So...

Violence and instability in Afghanistan has spread in to Pakistan...which shouldn't be that surprising I guess... but is it just me or have terrorist attacks increased at a near exponential rate in the past couple months?

Take a look at this wiki on the topic (yes...wiki...deal with it)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronology_of...n_Pakistan#2001

BBC article about the latest attack, with a brief chronology of attacks since late September at the very bottom of the page...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8310117.stm

I mean, in October alone...there's been an attack almost every other day, it seems. What's worse, these aren't just random suicide bombings against a civilian market, or a car bomb on a military convoy. Just earlier this month, militants stormed the Army's HQ and took hostages. Yesterday, militants carried out simultaneous attacks on government buildings, killing at least 40.

Violence in Pakistan, if it truly is escalating, is a very dangerous situation for all involved. It was bad enough when militants began causing chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan, but now you're talking about a nation with nuclear weapons. So, if war is truly spreading into Pakistan, what is the global communities best course of action? Should the US get involved directly? And what about India? You can bet that they won't be too pleased with a potential for Pakistan to go to the extremists...

1) Is this a momentary issue that Pakistan can handle by itself with relatively limited assistance from the global community?
2) Is this a much more serious issue that requires direct US intervention?
3) If radical Islamists gain control of Pakistan, what should be done about their nukes?
4) How can we blame this entire situation on Obama and the Democrats? Or...alternatively, how can we blame this situation on Bush and the Republicans? Because, you know, when it comes to national security, there's nothing more productive than pointing fingers...

We can only hope that Pakistan can keep control of their country. It will be 100times worse than if Pakistan gets taken over by terrorists, than if Afghanistan gets taken over by terrorists again.

It's absurd to simply sit back and "hope". Our first course of action is to establish control over Afghanistan (including the border area) to take Taliban resources, money, and manpower away from their fight in Pakistan. Next, we need to seal the Afghan/Pakistani border so militants can't move freely between the two countries. We then need to assist the Pakistani military in any way acceptable to them to crush the western tribal regions supporting the Taliban.

In the meantime, we need Russia and China to press India (India is lost to us and the sooner we get that into our heads, the better) to back off of Pakistan with some temporary non-aggression promises/pacts/whatever so that Pakistan's military can take some guys off the Indian lines to hit the Taliban. Pakistan's currently fighting a two-front war by having to guard against the massive Indian army while trying to take on the Taliban. It's doing this even as the Taliban move freely in and out of Afghanistan, moving weapons, foot soldiers, and money at will.

Europe has as much (if not more) at stake in this fight as the US does at this point. The Taliban don't need to win in order to win; they simply need to survive long enough for everyone to tire of fighting them. They're fighting the same war with the west as they did against the Soviets and it worked against the Soviets. Only now, instead of fighting for a part of a backward country nobody cares about, they're looking for regional control and a base of operations for worldwide Islamic terrorist organizations. Along the way, they'll have seized all the military hardware and knowhow of the Pakistani military.

This is the most important fight in the world since WWII and the entire western world ought to be treating it as such.

We can't take control of Afghanistan without more troops, first. Sadly, I think this administration is treating the War in Afghanistan as a "auto-pilot" war, which they sit back and do nothing like they have since McChrystal has been pleading for more troops.

That has been USA's aim since 2001, sadly unsuccessful. Question is what can be done about this problem? America has been trying to control Afghan-Pakistan borders for quite some time now unsuccessfully.



That would never work. So long as Pakistani sponsored terrorists are given free rein by Pakistan government, India cannot be expected to slack off on Pakistan. India has been too forbearant towards Pakistan in the opinions of most Indians after the 26 November, 2008 attacks in Mumbai.

That high profile attack was equated to 9/11 in India. But even though India, under US pressure agreed to solve matters diplomatically, Pakistan has just acquitted the prime terrorists behind those ghastly attacks.

How would USA react if Osama Bin Laden was arrested and acquitted by a court in Saudi Arabia simply because in that country, Al Qaeda is not declared as illegal, even though Saudi Arabia may have claimed that Al Qaeda is banned?

That is the sort of anger that Indians today feel towards Pakistan.

Forget any question of pressuring India of slacking towards Pakistan so long as USA turns a blind eye towards Pak sponsored terrorism in India.

I agree, though the Afghan/Pakistani border isn't really much of a border. You'd need a lot of manpower from the Pakistanis and potentially NATO to seal off the border.



I agree that India should back off a little bit from Pakistan, but come on...it's just not going to happen. With Pakistani-backed terrorism (as claimed by India) not only in Kashmir, but also with the Mumbai attacks, it is very doubtful that India is going to ease up on Pakistan. Plus you have the Kargil conflict, where Pakistani-backed militants and even Pakistani regulars snuck into India.

Russia would be helpful. China...not so much. Sino-Indian relations are based more off of competition than on trust and respect. Relations have been improving, but they aren't nearly to the level of Russian-Indian relations, especially after China's surprise invasion of India back in the . Plus, you have to remember that China has stronger ties with Pakistan than it does with India, so any suggestion to back off Pakistan will probably be ignored.

Also, to say India is lost to us is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. I understand American-Indian relations weren't great during the Cold War, but you'd think America would be interested in maintaining a healthy relationship with the world's largest democracy. Also considering India's now close link with Afghanistan... On a complete side-note, the Obama administration has been doing a !@#$ job maintaining relations with India, even though members of the military have been trying to get the administration to continue friendly relations (something I admit the Bush Administration did a better job of). I'm not sure if it's because Obama et al simply don't care about maintaining relations, or if it's because they figure India will always be on good terms, but if the US wants Indian help in dealing with Pakistan, it better get's its foreign relations teams working on it right away.



The most dangerous of which are a known stockpile of nuclear arms.

Well, the President is going to have to make a decision a lot sooner than he'd like. If he doesn't provide more troops, it's a lost cause and we may as well pull out the troops we have there now. We can't do anything with the pathetically small number of troops we have in there currently. However, if he does refuse more troops, I think it'll create a strong swing toward the Republicans looking ahead at 2010. I don't think Afghanistan is "Bush's war" in the public's mind anymore.



We've been trying to do it with a tiny force when we need overwhelming force. We need hundreds of thousands of troops in Afghanistan. I'd say at least 500,000 to be safe. The problem is that we've been chasing the Taliban around the country and every time we "clear" an area and leave, the Taliban just come right back in behind us. What we need is to clear and hold areas, providing protection and assistance to locals. When we provide them with security and assistance (medical, construction, etc), they'll fall in to support us and their own military. If we keep letting the Taliban move in behind us to chop off arms and legs of those working with us, we stand no chance of succeeding.




The issue in Pakistan is that its government is heavily fragmented. Pakistan - as a whole - isn't supporting or supplying the terrorists attacking India. In fact, the government itself would probably like to see a crackdown on them (if only to get India off its back), but the military won't go there. The military created and trained the units who are now working on their own in attacking India. While the military might appreciate those militants halting their attacks, the chances of them actually going after those militants by choice is slim. The Pakistani intelligence community, on the other hand, is quite likely supplying and aiding the groups attacking India.

See, in Pakistan, the government, the military, and the intelligence community are three very separate, very distinct groups with conflicting goals and interests. The government really has very little control over the other two. I think they haven't tried taking down the intelligence community for the simple fact that it'd put all those guys in direct opposition to the government (versus simply having their own agenda). Having them working directly against the government would likely result in all kinds of government officials waving goodbye to the game of life. As for the military, it largely seeks nothing more than security in the Pakistani state, acting mostly by what it perceives as the will of the people. The government can bark orders at the military all day long, but at the end of the day, the military's going to do what it thinks will bring security to the country and make the people happy.

So our best bet is to work with the Pakistani military to ensure that security. And while they probably won't be too keen on US forces marching around on their land, they'd likely be very welcoming to US forces sealing that western border. They've even quietly welcomed the drone attacks on leadership in the tribal areas that the Pakistani military can't attack directly right now.

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We could seal it on the Afghan side with a few hundred thousand troops in the country. That, with drones, would effectively make crossing the border a risky deal for any Taliban. Of course, getting anyone (especially this President) to agree to such a massive troop commitment at this point is rather unlikely. The interesting thing is that I think Americans would take the whole thing more seriously if he did commit that many troops. When you've got 40,000 over there, people look at it as what it is: a joke. Hop on TV and tell them the situation is so dire and critical to world stability that you're sending 500,000, people quickly get it in their heads that something - even if they don't understand it - is seriously important over there.



Didn't say it was realistic to expect India to fully back down, but they can certainly work with Pakistan's government to figure out some temporary changes in policy that would allow Pakistan's military to concentrate more on the Taliban. It's not in India's interest to have religious extremists in control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Those people think they go hang out with God if they die in battle for him. Not exactly the kind of people you look to MAD to protect you from in a nuclear conflict.



China is becoming increasingly important in the region, especially economically. India's best economic interests are to ride China's coattails toward modernization. And while China does present a certain amount of competition for them right now, India's future is linked to China's. That gives China a certain amount of ear time. As for Russia, they've become extremely close in recent years. With Russia and China essentially forming a bloc to balance American economic and political power in the world, India's desire to be part of such a bloc (primarily via Russia) would make those two very influential for India.



I should clarify that I don't mean India is our enemy by any stretch. Rather, they're aligning themselves with the Russian-Chinese bloc, which is a recently renewed attempt to balance against American economic and political power. India has every reason to place their friendship over our's. Between their existing relationship with Russia and China's rising regional star, they'd almost be fools not to get on board with those two. It means that if we want them to do something like back off from Pakistan (and our new relationship with Pakistan is a big part of why they've shifted to the RC-bloc), we're going to need Russia and China asking them to do the same thing. We can't press them ourselves to any significant effect at this point, but Russia and (to an admittedly lesser extent) China can.

If it looks like Islamabad will fall, we ask the Pakistani Gov't to surrender it's nukes. If they agree, we seize their nukes and if they can hold on and stabilize the situation we give them back. If they refuse, we hit their silos and nuke factories with everything we've got until their smoldering craters.

In ether case, we follow our actions up with money and boots on the ground.

Well, considering that under Bush's term, Iraq is a stable democracy now. We won in Iraq, but Afghanistan is a much harder task, because most of the people are tribal. You're right that if we dont get any more troops in Afghanistan, its a lost cause and we should just pull all of the troops out.

This post is excellent. After reading it, it would be silly for me to post anything substanative on the subject as this for the most part covers the relevant issues and falls in line with my thought process. The only distinction I would make is that if the over whelming force doctrine is not adopted then troops should be pulled out, special forces employed and an air strike campaign begun.

Cheers Loki, great post man.

As long as attacks on India have ties back to Pakistan, you'll never get India to "go easy" on them...which is unsurprising and sad at the same time.



Somewhat true, except Pakistan also has a history where the military is the government.

Something I also wanted to add is that due to poverty and lack of education...the people of Pakistan are, I believe, a very good recruiting base for militants and terrorists. It happens in every location where Islamic terrorism is popping up... the people are hungry, poor, sick... and then some religious group comes along and convinces them that all their suffering is due to the West, and how if they join up and help fight the war against the infidels, the people will be saved. Very easy targets indeed...

Probably best to leave Afghanistan, and use the resources to back up Pakistan. Your presence in Afghanistan just seem to make things worse. And lets face it, even with your superior weapons you have really not won a war since ww2.

argh, ok. So america stinks at fighting wars...


We won the "Cold War"

We secured South Korea to be a democracy.

We won Iraq, and now they are a stable democracy

NATO and the US won Desert Storm

...may I go on?

Oooohhhh....ouch!

To be honest, I don't think there are too many countries that have really "won" a war since WWII...

Mainly because we are not allowed to effectively fight wars. Once we commit to war deployment of troops should not be political, a general should get every troop he asks for until we leave the war.

That is the number 1 reason we can not win war anymore.

The blind eye we turned to Musharraf and ISI leading us down the garden path in the bungled Iraq and Afghanistan wars under the previous administration (and those before it, no doubt) simply ruined civil society in Pakistan ... and now we have no basis to feign surprise at the results, plenty of people in the region were telling us exactly what we were creating, and here it is.

Every time we prop up a dictator long beyond his usefulness and then the radicals take over his country, we act surprised. If football coaches learned as slowly as our foreign policy establishment, the NFL woudn't be using the forward pass yet.

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WINNER

If I have room in my sig I am quoting that.

Like I said in an another thread, this is just a weakness of a democracy. War weariness and public opposition lead to politicians getting involved. And we all know (Democrat or Republican) that politicians have such a great ability to mess up anything.

Indeed. Not to hammer this fact into the think heads in DC.

yes and no, it is a weakness of democracy, but democracy only is as weak as the people.


We've always been a democracy, we used to win wars. So while democracy allows what you detailed, its actually the people failing, the people have no stomach for it anymore. That I'm not sure how we can fix.

I think you mean "Now" instead of "Not"

Attempts to take out Pakistan's nuclear arsenal would be a futile effort. I do not think Pakistan keeps its nuclear weapons under ease observability of USA or any other nation.

Any such attempt would be truly catastrophic as it could trigger an event much like the Eastern_Mediterranean_Event . Pakistan is a paranoid nation, so too is India to an extent.

I didnt even know that India had nukes...

seriously?

Yeah how dare they.

You're kidding, right?

Yeah, i never did. Argh, just another example of how I'm "uninformed" according to some people....

Well, there's so many nations that have nukes now, and I've never have seen India come up in an shows or articles about nations that have nukes.

This is why I remain a big believer in the Powell/Schwarzkopf Doctrine of going to war:

1. Define your objectives clearly
2. Apply overwhelming force to achieve them
3. gtfo of Dodge after (2) is finished

If you can't do (1), then what the hell are you sending people off to die for?

Do democracies waffle on supporting military action? Absolutely, if there is not a cut & dried impending threat to the people that they see as justifying sending their sons off to die. If you B.S. them for a moment about the seriousness of the threat, they figure it out eventually ... always do. And then you're damned right, even the most cowardly "I don't want to look weak on defense at election time" elected officials start questioning the wisdom of spending billions to feed our best & noblest citizens into a meatgrinder.

What do you consider "many"? Im curious

Do you think less then 10 is many?

So many that you could count them on two hands. Seriously. There are 8 states known to possess nuclear weapons... not counting Israel due to i's refusal to declared itself, even though it is likely it possesses a decent arsenal...

I am not counting states like Iran who are close to potentially possessing nukes.

Also...how did you miss every news piece regarding India-Pakistan? Doesn't matter if it's an article about cricket...somewhere in there they'll mention "tension between the two nuclear rivals" or something along those lines...

eh, good point.

You cannot possibly offer a relevant opinion on Iran's pursuit of nukes (if they are pursing them) without understanding the regional arms race already underway in their corner of the world.

Well, maybe close.

I know every other nation that has nukes, except India till now.

Or...maybe not...

Other than probably not having a single gram of domestically produced weapons grade material .... or a tested warhead design .... that is compact enough to mount on a missile .... that they've test-fired.

Yeah, they're right on the verge.

i think a decade is more than enough to produce a nuke.

I'm not sure why you're quoting someone who says "Dictators=radicals later!" The dictators usually crush the radicals in a very efficient manner, which is why there are no longer communist insurgencies in South America or Iran.

The problem USUALLY is that the US withdraws support of a government and THEN it collapses.


Pakistan, though, is a country of 180 million people, though, so...

meh, dont let the other blokes scare you to much. So you didnt know about India, dont worry about it. im going to let you in on a little secret, the boiler room has some very articulate and educated posters. We've got some real idiots here too, but stick around read a bit, and most importantly ask questions when you dont know something.

Sure you will get some scorn, but you will obtain knowledge.

Well, many self -proclaimed "articulate and educated posters". I've been posting here since July, so im getting to see how things roll here.

here's what i mean. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_state...nuclear_weapons


sure there's only a few Nations that produce Nukes, but many have a stockpile of nukes.

Point of view is of paramount importance when one choose thier vehicle for information and entertainment. Things roll here pretty much like any other web based discourse, some people present decent arguments with references and are generally interested in a discussion, some simply like to chip in a remark here and there to see what kind of reaction they get (you know something like "you guys havent won a war since WWII).

Either way keep posting, be open to the self proclaimed "articulate and educated posters" some of them are smart individuals they are just victimized by the courage the anonimity of the web affords them.

Leaving Afghanistan as a base of operations for the Taliban so we can support Pakistan from... what, outer space? Hello, Afghanistan borders Pakistan. If we want to support Pakistan, the best place to do that from is.... Afghanistan.

As for winning a war, we seemed to kick the Hell out of the Iraqis twice in a row in conventional combat. The problem with unconventional coflicts is that there is no "winning", only losing. You either fight until the other side is dead/gone/loses interest, or you lose. Whichever side stops fighting first loses. There's no capital to take, no army to destroy; you simply fight what amounts to a war of attrition until somebody stops fighting.

And after winning the conventional war in Iraq for the second time 'round, we also won the unconventional war with the insurgency in Iraq. Thanks to US forces, the Iraqi government, with its military and police forces, have set up security in their own cities to the point that US forces have mostly withdrawn to the countryside. Under a plan put together during the Bush administration, US combat forces are on schedule to withdraw from the country entirely.



Not only are they not allowed to effectively fight wars, but their every action is micro-managed. What needs to happen is that the President, in consultation with Congress, sets out goals for the military. The military leadership then needs to provide the President with estimates on the resources they'll need to accomplish those goals. It then needs to be given the freedom to go do its job without politicial idiots micromanaging. If the military isn't getting its job done as promised, fire the leadership and appoint new leadership, but give them the autonomy necessary to implement policy.

The other issue is that since WWII, most wars fought have been unconventional wars. In other words, with no capital to take, no army to destroy, and no bases to conquer, it's extremely difficult to guage progress or give estimates on a time frame for success. It's rather challenging to even define what "success" is in such a situation. And at the troop levels we've got in Afghanistan right now, our great-grandchildren will be fighting Taliban soldiers.



Iraq may not have gone very well at times, but it's ultimately been a success. Saddam is gone and the Iraqi people have elected a reasonably representative group of government officials to lead them. They have an effective army and police force protecting their major population centers, and the US is on track for an orderly withdrawl under an agreement put together during the Bush administration.

Regarding Pakistan, Musharraf really didn't do too badly for us there. In fact, with the military in charge, things were a heck of a lot more stable. Musharraf would have been carpet bombing the Taliban after the crap they've been pulling. The disjointed government/military/intelligence community they have in that country, along with the serious poverty issues and tribal issues (especially in the western parts of the country) are creating a perfect storm of ineptness that the Taliban forces have been exploiting quite well. Ideally, someone with a military background would wind up in charge of Pakistan's government so the two could work together to solve the problems there.

I will agree that the US should learn from its experiences that a foreign policy of backing militant governments, dictators, and insurgents. It seems that everyone we train and equip inevitably comes back to use that stuff against us. Rather than trying to shape the world into something it's not, we should instead be looking to make ourselves more self-sufficient and improve our own country. Time to yank all foreign aid and put it to use building new schools, new roads, new bridges, and giving tax breaks to hard-working people right here at home.

First, Loki...you should know by now that the Boiler Room is not for coherent, well-thought arguments, so knock it off.



Second...this may not be that bad of an idea, actually.

I hate to be a skeptic here, but since many in the military are and I find myself in agreement, I'm going to say that I remain one. I think we spent the better part of a trillion dollars and thousands of American lives to somewhat postpone the civil war between the Shia, Kurds and Sunnis that Saddam's removal made inevitable, all while strengthening Iran's strategic position, but that the Iraqi government as it exists is incapable of standing on its own for long. If we spent all that money and all those lives to ultimately make Moqtada al-Sadr or someone like him the leader of whatever is left of Iraq after the Kurds and Shia get done fighting, no, I won't consider that a success, or something that was ever remotely worth doing considering the human cost we suffered and imposed in the process.

Nor would I, but I don't think that's likely at this point. If we simply walked out right now, I think the Iraqi government would have a difficult road ahead to survive. And I think they know that. With US forces nearby at a moment's notice, the Iraqi government is continuing to find strength and support among the people. Ultimately, by simply existing and performing basic functions for a long enough period of time, it will become too well ingrained for an al-Sadr or the like to bring it down.

The Kurds present an interesting issue, but they seem to understand that open combat will not be good for them. They merely want semi-autonomous control over their own area and to otherwise be left alone. They're very careful when answering questions like "do you want your own homeland?", so I think they understand the political realities of the time and are content to move very slowly and methodically toward that goal. Iran could potentially cause problems in Iraq, but frankly, I think that'd to more to bring the Iraqi people together than anything. That comes down to the old saying that I can punch my brother all day long, but God help you if you lay a hand on him.

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I love you.

Yes, reading your posts sometimes give me that impression.

Secondly Pakistan can be supported in other ways then by force.

Let me ask you this. Do you see a military solution to the whole war on Terror? To me its seems like the extremists feeds on your presence in the middle east.