As the slow drip of Hellfire missiles in FATA gradually transforms into a drizzle, Pakistanis should prepare for a long and rainy season. The drizzle may not end for a while. As sure as the fact that Santa Claus will not be delivering Christmas goodies to madrassah students in Bajaur, we can be sure that US planes and helicopters will be delivering ammunition (and possibly men) into the tribal areas in pursuit of the holy grail of US politics, the elusive Osama Bin Laden. American audiences of the US presidential drama that has engulfed the airwaves for what seems like an eternity do not in fact have eternal memories. What is clear, however, is that Pakistanis aren't exactly elephants either, when it comes to have long memories.
On Jan 12, 2006, well before Barry Obama became the new Pakistani protest effigy of choice, a US Predator struck a house in Damadola killing 18 people, one of whom was not Ayman Al Zwahiri, the intended target. The drones kept hitting targets rather innocuously until Oct 30 of 2006, exactly a month and four days after Gen Musharraf had tea and twinkies with Jon Stewart in New York, when another airstrike took 84 people to their graves near Chingai village of Bajaur. That is more than two years ago. Any anger over more recent US incursions into Pakistan is therefore perplexing.
Unfortunately, the country had better enlist in anger management, because whether Sen Barack Obama wins or Sen McCain wins, the real winners of this election will be Joe Biden Democrats. They are the ones who have the right combination of blue-collar values and national security toughness for US voters. Having watched the Rumsfled-Cheney-Wolfowitz neocon project implode, turning Iraq into a Mesopotamian punch line, US voters are going to seek the comfort of the wisdom of less hawkish and more sensible political voices. In the Senate, the House and, invariably, at the White House, regardless of who occupies it. Therefore, Joe Biden Democrats are going to define US policy for the next two to six years.
Normally this would be good for the world. The common sense of Joe Biden Democrats may not be ideal, but it represents dramatically improved prospects for world peace than the shoot first, dance later approach favoured by the Pentagon since 9/11. Unfortunately, common sense is not a valuable currency in tribal societies. This is why the Taliban initially refused to hand over Al Qaeda back in 2001, and why the tribes refuse to cooperate with the War on Terror today. Countless numbers of dead tribesmen, women and children as collateral damage has only hardened their obduracy.
This combination of irrational tribalism in Pakistan's FATA with calm but resolute foreign policy in the US is going to prove lethal for Pakistan's prospects of coming out of its current economic and national security crisis. The intensity of the American war in the tribal areas is going to have to be dialled up. Cynics scoff at the groundwork for this ramping up of intensity having been put in place by US intelligence. Of course, we've seen the fruits of such intelligence before. The rugged Marlboro-Man-confidence with which George W Bush referred to Niger's yellowcakes exports to Iraq in his 2003 State of the Union address was one of American intelligence's greatest hits. As warm and fuzzy as the Iraq trip down memory lane is, the fact that the Niger yellowcake scenario paved the way for the brutal missteps into Iraq is chilling.
This is what the National Intelligence Estimate had to say in July of 2007: "Al-Qaeda is and will remain the most serious terrorist threat to the Homeland, as its central leadership continues to plan high-impact plots, while pushing others in extremist Sunni communities to mimic its efforts and to supplement its capabilities. We assess the group has protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe haven in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership."
Pakistanis have been deeply mistaken to dismiss this report. The NIE is a compendium of 16 US intel coming together, and they enjoy dramatically more credibility than the high school amateurism of the Niger yellowcake paper did. More importantly, the NIE was taken seriously by those who matter. Joe Biden Democrats went gaga over the report which is why Team Obama saw the opportunity for him to establish war credentials, and prove that he had the chops for a tough national security decision. However, unlike what most people believe, Obama's Pakistan offensive did not begin after the NIE was published, but in fact, at the Democratic primary debate on June 3, 2007 in New Hampshire before the NIE report was published. He said then: "When you've got a military target like bin Laden, you take him out. And if you have 20 minutes, you do it swiftly and surely" in the context of Pakistan, and responding to Rep. Denis Kucinich's refusal to endorse bin Laden's assassination as US policy. On Aug 1, 2007, in a major foreign policy speech, Obama really got the ball rolling with, "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will." In an op-ed for Iowa's Globe Gazette on Aug 12, 2007, Obama wrote, "America's most dangerous enemies are training and plotting in the tribal regions of northwestern Pakistan… To suggest that targeting terrorists in Pakistan would be tantamount to an invasion is to misunderstand the capabilities of the US military or to misrepresent my position." He followed up on March 24 with, "We should be going after bin Laden … we should ask Pakistan to take him out. But if they don't, we shouldn't need permission to go after folks that killed 3,000 Americans." And, of course, at the debate with Sen John McCain on Friday, he reiterated this position.
Obama is not alone on Pakistan. At the Aug 19, 2007, debate, Joe Biden said, "The fact of the matter is, Pakistan is the most dangerous, potentially the most dangerous, country in the world. A significant minority of jihadists with nuclear weapons." In that debate, there was a short exchange about Pakistan between what one might call the sharpest tools within the Democratic Party. There were no less than half-a-dozen references to the dangers of Pakistan possessing nuclear weapons.
Pakistanis are offended by America's demands on Pakistan, and angry about violations of their country's sovereignty. However, as the record shows, neither the preparation for assaults on FATA, nor the assaults themselves are new. Even the explicit political articulation of America's demands is now over a year old. The process itself has been deliberate, and thoroughly documented. The real offense here is not American appetite for war. The real offense is that Pakistan has been completely unprepared to deal with the challenge posed by the shifting view of Pakistan in Washington DC. The real anger Pakistanis should be feeling is at themselves. Unelected or elected, Pakistan's leaders seem comprehensively lost for answers.
Pakistan's limited and dwindling state capabilities, however, are no excuse for US short-sightedness and jingoism. As common sense and resolute as it may sound to Joe Biden Democrats, and as saleable to the voters as a war in FATA may be, whatever the question is, destabilising Pakistan cannot be the answer. If the drizzle of Hellfire missiles in FATA escalates, Pakistan's dysfunction will only be deepened. Whatever the question is, a more dysfunctional Pakistan is not the answer.
