Tensions Rising on the Afghan-Pakistani Frontier?

By BJ

Yesterday, Fester noted the massive prison break in Khandahar, about which he had this to say:

This is a complex operation with multiple things that could go wrong against a high value and high prestige target.� It is also a Taliban attack that is aimed at delegitimatizing the government by highlighting its ineffectiveness while improving internal cohesion and morale as a demonstrated example of the Taliban taking care of its own.

An example of the highlighted portion can be found in this story, in which Canada's top general is trying to put a positive spin on the event.

. . . one Afghan was not so optimistic, saying it revealed the weakness of the government. One resident of Kandahar told CBC News he's keeping family members inside because they're terrified of the escapees, and tension in the city is high.

The more troubling part of the news today, is that Afghan President Hamid Karzai has apparently learned from his masters in Washington that the best way to answer a challenge to your legitimacy is to focus on an external threat and talk tough, and the external threat he's decided to focus on is Pakistan.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has threatened to send troops over the border into Pakistan to confront militants based there.

He said that when militants crossed over from Pakistan to kill Afghans and coalition troops, his nation had the right to retaliate in "self-defence".

. . .

He warned that he was prepared to seek out Taleban leaders wherever they were, specifically naming Baitullah Mehsud, who is based in South Waziristan, Pakistan.

"Baitullah Mehsud should know that we will go after him now and hit him in his house," Mr Karzai said, adding that Taleban leader Mullah Omar could expect the same.

There are actually two possibilities here, the first being that this is little more than tough rhetoric since Afghanistan doesn't exactly have the kind of offensive capabilities to be launching attacks against its far more powerful neighbour.

The second, and unfortunately more probable scenario, is that this may be Karzai's way to provide cover for American strikes across the frontier between the two countries. Washington has ever been highly critical of the Pakistani authorities inability or presumed reluctance to root out the Taliban on their side of the border, but the situation has grown tenser in recent days. Via Kat, the outgoing commander of the ISAF just held a press conference regarding Afghanistan, and leaves little doubt as to what he thinks the solution is.

In a sober assessment, Gen. Dan K. McNeill, who departed June 3 after 16 months commanding NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, said that although record levels of foreign and Afghan troops have constrained repeated Taliban offensives, stabilizing Afghanistan will be impossible without a more robust military campaign against insurgent havens in Pakistan.

. . .

McNeill criticized Pakistani efforts to crack down on that threat, and -- offering his unofficial view -- described the political situation in Islamabad as "dysfunctional."

He also criticized efforts by the Pakistan government to negotiate peace deals with insurgents on the frontier, saying past agreements have led to increased attacks across the border in Afghanistan. McNeill said the 50 percent increase in attacks in eastern Afghanistan in April compared with the same month last year is "directly attributable to the lack of pressure on the other side of the border."

He also goes on to note a couple of instances where US troops were killed in clashes with the Pakistani Frontier Guards, whose responsibility it is to patrol the border between the two states. No mention of the far more recent incident where around a dozen Pakistani paramilitary soldiers were killed by an American air strike. That incident has stoked anti-American rage in Pakistan and increased the rhetoric on both sides,

The rhetoric used by the Pakistani military Wednesday was the harshest it has leveled since the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001. The airstrike was a "completely unprovoked and cowardly act" which "hit at the very basis of cooperation and sacrifice with which Pakistani soldiers are supporting the Coalition in the war against terror," asserted the statement issued by the military's Inter-Services Public Affairs.

. . .

"I believe fundamentally if the United States is going to get hit, it is going to come out of the planning of the leadership in the FATA, Al-Qaeda specifically," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday. "That is a threat to us that must be dealt with."

U.S. commanders also say that the peace deals negotiated by the Pakistani army have enabled militants to step up their attacks on Afghan and coalition forces inside Afghanistan.

Some U.S. officers in Afghanistan contend that current and former Pakistani army, intelligence and paramilitary officers have secretly continued to aid the insurgents despite Islamabad's avowed support for the Bush administration's "war on terror."

"Their policy for the last four years can be generously described as duplicitous," Army Col. Thomas Lynch, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution, a public policy institute in Washington, told McClatchy this week.

Given the pro- and anti-Musharraf forces inside Pakistan seem to be heading towards yet another showdown, this would seem to be a really bad time for the US and its Afghan puppet to be turning up the heat in the pressure-cooker. As China Hand at American Footprints put it a few months back:

The Bush administration is pushing Pakistan into a corner.

It�s not a happy place.

It�s called Musharraf = Shah of Iran territory.

And it really doesn�t have to be that way.

Doesn't have to, but may yet be. If anything else, this shows the necessity of having adults back in the White House who know how to de-escalate tense situations before they blow up in your face, rather than the type who only seem to know how to throw fuel on the fire.