Descent into Appeasement
| By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Bill Roggio |
| Weekly Standard |
| June 9, 2008 |
| Web site: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/169cxzga.asp |
The good news is that some politicians apparently do keep their promises. Immediately after being appointed Pakistan’s prime minister earlier this year, Yousaf Raza Gilani promised negotiations with the Taliban, saying that his government was “ready to talk to all those who give up arms and adopt the path of peace.” Regional officials echoed his sentiment. He has delivered. The bad news is that such negotiations are eroding Pakistan’s security and creating an increasingly dangerous situation for Americans.The trouncing of Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf’s PML-Q party in the country’s February elections signaled a repudiation of his internal policies and his alliance with the United States. Musharraf’s approach to Pakistan’s largely lawless tribal regions–havens for the Taliban and al Qaeda–swung clumsily erratically between mobilizing his forces and entering into unenforceable agreements that eroded his military credibility. Neither tactic did much good, but negotiating with terrorists was the more popular of the two failed policies.
It is not surprising then that Pakistan’s new government launched a round of negotiations with the country’s Islamic extremists. What was unexpected, though, was the scale of the negotiations. Talks have been opened and agreements entered with virtually every militant outfit in the country. But the government has done nothing to answer the problem of the past accords and is again accepting promises that it has no means of enforcing.
The Taliban violated each of the conditions of the now-infamous September 2006 Waziristan accords. It used the ceasefire as an opportunity to erect a parallel system of government complete with sharia courts, taxation, recruiting offices, and its own police force. Al Qaeda in turn benefited from the Taliban’s expansion, building what U.S. intelligence estimates as 29 training camps in North and South Waziristan alone. And, while even the Waziristan accords paid lip service to stopping cross-border attacks against Coalition forces in Afghanistan, the new negotiations often leave this consideration aside. As North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) governor Owari Ghani recently told the New York Times, “Pakistan will take care of its own problems, you take care of Afghanistan on your side.”
The first in this new round of agreements was struck with the NWFP’s Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (the TNSM or Movement for the Implementation of Mohammad’s Sharia Law) on April 20 in the Malakand Division. The TNSM is led by Maulana Sufi Mohammed, who was imprisoned in 2002 for providing fighters to the Taliban in Afghanistan (as the TNSM continues to do to this day). The Pakistani government and the TNSM entered into a six-point deal in which the TNSM renounced attacks on Pakistan’s government in exchange for the promise that sharia law would be imposed in Malakand. The government also freed Sufi Mohammed.
A month later, Pakistan inked a deal with the Taliban in the Swat district. Led by Mullah Fazlullah (Sufi Mohammed’s son-in-law), they have been waging a brutal insurgency in the once-peaceful vacation spot. (More than 200 Pakistani soldiers and police have been killed since January 2007.) The 15-point agreement between the Pakistani government and the Swat Taliban stipulates that the military will withdraw its forces, and the government will allow the imposition of sharia law, permit Fazlullah to broadcast on his radio channel–which was previously banned–and help turn Fazlullah’s madrassa into an “Islamic University.”
Though the government extracted some concessions from the Taliban, they are so difficult to enforce that Pakistan will likely gain little more than the reintroduction of vaccination programs. (Fazlullah has campaigned against vaccinations in the past, describing them as a Western plot to make Pakistani men impotent.) The promise to close down training camps is certainly suspect.
This week, Pakistan negotiated a peace agreement with a Tehrik-i-Taliban leader in the Mohmand agency. Its terms are similar to the new accords signed with the TNSM and Swat Taliban.
In South Waziristan, the Pakistani government is in the process of negotiating an agreement with Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Tehrik-i-Taliban. He is a longtime adherent of the Taliban’s ideology, frequently visiting Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and appointed by Mullah Omar as governor of the Mehsud tribe. Baitullah Mehsud’s forces are responsible for killing and kidnapping hundreds of Pakistani soldiers, and he has masterminded a suicide-bombing campaign throughout Pakistan. He established the Tehrik-i-Taliban in December 2007 to unite local Taliban movements throughout the tribal areas and the NWFP and is thought to be responsible for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination that month.
While the agreement has yet to be signed, Pakistan’s Daily Times published a draft copy. The draft states that the Tehrik-i-Taliban must eject foreign terrorists (a concession they have ignored in the past) and prohibits them from attacking government and military personnel or impeding the movement of aid workers. In exchange, Pakistan will free Taliban prisoners and withdraw its army from the region. The deal is to be signed any day.
Pakistan has also started negotiations with the Taliban in the settled district of Kohat. The leaked terms of the proposed agreement are nearly identical to those negotiated with other groups.
This strategy of accelerated appeasement only empowers groups with a history of violence who are devoted to undermining Pakistan’s sovereignty. In addition to creating breathing space for extremists (since it is the militants who determine when an agreement is broken), the accords allow a greater flow of recruits to the training camps and further violence. At best, the politicians are shunting the problems down the road–and these problems will be larger by the time Pakistan is forced to confront them.
The new accords are also a threat to the United States. Baitullah Mehsud has told journalists that “jihad in Afghanistan will continue” regardless of negotiations, a sentiment echoed by other Taliban leaders. As U.S. forces in Afghanistan face increased cross-border attacks, Americans at home should be concerned about the increase in the risk of another catastrophic terrorist attack. The 9/11 Commission Report warned that a terrorist organization requires “time, space, and the ability to perform competent planning and staff work” in order to carry out a 9/11-like attack. Pakistan’s new accords provide al Qaeda and its allies with the requisite time and space.
If another major act of terror hits the United States, it will almost certainly be traced back to the al Qaeda network in Pakistan. Far from addressing the situation, Pakistan’s government is only increasing the dangers that we face.
Lee ADDS: These are the guys Obama says he will MEET WITH. Is this what you want?
July 19th, 2008 at 8:06 am
In the 1950s, in the wake of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” plan, Pakistan obtained a 125 megawatt heavy-water reactor from Canada. After India’s first atomic test in May 1974, Pakistan immediately sought to catch up by attempting to purchase a reprocessing plant from France. After France declined due to U.S. resistance, Pakistan began to assemble a uranium enrichment plant via materials from the black market and technology smuggled through A.Q. Khan. In 1976 and 1977, two amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act were passed, prohibiting American aid to countries pursuing either reprocessing or enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons programs.
These two, the Symington and Glenn Amendments, were passed in response to Pakistan’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability; but to little avail. Washington’s cool relations with Islamabad soon improved. During the Reagan administration, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s program. In return for Pakistan’s cooperation and assistance in the mujahideen’s war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration awarded Pakistan with the third largest economic and military aid package after Israel and Egypt. Despite the Pressler Amendment, which made US aid contingent upon the Reagan administration’s annual confirmation that Pakistan was not pursuing nuclear weapons capability, Reagan’s “laissez-faire” approach to Pakistan’s nuclear program seriously aided the proliferation issues that we face today.
Not only did Pakistan continue to develop its own nuclear weapons program, but A.Q. Khan was instrumental in proliferating nuclear technology to other countries as well. Further, Pakistan’s progress toward nuclear capability led to India’s return to its own pursuit of nuclear weapons, an endeavor it had given up after its initial test in 1974. In 1998, both countries had tested nuclear weapons. A uranium-based nuclear device in Pakistan; and a plutonium-based device in India.
Over the years of America’s on again- off again support of Pakistan, Musharraf continues to be skeptical of his American allies. In 2002 he is reported to have told a British official that his “great concern is that one day the United States is going to desert me. They always desert their friends.” Musharraf was referring to Viet Nam, Lebanon, Somalia … etc., etc., etc.,
Taking the war to Pakistan is perhaps the most foolish thing America can do. Obama is not the first to suggest it, and we already have sufficient evidence of the potentially negative repercussions of such an action. On January 13, 2006, the United States launched a missile strike on the village of Damadola, Pakistan. Rather than kill the targeted Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, the strike instead slaughtered 17 locals. This only served to further weaken the Musharraf government and further destabilize the entire area. In a nuclear state like Pakistan, this was not only unfortunate, it was outright stupid. Pakistan has 160 million Arabs (better than half of the population of the entire Arab world). Pakistan also has the support of China and a nuclear arsenal.
I predict that America’s military action in the Middle East will enter the canons of history alongside Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Holocaust, in kind if not in degree. The Bush administration’s war on terror marks the age in which America has again crossed a line that many argue should never be crossed. Call it preemption, preventive war, the war on terror, or whatever you like; there is a sense that we have again unleashed a force that, like a boom-a-rang, at some point has to come back to us. The Bush administration argues that American military intervention in the Middle East is purely in self-defense. Others argue that it is pure aggression. The consensus is equally as torn over its impact on international terrorism. Is America truly deterring future terrorists with its actions? Or is it, in fact, aiding the recruitment of more terrorists?
The last thing the United States should do at this point and time is to violate yet another state’s sovereignty. Beyond being wrong, it just isn’t very smart. We all agree that slavery in this country was wrong; as was the decimation of the Native American populations. We all agree that the Holocaust and several other acts of genocide in the twentieth century were wrong. So when will we finally admit that American military intervention in the Middle East is wrong as well?
July 19th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Iraq invasion wrong?
500 biological bombs found! No media coverage!
550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium found! No media coverage!
Al Qaeda camps in Northern Iraq and in Baghdad area! No media coverage.
Saddam’s Rape Chambers located! No media coverage.
Saddam executed, media coverage that attempted to paint it as wrong!
So, comment on those items but if you cannot, stop whining!
Lee