THE PAK CIVIL WAR

[Pete]

http://www.nypost.com/seven/05012009...63.htm?&page=1


".....Although Pakistan's officer corps draws on all of the country's provinces and territories, the army's heart really has only two chambers. The senior officers who form the military's center of gravity come from Punjab, a populous east-of-the-Indus state with old martial traditions.

But a crucial minority of the army's top performers come from the tribal lands west of the Indus that have always produced warriors. They're Pashtuns. So are the Taliban.

We ignore such fundamental considerations, failing to note that the extended family of a general or colonel with a name such as "Afridi" or "Khattack" is rooted in the mountain valleys that always embraced fundamentalist Islam.
....."

[Pete]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...m-Taliban.html


"......However, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, said last Saturday that It would be "unthinkable" that the Pakistani government of President Asif Ali Zardari would be toppled by the Taliban, adding: "Then they would have the keys to the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan, and we can't even contemplate that. We cannot let this go on any further."

The Wise One has spoken - So let it be.

[Ret10Echo]

Maybe Musharraf wasn't such a bad thing.....??

[dividebyzero]

Good article about Zardari by Nicholas Schmidle:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...ning-pakistan/

[Pete]

I was going to post this story for the information related to the title.

The more I read of the story the more I thought Dawn.com was pulling somebody's leg.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/...ani-govt-zj-01

There is no way in heck that Holbrooke said what this story said he did. No way. "...His mother worked there, she loved Pakistan....."?

Now what is interesting is pull down to the bottom of the paper and click on the "confusing signals" story.

This is what is going around in one of Pakistan's most widely read English papers.

[dividebyzero]

Originally Posted by Pete

This is what is going around in one of Pakistan's most widely read English papers.

Although I know this particular source isn't held in too high regard around here, the NYT had a good article about this from back in November. Relevant excerpts from here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/wo...a/23pstan.html

A redrawn map of South Asia has been making the rounds among Pakistani elites. It shows their country truncated, reduced to an elongated sliver of land with the big bulk of India to the east, and an enlarged Afghanistan to the west.

That the map was first circulated as a theoretical exercise in some American neoconservative circles matters little here. It has fueled a belief among Pakistanis, including members of the armed forces, that what the United States really wants is the breakup of Pakistan, the only Muslim country with nuclear arms.

“One of the biggest fears of the Pakistani military planners is the collaboration between India and Afghanistan to destroy Pakistan,” said a senior Pakistani government official involved in strategic planning, who insisted on anonymity as per diplomatic custom. “Some people feel the United States is colluding in this.”

Some commentators suggest that the United States is actually financing the Taliban. The point is to tie down the Pakistani Army, they say, leaving the way open for the Americans to grab Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

Recently, in the officer’s mess in Bajaur, the northern tribal region where the Pakistani Army is tied down fighting the militants, one officer offered his own theory: Osama bin Laden did not exist, he told a visiting journalist.

Rather, he was a creation of the Americans, who needed an excuse to invade Afghanistan and encroach on Pakistan

I've posted this here before, but these assertions seem to dovetail with mainstream Pakistani public opinion from early 2008 as reported by this USIP study:
http://www.usip.org/pubs/working_pap...7_pakistan.pdf

8. Relations with the United States
Majority opinion toward the United States is negative. Large majorities say that the United States cannot be trusted to act responsibly and also believe that it has
extraordinary influence over Pakistan. US military presence in the region is viewed as a threat to Pakistan. A large and growing majority believe it is a US goal to weaken and divide the Muslim world. A plurality disapproves of how Pakistan’s government has handled relations with the United States. Only one in four feels that security cooperation with the United States has brought Pakistan any benefit.

10. Ranking of Perceived Threats
Asked to evaluate a series of possible threats to Pakistan’s vital interests, the
Pakistani public rates US military presence in the region as a critical threat by the largest percentage. Other threats regarded as critical by majorities include tensions with India and violence between Pakistani religious and ethnic groups. Slightly fewer regard the activities of al Qaeda, local Taliban, and jihadist militants as critical, or the activities of ethnic nationalist movements. Only half see the possibility of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons as threatening. A majority considers the rise of China to be no threat to Pakistan.

In any case, the full article and the full USIP study are worth reading in pursuit of a better understanding of the challenges faced in our overall strategy towards Pakistan.

[incarcerated]

Today’s news snips from
www.stratfor.com

Pakistan: 16 Militants Killed Near Border
May 2, 2009 1428 GMT
Pakistani Frontier Corps forces killed 16 Taliban militants in the Mohmand tribal region near the Afghan border, Reuters reported May 2, citing a Pakistani military spokesman. More than 60 militants attacked the Frontier Corps outpost in a predawn attack on the Spin Tangi area of Mohmand, killing two soldiers before the attack was repelled.

Pakistan: Forces Move Into Shangla
May 2, 2009 | 1859 GMT
Pakistani security forces have moved into the villages of Alpuri Tehsil and Khawazakhela, part of the Shangla district in Swat valley after militant activity was reported in the area, The Associated Press reported May 2, citing Pakistani news agency Dawn. Pakistani forces also imposed a short-term curfew in the area after arriving.

Pakistan: Militants Kidnap Officials, Kill 1
May 2, 2009 | 1906 GMT
Taliban militants in Shangla district have kidnapped several people, including Pakistani municipal official Rozi Raheem and his son, and killed one other government official, Dawn News reported May 2. Raheem’s kidnapping occurred in Sharifabad region of the Swat valley.

Pakistan: Khan Refuses Disarmament
May 2, 2009 | 2050 GMT
Tehrik-i-Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan said militants will not disarm as required by the deal to implement Shariah in the Swat valley region of Pakistan, Geo TV reported May 2. Khan said U.S. President Barack Obama hopes to overturn the legislation approving Islamic law in Swat, and that militants will keep their arms to prevent the system from being abolished.

[Richard]

And another fine mess to continue to worry about...

Krepinevich discusses this in a strategic-level wargaming scenario - Armageddon: The Assault on Israel - in his book, 7 Deadly Scenarios.

Richard's $.02

Shaky Pakistan Is Seen as a Target of Plots by Al Qaeda
Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, NYT, 10 May 2009

As Taliban militants push deeper into Pakistan’s settled areas, foreign operatives of Al Qaeda who had focused on plotting attacks against the West are seizing on the turmoil to sow chaos in Pakistan and strengthen the hand of the militant Islamist groups there, according to American and Pakistani intelligence officials.

One indication came April 19, when a truck parked inside a Qaeda compound in South Waziristan, in Pakistan’s tribal areas, erupted in a fireball when it was struck by a C.I.A. missile. American intelligence officials say that the truck had been loaded with high explosives, apparently to be used as a bomb, and that while its ultimate target remains unclear, the bomb would have been more devastating than the suicide bombing that killed more than 50 people at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad in September.

Al Qaeda’s leaders — a predominantly Arab group of Egyptians, Saudis and Yemenis, as well as other nationalities like Uzbeks — for years have nurtured ties to Pakistani militant groups like the Taliban operating in the mountains of Pakistan. The foreign operatives have historically set their sights on targets loftier than those selected by the local militant groups, aiming for spectacular attacks against the West, but they may see new opportunity in the recent violence.

Intelligence officials say the Taliban advances in Swat and Buner, which are closer to Islamabad than to the tribal areas, have already helped Al Qaeda in its recruiting efforts. The officials say the group’s recruiting campaign is currently aimed at young fighters across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia who are less inclined to plan and carry out far-reaching global attacks and who have focused their energies on more immediate targets.

“They smell blood, and they are intoxicated by the idea of a jihadist takeover in Pakistan,” said Bruce O. Riedel, a former analyst for the C.I.A. who recently led the Obama administration’s policy review of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

It remains unlikely that Islamic militants could seize power in Pakistan, given the strength of Pakistan’s military, according to American intelligence analysts. But a senior American intelligence official expressed concern that recent successes by the Taliban in extending territorial gains could foreshadow the creation of “mini-Afghanistans” around Pakistan that would allow militants even more freedom to plot attacks.

American government officials and terrorism experts said that Al Qaeda’s increasing focus on a local strategy was partly born from necessity, as the C.I.A.’s intensifying airstrikes have reduced the group’s ability to hit targets in the West. The United States has conducted 16 drone strikes so far this year, according to American officials, compared with 36 strikes in all of 2008.

According to a Pakistani intelligence assessment provided to The New York Times in February, Al Qaeda has adapted to the deaths of its leaders by shifting “to conduct decentralized operations under small but well-organized regional groups” within Pakistan and Afghanistan. At the same time, the group has intensified its recruiting, to replace its airstrike casualties.

One of Al Qaeda’s main goals in Pakistan, the assessment said, was to “stage major terrorist attacks to create a feeling of insecurity, embarrass the government and retard economic development and political progress.”

The Qaeda operatives are foreigners inside Pakistan, and experts say that the group’s leaders, like Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, appear to be wary of claiming credit for the violence in the country, possibly creating popular backlash against the group.

“They are trying to take an Arab face off this,” said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at Georgetown University.

“If you look at Al Qaeda as a brand, they know when to broadcast the brand, as the group has done in North Africa,” Mr. Hoffman said. “And they know when to cloak the brand, as it has done in Pakistan.”

As a result, it is difficult for American officials to assess exactly which recent attacks in Pakistan are the work of Qaeda operatives. But intelligence officials say they believe that the Marriott Hotel bombing was partly planned by Usama al-Kini, a Kenyan Qaeda operative who was killed in Pakistan by a C.I.A. drone on New Year’s Day.

According to Mr. Hoffman, Al Qaeda may be trying to achieve a separate goal: getting the C.I.A. to call off its campaign of airstrikes in the tribal areas. A wave of terrorist violence could foment so much popular discontent with the government of President Asif Ali Zardari, he said, that Pakistan might then try to pressure the Obama administration to scale back its drone campaign.

For now, however, Obama administration officials say they believe that the covert airstrikes are the best tool at their disposal to strike at Al Qaeda inside Pakistan, which remains the group’s most important haven, but where large numbers of American combat forces would never be welcome.

The April 19 strike that hit what appeared to have been a truck bomb in a compound used by Al Qaeda set off an enormous secondary explosion, intelligence officials say. A second, empty truck destroyed in the same attack may also have been there to be outfitted with explosives, they say.

In another significant attack, on April 29, missiles fired from a C.I.A. Predator killed Abu Sulayman al-Jazairi, an Algerian Qaeda planner who American intelligence officials say they believe helped train operatives for attacks in Europe and the United States.

Still, officials caution that Al Qaeda has not abandoned its goal of “spectacular” attacks in the United States and Europe. According to one American counterterrorism official, the group continues to plan attacks outside its sanctuary in the tribal areas, aiming at targets in the West and elsewhere in Pakistan.

“They are opportunistic to the extent they perceive vulnerabilities with the uncertain nature of Pakistani politics and the security situation in Swat and Buner,” said the American counterterrorism official, who like other officials interviewed for this article was not authorized to speak publicly on intelligence issues. “They’re trying to exploit it.”

In meetings this past week in Washington, American and Pakistani officials discussed the possibility of limited joint operations with American Predator and Reaper drones.

Under one proposal, the United States would retain control over the firing of missiles, but it would share with the Pakistani security forces some sophisticated imagery and communications intercepts that could be relayed to Pakistani combat forces on the ground.

C.I.A. officials for months have resisted requests by Mr. Zardari to share the drone technology. In a television interview broadcast Sunday, the Pakistani leader said he would keep pressing to get his own Predator fleet.

“I’ve been asking for them, but I haven’t got a positive answer as yet,” Mr. Zardari said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“But I’m not giving up.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/11/wo...er=rss&emc=rss

I read this website daily. I have found a great deal of good info here.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/

My son, in his mom's day call. Gave me a reading list. It included this article.
The child is now the teacher.
The two articles that come up after I 'search' for 'shadow army' are these, both on the same page.
http://www.longwarjournal.org/cgi-bi...ch=shadow+army

[Pete]

"Boy I am glad the world isn't ruled by moms." "Yeah if they did, there would be a zillion soldiers with nothing to do. " For Better or Worse sunday 4/19/09


M. Thatcher was a mommy during the Falklands Campaign.

She didn't let her troops just sit around with nothing to do.