Islamist Coup? Are you keeping track of who you are discussing what with? Benazir's making noise, and she's not the only one. I'll agree that in the end the Army will probably prevail, but it won't be near as clean or as quick as you imply. The pressure in the tribal regions will drop during the interim, and if you understand the military situation on the ground, you understand that such defeats the purpose of the operation to begin with.
IIRC, you brought up a suggestion that I was asking for Musharraf to be "deposed" when I was asking for more pressure of the sustained, hardball variety with him. What else could you have meant by that were you not talking about Musharraf being possibly deposed by the army/ISI?
Secondly, if you know your Pakistan history, you'd know that the chances that a civilian like Benazir Bhutto overthrows an army strongman like Musharraf are less than zero. She cannot even enter Pakistan now. The reverse is often true though. If Musharraf gets replaced, it will most likely be by his army subordinates who feel that he has been army chief for far too long for them to move up. The events in the tribal areas has very little to do with Musharraf's survival or longevity.
Of course, the author says there aren't any terrorists in the Shawal, so I'm guessing you feel that all the rockets and IEDs are coming from...tribesmen?
Firstly, I don't see where the author of this article claims that there are no terrorists in Shawal or elsewhere in the tribal zone. The point he is making is that there is little evidence of the presence of the mainly Arab Al Qaeda who are the main ones who seek to do us harm. I must note that there has been less than satisfactory evidence presented by the Paks that the "terrorists" they killed were "foreigners." Eve if there were a few "foreigners" - they have been Uzbeks, Chechens or uighurs who are of marginal threat to us. What Raman correctly points out is that the Paks have been brazenly exaggerating their "successes" in the tribal areas by passing off local tribesmen as Al Qaeda. See this report on how the Pak army killed a bunch of locals and passed them off as "foreigners." Let me give you more examples. Remember the "100s" of "foreign terrorists in the March sweep by the Pak army in South Waziristan? That was pack of lies. Read a report in The Friday Times dated April 7 titled "Captured foreign fighters and Pakistan's credibility" where the Pakistanis refused to present the fighters to the media, the Chinese, Uzbek and Russian governments who wanted to verify claims that Chechen, Uzebk and Uighurs were arrested. Soon after that, the Pakistanis quietly released them and it turns out that the arrested were almost all local tribesmen.
You have to realize that a significant part of the force resisting the Pak army in Waziristan is local in nature. The tribesmen do not want the Pak army presence there for its disturbs their bootleg commerce, kidnap business and drug movement. You'll be surprised to see how many sophisticated heavy weaponry the tribesmen have in their possession, including heavy mortars, anti-aircraft artillery, RPGs, arty shells, SAMs and the kitchen sink. They even make a business selling this stuff to anyone that can pay in dollars. Heard of Darra Adamkhel?
Given the track record of serial falsehoods perpetuated by the Pak military and government spokesmen regarding the operations in the tribal areas, we would all do well to treat any claims by them with a truckload of salt. There is little independent evidence or mention by American or Western sources that the folks like Ghailani or Zubaida were ever based in the tribal areas. All the AQ bigwigs have been found in big cities. The more we focus on the tribal zone, the less attention we pay to the cities, which suits the Pak government just fine.
Ordinance travels on ships. We're already hurting having to fly it in over Pakistan, and you want to increase the airleg by orders of magnitude?
It is not something that I want but something that is currently happening. Ask anyone who knows about CENTCOM ops. The primary logistics route is Germany-Uzbekistan-Bagram and Pakistani bases are used mainly for surveillance and bombing operations as well as to move out prisoners.
Al Qaeda's primary supporters are retired military and ISI. Musharraf running them too? Busy guy.
I never said that Musharraf is "running them" - "them" being the Al Qaeda supporters within the Pakistan establishment. Musharraf treats Al Qaeda as an asset. As long as they are around, he feels that he holds value to us. To that end, he is trying to "manage" the anti-terror effort by calibrating the arrest of Al Qaeda members and thereby allowing the organization to survive. With the number of people we have in our custody, AQ should already be a goner, but clearly isn't. Why? Because the infrastructure of terror still exists intact within Pakistan. The safehouses, the money supply chain, the local sympathizers, friendly neighborhood ISI agents and cops -they have been left untouched. If you think that Musharraf is going to do anything about the infrastructure because "he is good guy," you got another thing coming. Unless we pressure Musharraf hard, he is not going to move against his source of livelihood. No AQ base in Pakistan = No role for Musharraf.
Remember Gen. Mahmood Ahmad of the ISI? Musharraf fired him after we pressed him to but Gen. Ahmad is now back in black. Musharraf even attended Mahmoud's daughter's wedding recently. The ISI, the army and Musharraf play good cop-bad cop with us. Every bad act Musharraf can palm off on the "ISI rogues" while he basks in the glory of his "stellar" support to us. This game was passable in 2001, but not now. The ISI is led by his man. The Corps commanders are virtually family, the DG of Military Intelligence and Intel bureau and FIA are all his own men. There is absolutely no excuse now. If you want to keep buying the "Good Musharraf versus Bad ISI" snake oil, that is exactly what Musharraf wants.
Ok, we can discuss details 27/4 for decades, and in all considered likelyhood, at the end of the argument, I'm simply not going to agree that there's a necessity for any significant change in current US policy with respect to Pakistan and President Musharraf.
I have examined your credentials and areas of expertise, and for the most part will now withdraw any questions regarding your credibility in these matters.
In fact, now that we have distilled the discussion down to its foundational elements, for the most part I choose not to contest your basic premise, regarding the reliability and intent on the part of Musharraf, and even its significance with respect to our ultimate objectives in Pakistan.
I will further grant your professed support for America and President Bush in the general sense, but I must confess, concerns remain regarding your additional influences, most especially those regarding apparant sympathy for an Indian take on current events.
I confess that much of this doubt may be in part due to the manner in which you have chosen to present your point of view. I must caution you that regardless of your intent and possible additional obligations, you would be more successful in selling improved walking sticks to hikers by hitting them over the head to demonstrate ther structural integrity than you have been or will be, in raising doubts about Musharraf, through the support of strongly anti-American or anti Bush references in this venue.
Further, there is no...valid...benefit in doing so as there are countless open source examples of corroborating evidence that raise this kind of doubt without the anti-American, anti-Bush, or anti-Pak/US coalition timbre of the efforts to date.
Having made these concessions, I am still 100% comfortable with the current US policy in the matter, both on a regional and on a global scale.
Not only can I make your case for you, indisputably, using more recent and pinpointed anecdotal evidence, without any disparagement except that focused directly on Musharraf, I can do the same, for example, Prince Nayaf in Saudi Arabia, and even raise similar doubts regarding Prince Abdullah in that country.
However, I also am of the considered opinion that neither of these situations is any more indicative of a need for policy change, either diplomatic or military, than are the doubts you attempt to raise.
I am not prepared to go into more detail in this matter, either privatly with you, in light of the remaining questions concerning your intent as outlined above, or in this venue, due to implications involving security.
If the day ever comes when America's primary, overriding terrorist and security concerns devolve to center on Pakistan and General Musharraf, I may revisit and quite likely even share your doubts, but for now, larger considerations demand a set of priorities and objectives which render the question of Musharraf's true intent both irrelevent and ultimately impossible to determine with any real confidence.
I further believe and wish to re-emphasize that in attempting to make your point, the choice of materials used in support of your point of view negatively affect our position in light of these larger considerations.
The key element in the future of the war on terrorism right now and for the forseeable future, is the question of who will formulate US global policy for the next four years.
Clearly the use or propagation of materials hostile to an Administration you say you favor, in support of what is curretly a sideshow in the strategic picture, is counter-productive.
By your own repeated admissions, the WMD threat level from Pakistan is unlikely to change, regardless of who runs that country, and I am sure that both you and I are aware of situations where this isn't
the case.
In order to meet the now minimal objectives vis-a-vis Pakistan, I believe we have ample resources in that country to verify that which we need to verify. The country's electronic communications systems are transparent to us, and I am more than satisfied with the organic elements of US oversight we have managed to place, at this time.
Unless you manage to raise unexpected dimensions in your final rebuttal here, I am reasonably convinced that further discussion on this subject will result in exponentially diminishing returns, and this is about as far as I'm willing to pursue this for now.