed down central government with a stronger emphasis on states (provinces) control. The people would have more local control over their own areas. For whatever reason we are putting tons of effort into trying to get them to get with the central government and the corrupt/inept Karzai. These tribes have been around hundreds if not thousands of years, and here we come telling them to give control of their lives to someone else.

[jtb0311]

What the media and many people refer to as the Taliban is far from a homogeneous group. There are some religious groups like the Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami (Hekmatyar's nuts), there are farmers in Afghanistan who don't like it when foreigners swoop in in helicopters and burn their crops (poppy - their livelihood, and one they often don't even know is used for Heroin; all they know is that some rich dude offered them $2500 a year to grow poppies, when they'd make $500 growing wheat), and there are a bunch of cussed backwoods types (that's what we'd call them here) who simply don't like it when an authority they don't recognize shows up to tell them what to do; it would be like a squad of UN soldiers in blue helmets showing up at your house to take your guns or something.
Then you've got the different ethnicities - Tajik, Pashto, Hazara, Uzbeks, and Nuristanis to name a few, and different tribes and sub tribes. You've got people who have never been more than a couple miles from the house they were born in. This is why one often hears the term "ACM" (Anti-Coalition-Militia) in A'Stan, instead of labeling everyone Taliban. This just scratches the surface of the variety of groups we need to deal with, each with their own objective and relationship to others (they often fight each other as well as us). It is very naive to think that policy makers in Washington can come up with a single strategy to deal with all of them. The situation in Afghanistan will turn around when the local mud hut dwelling Afghan farmer sees his life becoming better as a result of our presence, and when we are able to create an environment in which the Taliban drive a wedge between themselves and the local population. It all combines to make a big hairy ball of wax.

A couple of years ago a Canadian journalist wrote a series of articles about the Taliban based on interviews conducted by Afghans who worked with him in Kandahar. The lack of knowledge among the low level fighters about the outside world was simply astounding. Not a single Taliban knew where Canada was. They couldn't differentiate between American, Canadian, or British soldiers, and they called G.W. Bush the son of Clinton. 9 times out of 10, when asked why they were fighting against the coalition, their answers were along the lines of "I don't want Kabul to tell me what to do", or "The Foreigners killed my cousin, so I need to kill some of them" or simply "I want the foreigners to go away, this is our land". There was very little talk about building a pure Islamic state.

As for Pakistan... The argument about the ISI held water in the 1990s, but it's out of date now. The ISI supported the Taliban because having them in power in Afghanistan, under a modicum of ISI supervision, gave Pakistan a secure western border. The ISI will do what it needs to do to protect itself and Pakistan, but supporting a broiling guerrilla war within Pakistan's own borders is not a way to do either.
I think Pakistan should keep on doing what they're doing. They seem to have learned that you can't make a deal with these guys and expect them to live up to their end. So, the Pak Mil makes a push, and the Talib response, lashing out with indiscriminate attacks that kill civilians, won't endear them (The Taliban) to the population. One big reason we were able to defeat the Taliban so quickly in Afghanistan back in 2001/2002 was because they had so abused the civilian population that, when the pressure was on, there was no where for them to hide. They couldn't hide their rifles and disappear into the civil populace because they had no support. This is happening in Pakistan, with a lot of local tribes, sick of the Taliban, raising their own little militias to fight alongside the PakMil. The good Pakistanis have deployed hundreds of thousands of troops and lost something like 4 times as many troops KIA as the western coalition in Afghanistan has in fighting the militants. In many ways, we aren't in the best position to criticize them. We need to support their efforts and, when possible, coordinate with them. The bad guys don't really recognize the border as anything more than a tool that allows them to get away with some stuff - firing rockets from within Afghan territory, for example, gets immediate counter battery fire. Blasting a FOB from across the border gives the bad guys 20-30 minutes to get away while the U.S. Army chain of command decided if it's okay to fire into Pakistani territory. Anyway, why should we recognize the border either? I think we need to put more guys on the ground in Afghanistan so we don't keep playing whack a mole like we have for the past 8 years, and we need to let Pakistan take the lead and solve the problems on their end. If we invade with large units we're just going to create several hundred thousand more enemy guerrillas - they'll fight the Taliban, but they'll fight us too.

I'm really not concerned about the security of the Pak nukes, and whatever Iran is doing (I could write another essay about this, but I think they're just pushing our buttons, doing what they think we expect them to do, and getting it right) will have little if any impact on the fight in Baluchistan, Waziristan, and the NW frontier province.