Dan Simons, of the Council on Foreign Relations, has a stellar op-ed about what the U.S. can do about Pakistan:
For Pakistan to undertake a successful counterterrorism campaign against the troika of dangerous Islamists within its borders — al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban and domestic militants — its people must believe that such an effort is in their self-interest. We know from Iraq that winning over the populace is vital to a successful counterinsurgency or counterterrorism campaign. Pakistanis need to be convinced that Islamist extremism threatens their way of life.
Presently, though, many Pakistanis attribute the rise of Islamist extremism in Pakistan to Mushar raf’s ill-fated alliance with the United States. Given his role in sacking the chief justice last March and declaring a state of emergency in November to ensure his re-election as president, Musharraf’s unpopularity seems irreversible.
Accordingly, the appeal of a Musharraf-centric explanation for domestic terrorism will fade only if Pakistan continues to experience militant attacks after the president’s downfall. This is why Mu sharraf ultimately must go. Until he does, Pakistanis will not accept that the fundamentalists have a more expansive goal: to impose strict Islamic law on all of Pakistan.
Yet the support of the Pakistani people — while necessary — is not sufficient to carry out a prolonged, effective counterterrorism campaign. The concurrence of a motivated Pakistani army is also essential. To maintain the army’s support, Washington cannot instigate Musharraf’s demise.
It’s nice to see some legitimately sophisticated thinking about the topic in the popular press. I would quibble with the assertion that Pakistanis are blind to the threat of Islamist extremism (recall the multiple 100,000-person protests against the Taliban last year), but otherwise, this is worth reading in full—especially as an antidote to what the big papers here think counts as serious thought.
And at least he didn’t claim to be friends with Benazir Bhutto.
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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I think we have seen in Central Asia that it certainly is possible to convince your population that Islamic extremism is a threat to everything they hold dear. And that threat is useful in its own way for leaders…