Rumors Of Pakistan's Demise Greatly Exaggerated

By Steve Hynd

A day after many pundits followed Bill Roggio freaking out about Pakistan's status as a "failed state" because the Taliban were - gasp - only 60 miles from Islamabad, comes this from Reuters.

"Our leader has ordered that Taliban should immediately be called back from Buner," Taliban spokesman Muslim Khan told Reuters. He said there were only around 100 fighters in Buner.

Government and Taliban representatives went to Buner, along with Maulana Sufi Mohammad, a radical Muslim cleric who brokered the Swat deal, to tell the fighters to vacate the district.

Fazlullah's aide Mehmood Khan said the militants were returning to Swat, and witnesses saw them leaving Buner in the early evening.

It was unclear whether the Taliban's withdrawal was in response to a carrot or a stick, and worries abound over whether Pakistan lacks the capacity and intent to fight militancy.

Army chief General Ashfaq Kayani issued a statement aimed at dispelling those doubts and calming a mounting sense of crisis.

The army "will not allow the militants to dictate terms to the government or impose their way of life on the civil society of Pakistan," the statement quoted Kayani as saying.

Kayani's comments, issued after meeting with his commanders, reinforced expectations of an imminent offensive in Swat, analysts said.

100 Taliban. Five hours travel away from Islamabad on Pakistani roads on a good day, i.e. one where you have a working truck that isn't being bombed and shelled by Pakistan's huge military. Some threat. Want to bet me there's 100 militiamen ready for the rightwing revolution somewhere within 5 hours of D.C.? By some lights, that puts America on the verge of being a hollow state.

Pepe Escobar got it exactly right in a recent piece for Asia Times:

Islamabad controls most of Pakistan - Sindh and Punjab provinces - with an iron fist. Pakistani police and army control most of NWFP. In "separatist" Balochistan there's only 5% of the total population. For Washington to believe that a small, rural, Pashtun tribal agglomeration of bands of a maximum of 30 fighters, with no air force, no heavy artillery and no tanks, could take over a Pakistan with a 650,000-strong well-trained army is an absolutely ridiculous notion. And for Washington to believe - as Holbrooke implied - that a few Pashtun tribals and a few expat jihadis can take on Western civilization as a whole is also an absolutely ridiculous notion.

The Pakistani military also directly controls over 50% of Pakistan's economy and the civilian government is just a facade to keep US military aid coming. The military has let the Taliban have those bits of Pakistan it isn't interested in running itself, that's all. If they were a serious threat to military supremacy they'd be crushed. A potential deal where the Taliban get Sharia in return for keeping the populace off the military's back...that's maybe a different story...

But calling it a "failed state" if the military are back in charge, in a return to the status quo ante, deal or not? That's just fearmongering for escalation even if the prospect of an overtly military-run Pakistan isn't a palatable one. It's linguistic slight-of-hand framing the issue the way interventionists want it framed. "Failed States", it is implicitly assumed, don't have the sovereign right or ability to say no to American COIN ops. More, describing a nation as a "Failed State" brings in a whole load of implicit assumptions about the moral right to meddle, to "protect non- failed states".

And the one thing we can be sure about Bill Roggio is that he's a reliable stenographer for the Pentagon's spinners.

Still, none of this helps Obama's atrocious strategy for the region one bit, especially given that the Pakistani military has no intention of decimating a Taliban movement that still provides it useful proxies against it's real enemy, India. But even by the logic of pro-escalation types like Roggio and David Kilcullen, surging in Afghanistan when they call Pakistan's "imminent" collapse the real threat doesn't make sense. If an army larger than the entire US military can't stop the extremists on what they now say is the central front, what's a piddling amount of troops in the country next door supposed to do? If that massive army simply refuses to stop the extremists, again what's to be done by waving a far smaller "big stick" next door? Worse,a large military presence in the region, with that military using force and causing civilian casualties while the US tries to bend the Pakistani government to our will against its regional interests, isn't going to help stabilize Pakistan. Quite the reverse.

It just doesn't add up. And it doesn't add up because it has added fearmongering, designed to bolster waning domestic support for Bush's mismanaged occupation now that Obama has gone with the neoliberal hawks and decided to double down. It's far more likely that the Taliban aren't a realistic existential threat to Afghanistan, Pakistan or even America. Even in Afghanistan, only 8% of the populace think they've any chance of successfully re-seizing power and 84% say there's no Taliban problem in their area. The Taliban are simply a thorny problem that can be contained by counter-terrorism and law enforcement, rather than massively lengthy and expensive COIN surges.

Comments

[Russ Wellen]

Nothing to see here. Move along.

This is good:

The military has let the Taliban have those bits of Pakistan it isn't interested in running itself, that's all.

Whole post was great, in fact.

[Observer]

I wasn't aware that announcement came out of the administration. In fact I'm quite sure it came out of the MSM, looking to manufacture more controversy to sell.

There's no evidence Obama "has gone with the neoliberal hawks and decided to double down".

[Dave Schuler]

I think it's a bit premature, Steve. The reports I've heard on this have suggested that the Taliban from other areas have withdrawn leaving the local Taliban in place and in control since they hadn't seen much opposition from the military or the paramilitary forces.

If the Pakistani government advances and re-asserts control, then you're right. If not, then it more or less makes the reduction in territory controlled by the government official.

Note that the Taliban from other areas withdrawing from Buner doesn't mean they won't advance more closely on the capital. It may be that it means that they will. We'll just have to wait and see.

[zenpundit]

Hi Steve,

A muscular post.Agree and disagree.

If anyone wishes to know what the Pakistani military is *really* capable of doing when it believes itself to be cornered, they need only recall the events in West Pakistan prior to it becoming independent Bangladesh. 8000 fanatical fighters in Swat would be chewed up rather quickly.

Rather than the military being uninterested in these areas of Pakistan, I suggest that they value the militants as useful (and expendable) loose cannons in Pakistan's longstanding determination to have Afghanistan as Islamabad's "strategic depth" against India. The generals make concessions today, let predators kill militants tomorrow, then send some arms, then raid a few villages....

None of this means that Pakistan is not a failing or weak state or that Militants could not use closer geographic access to cities to engage in systems disruptions attacks. Or that borders should be inviolable. Or many other tangents that represent risks, costs or strategic problems.

[Steve Hynd]

The Taliban's Grave Error

"The Taliban finally made a grave error," said Javed Siddiq, editor of the influential Urdu language daily Nawa-e-Waqt. "Once they challenged Pakistan’s constitution as un-Islamic, Islamic scholars and the Pakistani people no longer saw them as the self-styled defenders of Islam against western infidels – but infidels themselves who want to dismantle the Pakistani state."

Siddiq said that challenging the constitution was a wrong step and believes it has backfired. Pakistan’s constitution was carefully forged by a board of Islamic scholars in 1973 – every tenet was crafted to make sure it conformed to the principals of Islam.

"Now, all the different sects of the Sunni and Shiite, the religious scholars, the army, the politicians and every Pakistani is against the Taliban," Siddiq said. "They have lost."

The Taliban were quick to sense their blunder and the resulting sea change in the country. "The expansion into Buner was the turning point," said Siddiq.

Regards, Steve

[cp]

Steve keeps accusing India about inciting trouble in Pakistan (with usually very outdated links). But Richard Holbrooke himself have said yesterday there is absolutely no evidence to it:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/No-proof-India-backing-Pak-rebels-US/articleshow/4448406.cms

If anything, a Taliban regime is going to disastrous for India.

[cp]

I agree with Steve here that the demise of Pak is exaggerated. But my projections are a bit different. I think Pakistan will be eventually become a Taliban-run establishment.

Most of the common people are disenchanted by the feudal system (Zamindari system), where most of the land and wealth are concentrated in the hands of privileged few. Unfortunately the politicians come from the same privileged background, and have not done anything to improve the conditions. The author (Javed Siddiq), whom Steve quotes in his comment above, speaks for the privileged lot.

The Taliban is winning because they are able to take advantage of these disillusionment of the common people, for whom it was a matter luck to get employment as a servant in these zamindaris (feudal palaces). While most other south-asian countries had re-allotted land from zamindars, Pakistan unfortunately didn't, and it's too late now. (India did it within 10 yrs of Independence, so I think Bangladesh, after it's own independence). To get a glimpse of the Zamindari system (from a preivileged women's point), read 'My Feudal Lord' by Tehmina Durrani.

Compounded to this, the Army is doing absolutely nothing: either to show the ineptitude of 'democracy' and also because a lot of the rank and file are filled with staunch Islamist, ( a legacy of Zia-ul-haq's strategy to whip Islamic identity to inculcate hate against neighboring countries).

Lastly, most of the media is steeped in Zia's ultra-Islamic and anti-India philosophy, and it feeds back to the common people. Here is an analysis from respected journalist (Irfan Husain) in Dawn:
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/zias-revenge