The War on Terror Comes to Pakistan

[thedrifter]

December 28, 2007
The War on Terror Comes to Pakistan
By Ray Robison

As the world digests the news of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, claims by an alleged al Qaeda spokesman that it is behind the political mass murder cannot be idly dismissed. For the War on Terror has come to Pakistan, and AQ has been losing. Our media have not paid much attention, but you can be certain AQ knows. Whether or not AQ had a hand in the mass murder, it hopes to benefit from it.

After the US liberation of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban and its al Qaeda affiliates emulated the Viet Cong in the 60's, and based their operations in the security of a neighboring country. In this instance, Pakistan assumed the role that Cambodia once served, as a sovereign haven from attack. Their ability to relocate into Pakistan and turn a perceived defeat in Afghanistan into an advantage so quickly suggests to some, including me, that al Qaeda had already planned this in response to the reprisals sure to come after the 9/11 attacks. Such a strategy plays against the predictable American reluctance to expand a war.

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf played along. Normally teetering on the edge of political irrelevancy, he had to placate a powerful jihad-centric group within his own government. This opposition force along with a shadow government of Islamic militant sympathizers within his security services and military, led him to make a settlement with these Islamic extremists in 2006 allowing the Taliban and al Qaeda to strengthen their support base and forces.

Such were the conditions that made the war in Afghanistan appear interminable. Although those forces were not a serious threat of retaking the country by military might, the endless nature of the mission posed the real threat of bringing capitulation in the countries that have seemed a bit squeamish about it since becoming involved: Britain, Germany, Canada and sundry other coalition partners. Of course, I don't mean to give offense, but those countries do have a substantial population opposed to their involvement in Afghanistan. I exclude Australia from that list, as most of the commentary I have seen from there is far more supportive of combating these terrorist groups.

But supported at home or not, these coalition forces have held back the Taliban and al Qaeda for many years now. We have been victorious, but only keeping the wolves at bay, not hunting them down in their lairs, as would be necessary for final victory. This year in particular saw wave after wave of Taliban forces throw themselves uselessly into coalition fires.

Throughout 2007, our media has been set on a narrative of a resurgent Taliban threatening the burgeoning, democratic Afghan government. But, the real story here is that American leadership by President Bush has stiffened the resolve of the coalition to keep the wolves at bay. It is hard to imagine, given the internal political sniping over Afghanistan in those coalition countries, that their support to this mission would have lasted long without the President leading the way.

And near the end of this year comes a hint that the war in Afghanistan is on a trajectory toward the total defeat of these terrorists. While the American media was focused on the politically charged arrest of a few oppositionists in Pakistan, they completely missed the big picture. The War on Terror has finally come to Pakistan.

The Taliban Splits

The conditions that led to this change have been reported here but nearly nowhere else in the U.S. The coalition forces have managed to split al Qaeda from a politically important Islamic militant leader in Pakistan. That man leads the Pakistan portion of the Taliban; he helped to create it in the 90's. Pitting him against al Qaeda has split the Taliban.

Since Al Qaeda has lost in Iraq, its leadership has reckoned they have nowhere else to go if they lose the support of the Taliban. With the Taliban split jeopardizing its' support base, al Qaeda has been forced into a position of attempting a hostile takeover of the Taliban, supporting young leaders to overthrow the old leaders who are allied with the Pakistan-based leadership.

This has created a condition in which the Taliban factions are turning on each other and al Qaeda is trying to run roughshod over them.

Musharraf Mobilizes Pakistan's Military

Musharraf, though certainly stepping on a lot of toes with his emergency declaration, has used this time to redeploy his forces, which were stagnant on the border with India, into combat. For the first time, he is sending large scale maneuver forces backed by artillery, tanks, and air support into regions controlled by al Qaeda and the sympathetic Taliban. His forces have reportedly driven the Taliban and al Qaeda forces of Maulana Fazlullah into the hills. The Pakistani military has even followed these terrorists into the administered areas which Musharraf effectively turned over to the Taliban over a year ago.

There are indications that Fazlullah himself had no real interest in an armed takeover of the Swat valley, where the bulk of the fighting has been located. It appears very much like he was driven to it by al Qaeda forces coming in from the tribal areas and imposing their will on the "young Taliban" to take more land in Pakistan.

This is an indication that al Qaeda is desperate, has redirected forces once meant for Iraq and is willing to crush the same people who have hosted them in Pakistan. In effect, they are doing the same thing in Pakistan that led to their defeat in Iraq. Only this time, they have no other strong support base to fall back to if they lose the Pakistan tribal regions.

The most critical indicator is that the MMA, the extremely militant Islamic party that opposes Musharraf, has remained mute as the army has slaughtered its Taliban and al Qaeda brethren. Did no one in the media notice this? Not one journalist noticed that the jihad block of the Pakistan government was silent about the slaughter of the Taliban in Swat? And they call President Bush "incurious"?

While it has yet to play out to its ultimate end, the die is cast. And it happened this year, thanks to a president still maligned by the press for his "mishandling" of the Iraq war. But the thing about history is that it truly is results-based. If the War on Terror continues to play out in Pakistan with real results, historians may note the change came in 2007. How foolish will our journalists look that none of them noticed it happening right under their noses?

The assasination of Benazir Bhutto may well be one last attempt to get the Pakistanis fighting among themselves, much as the attack on the Golden Dome temporarily set Shia against Sunni in Iraq. May this attempt at stirring up trouble fail even faster.

A year that started out in near disaster for the Bush Administration has concluded in poignant victory. The quagmire narrative was defeated. Many more battles and challenges lie ahead in Iraq, of course. All but the most diehard partisans, even the New York Times, now acknowledge that some success has been accomplished. There is a chance that Benazir Bhutto's death may reverse course. George Bush's last year in office promises to be eventful.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

December 28, 2007
The Battle of Pakistan
By Christopher D. Geisel
The assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto means that the nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Pakistan is now a battleground just as important as those in Iraq and Afghanistan in the global war against the radical Islamists.

The Battle of Pakistan is now well underway.

Just a few days prior to Bhutto's murder, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates warned that Al-Qaeda has "turned its face" from Iraq toward Pakistan. Now we have the bloody event that confirms that the forces of radical Islamism are opening a Pakistan front like never before. And this attack is their greatest victory to date.

Critics of recent American foreign policy (most notably, the 2003 invasion and liberation of Iraq from fascist dictatorship) will inevitably use these new events in Pakistan as an excuse to accuse the U.S. of "taking its eye off the ball"-supposedly engaging in the unnecessary "distraction" of the Iraq War, while losing focus on the "real War on Terror" in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

But these critics will reveal their lack of proper perspective on the global nature of this sweeping struggle.

Neoconservative Norman Podhoretz has written in World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism that the current war is best seen as a worldwide struggle against "Islamofascism," a militant ideological movement that seeks to destroy modern civilization, returning to a seventh century version of fundamentalist Islam.

Those who see the Iraq and Pakistan/Afghanistan theaters of battle as divergent options in a zero-sum game will have missed the lesson of previous existential struggles between the free world and totalitarianism from World War II to the Cold War. While the enemies of freedom may be dealt serious blows in one or more theaters of battle, they can and will open new war fronts until they are ultimately defeated.

Indeed, the forces of radical Islamism appear to be quite desperate to open a new front. While Iraq is by no means fully stabilized as of yet and while there is no certainty that Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki's government will be able to achieve the national reconciliation viewed as critical to the long term peace and stability of his fledgling constitutional democracy, there are still good reasons to be optimistic about the future of Iraq. The biggest story of 2007 has been the success of General David Petraeus' new counterinsurgency strategy, which has led to decreased sectarian violence and increased stability across Iraq. We have seen such achievements as political reconciliation at the local level, the Sunni Awakening and routing of Al-Qaeda in Al-Anbar province, the reigning in (to some extent) of violent Shia militia activity, the return of Iraqi refugees, and oil revenue sharing among the provinces for funding reconstruction.

Meanwhile, we have witnessed the lasting success of the 2001 liberation of Afghanistan from fundamentalist Taliban control. With everything that we have heard about a resurgent Taliban, which has stepped up deadly attacks against America and its NATO allies there, they have been unable to significantly undermine President Hamid Karzai's constitutional government.

Thus, if we adopt some healthy and educated optimism, we can see both the Iraq and Afghanistan war fronts as moving more and more into our winning column.

The assassination of former Prime Minister Bhutto is a crystal-clear indication that the radical Islamists have set there sights fully on Pakistan as their next best chance for a game-changing victory in their global war against freedom and modernity. They failed to sustain a fundamentalist theocracy in Afghanistan, which served as a headquarters for Al-Qaeda's global terrorist network. They also failed to either prevent Iraqi democratic elections in 2005 or to plunge Iraq into full-fledged civil war in 2006 and 2007. Now, they seek to undermine pro-Western dictator Pervez Musharraf's tenuous hold on Pakistan, hoping to unleash pro-Taliban Islamist forces to seize control of its nuclear arsenal.

It is perhaps the understatement of the year when the U.S. State Department comments that "the attack shows that there are still those in Pakistan trying to undermine reconciliation and democratic development." Bhutto was -- both practically and symbolically -- a threat to radical Islamism. With her courageous return from exile to Pakistan -- viscously cut short after only ten weeks -- she carried with her the hopes of democratic reform in Pakistan, to be initiated by a victory for her Pakistan Peoples Party in upcoming parliamentary elections. Because political despotism throughout the Muslim world is the environment in which radical ideology has festered, consensual government can be the great antidote, making it an imminent danger to the Islamist forces. Moreover, as the first woman to be elected leader of a Muslim state, Bhutto represented the ultimate antithesis of the radical Islamist vision of restoring an Islamic caliphate, ruled by sharia law, with women treated as second-class citizens.

When looking at the consequences of Bhutto's assassination, perhaps even more important than the blow to liberal democratic reform is the immediate destabilizing effect on President Musharraf's government. Until free elections are held in Pakistan, Musharraf is a dictator; but we must admit that he is, at present, a critical U.S. ally and perhaps the only thing standing between pro-Taliban, pro-Al-Qaeda Islamists and Pakistan's nuclear weapons. The Islamists, while seeking to return to the seventh century, are at the same time coveting the weapons of the twenty first century in order to implement their dark vision. And a Pakistan ruled by a pro-Western leader like Musharraf is infinitely more desirable than the radical Islamist alternative if we are to successfully prosecute the war against both Taliban remnants and Al-Qaeda's command and control in Afghanistan/Pakistan border regions.

September 11th, 2001 was not the beginning of the current global war against the radical Islamist forces, but it was the day that the mortal danger and existential nature of the threat was widely realized, notably in the U.S. In the wake of those attacks that left thousands of Americans slaughtered on their own soil, America and its allies launched for the first time a global war against the new enemy. It was a war against the totalitarian movement that many describe as against Islamic fascism and Islamofascism, or that others describe more vaguely and euphemistically as the Global War on Terror. While we have seen further terrorist attacks worldwide since 2001 -- as we have engaged the enemy on many fronts using diplomatic, economic, and military instruments of power -- the key battlegrounds so far have been Afghanistan and Iraq.

What these two major fronts have in common is that they were opened by the forces of freedom, on October 7, 2001 and March 20, 2003, respectively. Thus, in both toppling the fundamentalist and terrorist-harboring theocracy in Afghanistan and in deposing the fascist dictatorship of a weapons-of-mass-destruction-seeking terrorist sponsor in Iraq, the free people of the world took the initiative in an unprecedented global offensive against radical Islamist terrorism.

But now the first major new front in the global conflict has been opened not by the forces of freedom but by the Islamists. December 27, 2007-while not the first day of the attempt by radicals to destabilize Pakistan-is the day of the first great success for the forces of darkness there, the beginning of what may evolve into a significant counter-offensive.

We have now seen the opening salvo in what should be recognized as the Battle of Pakistan.

Former Prime Minister Bhutto acknowledged recently the great personal danger she faced in her return to Pakistan. Her words align well with what must be the collective sentiment of the free world in the current global war, as it envisions the sacrifice that will be necessary in what will undoubtedly be a long-perhaps even generational-struggle against a new brand of totalitarianism. She said: "But these are risks that must be taken. I'm prepared to take them."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Death of a Queen
By George H. Wittman
Published 12/28/2007 12:08:51 AM

Benazir Bhutto grew from an exceptional college student to a world personality in what seemed like a matter of minutes. She rushed to the role of Pakistani leader after the execution of her father with all the confidence her family's vast support system could muster, personally and politically.

When she exiled herself to Dubai in 1998 just before the military coup the next year, she continued to operate behind the scenes through her political instrument, the Pakistan Peoples Party. Her influence remained strong even though she was convicted in absentia of corruption.

As shocking as it is, it was hardly surprising she was assassinated. Ever since Benazir Bhutto became prime minister at age 35, she was outspoken in defense of democracy in Pakistan; though many said she was primarily interested in maintaining the ascendancy of her own political allies. The problem she faced was not only the entrenched traditional power of the military, but the equally powerful opposing tradition of civilian political corruption.

Bhutto's defenders always have been quick to point out that any corruption with which she was later tainted was not of her doing. Her husband was the bad guy and did the jail time, to be given early release by Musharraf in 2004. It was a debt she owed to the general that wasn't publicly discussed much. She was characterized as the tool of a system that required vast sums of money to aid in the democratic process. Her family's powerful economic and political role in her native province of the Sindh was offered as an explanation of her many advantages.

Others, including most of Pakistan's military hierarchy, saw these "advantages" as simply an extension of her father's questionable dealings while in office.

The fact is that all parties in the country regularly charge each other with "stealing from the people." It's a mantra of political office seekers in Pakistan, and in many cases contains a great deal of truth.


THE BIG QUESTION has been why Bhutto, safe and secure in various homes she owned in the U.K. and the Gulf, would want to return to the turmoil of her homeland.

Some said she was driven by patriotism and a commitment to democracy. Others cynically said she simply was exercising the droit du seigneur so typical of the privileged classes throughout South Asia who expect power as their natural inheritance.

That Benazir Bhutto carried herself as a queen was not disputed. She was nonetheless extremely smart and a considerably practiced politician. Her regal manner was well supported and earned; all of which lent justification to the opposing characterizations of both her enemies and followers.

Perhaps the most striking characteristic of this lady was her personal warmth. This style was commented on by journalists and the numerous foreign politicians with whom she came into contact over the years. She could work a room of European and American leaders like the pro she was.

Afterward she would buttonhole a targeted politico whose support she desired and charm him or her one-on-one. She knew her job and how to do it.

If Bhutto had a shortcoming -- and she did have a few -- it was that she had a tendency to give everyone she wanted to please the impression that they had her complete agreement on key issues. This was particularly true of important people within her rather large Western social circle. They thought that the lady was not for turning, but, often, analysts found the opposite was true.

Along with the fashionable haute monde of the foreign policy elite, certain American and European journalists were favored with her attention. None of the latter ever forgot, at least initially, to call her "madam prime minister." Some select female correspondents, though, were drawn into her confidence on a first name basis. She had considerable media savvy.

She died as she expected -- at the hand of an assassin. One wonders if she actually sought martyrdom or simply had no way to avoid it. Her death will convulse Pakistan once again and the military will once again have to step in. She must have known that would be the case, too.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

THE BHUTTO ASSASSINATION: NOT WHAT SHE SEEMED TO BE

By RALPH PETERS


December 28, 2007 -- FOR the next several days, you're going to read and hear a great deal of pious nonsense in the wake of the assassination of Pakistan's former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto.

Her country's better off without her. She may serve Pakistan better after her death than she did in life.

We need have no sympathy with her Islamist assassin and the extremists behind him to recognize that Bhutto was corrupt, divisive, dishonest and utterly devoid of genuine concern for her country.

She was a splendid con, persuading otherwise cynical Western politicians and "hardheaded" journalists that she was not only a brave woman crusading in the Islamic wilderness, but also a thoroughbred democrat.

In fact, Bhutto was a frivolously wealthy feudal landlord amid bleak poverty. The scion of a thieving political dynasty, she was always more concerned with power than with the wellbeing of the average Pakistani. Her program remained one of old-school patronage, not increased productivity or social decency.

Educated in expensive Western schools, she permitted Pakistan's feeble education system to rot - opening the door to Islamists and their religious schools.

During her years as prime minister, Pakistan went backward, not forward. Her husband looted shamelessly and ended up fleeing the country, pursued by the courts. The Islamist threat - which she artfully played both ways - spread like cancer.

But she always knew how to work Westerners - unlike the hapless Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who sought the best for his tormented country but never knew how to package himself.

Military regimes are never appealing to Western sensibilities. Yet, there are desperate hours when they provide the only, slim hope for a country nearing collapse. Democracy is certainly preferable - but, unfortunately, it's not always immediately possible. Like spoiled children, we have to have it now - and damn the consequences.

In Pakistan, the military has its own forms of graft; nonetheless, it remains the least corrupt institution in the country and the only force holding an unnatural state together. In Pakistan back in the '90s, the only people I met who cared a whit about the common man were military officers.

Americans don't like to hear that. But it's the truth.

Bhutto embodied the flaws in Pakistan's political system, not its potential salvation. Both she and her principal rival, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, failed to offer a practical vision for the future - their political feuds were simply about who would divvy up the spoils.

From its founding, Pakistan has been plagued by cults of personality, by personal, feudal loyalties that stymied the development of healthy government institutions (provoking coups by a disgusted military). When she held the reins of government, Bhutto did nothing to steer in a new direction - she merely sought to enhance her personal power.

Now she's dead. And she may finally render her country a genuine service (if cynical party hacks don't try to blame Musharraf for their own benefit). After the inevitable rioting subsides and the spectacular conspiracy theories cool a bit, her murder may galvanize Pakistanis against the Islamist extremists who've never gained great support among voters, but who nonetheless threaten the state's ability to govern.

As a victim of fanaticism, Bhutto may shine as a rallying symbol with a far purer light than she cast while alive. The bitter joke is that, while she was never serious about freedom, women's rights and fighting terrorism, the terrorists took her rhetoric seriously - and killed her for her words, not her actions.

Nothing's going to make Pakistan's political crisis disappear - this crisis may be permanent, subject only to intermittent amelioration. (Our State Department's policy toward Islamabad amounts to a pocket full of platitudes, nostalgia for the 20th century and a liberal version of the white man's burden mindset.)

The one slim hope is that this savage murder will - in the long term - clarify their lot for Pakistan's citizens. The old ways, the old personalities and old parties have failed them catastrophically. The country needs new leaders - who don't think an election victory entitles them to grab what little remains of the national patrimony.

In killing Bhutto, the Islamists over-reached (possibly aided by rogue elements in Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence, one of the murkiest outfits on this earth). Just as al Qaeda in Iraq overplayed its hand and alienated that country's Sunni Arabs, this assassination may disillusion Pakistanis who lent half an ear to Islamist rhetoric.

A creature of insatiable ambition, Bhutto will now become a martyr. In death, she may pay back some of the enormous debt she owes her country.

Ellie