America’s Pakistan Problem
As America moves into the 21s century it faces an increasingly vexing problem: what’s it to do about Pakistan? Is it friend or foe or an unacceptable combination of both? Is giving it sensitive information a national security risk? Does it have freelancing elements working against American interests? Or are these elements not really freelancing? Is it playing a double game? Is Pakistan covertly in the violence exportation business?
What kind of policy protects American interests when it involves a politically unstable nuke-equipped country with powerful elements within it that seem to be working actively with those who’d like to blow Americans up? Those are just some of the questions raised by news about Pakistan in recent months.
U.S.-Pakistan relations have been rollercoaster-like for many years but the relationship was forever changed on May 2 when Navy Seals staged a daring raid into Pakistan territory that killed Al Qaeda terrorist boss Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden was living in Abbottabad, in the middle of the equivalent of Pakistan’s West Point — raising the possibility that the Pakistan government, its military and/or its intelligence services were incompetent at fighting terrorism at home at best and bin Laden’s protectors at worst.
Several other incidents later took place that seemingly confirms a growing belief that Pakistan is not trustworthy. Then came the catalysts that pitchforked the issue of Pakistan’s into the headlines. A Sept. 10 truck bombing at a NATO outpost south of Kabul killed five people and wounded 77 coalition soldiers. Then press reports revealed that cell phones found on attackers in the Sept 13 attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul were linked to Pakistan intelligence officials.
Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, didn’t mince words in his testimony to Congress. He charged there was collusion between Pakistani intelligence and the Afghan Taliban group, the Haqqani — a family of some 10,000 fighters based in Pakistan’s tribal areas, described by the New York Times as an Afghani version of “The Sopranos.” Mullen made it clear he felt the truck bomb and the embassy bombing were carried out with the help of Pakistan’s shadowy intelligence agency, the ISI.
“With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy,” he told the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We also have credible evidence that they were behind the June 28th attack against the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations. [The] Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.”
Several analysts considered this part of an effort to force the Pakistani government to crack down on the Haqqani network, or at least go along with expanded U.S. drone attacks. But Islamabad’s reaction escalated the war of words over the war on terror even more. Officials denied the allegation and warned the U.S. about its relationship with their country.
5 Responses to “America’s Pakistan Problem”
The only possible reaction the U.S. has, is to punish this backstabbing Pakistani behavior with a massive blow to destroy the Pakistani illusion of power equivalence.
Or
Pull out of the region entirely and save two billion dollars a week.
You decide.
It’s time to have serious talks with India about working to build closer ties and resolve any differences we might have with them because Pakistan is completely incapable of being a reliable ally in the region given the realities of their domestic politics and culture.
If we pull out of Pakistan, China moves in as their new benefactor. That might happen even if we stay, but its still a really tough problem. I think we all know that Pakistan will never be a true ally of ours, that the country is fractured in many ways. The rulers of Pakistan don’t control everything within their borders, and there are several factions within even the ISI that don’t like us and never will. That being said, they have nukes, and they have lots of trained gunmen that don’t like us who push constantly to erode the control of the at least on paper friendly to the US gov’t of Pakistan. Something really clever needs to happen, but I don’t have any idea what that would be. I don’t think our gov’t has any idea either.
I’m for pulling out. We do invasions well, but not very well with occupation.
I would say pull out and if it becomes necessary after a time, reinvade. It is much, much, cheaper and we loose fewer people. Besides, our boys love it. It’s exciting and they always win. They get to shoot the place up and show off their medals when they get home, instead of insideous redeployment after redeployment sucking sanity out of their heads each mind numbing trip.
I say go for the two billion dollar a week savings and just pull out. After a few of our invasions people will get the darn message or there won’t be many of them left. Not to mention it frees up the military to clobber Syria before they murder off all their innocent civilians. Speaking of which Iran……
I don’t know how the Chinese would feel about Pakistan. Remember they do have some of their own Muslim extremists and dealing with a Pakistan where their influence is growing and nuclear material is available might make them more than a bit nervous.