More Af-Pak

The paragraph below is from the Sabrina Taverise article, which you can access here. And here is the Scott Shane article. She is interviewing a Pakistani psychiatrist.

I asked him to spell it out. “It’s coming from Americans, Jews and Indians,” he said. “It’s an axis of evil that’s being supervised by you people....” In recent months, Pakistan has begun challenging the Islamist extremists on its border and the extremists have directed bombings against Pakistani citizens and institutions. Even so, Pakistan’s powerful news media aggressively trumpet the conspiracy theories, which are consumed by anyone who picks up a paper or turns on a TV.

The Shane article also has a terrific map that one can click on and enlarge. Some other interesting facts. Karzai is a Pashtun whose father was murdered by the Taliban. He is part of a Pashtun group that supported a return of the King years ago after the exit of the Soviets. However, the CIA and the Saudis funneled their money through the Pakistani ISI, which gave most of it to jihadists like Hekmatyr. Later they supported the Taliban to counteract Indian support of the northern forces (who were also supported by Russia).

Before the Taliban took over, one could not drive through Afghanistan without periodically having to pay extortion (tolls) to bandits. Unless the current surge can make living conditions better, many people will favor the Taliban in spite of their fundamentalist excesses and harboring terrorists. Currently, the government is rated the second most corrupt in the world (Iraq is fourth). So part of what has to happen is for the corruption to lessen.

As long as terrorists and insurgents can merely cross the border into Pakistan and be safe, not much will be achieved. We need Pakistani cooperation.

Terrorists can organize anywhere. The anarchist movement in the era around 1900 is a good example of this. Given all these factors, should we really expect very much long term from this "surge?" Maybe not. Then why spend the money and American lives? On the other hand, what is the danger that if this region is taken over by Taliban-like forces, that terrorists will get nuclear weapons? There is no easy answer to these questions.

Addendum: After posting this, I ran across this article which makes the argument so much better than I did.