--Boot Hill
Posted on 06/02/2004 9:05:25 PM PDT by Axion
Summary
Islamabad is threatening to use air strikes against jihadists and their hosts in Pakistan's northwestern tribal region, but there is no reason to believe the government will act upon those threats -- at least not now. There are certain circumstances in which President Gen. Pervez Musharraf would be forced to engage the militants.
Analysis
Pakistani authorities hinted June 2 that they might launch air strikes in the country's northwestern tribal belt to root out al Qaeda-linked militants who have defied an order to register with authorities. "We are not satisfied at all with the performance of tribesmen in finding and handing over the foreigners hiding in the area," the administrator of the South Waziristan agency, Ismatullah Gandapur, said. Gandapur added that Pakistan air force personnel are in South Waziristan's capital of Wana to survey suspected fugitive hideouts.
Threatening to use air power is Islamabad's latest effort to rein in Islamist militants in the South Waziristan area of Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas. This new action is in keeping with the government's carrot-and-stick policy toward militants to convince them to register with authorities.
It also is an attempt to prove to Washington that Islamabad is hard at work in the U.S.-led war on militant Islamism.
President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's government is not engaged in a serious undertaking against the militants -- and will not be in the short term. Musharraf fears igniting an uprising among the tribes and their Pashtun supporters in Pakistan proper. He also is unsure if his own natural constituency -- the military establishment -- would support a hard-line stance on the militants.
The government realized after its botched military offensive against militants and their tribal hosts in March that there is no easy solution to a situation in which tribal areas provide open sanctuary for Afghan, Arab, Uzbek and Chechen extremists. This would explain why the government has let several deadlines for the militants to register expire despite a deal that was struck in April between the Pakistani military and renegade tribal warlord Nek Mohammed.
That said, the question now is: How long can Musharraf continue the pretense that he is taking action? The answer depends on how political events unfold in Washington and Islamabad.
If things go Washington's way in Iraq, the newly appointed transitional Iraqi government will take power June 30, allowing the United States to scale back the intensity of operations there; the Bush administration then will turn its attention to the al Qaeda situation in Pakistan.
Regardless of the outcome of the U.S. presidential elections, Pakistan will follow Iraq as the new theatre in the U.S. war against militant Islamism. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry has made it clear that his administration also would make al Qaeda the top priority. Washington, in turn, will increase the pressure for Musharraf to take some definitive action. It is just a matter of how soon.
An even bigger incentive for Musharraf to toughen his stance against the militants concerns his own safety; suspected al Qaeda militants have made three attempts on his life since his government allied itself with Washington's war on terrorism. Musharraf might be convinced to take more extreme measures against the militants in order to save his own life.
Musharraf does not have the luxury of acting solely for his personal survival; he is preoccupied with political survival. His political future is becoming increasingly unclear as the Dec. 31, 2004, deadline for him to step down as military chief approaches -- and the last thing he needs is to risk a major uprising in the tribal areas. He is in the process of ensuring he has enough political capital to assume the role of a civilian president, and that his military successor will continue to provide his regime with the teeth it needs to function.
Under increasing pressure from Washington, Musharraf eventually will make his move against the militants. For this, he will need assurances that his military and political matters at home are under control -- and that he can act with a minimum of domestic strife. He then could give Washington what it wants and launch an all-out offensive against al Qaeda in Pakistan.
I don't think this is a slam dunk at all - regardless of analogies to our actions in Viet Nam. The article also paints Musharraf's position as extremely unstable and gives no hint of what actions we would, or could, take should he fall.
Pong
Thanks for posting this.
--Boot Hill
Mush is waiting to see who wins the election..
--Boot Hill
Mush has someone telling him the election is close...it would figure he straddle the fence.
Novelists Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins, authors of such bestsellers as City of Joy and Is Paris burning?, have just written a new novel titled Is New York Burning? whose plot involves al-Qaeda members, with help from a Pakistan army major, successfully smuggling a Pakistani nuclear device into New York and then using it to try to blackmail the United States into stopping support for Israel.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FF04Df05.html
LaPierre's and Collins non fiction books are well worth reading.
Freedom at Midnight - about the Partition of India.
The Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse = Notable for it's description of the Ford Administration receiving a nuke threat for Boston and deciding whether to evacuate or not.
Also, Collins's masterpiece fiction novel Fall from Grace about the SOE and the Double Cross Op preceding DDay.
As I have repeated ad nauseum, we shall regret giving Pakistan the kid gloves treatment someday.
Therein lies the most overlooked Pakistani threat - the knowledge in the heads of nuclear experts sympathetic to the jihad movement, and jihadi groups with weapons-of-mass-destruction ambitions such as LeT operating secure facilities and training camps in Pakistan with only the most minimal of restraint...
And we were surprised at what Libya had already assembled from their friends.
Your comment:
As I have repeated ad nauseum, we shall regret giving Pakistan the kid gloves treatment someday.
Reading your link above adds to the nausea that I'm feeling. Pakistan, with its country-wide brainwashing via the maddrasses, is, with North Korea, truly the most dangerous country, with the ultimate resolution of its condition likely to be catastrophic. With these two countries, there seems to be little leverage for rationality from the rest from the world. They have created their own asylums.
Check this out, not a threat to the USA, but significant?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FF04Df03.html
India frets over Yangon-Pyongyang deal
By Arun Bhattacharjee
NEW DELHI - Nothing scares India more than the prospect of another nuclear power on its border, especially when that country is run by the military. So Myanmar's evident success in wooing North Korea to help it build a nuclear reactor has ruffled more than a few feathers among bureaucrats in India's Foreign Office at a time when a new foreign minister is trying to shape a new foreign policy.
The bombshell that Myanmar has succeeded in wooing North Korea to supply it with nuclear-reactor technology came to the notice of Indian intelligence in mid-May but remained under a wraps as the country was involved in general elections.
According to sources within the country's intelligence community, Myanmar's effort to purchase a reactor was known to Russia, the United States and China, as over the past four years the military junta in Myanmar has approached India, Russia and China in its quest, but failed to gain its objective. India refused in 2000-----endsnip
Combined with the Burmese concession to China on Coco Island, asininely handed over to Burma by India in the 50's, the Molucca Straits are threated - a vital choke point for trade to Japan, including oil shipments.
LeT is simply a front for PakiIntel services to run their ops with plausible deniablility combined with a suspension of disbelief by the American authorities regarding the true nature of conditions in Pakistan.
Another rogue state added to the Rogue's Gallery.
Someone, somewhere, is asking to be made An Example.
No, better to give a week's worth of warning to them...
Good article. It nicely collects a number of the threads we've been discussing on these topics for some time now. It is good to see that there are still sane minds in Asia who can comprehend the grave nature of geopolitical developments currently underway in the Indian Ocean Basin and the Far Western Pacific.
Because Mushi can't target them.
--Boot Hill
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.