Celebrating the year anniversary of bin Laden’s demise, I wrote for the Atlantic about the weird inflated hyperbole that’s arisen about al Qaeda.

This week marks one year since Osama bin Laden’s death. We’re hearing a lot about what the anniversary means for the larger struggle against Islamist violence around the world. Most assessments of the “War on Terror” fall into one of two categories: al-Qaeda is stronger than ever or al-Qaeda is dead or dying. Whatever you think about al-Qaeda specifically, the global movement of violent Islamism is more complicated.

More there.

Jund al-Khilafah (JaK), a Kazakh-led terrorist group based in Pakistan, issued its second statement on the Ansar al-Mujahideen online forum on April 1 claiming affiliation to Mohammed Merah. JaK’s first statement was released on March 22.

On the day after Mohammed Merah was killed in Toulouse on March 22 JaK issued the following the statement (excerpted):

“On Tuesday, March 19, one of the Islamic knights, brother ‘Yousef al-Faransi’ – we ask Allah to accept him – took off in an operation that shook the pillars of the Zionist- Crusade in the entire world and filled the hearts of Allah’s enemies with terror…. We hereby claim responsibility for these blessed operations, and we say that what Israel is committing of crimes against our people on the blessed land of Palestine, and in Gaza specifically, will not pass without punishment. The Mujahideen everywhere intend on avenging every drop of blood that was unjustly and aggressively shed in Palestine, Afghanistan and other Muslim homelands.”

One week later, on April 1, JaK showed deeper knowledge about Merah in a second statement (excerpted):

“And since I got to know the brother closely and sat with him in many occasions, and for a short period I was one of his mentors, I see that it is my duty to defend the honor of the brother…and seek to remove the fiction from the truth of what was going on in his mind, and the motives that pushed him to carry out the operations in France…. From Egypt to Ash-Sham, and from there to Palestine…. where he visited Jerusalem and prayed there, and thereafter to Kurdistan, Iraq, and then to Tajikistan, where he was able to get a visa to Afghanistan, and entered and searched for who would help him join the Taliban…. From Afghanistan he returned to France when he prepared a visa to Pakistan with the excuse of trade and went there. Allah graced him this time, as in Islamabad he met people who took him to the Taliban, who in turn facilitated his arrival in the tribal regions, when he ended up joining our brigade…. Brother, Yusef is not a reckless man as the media in the Western countries wants to view him. He was a serious young man…who was intelligent and mastered the use of a Linux computer and an Apple Mac in his possession and prepped it with many software programs for film production because he was fond of photography and always carried a Panasonic Full HD 14.2 Megapixels camera.

Neither of these statements has gathered much attention in the mainstream media probably because most analysts see JaK’s claims as false, but the claims were good enough for the administrators of Ansar al-Mujahideen online forum to post them. One of the major surprises about JaK claiming an attack in France is that in 2011 all of JaK’s attacks were carried out in Kazakhstan and all of JaK’s statements were directed against the Kazakh government.

Yet, one reason to believe that JaK’s claims are legitimate is its track record. In 2011, the three claims JaK made about three attacks in Atyrau, Taraz, and Boraldai (a village outside of Almaty) were consistent with the facts on the ground and were released within three to four days of the attacks, so they showed some degree of inside information.

For instance, on October 31, 2011 in Atyrau, a terrorist blew himself up next to an apartment building near the Prosecutor-General’s office and another bomb detonated in a garbage can blocks away. A claim of credit by JaK following the attack showed inside knowledge, especially since the statement was released the day after the explosions, which would not have given JaK much time to see the media’s depiction of the event. JaK said:

“We refute that the last attack was carried out as a martyrdom-operation. It seems that the bomb exploded accidently, which led to the martyrdom of its carrier. We ask Allah to accept him among the martyrs.”

A similar claim with a degree of inside knowledge was released three days after Maksat Kariyev went on a several hour noontime rampage in November 2011 in Taraz, Southeastern Kazakhstan killing five security officers, one gun shop guard, and himself in a suicide bombing that he detonated when a police commander approached him. JaK claimed responsibility and said:

“In Taraz, you saw with your own eyes what one soldier did to you, and God willing you will see horrors by the hands of men who don’t fear death and give their souls easily to support the religion of Islam and defend the honor of the Muslims.”

In Boraldai Village outside of Alamaty, five JaK fighters were killed on December 3, 2011 when Kazakhstan security forces surrounded them inside their safehouse. Four days later Jak came out with a claim that said:

“We are ready to be killed in the thousands in order to support [Islam]… losing our lives is a cheap price that we pay for this cause… God give glory to the fighters who were killed by the apostate forces of the Nazarbayev regime at a base where the five lions of the al-Zahir Baybars Battalion of Jund al Khilafa were gathered.”

Sure, JaK may be bluffing about Mohammed Merah. But what may have happened is that Merah passed through a JaK training camp in Pakistan’s tribal areas with the approval or guidance of the Taliban or al-Qaeda. This is not such a far stretch considering that the IMU, JaK, TIP, and other Central Asian groups all have camps supported by the Taliban in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region. To Merah, JaK could have been a typical al-Qaeda outfit, but to JaK Merah could have been perceived as one of theirs— hence the claims.

On February 28, a 40-year old Chinese female was shot dead in Peshawar, Pakistan along with her male interpreter. According to various news sources, she was a “tourist,” which is surprising considering that the Chinese are famous for group tours and that even the boldest of female travelers is unlikely to engage in tourism in Pakistan’s most Talibanized city. Nonetheless, Pakistan’s Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Operations, Tahir Ayub, confirmed that she entered Pakistan on a tourist visa and that she was taking pictures in the bazaar when she was killed.  She was a student of Beijing University, so her bold travel plans may have been related to her studies.

The murder of this lady and her interpreter is unique because the Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying it was in retaliation for “atrocities” by Chinese security forces in Xinjiang. While this not the first time Chinese nationals have been murdered in Pakistan, this is the first time the Taliban has claimed responsibility for murdering a Chinese national.

This murder in Peshawar occurred within 24 hours after a group of around ten Uyghurs armed with knives and axes attacked a market in Yecheng County in Xinjiang, near Kashgar, killing as many as 20 people. The Chinese security forces responded by arresting more than 80 Uyghurs. There is no proof that the Taliban actually carried out the murder in Peshawar or that the murder was related to the events in Yecheng, but it is possible given the claim of responsibility and the timing.

Why might the Taliban have an interest in killing this woman and claiming credit for it, regardless of the possible relationship to the Yecheng incident? One possibility is that members of the Pakistani Taliban have been influenced by Uyghur militants from Xinjiang who are based in the tribal regions on Pakistan. A jihadi group claiming to be called the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) has released more than a dozen videos of Uyghurs in the tribal regions of Pakistan engaging in military training with other Central Asian militants. One video featured Chinese Uyghur Memtieli Tiliwaldi, who was later killed by Chinese security forces in Kashgar after he participated in attacks on Chinese civilians in Kashgar on July 30 and 31, 2011.

A set videos called “Tourism of the Believers” has featured a preacher speaking in Uyghur to approximately 30 listeners about jihad and other Islamic issues. It can be assumed that the videos were shot in Pakistan because of the mountainous terrain in the background and the listeners’ traditional Islamic clothing which is commonly worn by men in Pakistan. It can also be assumed that the listeners actually understand the preacher and are not just props for the video since they respond in unison to the speaker’s cues. These videos give good cause to believe that there are at least a few dozen Uyghur militants in Pakistan.

Although Xinjiang and China are not a top priority for the Taliban on par with the U.S. and NATO, some Taliban and Central Asian militants may have been influenced by their Uyghur brethren in Pakistan and taken up the TIP’s cause. This unfortunate lady may have been the victim of a revenge act by such members of the Taliban. Since the attackers have not been caught, they may even have been Uyghurs or Central Asians in Peshawar themselves.

Another motive for the Taliban in killing Chinese nationals in Pakistan is related to China’s developing infrastructure, such as roads, tunnels and bridges in Pakistan which facilitate trade and commerce between the two countries. The Taliban may feel threatened by China as a positive development actor in the country, which is helping to spur Pakistan’s economic development. It serves no benefit to the Taliban if people have more jobs and trade opportunities, especially with an “infidel” country like China. If anything, a better economic condition as a result of trade with China could deter people from joining the Taliban.

By killing Chinese nationals the Taliban may hope to deter Chinese nationals from working in Pakistan and therefore stunt Chinese influence in Pakistan and add friction to the China-Pakistan relationship. The Taliban may also be trying to provoke a response from China through an aggressive reaction or rhetoric to portray China as an enemy since the U.S. is soon leaving Afghanistan and terrorist groups always benefit from having new enemies to justify their existence.

China and Pakistan have been quick to affirm their mutual interest in finding the murderers and respecting each others’ sovereignty, but the overarching issue is whether this incident will become part a larger trend of attacks against Chinese nationals in Pakistan. Thousands of Chinese nationals are working to develop Pakistan’s infrastructure and their projects could get sidelined if the Taliban and other allied extremists succeed in carrying out more of these types of attacks.

2011 saw a substantial decrease in drone strikes in Pakistan. According to numbers assembled by the New America Foundation, strikes fell from a high of 118 in 2010 to 70 in 2011 — a 40% decrease (there were no drone strikes in December because of an errant U.S. artillery strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers). Today, the New York Times reports on another bit of news that correlates with the decrease in drone strikes: fewer suicide bombings.

The kidnappings are continuing even as Pakistani security forces have seemed to blunt the militants’ ability to inflict mass casualties: suicide attacks fell by 35 percent in 2011, according to the annual report of the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, while the number of people killed in attacks fell from 3,021 in 2009 to 2,391 last year.

But the lull may be temporary, experts warn, and meanwhile the militants are filling their coffers with ransom money.

I’m really curious who these experts are and what they base that on (especially if it’s more than just a feeling). Interestingly, too, the number and rate of kidnappings, which is the subject of the article, have remained relatively constant over time (Declan Walsh, the author, rightly notes that kidnapping for ransom has a very long history in Northwest Pakistan, in contrast to suicide bombing, which does not).

Still, correlation is not causation and all these numbers could be responding to things we just don’t know or see. Pakistanis, however, are drawing conclusions from this correlation, and it’s been driving public anti-American sentiment for quite some time now. Though policymakers might think the effects are worth the cost, the cost seems to have risen substantially, especially as Pakistan implodes on itself and American influence and capacity for constraining the outcome hits another all-time low. Is that worth it? We won’t know for a while, but it’s an awfully big gamble.

Chart comes from the New America Foundation’s drone tracker.

Frank Jacobs has a really interesting piece in the Opinionator about border areas and government control.

But there exists another type of border, one that doesn’t reflect back our image. In vampiric asymmetry, it offers only the void. There are no barriers, no officials, no capitals on the other side. The world as we know it — reciprocal even across national borders — ends here. One thinks of the American West in the mid-19th century, or parts of Brazil into the 20th. The borderline does not merely separate two territories, but two paradigms: law and order from anarchy, progress from primitivism. Or perhaps, seen from the other side: freedom from oppression, purity from decadence.

In earlier times, such lawless anomalies were surprisingly common, even in the middle of “civilization.” London was riddled by as many as a dozen legal safe havens, where debtors and criminals could seek refuge from arrest [1]. Emerging first in the Middle Ages, they persisted until Parliament abolished the last of them in 1723.

Lawless regions as an analytic construct is of interest to Central Asia hands, if only because there are a few of them in the region and they can sometimes adversely affect international politics. Jacobs highlights an intriguing region, called “Zomia” by Dutch historian Willem van Schendel, where states exercise little or no control over the people who live there. Recently van Schendel expanded this Zomia region to include several of the states of Central Asia, as highlighted in the map above.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas in Pakistan is perhaps the most immediately famous part of Zomia, and that can give you an idea of what the construct means: a region where a government might exist in some form but where control is either absent or violently contested by locals. It is intriguing, to be sure. But Jacobs also gets a few things badly wrong as well.

For one, the map of Zomia—which is posted above—is wrong. Even ignoring the completely arbitrary extent of the shaded area, whoever made the map mislabeled Tajikistan as Uzbekistan. That’s just… well, mistakes happen, even in the New York Times. But if you can’t name the right country on a map, just how much do you know how the social disconnection that may or may not be there?

But there is a more serious mistake Jacobs makes in trying to discuss the idea of Zomia:

In 2009, the Yale political scientist James C. Scott examined the fractious nature of Zomia’s politics in a “counter-narrative” [8] — in other words, from the local point of view. These highlanders, he contended, are not unassimilated because they are untouched by modernity, but because they reject it. This puts them in league with, or at least in the same league as, the non-conformists of Alsatia. This also illuminates, and complicates, our understanding of the Afghanistan-Pakistan conflicts, which might not be all about secular modernity versus religious orthodoxy, but maybe also about city versus village (or, more likely, valley).

Unless one equates modernity with answering to a central government you did not choose, this is all wrong. All of it. I can’t speak to Scott’s argument—I own but have not read his book—but the idea that these transitional regions resist their governments because they reject modernity is nonsense. Afghanistanis and Pakistanis do not reject modernity writ large: they love running water and sanitation and schools and iPhones and electricity and the Internet. Even the Taliban enjoy and appreciate these aspects of modernity. What they are rejecting is a government they view as abusive and unrepresentative. Moreover, most Afghans still identify as Afghans, even (or perhaps especially) when explaining why they reject rule-by-Karzai. So it’s not as simple as rejecting a national identity or modernity.

A similar thread connects the other regions of Central Asia. Southern Kyrgyz don’t reject modernity—they’d love to all drive a Mercedes and live in a big house and have nice things. What they reject is the broken politics of Bishkek. In Tajikistan, it’s hard to say even that the countryside is rejecting the state—the state is so absent in many places it’s hard to say the people there believe in it one way or another very strongly at all.

The idea of a lawless region as an object of analysis is fraught with issues. These regions are not “lawless,” as Jacobs calls them. They just operate under different laws that are neither drafted nor enforced by the state. The tribal areas of Pakistan, for example, actually follow a long-established pattern of competition between local and central methods of control. Similarly, Southwest Kyrgyzstan isn’t rejecting modernity by any stretch, it is just coming under the control of mafia dons who have taken up high-level positions in the local and regional government. It’s not lawless, it’s just a different kind of law, however un-ideal and crappy.

I know the idea Jacobs is getting at: that some regions of the world, seemingly clustered in Central and South Asia reject their governments’ control. That’s fine and fairly accurate to say. But to extend that to then argue that the people in this vast expanse exist in lawlessness and reject modernity is a pretty ridiculous assumption to assign to them. It’s also just not true, at least in a big chunk of the region he’s describing. When trying to make a grand argument about a big topic, it’s important to get the details right.

The AP report:

Pakistan’s defense minister said Tuesday that the country should reopen its Afghan border crossings to NATO troop supplies after negotiating a better deal with the coalition.

Pakistan closed the crossings over two months ago in response to American airstrikes that accidentally killed 24 Pakistani soldiers at two Afghan border posts. The closure has forced the United States to spend six times as much money to send supplies to Afghanistan through alternative routes.

You can frame this two ways:

• The U.S. is spending an exorbitant sum to send supplies through the NDN (read: Uzbekistan), so therefore everything is a failure and the silence will fall; or
• The expansion of the NDN (read: Uzbekistan) has created sufficient political space and pressure on Pakistan that they’re finally willing to climb down and play ball on transit routs and other issues.

Of course, both frames are true, at least to a degree. In the current status quo it’s unlikely Pakistan will agree to much more than allowing the transit routes to reopen (not coincidentally further enriching the Pakistani military-run trucking mafia along the way), just as it’s unlikely paying even $87 million more per month for transit costs through Central Asia will bankrupt the U.S.

From the U.S. government’s perspective, however, they’re now getting movement out of Islamabad, and that’s really what they want. Mission accomplished, then?

I wrote a piece for The Atlantic about why Pakistan’s boycott has turned an already iffy conference at Bonn into a complete farce:

But the Bonn II conference has met with significant hurdles. Besides Pakistan, Afghanistan’s largest neighbor, no one seems to know if Afghanistan’s other major neighbor, Iran, will participate (I spoke with officials in the State Department, who would neither confirm nor deny Iran’s attendance). U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker has told the Taliban they are not welcome to participate either, though German representatives have expressed interest in hosting some Taliban representatives. And Uzbekistan, which the U.S. is counting on as a transit corridor for its withdrawal plans, has been coy about its participation in any international conferences.

So a conference about the future of Afghanistan that is meant to leave a lasting, workable regional framework in place to manage the many diplomatic, economic, and security consequences of an American withdrawal might not include four of the most important participants: Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, or the Taliban. And yet, the other 90 countries that participate hope to accomplish something.

Not exactly earth-shattering, but it needs to be said.

This is a guest post by Eric Auner, a Policy Analyst at the American Security Project. He tweets at @eauner.

***

Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder’s latest article properly focuses on nuclear dangers emanating from Pakistan. Their critiques of Pakistani behavior are powerful and convincing. The article does not, however, acknowledge the ways in which Pakistani nuclear policies mirror those of other nuclear-armed states.

Pakistan is in a difficult spot, both politically and geographically. It faces multiple insurgencies at home, it is bordered by an unstable Middle East and a rising India, and the country’s economy and political system consistently fail to deliver results for most Pakistanis.

The Pakistani government’s behavior has exacerbated these problems. Civilian leaders are corrupt and ineffectual, which has tended to strengthen the political dominance of an overly ambitious military. The country has started numerous unsuccessful wars with India. It has used militant and terrorist groups to bloody its stronger rival and maintain influence in Afghanistan. Numerous terrorist attacks, including the 2008 attacks on Mumbai, have resulted from this policy.

Pakistan has also developed a nuclear arsenal, which now consists of over 100 weapons by some estimates. The country developed nuclear weapons in response to the Indian nuclear program. India conducted a “peaceful nuclear explosion” in 1974 and then conducted a series of nuclear tests in 1998 after decades of steady progress towards a nuclear weapons capability. Pakistan responded with its own nuclear tests in 1998, announcing itself as a nuclear weapons power.

Many observers, including Goldberg and Ambinder, are concerned that Pakistan is unwilling or unable to keep its nuclear weapons safe from terrorist groups.

Below I identify several of the arguments used in Goldberg and Ambinder’s article and elsewhere to criticize Pakistani behavior in the nuclear realm. I will argue that Pakistan’s actions are in many ways broadly similar to those taken by other nuclear weapon powers.

This exercise is not intended to excuse or validate Pakistan’s actions, especially the use of terrorist groups as a foreign policy tool. Nor do I suggest that the history of the Pakistani nuclear program exactly resembles those of other countries. Rather, I propose that a more thorough understanding of Pakistani nuclear motivations will result in a more thoughtful and effective American response to the challenges posed by Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

Pakistan is not transparent about its nuclear arsenal

Goldberg and Ambinder highlight Pakistani nuclear opacity (emphasis added):

Some American intelligence experts question Pakistan’s nuclear vigilance. Thomas Fingar, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council and deputy director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush, said it is logical that any nuclear-weapons state would budget the resources necessary to protect its arsenal—but that “we do not know that this is the case in Pakistan.” The key concern, Fingar says, is that “we do not know if what the military has done is adequate to protect the weapons from insider threats, or if key military units have been penetrated by extremists. We hope the weapons are safe, but we may be whistling past the graveyard.”

It would enhance international stability (and calm American fears) if Pakistan provided more information about its nuclear plans. Unfortunately, no country, including the United States, is fully transparent in this regard. Nuclear weapons locations, safety procedures, and targeting plans will always be closely guarded secrets.

Pakistan is expanding its nuclear arsenal and building new kinds of weapons

Western nuclear experts have feared that Pakistan is building small, “tactical” nuclear weapons for quick deployment on the battlefield.

There is a long-running debate about how many nuclear weapons a given country “needs” to protect itself. Nuclear-armed countries have tended to err on the side of building a large number of weapons in order to deter rivals and hedge against a first strike against their nuclear forces.

The United States possessed over 20,000 nuclear weapons with various explosive yields at the height of the Cold War and retains over 5,000 today. The substantial reductions of the last two decades have come in the context of relative international stability and the disappearance of America’s main strategic threat.

For Pakistan, the strategic threat from India is growing as the country gains more political and economic clout and continues a robust military modernization campaign.

Seen in this context, the Pakistani decision to invest its scarce resources in nuclear warheads is regrettable and destabilizing, but is hardly without historical precedent.

Pakistan disperses its nuclear forces, making them more difficult to protect and account for

General Kidwai promised that he would redouble the [Strategic Plans Division’s (SPD)] efforts to keep his country’s weapons far from the prying eyes, and long arms, of the Americans, and so he did: according to multiple sources in Pakistan, he ordered an increase in the tempo of the dispersal of nuclear-weapons components and other sensitive materials. One method the SPD uses to ensure the safety of its nuclear weapons is to move them among the 15 or more facilities that handle them. Nuclear weapons must go to the shop for occasional maintenance, and so they must be moved to suitably equipped facilities, but Pakistan is also said to move them about the country in an attempt to keep American and Indian intelligence agencies guessing about their locations.

All countries with nuclear weapons have feared that foreign powers could disable their nuclear weapons on the ground to prevent them from being used. The established nuclear powers use nuclear-armed submarines precisely because they are almost impossible to find. Pakistan lacks the sophistication to deploy a submarine with nuclear missiles and its land-based facilities are visible to foreign surveillance.

The article alleges that Pakistan transports complete nuclear weapons on public roads in unmarked vans (Pakistan denies this). This is highly dangerous and irresponsible if true. Nevertheless, the general practice of dispersing nuclear forces is broadly consistent with the behavior of other nuclear powers.

Pakistan reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict and may use them on the battlefield

India, in contrast, has been more transparent about its nuclear posture; unlike Pakistan, it has pledged not to use nuclear weapons first—only in response.

During the Cold War, NATO feared a Soviet invasion of Europe. This led the United States to threaten nuclear retaliation against a conventional Soviet attack and to station tactical nuclear weapons in several European countries. A number of these weapons remain in Europe today. The United States still reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first in some circumstances. Israel developed its nuclear arsenal to protect itself against invasion by its neighbors, none of which have nuclear weapons.

There is a powerful argument to be made that all nuclear-armed countries should declare a “no first use” policy and renounce nuclear weapons as a war fighting tool, retaining them as a pure deterrent. Few countries have done so. Pakistan is sadly typical in this regard.

Conclusion

Goldberg and Ambinder are correct that “keeping Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal secure and holstered” is “the most important goal” for American policy towards the country. A policy centered on this goal will need to find new ways to address Pakistani feelings of insecurity and nuclear vulnerability. Policies that build stability between India and Pakistan are a necessary precondition for progress on this front.

Pakistan’s nuclear policy presents unique challenges even as it adheres to historical patterns. American policy will benefit from acknowledging them.

There remains a lot of pushback against the idea that the U.S.’s decision to re-engage with the Karimov regime in Uzbekistan represents a least-bad option for the region. Writing a guestpost at my friend Steve LeVine’s blog, Russell Zanca argues:

Like-minded thinkers see Uzbek military forces as competent and trustworthy military partners. Furthermore, Foust himself asserts that there are times when cooperation between U.S. military forces and even those of authoritarian states, such as Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, lead to a softening of how military and police forces handle domestic disturbances.

I am wondering if this was manifest in how Egyptian police recently dealt with Coptic protesters in Cairo. Those who think similarly must know that U.S. and Uzbek military forces have been working together since the mid-1990s, and yet in 2005 Uzbek military units had no compunction about killing hundreds of their countrymen in the city of Andijan. If these examples show that U.S. engagement improves the conduct of the armed forces of dictatorships, I suppose I simply don’t grasp how awful these armed forces might behave without our assistance and cooperation.

This is misreading my argument, which was that Security Assistance can lead to increased professionalism (not that it always does), and that increased professionalism would be good for Uzbekistan. In fact, former political prisoner Sanjar Umarov has argued that quite explicitly: that some monitoring and professionalization would actually substantially reduce the amount of abuse in the Uzbek system. (For the record, despite the recent incident with the Copts, the U.S.-trained professionalism of the Egytpian Army is widely credited with allowing the revolution that toppled Mubarak to proceed with relatively little violence.)

Furthermore, it was not quite “Uzbek military units” that opened fire on the protesters in Andjon. According to an OSCE survey of refugees, it was a mixture of Interior Ministry forces and the police, and some military vehicles, that were identified firing into the crowd. This is not a defense of the massacre, but it is important when using it as an argument that the details are correct. The OSCE was running a police mentorship program at the time; while it has serious problems, no one blames the OSCE for the behavior of the Uzbek police (and there is some evidence that better training has led to marginal improvements, though nothing significant). As Cornelius Graubner argued quite well, “programs must contain meaningful human rights and good governance components, not just technical innovation.” I couldn’t agree more.

Which is probably why Secretary Clinton and her staff have been up front that they also will be pushing for human rights and good governance issues as a part of the new engagement policy. I share Nathan’s skepticism that this will result in anything other than marginal improvements. But marginal improvements are better than zero improvements, which has been the result of the last six years of isolation, protest, and hectoring-from-afar (as well as the cotton boycott).

The big problem I see with the opposition to engagement is that it is focused entirely on Uzbekistan, with almost no regard for the broader political and regional context. The State Department is pushing this engagement so that the U.S. can withdraw from Afghanistan without empowering the international terrorists who run Pakistan’s military and intelligence services. The implicit argument that denying the ISI the ability to launder U.S. money and equipment to launch terrorist attacks inside Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India, is a bad thing because it won’t change the plight of Uzbeks is badly shortsighted.

The human rights argument about what to do in Uzbekistan are, at best, a sideshow. Ending the military subsidies to Pakistan and shifting the military’s supply chain to Uzbekistan is a massive net-gain for the entire region. Literally everyone, including Uzbeks, will benefit by starving the Pakistani beast. Moreover, it will make the war in Afghanistan more likely to end on a less-bad note, since the continuing dissolution of the U.S.’s relationship with Pakistan won’t necessarily prompt a catastrophic, sudden withdrawal.

Critics like Russell Zanca, or ICG’s Andrew Stroehlein, do not place their arguments in the context of the war in Afghanistan, which is the context the U.S. government is using. They just say engagement is bad because it won’t really help Uzbeks. They’re right about the latter part. But in the real world, where you cannot just cross your arms and pout that you don’t like your choices and wish for something better, you have to make choices. Engagement with Uzbekistan, and disengagement from Pakistan, will do the least amount of harm, which is all we can hope for at this point. It is the only real option U.S. policymakers have left.

A special guest post by C. Christine Fair

On Monday, August 1, the New Yorker ran a piece by Nicholas Schmidle, a young freelance journalist, which proffered a breathtakingly detailed account of the Bin Laden Take-down in May of 2011.  I have known Schmidle since the summer of 2006, when we met at my office at the United States Institute of Peace. He explained that he had a fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs that would allow him to live in Pakistan and write about his experiences for two years.

Mr. Schmidle had one serious problem: he was not an accredited journalist, which meant the Pakistani government was disinclined to give him a journalism visa. He sought my advice. I explained to him that visa issues are not my bailiwick but I outlined some of the key issues he could consider if and when he sets out upon his newfound adventure. Though he didn’t know much about Pakistan, Mr. Schmidle struck me as a fast study.

In the end, Dr. Shireen Mazari (an outspoken, anti-American polemicist) agreed to host Mr. Schmidle at the think-tank she ran at the time. However, it was a bargain with the devil: he still was not a journalist and he got his visa at the behest of a dubious shill for Pakistan’s intelligence agency.

Over the next few years, I watched Mr. Schmidle’s reporting. He had an eye for the key issues and he covered many important stories that others overlooked. I met him episodically in Islamabad when I came to Pakistan. In January 2008, Mr. Schmidle published a piece in the New York Times Magazine called the “Next-Gen Taliban.” In that article, he ventured into Quetta to attend an opening ceremony for the campaign office of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI), which he described in anodyne terms as a “a hard-line Islamist party.”

Mr. Schmidle wrote that the men in attendance mostly spoke Pashto but “knowing Urdu, I could understand enough [of their Pashto] to realize that they weren’t rehashing the typical J.U.I. rhetoric.” That made the rest of the article immediately suspect.  I knew Mr. Schmidle, and knew that his language skills in Urdu were functional at best and, even if he had superb Urdu skills (and he did not), this would not render Pashto comprehensible in the slightest. (It is not an Indo-Aryan language like Urdu and therefore has a grammar and syntax that is starkly different from Urdu.) While one may recognize some Urdu words, without grammar and syntax the content of the discussion would have been opaque to Mr. Schmidle. Indeed, Pakistanis who have spent their entire life in the country speaking Urdu cannot understand Pashto and would never make the absurd claim to do so.  How could Mr. Schmidle understand, must less interpret, what was going on without knowledge of Pashto or a translator? It seemed to me that things were not as they were reported.

I had a similar feeling this week when I began perusing Mr. Schmidle’s account of the Bin Laden raid.  The account was deeply detailed. He described how the commander of the team, whom he called James “sat on the floor, squeezed among ten other SEALs, Ahmed [the translator], and Cairo [the malimois]. (The names of all the covert operators mentioned in this story have been changed.) James, a broad-chested man in his late thirties, does not have the lithe swimmer’s frame that one might expect of a SEAL—he is built more like a discus thrower.”

Schmidle detailed “James’” apparel and personal effects:   he was sporting “a shirt and trousers in Desert Digital Camouflage, [carrying] a silenced Sig Sauer P226 pistol, along with extra ammunition; a CamelBak, for hydration; and gel shots, for endurance. He held a short-barrel, silenced M4 rifle.”  He even inventoried the contents of this fellow’s pockets.

Mr. Schmidle then recalls, in riveting detail, the harrowing movements of the helicopters and how “the interior of the Black Hawks rustled alive with the metallic cough of rounds being chambered.” When the first helicopter encountered problems, Schmidle exposits how the pilot reoptimized his plans and aimed for “for an animal pen in the western section of the compound.” He next tells his readers how the SEALs in the ill-fated bird “braced themselves as the tail rotor swung around, scraping the security wall. The pilot jammed the nose forward to drive it into the dirt and prevent his aircraft from rolling onto its side. Cows, chickens, and rabbits scurried.”

He even describes how the translator Ahmed hollered in Pashto at the locals that a security operation was ongoing to allay their suspicions about the nature of the cacophony in the cantonment town. (This detail caught my eye as the majority of persons in Abbottabad, where the raid took place, speak Hindko rather than Pashto.) He account is replete with quotes and other minute details obtained from persons seemingly involved directly in the assault and presumably speaking to him in person.

The article was in fact so detailed that it left the unmistakable impression that Mr. Schmidle had interviewed at least a few of the SEALs involved in the raid. During an NPR interview, Steve Inskeep explains that indeed Schmidle had spent time with the SEALs who were on the mission to get Bin Laden. NPR subsequently issued a correction for reasons noted below.

If not Navy SEALS, then perhaps he met some Navy Otters?

All of this makes for a gripping read. Too gripping I thought to myself.  As it turned out, there is one very serious problem with Mr. Schmidle’s account: Schmidle never met any of the SEALs involved, as reported (with great tact and restraint) by Paul Farhi on August 3.

Farhi reached the same conclusion as I had: “a casual reader of the article wouldn’t know that [he had not interviewed the SEALS]; neither the article nor an editor’s note describes the sourcing for parts of the story. Schmidle, in fact, piles up so many details about some of the men, such as their thoughts at various times, that the article leaves a strong impression that he spoke with them directly.”

Surely a journalist or an editor with a commitment to informing—rather than amusing—a public would understand that disclosing this simple fact is critical to allowing readers to determine how much credibility they should put into this account.  In the absence of such disclosure, we are left asking whether this was second or third-hand information? Who are the people that he spoke to and how credible is their information?

Such an egregious exercise of incaution raises a number of questions about the entire report.

Schmidle has demurred from tackling this serious issue of credibility, integrity and veracity directly.  During a “live chat” with Mr. Schmidle on the New Yorker’s website yesterday, several persons including myself tried to ask Mr.Schmidle to explain this egregious oversight.  (I posed the question four times throughout the course of the “live chat.” The moderator did not post a single one. (Earlier in the day, Schmidle and I exchanged emails wherein I expressed my dismay at his reportage.)

Many of us were following this in real time via twitter. I was not alone: others—including other journalists—tried to ask other tough questions but the moderator did not post them either. I also tried to post a comment to this effect along with other readers’ comments. That comment has not yet been posted.

Finally, after a volley of fatuous queries to which Schmidle responded with a peculiar degree of detail, the moderator finally let one person raise the issue that he neither met any of the SEALS involved nor indicated as much in his report.

Unfortunately for the credibility of this exercise, this person was Erin Simpson—a friend of Mr. Schmidle.  Ms. Simpson had earlier defended him during a twitter exchange with me wherein she responded to my vexed queries that “he’s a good friend.” She further intimated that someone involved in the operation may have spoken to him because he is a “GO’s kid.” The latter point references the fact that his father,  Marine Corps Lt. Gen. Robert E. Schmidle Jr., is the deputy commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.

Schmidle answers Ms. Simpson in a familiar voice: “Hi Erin. Good question. I’ll just say that the 23 SEALs on the mission that evening were not the only ones who were listening to their radio communications.”

The response was risible and hardly addressed how he could have acquired such details of the operation through such means.

That the moderator passed on only softball questions and that this one question was posed by a “close friend,” raises more questions than the “live chat” could have answered.

What’s at Stake?

One may ask at first blush why a feel-good story about the Bin Laden raid is problematic or even merits sustained critique. From an American point of view, the story reads like the film script Schmidle may well aspire to write. It confirms all that we wanted to know about the raid and the bravado of our SEALS.  The shooter, who finally killed Bin Laden, even managed to mutter “For God and Country” in the femtoseconds that his synapses took to pull the trigger, according to Schmidle.

However, there are implications that go well beyond Mr. Schmidle’s limits of journalism integrity and his own personal aggrandizement and professional aspirations.

First, many Muslims across the world fundamentally doubt the events of the Bin Laden raid. Some believe Bin Laden is still alive. Others believe he died long ago. Others believe that the events of May 2 were staged to allow the Obama administration to make an exit from Afghanistan.  As Mr. Schmidle’s is the first (and so far only) account of the drama, these problems cast a pale of doubt upon the events that transpired that evening.

Second is the simple fact of Mr. Schmidle parentage. His father, as noted above, is the deputy commander of the U.S. Cyber Command.  Given the conspiratorial propensities of many within and beyond the Muslim world, Schmidle’s ties to this organization by virtue of his father would recast any serious inaccuracy in his report as a U.S. military psychological operation to deliberately misinform the world about the operation.

The reasons for this are at least two-fold. First is the charge of U.S. Cyber Command itself, which in it the lexicon of the U.S. Department of Defense is “pulling together existing cyberspace resources, creating synergy that does not currently exist and synchronizing war-fighting effects to defend the information security environment.” While the organization appears dedicated to protecting cyber infrastructure, others may interpret its role as using cyberspace to spread disinformation.  Second, cynics may justifiably wonder what influence if any his father had in the article. Schmidle explains this to Farhi “’He knew I was working on it,’ the younger Schmidle says, ‘but we both decided it was best not to discuss it in advance. We wanted to maintain distinct lines of operation.’” I have no reason to not believe this. However, given that questions that now hover about his report will other readers be so inclined?

Finally, whether or not the shooter actually said “For God and For Country” is another important question that affects the way in which the United States and is citizenry are seen across the world. The conflict with Bin Laden has been waged in lamentably civilizational terms focusing upon the clash of Islam and the presumably non-Islamic west.  Since 9/11, countries with Muslim minorities have been gripped by Islamophobia with some states outlying headscarves and minarets and others seeking to restrict the erection of new mosques. Anti-immigration concerns in Europe are thinly disguised efforts to deter future Muslims from migrating.  Success in the war of terrorism seems to be equated with success in turning back the spread of Islam. Several states in the United States have even introduced ludicrous and shameful bills to outlaw Sharia.

How would a proclamation that Bin Laden was killed “for God and for country” be read in a place like Pakistan where the war on terror has been largely seen as a war on Islam and Muslims? If this was in fact uttered, as an American, I am saddened that eliminating the world’s most notorious killer was done “for God” first and country second. If it wasn’t uttered, such a gratuitous detail hardly helps the United States make its case that it opposes terrorists not Muslims.

A Story Too Good to Check?

Whether Americans and our allies like it or not, Pakistan and Pakistan’s populations are critical to U.S. interests.  This will be true for the foreseeable future.  Journalists have an important function: informing our publics.  Journalists’ reportage shapes how Americans see their country abroad and understand the countries with which the United States engages. It shapes our support for war, for foreign aid, for particular bilateral relations. The U.S. experience with the Iraq war illustrates the extreme limits of how a supine and incompetent press became the vehicle to mobilize an angry public for an ill-conceived and unjustifiable war of choice.  The United States will long pay the price for strategic error.

Journalists have an equally important, if less appreciated, role in shaping how the outside world sees us. With the internet, the entire world reads our press, watches our television and hears our radio broadcasts.  Media hype and hysteria, xenophobia, Islamophobia and more quotidian issues of inaccuracy and incaution with handling sensitive pieces of information are for the whole world to see and to judge us.

With stakes this high, should not the standards of journalistic integrity be even higher? I should think yes. The New Yorker should immediately right this wrong by publishing an editor’s note disclosing the simple fact that he never interviewed the SEALS in involved in the raid.

C. Christine Fair is an assistant professor at Georgetown University and the author of Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States.