U.S. Lacks Pakistan Strategy

Bush Administration Failing to Combat Al Qaeda Training in Pakistan

Pakistan (Steve Evans)

By Spencer Ackerman 04/25/2008 | 5 Comments

On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush, on holiday at his Crawford ranch, received a CIA briefing entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in U.S." He did not interrupt his vacation. Barely a month later came the most momentous day in post-Cold War U.S. history.

Seven years, two ground wars, 4,700 U.S. troop deaths and nearly a trillion dollars later, Washington faces a situation analogous to that experienced in 2001, say national-security experts, including some former Bush administration officials. Al Qaeda enjoys a safe haven in Pakistan, where its operational planning likely proceeds apace, and the United States does not have good military options for combating it.

(Matt Mahurin) Avoiding a repeat of 9/11, they say, requires a realignment in Pakistan policy that the Bush administration appears to have no appetite for pursuing. Taken together, that means that the measures necessary to prevent an attack are politically unpalatable; while the politically palatable measures are strategically perilous -- much like the choices confronting policy-makers worried about Al Qaeda before 9/11.

"It's a situation that sounds quite similar to the strategic warning the intelligence community issued during the summer of 2001," said Rand Beers, president of the progressive National Security Network. Beers should know: he was a counterterrorism official on the National Security Council for Presidents Ronald Reagan through George W. Bush. In 2003, he resigned in protest over the invasion of Iraq and became chief national security aide to Sen. John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic nominee for president.

On Friday, the Government Accountability Office released a report detailing the lack of U.S. strategy toward Pakistan and the concurrent rise in Al Qaeda's fortunes. The title befit its assessment: "The United States Lacks a Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas."

Among the report's findings:

No comprehensive plan for meeting U.S. national security goals in the FATA has been developed, as stipulated by the National Strategy for Combating Terrorism (2003), called for by an independent commission (2004), and mandated by congressional legislation (2007). Furthermore, Congress created the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) in 2004 specifically to develop comprehensive plans to combat terrorism. However, neither the National Security Council (NSC), NCTC, nor other executive branch departments have developed a comprehensive plan that includes all elements of national power—diplomatic, military, intelligence, development assistance, economic, and law enforcement support—called for by the various national security strategies and Congress.

The GAO report cited an intelligence assessment from January 2008 that was scarcely more optimistic. "Al Qaeda is now using the Pakistani safe haven to put the last element necessary to launch another attack against America into place, including the identification, training and positioning of Western operatives for an attack," the GAO summarized a report from the director of national intelligence as saying.

That still unreleased assessment reportedly "stated that Al Qaeda is most likely using the FATA [federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan] to plot terrorist attacks against political, economic and infrastructure targets in America 'designed to produce mass casualties, visually dramatic destruction, significant economic aftershocks, and/or fear among the population.'"

Pakistan experts fear the deterioration of a delicate political-military situation in the tribal areas of Pakistan believed to shelter Osama bin Laden. Last week, NATO forces in Afghanistan's Kunar province crossed the porous Afghan-Pakistan border in pursuit of fleeing Taliban and possible Al Qaeda guerrillas, bringing attack helicopters for air support.

It was one of an occasional number of cross-border "hot pursuit" raids that the tribal Pashtuns are not prepared to support, according to New York University's Barnett Rubin, a South Asia specialist. "The U.S. has pressured the Pakistani military [to conduct] operations," Rubin said in a conference call Thursday, "but they're undertaking them in remote areas where the targets mix with the population. It has created quite a few civilian casualties. And those are people who welcomed those [Al Qaeda members] fleeing Afghanistan, at least initially."

Washington's strategy toward Pakistan since 9/11 has been to prop up the dictator Pervez Musharraf. Yet a series of crises in 2007 forced a weakened Musharraf into holding elections, weakening him further. Musharraf's approach to the jihadists in the tribal regions he does not control has been inconsistent: he has sent his forces to raid the Pashtun areas, but also signed ceasefires with militants in 2006, which U.S. commanders in Afghanistan blame for the 2007 rise in U.S. military casualties there.

The deals did not stop the creation of a new organization, the Taliban Movement of Pakistan, under the command of jihadist Beitullah Massoud, which Rubin described as "originally a hosting organization and defense organization for Al Qaeda."

Yet the new Pakistani government is leaning toward a new and more comprehensive cease-fire accord. The New York Times reported Friday that a 15-point draft agreement put forward by the government "called for an end to militant activity and an exchange of prisoners in return for the gradual withdrawal of the Pakistani military from part of the tribal region of South Waziristan." An anonymous U.S. official told the paper, "We have seen the agreements they have made before, and they do not work."

But Washington has few good options to eliminate the safe haven. Large-scale military action in Pakistan by U.S. or allied forces risks destabilizing a volatile nuclear power. There is no political support domestically for a third U.S. ground war. And U.S. ground troops and intelligence assets are already overextended from the pace of deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All this reminds Beers of the situation he faced in the years leading up to 9/11. At that time, the contours of the threat from Al Qaeda were visible but a workable comprehensive strategy that politicians could embrace was not.

"The GAO piece, like the NIE on terrorism before it and the recent testimony by the DNI [Director of National Intelligence] Adm. McConnell, all represent a clear strategic warning by the Intelligence Community that Al Qaeda is alive and well and again clearly capable of attacking the United States," Beers said in an e-mail. "This message is similar to what we heard during the summer of 2001: we don't have specifics, but we believe we are in a higher threat environment. Al Qaeda has the intent and the capability and is looking for the opportunity."

A representative from the State Dept.'s Office of Counterterrorism did not return a request for comment.

Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at Center for American Progress who recently returned from a trip to Pakistan, said the U.S. had only a limited window of opportunity to radically reorient its Pakistan strategy. He advocates reorienting the U.S. aid package away from the Pakistani military primarily -- where more than 90 percent of U.S. aid currently goes -- and toward civilian capacity-building projects that benefit the lives of the average Pakistani.

"The consequences are cataclysmic," Katulis said. "If we maintain our posture, which I largely interpret as Musharraf-centric... the potential for U.S. misfiring has tremendous blowback. ... If there were more unilateral military strikes by the U.S. at this point, it will further destabilize the situation when this new government trying get its legs and send off feelers to peel off extremists." (Full disclosure: Center for American Progress's ThinkProgress website hosts my personal blog.)

Perhaps the most succinct assessment of the Bush administration's priorities was offered earlier this month by Amb. Ryan Crocker during testimony to a House panel. Crocker is U.S. ambassador to Iraq, an assignment he accepted after several years' service as ambassador to Pakistan. Asked whether the greatest threat to the U.S. from Al Qaeda came from Iraq or from the Afghan-Pakistan border, Crocker conceded, "I would... pick Al Qaeda on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border."

Comments:

ufred
Posted 04/25/2008 07:37pm with

Interesting. What would you suggest is the US primary interest in Pakistan. Is it to aid the establishment of a new government and stable state? Is it to secure good relations with such a government? Help establish governmental ascendance over the military?
Or are such things secondary to attacking Al Qaeda?

warbucks
Posted 04/26/2008 04:00pm with

First we drain the swamp.

There’s clearly an array of powers at work creating the case right now for a war on the Pashtun tribal regions. These things don’t just happen in a vacuum. Wars seem to start with the careful choreography of the news media. The war masters, the maestros, start feeding their lap dogs, the press. The music is then played by the press for the rest of us to hear.

Notice how all the papers are beginning to play the same thing about the Afghan and Pakistan border? The theme of “lawless frontier” is being played every week. The sound drowns out the reality of a noble 5000 year old culture of some 42-million people.

We hear instead about the vilified denizens of a “lawless tribal frontier.”

What you missed it? Well, it’s only been playing for about two weeks. You need to tune in to the inside pages. The maestros have been composing for a while longer…. Their creative juices kicked in about the time Sen. Obama, answering one of those deadly sucker-punch sound bite questions showed us his war face telling us he would take action on “high-value terrorist targets” in Pakistan if President Pervez Musharraf “won’t act.

That’s the sunshine it took to start the war-sap flowing. War-sap is sticky stuff, its residue has been known to encapsulate the creatures that get too near and preserve them there for posterity.

There is a legal system in place of course, in this lawless frontier. It’s been there for 5000 years. The Pashtun call the system the jirga. But its not part of the sharia law, it’s unique to the Pashtun and precedes Islam by thousands of years. But we don’t sing about that just now.

Please, I definitely don’t want the Pashtun to start signing their homeland song either. I don’t want to learn that an 1893 border line drawn with the blessing of Queen Victoria divided a group of mountain dwellers along the Afghan and Pakistan boarder in two.

I thought mountain ridges where proper borders. Everybody uses them. I just can’t handle the sound of another this-a-stan or that-a-stan popping up. So please, I don’t want to know about a Pashtunistan. And I definitely have no interest in anything 5000 years old, if it means Obama can catch Osama on good intelligence, bring it on! That should be Commander Obama’s war face call: “Bring it on!” Hmmmm, that sounds familiar.

What is this Pashtuni-whatever, Pashtunwali, anyway?

It’s a code of conduct. The Pashtun openly express somewhat defiantly, total cultural independence and have seen conquering armies and powers come and go through the millennia. Probably because of their original geographic high mountain foothold they could stand off vast armies with terrain advantage. Well it’s about time maybe for all that to stop.

If the Pashtun just hang in there with there non-violent thesis a few more generations, they’ll be the dominant culture of the entire region with the new awakening of intellectual prowess and coming Islamic Reformation which is beginning right now. Their hopes of control over their resources, a name for themselves, and an end to fundamentalist radical Islamic persecution will fade away and they will be the dominant culture. They would be wise to muster whatever assets are needed, magically go find Osama bin Laden and turn him over to the world court thus avoiding a coming war in the tribal area.

And, how come they sound more like American cowboys than foreigners? Darn it, if we are going to start another little war, can’t we start it with some body that doesn’t live like my great, grandfather? The old Pashtun nationalist non-violent Kahn Abdul Gaffari Kahn 1930’s photo, even looks like grandpa!

Setting aside the Pashtun mostly pray to the same God I do, grandpa did, and great grandpa too, how on earth did they adopt the same code as the old cowboy code of the west?

According to “lawless frontier” musical score, the first impressions I hear is Pashtun love rifles, chewing green tobacco, and appreciate a good sense of humor. So what’s not to like? I can’t go to war on that.

If I fell out of the sky and landed in a group of people like that, I’d get along just fine, especially if I were being chased by the law. What they call Nanawateh we call asylum. Nanawateh is extended even to an enemy, just like the Cowboy Code of the Old West. Except if you are granted asylum (called Lokhay Warkawal) by the Pashtun elders as a group you’re in like Flynn! They protect you even if it means forfeiting their own lives. Man that is lawless. Imagine a code of living where a principal was so honored, that it exceeded my duty to the state. Hmmm. Now that is lawless. Isn’t it?

Better to just seek hospitality, then they’ll treat you like a king, which makes me want to open a 5-Star hotel somewhere in the snowy peaks along the boarder if I can find a few acres for a ski-lift not planted in opium poppies, viewed on Google Earth satellite, not that anyone is actually checking the carefully cultivated fields above 6,000 feet along the borders. I would feel right at home there, not unlike parts of Tennessee or California.

Look at the forces arrayed here. My little fantasy war is going to happen.

The Democrats need to show they can be trusted with national defense again, be it Hillary or Obama. And McCain says fight to win.

The second verse of the song is still being written: Floating the contingency balloon. Up, up, and awa-a-a-ay, in my beautiful ball-o-o-o-on….

Obama or Hillary, or McCain get sworn in January 20, 2009. By mid June, whoever is President is going to make a push into the boarder regions the so-called “lawless frontier tribal zones” and “on good intelligence,” unless of course my leader does it first before June 20th. The operation will be Pakistan’s (well okay we’ll give them a few billion). It will be a fast coordinated air-ground attack with airborne US intelligence and lots of surrounding US air cover as a safety check to insure the operation stays within operational parameters. Pakistani’s will not go into Afghanistan and vice a versa. Meantime the Pakistan Navy will be backed up (some would say surrounded and outgunned) by the US Navy to keep a lid on the operation seeing to it they don’t launch an attack on India by Pakistan Islamic fundamentalist-leaning ground forces. We’ll hold India’s hand throughout the entire episode and offer security where needed.

Up, up and awa-a-a-ay in my beautiful …. This thing’s going to happen regardless of who wins.

You can’t deny the poetic justice in someone with a Muslim name (Obama) catching a renegade terrorist (Osama). Can you imagine the songs that we could write about that? To the tune of “Froggy went a courting.”

Obama went a hunting and he did hunt, uh-huh
Obama went a hunting and he did hunt, uh-huh
Obama went a hunting and he did hunt, he hunt Osama on the Mount
Obama went a hunting and he did hunt, un-huh. …..

The best time to wage this little war would be during the Chinese Olympics. China would likely remain quiet with their hands temporarily full with the Olympics.

So my fantasy, glorious, contingency war needs to be brief, violent, and force the Pashtun jirga to rethink their long term cultural interests. It needs to end with Osama in a holding tank, brought up on charges in the world court.

If it fails? Well what do you expect from the lawless tribal frontier area in Pakistan with questionable army allegiance? Corruption is everywhere.

I’d still like to open a 5-star hotel with some good ski-runs. You don’t suppose the opium production their so good at, has anything to do with the foolishness of some of our drug laws? Nah.

Victor Davis Hanson says you have to look at war with a long term perspective in order to understand its meaning. Long term is real long term. It may well turn out that while many say Bush’s legacy must be a failure, history may have a completely different take on things, long after both you and I and our great grand children have come and gone. It may turn out, that doomed legacy of a Bush Presidency we hear so often this campaign-cycle ends up being written 1000 years from now as the President who started Islamic Reformation (* See Footnote) and brought freedoms that enabled thinking people to ask questions about religious practices that eventually changed the world and started the east and the west talking again.

The Ritz, I like that franchise, a 5-star Ritz, 18-hole world class golf course, mini-conference center with A Pashtun bag-piper paying my old favorite, “The Ass in the Graveyard” with double malt scotch, in the bracing night air.

Respectfully,
Warbucks

Footnote: Reformation: “Christianity has the advantage of having been able to interpret its religious texts in their historical context, thus arriving at the distinction between what belongs to the bedrock of faith and what is related to culture: a distinction that Muslims have difficulty making.” ... This was a topic of discussion in Muslim and Christian dialogue in Brussels, April 17, 2008. And from Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to the US in April 15-21, while visiting a synagogue in New York, with about 200 representatives of other religions, including Islam, to the Muslims the Pope said that interreligious dialogue “aims at something more than a…

billw
Posted 04/28/2008 07:32am with

Shorter Ackerman via Rob Riggle:

“My take is that in the United States War on Terror we’ve been walking in a F***ing circle. I mean, have you read this report? let me just give you the Cliff Notes, okay. In 2001 there was a memo: ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack the united States from a Safe Haven in Afghanistan. Now, seven years and $700 billion later, we get a new memo saying ‘Bin Laden Determined to Attack the United States from a Safe Haven Somewhere Around Afghanistan.’

We’re right back where we started! We could have gotten here by doing nothing!

I knewit. I knew it. I knew it! I knew this motherf***er didn’t know where he was going!

I mean all of us, we were all in the back seat, America was just in the back seat, you know. You know, acting like uh, ‘I don’t think this is the way to defeat al Qaeda’ and he’s like uh ‘I know what I’m doing. Heh heh. I know a short cut through Iraq. Come on now, just trust me, hahehheh.’ And we’re all like ‘I don’t know. Maybe we should ask for directions. You know, I’m pretty sure al Qaeda is the other way.’ and he’s like ‘Shut up! Shut up! What the hell! I’ll dump your ass in Yemen. You’re just like your mother! Keep your hand off the radio g*ddamnit!’

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=166…