In recent memory, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and Pakistan have received the lion’s share of the attention of U.S. policy in Central Asia. This is not surprising. It would be hard to ignore two wars and the issue of preventing nuclear proliferation either by Iran or from an unstable Pakistan. Yet, U.S. foreign policy has omitted a region that has sparked conflict between two nuclear armed states as recently as 1999. That region is Kashmir.
This past summer, WikiLeaks, an on-line source of anonymous whistle-blower revelations, unveiled damning information about the war in Afghanistan and its “official portrayal.” Sidebar revelations also cast doubt on Pakistan’s alliance with the United States, charging Pakistani intelligence agencies with “aiding insurgents.” Pakistan and the United States forcefully denied any chink in their “strategic partnership.”
After suffering through months of intense battles between Islamist militants and the army, the impoverished northwestern region of Pakistan must now endure the severe ramifications of a fierce wave of flooding in September that has so far claimed close to 2,000 lives, wiped out whole villages, and left innocent families clinging to the tops of their submerged homes hoping to be rescued.
Pakistan seems to be in a double bind: Resist the United States and NATO and open the door to seizure of its nuclear-weapons program — or cooperate and suffer the same results.
Much as the United States needs to withdraw from Afghanistan, it needs to keep in mind the effects that our military standdown would have on India.
In a speech he gave on March 27, 2009, President Obama referred to the remote areas of the Pakistani frontier as, “for the American people…the most dangerous place in the world.” It is from this speech that Imtiaz Gul drew the title of his book, The Most Dangerous Place: Pakistan’s Lawless Frontier. Gul provides a comprehensive, inside look at the chaotic situation in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have become an epicenter for extreme Islamic militancy.
Wars are rarely lost in a single encounter; Defeat is almost always more complex than that. The United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have lost the war in Afghanistan, but not just because they failed in the battle for Marjah or decided that discretion was the better part of valor in Kandahar. They lost the war because they should never have invaded in the first place; because they never had a goal that was achievable; because their blood and capital are finite.
The Times claims that Pakistan’s inequitable tax system helps drive the insurgency, but offers no proof.
Some CIA officers involved in the agency’s drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency, because it is helping al Qaeda and its allies recruit.
Yesterday was almost equally violent for both India, where suspected sabotage of train by Maoists left at least 74 dead in West Bengal, and Pakistan. In Lahore, an equivalent number were killed in the attacks on the two Ahmadi mosques. According to the New York Times: “Geo TV, a leading news channel in Pakistan, reported that members of the Punjab branch of the Pakistani Taliban were claiming responsibility for the attacks.”