No Pakistani distributor has bought the rights. I imagine that the Taliban and al Qaeda might violently object.

I've long found Paul McHale, a former member of Congress and also a former Pentagon official, a clear thinker. Here he questions the Pentagon's "pivot" to Asia:

"Does it make sense for the United States Army to prepare for a protracted land war against China? . . . Should the Army really be focused on North Korea while paying insufficient attention to Iran? And if a post-2014 civil war in Afghanistan spills over the Durand Line and threatens the stability of Pakistan's government, are there any issues in Myanmar that trump the possible acquisition of nuclear weapons by the Taliban?"

I am not kidding. A member of the Pakistani government is calling on our enemies to kill an American.

This is from the odd Wikipedia entry about the guy: "He has complain from pathan youth. He always uses to say that pattan youth does not know about Kalabagh. They should get all the knowledge regarding to this project and should come forward to protest against it. Whenever you pay a visit to his office you will come to know that how tremendously he explains the whole project." 

The Pakistani government said he was expressing his own opinion.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 16, 2010.

I am not advocating that we adopt an imperial stance, or even that everything the British did was right or even moral. But I do think we can learn from them, which is why I am dwelling this week on Roe's fine book on the British experience in Waziristan.

For example, in 1947, the new Pakistani government invited the former British governor of the North-West Frontier, Sir George Cunningham, to come out of retirement and administer the province, because he was seen as an honest broker. That might be the end-game we should aim for in Iraq, where the American officials eventually subordinate themselves to the Baghdad government and even are seconded to work for it.

That's my lesson, not Roe's. Here are some of his. You'll find more on almost every page:

• Be prepared to conduct a "constant mapping of political, economic and social information to gain a temporal insight into the views, motivation, and differences among the tribes and subclans."
• Don't underestimate your enemy. "To take on the tribesman and defeat him in his own hils is a game demanding a lifetime of specialized study."
• Tribesman will study your tactics and punish lapses or even simple repetitions. "This is one read on why an advance is seldom disputed with vigour, whereas the withdrawal is ferociously harrassed."
• Political officers must counter the tendency of military commanders to rely on their "instinct and their own values and standards, which often will be mistaken, unsuitable or inappropriate." (Tom: I saw this tendency a lot in Iraq in 2003-06.)
• "Tolerating ambiguities, shortfalls and inconsistencies must be central to any sustainable policy." (Tom: Hmm, sounds like FM 3-24.)
• Don't fight the tribal structure. "Employing and, where necessary, reinforcing the existing tribal framework and structures offers the best opportunity for success."
• Be prepared to pay off the enemy.
• Local forces should be the heart of your effort, not regular Army troops.

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on March 15, 2010.

To my surprise, Roe in his book on Waziristan notes that the British in the 1930s had their own debate, similar to the one inside our military now, about whether they were too focused on small wars. As one officer wrote in 1932,

Surely no one wants an army trained on North-West Frontier lines only... Any tendency towards specialization for mountain warfare operations on the North-West Frontier must be resisted. These are a very small part of the Army's possible commitments, and specialization means a waste of part of our already very small army.

That officer was right, of course. On the other hand, in support of those who say that counterinsurgency is more difficult than conventional warfare is the testimony of an officer who fought in Gallipoli and France during World War I and then against Pashtuns in Waziristan: "I soon came to the conclusion that commanding a Company in Waziristan was far more difficult than commanding a Battalion in France."

As for the need for adaptive forces, emphasized so often lately, how pertinent is this observation? "How good or bad these regiments were on the frontier depended on one thing, and that was how ready they were to learn."

Roe also concludes that the best policy is a hands-off one, with military forces held in reserve, and the tribes essentially left to themselves, as long as they don't cause trouble. "The majority of tribal territory was left largely untouched."

While Tom Ricks is away from his blog, he has selected a few of his favorite posts to re-run. We will be posting a few every day until he returns. This originally ran on February 12, 2010

We bring Kilcullenpalooza to an end with his observations on a few ways of judging the performance of your local Taliban unit. Significantly, only near the end of the essay does he focus on the enemy. You listening, S-2s of the world?

So here are some ways to know your enemy:

• "High-technology inserts." When you see the enemy using satellite phones, sniper optics and high-end roadside bombs, those indicate that the group may have access to external sponsors, and is a mainline Taliban outfit, rather than just the local minor league team.
• "Insurgent medical health." What shape are detainees arriving in? The local wannabes tend to suffer from afflictions like malnutrition, parasitic diseases, TB, and such. "Main force units, on the other hand, often have a better general level of health," especially if based in Pakistan.
• "Presence of specialist teams and foreign advisers." If you are facing a Taliban group with mortar teams, intelligence teams, and more, then you are facing the major leaguers. Doubly so if they have foreigners with them.
• "Insurgent village of origin." Where is the guy from? If he is caught fighting on his home turf, he may well be a part-timer and more amenable to switching sides. These are the guys to think about reconciling, especially because "attempts to destroy local guerrillas outright can backfire by alienating communities, creating blood feuds that perpetuate the conflict." But guys from outside the district "should be targeted with maximum lethality." They can be killed without disrupting local relationships -- indeed, the locals may feel safer  without the outsiders hanging around.
• "First to fire ratio." Which side starts the firefights? That shows who holds the tactical initiative. And the side holding that is better able to control both its loss rate and that of its opposition. "If they are losing more of their casualties in engagements we initiate, then we control their loss rate and can force them below replenishment level and ultimately destroy the network in question."
• "Price of black market weapons and ammunition." Price fluctuations in common items, such as AK-47s, or bullets for them, are possible indicators of changes in the enemy's operating tempo. But price increases also may be signs of greater demand by the local community, or of more effective interdiction.
• "Insurgent kill/capture versus surrender ratio." You can track enemy morale by following rates of surrender.
• "Mid-level insurgent casualties." Pay attention especially to the middle tiers, the planners, facilitators, specialists, trainers, recruiters, and low-level operational commanders. This is the guts of an organization, and so a good indicator of its health. Conversely, you may want to keep alive the rank and file, who "may be good candidates for reintegration," and the top guys, who might be convinced over time to give up.

That's it. Again, I think this is a terrific paper, one of the most insightful things I've read lately, and one of Kilcullen's best essays. I think it is most significant for the order of its recommendations. It tells you what not to track, and then emphasizes measuring the people, the government, the security forces -- and, lastly, the enemy. It is signed, "David Kilcullen/ Kabul, December 2009."

Longtime grasshoppers know I am a big fan of the commentary of David Ignatius. So, no surprise, I think he is right in his comments on how Pakistan has blown it over the last decade:

Pakistan is losing the best chance in its history to gain political control over all of its territory -- including the warlike tribal areas along the frontier.

Pakistan has squandered the opportunity presented by having a large U.S.-led army just over the border in Afghanistan. Rather than work with the United States to stabilize a lawless sanctuary full of warlords and terrorists, the Pakistanis decided to play games with these outlaw groups. As a result, Pakistan and its neighbors will be less secure, probably for decades. . . . The Pakistanis lost a chance over the past decade to build and secure their country. It won't come back again in this form. That's a small problem for the United States and its allies, but a big problem for Pakistan.

By LTC Kevin D. Stringer, Ph.D., USAR

Best Defense guest book reviewer

Robert Cassidy's War, Will and Warlords, (PDF will soon be made available for free), a study of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is a must read for all scholars, policymakers, diplomats, and military practitioners seeking to understand the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus. Cassidy provides a number of salient points concerning uneven U.S. involvement in the region, the contradictions of Pakistan, and the counterinsurgency (COIN) approaches implemented on both sides of the porous region between the two states.

For the United States, Cassidy offers insights into how short-term and ill-advised American policies -- the support of the mujahedeen and Pakistani President Zia to name just two -- created the conditions that spawned Al-Qaeda and provided the Taliban on both sides of the Pashtun frontier a popular support base. Cassidy further demonstrates how U.S. financial aid underwrites Pakistan's military expenditures against India, which destabilizes the entire region.

Concerning Pakistan, the author explores its security policies, and how they contradict American strategy. Pakistan is Janus -- one "face" grudgingly supporting the United States with the Pakistani Army conducting operations against the Taliban on its side of the border, while the Pakistani intelligence service "face" promotes and supports the Afghan Taliban as a proxy against the Karzai government and India on the other side.

In his discussion of counterinsurgency, Cassidy illustrates that both the American and Pakistani militaries struggle in these operations because of embedded institutional and structural propensities for conventional war. For legitimacy, the insurgents challenge the Afghan and Pakistani administrations in the outlying tribal regions given low governmental presence and high levels of endemic corruption. For this theme, I would have liked to see the author engage in a more detailed critique of the quality of Afghan forces being trained by the United States for pacification efforts -- are they "shake and bake" or competent troops? Similarly, Cassidy's sober assessment of the capacity building projects executed to date would have added greater insight to campaign progress. These omissions left me with an uneasy feeling that Coalition and Afghan government efforts may not be as positive as described in the text.

The book is well-researched, and the author's soldier-scholar credentials are impeccable. Colonel Cassidy is a military professor at the U.S. Naval War College with both scholarship and experience in irregular warfare and stability operations. With a PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, he has served as a special assistant to two general officers, a special operations strategist, and published two previous books, one on peacekeeping and the other on counterinsurgency.

My one major concern with the book is the chosen publisher, the Marine Corps University Press, whose marketing capacities may limit its wider dissemination. This book definitely deserves a broad readership given its relevance to U.S. policy-making in the region and future military campaigns.

Kevin D. Stringer, PhD, is an associate professor at Webster University, Geneva campus, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

His take makes sense to me. So I am less worried by the prospect of a military coup, but no less concerned about the general drift of Pakistan.

Since the 1950s every political crisis Pakistan has faced has been a result of civilians trying to wrest power and control from the military. This crisis is no different except for one important aspect - the military has no intention of seizing power. Instead it has allied with the Supreme Court in an attempt to get rid of a government that is widely perceived to be corrupt and irresponsible.

But in an era when hope of democracy is spreading through the Arab Muslim world and powerful armies in countries such as Thailand and Turkey have learnt to live under civilian control, Pakistan is an ongoing tragedy. Its military refuses to give up power, its huge stake in the economy and its privileges, while its politicians refuse to govern wisely or honestly and decline to carry out basic economic reforms such as taxing themselves.

By Steve Inskeep

Best Defense guest columnist

A few years ago, two friends took me out for a boat ride in the waters off Karachi.  We worked our way around a coastal peninsula, all of which was controlled by a single real estate developer. That developer was the Pakistani army.

A row of McMansions lined the water. Several upscale apartment towers clustered together, near a club that advertised "six-star" facilities, and a golf course equipped with stadium lights so that players could avoid the heat of the day and play in the evening in the ocean breeze. And most of the land was still awaiting development.

This stretch of prime real estate, roughly the size of midtown Manhattan, was just one of many sections of property throughout the city to be developed by the local Defence Housing Authority. It's so closely linked with the army that the commander of V Corps, which is headquartered in Karachi, is also the president of the housing authority. This would be the rough equivalent of, say, placing the current commander of the U.S. Army troops at Fort Hood, Texas in charge of downtown development in Houston.

That peninsula illustrates the way that Pakistan's army has taken many of the country's prime economic opportunities for itself. Military involvement in economic activity started in understandable ways -- for example, soldiers had a chance to obtain plots of land upon retirement, following a practice with precedents back to ancient Roman times -- but has grown until the military operates factories and construction companies as well as developing real estate in partnership with multinational corporations. When the army, in the face of protests, allowed free elections and surrendered control of the president's office in 2008, it held onto its economic power, just as it maintained its grip on foreign policy.

The military has, in other words, kept many privileges that it would be unlikely to have in a fully democratic state. And when I try to understand the disturbing news from Pakistan in recent months, the army's privileges come to mind.

The army, one of the world's largest with well over half a million troops, maintains its pre-eminence less through violence than through public opinion. It remains the nation's most trusted institution, and also influences a great deal of the media coverage that Pakistanis consume. But this past spring, after the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, the army's prestige was tarnished. The army faced rare public criticism -- if not for somehow allowing bin Laden to hide near a military academy, then at least for allowing U.S. Navy Seals to fly in and out undetected. Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister who was the army's darling long ago, repeatedly criticized the army and demanded inquiries.  Some of the pressure even came from within the army itself: Najam Sethi, a distinguished Pakistani journalist, spoke of unrest among junior army officers.

Read on

A good beat, too. I was especially struck by the mocking sign claiming that "This video is sponsored by Zionists." In your face, ace.

I only understood a fraction of the references (like kojaks flying kites?), but an article in Dawn makes it clear this is nervy stuff for a bunch of kids in Lahore to put out. "Here was a bunch of raw, early twenty-somethings poking fun at the military chief," notes Dawn with some astonishment. There is indeed a shoutout to a certain Pakistan general. Btw, the band's Punjabi name means "the Dishonour Brigade."

The song also name drops Blackwater in an interesting way, implying (according to the article) that Pakistanis should stop blaming that company and instead look at internal sources of violence.

Meanwhile, here is a solid interview about the future of Pakistan and Afghanistan with the finely named Vanda Felbab-Brown. She speaks much truth.

I wonder which step Mullen is on?

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said to the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday that Pakistan's intelligence agency was in the background of the recent attack on our embassy, as well as a bunch of other assaults. But he seems happy to keep on chatting with them.

He also said a bunch of other stuff, like about where the fight is. My interpretation is that we have moved to a strictly transactional relationship. We will continue to deal with them but will call them out on occasion.

Just treat this as a guest column.

With ISI support, Haqqani operatives plan and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy. We also have credible intelligence that they were behind the June 28th attack on the Inter- Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effective operations.

In choosing to use violent extremism as an instrument of policy, the government of Pakistan, and most especially the Pakistani army and ISI, jeopardizes not only the prospect of our strategic partnership but Pakistan's opportunity to be a respected nation with legitimate regional influence. They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power. But in reality, they have already lost that bet. By exporting violence, they've eroded their internal security and their position in the region. They have undermined their international credibility and threatened their economic well-being. Only a decision to break with this policy can pave the road to a positive future for Pakistan.

... As you know, I've expended enormous energy on this relationship. I've met with General Kayani more than two dozen times, including a two and a half hour meeting last weekend in Spain ... Some may argue I've wasted my time, that Pakistan is no closer to us than before, and may now have drifted even further away. I disagree. Military cooperation again is warming. Information flow between us and across the border is quickening. Transparent -- transparency is returning slowly.

... I actually believe that the ISI has got to fundamentally shift its strategic focus. They're -- they are the ones who implement as -- I would argue as a part of government policy the support of extremists. It's not just Haqqani because we've also had our challenges with LET, which is an organization they put in place. So in many ways, it's the proxy piece here. The support of terrorism is part of their national strategy to protect their own vital interests because of where they live. And that's got to fundamentally shift.

... it's very clear the toughest fight is going to be in the east, and the Haqqani network is embedded in Pakistan essentially across from hosts Paktia and Paktika, which, as General Petraeus said, is sort of the "jet stream to Kabul." And they want to own that. That's really their goal ... So I think the risk there is very high. Over the course of the next couple of years I think the biggest fight is going to be in the east, enabled certainly by us, but also Afghan security forces and coalition forces, more than anyplace else. The south I'm not going to say is not problematic, but we're in a much better place in Kandahar and Helmand than we were a couple years ago. It's going to be the east, I think, that in the end answers this from a security standpoint. And Haqqani is at the heart of that.

So observes my CNAS colleague Patrick Cronin, reacting to the AP's report that the U.S. government has agreed to limit its military presence in Pakistan to between 100 and 150 troops.