I'd planned to be focusing on final preparations for an upcoming field research trip to Lebanon and Algeria. But then Pakistan went and arrested half the Quetta Shura. The full consequences won't become clear for a while, and a number of questions now loom.

There's obviously the issue of the degree to which this will impair the Taliban operationally. As well as the question of how this move will affect the Taliban's relationship with al-Qaeda on the one hand and Pakistan on the other. The biggest question, for me at least, is what this says about Pakistan's calculus. On the optimistic end one could hope this marks a critical break with Pakistan's past protection of the Afghan Taliban? Or for cynics out there was this a play to remove some of those actors who might have sought a separate peace that excluded Pakistan from the equation?

The Christian Science Monitor, which broke the story, carries a couple of quotes that point toward the latter:

The crackdown may to be related to efforts by some Taliban leaders to explore talks with Western and Afghan authorities independently of Pakistan, the UN official said. Pakistan is widely suspected of backing the Afghan Taliban in a bid to maintain influence in Afghanistan, a charge Islamabad has long denied. But Pakistan may also be wary of Taliban attempts to initiate talks without its involvement or sanction.

"Pakistan wants a seat at the table," says the UN official, who is familiar with Taliban efforts to initiate talks. "They don't want the Taliban to act independently."

"It's possible that Mullah Baradar and those around him wanted to start thinking about an eventual settlement," says Mr. Muzjda. Former and current Taliban figures emphasize, however, that such a settlement necessarily involves a timetable for withdrawal of foreign forces in the country.    

Perhaps. Or maybe Pakistan concluded that the best way to guarantee a seat at the table was to show the U.S. that it deserved one.

On an unrelated matter, I'm not in the practice of linking to different articles that carry an odd quote of mine. But a week ago I gave an interview to the Hindustan Times about LeT's recent activities and what I said ended up differing from what made it into print. I'm going to chalk this up to a crappy phone connection, but nonetheless some important nuances were lost and I wanted to take this opportunity to set the record straight. I appreciate this blog’s readership indulging me.

The crux of the story, which you can read here, was about Lashkar's resurgence especially in light of the recent Pune attack. In it, the reporter quoted me as saying:

Lashkar resurgent spells India bloodied. While Lashkar has shown pan-Islamic tendencies, says Stephen Tankel, author of Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar e Taiba, "for the core leadership, India remains the main enemy." Another fillip for Lashkar, he says, is that despite Mumbai its infrastructure has been unharmed and it's incurred no costs.

I did not say its infrastructure was unharmed and it incurred no costs as a result of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. I said its social welfare operations were restricted, but continued to operate. I also added there was nominal government control over some facets of the organization, but by no means all of it. Further, the government did take JuD [its social welfare wing] out of the formal banking system. While I did say its military infrastructure emerged relatively unscathed, I emphasized I was referring to the military infrastructure and not the overall infrastructure. An important distinction given the restrictions, however minimal they may be, placed on JuD. Overall, I said, the group incurred minimal costs in proportion to the benefits it accrued from the Mumbai attacks.

"Unharmed" and "no costs" are absolutist statements. They give the impression that Pakistan did absolutely nothing, which is not true. I'll be the first to hammer the Pakistanis for not doing nearly enough – and have a number of times – but it's incorrect to suggest they did nothing at all.

Regarding the questionable claim of responsibility by a LeT splinter, the reporter also quoted me as saying  "I've never heard any rumblings about Lashkar splinters." Not what I said. I can name at least one LeT splinter, not to mention the temporary split in the organization in 2004. What I said was that I’d not heard any rumblings about a new splinter organization having emerged.









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On Tuesday Jane Perlez at the NYT reported that Pakistan offered to mediate with Taliban factions who use its territory and have long served as its allies. This is not the first time that Pakistan floated such an idea. In July the Army's spokesman Athar Abbas floated the idea during a CNN interview when he stated Pakistan still had contacts with various Taliban factions and hinted at what wanted [hint: it had something to do with keeping the country to its east out of the country to its west] in exchange for helping to broker a solution. That trial balloon got popped a few hours when the Inter-Services Public Relations denied Abbas ever made the comments.

This time around, the offer came from Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the army chief, during a meeting last month at NATO headquarters. Two things jump out from Perlez's reporting. First, this:

Pakistani officials familiar with General Kayani's thinking said that even as the United States adds troops to Afghanistan, he has determined that the Americans are looking for a fast exit.

The idea that Pakistan is moving because it thinks the U.S. is working on borrowed time could be read many ways, but two broad notions stand out. One is that America has done a poor job of convincing its allies and its enemies that it is prepared to stay the course and Pakistan is positioning itself to resume some sort of hegemonic relationship vis-à-vis Afghanistan. Maybe not turning the clock back to September 10th, but it has successfully waited the U.S. out and is now poised to deliver an acceptable peace.

The other is that Pakistan sees the writing on the wall and realizes that without the U.S. there in the long-term it is going to be forced to deal with a government in Kabul that is much closer to Delhi than it would like. Further, this suggests that Pakistan doubts whether, even without the U.S. there, it could turn the clock back to September 10th and enjoy a proxy government [even one that did not listen to it all that much] in Kabul.

In reality, both of these calculations probably exist simultaneously. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage has claimed the ISI stayed out of Afghanistan more than the U.S. expected for the first 4-5 years of the fight because it assumed the U.S. would triumph. When the Taliban’s insurgency gained legs a few years back, the ISI reengaged. It probably did so out of fear and opportunism. In any event, the question is not just what Pakistan hopes to gain in terms of influence in Afghanistan, but what it can deliver for the U.S. and whether that aligns with American goals for the region.

This goes to the second item that jumped out at me:

What the Pakistanis can offer is their influence over the Taliban network of Jalaluddin and Siraj Haqqani, whose forces American commanders say are the most lethal battling American and NATO soldiers in Afghanistan.

The Haqqani network is responsible for much of the violence in southern Afghanistan and the major suicide bombing operations in the country. The Haqqani's are close to al-Qaeda's leadership – a relationship that goes back to the war against the Soviets – and have acted as a proxy for Pakistan in Afghanistan. It was responsible for planning the suicide bombing operation against the Indian embassy in Kabul in July 2008, which U.S. officials claim the ISI engineered. It also helped AQ and the TTP to stage the 30 December attack on a CIA base in Afghanistan. The million dollar question is, therefore, which way would the Haqqani's swing?   

My evolving sense of the ISI vis-à-vis control over proxies like these is that it has a lot more contact and influence than it claims publicly and a less influence than it claims privately. Could Pakistan get the Haqqani network to ratchet back in Afghanistan? Maybe. But could it get the Haqqani's to deliver their AQ allies? I'm pretty skeptical. And while stability in Afghanistan would be great, the idea was always to degrade al-Qaeda. Perlez reports:

According to a Pakistani military official, the Pakistanis would first have to resolve where Qaeda fighters would go and whether they might be given safe passage to Yemen or another location.

This seems a bit far-fetched to me and I can't imagine the U.S. agreeing to it. Of greater concern is that, if the U.S. does pull back from an Afghanistan where Pakistan has greater influence without rolling up al-Qaeda elements in the tribal areas then it is going to be much more difficult to keep the pressure on. Again, stabilizing Afghanistan would be wonderful and taking players like the Haqqanis off the pitch would go a long way toward doing that.

 

But fighting in Afghanistan was always supposed to be a means to the end of al-Qaeda elements in the region. On that score, Dan Markey who knows a thing or two about Pakistan summed it up pretty well when he told Perlez 'The United States side is pretty worried about seeing a deal emerge that suits everyone other than us.'
 

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On Monday, Fred Kaplan captured the sense of ambivalence many seem to feel about Afghanistan. I've been and remain a proponent of a surge there, but just barely. With that in mind, a few quick impressions from President Obama's speech:


1.    The tone itself is what we’ve come to expect – measured, lacking in hubris and suggesting an extensive cost-benefit analysis. Whether or not one agrees with the Administration, the extensive review process suggests the President means it when he says "I'm mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who -- in discussing our national security -- said, "Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs."

2.    The President reiterated his goal of "disrupting, dismantling, and defeating al Qaeda and its extremist allies." I'd like to know more about how we’ll deal with actually degrading al-Qaeda and its allies in Pakistan during the next 18 months. I understand the President was constrained in what he could say, but I was looking for more about how U.S. operations in Afghanistan translated to action against AQ in Pakistan. I think there is a strong case to be made for why continued U.S. action in Afghanistan is necessary to degrade al-Qaeda. I’m not sure whether the President missed a chance to make that case last night or if he smartly avoided getting too bogged down in al-Qaeda. I wonder whether part of this was a response to the previous Administration.

3.    With his mention of Somalia and Yemen, Obama publicly recognized that whatever the U.S. does in Afghanistan, those actions alone will not defeat al-Qaeda. I don’t think, and certainly hope, that this Administration is not planning to launch a COIN-focused strategy against these or other ungoverned spaces. So why should Afghanistan be any different?

The argument has been made that because AQ is now a transnational movement we should not focus so much energy on Afghanistan. Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri are AQ 1.0 and we’ve already moved on to AQ 2.0 or 3.0. In other words a decapitation strategy won’t work. Further, attacks can be planned anywhere and so there is no point in focusing so many resources on Afghanistan.

This misses a few salient points. Most jihadi groups are waging what I’d call peripheral campaigns against the West, while remaining focused primarily on their own backyards. Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership – and by that I don’t just mean the top two – is different. It prioritizes the fight against the U.S. and its allies, and most plots disrupted in the West continue to emanate from the Afghanistan/Pakistan region. That makes degrading the capabilities of actors in this region a fundamentally different objective than degrading the capabilities of all jihadi groups in other ungoverned spaces.

4.    Not much was said about Pakistan, but what was said mattered. First, the President made clear that the U.S. relationship with Pakistan would extend – in terms of time and scope – beyond America’s activities in Afghanistan. Second, he made it clear that the U.S. “cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.” Getting Pakistan to actually go after all of the militant outfits inside its borders will be no easy task. Building capacity there is a must have, but that alone will not be enough. I’ve often wondered whether the U.S. has more or less leverage over Pakistan when it is fighting next door.

5.    The time horizon is clearly what many people will focus onIt’s almost trite to note by this point, but people in the U.S. don’t believe there will be a drawdown in 2011 and people in Afghanistan don’t believe the U.S. will stay. I don’t really think there was a better option – an open-ended commitment was not politically feasible on the home front. That said, it is somewhat unfortunate that the 18-month time horizon just happens to coincide with the official start of the general election season for the 2012 elections. And that the start of the general election season coincides with the traditional summer season surge of fighting by the Taliban.

On the one hand, I do think that putting out a time horizon is necessary to pressure political actors in Afghanistan. On the other, the Taliban can simply melt away and wait things out. Of course, there is no guarantee that a drawdown will actually begin in 18 months or what that will look like. Also missing was a description of what a withdrawal would look like.

6.    There was a clear commitment to facets of the COIN model – strengthening the ANA and ANP as well as providing security for the populace – but no real details about how this will work. That’s understandable. But given some of the other acknowledgements of past failures and current counter-arguments, I’d like to have seen the President acknowledge the challenge posed here. I assume he did not for fear of undercutting morale in Afghanistan. The U.S. is gambling a lot on the ability to build an Afghan army and Afghan police force in the next 18 months. What happens if [or when, depending on your degree of pessimism] this does not come together?

 

You can have a look at the transcript here.

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On this day last year 10 gunmen from Lashkar-e-Taiba launched coordinated attacks in the city of Mumbai. I first heard about it when a friend called to say Mumbai was under siege. He also follows South Asian militant groups and we both came to the same conclusion pretty quickly – this was a Lashkar attack.

At the time, a lot of people in the West were suggesting AQ must have been responsible. This is understandable. LeT had managed to keep a somewhat low-profile and had never launched a terrorist spectacular of this magnitude, even though it had been behind a number of major attacks in the past. A year later that is no longer the case.

Foreign Policy asked me to contribute a retrospective for the anniversary. For those interested in analysis of the attacks and the [limited] crackdown Lashkar faced afterwards, you can find the article here. In this space, I'd like to put analysis aside for a moment.

I made my first trip to India and Pakistan two weeks after the Mumbai attacks – a trip I’d been planning for months – to conduct extended field research on Lashkar. In both countries I met with people who have become all-to-familiar with the costs of political violence. The overwhelming majority of them were patient and gracious in terms of sharing their time, their knowledge and their experiences. Like most researchers, I took more than I could hope to give back. I'm sure many of those who constitute this blog's readership are familiar with this dynamic.

In about six months time I'll publish my first book – on Lashkar. It's troubling for me, as I imagine it is for many researchers who write about political violence, that other people’s pain has in some way enabled my gain. But like many of my colleagues I do the work I do in the hopes of putting myself out of a job, even as the realist in me knows that won’t happen.

Again, I'm sure this sentiment is familiar to those who follow this blog. And most people outside of the field understand it as well. Yet when I tell people the subject of my book and explain that Lashkar was responsible for Mumbai [the easiest anchor for those unaware of South Asian militancy], there are those few who invariably will say something along the lines of "so at least the attacks were good for you."

No. No they were not. 166 people died. Over 300 were injured. And the group responsible continues to operate relatively unimpeded. Not to seem ungrateful, but if I could trade a book contract for those ten gunmen never making it out of port in Karachi I’d make that trade in a heartbeat.

The sad truth is that the chances of my being able to bend the universal laws of nature to make that trade happen are only slightly lower than the prospect that more attacks like Mumbai won't take place in the future.

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The anniversary of the Mumbai attacks is this Thursday, which also happens to be Thanksgiving for those of us here in the U.S. Talk about dichotomous experiences. Before hopping on a plane to go eat turkey with the family, I'll do a proper retrospective. In the meantime, I've got a new piece out in the CTC Sentinel looking at the threat LeT poses to India and the West. For those interested, here is the link.

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Today's suicide bombing attack at International Islamic University in Islamabad is just the latest in a series of bold attacks – see here, here, here, here – in the past several weeks. And that list is by no means exhaustive. Terrorism is, among other things, a strategy of imposing costs. And the tactical acumen displayed during some of the recent attacks makes clear the TTP and its allies are fully capable of imposing costs on Pakistan in return for the current offensive into S. Waziristan.

I heard about today's attack on NPR this morning as I was drinking my coffee and scrolling through today’s news. The correspondent, whose name I did not catch, suggested something along the lines of: "along with the spate of recent attacks this one might be the tipping point for the militants." I'm clearly paraphrasing and, to be honest, was only half listening once the report had gone from facts to analysis. Qamar Zaman Kaira, Pakistan’s information minister, expressed a similar sentiment:

"It is a show of their desperation after the military operation in Waziristan. Their real faces are now exposed in front of the nation. The whole nation will have to be united to face them."

I know these are just the types of things people say after an attack and so it's a bit unfair to assail such statements as if they were studies analysis. Nonetheless, I fear like we've heard this all before. The attacks on the Sri Lankan cricket team were supposed to be the sign the thing that galvanized Pakistani society. Since, you know, cricket is a pretty sacred activity there.

 

Then the attack on the police training facility outside Lahore was supposed to be the thing that galvanized the police. Then the Taliban’s foray into Buner was supposed to be the thing that galvanized the Army. And, of course, killing Baithullah Mehsud was supposed to be the thing that helped forge a renewed Pakistan-U.S. relationship. Until Kerry-Lugar of course.

I do think that a lot of people in Pakistani society, the police force, the security services and the military are galvanized. The Army is, after all, in the process of invading S. Waziristan. However, forgive my cynicism, I don't think that means the insurgency in Pakistan has jumped the shark just yet. And I'm not quite sure what the citizenry can actually do about that.

First, we have no idea how the operation in S. Waziristan will actually turn out, or what happens if militants decide to set up shop next door in Haqqani-land next door in N. Waziristan. Second, while I am seriously in favor of disrupting the safe haven that exists in the FATA, I do think it is important to keep in mind that groups like JeM and LeJ – which are contributing heavily to these attacks – are Punjabi groups. Yes they operate closely with the TTP in FATA, but they also have networks [and in the case of JeM, physical infrastructure] in Punjab.

Does Pakistan need to do counter-insurgency in the FATA? Absolutely. But it also needs to improve its counter-terrorism capabilities in Punjab, and really throughout the rest of the country. ICG had a couple of pretty good reports last year – here and here – on the structural inadequacies facing Pakistan in this regard. This is not to take anything away from the men and woman who are working hard to prevent these types of attacks.

I know people who work for the Intelligence Bureau and the Anti-Terrorism Force, and they're committed to preventing these types of attacks. However, I'm yet to see the type of structural reforms necessary within the police force and the intelligence agencies necessary to dismantle the networks that make attacks in Pakistan's heartland possible.

For starters, I'm curious if anyone out there knows of improvements or planned improvements in terms of a) better inter-agency intelligence sharing; b) increased funding and training for Pakistani police; or c) increasing capacity within intelligence agencies that are not the ISI.  

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A whole lot of grief and hurt feelings to judge by the debates going on in Pakistan over the Kerry-Lugar legislation, a complete version of which can be found here. Several American friends have asked what right Pakistan has to get so upset about receiving $1.5 billion a year from the U.S. And on the face of it that does seem a bit preposterous. Dig a little deeper and the outrage emanating from Islamabad [and really from Rawalpindi where the Army is based] makes more sense.

The conditions within the bill are viewed as a breach of national sovereignty. This is a particularly big deal in Pakistan, a young country which is hyper-sensitive about its sovereignty and which is seeing that sovereignty violated on a regular basis by US drone strikes.

Rather than trying to unpack the Pakistani psyche [as if there were only one] in a single blog post, I'd propose taking a step back and looking at how elites and masses are shaping the current debate. Caveat: this is an oversimplified, strawmaneque way of looking at the problem. But please bear with me.

To the degree that 'the Pakistani street' objects to Kerry-Lugar it is largely a question of trust. During my last trip there I had numerous debates with Pakistani colleagues about the appropriate level of conditionality in US aid.

For most of them the issue of sovereignty was viewed through the prism of trust, i.e. America either trusted Pakistan to sort out its own affairs or it didn't and thus felt compelled to meddle. This goes to both how America is believed to view Pakistan and how Pakistanis view themselves. Some of my debating partners were members of the liberal intelligentsia, people who were critical of the army and the government.Despite all of the vitriol they heaped upon the civilian and military leadership, they nonetheless took great offense at an outside power pushing Pakistan around.  

The political and military elites who have objected to the conditions in Kerry-Lugar appear to be instrumentalizing this national sentiment. I don't doubt that many of them feel the same sense of national pride, but I’d also bet that in some cases others factors are at play.

First of all, Congress wants to know where and how the money is being spent. Given the propensity for cash to be diverted in Pakistan this is an understandable request by Congress. Conversely, given the propensity for cash to be diverted in Pakistani this is an understandable point of contention for certain actors living there.

Second, the US also is making some of the same demands it has made for a while, but is now demanding a certification process. According to the bill:

Certification- The certification required by this subsection is a certification to the appropriate congressional committees by the Secretary of State, after consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence, that the security forces of Pakistan–

(1) are making concerted efforts to prevent al Qaeda and associated terrorist groups, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, from operating in the territory of Pakistan;

(2) are making concerted efforts to prevent the Taliban and associated militant groups from using the territory of Pakistan as a sanctuary from which to launch attacks within Afghanistan; and
    
(3) are not materially interfering in the political or judicial processes of Pakistan.

I've no doubt that a host of other factors are contributing to the discourse in Pakistan right now, not least the overall sense of US meddling. Could the bill have been written in a more sensitive manner? Probably. Is there a philosophical difference, i.e. the US wants metrics and elements within Pakistan see that as a breach of sovereignty. Absolutely.

However, I also have little doubt that beyond their explicit nature, it is the content of the above clauses that is raising some hackles. And I don't think the only reason for that is wounded national pride. It's not just that the US is placing conditions on aid, but the nature of those conditions. For example, is Pakistan acting against groups [LeT, JeM, the Afghan Taliban, the Haqanni Network] that it has been reluctant to move against in the past? Given the news that the Indian embassy was attacked, again, and that last time the ISI was reported to be complicit, these are worthwhile questions to ask.

This does not negate the sense among some Pakistanis that their country is being asked to fight America's war for it. Or among Americans that elements within Pakistan continue to play a double game vis-à-vis militant outfits operating there.

 

It does suggest that we need to move beyond the issue of sovereignty – always useful for whipping up the citizenry – and get down to the fundamental issue that we're dealing with two countries that have vastly different strategic priorities. On that score, it is debatable whether the US should be looking to win hearts and minds or simply looking for leverage where it can find it.

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Last week Saeed Shah reported on Jaish-e-Mohammad's [JeM] construction of a walled-off 4.5-acre compound three miles outside of Bahawalpur, located in the south of Pakistan's Punjab province.

JeM already has a headquarters and a seminary in the city center. This new facility is much grander. It includes a swimming pool, stable for horses and a playground for children. Gotta love those kid-friendly militants. The compound sounds just like my sleep-away camp, except I have a feeling its riflery range may be a bit more robust.

In all seriousness, this is deeply troubling. Over the past six months Pakistan has made strides in its fight against the TTP and TNSM, two organizations that consistently threatened the state. At the same time there seems to be no sign that a seeming reengagement with militant groups, which appears to have begun in 2008, has abated. Rather, the security services continue to provide – at least – passive support to groups like JeM.

It is likely that support for JeM goes beyond merely tolerance. According to a number of interlocutors I’ve spoken with in Pakistan the group is far more dependent on state assistance than is Lashkar-e-Taiba, which is financially independent. Further, JeM's hands are not nearly as clean as Lashkar's in terms of violence within Pakistan or involvement with al-Qaeda plots against Western countries. It is JeM’s involvement in such plots that makes the compound in Bahawalpur so troubling.

The site could serve multiple purposes. First and foremost, it could probably be used for training. At the very least, this could include indoctrination. More worrying is that unlike the many guerrilla warfare camps in the mountains, this compound will be used to provide the types of skills needed for urban terrorism. These include not only bomb making, but also reconnaissance and other intelligence-related skills.

Second, according to Shah's report, Bahawalpur serves as an "R&R" safe haven for jihadists battling in Afghanistan. They can rest up far away from the FATA, where militants must be more mindful of U.S. unmanned aerial drones. This means it can also serve as a hub for networking among current and would-be jihadis, which provides another type of functionality: a meeting point for Westerners seeking access to al-Qaeda.

In the past JeM and LeT were valuable to al-Qaeda because of what is called the "Kashmiri Escalator." A disproportionate number of British Pakistanis are of Kashmiri decent and those interested in making contact with a militant group often can employ familial connections in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir to find their ways to Lashkar or JeM.

Recruits procure training from one of the two groups, after which some of them are passed on to al-Qaeda operatives who are often in the FATA. In 2009 British security officials estimated that approximately 4,000 people were trained in this way since 9/11 and accounted for three quarters of the serious terrorist plots the UK faced. Westerners in search of training in the FATA now have another jumping off point to get there.

I'm still a proponent of staying in Afghan because I believe it is important to deny al-Qaeda safe haven there as well as to degrade the capacity of al-Qaeda and its allies to destabilize Pakistan. It appears al-Qaeda Central's power in FATA may be attenuating and fissures may be developing with the Afghan Taliban. If remaining in Afghanistan is necessary to keep things moving in that direction, then I'm still on board with the mission.

But developments such as this one give me pause. The Obama Administration recently released its metrics for Afghanistan and Pakistan. Objective 2b is 'Develop Pakistan's counterinsurgency (COIN) capabilities; continue to support Pakistan's efforts to defeat terrorist and insurgent groups.' One of the metrics involved in measuring success is 'Extent of militant-controlled areas in Pakistan.'

JeM is a banned organization and known to be a close al-Qaeda ally. Indeed it is historically closer to al-Qaeda than LeT. JeM operatives have been involved in a number of plots against the West, and more than a few in Pakistan as well. Bahawalpur is not S. Waziristan. It's not ungoverned space. This militant-controlled area exists in the country’s heartland and is being developing in full view of the authorities.

Enormous sacrifices are being made to keep Afghanistan free from al-Qaeda and its allies. Meanwhile, next-door some of those same allies are building away in the seemingly safest of havens.

On a completely unrelated matter, I've been absent from FREErad!cals for too long. A summer associate position at RAND and a book deadline pretty much devoured my entire summer. Blogging suffered as a result. My apologies for that. The summer gig is now over and last week I turned in a draft manuscript for Storming the World Stage: The Story of Lashkar-e-Taiba. So I plan to get back to blogging here at least once a week.

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The Afghan elections were yesterday in case you hadn't heard. And if you were counting on this blogger then you probably haven't since I've been the one person in the world not writing obsessively about it. Mea Culpa. In my quasi-lame defense balancing full time job + finishing book manuscript has not left as much time for blogging as I'd have liked. But while I have not been writing about Afghanistan I have been reading about it. So I should probably quit winging and get on with my early thoughts on the election.

Caveat Lector: There will be no predictions in this blog entry and there is, as yet, not much to analyze. I also promise no more pretentious use of Latin for the remainder of this post. But I say no predictions/heavy analysis because we're not going to know who won, whether rigging was a big problem or what the security situation looked like in various places on the ground for a little while. What we do know is based on a lot of snap reporting, emailing, blogging and tweeting.

On that score my colleagues Gilles Dorronsoro and Austin Long over at the Foreign Policy AfPak Channel, both of who are on the ground in Afghanistan, had a brief exchange discussing turnout that went something like this:

Gilles: So some people are not afraid of the Taliban, just cynical?

Austin: I also think you hit the nail on the head on turn-out: it's probably low only in part because of security concerns but mostly due to apathy and cynicism.

Note: They had more to say than that. If you want a play by play: go here. Seriously, you should go check it out. They've got a murderer's row of people on the ground writing in. But finish reading this post first.

Their exchange raises the question: which is worse? Failure to provide adequate security speaks to the distinct operational challenges in Afghanistan. And to be clear, that failure was not a one day affair. Some areas never even had the chance to vote because officials could not get out there to register them. Or polling places were set up far enough away because of security concerns that actually making it to the polls was impossible. On the one hand, it was never reasonable to assume we could secure the entire country for Election day. On the other, this is yet another reminder of how the security dynamic has changed in the past few years..

As hard as it is going to be for Coalition forces in concert with the ANA to protect the population, getting that population to believe in their leaders is probably going to prove even more challenging. Governance and security are intrinsically tied together. But governance clearly goes beyond security. It says something that the Taliban probably wanted to infringe on elections just enough to depress turnout and send a message, without actually keeping Karzai from winning. Anybody who read Elizabeth Rubin's fantastic piece can see why.

None of this is to take away from all those who voted or the countless people on the ground working to make the election happen. Once we have definitive answers on turnout, the security situation and maybe even which candidate won than we can let the real analysis begin.  

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Among the many tough choices that must be made about how to bring stability to Afghanistan and Pakistan the decision to target Baitullah Mehsud was low-hanging fruit. He was responsible for the deaths of countless Pakistanis and under his leadership the TTP threatened the stability of the state. Although his survival was a source of friction between Pakistan and the U.S., Baitullah was also a target both sides could agree was a threat. Killing him was a shared operational priority, worthy of an American breach of sovereignty by way of hellfire missile. One hopes that his death will be a confidence building measure in the Pakistan-U.S. partnership, but the two countries still have divergent strategic priorities and future targets are likely to prove harder to agree upon.

In the event he is really dead (uncertainty still remains) his death will have an impact at an operational level on the TTP. But even this should not be overstated. In the short term his death will degrade the TTP’s unity, making it a less effective force in the short term. Early reports indicate a power struggle might be underway between Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman, who are two of Baitullah’s would-be successors. At least one of those men, Waliur Rehman, has denied this. Either way the Pakistani Taliban’s insurgency has always been marked by separateness and togetherness, though it has become more unified recently. On the whole disunity is probably a net plus, but even if the movement returns to a splintered state the actors involved are still a threat on both sides of the Durand line. This is not just a Mehsud family affair and is too complex for one man’s death to unravel it. Recall that Nek Mohammed’s death did not prove to be the Pakistani Taliban’s undoing, but instead paved the way for Baitullah’s emergence who also tangled with fellow commanders.

Competition could also drive additional attacks against Pakistani targets, though its not as if the TTP needs a whole lot more motivation to attack the state. Nonetheless, one of the bits of information I was struck by most when in Pakistan a few months ago was the fact that some militants were attempting to “outbid” one another in terms of the level of attacks they could deliver. As different actors compete for power – at the top and mid levels – attempts to outdo one another might increase violence against the Pakistani state in the short-term.

Of course, it is also possible that if a new leader emerges who can keep the TTP united that he could decide to ratchet back on attacks within Pakistan and refocus on the Afghan jihad. Baitullah’s death aside, the Pakistani Taliban have had an uneven year. They were a whole lot more popular on the home front when killing Coalition forces next door. With the Afghan jihad humming along, one wonders: will the TTP shift focus and, if so, how will the Pakistani state respond?

This operation may have bolstered the Pakistan-U.S. relationship and helped the latter improve its reputation as a team player. But it is highly questionable whether the quid pro quo will result in Pakistan passing along Mullah Omar’s coordinates. There are early rumblings that this could pave the way for cooperation against the Haqqani Network, but action there probably depends as much [or more] on the state of its relationship with Pakistan than on Pakistan’s relationship with U.S. In short, it remains to be seen whether there will be a strategic shift in Pakistan’s behavior vis-à-vis those actors who Washington considers enemies and Islamabad considers assets in Afghanistan. Hopefully this operation not only will disrupt TTP unity, but also help increase cooperation between the U.S and Pakistan. Confidence by both sides in their relationship is important since future decisions will not be so easy to agree upon.

Finally, at the risk of wading into the drone strike debate when I’m about to bump up against a self-imposed word limit: they may be degrading al-Qaeda’s capability to strike Western countries and making some militants uneasy, but they are not a solution for the problem in either Pakistan or Afghanistan. I’m not as orthodox on this as some and do see their value. Taking out targets like Baitullah Mehsud is a net plus even if it has to happen via hellfire missile. If serious infighting results from his death then this would be a prime example of how operational action that can produce strategic results. But the insurgency built strength over a long period of time. Defeating it could take even longer and won’t happen via remote-controlled aircraft alone.



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... doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. For example, using air power to try to defeat an insurgency.

I'm already on record saying I think that rushing into S. Waziristan before Swat is secure is a bad idea. And by secure I mean knowing that Pakistani forces are able to hold the area and enable refugees to return while ensuring militants do not. Refugees may be returning, but it is far from certain that it is actually safe for them to do so.

On the plus side, the army has pledged to keep a presence in Swat for a year. Though exactly what that means I'm not certain. But as Saed Shah reported over the weekend, Pakistan is anxious that its forces not be overextended, a danger from an all-out Waziristan offensive.

Hmm… yeah, I could see how the Army might be nervous about that.  Presumably, the Army could commit more troops to the fight. Or maybe hold off on the S. Waziristan operation until it could take a comprehensive approach. But according to Shah the Pakistani Army has come up with another solution… bomb their way to victory.

The operation is unlikely to destroy the enemy, however, and will leave in place some Taliban warlords whom the United States and its NATO allies in Afghanistan regard as a significant cross-border threat. It will raise questions about the seriousness of Pakistan's fight against insurgents after the country won international praise for its concerted efforts in Swat.

 

"The nature of the operation is totally different from what we did in Swat," said a senior Pakistani security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "It is just blocking the entrance. Nothing goes in, nothing comes out. We'll keep punishing (the enemy) with long arms, air (power), Cobra (helicopters).
    
…

"It won't be the army physically moving and attacking, with your combat power dwindling with each passing day, and the need to put in additional" troops, the security official said, adding that the military couldn't afford to open up more than one front.

To be fair to Pakistan it took America quite a while to (re)figure out COIN in Iraq. And it's taking even longer in Afghanistan, where the U.S. is still trying to get its act together. So it's not like I think we're such geniuses as this. But if they understand what is necessary (and Swat indicates they might) then regressing to an enemy-centric approach in S. Waziristan is all the more baffling.

 

I understand the desire to do something about militants who are savaging the country. But knocking over a bunch of buildings, (probably) wracking up a lot of civilian casualties and maybe clipping a militant here or there is not going to solve the problem.

 

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Kandahar Police Chief Matiullah was killed yesterday during a shootout between Afghan police and an Afghan private security firm said to have been employed by the Coalition.

I'm slammed at work and several serious Afghanistan watchers with a lot more local knowledge than I have [which ain't that hard] are all over this story. So go here to learn more:

http://easterncampaign.wordpress.com/2009/06/29/kandahar-police-chief-killed-and/

http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/06/29/the-final-straw-slaying-of-kandahar-police-chief-might-be-sympton-of-intractable-problem/

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A week ago Zainuddin Mehsud was going to bring peace to the land. If you define peace as defeating Baitullah Mehsud so that everyone could focus on fighting the infidels in Afghanistan. He was, in other words, a good jihadi in the eyes of the Pakistani government, which (perhaps not surprisingly) distinguishes between people who want to fight inside the country and those preferring to do their killing next door. It seems that Pakistan still believes that it’s better to send a proxy to do the Army’s job.

Protecting that proxy… well, that’s a different story. One common refrain in some of the MSM coverage yesterday is summed up here:

The killing called into question the government’s strategy of exploiting tribal fissures in order to defeat Mr. Mehsud and was apparently intended to serve as a reminder that there were serious consequences for crossing him, analysts said.
'It tells people, if you side with the government, this is what will happen to you,' said Talat Masood, a retired general and a military analyst. 'It says the government can’t give you protection, but the other side can.'

Do people in the FATA really need a reminder?  I mean, isn’t it pretty clear that the neither the Pakistani Army nor the Police have your back?  Joshua Foust made this point yesterday about as well as it could be made.

To me, there are two larger issues here than the fact that you can’t rely on the Pakistani state for protection.

First, I’m bothered by this belief that there is some non-state actor our there that is going to do the state’s job for it. I’m not suggesting that Pakistan should not seek to build and exploit local alliances, though this is probably going to make that even more difficult for them to do. But I am suggesting that the belief that proxies can do this job for them is misguided… and what helped get us here in the first place.

Second, having Zainuddin on side was all well and good in terms of dealing with Baitullah and the TTP. I understand the concept of triage and prioritization in these situations. My concern is that I’m not convinced there was a plan for what comes next. Or for that matter, even an intention for there to be a sustained campaign post-Baitullah.

Color me cynical, but this whole episode smacked of short-term tactical objectives with no plan for long-term, sustained and strategic follow-through.

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Qari Zainuddin Mehsud, who recently emerged as a rival to Baitullah Mehsud, was shot dead in Dera Ismail Khan on Tuesday morning (Pakistani time). A number of people in Pakistan saw Zainuddin – a well-respected commander and member of the Mehsud tribe – as a potentially powerful ally against Baitullah. I’m crashing on work for my day job, but I’ll try to post a more detailed analysis. At which point I’ll also recap some of the highlights of the Afghanistan/Pakistan panel I sat on today at the International Terrorism and Intelligence conference.

As much as I’d love to point you toward other news analysis on the Zainuddin assassination, the news just broke. Will try to at least link to some decent analysis tomorrow morning.

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I’m off early in the morning to NYC for a wedding, but wanted to quickly draw your attention to this piece on development gone wrong in Afghanistan.

Low point… USAID refusing to subsidize cotton as an alternative to poppy because, ‘U.S. law prevents the government from aiding foreign cotton producers because doing so could help them compete against American growers.’

But apparently helping the Taliban to compete against US soldiers is ok. Or at least what America was inadvertently doing according to Richard Holbrooke, who thankfully has more experience with development work than local Pashtun culture.

"In my experience of 40-plus years -- I started out working for AID in Vietnam -- this was the single most wasteful, most ineffective program that I had ever seen," he said in a recent interview. "It wasn't just a waste of money. . . . This was actually a benefit to the enemy. We were recruiting Taliban with our tax dollars."

The rest of the article is equally devastating.

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I'm not opposed to Richard Holbrooke touring a refugee camp. Every little bit helps in terms of boosting America's image in Pakistan right now. And I'm heartened to read things like the following:

In meetings with Pakistan's government, military, judiciary and political opposition leaders, he pressed the message that getting the refugees back home safely was as crucial, and perhaps even more immediately important, as the ongoing military offensive. Temporary refugee camps tend quickly to become permanent, he argued. They are breeding grounds for public dissatisfaction and recruitment centers for extremists; getting people out of them is key to building confidence in the government.

But is it me or does anyone else think it's problematic that the man responsible for America's Afghanistan and Pakistan policy was making pit stops on his way through the camp looking for information to 'take home to U.S. intelligence analysts and White House policymakers'. Is the U.S. mission in Pakistan that short-staffed?

Because I come pretty cheap and I'm more than happy to go traipsing around the country-side asking people about how the Taliban recruits in their village if that'll free up his time for policy-making and stuff.

Also, I understand building rapport with an interview subject can be difficult, but talk about an awkward moment:

Holbrooke asked some questions about the Taliban but got few answers. 'Are these all your children?' he asked with a smile. Yes, Khan said, he had nine.

'Your daughter is beautiful,' Holbrooke continued, nodding toward a young woman who sat quietly at the edge of the family. Her head was covered in a royal-blue scarf that revealed only her stunningly dark eyes.

'That's not my daughter,' Khan said abruptly. After an awkward silence, the woman explained that she was a Pakistani police officer. It was unclear whether she was there to protect Holbrooke from the refugees, or to monitor what they told him.

In other news, Islamabad is going ahead and wading into S. Waziristan. For the record, not much has changed in terms of my view about this since yesterday.

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Should Islamabad hurry up and bring the fight to the motley crew in S. Waziristan? Nick Schmidle thinks that's a bad idea as does Andrew Exum over at abumuqawama, who beat this blog by at least a day in linking to Schmidle's piece… but given that we just launched like 5 minutes ago (and I just started a new job) let's chalk that up to growing pains. In any event… I tend to agree.

In trying to work out my own thinking on it, I made myself a little good idea / bad idea chart. The good idea / bad idea chart approach is a favorite of one of my wife’s friends who runs a day camp. Whenever a kid ends up in her office for doing something bad, she holds up a piece of oak tag with good idea on one side and bad idea on the other.

Now it's not that I don't appreciate nuanced grey areas – I love to build myself a wall and sit on top of it as much as the next PhD student – but if I ever get a policy job there is no doubt I’ll have that chart hanging in my office.

Good Idea

1. The army is finally engaging and has pretty good success in Swat. More importantly, they seem to have learned a thing or two about how to fight this kind of war. A friend of mine went out there to survey the collateral damage last week and said it looks like they've managed to avoid flattening the place.

And when I was there during the beginning of the offensive, the reports I was hearing indicated that the army was trying to avoid falling back on overwhelming and indiscriminate force. While we shouldn't be inducting the army into the COIN (counterinsurgency) Hall of Fame just yet, they do seem to be improving. So the momentum is there… and in an insurgency, I'm told that is something you don't want to waste.

2. A significant number of the people involved in the violence savaging the rest of Pakistan are either working from, or working with people in, S. Waziristan. Ultimately, putting a stop to the terrorism now savaging the rest of the country is going to require going into S. Waziristan. And the longer Islamabad waits, the longer those attacks go on.

3. The population appears as if it might be primed for this offensive, and given its past history Islamabad should probably avoid looking like it is decided to roll over. When I was there in May the Army was saying it was going into S. Waziristan by June, though Abbas has done a good job of walking back off that particular talking point.

Nonetheless, as attacks escalate in the rest of Pakistan there will be increasing pressure to deal with the people responsible… and a lot of them are in S. Waziristan.

Bad Idea

1. As Schmidle pointed out, S. Waziristan ain't Swat. And it's not like Swat was exactly a cake-walk. More importantly, it's also not over yet. Yes the Army has done a decent job of clearing the area of militants, and of doing so without actually destroying every house in the neighborhood.

But clearing is the easy part, and something the Army has been able to do before. Based on some of the conversations I've had recently with folks on the ground, at least some Pakistani officers are well aware that many of the militants simply melted away. Now they need to hold the area, begin returning refugees to their homes and protect them once they're back.

2. And speaking of refugees… as anyone who picked up a newspaper in the last month knows, Swat created an enormous IDP (internally displaced people) crisis. Which Pakistan really needs to focus on fixing. For so many reasons. First, there is the obvious fact that the level of human misery is high. And all strategy aside, dealing with that is a moral imperative. Second, failing to do so would be a pretty good way to lose popular support. Third, beyond needing to get its governance on in order to maintain the support of its own population this is also a good opportunity for Islamabad to show the rest of the world it can, you know, actually take care of its people. Fourth, refugee camps = militant recruiting grounds. Just ask the guys from Lashkar-e-Taiba… I mean Jamaat-ud-Dawa… no sorry, I meant Falah-i-Insaniat Foundation (FIF). I’m told the first thing a refugee fleeing from the fighting sees when he/she comes to the camps in Mardan is a guy waving the LeT/JuD flag.

3. I think its great the Zardari and Sing are supposed to make nice to one another tomorrow (or today or yesterday depending on when this runs), but I’m doubtful that anything said at the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization) summit is going to convince the Pakistani army to start pulling its forces off the eastern front in any great numbers.* I believe the Pakistanis are serious about 'getting serious' with the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan). But I'm also inclined to believe their officer corps when they tell me that India is still the long-term existential threat and that any reinforcements for the fight against militancy will probably come from the garrisons and not the Eastern front.

And that's what they were saying to me a month ago… when the cameras weren't rolling. They were also saying that technology is the answer to counter-insurgency, not doctrine or training. Which just made me sad all day. But long story short, it is unclear that the military is entirely prepared for what an invasion of S. Waziristan would entail.

4. And, according to Sabrina Tavernise and Pir Zubair Shah over at the NYT, the militants do seem to be getting prepared.

Mr. Mehsud now has thousands of fighters entrenched in mountain terrain that is nearly impossible for conventional armies to navigate, and past efforts to capture him, most recently last year, have failed. … Fighters loyal to Baitullah Mehsud have been moving into the area from elsewhere in Pakistan to fortify it. Commanders are dividing responsibilities, designating fighters for bomb making and remote detonation, said a fighter who spoke by telephone from the area.

5. The mission itself seems unclear. Are they going after militancy in S. Waziristan or just its most famous militant? The TTP is an umbrella organization and beneath that umbrella it's fractious. So would killing or capturing Baitullah be a good thing?  Yeah. So would killing bin Laden, but that's not going to stop your AQ problem.

And yes, I realize that analogy only goes so far since bin Laden is far more influential outside of Pakistan and even less hands on operationally inside Pakistan. But my point is that it's not like the TTP is some sort of uber-hierarchical organization you can just decapitate and suddenly it falls apart and people start going home.

5a. The mission itself seems unclear. Part Deux. As the Tavernise and Pir point out, the military won a hard fought victory in Bajaur not so long ago and the militants are back there today. As Talat Massood, who is a seriously astute observer of Pakistan and all-around one of the good guys, made clear in the Times piece: that is because they failed to establish effective local governance structures afterwards. I'm not all that comforted by the idea that success can be declared if they nail Baitullah and his supporters.

So yeah… I can see the arguments for why S. Waziristan makes sense right now, but they fall short of convincing me this is not a bad idea. Because even if Pakistan clears out S. Waziristan – and that is a big if – I'm not yet confident they can keep it militant-free and develop lasting governance structures that work. And I'm even more concerned about what happens to the internally displaced population and the gains they've made elsewhere in the meantime.

* I'm actually not being flip. I think it's great that they are going to hold talks even if that really only amounts to a sideline meeting.

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This section of Free Rad!cals is dedicated to following events in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Unfortunately for people living in these two countries, a blog dedicated to political violence has a lot to work with when considering their neighborhood.

Given the importance of "AfPak" – a term I've just used for the first and last time – there's hardly an information or opinion shortage about these two countries. There are also a lot of people claiming to be experts on one or both of them. I'm not one of them.

I've been following militant groups in Pakistan for two years now and am writing a book on one of them: Lashkar-e-Taiba. First through desk-based research and then via extended field research trips to Pakistan I've begun developing what my wife considers to be an unhealthy obsession with the country. Also the food. My engagement with Afghanistan has been confined primarily to its role as a playing field for a number of the various militant groups I follow for my PhD research.

Given this background, when I wade in with analysis it will primarily revolve around militant activity. Since Afghanistan and Pakistan constitute what many experts (and quite a few non-experts) consider the central front in the fight against al-Qaeda there should be enough fodder for a blog about political violence.

Clearly, its impossible to write – intelligently at least – about militancy, terrorism or insurgency without considering a host of other issue areas. I can't promise to actually write intelligently, but rest assured I'm at least on board with that "holistic approach" to defeating jihadi militancy that's suddenly all the rage.

However, if you're looking for in depth cultural analysis or assessments of local political dynamics in Afghanistan or Pakistan there are people out there better equipped than me to provide it. And I promise to link to them often, along with highlighting articles, policy papers, and books that may be of interest.
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