Maybe I’ve been wrong to lay so much blame on NATO and the problems with redeploying some troops to the south of Afghanistan. It seems the larger problem in Afghanistan is actually Pakistan, and that disastrous agreement the Musharraf government struck with the Baluchi chiefs. The “independence movement” of sorts for Islamic radicals has migrated north into Waziristan, and looks set to occupy the entire northwestern border region of Pakistan.
Islamic militants are using a recent peace deal with the government to consolidate their hold in northern Pakistan, vastly expanding their training of suicide bombers and other recruits and fortifying alliances with Al Qaeda and foreign fighters, diplomats and intelligence officials from several nations say. The result, they say, is virtually a Taliban mini-state.
The militants, the officials say, are openly flouting the terms of the September accord in North Waziristan, under which they agreed to end cross-border help for the Taliban insurgency that revived in Afghanistan with new force this year.
The area is becoming a magnet for an influx of foreign fighters, who not only challenge government authority in the area, but are even wresting control from local tribes and spreading their influence to neighboring areas, according to several American and NATO officials and Pakistani and Afghan intelligence officials.
This year more than 100 local leaders, government sympathizers or accused “American spies” have been killed, several of them in beheadings, as the militants have used a reign of terror to impose what President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan calls a creeping “Talibanization.” Last year, at least 100 others were also killed.
Ironic that Musharraf complains of the Taliban’s creep even as he cedes yet more territory to them. But when American troops can see Taliban fighters sneaking into Afghanistan, but can only attack them once they’re in-country, then we are simply stuck in a no-win situation. We know where the fighters train and camp in Pakistan; in Afghanistan their support network has become much more complex and subtle than it was in 2002. Without authorization to enter Pakistan in pursuit, or without concrete (i.e. military) action on the part of Islamabad, then we might as pack up our bags and leave—otherwise the entire Afghanistan campaign is nothing more than a meat grinder for NATO troops and innocent locals.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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“Without authorization to enter Pakistan in pursuit, or without concrete (i.e. military) action on the part of Islamabad, then we might as pack up our bags and leave—otherwise the entire Afghanistan campaign is nothing more than a meat grinder for NATO troops and innocent locals.”
Hm. We are unable to secure a large, mountainous country of 31 million people with the resources we have committed there. We must therefore extend our operations into a neighboring large mountainous country of 165 million people.
This strategy will certainly have an effect if we employ it.
But I don’t think you’ll like what that effect is.
One of the primary reasons we cannot secure a country of 22 million (Afghanistan’s actual population, according to the World Bank) is that the fighters and militants who explode car bombs and arm and train suicide bombers live in refuge in the western frontier provinces of Pakistan. There is no need to involve the rest of the country; just give NATO right of pursuit, deny them a safe haven across an imaginary line that for all practical purposes doesn’t exist anyway.
Of course that won’t happen, because it would collapse Musharraf’s regime. Which is why I’m convinced Afghanistan cannot be won. There are far too many constraints on NATO’s behavior.
Did you really mean “Baluchi” chiefs? Or did you confuse the Baluch with the Pushtoon in the North?
They present two entirely different problems, with the former having little to no influence in the disorder in Afghanistan, while the former seem to have almost everything with it.
I meant to say “latter” as in “the latter seem to have almost everything with it.” Sorry.