With Allies Like These . . . pt. 5 Posted by Michael Cohen

Today in the New York Times, yet more information that the Pakistanis have zero interest in cracking down on Afghan Taliban safe havens in their midst:

The Pakistani Army indicated Thursday that it would not launch any new offensives against extremists in the mountainous region of North Waziristan for at least six months, pushing back against calls by the United States to root out militants staging attacks along the Afghan border.

An Army spokesman described Pakistan’s position as the United States secretary of defense, Robert M. Gates, arrived here for an unannounced two-day visit. Mr. Gates said that he planned to urge top Pakistani military officials to pursue extremist groups along their border, and that ignoring “one part of this cancer” would threaten the entire country’s stability.

. . . Implicitly he pressed Pakistan to root out the Afghan Taliban leadership, the Quetta Shura, which has found refuge in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province outside the tribal areas. American officials are increasingly frustrated that while the Pakistanis have launched offensives against the Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda, they have so far not pursued the Afghan Taliban and another extremist group on their border, the Haqqani network, whose fighters pose a threat to American forces.

Good luck with that Bob! Is this perhaps the least surprising news story ever.  Why the US thinks that the Pakistanis will simply disregard their own national interest because we gave them a few billion dollars in aid or we asked them really nicely is beyond me. The Pakistanis have been supporting the Taliban since the mid-1990s; they are the only reason why the Taliban is able to maintain its position as a serious insurgent force - a fact that American officials seem to recognize:

American officials privately say that the Pakistanis are reluctant to go after the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network because they see them as a future proxy against Indian interests in Afghanistan when the Americans leave. India is Pakistan’s archrival in the region; under President Obama’s Afghan strategy, announced last month, the United States is to begin withdrawing its forces from Afghanistan by July 2011.

You think? Here's what I don't understand: if American officials realize the inherent difficulty in getting the Pakistanis to go after these safe havens how did that not factor into the policy review for Afghanistan, which from all appearances continues to embrace a counter-insurgency model? Why would you announce a timeline for withdrawal if you have no legitimate plan to take out these safe havens? And if the military supposedly "gets" COIN how did this inconvenient fact not find its way into General McChrystal's strategic review, which says that ONLY population centric COIN can work in Afghanistan?

Perhaps all the counter-insurgent 'experts' out there could name for me the many successful counter-insurgencies fought against insurgent forces that have unmolested safe havens? 

Crikey, even in Vietnam - with tons and tons of bombs dropped by American planes - we couldn't stop the steady flow of supplies that came along the Ho Chi Minh Trail to the Vietcong. And in Afghanistan/Pakistan we're doing literally nothing to stanch that flow - except giving more money to the country that is supporting the effort.

And people wonder why I'm pessimistic about Afghanistan.

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In the aftermath of Sept. 11, the United States military forces engaged Al Qaeda in the mountains of Afghanistan, killing and capturing some of its leaders and hobbling the group in the early years. They had a mandate to bring in Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," in the words of President Bush.

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