US Foreign Policy Factionalism and Pakistani interests

By David Anderson:

Last week, Zenpundit laid out a fairly comprehensive and concise set of points and arguments in the debate on Afghanistan policy. I'll grab a few that I think are important:

Many anti-war and anti-COIN writers have pointed out that the U.S. does not have any intrinsic interests in Afghanistan. In a narrow sense, this is correct. Afghanistan has nothing we need and no economy to speak of. We abandoned Afghanistan after the end of the Soviet War and are there now only because al Qaida happened to be based there at the time of 9/11. Why not just leave again?

Afghanistan could properly be fitted into national strategy from two angles. A regional strategy for Central Asia and the Subcontinent or as part of a global strategy in the war against al Qaida. As the former task would be too complicated and slow to finesse from an interagency perspective, we should view Afghanistan in the context as a part of a global war against al Qaida. We need Afghanistan�s proximity to al Qaida in Pakistan�s border provinces in order to attack al Qaida effectively and to put continuous pressure on Pakistan�s government, elements of which which still sponsors the Taliban and, at least indirectly, al Qaida.

He also makes two points that I and everyone else, Zen included, who knows what they are talking about have been making for years now:

What makes al Qaida distinctive from all other Islamist terrorist-insurgencies is their transnational, strategic, analysis and commitment to struggle against the �far enemy� ( i.e. the US) and for the unification of the �ummah�. That�s really unique....

The primary destabilizer of Pakistan is the Pakistani government�s schizophrenic relationship with the extremist groups it creates, subsidizes, funds and trains to unleash on all its neighbors. When the Islamist hillbillies in FATA or their Punjabi and Kashmiri equivalents try to menace the interests of Pakistan�s wealthy elite, the �ineffectual� Pakistani Army and security services can move with a sudden, savage efficiency.

I agree with Zen that the primary goal of the United States should be to disrupt, divert and destroy groups which have capacity, intention and willingness to executute international terrorist strikes against US citizens, US territory and to a slightly weaker degree US interests as interests is a very widely defined term. Most of the groups that have the capacity for "far enemy" strikes don't have the intention or willingness to do so. For instance, Hezbollah is reputed to be the most capable terrorist organization in the world, but they are primarily interested in the Lebanese and Isreali domains with extended tentacles for fund-raising and logistics only.

The local Taliban factions and aligned militias in Afghanistan are fighting for a combination of local & "accidental" guerrilla reasons: for political power in the traditional Afghan arrangement of local elites and warlord-ism and as proxies for Pakistan's attempts to build and maintain friendly strategic depth against India. There are definately sub-factions of the Taliban, including the promininent Mehsud and Haqqani (sic) networks of Taliban fighters, who are co-belligerents with AQ fighters and who are thinking and fighting on a larger operational canvas than purely local militias. However these alliances seem to be predominately alliances of convienence that could be fractured if the mid-level district and province commanders and leaders are offered a better deal for local power and prestige.

However, I am struggling with the conflict inherent in the exceprts I clipped out. Zen argues that instability in the Hindu Kush and Afghanistan is favorable for Pakistan as Pakistan's elites fears India. He also argues the Pakistani state has the capacity and will to protect itself from any significant long term Pashtun insurgent threat when the Pashtun tribes go from a useful annoyance to an actual threat. He then argues that the capacity and will of the Pakistani state would be weakened by US carrier overflights and the cost of that weakness of the Pakistani state justifies a close proximity to the Pashtun homeland by having the US and ISAF plop down a couple of corps. He neglects to mention that ISAF's supply lines go through Pakistan and more importantly through Peshwar (which is sure to piss off the locals) and that US carrier air wings' tactical strike aircraft as well as HVAs such as B-52s/B-1Bs and surveillance aircraft such as the E-8 and E-3s already routinely overfly Pakistani air space and routinely engage in direct tactical actions in support of the drone war.

Zen identifies Pakistan as the key player but I think is muddling things a bit much here. He is advocating leaving a massive logistics presence, continuing the drone war and continuing daily overflights of Pakistani air-space in order to minimize the US impact on Pakistan. Huh? I am confused here. Instead, these actions continue to enable the Pakistani elite to haggle US interests against their own longstanding fear of India's growing absolute and relative power. Removing ISAF by Alien Space Bats tomorrow afternoon during Tea Time (as we all know ASBs are British) will not solve all problems or even the 'Pakistani' problem, but it would mean Pakistan would have significantly more influence in Kabul as the Indian friendly government would have lost its major sponsors and enforcers. And at that point, Pakistan would be able to slowly rebuild a secure strategic depth to partially assuage their Indian fears.

I'm spit-balling here, but there is a potential of a deal where the US and ISAF cuts the mid-level Taliban into local power and cash flows (as partially suggested by Mark Kleiman with his tongue partially in cheek) and holding the cash-flows back if "far enemy" camps and cells are seen to operate. At the same time, assuage the Pakistani elite's India focused fears by either selling a several brigade sets of heavy equipment and several wings of F-16 Block 60s or by cutting a deal with Beijing to reduce Indian insecurity and thus Pakistani insecurity about India's build-up against China being diverted to Pakistan. 

Either way, the need for a Pakistani deep rear in Afghanistan would be reduced.  And once that need is reduced, the incentive to  continually destabilize an India friendly Afghanistan is reduced.  At that point, the local deals to pull in most Pashtun aligned factions into a traditional Afghan quasi-governing framework is vastly more plausible from the US perspective.  The US military footprint would be reduced to small hunter-killer teams in Afghanistan along with a fairly large intelligence network to smash any known concentrations of actual "far enemy" bands. None of that requires long-term large scale occupations, or COIN with a high probability of failure, or the resignation of being a target.