Is Pakistan Fighting Back Against Taliban?

The U.S. has spent billions to arm the Pakistani army and police, and contributed thousands of manhours training the troops. Yet the Pakistanis are sending in token police and soldiers to fight the Taliban, and rapidly ceding large areas:

As I write this, the CNN video and transcript aren’t up, so I typed as Fareed Zakaria talked to Anderson Cooper: The Pakistani military “does not want to fight this war. [The military] has been in a state of denial,” he continued. The Pakistani military has been too focused on planning a war with India on the Eastern frontier. “That’s the war they know, that’s the war they’re comfortable with. Big conventional deployment,” Zakaria said. “This is a much more complicated guerilla war, a complex insurgency. They don’t want to fight this. Their whole training has been for the war against India. They get a huge budget for a war with India. They don’t know counter-insurgency, and don’t want to embrace this war of counter-insurgency. First, you actually have to fight this war. Secondly, they think they might lose,” and they can’t risk humiliation. Zakaria said that’s what the peace deals were about: to avoid confronting the elephant in the room. “But this is now the moment of truth for the Pakistani military,” Zakaria said. [Editor's Note: Thanks to PM317 for sending me a better map of the region.]

Zakaria believes the Taliban can’t take over the capital and the nuclear arsenal, but that their increasing control will permit more terrorist cells and Al Qaeda regrouping. “Remember, every single terrorist attack since 9/11 that has had some roots in South Asia has NOT had them in Afghanistan. It has been in the Pakistani tribal areas. … If they get more and more territory, more and more freedom of action, this is very bad news.” (Zakaria’s Q&A notes that analysts are concerned about a collapse of Pakistan.)

Meanwhile, the Taliban in the Swat Valley are beheading Pakistani soldiers and publishing the video to attract followers and terrify Pakistanis. (The stomach-churning video is here. Think hard before you view the video.) Besides the Taliban’s unspeakable acts against Pakistani soldiers, Swat Valley has become a nightmare for women who are beaten regularly for miniscule infractions.

Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly are consumed with proving how tough (MANLY!) they are on torture, defending Dick Cheney (because he did stroke Hannity’s ego by giving him a two-part interview!), and opining that waterboarding isn’t torture. Thursday night, Hannity devoted an entire segment to the Levi Johnston/Sarah Palin tabloid saga as if it were news. Pakistan? The Taliban? Neither came up.

Obama and his media crew must laugh themselves silly over how easy it is to divert the rightwing media away from the administration’s most terrifying problems: Find an issue that triggers the hosts’ manly egos. Even The Drudge Report lists only one story, towards the bottom of the right column, below Larry King’s interview of Levi Johnston: “CLINTON: Pakistan ‘mortal threat’ to world, as Taliban surge towards Islamabad…. Priorities, priorities.

WAKE UP, Fox News and CNN! MSNBC, you’re irrelevant. As Allahpundit writes at Hot Air, IT IS “Time to start freaking out about Pakistan“

Reuters reports that the impotent Pakistani government may reconsider its stance on Sharia law — failing to comprehend that that ship has already sailed! Do they really think the Taliban will cooperatively cede the power they’ve been given? Uh, no!

Pakistan to review sharia law
(02:02) Report
Apr 23 – After Hillary Clinton says Pakistan’s government has ‘abdicated’ to the Taliban, Pakistan’s PM seeks to portray a firm grip on pro-Islamist elements.

Did Pakistan really think that the Taliban would honor the pact and lay down their arms? Are they that naive and weak-willed?

Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke Thursday afternoon with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on the U.S.’s efforts to contain the areas that are “safe havens” for extremists like the Taliban:

As my daddy used to say, “The shit’s going to hit the fan” in Pakistan UNLESS something is done. That government is pathetically weak. Somebody’s got to intervene.

The BIG picture focus: Those nukes held by that namby-pamby government. I’m glad that Zakaria doesn’t think the Taliban can grab control of the government or the nukes. But it could be wishful thinking. Let’s hope he’s correct. The Taliban are now only 60 miles from Islamabad and sectors of Punjab where nuke controls are held.

Obama made a speech about the counterterrorism needs for Afghanistan and Pakistan, in which he said:

“Al Qaeda and other violent extremists have killed several thousand Pakistanis since 9/11. They have killed many Pakistani soldiers and police. They assassinated [former Pakistani Prime Minister] Benazir Bhutto. They have blown up buildings, derailed foreign investment and threatened the stability of the state. Make no mistake: Al Qaeda and its extremist allies are a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within.”

Yes, we know, Mr. Obama. Now do something about it.

The Associated Press has a fuller description of the history of the Taliban incursion into Pakistan and the Pakistani government’s weak response (as well as the ridiculous attempts to make deals with extremists who have NO interest in honoring their part of the bargain). Here’s a short section from that A.P. story, “Taliban move to new Pakistan area ups peace doubts“:

U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke talked to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari by telephone Thursday, but the president’s office would not say if Swat or Buner were discussed. The chairman of the U.S. military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, was visiting Pakistan.

From the UK Independent: A Pakistani barber looks out from his shop window in the Buner district. The words are a warning scrawled by the Taliban and read: 'Do not shave'

As reports filtered out about Taliban fighters moving into Buner — that they were patrolling roads, broadcasting radio sermons and ordering barbers to stop shaving beards — the government sent six platoons from the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary to the district this week.

Government official Syed Mohammed Javed confirmed the deployment but would not comment on the troops’ purpose. Javed did not specify the number sent; a platoon typically has 30 to 50 members.

The troops were dispatched Wednesday, Javed said. Unidentified gunmen opened fire on one of the convoys Thursday, killing an escorting police officer and wounding another in the Totalai area, said Hukam Khan, a police official.

How much force the government was willing to display remained unclear, especially after the army’s spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, insisted the situation in Buner was not as dire as some felt. He said militants controlled less than 25 percent of the district, mostly its north.

“We are fully aware of the situation,” Abbas said. “The other side has been informed to move these people out of this area.”

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani insisted no group would be allowed to challenge the authority of the government, but a few lawmakers — including some who initially backed the peace deal with the Swat Taliban — said the administration had to do more to contain extremists.

“If the other party is not able to give us peace and expanding themselves to Buner and Shangla, then it is the government’s duty to use its full strength to stop their expansion,” said Haji Mohammad Adeel, a top member of the party that leads the provincial government in the northwest and entered into the accord in the first place.

The provincial government agreed to the peace deal in February, but the president signed off on it only last week, under strong pressure from the national legislature.

The accord covers Swat, Buner, Shangla and other districts in the Malakand Division, an area of about 10,000 square miles (25,900 square kilometers) near the Afghan border and the tribal areas where al-Qaida and the Taliban have strongholds.

Supporters have said the deal takes away the militants’ main rallying call for Islamic law and will let the government gradually reassert control — a theory yet to be seriously tested.

Analysts said Buner is a wake-up call for a Pakistani government that has often seemed weak-willed in dealing with insurgents. But, they said, Islamabad is not in danger now.
“The military is going to be the major impediment” to taking the capital, said Hasan Askari-Rizvi, a leading political analyst. Still, he said, sympathizers in the capital could use the Buner advance as a rallying cry to cause unrest.

More than a half million people live in Buner.

On Thursday, the bazaar in Buner’s main town of Daggar and the road into the district were almost deserted, a visiting AP Television News reporter found. Police and government officials in Buner appeared to have either fled or were keeping a low profile, and there was no sign of Frontier Constabulary troops in the town.

The meeting of tribal elders and the Taliban in Daggar ended without notice the militants would leave.

A Taliban leader who goes by the name “Commander Khalil” said the militants agreed to stop patrolling in Buner, though they would keep armed guards in their vehicles.

“Pakistan scrambles to repel Taliban advance,” published in The Independent, enumerates the concerns of leaders, from Robert Gates to a worried Punjabi politician:

Fears of a threat to the Pakistani state have never seriously been entertained within the country – until now. “Pakistan is on the precipice, we are really worried,” said one Punjabi opposition politician. “We are worried about Swat, the tribal areas, and beyond. The Taliban are making their way into Punjab.”

Besides the concern of many experts, reports Zakaria, that the Pakistani government is about to collapse, the subtitle of the Independent story says it all about the Pakistani government’s weak response:

Swat Valley peace deal blamed as government forces come under fire from insurgents 60 miles from capital

Memo to PBO: You can’t win hearts and minds by shaking hands and smiling broadly with extremists hell-bent on destroying you. You have to KICK BUTT (Smartly, of course. Always smartly.)