After a recent incident where U.S. helicopter gunships crossed into Pakistan, in hot pursuit of Islamic terrorists, and killed three Pakistani soldiers (and a lot more terrorists), Pakistan cut one of the two NATO supply routes that pass through Pakistan.
Aside from the fact that the Pakistani soldiers fired on the NATO helicopters (which they often do, even when the choppers are on the Afghan side of the border), the U.S. didn't have to remind the Pakistanis that such a gesture was self-defeating.
The Pakistani government is heavily dependent on American economic and military aid, and more and more of the supplies for foreign troops in Pakistan is coming from non-Pakistani sources. This hurts Pakistani businesses that move, and often provide, the supplies.
At the moment, about half those supplies come through Pakistan. The Pakistanis only closed, for about a day, one of the two main routes. About 30 percent of the supplies come in via Central Asia railroads, and another comes from the Black Sea, via rail to the Afghan border. The remaining 20 percent comes in by air. But some of that may be shifted to the Central Asian route, which is much safer (from bandits, bad roads and the Taliban) than the Pakistan routes.
The U.S. and NATO supplies coming in via railroad from Western Europe, go through Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, to Afghanistan. This approach costs $400 a ton to get supplies into Afghanistan, versus three times that to truck it in from Pakistani ports, or $14,000 a ton to fly stuff in.
This Central Asian route has been under negotiation since 2003, but Russia kept agreeing to it, and then withdrawing cooperation. What has finally compelled Russia to cooperate in the last year is the growing problems they are having with heroin and opium coming out of Afghanistan into, and through, Russia.
Shipping supplies to Afghanistan via Russian and Central Asian railroads has advantages for the nations it passes through. Russia has an economic interest in this, as more traffic makes it financially attractive for Central Asian nations to invest in upgrading their rail connections to Afghanistan. Tajikistan, for example, is extending its railroad to the Afghan border by building another 145 kilometers of track.
Afghanistan itself has no railroads, mainly because there is not enough economic activity in the country to make this worthwhile. Foreign donors have contributed billions of dollars since 2002 to build more paved roads in Afghanistan. Currently, there are 42,000 kilometers of roads there, but only a third are paved. There are few rivers, much less navigable ones, and no access to the sea. The place has long been a logistical nightmare.
Most Afghans recognize that roads will make the country more prosperous, by making it economically feasible to export many commodities, and cheaper to bring in, and distribute, foreign goods. Naturally, the Taliban are opposed to all this road building, as it threatens the poverty and ancient customs that Islamic conservatives are so fond of.
Afghanistan's neighbors are eager to trade, and are using the U.S. and NATO need for more access to upgrade their transport links to the country.
For example, 90 cargo containers were shipped through the Caucasus, via Turkey, Azerbaijan, the Caspian sea and Kazakhstan, to Afghanistan last year, as a test, and regular shipments began shortly thereafter. It's also possible to ship containers across the Caspian to a port in Turkmenistan, and thence to Afghanistan.
The U.S. and NATO wants to move up to 50,000 containers a year via these new Russian and Caucasus routes. This makes it economically feasible to ship more civilian goods this way. As the traffic increases, it makes economic sense for Afghanistan to start building rail lines, something most nations began doing over a century ago.
Pakistan canceled leave for members of its armed forces Friday, beefing up its military strength in case of conflict with India over the deadly Mumbai attacks, a senior military official said.
The military remains on alert, but it has not moved additional troops to the Indian border, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
In response, India said it had not canceled any time off for its military. "People are taking leave, no problem," said Indian Defense Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar. "We have an optimum number, which is always maintained."
Pakistan accused Indian fighter jets of violating its airspace on two separate occasions more than a week ago, raising the possibility of conflict. But Pakistani officials subsequently played down the incidents, saying the violations, which India denied altogether, were likely accidental.
Pakistani fighter jets have flown over several of the country's major cities in recent days after the alleged airspace violations.
Pakistan and India have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947, but the stakes are even higher now that both countries have nuclear weapons.
Hoax call put Pakistan on high alert
The caller allegedly threatened to attack Pakistan if measures were not taken to track down militants associated with the Mumbai terrorist strikes.
On Saturday, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported on the incident: ”Whether it was mere mischief or a sinister move by someone in the Indian external affairs ministry, or the call came from within Pakistan, remains unclear, and is still a matter of investigation. But several political, diplomatic and security sources have confirmed to Dawn that for nearly 24 hours over the weekend the incident continued to send jitters across the world. To some world leaders the probability of an accidental war appeared very high.”
Senior Pakistani government officials confirmed the report and said the matter was under investigation, which involves efforts to trace the origin of the phone call and how it was directed to Mr Zardari.
One senior Pakistani official said Indian officials have denied that the call ever originated from Mr Mukherjee, raising the possibility that the call was a hoax. However, the Pakistani official insisted that the calling number was traced back to Mr Mukherjee’s office in New Delhi.
”We are looking at two possibilities right now. Either it was somebody from the Indian foreign ministry who used the foreign minister’s number to pull a prank or some very sophisticated technology was used to fabricate the calling number” said the official who spoke to the Financial Times on condition of anonymity.
Reporting on the reaction to the phone call, DAWN wrote; ”Intense diplomatic efforts that started late on Friday went on throughout the following day. During this period phone calls were made from Islamabad to some of the top officials and diplomats in Washington, including Condoleezza Rice, and the US Secretary of State called Mr Mukherjee and others in India in a night-long effort to understand what might have gone wrong, and to persuade the two sides to bring down the temperature.”
A senior western diplomat commenting on the report said, the incident prompted Mr Zardari to call Condoleezza Rice, US Secretary of State, to convey Pakistan’s anxiety over worsening security conditions.
Ms Rice then called Mr Mukherjee to inquire about the incident during which Mr Mukherjee categorically denied making the phone call in the first place. The western diplomat also revealed that before Ms Rice’s phone call to Mr Mukherjee, the unknown caller allegedly using the Indian foreign minister’s phone from his office, also called the US secretary of state, but was not put through to speak to her.
”Could this incident have caused a war between India and Pakistan? That is the big fear of an accidental situation coming together” said the western diplomat. ”It seems that standard procedures should have been followed in Pakistan such as someone taking down the Indian telephone number and then returning the call. That obviously did not happen, in what seemed at the time like a building up crisis situation”.
Banditry has always been a big problem in Afghanistan.
There has never been an effective national police force, and army operations merely caused the bandits to scatter back to their villages.
The basic problem is that there is not one Afghanistan, but hundreds. Each tribe and warlord has its own army which polices its neighborhood. Everything outside that area is considered potentially hostile territory. Men are free to go outside the tribal area and become bandits. Loot taken in battle (or armed robbery) has always been a big deal in Pushtun tribal culture.
So while most Afghans can understand the usefulness of keeping the main road from Kabul to Kandahar open, many of those same Afghans condone their kinsmen robbing people on that highway, as long as it's done to "strangers" (not from our tribe or, even better, foreigners.)
While a lot of Afghans, especially those living in urban areas, try to get away from these medieval attitudes, the majority of those in the countryside are more traditional in their attitudes. This is where a lot of the violence comes from.
Journalists tend to blame it all on the "Taliban," but in fact, most of it is just those gun totting country boys doing what they've always done. More are on the payroll of some drug gang, than a Taliban outfit.
Life would be so much easier, so the conventional wisdom goes, if peace could be obtained by just destroying the "Taliban." But the real enemy is a set of cultural attitudes that aid and abet the lawlessness. It's a much more elusive target.
Cities like Kabul have become very different parts of Afghanistan. You see lots of women without veils (even as Western media report "Taliban terror creeping into Kabul"), and men without beards. Videos and music are freely available, as are alcoholic drinks.
A lot of these city slickers are fresh from the country, where the restrictive lifestyle of "tradition" continues to drive the more adventurous away. This is the sort of thing that offends tribal and religious leaders. These guys don't want change, because it tends to mean less power and money for them. That's why the Taliban has such a following in the countryside, and not in the cities.
News reports about Pakistani troops exchanging fire with NATO and U.S. helicopters at the border appear to be more stories than news. Many of the border guards (a force recruited from local tribes) are pro-Taliban (or on the Taliban payroll), and quick to fire on aircraft and any armed men they are not familiar with.
That's been going on for decades, and was the cause of tension with the Russians in the 1980s.
Real violence between Pakistan and the United States is unlikely, because the U.S. is the major financial and military supplier for Pakistan. Thus without U.S. support, military upgrades don't happen and the economy tanks. Religion is one thing, defense and economics are something else (that is more important to more Pakistanis).
Meanwhile, the government makes the right noises about "defending Pakistan's borders" while doing nothing to actually interfere with American operations on either side of the border.
Over 20,000 Pushtuns have fled from Pakistan into Afghanistan to avoid the violence between Taliban gunmen and the Pakistani army.
The Pakistani Taliban are under attack in several areas (Waziristan, Swat Valley and Bajaur) and losing in all of them. The head of the Pakistani Taliban has just died, after being ill for several months, leaving behind a power struggle. The Pakistani Taliban is in disarray and falling apart. This is being felt in Afghanistan, where fewer "volunteers" are coming across to help out the Taliban there.
In the face of this, the Afghan Taliban say they will keep fighting throughout the Winter. NATO responds by announcing another Winter offensive. This will get interesting, because NATO forces are more mobile in Winter.
Traditionally, Afghans stay indoors during the Winter. Getting a chill can be fatal, and the rain, snow and ice make it difficult to get around.
The government has again openly called for Taliban leader Mullah Omar to come negotiate with the government. This comes in the wake of several years worth of successful negotiations with lower level Taliban leaders.
Many of these guys have left the Taliban as a result. There are also reports, denied by the government, that Saudi Arabia is sponsoring secret peace talks between the government and the Taliban.
One has to ask, why would the Taliban want to negotiate? Put simply, while the drug gangs are doing well (despite heroin production falling 20 percent from last year), the Taliban are on everyone's hit list, and are taking a lot of hits.
Now defeated al Qaeda operatives are moving in from Iraq and elsewhere, and blowing people up. That generates more hostility than support, and this hurts the Taliban as well.
Within the Taliban, a debate is on over how to deal with the lack of progress. The Taliban have been able to generate more violence, and dire headlines in the West, but not much else.
True believers are getting discouraged.
U.S. and NATO commanders believe they can largely shut down the Taliban and al Qaeda if they have some more troops. The U.S. has agreed to send three more brigades next year. NATO nations, urged on by France, are trying to muster more troops for Afghanistan.
By next year, changes in Pakistan, and growing attacks on Afghan drug gangs are expected to weaken the Taliban even more.
The new government in Pakistan is behind the recent army offensives against the Taliban, and has just replaced the head of their intelligence agency, the ISI, which originally invented the Taliban back in the 1990s.
The ISI has long been full of Islamic conservatives, but the new head is different. How different will become apparent by early next year.
The Afghan government believes that key leaders in the Pakistani army and intelligence service (the ISI) are still making deals, some of them secret, with the Taliban and Islamic radical groups, to make it easier for Afghanistan to be attacked, while providing Pakistan some immunity from terrorism. This kind of cynical arrangement is a staple of politics, especially in the Moslem world.
Islamic radical groups will grant such immunity from attack in return for favors, then later resume attacks. So while the Afghan accusations may sound bizarre to Western ears, they make a lot of sense along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Behind the scenes, the U.S. is trying to get the Pakistani army and ISI to change their strategy, but that is not easy. The generals leading both organizations (and the current head of the Pakistani military used to head ISI) are more concerned with self-preservation in the long term, than in eliminating Taliban activity inside Afghanistan. To the Pakistani generals, the Taliban are just another in a long line of tribal troublemakers. And it's traditional to deal with these fellows using bluff and bluster, rather than anything more expensive (like bullets and soldiers lives). Ideally, you'd like to get the tribes fighting each other, which is exactly what is happening when the Taliban go to Afghanistan. This year, however, there is an additional complication. Several thousand al Qaeda terrorists (or recruits) have showed up, the aftereffect of the al Qaeda defeat in Iraq. It's not yet clear how many of the al Qaeda men will cross the border, or stay and try to take control of Pakistan. The ISI is negotiating, hoping to get most of these new thugs into Afghanistan. But al Qaeda needs Pakistan as a base, and NATO is leaning on Pakistan hard to not allow that.
The Taliban have developed more effective tactics this year. After a disastrous outing last year, the Taliban were under a lot of pressure to reduce their casualties this year, and they have. The Afghans have always been adaptable, especially when it is a matter of life and death, and there have been many small changes in Taliban tactics to counter the greater lethality of NATO forces (who use UAVs, smart bombs and better trained troops). Taliban forces now operate in smaller groups, keeping weapons (which can be identified from the air by UAV or aircraft cameras) hidden, and concentrate forces just before an attack. Cell phones and walkie-talkies make this easier. Taliban will also break off an attack quickly, knowing that the smart bombs are on the way. The Taliban will stay near the Pakistani border, because the Americans and NATO rarely pursue, although smart bombs are more frequently dropped on the Pakistani side. But once a group of armed Taliban have made it into Pakistan, they can melt into the civilian population. Which leads to another popular Taliban tactic, using civilians as human shields. It doesn't always work, and when it doesn't the Taliban are quick to claim another NATO atrocity. The Taliban have also been using a growing number of deceptions to try and get NATO smart bombs or artillery to hit friendly targets. A favorite one on the border is to fire mortar shells at NATO troops on one side of the border, and at nearby Pakistani border guards just across the frontier, to try and deceive NATO and Pakistani troops into believing they are firing at each other. NATO counter-fire radars have spotted the shells, and traced them all back to the same location. But such radars are not always available, and sometimes this trick works. Another deception is feed bad intel to the followers, and try and trigger a missile or smart bomb attack on civilians.
This year's Taliban tactics, however, are more disruptive and less concerned with taking permanent control of territory. The Taliban is trying to disrupt the Afghan government control (which was never very great to begin with), and wear down the foreign troops (and cause popular discontent back home that will lead to NATO forces being recalled). The Taliban are playing the long game, which is how things are done up in these hills, when you are dealing with a more powerful opponent. The Taliban have no doubt that their foe (the Afghan government and their foreign allies) are more powerful. The foreign troops in particular, are very deadly. The older Taliban, who fought the Russians in the 1980s, note that the NATO and U.S. troops are all equal to the small number of commandos the Russians used. Back then, the only Russians the Afghans feared were the few thousand paratroopers and Spetsnaz commandos they sometimes encountered. When that happened, the Afghans knew it was time to retreat, quickly. But now, even the Afghan Army troops are more lethal. They have been trained by the Westerners, and that has made a difference. But most of the opponents the Taliban face are anti-Taliban (or pro-government, there is a difference) tribal fighters. The "Taliban War" is basically a tribal conflict, just as it was back in the 1980s, against the Russians, and in the 1990s, when the Taliban captured Kabul, and almost took over the entire country (cut short by the U.S. invasion of late 2001.)
The Taliban are paying more attention to extortion and taking over business operations, on both sides of the border. The Taliban may be on a Mission From God, but God's children have expenses and must get paid. The more the better. The tribal areas are poor, and the Taliban attracts a better grade of roughneck if they can pay better. The Taliban leaders, in particular, want more reliable gunmen, if only to provide themselves with better personal security. NATO has stepped up efforts to track down and kill the Taliban and al Qaeda leadership. This is happening more often, and is disrupting Taliban operations in areas where key leaders are taken out. The American get more cooperation from Afghans in this, because the Taliban have increased their attacks on reconstruction projects. This year, more efforts are being made to kidnap foreign aid workers, and hold them for ransom. The Taliban could kill these guys, but the ransom routine has the same demoralizing effect on the aid workers, and raises badly needed cash as well. In the last week, two French aid workers were grabbed, and two Turkish ones were released, after ransom was paid, after being held a week.
The U.S. is doubling the number of MRAPs (armored trucks designed to deflect mine and roadside bomb explosions) in Afghanistan (to 1,600). These must be driven in from Pakistani ports. That will come in handy, because the Taliban are trying to take down the road based NATO supply line, that stretches from the Pakistani coast into Afghanistan. These trucks are protected by lucrative security arrangements made with tribes that "own" the roads. These guys don't like seeing this income threatened by a bunch of religious fanatics. Most of this fighting is taking place on the Pakistani side of the border, and NATO has quietly told the Pakistanis that if these supply lines cannot be protected, NATO would have to come in and do it. This, more than anything else, motivates the Pakistanis to tone down Taliban violence, at least on the Pakistani side of the border.
July 16, 2008: Despite new tactics, the Taliban still get chewed up pretty badly. A Taliban war band, of about 300 men, was spotted as it crossed over from Pakistan, and quickly jumped on by NATO troops and smart bombs. About half the Taliban were killed, and the rest wounded, captured, or scattered. It's catastrophes like this that force the Taliban to pay better, and to encourage their commanders to keep their fighters dispersed. But many of the Taliban big shots are traditionalists, and just love the feeling of leading a column of several armed men through the mountains. It's a tradition that's become an expensive luxury, one that often costs you your life.
