The Diplomat » Taliban

Can U.S. Get out of Afghanistan?

Joshua Kucera — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 18:23:53 +0000

The U.S. is facing a number of roadblocks in its effort to secure routes to pull its equipment out of Afghanistan, with erstwhile allies Pakistan and Uzbekistan making it clear that the U.S. can’t rely – as it has been until now – heavily on them. But in its effort to diversify its supply routes, it’s gaining cooperation from an unlikely source: Russia.

With plans to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan starting in 2014, the Pentagon is busy setting up what it calls “retrograde transit” agreements with countries neighboring Afghanistan. The U.S. already has a number of shipping routes in place, mainly through Pakistan and through the ex-Soviet republics of Central Asia, a collection of routes known as the Northern Distribution Network.

But in November, an errant NATO airstrike killed more than 20 Pakistani soldiers, and Pakistan immediately cut off all transit to coalition equipment. Those routes, which once carried about a third of the coalition's equipment to Afghanistan, remain closed, though U.S. officials have expressed optimism that they will be able to negotiate to reopen them.

The U.S. had set up the Northern Distribution Network as a strategic hedge against Pakistan’s unpredictability, a decision that proved wise when Pakistan implemented its blockade. But the first round of agreements that the U.S. signed with the Central Asian governments didn’t provide for taking equipment out of Afghanistan, only bringing it in. Now, the U.S. has signed agreements with all the Central Asian countries for reverse transit, but some of the countries appear to be lagging on the implementation of those deals.

Uzbekistan, in particular, is reportedly raising prices it charges for the transit and creating bureaucratic delays. When one of the major NDN contractors, FMN Logistics, carried out its first retrograde transit shipment on February 29, it notably did so via the so-called KKT route, crossing Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. That route is longer and uses much worse roads than the Uzbekistan route, but those countries are more cooperative. However, the KKT route is still an incomplete solution: during winter, it’s all but impassable.

Amid these difficulties, the U.S. is getting assistance from a country many regard as the United States’ biggest foe: Russia. Russia had already agreed to allow transit through the country (it is the best way to get to Europe after passing through Central Asia), but is now negotiating with the U.S. over opening a transit hub in the Volga River city of Ulyanovsk.

The Ulyanovsk facility would be used for the U.S. and NATO to fly goods from Afghanistan into Russia, and then by rail onward to Europe. That is more expensive than surface transport all the way to Europe or the U.S., but less expensive than flying the goods the whole way. As such, it provides an acceptable alternative to Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

The Strategic Corporal’s Evil Twin

James R. Holmes — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 16:13:56 +0000

In the late 1990s, following U.S. interventions in trouble spots from Mogadishu to Kosovo, U.S. Marine Commandant Charles C. Krulak published a minor classic of military theory. Titled “The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War,” his commentary observed that very junior military leaders can make very consequential decisions – tactical decisions that reverberate up to the strategic or even the political level. This week’s slaying of 16 noncombatants in Kandahar, allegedly by a U.S. Army noncommissioned officer (NCO), confirms Gen. Krulak’s insight in a macabre and dispiriting way. Children were among the victims, prompting calls for accelerating the U.S. drawdown in Afghanistan. The strategic corporal can advance a campaign’s goals through his deeds, or thwart those goals through his misdeeds.

Why the focus on noncommissioned officers? Complex operations – undertakings that demand the experience and mature judgment of seasoned officers – perversely tend to push authority down onto lower leadership echelons. The reason is simple. Battling enemy armies usually involves large-unit operations overseen by commissioned officers or senior NCOs. Much like cops walking the beat in tough neighborhoods, by contrast, forces that intervene in strife-wracked countries can’t remain concentrated in big units. They must spread out to place adequate numbers of boots on each square mile of ground. There are too few senior officers to go around. As large units disperse into smaller ones, authority devolves on small-unit commanders.

Which amplifies the stresses on them. This is doubly true, writes Krulak, when the “unique challenges of military operations other than war” combine with the “disparate challenges of mid-intensity conflict.” Troops dispatched to urban areas to restore order amid strife and disorder might find themselves waging high-intensity combat in one city block, interposing themselves between combatants as peacekeepers in the next block, and rendering humanitarian aid in the next (hence the three-block metaphor). Bafflingly complex enterprises demand a variety of skills, some outside the standard military repertoire. Their hallmark is unpredictability. Passions – the fury that pervades conflicts pitting neighbor against neighbor – only compound the strain on ground-force leaders. Krulak’s points of departure were then-recent contingencies like Bosnia and Somalia. He pronounced the Battle of Mogadishu (1993), memorably retold in Black Hawk Down, an archetype of three-block war.

The shooter in Kandahar was Krulak’s worst nightmare. The commandant observed that the outcome of complex operations “may hinge on decisions made by small unit leaders, and by actions taken at the lowest level…Success or failure will rest, increasingly, with the rifleman and with his ability to make the right decision at the right time at the point of contact.” Faced with “a bewildering array of challenges and threats,” junior personnel must “confidently make well-reasoned and independent decisions under extreme stress.”

When we discuss civil-military relations in seminars at the U.S. Naval War College, as we did this past week at the start of the spring term, we explore the tension between elected officials’ oversight of military operations and commanders’ independence to do their jobs without undue interference. Micromanagement results from overly intrusive political supervision, politically inapt operations from granting the military too much latitude. A perennial question is when officers should push back against directives from their civilian masters. But look at things from policymakers’ standpoint. To what degree should they interfere in events on the ground? Well, it depends. If indeed the effects of a tactical action radiate up from tactics to operations to strategy or politics, policymakers may see the need to assert themselves, reaching into affairs normally reserved to officers’ discretion. Routine acts can have direct political import – warranting direct political supervision. Knowing when to intervene and when to keep their hands off is a matter of prudence for civilian officials.

Pakistan’s War Against “Miscreants”

diplomat_admin — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:53:47 +0000

In the middle of last year, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari promulgated two key presidential regulations aimed at quelling militancy in two of the country’s most restive areas. But the changes are both troubling and potentially counterproductive.

On June 23, Zardari promulgated the Actions (in Aid of Civil Power) Regulation, 2011 (AACP), which is applicable to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and the Provincially Administered Areas (PATA) of Pakistan.

Under AACP, the Pakistani armed forces have the authority to intern militants and civilians tied to ongoing armed conflict in the border regions of the country. The objective of the regulations is listed as incapacitating “miscreants’– a troublingly broad categorization of individuals that implies wrongful behavior without analyzing the nature of the actual acts committed. It’s a draconian law that raises some serious questions.

Apart from running counter to the principles of natural justice, it violates the constitutional rights of Pakistanis and prevents Islamabad meeting its international human rights and humanitarian law obligations.

The problem is that the government defines the ongoing militancy as an internal problem of a criminal nature, involving acts of terrorism. The interned “miscreants” are therefore accorded very limited due process compared to what would be accorded to them under the rules of war. They are also liable to be punished for criminal offenses as defined by the state, which are not per se violations of international humanitarian law.

The new definitions come despite the fact that Pakistan is obligated to comply with common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which is applicable inthe case of armed conflict that isn’t international in nature. Common Article 3 provides minimum standards of protections based on humanitarian concerns that can’t be derogated from – in any situation.

The objective is to protect civilians and combatants and ensure respect for the laws of war among all parties to a conflict. Internment and punishment of combatants, meanwhile, is supposed to be based on legitimate military objectives and any violations of humanitarian law. But under international law, internment is only permitted in very limited cases, while a number of rights and privileges are supposed to be enjoyed by the interned. In addition, any penal prosecution requires sufficient due process for combatants and the restriction of penal prosecution to criminal offenses related to the armed conflict. But this isn’t proving to be the case under the AACP. (Troublingly, these regulations were also made retroactive effect from February 1, 2008. This method of criminalizing past conduct is contrary to the principles of natural justice and international humanitarian law).

The new law also allows the armed forces to undertake law enforcement, something they aren’t intrinsically designed to do, and something they lack adequate training for. On top of this, the misuse of force by the armed forces is to be investigated from within the military hierarchy, while armed force personnel are given extensive evidence gathering powers. Any evidence provided by them is both admissible and deemed incontrovertible in a court of law, even if the evidence has been procured in contravention of the regular laws guiding evidence in Pakistan.

Afghanistan’s Race Against Time

David Axe — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 14:48:29 +0000

Ali Mohamed has a surprise for his U.S. Army advisers. An explosive one. It’s right here in his backpack.

It’s late January in Marzak, a remote town in this rugged, sparsely-populated province in Afghanistan's extreme east, along the border with Pakistan. Mohamed is the newly-minted platoon leader for Marzak’s first and only Afghan Local Police force, a militia-style security outfit trained by U.S. troops and paid and equipped by the Afghan Interior Ministry.

No, Mohamed isn’t one of the approximately 45 Afghan police, soldiers and airmen who have turned on their U.S. trainers over the years, killing 70 Americans. Rather, he’s an important ally in a critical Afghan village at an important late stage of the Afghanistan war. In many ways, Mohamed represents Afghanistan’s future as the U.S.-led NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) eyes the exit after 10 years of bloody fighting.

The Army’s 172nd Infantry Brigade has identified Marzak as a vital node in a Taliban supply route through Paktika’s mountain passes. For several years now, U.S. forces deployed to Paktika have concentrated on identifying and shutting down Taliban footpaths.

Marzak is the key to controlling this particular path. In early January, an American platoon flew into the impoverished, agricultural village and began the hard work of recruiting and training a 100-strong local police unit from the local military-age, male population. The first 40 of the new militiamen completed their training on January 23. The Americans tapped the quiet, diminutive Mohamed to lead them.

And just a few days later, Mohamed, acting on a tip from one of his neighbors, goes stalking off into the snow-coated mountains, unannounced, to dig up a Taliban weapons cache containing a 105-millimeter artillery shell (likely meant as bomb component) and more than 100 rounds of 12.7-millimeter machine-gun ammunition.

Mohamed hauls the weapons back to Marzak and proudly presents them to his American trainers. They pat him on the back and gently recommend that, maybe next time, he should inform his chain of command of what he’s up to. All the same, U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Andrew Flynn is proud. “This is a new beginning for Marzak,” he says.

But in Afghanistan, it’s a bit late for new beginnings. Indeed, Mohamed is a human manifestation of the coalition’s end-game. As a local cop interdicting Taliban weaponry, he represents the U.S. and ISAF’s last-ditch efforts to stabilize Afghanistan ahead of the planned departure of foreign troops.

The Clock is Ticking

Today, some 124 months after the first contingent of U.S. Marines riding in CH-53E heavy lift helicopters infiltrated the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in southern Afghanistan, the American-led international intervention in Afghanistan has an expiration date.

“Hopefully, by the mid to latter part of 2013, we’ll be able to make a transition from a combat role to a training, advise and assist role,” Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said during a visit with European military leaders in Brussels.

President Barack Obama had previously pledged to withdraw all regular U.S. combat troops – currently 90,000 strong – from Afghanistan no later than the end of 2014. At least 20,000 Americans will quit the country by the end of 2012, the Pentagon says.

Some Special Forces are slated to remain behind as advisers, potentially for years. But they might number only a few thousand.

Without U.S. combat forces and, just as importantly, America’s logistical expertise, the roughly 40 other ISAF nations, together providing some 60,000 troops, can’t hope to continue fighting – nor is there any indication they want to. France and Germany, two of the biggest force-providers outside the U.S., are already beginning their pull-outs.

Mind Games in Afghanistan

Richard Weitz — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:11:47 +0000

Last week’s mysterious leaking of a secret U.S. report summarizing thousands of interrogations of detained Taliban, al-Qaeda, and other suspects in Afghanistan has weakened the NATO campaign and peace efforts there by sowing discord between the alliance and its regional allies, while deepening doubts about the Taliban’s ultimate intentions. Indeed, the Taliban’s sympathizers – or at least someone unhappy with the NATO presence in the country – may well have leaked this report with these very goals in mind, so its content needs to be read with care.

According to the BBC and The Times, this report “On State of the Taliban” was compiled last month by U.S. military personnel at Bagram air base north of Kabul, where more than 3,000 Taliban prisoners are normally detained at any one time. The report summarizes the key findings of 27,000 interviews with more than 4,000 detainees, who encompassed suspected senior Taliban commanders, rank and file Afghan guerrilla fighters, members of al-Qaeda and other foreign terrorist organizations and Afghan civilians sympathetic to the insurgents.

The report made for some explosive headlines. Unfortunately, too often, media outlets simply repeated its excerpts verbatim, or with sympathetic supporting commentary, neglecting that all the opinions were second-hand and from suspect sources. The report’s authors didn’t provide, or apparently even seek, any evidence to confirm what the Taliban prisoners were telling them. And the Taliban told their interrogations precisely those things that would most serve their cause by boosting the insurgents’ moral and discrediting the United States’ closest allies in the war against them.

The United States and its NATO allies in the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) are already transferring the leading combat role in various provinces from NATO to the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) as they continue to withdraw forces added during last year’s troop surge. In light of this impending withdrawal, one of NATO’s main worries is that the Afghan government and ANSF may be ineffective and too corrupt to survive alone against the Taliban without an indefinite foreign troop presence buttressed by enormous volumes of international assistance.

The report certainly feeds this worry by describing widespread collaboration between the guerrillas and the Afghan security forces in areas that ISAF has transferred to ANSF control. Afghan soldiers reportedly sell their weapons to the Taliban, while even government officials supposedly express growing interest in joining the Taliban movement. The detainees are summarized as believing that, “Afghan civilians frequently prefer Taliban governance over the Afghan government, usually as a result of government corruption.”

Another concern is Taliban duplicity. The Taliban leadership has moderated its formal position on some issues, and instructed its field commanders to do likewise in a recent field manual. But such policies seem like tactical maneuvers to reduce Afghan resistance to their return to power as well as facilitate recruitment and retention. The report suggests the stratagem has helped gain some external support and “at least within the Taliban, the refurbished image is already having a positive effect on morale."

But even if Taliban leaders endorsed a peace agreement, it would be hard to trust their intentions. They could easily imitate the North Vietnamese strategy of professing to accept a compromise settlement in order to secure a foreign military withdrawal, and then resuming offensive operations against the local government before it had fully recovered from its years of dependence on foreign military support.

Pakistan – Evolution or Revolution?

diplomat_admin — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 14:27:34 +0000

Events have been moving fast in Pakistan in the last few months. Yet while the country’s longest lasting democratic government has been widely reported as being on the brink of a coup, rumors of its death have been premature. Indeed, the classic standoff between civilian government, the military and the justice system seems to have been tempered by another element – the free media and its counterpart, informed public opinion. The likely scenario if all factions hold to the status quo will be an early election following the March vote for the Senate.

This will be an opportunity for emerging leader Imran Khan and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf,or the Movement for Justice Party, to step into the political space being created, and to prove that Pakistan’s fragile democracy really has taken root. In a CNN interview on January 22 with Fareed Zakaria, Khan stated his ambition is to end “the war with no objectives,” as well as to put an end to corruption, the deepening sense of gloom, the unprecedented inflation and the sense that “Pakistan is the most dangerous country in the world.”

Khan’s call for peace is also a powerful protest against the United States and its policies in this turbulent area of the world. Anti-U.S. feeling is strong in Pakistan ever since the killing of Osama bin Laden in his Pakistan refuge, something that caused major embarrassment to the military establishment and its intelligence service, the ISI. Relations with the U.S. became even frostier in November, when 24 Pakistani troops were killed in a NATO aerial attack on two border outposts. Pakistan still doesn’t accept the U.S. account that puts partial blame on Pakistani forces.

Then there’s the recall of Pakistani Ambassador to the United States Husain Haqqani, also in November, which has broken the communication established between the two countries. Haqqani, a key ally of President Asif Ali Zardari, was well regarded by the Obama administration. He’s now said to be under virtual house arrest in a presidential guest suite in Islamabad because of his implied role in asking for U.S. help should there be a coup in Pakistan. He denies that he wrote the memo or that he asked an American businessman of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, to deliver it to then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen.

Ijaz was scheduled to arrive in Pakistan before January 24 to give evidence before the judicial panel investigating the allegations, but he is reportedly refusing to enter the country because of fears over his safety. In the meantime, the government announced on January 19 a “parliamentary review of bilateral relations,” saying this was the reason a visit by U.S. Special Envoy Marc Grossman was rebuffed. Grossman is currently touring the region for consultations over the peace process with the Afghan Taliban. Pakistan is said to be annoyed about not being informed about such talks and the opening of the office in Qatar. Pakistan had recently also asked Washington to reschedule a visit of the Central Command head Gen. James Mattis to the country, saying that “Pakistani leaders were busy with an internal political dispute.”

Another point of tension is the closing of NATO supply routes by Pakistan as retaliation for the fatal airstrikes in November. Pakistan plans to reopen these routes, but will impose tariffs on supplies, both to express their anger and to raise funds for the government. At present, the United States is paying six times as much to send war supplies to troops in Afghanistan through alternate routes, and hundreds of vehicles stacked with goods and fuel are still being held at the border.

Is Taliban Serious About Talks?

Richard Weitz — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 18:43:43 +0000

After years of stagnation and secrecy, the peace talks to end the Afghanistan war are finally making progress. Last week, an Afghan Taliban spokesman said that his group had agreed in principle to establish a political liaison office in Qatar for the purpose of seeking a negotiated settlement to the conflict. The Obama administration and, less enthusiastically, Afghan President Hamid Karzai have welcomed the development as evidence that the Afghan peace process is finally making progress.

U.S. and German officials have been holding clandestine discussions with Taliban representatives for about a year. They’ve been engaged in “talks about talks” – discussing what steps to take to launch formal peace negotiations, what items should be discussed, and what the framework of a possible settlement might look like.

Establishing such an office is an essential prerequisite for launching formal peace negotiations. The Taliban’s interlocutors must know they are talking to authorized representatives of the movement rather than false emissaries who, in the past, have swindled money from the United States and last year assassinated former Afghan President Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the Afghan Peace Council.

But creating such an office is only the first step of many that will be needed for a viable and durable Afghan peace settlement. And, despite recent positive developments, the odds are still against one.

Karzai’s foreign backers have overcome their initial doubts and become enthusiastic backers of any peace settlement. Despite the surge in troops and other resources entering Afghanistan, NATO forces and their Afghan allies acknowledge that they couldn’t plausibly hope to kill or capture all the Taliban insurgents. More practically, their wary publics are demanding an end to the Afghan mission, so most NATO governments have announced they will withdraw all forces by 2014. Foreign governments are already reducing their troop deployments and foreign aid contributions to Afghanistan.

The renewed peace process will have to overcome past problems that have blocked any settlement. For several years now, Karzai has offered to negotiate with “moderate” Taliban leaders, renegade warlords, and other groups and commanders fighting his government, providing they agreed to end their insurgency and accept the legitimacy of his government and the basic tenets of the Afghan constitution adopted following the Taliban’s defeat in late 2001. The Afghan government has also offered various forms of amnesty and other inducements to guerrilla fighters who pledge to cease fighting.

Until now, the Taliban leadership has publicly rejected Karzai’s reconciliation overtures and denounced the reintegration process. Taliban leaders had demanded that all NATO troops leave Afghanistan as a prerequisite for starting the negotiations. In addition, many former fighters who participated in earlier reintegrated schemes subsequently took up arms again because they didn’t receive adequate financial assistance, employment retraining, or protection.

In terms of the procedures, any Taliban negotiators will need guarantees for their safety, while the Afghan government and its foreign partners will need to ensure that the Taliban actually engages in meaningful talks rather than tries to use the office for purposes of propagating its views and recruiting more members. Their merely recognizing the office incurs the risk of elevating the movement’s legitimacy.

Pakistan’s Roller Coaster 2012

diplomat_admin — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:58:05 +0000

Deadly violence bookended Pakistan’s 2011. The year began with the assassination of Salmaan Taseer, governor of the country’s largest province, by his bodyguard. It ended with a deadly NATO attack on a border base that killed 24 Pakistani security personnel.

In the months in between, U.S.-Pakistan relations went into free fall. CIA contractor Raymond was acquitted of murder after apparently killing two Pakistanis in broad daylight in Lahore. Later, the United States unilaterally killed Osama bin Laden near a Pakistani military academy, humiliating Pakistan’s army and air force. Subsequently, an angered U.S. Congress moved to restrict aid to Pakistan.

Domestically, former cricketer Imran Khan shook up Pakistani politics, with his party emerging as a third way political force. Meanwhile, the ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) was put on the defensive when an anti-military memo delivered to the Pentagon, alleged to have been coauthored by Islamabad’s ambassador in Washington, forced the diplomat’s resignation and strained ties with the military, sparking talk of a possible coup.

Amid all this turmoil, Pakistan’s state and citizens went unattended. Economic growth was anemic, inflation remained high, and major state-owned companies bled billions of dollars.

All of this means that 2012 may well be both a year of change, and more of the same.

Here are five developments to watch out for in 2012:

A new government in Islamabad. National and provincial assembly polls are scheduled for 2013, but Pakistanis will likely head to the polls around the time Americans do this autumn. For months, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) has been clamoring for early elections. Now, the governing coalition leader the PPP appears to have decided to move for early polls, currently expected to be held in October.

Both the PML-N and PPP face a serious challenge from Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e Insaf (PTI), which could be the next coalition government’s kingmaker by gaining the third largest share of National Assembly seats. By the year’s end, there could be a new prime minister in Islamabad and a new president-elect in Washington, adding even more uncertainty to the volatile bilateral relationship.

Mullah Omar: Last Man Standing

Luke Hunt — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:34:55 +0000

Anti-terrorism officials around the world last year chalked up some stellar success stories, capturing or killing a number of high-profile Islamic terrorists linked to al-Qaeda. Chief among them was obviously Osama bin Laden. But others included Omar Patek, the last of Jemaah Islamiyah’s senior leaders, who was arrested in Pakistan last January in the same town that bin Laden was captured in.

But one man has eluded everyone for more than a decade.

Since the September 11, 2001, strikes on New York and Washington, Mullah Mohammad Omar – the self-styled Imam and Taliban chief – has ranked among the world’s most wanted, alongside bin Laden who Omar for years helped harbor.

He’s often seen as a major obstacle to peace not only in Afghanistan, but in wrapping up the War on Terror, which has ended up stretching across the Middle East, Africa, and Southeast Asia, where the jihad movement is struggling following the loss of a number of senior leaders.

Amid U.S. plans to finally exit Afghanistan in 2014, some in Washington believe a negotiated peace is plausible if the Taliban can be brought into the political process.Such an idea gained erroneous additional credibility last week amid media claims that Omar, a native of Uruzgan Province, had been removed from the FBI’s most wanted list.

The truth was, though, that the one-eyed cleric wasn’t actually on that list. The FBI restricts its concerns to attacks inside the United States and Omar remains on a separate database – the Rewards for Justice List – held by the U.S. State Department, where he has a $10 million bounty on his head.

The report was an unfortunate mistake, but some in Pakistan took it further, suggesting his name was removed to promote dialogue with the largely Pashtu militia that’s establishing an office in Qatar as a base for future peace talks.

“I don't think the U.S. has any choice other than to negotiate with whatever they choose to identify as the Taliban leadership,” says Gavin Greenwood of Hong Kong-based security firm Allan & Associates.

“The Afghan government is already doing so, so Washington's task, in an election year, is to find a suitable formula that emphasizes the positive nature of U.S. involvement in such negotiations. This will be far more difficult than any actual talks – which I would assume are already underway in one form or another – given the high political stakes.”

Afghan President Hamid Karzai says he supports the Qatar office, and there are hopes that moderates within the movement will use it as an outlet for talks. Omar, though, still advocates the extinction of the United States, and this isn’t the first time negotiations with the Taliban have been attempted.

In 1999, after four years at the helm and amid almost total isolation, Omar attempted to ease the militia back into international diplomatic circles in his bid to win the Taliban its cherished dream of U.N. recognition as the legitimate head of state in Afghanistan.

The United Nations and all but three countries, including Pakistan, instead recognized another faction led by Burhanuddin Rabbani and guerrilla leader Ahmad Shah Masood as the country’s true rulers – an extreme point of agitation for Omar, bin Laden and their cohorts.

How Pakistan Kids Itself on China

Richard Weitz — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 19:19:51 +0000

China’s senior foreign policymaker, Dai Bingguo, spent the last few days in Islamabad assessing conditions in the country, as well as the state of China-Pakistan relations. He also pledged China’s continued economic and security assistance to Pakistan, misleading some Pakistanis into thinking that Beijing will ride to their rescue. The reality, though, is that the Chinese government has made clear in past crises that, while it seeks close ties with Pakistan, Beijing is unwilling to bankroll a break between Islamabad and Washington.

The Pakistani situation is perhaps the most complex it has ever been. Islamabad’s ties with the United States and NATO are strained over border clashes, terrorism, and other issues. Meanwhile, Islamabad itself has been swept up with rumors of yet another military coup. All this chaos and uncertainty is calling into question Beijing’s geopolitical plans for Afghanistan and the rest of South Asia.

Its been an annus horribilis for Pakistani-U.S. relations, beginning in January with the Raymond Davis affair, the dispute over the elevated U.S. drone attacks on Pakistani territory, the May 2 Special Forces attack on bin Laden’s compound at Abbottabad in central Pakistan, the September attacks by a Pakistani-linked terrorist group against the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and finally the November 26 cross-border clash in which NATO forces killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers and wounded many others.

The Pakistani government has retaliated for the latest incident by closing the two Afghan-Pakistani border crossings at Chaman and Torkham to NATO’s supply convoys, giving U.S. personnel 15 days to vacate an air base in Balochistan used to assist drone attacks against insurgents and terrorists in northwest Pakistan, and suspending certain joint activities. Pakistan also withdrew Pakistani liaison officers from the Afghan-Pakistan border coordination centers and NATO headquarters in Kabul, boycotted the December 5 Bonn conference on Afghanistan, reinforced its border defenses, relaxed its rules of engagement, and launched a comprehensive review of Pakistan’s security cooperation with NATO and the United States.

At home, the Pakistani military leadership and the Zardari government have come into open confrontation, with each accusing members of the other institution of plotting against it. The military forced the dismissal of the Pakistani Ambassador to Washington a few weeks ago over a leaked memo that worried about the prospects of a coup. The day before Dai’s arrival, Gilani told the National Assembly that, "Conspiracies are being hatched to pack up an elected government."

Dai, an expert on South Asian affairs, visited Islamabad as a representative of Chinese President Hu Jintao, nominally to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Sino-Pakistan diplomatic relations and the closing of the Year of China-Pakistan friendship. As State Councillor, Dai outranks Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

The Chinese government has some of its closest allies within Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishments. Dai conferred “for some time” with Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen. Khalid Shameem Wynne. The details of their discussion weren’t released in public, but Beijing probably wouldn’t welcome a coup at this troubled time.

After all, economic ties between China and Pakistan continue to develop, with two-way trade now exceeding $10 billion. Chinese firms have made substantial investments in Pakistan’s defense industry, energy, engineering, information technology, mining, telecommunications, as well as banking, transportation, and other infrastructure sectors. China provides technical assistance in such areas as agricultural production, environmental protection, natural resource exploitation, and outer space research. Beijing particularly favors high-profile mega projects such the Karakorum Highway, Gwadar Port, Taxila Heavy Mechanical Complex, Chashma Nuclear Power Plant, Jinnah Sports Stadium and Pakistan-China Friendship Centre.