Right at the Edge

NY Times ^ | September 5, 2008 | Dexter Filkins

[gandalftb]

During a firefight, Americans called airstrikes on soldiers from Pakistan.

The mystery was solved by residents.

“When Americans started bombing the Taliban, the Frontier Corps started shooting at the Americans,”.

Pakistan's wild, ungoverned tribal areas have become an untouchable base.

The survival of Pakistan’s leaders depended on a double game: assuring the US they were vigorously repressing Islamic militants while simultaneously assisting them.

It reaps billions in aid to boost the Pakistani economy and military and Islamist proxies.

What happens when the bluff no longer works?

To great fanfare, the Pakistani military began a decisive offensive to rout the Taliban.

A few days into the operation, I rode in.

There was no evidence, anywhere, of the military operation. No Pakistani soldiers, no trucks, no tanks. Nothing.

So here was a Taliban chieftain, sitting at home, not three miles from Peshawar, untouched by the military operation supposedly unfolding around.

"What’s going on? I asked. "Why aren’t they coming for you?"

Namdar said, “The army comes in, and they fire at empty buildings. It is a drama — it is just to entertain.”

"Entertain whom?" I asked.

“America,” he said.

Pakistan’s leaders find it difficult to mobilize the army and intelligence services.

It’s easier to do as little as possible.

Pakistani security services support the Taliban for money: keeping the Taliban alive was the surest way to win billions of dollars Pakistan need, the “strategic games..

“The Pakistani economy would collapse without it. This is how the game works.”

“It’s a game”. “The U.S. is being taken for a ride.”

Taliban capitalize on resentment toward hereditary maliks and the government. Taliban come mostly from lower classes.

The chaos has been redirected. Channeling the Taliban into Afghanistan is indeed the new game. It is certainly the military and ISI officers who are doing the managing — not the country’s elected leaders.

[gandalftb]

Well written article, much more detail than offered here. Sums it up well.

[Cicero]

Well, sure it’s a game. If you tried to kill all the terorists and terrorst helpers and future terrorists in Waziristan, you’d have to kill everyone.

Dealing with Pakistan has always been like the proverbial tiger ride.

[rbg81]

Yup. Shame on Bush for putting up with this fiction for as long as he has. If he had expanded the military after 9/11, our ability to deal with the Pakistanis would be different. Instead, he told our young men to go shopping rather than enlist.

[flowerplough]

From page 9:
...the essence of the new Pakistani game. As long as the militants refrain from attacking the state, they are free to do what they want inside the tribal areas — and across the border in Afghanistan. While peace has largely prevailed between the government and the militants inside Pakistan since earlier this year, the infiltration of Taliban fighters from the tribal areas into Afghanistan has risen sharply. Even the current Pakistani offensive, according to Maj. Gen. Jeffrey J. Schloesser, the top American commander in eastern Afghanistan, has failed to slow the influx.

In short, the chaos has been redirected.