Vol. 73/No. 15      April 20, 2009

Washington’s top generals have stressed that they can make little progress in Afghanistan without dealing major blows to Taliban and al-Qaeda sanctuaries and bases of support in Pakistan.

“Afghanistan and Pakistan, while two countries, are a single theater,” Gen. David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said at a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting April 1. Accomplishing Washington’s goals there will require a “sustained substantial commitment,” he said.

The Pentagon proposes replacing the current military aid program for Pakistan with one designed specifically to bolster the military’s counterinsurgency capacity. The new plan would allocate an average of $600 million per year over the next five years—double the amount of the current program.

The plan is directed at training and equipping Pakistani troops, including its special forces and its 60,000-strong paramilitary Frontier Corps. The program would supply night-vision goggles, helicopter gunships, and other equipment suited for mountainous terrain-based counterinsurgency operations.

Part of Washington’s strategy in Pakistan, according to U.S. officials, is to shift the Pakistani military’s focus and resources away from its eastern border with rival India, where most of its army is amassed, toward the fight against al-Qaeda and Taliban forces along the border with Afghanistan.

Islamabad built up the Taliban movement in the 1990s to establish greater influence and control over Afghanistan following the Soviet-Afghan war.

Under pressure from Washington following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Pakistani government launched a war against sections of the Taliban. Today Taliban forces control whole swaths of territory in the northwest.

Pakistani military officials say some 1,500 troops have died fighting Islamist forces in a war that has killed hundreds of civilians and forced roughly half a million to flee their homes, thousands of which were burned down by Pakistani paramilitary forces.

But U.S. officials say at least sections of Pakistan’s military intelligence continue to aid Taliban forces. Participants in the April 1 Senate Armed Services Committee meeting discussed their need to convince the Pakistani government that Washington is in Afghanistan for the long haul. Assuring the Pakistani rulers of this is part of convincing them that they no longer have an interest in maintaining relations with Taliban forces as a “hedge” in the event of a U.S. withdrawal.

The U.S. government recently announced it will send 21,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and is discussing the possibility of sending about 10,000 more down the road to augment its current force of 38,000.  
 
Increase in nonmilitary aid
In addition to doubling its military funding to Pakistan, the White House is backing legislation to triple nonmilitary aid. A bill introduced by Sen. John Kerry and Sen. Richard Lugar calls for allocating $1.5 billion per year over the next five years. The money is aimed at undermining the Taliban’s base of support and softening an acute economic crisis that threatens to accelerate social unrest throughout the country, as well as provide an incentive to the Pakistani government to fully cooperate with Washington’s course.

A recent report from the Asia Society, a U.S. think tank, titled Back from the Brink?—A Strategy for Stabilizing Afghanistan-Pakistan, estimates that such an effort “might require a five-year package of $40 billion to $50 billion” in addition to “Pakistan’s $7.6 billion IMF bailout.” To this end, Washington has been pressing its imperialist allies as well as Islamabad’s allies in China and Saudi Arabia to pitch in.

Within the next couple of years, the report estimates, 70 percent of the population in Pakistan will be living on less than $2 per day, and 40 percent on less than $1.25 per day.

In Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the Afghan border, a Taliban stronghold, per capita income is one-third that of the rest of the country.

Washington has been working to reduce its reliance on Pakistani territory for military supply routes to Afghanistan and has established alternative routes through Russia and several former Soviet republics in Central Asia. It is also encouraging its European allies to pursue possibilities for establishing NATO supply routes through Iran and seeking other fields of cooperation with Tehran.

The CIA carried out its 12th and 13th aerial drone strikes this year in Pakistan April 1 and April 4, killing 12 and 13 people respectively. Women and children were among those killed in the April 4 attack, reported Dawn, a Pakistani daily.

Pakistani government officials told Reuters news agency that about one-sixth of U.S. drone strikes killed only civilians. Many attacks kill both combatants and civilians.

The April 1 strike was the first time U.S. drones hit the Arakzai region of the FATA. Washington has been expanding its strikes to new areas of Pakistan in recent months.  
 
Baluchistan in U.S. sights
Washington is drawing up a new list of targets for drone strikes, the Wall Street Journal reported. Also under discussion is how to speed up the drone strike decision-making process and whether to expand these strikes to Pakistan’s southwest province of Baluchistan, where the former head of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Mullah Mohammad Omar, is believed to operate.

Baluchistan is home to the Baloch, an oppressed nationality. The Pakistani military has put down five Baloch insurgencies since the country was founded in 1947.

Following the Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Taliban established a base among the newly arrived, massive Afghan refugee population in Baluchistan. The Pakistani government propped up the Taliban there to counter the secular nationalist Baluchi movement, including rigging elections in favor of pro-Taliban parties.

Pakistani president Asif Zardari visited Baluchistan for the first time in late March, where he promised concessions aimed at stabilizing the province. He said the government would move toward granting the province greater autonomy, construct dams and provide assistance for agriculture development, and increase the province’s share in revenue generated from its rich oil and gas resources.
 
 
Related articles:
Court rules 3 can sue for release from Bagram jail
2,000 in N.Y. rally against Iraq, Afghanistan wars  
 
 
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