A week of
devastating violence in Pakistan has raised concerns over the country's ability to survive the ever-growing Taliban threat. Taliban
attacks, the most alarming of which
hit
Pakistan's cultural capital of Lahore, have left dozens dead. Pakistan's dozens of nuclear weapons and ongoing territorial conflict with India over
Kashmir mean that the security of the more than one country is at stake. As the
White House and Pentagon reevaluate Afghanistan, the Taliban's role in
Pakistan could soon be seen as equally dangerous.
- Taliban Fight Has Ethnic Overtones Juan Cole suggests an ethnic divide between the Taliban and Pakistani state. "There is a sense in which the Pakistani army's struggle against the
Taliban is increasingly an ethnic war between radical Muslim Pashtuns
and more traditionalist or secular Punjabis. (Punjabis are 55% of the
population and dominate the army; Pashtuns are more like 12% of the
population and disproportionately rural and poor)," writes Cole, an author and Middle East expert.
- Pakistanis Turning Against Taliban Steve Coll testified before
the House Foreign Affairs Committee about Pakistan's relationship with
the Taliban. "The relationship between the
Pakistani security services and Islamist extremist groups - Al Qaeda,
the Taliban,
sectarian groups, Kashmiri groups, and their many splinters - is not
static or
preordained. Pakistani public opinion, while it remains hostile to the
United
States, has of late turned sharply and intensely against violent
Islamist
militant groups. The Pakistan Army, itself reeling as an institution
from deep
public skepticism, is proving to be responsive to this change of public
opinion," said Coll, a New York writer and the head of the New American
Foundation, a think tank. "Moreover, the Army, civilian political
leaders, landlords, business
leaders and Pakistani civil society have entered into a period of
competition
and freewheeling discourse over how to think about the country's
national
interests and how to extricate their country from the Frankenstein-like
problem
of Islamic radicalism created by the Army's historical security
policies. There
is a growing recognition in this discourse among Pakistani elites that
the
country must find a new national security doctrine that does not fuel
internal
revolution and impede economic and social progress. The purpose of
American
policy should be to create conditions within and around Pakistan for
the
progressive side of this argument among Pakistani elites to prevail
over time."
- Pakistan Cares More About India Bruce Riedel,
of the liberal think tank Brookings Institute, told Al Jazeera English
that Kashmir is key. "There's not a direct pay-off, but clearly if you
want to change the strategic direction of Pakistan, you've got to deal
with the issues that motivate Pakistan, and those are India and in
particular Kashmir." Kashmir is the hotly disputed region between
Pakistan and India. Riedel says this makes India just as important for
Afghanistan. "If you want to try to stabilize Afghanistan you need to
stabilize Pakistan. And the same is true in reverse."
Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and
Pakistan, holds a similar view. "Their history is defined by their
relationship with India," Holbrooke told
the New Yorker's George Packer. Packer reported that Holbrooke "was
going to India almost as often as he was going to the two other
countries." General Stanley McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, agrees as well. "If we fail here, Pakistan will not be able to solve their problems — it
would be like burning leaves on a windy day next door. And if Pakistan
implodes, it will be very hard for us to succeed," he told the New York Times.
- Tackle Pakistan Before Afghanistan Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argue
in Survival, a policy journal on global affairs, that Pakistan could be
more important to U.S. interests than Afghanistan. "The question is whether
counter-insurgency and state-building in Afghanistan are the best means
of
executing it. The mere fact that the core threat to U.S. interests now
resides
in Pakistan rather than Afghanistan casts considerable doubt on the
proposition," they write. "The realistic American objective should not
be to ensure
Afghanistan's political integrity by neutralizing the Taliban and
containing
Pakistani radicalism, which is probably unachievable. Rather, its aim
should be
merely to ensure that Al Qaeda is denied both Afghanistan and Pakistan
as
operating bases for transnational attacks on the United States and its
allies
and partners."
