By Haider Ali Hussein Mullick
Best
Defense chief Pakistan correspondent
I just got back from
my third trip to Pakistan this year, where I examined the scope and scale of
its counterinsurgency strategy and al Qaeda's response.
The bottom line is that al
Qaeda's big plans for world dominance have failed, but its ability to keep the
United States and allies on high alert is increasing. There are two primary
reasons for this paradoxical situation: First, al Qaeda's very successful
nine-year 'train the trainer' program, which multiplies its strength without
expanding its numbers. Second, the August floods that devastated Pakistan are a
game changer, a godsend for al Qaeda, diverting 30,000 Pakistani
counterinsurgents and key enablers (helicopters, engineers, medics, etc.) away
from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border to flood relief and reconstruction
activities. To overstretch armies, smart insurgents always pray for the opening
of multiple fronts. The damage from the floods couldn't be worse -- 1/5th
of Pakistan (size of New England) inundated, seven million people lost their
homes, and $30
billion in total damages. The timing was equally terrible: The Pakistani
surge was finally working, and troops were holding Swat and South
Waziristan since 2009.
Today, the nuclear-armed
Pakistani army is under great stress, and reluctant to go into North
Waziristan, home to al Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and the Pakistani Taliban.
The army is the police, National Guard, relief organization, reconstruction
agency, and governing body in critical areas in the north and south, while the
weak civilian government is perceived to be corrupt, inept, and aloof as it
wrestles with the Supreme Court. Half of 180 million Pakistanis are under the
age of 25 and facing high prices, unemployment and little opportunity. They watch
the rich pay virtually no taxes and they find solace in U.S. and India bashing,
and blissful ignorance about their actual enemies, which are the al Qaeda
syndicate, corruption and poverty. Al Qaeda couldn't ask for a better home.
What's worse is that we don't
have any good options in Pakistan, and President Barack Obama has made that clear again
and again.
But we can make our bad options better. If there were a 9/11-type attack
post-marked Pakistan there would be retaliatory airstrikes against terrorist
camps -- but Washington doesn't have a 'day-after plan'. We need a strategy that
deals with such an attack and strives to balance terrorist interdiction (with
or without Pakistani help amid imminent danger) with U.S. civil-military aid
and outreach to the Pakistani people. Today we must maintain the Catch-22 of
supporting nuclear-armed, comatose Pakistan, knowing that it won't wake up, walk
on its own or hug us anytime soon. But we must combine that with a long-term
roadmap to bring the countries together, to imagine the impossible by doing the
possible. We must continue to assert our security interests, help Pakistan help
itself, and make our partnership transparent to the Pakistani people. Hope is
not a policy, but striving for a more effective partnership with a
nuclear-armed country that is the second-largest Muslim nation, that is home to
al Qaeda, and that borders Iran, China and India, is.
Read more here to
learn about al Qaeda's post-9/11 metamorphosis, and how the United States can
better partner with Pakistan to degrade al Qaeda and associates.
Read More
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