Pakistan - The New "Biggest Concern" for U.S.?
--- Saturday, April 4, 2009 
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama warned that Afghanistan, not Iraq, should be treated as the true “central front” in the war on Islamic extremism -
But today - it seems - Things Have Changed...
. . . As president, he has begun to translate that approach into action, announcing a slow withdrawal from Iraq while committing more troops and resources to Afghanistan.
But quietly, Obama has redefined and broadened the problem in a profound way. When he and others in his administration discuss the issue, they no longer describe the central front as Afghanistan; now, they tend to talk of Afghanistan and Pakistan, together, as a single problem.
“The future of Afghanistan is inextricably linked to the future of its neighbor, Pakistan,” Obama said last month in announcing a new policy in the region. “In the nearly eight years since 9/11, al-Qaida and its extremist allies have moved across the border to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier. This almost certainly includes al-Qaida’s leadership: Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. … For the American people, this border region has become the most dangerous place in the world.”
The evolving recognition of Pakistan’s importance is also laid out starkly in a new “white paper” issued by the administration on policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. Among other things, it stresses the importance of “disrupting terrorist networks in Afghanistan and especially Pakistan,” with the emphasis quite clearly on Pakistan. According to the report, “The core goal of the U.S. must be to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al-Qaida and its safe havens in Pakistan, and to prevent their return to Pakistan or Afghanistan.”
That language tells you a lot about the thinking of the president and his advisers and generals. Pakistan is no longer considered important just because of its impact on events on Afghanistan; Pakistan itself has become the central focus, with Afghanistan increasingly secondary. Two things have driven that reassessment:
• The stability of Pakistan itself is increasingly threatened. In testimony last week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. David Petraeus warned that “the Pakistani state faces a rising —indeed, an existential — threat from Islamist extremists such as al-Qaida and other transnational terrorist organizations.” Pakistan’s elected civilian government is weak and divided, unable to act to protect itself or its people. It is ceding more and more territory — and more and more of its citizenry — to rule by the Taliban. As Obama described the threat, “al-Qaida and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within.”
• Pakistan has a nuclear arsenal estimated roughly at 100 warheads. And while there is no immediate danger of Islamic militants gaining control of either the government or the warheads, the trend line is worrisome. If Pakistan falls, Petraeus warned Congress, it “would provide transnational terrorist groups and other extremist organizations an opportunity to acquire nuclear weapons and a safe haven from which to plan and launch attacks.”
It is in Pakistan, in other words, that the nightmare scenario woven by President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is most likely to play out. All the ingredients are there: nuclear weapons, a government so far lacking the means and will to defend itself, and a rising tide of Islamic extremism. In fact, the situation has deteriorated to such a degree that before Obama’s first term ends, it is conceivable U.S. troops may be fighting on the ground in Pakistan itself.
U.S. officials of course deny any such plan, as they should. “There is no intention for us to be conducting operations in there, certainly on the ground,” Petraeus said last week, “and there is every intention by the Pakistani military and their other forces to conduct those operations.”
Again, that language is revealing. It is no doubt true that at the moment, the U.S. has no intention of conducting ground operations in Pakistan. Doing so would mark a dangerous escalation of our commitment in that region. But the general’s choice of words leaves the door open should the situation change.
The most likely areas for such an intervention are the tribal regions bordering Afghanistan. They are technically part of Pakistan, but the Pakistani government has no presence there. The conditions that might force such an intervention are purely speculative. On a smaller scale, hit-and-run operations against specific targets inside the tribal areas could be launched under the same ground rules already in effect for missile strikes. Those strikes — by some reports launched from within Pakistan itself — occur with private permission but public condemnation from the Pakistani government. Ground raids, rare in the past, are likely to increase in number and scale as the summer fighting season opens.
At some future point, it is even conceivable that a Pakistani government will feel so threatened by Islamic extremists that it requests more direct and extensive U.S. military assistance. In light of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, it would be hard for Obama or any other president to deny that request.
Furthermore, if for some reason the United States chose not to intervene while Pakistan’s government fell to extremists, others in the region — most notably India — would almost certainly feel compelled to act, with potentially disastrous consequences.
The “AfPak” policy laid out by the Obama administration is clearly designed against that calamity. It attempts to bolster the will of Pakistan’s government to defend itself and to give Pakistani forces the training and resources they need to do so. The U.S. government is also working with India to lower tensions with Pakistan, so the Pakistani military can feel free to concentrate on the extremist threat.
India’s restrained reaction to the terror attack on Mumbai — an attack clearly launched from Pakistan, with possible support from elements in the Pakistani government — was an important if temporary success in that effort. It also suggests that India very much shares U.S. apprehension about that trend line in its neighbor.
What makes the problem truly difficult is there’s no short-term or mid-term answer, no chance of anything we might call victory. For a variety of reasons, including a failure to commit enough resources or attention years ago, the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan has become a condition that can at best be managed but maybe not cured.
• Jay Bookman, for the editorial board (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)
