Pakistan & Another Iraq War Disaster
When Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency on November 3, he said it was to deal with terrorists. But nearly two weeks later he not only has not dealt with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, he has allowed the Taliban to push closer to Islamabad as they take over one district after another in yet another tragic consequence of the Bush administration starving the War on Terror in South Asia to feed the war in Iraq.
Military blogger Bill Roggio, who has been on top of a story that the U.S. media shows little interest in and the White House wants to wish away, reports that the radical Islamic group, which was all but decimated after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks, is taking territory in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province at a dizzying rate.
The mountainous region abuts the Afghan border and is believed to be where Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cadre are hiding out with Taliban assistance.
After fighting the Pakistani military to a standstill in North Waziristan and forcibly taking over much of Swat, the Taliban have marched eastward into the district of Shangla and this week took control of the district office and police station in a key village without facing any resistance from the government.
Roggio says that Musharref has cut peace deals with the Taliban in North and South Waziristan, Bajaur, Mohmand, and Swat over the past year only to see the Taliban expand their influence. Much of the Northwest Frontier Province is either under open control of the Taliban or is heavily influenced by it. (Red areas on the map are controlled by the Taliban; purple areas are in its de facto control.)
Meanwhile, Musharraf has freed several high-level Taliban from prison.
The White House response to Musharraf’s heavy-handedness has been muted and U.S. aid – in the form of untraceable cash payments – continues to flow to Pakistan. Meanwhile, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte is to meet with Musharraf tomorrow, and some U.S. officials are losing faith that he can survive in office.
No matter. The U.S. is winning in Iraq where, as President Bush incessantly notes, those danged terrorists who launched the 9/11 attacks came from, right?
So who gives a fig about Pakistan?
38 Responses to “Pakistan & Another Iraq War Disaster”
You may find this story interesting.
Oh really? Pakistan has NEVER had control of these areas and the British before them didn’t either. Perhaps you can explain exactly what GWB coulda-shoulda-woulda done to prevent the Taliban taking control here? Frontline, certainly no supporter of GWB, has an excellent program on the history of the area.
You know, not every problem in the world can be laid at the feet of GWB.
BTW, Bill Roggio does do a great job following events along the border.
I fail to see how the USA could have aided Musharff in his crackdown of terrorists.
We literally had soldiers on their borders, were given overflight priveledges and at times had soliders stationed in Pakistan.
This was in response to Afghanistan who everyone seems to be in favor of and yet Musharraf just played lip service which in reality was more then anyone expected anyways.
I’m curious Shaun just what should the President have done. Lets say for example we never even glanced at Iraq and are only in Afghanistan……what should Bush have done differently to absolve the current situation in Pakistan?
Because if you have the answer I will make some phone calls and get you a job at the state department.
The US can’t do it alone, but it can play an important leadership role. Here’s one view on solving the border issue.
Just to provide some clarity:
1. Iraq is a bigger problem today than it was when George W. Bush started his war there.
2. Afghanistan is a bigger problem today than it was when George W. Bush started his war in Iraq.
3. The Taliban are a bigger problem today than it was when George W. Bush decided to ignore them and start his war in Iraq.
4. Pakistan has always been a problem, but it’s a bigger problem today than it was when George W. Bush started his war in Iraq.
5. We now have problems with our NATO ally Turkey because George W. Bush started his war in Iraq.
I could on.
So when Shaun says, “yet another tragic consequence of the Bush administration starving the War on Terror in South Asia to feed the war in Iraq,” that seems right to me.
Is anyone really saying it’s not true?
There are two separate issues here. One, is the stability of Afghanistan, which seemed secure in 2002 and 2003 and now seems imperiled by a resurgent Taliban given sanctuary along the border. The second issue is Pakistan itself – more ominous because of its nuclear power – but less unstable than Afghanistan overall (even with the recent chaos at the top). Pakistan is a far more “developed” country than Afghanistan with stronger historic, economic and strategic ties to the West than Afghanistan will ever have.
As far as blaming Bush, I think he’s responsible for the first problem – the insecurity in Afghanistan – because of the lukewarm financial and military commitment to that country after 2002 (thanks to Iraq). If Afghanistan’s post-Taliban regime really were that stable, the Taliban and Al Qaeda holed up in Pakistan would hardly affect Afghanistan at all. The instability of Afghanistan makes the situation within Pakistan problematic on both sides. But as for internal Pakistani politics, there is little Bush can or could have done. In many ways, it has more to do with the long-simmering debate with India over Kashmir (which has fueled islamist politics in Pakistan far more than Afghan issues) than it does the American interests in Afghanistan.
Musharraf was the key ally in South Asia after the 9/11 attacks. While it is correct that the border districts have been historically lawless, the Bush administration’s relationship with the general has been one of benign neglect despite how vitally important the stability of Pakistan is and its vital role in helping contain the Taliban and exterminate Al Qaeda on its side of the Afghan border. Instead, Musharraf has been coddling the Taliban, which is just obscene.
This has been the U.S. policy: Just shovel billions of dollars of money into Musharraf’s corrupt coffers and hope for the best.
These circumstances, coupled with a diversion of resources from South Asia to Iraq, has brought us to the present state today. To claim that GWB could not have leveraged or otherwise influenced events in any way is patently ridiculous. But we’ll never know because that effort was never made.
LOL – I have to side with the Right side this time. While Bush 41 has screwed up, lets not forget Pappy Bush and Reagan’s lifting of sanctions against Pakistan during their terms. Pakistan was the Wests(and China) ally during the Cold War when the USSR and India cozied up.We used Pakistan while we fought a proxy war in Afghanistan after 1979. Guess who helped India and Pakistan develope their nukes, all the same players listed in the last couple of sentences.
[...] Mine Pakistan & Another Iraq War Disaster » This Summary is from an article posted at The Moderate Voice » Domestic and international news [...]
Oh wow what a bunch of revisionist thinking here! Here is what W could have done: NOT INVADE IRAQ! He could have upped the troop presence in Afghanistan to 150,000-plus troops, and with NATO troops sealed the boarders with Pakistan and ruthlessly hunted out the remaining Taliban and Al-Queda, with focus, determination and resources. Instead we pulled down our best forces in Afghanistan at precisely the wrong time, and allowed the Taliban to rebuild and the boarders to be porous. Now we are faced with the very real risk that radical muslims will possess real nuclear weapons in a few short years (or months) – In Pakistan, not Iraq and not Iran. It has always been Afghanistan and Pakistan that have been the major threats, never Iraq. That was so clear you could not have possibly missed it unless you just looked the other way. So go ahead and wash your hands of the mess in the real danger spot in the world, because there is nothing our Fearless Leader could have done because we have such important work to do in Iraq. Yes the history of this area is rotten and befuddling. But taking your eye (and your troops) off the ball before you are done to engage in the highly stupid headfake into Iraq did nothing to help US security and in fact has compromised us to the point where now we would be very hard pressed to be any real help to Musharif at all. My God, when the history of this era is written, the apologia for everything W while the world tumbled out of control will make for tragic reading. If only people had had the same attitude about finishing the job in Afghanistan as they seem to have about finishing the job in Iraq. Make no mistake about it, our security is at real risk in the Pakistan-Afghanistan area, and given the debacle in Iraq, and the current weakness of our forces, there is precious little we can do about it now.
Pakistan is a bigger problem today because:
1. It has nukes.
2. The Taliban might be taking it over soon.
3. Which would give the Taliban access to those nukes.
George,
Correlation does not equal causality. Furthermore, I think Pat Lang has it right (he’s no friend of GWB, btw):
Read Pat’s comments on Pakistan in full.
Shaun,
I don’t think you appreciate the complexity of the situation surrounding the border issue. The US has far less influence than I think you believe. And my question still stands – you provide a lot of criticism and point out all the bad things, but where is your solution? What would you have done differently to prevent the situation we’re in today? How would you have compelled Musharraf to engage the Taliban more forcibly? Can you tell me exactly what resources were diverted to Iraq? Etc. The idea that GWB is responsible for this mess seems equally ludicrous to me as the idea the Clinton was responsible for the rise of the Taliban and AQ in the first place.
Still, I’ll give you a hint – some cogent answers to some of these questions are provided in the article I linked to above.
jammer1,
I am not an Iraqi war supporter. Furthermore, the US had not intention of stationing a large occupation force in Afghanistan even before Iraq was on the radar for a variety of reasons I won’t belabor here except to mention logistics, culture, history and the Northern Alliance. Sealing the border is virtually impossible – if you had any concept of the geography and history of this region you’d know why. Finally, you can’t simply “seal the border” and “hunt out the remaining Taliban” because the Taliban are in Pakistan too – unless you’re suggesting that we should have invaded Pakistan?
George,
The Taliban have zero chance of seizing power in Pakistan. Other, non-Pashtun, non-tribal Islamist elements could however.
I’m going to kill my self for saying this, please tell me where W’s name or influence is listed below.
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/pakistan/nuke/chron.htm
http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/pakistan/nuke.htm
If you notice, all violations listed above originate in North America. Pakistan has always been our loved but “troublesime crazy uncle” in proxy wars against our enemies. The USSR fell because of the expense of nuclear proliferation, an unsupported war(Afghanistan) and Chernobyl. I must admit Pakistan is a lesser evil than the USSR, what say you?
Why the huge fuss over bin Laden but so little over AQ Khan, who spread nuclear technology to enemies like North Korea and Iran? He remains under house arrest, but shouldn’t the US demand to know what secrets he spread and to whom? It would give us a better idea than we have now.
As far as Musharaff and the US go, we have very limited options. Musharraf is like the Shah in 1979, on the verge of the Iranian revolution. He was driven from power and an Islamic extremist took his place. That would be the worst case scenario, because then there would be an Islamic government with access to nukes, where the majority is hostile to the US, and where AQ Khan could resume his black market activities. That scenario makes Ahmadinejad look like Tiny Tim!
Kritt,
Khan is a national hero in Pakistan. We have worked to gain access with limited success to determine the extent of his proliferation activities, but making demands to turn him over would be the equivalent of some country demanding the US turn over Charles Lindberg after his historic flight. The IAEA recently asked, and was denied, access to Khan as part of its effort to determine the scope of the Iranian program.
Rudi is right. Pakistan has long been a “necessary” country that we’ve been forced to befriend to deal with larger strategic interests.
Hey folks, Khan is a metallurgist, not a “nuklear” physicist. Khan stole the crude centrifuge designs and component supplier lists during his days working in Europe on URANIUM ENRICHMENT. The West and CHINA supplied more of the “nuklear” technology to Pakistan than Khan ever did.Khan only showed his people how to ENRICH URANIUM, the Chinese probably helped to build their bombed, even helped in tests. Remember this when you by contaminated products at WallyWorld.
Entropy – Give a listen to this radio blog if your interested. I’m in my Libertarian costum today, probably won’t take it off…
PakiDerm
Entropy – Don’t forget about Rummies usurping of ‘ “implementation of Shinnseki’s new “lean mean†Army.‘ in the overall picture. The new lean and mean Rummies Army was supposed to be proven as the new model in Afghanistan. Shinnseki’s plan started during the Clenis years, with some input from the Dark One.
Resources were diverted from Afghanistan for the sake of invading Iraq. Would the resurgent Taliban have the appeal they now do in the border regions of Pakistan if they weren’t being successful in Afghanistan because of that lack of resources and effort? I think one feeds the other at this point.
Entropy is right. The mess in the region can not be blamed on Bush alone. A long series of administrations have proceeded in a moment-to-moment fashion, without developing an understanding how all the pieces fit to together.
When the Russians where in Afghanistan, it was all about the Russians, and the region was treated like an expedient, unimportant background.
The same with Iraq. Then it was about Iran and Saddam and democracy, with no one figuring out what Iraq and the region was like from the inside. The Iraqis themselves were just a blurry background to our pursuit of national interests.
Bush, I think, tried to transcend the narrow focus and did think about the region as a whole. However, he neglected to consider the details of execution for his vision, because he, like his predecessor, treated the region as mere background to his plans. He didn’t look at what constitured the background.
Consequently, he made things worse.
That’s why he continues to get the blame: he made things worse. And while it’s neither fair nor productive to stop at this point, it’s understandable for a people living with today’s high anxiety about the region.
Now, while in the midst of multiple crisis situations (Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Musharaff trying to detroy the judiciacy, the resurgence of the Taliban, the ever present AlQaeda), some sertious thinking is emerging that actually looks at the regions as it is, not only how it would fit nicely into the pursuit of our national interests.
Entropy links to some exemplary thinking.
My fear is that it comes too late. My fear is that we’ll be hamstrung by dealing with immediate crises and will once again, assign the nature of the region to a blurry backgroung to serve our own interests.
I’m all for looking out for our own interests. BTW.
I deeply regret and fear, however, our short-sighted, crisis to crisis manner of doing it.
I agree with Doma- the ME was a cauldron of resentments waiting to boil over, when Bush came into office. His lack of foreign policy experience after 9/11, paired with his decision to allow Cheney to short-circuit Colin Powell, resulted in our unilateralist preemptive strike policy which has further destabilized the region.
But I still say that many US and European regimes were warned about Khan after they realized he had stolen nuclear technology secrets, but did nothing. We are living the nightmare of the perfect storm- destabilized governments combined with radical Islam, combined with unprecedented anti-US sentiment, combined with the proliferation of nuclear technology to the unstable or anti-US regimes.
The Axis of Evil policies just exacerbated an already dangerous situation.
KR says:
We didn’t do nothing, it’s was Western technology that gave Pakistan the bomb. It was a reaction to the coziness of India and the USSR. Look at my posting above, it’s North American companies that supplied the Pakistan military, not just Khan(an engineer), so that they could counter balance a Indian-Russian alliance.
Again, what resources? I see this claim all the time, but where is the evidence? Aid to Afghanistan has gone up every year since we invaded. No military units that I know of were pulled out of Afghanistan for the Iraqi invasion.
The principle drain has really been one of expertise – the best COIN minds are in Iraq right now, not Afghanistan.
Khan received the most important nuclear assistance from URENCO and China – Khan worked at URENCO and despite ample warning and red flags, he absconded with all the technical and engineering data he needed to create a centrifuge program in Pakistan. China is widely believed (though it’s not proven) to have provided Pakistan warhead design information as well as test data that would allow Pakistan to build more advanced warheads without having to test.
Entropy:
You do the math: 175,000 U.S. troops in Iraq today, the highest level since the outset of the war (in part because of troop rotation overlaps) and 27,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
That’s your best defense of the current state of American military and foreign policy?
Shaun,
Were there ever plans to have anything close to that many troops in Afghanistan? No. Could the US logistics system keep that number of troops supplied in a land-locked country with the world’s crappiest road network? No. Is there any evidence to show that the military ever wanted more than roughly 30k US troops in Afghanistan? Not that I’ve found. After all, we only needed a handful to take the country in the first place and we were really only able to supply 15-20k in 2002 anyway since almost everything had to come in by air and even then there was only a couple of airfields that could handle C-17′s.
I’m willing to be convinced otherwise, but until I see some evidence – and not speculation – I will continue to criticize the idea that Iraq sucked much away from Afghanistan.
Certainly the Iraqi debacle has been disastrous for our armed forces in general, impacting everything from training to readiness and the adverse effects of the current optempo are certainly affecting Afghanistan.
Perhaps you failed to read anything else I’ve written in this thread, nor the links I’ve provided? The fact that something happens on GWB’s watch does not mean that GWB is the cause or that GWB is to blame. If that’s the game you want to play we can apply such dubious logic to events that happened during the watches of previous Presidents, though I suspect you might not like the conclusions. After all, it would mean that Reagan was responsible for beating the USSR, Clinton was responsible for India and Pakistan going nuclear and the Taliban and AQ, and Carter was responsible for the oil embargo. See what I mean?
Entropy, I agree with you that Bush, alone, is not responsible. But I sure don’t agree wtih you that Iraq has not depleted our ability to deal with Afghanistan.
Bush (or one his generals?) announced that after troops begin to be recalled from Iraq, some would be deployed to Afghanistan.
NATO generals are repeatedly complaining that there are insufficient troops in Afghanistan. Mosttly it’s due to Europeans not fulfulling their obligations, but you can’t say that the US using up its troops in Iraq has no effect on our capabilities in Afghanistan.
Look at our budget, if you want further proof of what this is costing. You can’t possibly claim that those costs don’t spill over into other capabilities, both in Afghanistan and at home.
Doma is right- we are losing ground in Afghanistan to the Taliban, while Nato begs for troops. And what would we do if all hell breaks out in Pakistan?
In Iraq we have 175,000 troops and an even larger mercenary force so that we can keep the effort in a holding pattern, hoping that the Iraqis someday decide they feel like getting it together. We have built permanent bases that may never be used an a mammoth sized embassy which is accomplishing exactly what? Except to send the signal to the Arab world that we expect to occupy Iraq for the forseeable future.
Meanwhile we are spending 12 billion a month– how can that approach fiscal responsibility?
Rudi- I stand corrected on Khan. I didn’t know that the West played such a big role in Pakistan’s quest for nuclear weapons.
How refreshing!!!
A good back-and-forth by everybody… Well done.
It reminds me of the good old days, Thanks.
Despite what some may believe, not everything that is bad or wrong in this universe is Bush’s fault.
ATTENTION COMMENTERS:
We have a comments policy below that you might want to review before you click the “Submit Comment†button. Please stick to the topic and avoid attacks on our bloggers or each other.
Holly,
Is there anyone in particular that was aimed at?
Doma,
What I will concede is that Iraq has impeded our larger counterterrorism mission – not just in Afghanistan – but around the world in the past couple of years. I don’t think Afghanistan was impacted at all in 2002-2004, or if it was, only marginally so. Beginning with the previous “surge” for the elections in 2005, the optempo has been materially damaging our forces which is impacting everything the military does, including Afghanistan. It’s made us strategically vulnerable. We have no reserve for contingencies. It has undoubtedly emboldened Iran, who now knows that a “regime change” land invasion against it is impossible and that our forces in Iraq are vulnerable to Iranian counterattack should the US go with airstrikes.
In short, I do not mean to demean the negative impact Iraq has on a host of factors, but it remains my belief that we’d still have a huge problem with the Taliban today even if Iraq hadn’t occurred for the wide variety of reasons already laid out. IOW, I completely disagree with the notion that the Taliban and AQ would somehow be defeated if not for Iraq. Even a cursory examination of the history of the regions would indicate otherwise.
As I said above, spending on Afghanistan has increased every year since 2001. I don’t see Congress debating either/or with regard to funding Iraq and Afghanistan – what I see is Congress cutting checks for pretty much everything that’s requested – in fact, it’s even increased funding in both theaters from what Bush has proposed on a few occasions.
Short-term, I don’t think there’s a lot of impact to this since all this money is basically borrowed. Long term? Yeah, it’s going to be a kidney punch as the economics of interest payments really start to kick in. We’ll be paying for these wars for a long time. I think my generation – “gen x” – will suffer the worst as we’ll be paying for these wars probably into retirement plus paying for all the boomers on social security and medicare. It ain’t gonna be pretty.
Holly,
I forgot to add: Because I think everyone is being pretty civil, actually.
What I’m reading are a lot of excuses for why President Bush, currently serving his seventh year in office, shouldn’t, I’m not quite sure, get all the blame for the current state of American military and foreign policy.
Does anyone want to defend the current state of our military and foreign policy?
#1 – I agree.
#2 – If offending posts were edited instead of deleted your “ATTENTION COMMENTERS:” post would make more sense to those of us who didn’t see the offending remark and it would better understand policy.
#3 – regards, SteveK
should’a read: …and it would be easier to understand policy.
#4 – what happened to the “PREVIEW” toggle?
No – it’s not aimed at anyone in particular. I took a look at the last 20 comments at TMV and noticed some threads were getting a little crazy. We rarely delete comments – we usually don’t have time to read them. Once a day or so I peek at the last 20 comments and add a caution note if necessary.