A 'New War' Within Pakistan?

By Cernig

Investigative journalist Gareth Porter appeared on Democracy Now! today to talk with Amy Goodman about his report that the intelligence community warned the White House about destabilizing raids into Pakistan based upon little or no intelligence.

what they said was that if these raids were to continue for any length of time, there is a very high risk that they would not only continue to anger the population in that area of the North-West Frontier—in this case, it was South Waziristan—but that it could, in fact, begin to tilt the balance within the so-called Frontier Corps—that is, the 80,000-strong militia of the area, that is recruited within the area, which the US military is trying to get the Pakistani government to agree to allow them to train and to buy off with cash—that it would tilt this Frontier Corps towards a more active and open commitment on behalf of the pro-Taliban Islamic forces in that region. And that would, of course, be a major shift and really contribute to the destabilization of Pakistan.

... now, we’re confronted with a much more fundamental choice with regard to the situation in Pakistan, as well as in Afghanistan, and that is whether to continue to try to provoke greater anger and hostility within Pakistan by carrying out these rather effectless raids into Pakistan or to recognize that the more calm and wise course would be to rethink the entire Afghanistan debacle and really begin to think about some way of extracting ourselves from that unwinnable war.

He also has an opinion about the dangers of Obama's stated policy for the region.

AMY GOODMAN: If Barack Obama became president, do you think the policy would be any different? While he does talk about negotiations, he also has said that he endorsed unilateral strikes on Pakistan.

GARETH PORTER: Well, not only has he talked about unilateral strikes against Pakistan, but he appears to believe that the United States should indeed carry on a new war within Pakistan against the will of the Pakistani government. And this is why this is such a dangerous situation. The United States is really heading into a situation where it is very likely that at some point in the future, if these raids continue, we will indeed be finding ourselves fighting against the Pakistani military.

But what I did not say earlier, but what I would like to add, is that the National Intelligence Council, according to my source, also is afraid that continued raids in Pakistan would result in a beginning of defections from the Pakistani military’s Pashtun officer corps to the pro-Taliban side because of the increasing polarization which this is causing. And that, of course, would begin to threaten the unity of the Pakistani military and, in turn, to threaten the stability of the Pakistani regime in general.

That dovetails with my own assessment of the possible fallout from Obama's stated position - and my own view that Obama needs to distance himself from the ZBig hawks he has advising him and concentrate upon the second part of his stated policy -  "non-military aid to the Pakistani people and to sustain it for a decade, while ensuring that the military assistance we do provide is used to take the fight to the Taliban and al Qaeda." It also appears to be the opinion of Admiral Mullen.