Memo to Pundita Readers

Until further notice advise that you cover your ears while visiting this blog. Don't say I didn't warn you. I swear, this war is going to put me in a straightjacket yet.

Hey, hey Admiral Mullen how many US troops have you killed today?

Adm. Mullen has long been the most outspoken member of the U.S. government in support of Pakistan's military efforts. Adm. Mullen has used his close relationship with Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, the Pakistani army chief of staff, to prod the military to step up its actions against militants.
- Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2010



October 17, 2010, Long War Journal

Pakistan is not conducting 'surgical' raids in North Waziristan
By Bill Roggio

Buried at the end of this Wall Street Journal article on Admiral Mike Mullen's infatuation with Pakistan (a topic worthy of a book in itself), are these two completely false paragraphs that claim Pakistan is conducting covert operations against al Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Haqqani Network based in North Waziristan:

Pakistan currently conducts "surgical" raids against militants in North Waziristan—home to the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network -- but has said a large-scale operation to clear the area of all military would threaten Islamabad's ability to keep militants out of other areas it cleared previously.

Islamabad is willing to step up their surgical raids in North Waziristan if the U.S. provides them with more information about the location of militants they want removed, a senior Pakistan official said this week.

There is absolutely not one shred of evidence to back this up. None. Pakistani forces have not killed a single leader or senior operative of al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Islamic Jihad Group, the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party, the Lashklar-e-Jhangvi, the Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, the Harkat-ul-Jihad-i-Islami, the Fedayeen-i-Islam, etc., based in North Waziristan. The only "surgical raids" being carried out in North Waziristan are done by the unmanned US Predators and Reapers.

In the interview, Admiral Mullen describes Pakistan's counterinsurgency efforts against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Swat and South Waziristan as "heroic." Yet there is nothing remotely heroic in Pakistani officials making false claims about Pakistan's efforts to take on terrorist sanctuaries in North Waziristan. In the ranks of the US military, there is a term for those who pump up their exploits at the expense of those fighting alongside them: blue falcon.

Do you have any idea what you have done, Mullen? Do you even care? Right now ISAF is having to use a cutthroat warlord to clear Taliban for them because of your man crush on Kayani -- or is that you've Gone Native?

Don't give me that yap about Obama Made Me Do It. If Obama told you to jump off a cliff would you?

If you want to be diplomat, go work for State. If you want to lobby for Pakistan's regime, go to work on K Street. But whatever you do, get out of the U.S. military. Scat! Shoo! You, you, you -- Blue Falcon! Blue Falcon! Bad Bill Roggio! Bad! Bad! Teaching innocent old women military curse words!

Long War Journal, October 26, 2010

Pakistan: North Waziristan operation is not on the table
By Bill Roggio

Just days after the US government committed to providing the Pakistani military more than $2 billion in aid, the top general in the northwest said an operation in North Waziristan won't happen anytime soon. From Dawn:

"Pakistan will consider mounting an anti-Taliban offensive in North Waziristan only when other tribal areas are stabilised, a senior military officer said on Tuesday, a position likely to anger ally Washington.

Pakistan has resisted mounting US pressure to launch a major operation in North Waziristan to eliminate the Haqqani Taliban faction.

Pakistan's army has repeatedly said it is too stretched fighting Taliban insurgents in other forbidding mountaineous regions, and that only it can determine if and when to strike.

Lt.-Gen Asif Yasin Malik, the main military commander for the northwest, said it would take at least six months to clear militants from Bajaur and Mohmand, two of Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous tribal agencies.

“What we have to do is stabilise the whole area. I have a very large area in my command,” he told reporters on a trip to Orakzai agency. “The issue is I need more resources.”

There are already six brigades in North Waziristan which carry out daily operations, he said.

Surprising, isn't it?

And as we noted [on October 17] the Pakistani military is not carrying out operations in North Waziristan.

Has this problem been fixed yet? Or does ISAF plan to set up a Welcome Wagon and food court for Taliban on the Afghan side of Torkham Gate?

Torkham Gate checkpoint, Khyber Pass
Pakistan side of border with Afghanistan

Thursday, October 7, 2010, McClatchy Newspapers (emphasis mine):

Pakistan blocks NATO convoys but Taliban get free passage

By Dion Nissenbaum

TORKHAM, Afghanistan — For more than a week since a confused U.S. helicopter strike killed two Pakistan paramilitary soldiers, Pakistan has blocked scores of Western supply convoys on the vital route that supports the U.S-led military campaign in Afghanistan.

Yet every day, say taxi drivers, security officials and border shop owners, Taliban insurgents cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan with nary a second glance from border officials.

"Every day, 40,000 to 70,000 people pass through the border, we can't handle it," said Gen. Mohammed Zaman Mamozai, the commander of the Afghan Border Police stationed at Torkham gate. "For us it's very difficult, and it's not possible to ask every single person where they are going and if they have a passport."

"If they want to come to Afghanistan, none out of a hundred will be arrested," said Sediqullah, a 36-year-old Afghan taxi driver, as he waited for Torkham-bound passengers outside Kabul.

Among the thousands of men he's picked up at the border, Sediqullah, who like many Afghans has one name, suspects that he's unwittingly ferried plenty of inconspicuous Taliban insurgents heading to fight U.S.-led military forces across Afghanistan.

Pakistan's willingness to allow sanctuary for Afghan insurgents long has strained ties with the U.S., and its closing of one of NATO's critical supply routes to Afghanistan added to tensions. However, Afghanistan also shares the blame for failing to guard its own front door.

For nearly a decade, the U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to cut off the remote, high-altitude mountain trails Taliban forces use to smuggle weapons and fighters into Afghanistan.

Now, the U.S. military is turning its attention to the border crossing.

"More and more we've realized that they are not coming through the passes, they're just coming through the . . . gate," said one U.S. government official in Afghanistan who spoke on the condition of anonymity so he could candidly discuss the unfolding plan to focus on the border crossing.

The U.S.-led coalition is setting up a special task force in eastern Afghanistan to deal with the insurgents who are coming into the country through the front door.

Torkham is one of America's busiest military lifelines into Afghanistan. About half of the U.S.-led military coalition's supplies come through Torkham, which is on the western edge of the fabled Khyber Pass, and the southern crossing at Spin Boldak, Afghanistan.

Not only have convoys headed for Torkham been idled, but Taliban officials in Pakistan also have claimed credit for a series of attacks on fuel trucks along the country's second supply route bound for NATO bases in Afghanistan.

Less dramatic, but every bit as troubling, is the suspected flow of insurgents using the porous crossing to dispatch new fighters, coordinate attacks and return to relative safety on the Pakistan side of the border.

No one can say how many foreign fighters pass through Torkham. Gen. Mamozai of the border police said he suspects that more insurgents use clandestine routes, but Torkham now has the attention of U.S. military officials.

"This area is our first priority," said a U.S. military official in eastern Afghanistan who also agreed to discuss the evolving program only if he could speak without being identified.

The Taliban presence is clearly evident at Torkham. [...]

Mamozai said his forces don't have the resources, intelligence network, surveillance equipment or Western support necessary to secure the border.

In the past nine months, the general said, his men had made only a few dozen arrests and confiscated a few hundred weapons at the border.

Getting a handle on the problem, he said, would require the Obama administration to put increased pressure on Pakistan to target insurgent havens along the border.

"Pakistan is not helping," he said. "The problem is that the international community is not going to that side of the border."

Border corruption and abuse are widespread.

Within minutes of arriving at the Torkham crossing gate earlier this week, two Western reporters watched a Pakistani border guard shake down a young traveler for a few dollars before letting him into the country.

Nearby, a second Pakistani border guard roughly pulled a second young man into a tiny border police shack after the traveler refused to comply with demands for cash.

On the other side of the road, Afghan border police stood by as scores of people walked into Afghanistan without being checked at the last gate. [...]

Afghan warlord Abdul Raziq pulls Petraeus irons out of fire but we need Gurkhas. We need Gurkhas badly.

Gurkhas

Afghan Border Police, Spin Boldak

Yes I know there has been a Gurkha unit in Afghanistan; the 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, has been serving in southern Helmand province and of course doing a splendid job. They're returning to their base in England next month. But we really need Gurkha units at the border checkpoints.

With regard to the Afghan border police at Spin Boldak, the ISAF has had to make a deal with the devil because the NATO regimes, including the U.S. one, refuse to deal with Pakistan's military in appropriate fashion. This October 26 Washington Post report, U.S. operations in Kandahar push out Taliban, (which I feature in its entirety at the end of this post) does not go anywhere near telling the real story about the heroic Afghan Police Colonel Abdul Raziq, the leader of a tribal militia and border police force that extends across Kandahar and Helmand provinces.

Yes the colonel is very brave; a great fighter, a great leader -- a man who fights out in front of his troops the way real military commanders used to do -- and he is killing many Taliban. He is also a fiend.

Here is the real story about the colonel, whose name is spelled somewhat differently depending on the reporter. No matter how you spell it -- Abdul Razik, Abdul Raziq, Abdul Razziq -- it's the same Afghan warlord who is right now pulling General Petraeus's irons out of the fire in Kandahar.

And note that Carlotta Gall's October 21 report for The New York Times, which broke the story that the U.S. military was "routing" the Taliban from Kandahar, does not mention the efforts of the colonel; it cites only an amazing 'new' mobile rocket with pinpoint accuracy as a factor in the rout. There's an amazing mobile rocket, all right; its name is Abdul Raziq.

But the colonel's help is not a solution, and it is creating just as many problems as it solves. From Afghanistan Analysts Network, 2010 Elections 29: Losing legitimacy - Kandahar's preliminary winners:

There has been some very positive news coming out of Kandahar province lately, as the New York Times' Carlotta Gall has reported. According to ISAF and Afghan government officials, the Taliban have been "routed" from the province by a massive military offensive, partly with the help of a miraculous rocket launcher, the HIMARS system, which, though not exactly "new" as claimed in the Times piece, certainly sounds impressive. The news is all the more remarkable in that it closely follows the timetable that was laid down by military officials throughout the summer.

It's a pity, then, that this moment of military triumphalism should be marred by the impending election -- barring Electoral Complaints Council (ECC) intervention -- of an extremely dubious slate of Afghan parliamentary candidates, one that underscores how tenuous the connection is between the people of Kandahar and their government.

[...]

[Election] Observers were anticipating extreme fraud in Kandahar, where what little security exists is dependent on strongmen. The most notable of these is the young Border Police colonel Abdul Raziq, who commands a large, mostly Achekzai militia based out of the key border town of Spin Boldak. In the 2009 presidential elections, Raziq proved that he could deliver vote counts through his commander network that extends through the districts of Maruf, Arghestan, Spin Boldak, Reg, Shorawak, and Daman. This year, he seems to have been elevated, in some respects, to a role in the elections equal to Ahmed Wali Karzai’s. [...]

The paragraphs I've snipped from the AAN report are too depressing to read unless you don't mind wearing sackcloth and ashes for the rest of the day.

The photograph of Afghan border police in the "key" border town of Spin Boldak was taken by the AAN report's co-author, Matthieu Aikins, and used for Foreign Policy magazine's crosspost of the AAN report. The photo of the Gurkhas is from the BBC but they don't identify the unit.

All right; I'm now going to go sprinkle more ashes on my head and take a swig from the sherry bottle -- for medicinal purposes only, of course.

Washington Post report
U.S. operations in Kandahar push out Taliban
By Joshua Partlow and Karin Brulliard
Staff writer Rajiv Chandrasekaran and special correspondent Javed Hamdard contributed to this report.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN - With 2,000-pound bombs, 12,000 troops and one illiterate but charismatic Afghan border police commander, the U.S. military has forced insurgents to retreat from key parts of this strategically vital region, according to U.S. and Afghan commanders.

The developments are far from decisive, but senior military leaders believe they have made progress on the western outskirts of Kandahar city and in the pomegranate orchards of the Arghandab River valley. The ground remains treacherous, seeded with bombs that reverberate daily through the city.

The Taliban departure from some areas could be a strategic response to an operation NATO has trumpeted for months. Or insurgents could be lying low, developing new avenues of attack. NATO forces have cleared villages before, including in Kandahar province, and failed to hold them. Whether insurgents can be kept away this time, or prevented from grabbing new parts of the city or its surroundings, remains to be seen.

The most unexpected, and potentially risky, aspect of NATO's resurgence is Abdul Razziq, the 32-year-old police colonel best known for allegations of pocketing millions of dollars in illegal customs dues, who has left the border to lead hundreds of his militiamen into Taliban-held villages that have bedeviled NATO troops for years.

Behind Razziq's hardened fighters -- who possess a local knowledge that police officers and soldiers from Afghanistan's national security forces cannot match -- American soldiers have taken back territory previously out of reach. He has led clearing operations in all of the areas central to the American campaign here - Panjwayi, Zhari, Arghandab and Kandahar city - and has captured hundreds of Taliban fighters.

"He's like a folk hero now," said Col. Jeffrey Martindale, who commands a U.S. Army brigade in Kandahar. "The Taliban fear him."

Afghans who live in these areas, and have witnessed earlier clearing operations give way to Taliban comebacks, often do not share the U.S. military's optimism. And some believe insurgents may be moving into the city to avoid U.S. troops on the periphery.

"Security in the city is now drastically worse," said Samsor Afghan, 27, a university student who runs a computer software store downtown, across the street from where a suicide bomber attacked the day before.

"The Taliban are everywhere. We don't feel safe even inside the city."

American commanders have nevertheless been buoyed by changes in areas where the bulk of their forces are located. Among the shifts is what they describe as a new assertiveness from Afghan security forces, which now outnumber NATO troops in this operation.

A late-night call

Officers trace the change to one night in mid-August, when Kandahar's governor, Toryalai Wesa, called President Hamid Karzai to report that Taliban forces were blocking a road and searching cars in Malajat, an insurgent stronghold in western Kandahar city.

"Could you, Mr. President, order NATO to come and help us?" Wesa asked, according to an Afghan official present in the palace.

"Shame on you," Karzai replied.

Karzai had recently issued a decree instructing governors to act as the commander of all Afghan security forces in their provinces. He told Wesa to assemble his own force and respond. "Go after them. Don't wait for NATO," he said.

Just hours later, Wesa had cobbled together a few hundred Afghan police, soldiers and intelligence officers and sent them into Malajat, a move that surprised the Americans in Kandahar. The operation began with Afghan government forces capturing 11 insurgents, but the contingent was soon trapped in a minefield. Five Afghans were killed getting out.

Wesa emerged chastened from the operation, U.S. officials said. For a second run at Malajat, the solution was Razziq. On the border, he developed an outsize reputation - part Robin Hood, part warlord. He was a close ally of the Karzais with thousands of tribal warriors at his command.

"If you need a mad dog on a leash, he's not a bad one to have," said a U.S. official in Kandahar.

U.S. troops hastily planned support and coordinated to have Afghan forces ring the neighborhood, while Razziq, cellphone and satellite phone in hand, roared up from the southern desert with a few hundred men. They arrested about 20 suspected insurgents and found scores of explosives.

There was little violence, but U.S. troops noted Razziq's style. At one point, his men spotted a stolen Afghan police truck. They fired at it with a rocket-propelled grenade, which deflected off the truck and exploded in the trees. Suddenly a man in white robes fell from the branches, blowing up when his suicide vest hit the ground, which then blew up the truck - a story that Razziq chuckles in recalling, U.S. officials said.

[Pundita note: another part of this famous tale is that some of Razziq's men screamed and ran at the sight of the Taliban in white robes, thinking they'd seen a ghost.]

As this partnership has developed, Razziq has been partnered with a U.S. Special Forces commander to help coordinate his moves. He has been called on elsewhere, including particularly treacherous parts of the Arghandab River valley, where whole villages had been rigged with explosives that had made them impenetrable to previous American units.

The Afghan operations have stunned U.S. troops, accustomed to years of prodding along their reluctant allies. At 3 a.m. on Sept. 15, Capt. Mikel Resnick, a company commander in Arghandab, learned that 1,000 Afghan troops were moving into his area.

"I don't know if they're going to go burn the orchards down and leave me to clean it up," he said of his initial reaction to the plan.

The Afghans, who took 72 hours to capture 50 detainees, five large bombs and 500 pounds of explosives, required only advice and air support from the Americans, said Lt. Col. Rodger Lemons, the battalion commander at the Arghandab district center.

"We basically sat in here and monitored the fight," Resnick said, referring to his outpost at the village of Sarkari Bagh. "They essentially cleared this entire place out."

U.S. military officials acknowledge that it is not ideal to have the border police leading the operation, because the goal is for the Afghan army and police to provide security in their own areas.

"We need to make sure this is not undermining the legitimacy of the Afghan government," said a senior NATO military official in southern Afghanistan.

The fight in Kandahar, unlike the previous U.S.-led operation in Marja, has also benefited from a more intensive campaign by U.S. Special Operations forces to hunt down Taliban commanders and bomb-making networks before the infantry push.

The local victims

During the Kandahar operation, Americans have unleashed ferocious air bombardments. In some parts of the Arghandab, U.S. troops discovered the Taliban had cleared out whole villages and rigged each house with homemade explosives.

In one October operation to clear the way for Razziq's troops, American aircraft dropped about 25 2,000-pound bombs and twice as many 500-pound bombs, while also firing powerful rockets over the ridge from the Kandahar Airfield miles away.

"We obliterated those towns. They're not there at all," Martindale said. "These are just parking lots right now."

Martindale said civilians had long ago fled the Taliban-dominated area, and that the U.S. attacks did not cause civilian casualties - a claim that could not be independently verified.

Faced with the NATO and Afghan push, American commanders believe that many Taliban leaders have retreated to Pakistan, leaving lower-level fighters to stage attacks in Kandahar. Part of this appears to be the normal ebb of fighting in Afghanistan, as insurgents slow their tempo in the colder months.

Afghans living in Zhari and Panjwayi cited many complaints with the current operations, including homes and orchards damaged by American troops, no government support for the people and elusive Taliban guerrillas who dodge the conventional armies.

"Who are the victims of these operations? Just the local people. If the Taliban comes, the people suffer, if the foreign forces come, the people suffer," said Mohammad Rahim, a member of Panjwayi's district council. "The Taliban always leave, and the Taliban always come back."

Of course they'll continue to come back unless there are better border controls and NATO stops playing patty-cake with Pakistan's military and civilian leaders.

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So India is supposed to eat America's shit? Is that the story behind the bombshell report on Tehran's payments to Karzai?

Ever since The New York Times broke the story on October 23 I have been trying to figure out why Tehran's bribes to Karzai's regime, which have been going on practically since Karzai was installed in office, were turned into a sensational news story, replete with 'leaks' from unnamed officials and lots of horrifying details. What else was happening that might explain why unnamed officials wanted to announce just then that there was gambling in Casablanca? I noted on the 24th that the latest strategic dialogue between Pakistan and the United States was happening, which led me to conclude:

I suspect the sudden airing of many details about Iran's machinations, including their continued support for Gulbuddin Hekmatyar "one of the most brutal of Afghan warlords," is in response to howls from Pakistani officials that they shouldn't be accused of all things bad in Afghanistan while the Iranians are running riot there.

But while reading Bret Stephens's op-ed today for the Wall Street Journal that's titled, The Pakistan Paradox, suddenly another possibility dawned. The bombshell New York Times report on Iran's machinations in Afghanistan was published little more than two weeks before President Barack Obama is scheduled to leave for a visit to India:

> Where he is going to have to face pointed questions from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh about what U.S. intelligence agencies knew regarding the planned 2008 terrorist strike on Mumbai, orchestrated by a terror group with close ties to Pakistan's military, and exactly when they knew it.

> Where he going to ask for the Indian government's continued understanding about the U.S. government's close involvement with a terror-sponsoring regime that keeps mounting attacks on Indian civilians.

> And where he is going to attempt to bully, bribe, and cajole Mr Singh into cutting off friendly diplomatic relations with Tehran.

Bingo! Double Bingo!

As to what Bret Stephens's op-ed has to do with any of this -- nothing, not directly. He argues that Indians will have to suck it up regarding the U.S. relationship with Pakistan because, well, the USA needs Pakistan's help right now:

[...] If there's an overarching logic here it's that Islamabad wants to preserve its options. Uncertainty about U.S. staying power in Afghanistan helps explain why Pakistan will not entirely forsake its erstwhile clients in the Taliban and the mujahedeen. Pakistani fears are further exacerbated by America's recent tilt toward India.

And while the Obama administration has made much of its aid packages for Pakistan—$1.5 billion a year on the civilian side, followed last week by the announcement of another $2 billion for the military—Pakistani officials complain that only a small fraction of the funds have been disbursed.

What, then, to do? First, instead of publicly lecturing Pakistanis on how they need to get tough with the Taliban, the administration would do better to make good on its existing commitments. Say what you will about Mr. Zardari's abilities, he has aided the U.S. military effort in a way his predecessor Pervez Musharraf, supposedly a pro-American strongman, never did.

That's a relationship to build on, quietly and incrementally, not to tear down. So it would be helpful if the administration doesn't repeat the mistake of blabbing to Bob Woodward, whose book may have helped Mr. Obama seem more presidential but didn't do any favors to his presidency.

Equally helpful would be to stop mindlessly demanding that military assistance to Pakistan go toward fighting the Taliban instead of arming against India.

The missing ingredient in Pakistan's counterinsurgency effort isn't the right military tool kit, such as night-vision goggles or Apache helicopters. It's the will of the Pakistani general staff to cooperate more fully in the fight. If that cooperation can be secured by selling conventional weapons such as F-15s and M-1 tanks to Pakistan, so much the better.

(As for India, it has less to fear from a reasonably well-armed, confident Pakistani army that has strong ties to the U.S. than it does from a poorly armed Pakistan that mistrusts the U.S. and continues to consort with jihadists as a way of compensating for its weakness.)

Finally, the administration ought to understand that Pakistan's reluctance to defeat the Taliban at any price is a mirror image of our own reluctance. The July 2011 "deadline" to begin withdrawing troops was bound to affect Islamabad's calculations, and not for the better. The sooner we junk it, the better the cooperation we'll get.

It's an old American habit to lament the incompetence and duplicity of our wartime allies, and Pakistan abounds in both qualities. But unless we are prepared to deal with Pakistan as an adversary, we must make do with it as a friend.

Bret's claim that India has less to fear from a well-armed, "confident" Pakistani army with close ties to the USA is so ignorant of the history of Pakistan's relations with the U.S. and India as to be insulting to a well-informed reader's intelligence.

Bret is a superhawk about dealing with Iran -- he once urged in writing that Israel bomb Iran. It struck me that some version of his argument about India and Pakistan is standard issue for superhawks on Iran and that some of them also downplay the importance of Afghanistan and a U.S. victory there.

Such arguments seem to arise from a view that the Pakistan and the Afghan conflict is nowhere near as important as the threat to Israel from Iran. From that line of reasoning it would follow that India needs to distance itself from Iran if it's to have a good relationship with the United States, and that it shouldn't try to push the USA to get tough with Pakistan.

At any rate, those were the thoughts that struck me after I finished reading Bret's essay. Actually, the first thought was, 'So Bret's an expert now on Pakistan and India, is he?'

Well, many in the American branch of the Commentariat are scrambling to become overnight experts on those two countries after finding them on a map. Anyhow, it was a hop and a skip from the above thoughts to my little Eureka! moment about the timing of the report on Iran raining cash on Karzai's regime.

Is she right, is she wrong? Either way I have no intention of giving back my bingo prize.

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