By Anjum Niaz
Will Obama and Zardari face failure should there be a clash between COIN and COTE? The naysayer - from military intelligence spooks down to doctoral candidates and research fellows in prestigious Washington think-tanks; from counter-insurgency (COIN) and counter-terrorism (COTE) experts to newspaper columnists and editors in America – paint a doomsday scenario in either case. Damned if you bomb Al Qaeda in Pakistan and damned if you don't. Obama's vice-president and COTE advocate Joe Biden wants none of civilian wooing of Pakistanis and Afghans; less American soldiers on ground and more Predator bombings in Pakistan - instead of US spending $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan for its counterinsurgency campaign to defeat the Taliban, reverse the order and bomb the hell out of Al Qaeda in Pakistan he says. But dissenter McChrystal, a top US commander in Afghanistan warns of failure should Obama not send more soldiers, writes Bob Woodward in Washington Post based on a planted Pentagon leak. The general wants another 40,000 US troops in the war region. Bruce Riedel, the man who invented the 'Af-Pak' word also wants US to stay for the long haul.
Obama is caught in Catch-22. Previously, he hoped that COIN would tame the Taliban and rout the region of terrorism. But today, he's not sure as conflicting views come out of his administration. "Pakistan is the nuclear elephant in the room," Obama is being reminded.
"You can exile a man, but not kill the idea; you can imprison a man, but not kill the idea; you can kill a man but not kill the idea," Benazir Bhutto told Tom Ridge months before her assassination. Tom was George Bush's top homeland security czar after 9/11. He has now come out with a book The test of our times. The "idea" that Benazir Bhutto spoke about was Al Qaeda. It's time now for America to convince the Muslim population that terrorism and Bin Laden are their worst enemy, says Tom. Apart from quoting the late Ms Bhutto, he's at a loss to suggest a viable solution. On the day Zardari met with Obama in New York, the New York Times had a front-page story on how the Taliban headquartered in Quetta were launching sophisticated attacks across Afghanistan. The story had no timeline. It was based on a classified American intelligence report leaked to the Times. As always the timing of such leaks to the US media is ominous. It's meant to put pressure on Pakistan.
Then Christina Lamb of The Sunday Times came with her own story – this one had a Washington dateline -- saying that the Americans were threatening to bomb Quetta in order to target Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership which they insist is hiding there. Lamb, who is writing a book on Benazir Bhutto and enjoys easy access to Asif Zardari, wrote: "The problem is that while the government of President Asif Zardari is committed to wiping out terrorism, Pakistan's powerful military does not entirely share this view." She quoted sources as saying that the ISI were supporting the Taliban and protecting leaders in Quetta. "Western intelligence officers say Pakistan has been moving Taliban leaders to Karachi. US officials have even discussed sending commandos to Quetta to capture or kill the Taliban chiefs before they are moved."
Shaheen Sehbai gave his take from Washington: "President Zardari and his aides are confident that they have conquered Washington and will return to Pakistan triumphant in the glory of becoming the darling of the West." A "disgruntled" member of the Pakistani delegation is quoted by Sehbai as saying, "This (euphoria) is the misguided vision of a few bloated visionaries in the president's camp and they will soon find out the heat of these unacceptable conditions when they return to Pakistan." The PPP spokesman (whoever he/she be?) has chastised Sehbai for his comments and called him a "doomsday prophet" and a "pessimistic mind reader" (whatever that means?).
Sameer Lalwani (whom I initially mistook for a Pakistani) has released his assessment of Pakistani capabilities for a counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign. The MIT doctoral candidate argues that the COIN campaign in Pakistan can be a disaster. "The fundamental point I have tried to make in this report is that US strategy in the region has operated under the implicit assumption that Pakistan is or should be closely aligned with US interests, when in fact, my read - based on this assessment - is that Pakistani strategic interests diverge," Sameer said in an email message to me. "This seems to have less to do with duplicity and more to do with fundamental limits in capabilities and military doctrine. In other words, it seems to me Pakistan is caught between a rock and a hard place and any move it makes is bound to have both political and strategic blowback. I don't think this has been properly understood by US political and strategic community."
The idea behind his extensive panoptic work is to encourage America to re-evaluate its strategy towards Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. His doctrine calls for political over military solutions; population security over enemy targeting; ground forces over airpower, and small-rather than large-force deployments for missions such as patrols, intelligence gathering, and development assistance. However, while Pakistan is committed to a COIN campaign, according to Sameer, the Pakistani military, so far, has conducted a campaign that runs nearly counter to all these prescriptions. "This is primarily because of a military doctrine that is rooted in a persistent fear of a superior Indian army threatening the Pakistani core."
And what are the obstacles?
Pakistan needs to deploy between 370,000 and 430,000 more troops to conduct COIN operations in the FATA and NWFP. Even if it tried raising the number, it would take 2-5 years to raise and train the requisite forces for a counterinsurgency programme. Moreover, the demographic and topographic terrain of the tribal area encourages a protracted insurgency challenging the powers of the military forces deployed in the area. In addition Pakistan needs to recruit and manage more than 100,000 men in local militias to assist in holding areas that have been cleared of insurgents as in Swat. Even piecemeal development in the region, says Sameer, would be questionable, given the realities of the Pakistani economy. More fundamentally, reform would require undermining the power of the country's existing elites and land-owning classes, which dominate the political scene. Pakistan's limited resources would necessitate substantial US and western military aid, assistance in training, and economic support to wage a COIN campaign. "Pakistan's reliance on American support to conduct a COIN campaign and offset its disadvantages actually could prove counterproductive, intensifying public resentment, further eroding morale, and strengthening militant recruitment and cohesion," says Sameer Lalwani.
Sameer like Christina Lamb and others believes that the Pakistan Army and Zardari are not on the same page. This serious concern gets aired often by analysts abroad and at home.
Postscript: Zardari went to Rome to meet the flamboyant Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, notorious for his sexual romps and racist comments. This is the second time he has made politically incorrect comments on the Obamas. Silvio told a cheering crowd on his recent return from the US, "I bring you greetings from a person who is called...a person who is sun-tanned...Barack Obama… You wouldn't believe it, but they go sunbathing at the beach together - his wife is also sun-tanned." One hopes billionaire Berlusconi didn't pull in our president in publically settling his personal scores…here's another lesson in disaster - wholly different from COIN and COTE- stay clear of loose cannons!
Email: aniaz@fas.harvard.edu & www.anjumniaz.com