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The rapidly-decaying Pakistan situation.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  November 27th, 2011 at 09:19 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

A quick review of the recent breakdown in Pakistani-American relations:

Last Saturday a NATO airstrike reportedly killed 24 Pakistani troops located in military bases on Pakistani soil.  The exact details of the situation are still unknown: the Pakistanis are claiming that the assault was completely unprovoked, while (admittedly anonymous) Afghan sources claim that NATO troops were returning fire.  Either way, the population of Pakistan is enraged – to the point where they’re burning the President in effigy* – and NATO forces are worried about our allies the Pakistanis taking this opportunity as an excuse to step up reprisal attacks on NATO troops in Afghanistan. Which, if true, would be even more offensive than the burning in effigy.

Now, I could write about domestic politics at this point; and I could also write about how this showdown may have been inevitable from the start.  But the real, immediate point here is: one major piece of fallout from this incident is that critical NATO resupply convoys to Afghanistan have been stopped at the Pakistani border.  The administration needs to make this clear that this is unacceptable.  Because it is.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*They can just go ahead and stop that, by the way.  Now.

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  • Raven

    More seriously, if NATO genuinely Was returning fire, rather than just managing to screw the pooch massively (it’s NATO, could go either way), then I’d have to say that the “friendly” forces in Pakistan have pretty much LOST the civil war.

    We most definitely need to be thinking about ways to secure or eliminate Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal.

  • septembergurl

    we are going to have to fish, cut bait, or go ashore re Pakistan.

    In this development, it’s interesting to look back at the debate last week where Perry & Bachmann debated what our approach to Pakistan should be. As I recall, bachmann argued (from her position on the intelligence committee) that Pakistan was too important for us to cut off, while Perry argued for a cutoff of foreign aid. At the time I thought Bachmann had the better argument, but now I think Perry was right.

    Today on Fox, I heard Gov Huntsman argue in light of recent events, that we need to re-evaluate pakistan, treat them with very low expectations, withhold aid if they refuse the base for drones & passage of supplies to Afghanistan, etc, and that we should look for a new partner in the WOT in the region.

    When discussing Pakistan, Huntsman regularly namechecks the President, Asif Ali Zardari and the powerful Chief of staff of the military, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Can your guy do that?

  • breaves

    President Obama needs to step up as Commander in Chief and we must invade Pakistan before things get worse.

  • lizzie

    and certainly there is no way USA is going onshore to straighten out anything.
    For more than a year, Pakistani anti-Americanism has been fuelled by paranoid rumours that America wants to “steal Pakistan’s nukes”.

    Who knows? Maybe a set-up to allow Musharraff to make his comeback?

    Also, the NATO-supply route from Peshawar thru the Khyber Pass has been shut down before, by Pakistan.

    On a cheerier note, breaking news from HotAir, in an excellent report from J.E. Dyer, on Syria:

    http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/2011/11/27/so-why-did-we-have-to-hear-about-a-no-fly-zone-over-syria-from-rick-perry/

    Imagine that, Rick Perry as foreign policy guru :)

  • lizzie

    Have been studying South Asia since 2003, in depth, especially the Pashtuns
    (or Pathans)
    1) The Pashtuns were divided by the Durand Line in 1893 because the Brits gave up trying to ?govern? them after the Second Anglo-Afghan War. This is why the Af-Pak border is porous ? no one living there ever recognized it as anything but a British fantasy.
    2) in 1947 the FATA Pashtuns were Nationalists (ANP) aligned with India?s Congress Party, but the Brits forced them into Pakistan.
    3) Baluchistan continues to want to regain self-determination in a re-united Baluchistan that includes the part in Iran.
    4) Sind (Karachi) also has an official self-determination separation movement.
    5) which is why the military is dominated by Punjabis.
    6) The Swat Valley was the last bit to join Pakistan, in the early 1990?s.

    and then there is Kashmir?

    Pakistan survives economically from diaspora payments, especially from all the Pakistanis who do the grunt work in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

    The Saudis already pay for Pakistan?s nukes because no one fears a nuclear Iran more than the Saudis, whose oil is mostly located underneath the Shi?a minority who are barely tolerated as citizens in Saudi Arabia.

  • tomatin

    the AfPak theater I kinda saw this coming.

    Face it Pakistan has become an outlaw country like Iran was when we were in Iraq. We just don’t call it whatit is because they got nukes and we need to be their “friends”. Pakistan appease the Taliban in their own country. I really wonder if this was payback to the checkpoints that were letting the Taliban into Afghanistan.

    Anyone notice the attacks in Iraq are escalating since we are leaving too.

  • Tbone

    he would just tell them to get their heads and butts wired together and do what they are told.

  • Tbone

    Muslims because we are not willing to lay down the law to them now.

  • NeoKong

    I’m not saying it is impossible but I hardly think that NATO forces would fire on a Pakistani base by accident. Those drones can read a toothpaste tube at 5,000 feet so I find it hard to believe that this was all some mistake especially given the layers of oversight.

  • billymorris68

    Shouldn’t we just nuke them?

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    We’re typically against it.

    Clarify your position.

  • nathanalbright

    Namechecking the elites in a country as corrupt as Pakistan doesn’t mean anything if they don’t fear/respect you enough to do as they’re told or face the consequences. Pakistan is a nightmare, perhaps it’s time for a friendly partition so that the Baluchis and Sind can be free and the Pashtun territories restored to Afghanistan.

  • acat

    of the incompetent, and as a result they end up using far more.

    (somehow, everything after the comma is routinely deleted from this idea)

    Mew

  • http://www.hakubi.us/ Neil Stevens

    Well, Salvor Hardin’s line is a factor in how that concept gets quoted online.

  • tankertodd

    Invade a nation of 150 million +? And a nuclear power at that? Over Afghanistan?

    We could arguably cut bait from Afghanistan now. I mean, we made our point: mess with us and we’ll be in your backyard for a really long time, killing you like it’s cool. We’re unafraid to go where the Brits and Russians retreated from. If you mess with us, you will die. We can carry on with that policy thanks to our naval power off the coast of Pakistan, where they can receive the same message.

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    Choices:
    1. Pay Pakistan more bribe money to shush it over and move back to the old status quo. If this fails to be an option then:

    2. Make an alternate route into Afghanistan such as going completely airlift or alternate land routes or just carving out a land route through Pakistan and saying “so what” to the Pakistanis.
    or…

    3. Destroy their nukes, carve out a land route and start killing anyone who tries to interfere with the movement of NATO supplies until no one bothers trying anymore.
    or…
    4. Quit Afghanistan and admit defeat because we are suffering from the Vietnam syndrome about not wanting to widen the war into a country that supports and abets the insurgents we are fighting in Afghanistan. (but to be fair to Pakistan we aren’t dealing truly harshly with Iran who arms insurgencies in both Afghanistan and Iraq so what can we expect from them when they only pretend to be our allies).

    The Pakistanis are shooting at our people. They’ve been doing it longer than this… oh and they deliberately harbored Bin Laden until we found him and sent in a SEAL team to get him. It seems to me that the Pakistanis have picked a side in this war and it’s not ours.

    What do I expect to see the O do about it?
    Probably nothing much from the guy who kept saying we needed to invade Pakistan because “that’s where the war is” (if I recall correctly in reference to the insurgency coming across the border etc) until he was elected then suddenly seemed to conveniently forget about it.

    Personally I’d leaning towards option #3 with he caveat that the Pakistani nuclear program personnel/capability to rebuild nukes needs to go as well. Perhaps ask India to help “peacekeep” the region.

  • snowshooze

    So… why should Obama care?? And if Obama doesn’t care.. why should WE care??
    I was reading the air-strike was in self-defense. NATO shot back when fired upon.. only they hit their target.
    Well.. all is fair in love and war.
    Everyone knows NATO is a sock puppet for the good old USA.
    Look, I think we need to clarify our position a bit.
    I suggest that we carpet bomb Islamabad.
    And when we flatten it, we should send an invoice… just so as that they do not misunderstand us.

  • snowshooze

    Kill the Pakistani Nukes on the ground, where they stand.
    This will send a little hello to all the aspiring nuclear powers…
    Yeah, you wanna play? Ok..no whining when we kick your butts.

  • wennejunk

    of power projection and what we can do with it.

    Somebody bothers you?

    Meh – nuke ‘em.

  • nathanalbright

    …a bill for our aid for the last few years when they harbored Osama. That ought to make them get the point.

  • septembergurl

    partitioned India (creating pakistan)and Palestine(creating Trans-Jordan and Israel).

    That was 1948.

    How’s that workin for you?

    I’d say it’s a recipe for endless war.

  • nathanalbright

    …an endless war doesn’t bother me at all as long as we’re not involved in it. A Pakistan that is divided and squabbling among itself is a Pakistan that is not trying to be something it’s not (i.e. a unified nation). I think the same option should be done in other areas with insoluble separatist movements (see Georgia and Somalia, with a possibility of it in Libya and Iraq).

  • aesthete

    [no text]

  • Marcus_Traianus

    Whenever it is in our national interest, Pakistan is already on notice we will ignore their national sovereignty. See UBL for only the latest example. We move in and out at will and usually without notice since Pakistan can’t be trusted.

    There is no need to invade en masse. That’s a joke. Our infantry would be sipping tea somewhere in the Punjab region of India before Pakistan even knew what happened. Very precise, select actions are all that is necessary.

    Pakistan’s border troops are essentially Frontier Corps and gratuitously imbued with personnel not friendly to the US or NATO. They often provide support for the Taliban and other terrorists that criss-cross the border. Not to mention the IED chain that stretches back into Pakistan. The ISI binds this whole crap-pile together.

    This would not be the first time Pakistan fired on our forces first. See the incident with Major Baugess at Teri Mangal for something we don’t want repeated. Ever.

    So when the smoke clears, my prognostication is we were fired on and returned fire to keep our guys from getting killed or injured. Fine with me that only the bad guys were smoked. Maybe they will stop supporting the wrong side since force seems to be all they understand.

    As for logistics, this creates a huge nightmare. Look at the region on a map and you will see there are very few options. Therefore, this is a perfect opportunity to raise the stakes and start pulling back on things that really matter to Pakistan. That is, if we had a CinC with a set.

  • blooch

    I thought flammable US president effigies were a thriving cottage industry in every Muslim country. Maybe pictures of President Pockeestahn pyrotechnics in Peshawar are showing up in the MSM? Now that would be a crisis worse than Obama photographed wearing a Silly Shirt.

    Flaming Barack Obama…seems there’s a lot of that going around lately.

  • septembergurl

    eg, post WWII partition of Korea and Vietnam..

    Whatever problem caused the partition is exacerbated by the partition, then the aggressive side (Commies, Moslems) attacks the other side and we are called on for help.

    Is how that generally plays out.

  • buddyp

    Pakistan doesn’t have a stranglehold on supply routes to (and exit routes from) Afghanistan because of supply lines through
    Tajikstan and Uzbekistan.

    Hmm, imagine if we had a new president who was not only completely ignorant of those “Beki Beki stan stan” countries, but also had insulted them by his implication that they are so unimportant to the U.S. that a president could hardly be bothered to know anything about them unless and until he was about to meet with them about something.

  • snowshooze

    We were forced to devolop alternatives to the Pakistan route over their previous closures.
    Just about everybody in the region hates our stinking guts along with each other’s and everyone else generally.
    Honestly, if not for oil, minerals and trying to help defend the Jews… we would have no interest whatever.
    They still live with a tribal mindset. And even the tribe we are supporting is using us to get the upper hand on all the others.
    This includes Pakistan.
    I believe Perry understands this point, and it is the reason he wants to start at zero aid for any of them, every year, and set objectives and progress points for continued support.
    So our rented Pakistani friends need to understand they have to produce something for the money. If we do not approch the problem with this realistic understanding, we won’t ever get out of there.
    We have to lead them to peace with a bit of a push… they have no intention of doing it on their own.
    If we just send them money to do as they please with…it only gets used destructively.

  • Raven

    And when whichever anti-American faction asserts control again (Taliban, Haqqani, etc), we will be attacked, again.
    They don’t care how many of them we kill or how long we’re “in their backyard, killing them like it’s cool.”

    Afghanistan can’t stand on its own 2 feet yet. We can’t leave until that changes. More than that, the government in Afghanistan must be hunting down the extremists and terrorists on its own, without us telling them to.

  • Raven

    But so few people want to take the problem seriously. They don’t even see the problem for what it is. It’s always Our fault for being there in the first place.

  • Raven

    and NATO is WAY past that point, the more layers of oversight, the more likely there is to be an “accident” of this kind.

    See the UN in the Congo for a perfect example.

  • Raven

    for the USA. It has to do with THEY ATTACKED US!

    So get your head out of that racist backside of yours and get with the program.

  • snowshooze

    And Bush should have let Stormin’ Norman finish the job in the desert.
    But our pussyfooting around with these people has done us no favors.
    And this half hearted war game they are playing is getting more of our guys killed. If we are gonna do this.. we should go all out, and to heck with what it looks like. Finish the job.
    As in Obama thought the Generals request for 40,000 troops was a point to negotiate. ?
    That is insanity.