There's a lot that has occurred in Pakistan over the weekend worth noting.
First we'll start with the
fighting:
Fighting between pro-Taliban and security forces have died down in a tribal region in northwestern Pakistan, where clashes have left at least 46 militants and five soldiers dead.
An intelligence official, however, said on Sunday that hundreds of civilians were fleeing the embattled towns in North Waziristan.
Earlier during the day, helicopter gunships backed ground troops in the intermittent clashes in Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region.
The fighting came just days after the army attacked a suspected al-Qaida camp in the village of Saidgi near the Afghan border. Military officials said 45 people, including foreign militants, were killed in the attack.
But the tribesmen - who sympathise with the militants - claim local people died and the operation whipped up more anti-government anger in the area - about 190km from Peshawar, the provincial capital.
I saw General Shaukat Sultan on CNN spouting the usual Pakistani propaganda: everyone dead is a foreigner, the Pak Army has the situation under control and that the fight against Al-Qaeda is just about over.
He did add this fun little tidbit though:
Sultan said the militants were led by a local cleric Maulvi Abdul Khaliq, who this week called for a jihad, or holy war, against Pakistan's army.
Earlier Saturday, Khaliq had demanded that authorities stop killing "innocent" people in military operations and urged local elders, in an announcement broadcast from mosques and loudspeakers mounted on pickup trucks, to stop contact with the local government as a protest against the Saidgi operation.
If that's even one quarter true, that's big trouble for the Pak Army. The Pak Army has some 80,000 troops operating in the NWFP (including the two Waziristans) and some 120,000 troops in Balochistan, which adds up to a major military operation. That's 200,000 regular troops and does not count the number of paramilitary "Frontier Corps" members in the area.
The problem is that the army and paramilitaries are almost entirely in what they call "cantonments". It's essentially what the American military calls a Forward Operating Base (FOB), an encampment with a guarded perimeter from whence operations are launched, deep in hostile territory. In effect, the Pak military is in the same situation as the American military in Iraq, having hundreds of thousands of troops trying to maintain law and order while occupying a foreign land.
It sounds a little weird to think of the NWFP and Balochistan as "foreign land" but that's exactly what it is, despite what the map says. The Islamabad government has waged several out-and-out wars against the Balochs (with a significant amount of help from the U.S. and Shah-controlled Iran). The occupation of the NWFP is something new from post 9/11, as the areas were previously nearly completely independent.
Here's what the Pak newspaper Daily Times said about the fighting:
The exchange started on Saturday afternoon after the main army base was attacked by militants "from all sides", eyewitnesses and a military official said. "Security forces are retaliating after coming under the miscreants' fire at the main base in Miranshah from all sides," the military official said. "The main military base was attacked from all sides and the security forces retaliated in self-defence," a government official said.
In other words, a full-scale assault by the locals. The Daily Times, by the way, reports that over 100 people died.
There's no way to know what's really going on other than that fighting has occurred. There may be foreigners in the region and they may be Uzbeks, Chechens, Afghanis or even Indians. Or it may be mostly a tribal war against the Pak Army, considering them occupiers of their lands.
I saw Pervez Musharraf give a full interview on CNN but I can't find the transcript. I really wish I could because he absolutely blasted Karzai for both providing old and useless intel on Al-Qaeda/Taliban members in Pakistan as well as failing to control the border. If I get the transcript later I will post it because it's quite indicative of how short this man's fuse has become.
And he's got very good reason to be upset. First, his "vital ally" George Bush shows up a day after granting India a major deal in nuclear technology and expertise exchange. Musharraf has stuck his neck out on the line in this "War on Terror", which the majority of Pakistanis oppose, and yet Bush said no dice on a similar nuke deal with Pakistan.
Musharraf is like the president of the Hair Club for Men - he's not just the president of Pakistan, he's also the head of its military. He has a fairly firm grip on the country but things are growing more and more unstable. The "cartoon riots", which are first were accepted and even supported by the government, have turned into a near daily outlet of rage not only against Denmark but the entire western world, including the United States, as a general protest against the concept that the west is fighting a war on Islam itself.
Add that to the horrendously botched raid in Bajaur District (NWFP) in January, which failed to kill any Al-Qaeda members and instead ended the life of a few poor, innocent women and children villagers. And Bush can shake hands with all the survivors (photogenically bearing crutches) of the October 2005 earthquake but there's still a lot of people out there in the mountains shivering through the cold. And if you remember, more than one American relief chopper was shot at.
Pakistan was promised F-16 fighter jets and they've yet to be delivered, yet the U.S. is busy busting their hump trying to sell major weapons contracts to India (and mostly failing). It's quite clear that India is suddenly America's new bestest buddy and Musharraf is increasingly left holding an empty bag of windy promises.
What does he have to show for 4 years of sucking up to the United States? Not much. The Afghan border is still quite porous. Tribal militants using small arms and mortars in Waziristan is busy kicking the daylights out of the Pak Army. Balochistan is on fire with a full-fledged war, and Pakistan has repeatedly said Indian RAW (equivalent to the CIA) agents are fueling the unrest. And Musharraf got almost no help at all from Bush in ending the Kashmir dispute.
Add this to the mix:
President George W Bush has indicated the US has dropped its staunch opposition to a proposed gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan.
Mr Bush said on his visit to Pakistan he understood the need for natural gas in the region and that the US argument with Iran was over nuclear weapons.
The $6bn project for the 2,600km (1,625 mile) pipeline will bring Iran revenue, Pakistan transit fees and India energy.
Now why on earth would Bush be suddenly a supporter of a pipeline that would bring Iran revenue? And make a landmark deal with India to exempt them from nuclear technology sanctions, despite the fact that their entire military program will be operated without IAEA oversight?
The key to the whole thing, once again, is Balochistan. It's hard to tell from that map, but the Baloch people live not just in Balochistan in Pakistan but also a swathe of southern Afghanistan and eastern Iran (also called Balochistan).
To begin with, despite the fact that Pakistan has been run by a bunch of dictatorships throughout most of its history, it was always a better ally to the United States than India. During the Cold War (and afterwards), India always had better relationships with the Soviets/Russians. So when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, it was no problem at all for the U.S. to use Pakistan's ISI (akin to their CIA) to funnel weapons to the muhajeddin (later to become Al-Qaeda and the Taliban).
After 9/11, it was realized that Pakistan should take the lead in the "War on Terror", at least in regards to the Taliban (Iraq is irrelevant to this). Sure, Musharraf's government had openly supported the Taliban but with the promise of massive financing and the ability to buy brand-new weaponry, Pakistan did the fastest flip-flop of the 21st century. And Bush delivered on his promise, lifting sanctions against Pakistan within weeks of 9/11 and later designating the country as a Major Non-NATO US Ally.
Except someone quite wisely was stacking the deck. It wasn't just sanctions against Pakistan that got dropped, but also India's (in place since 1998 due to their testing of a nuclear device). The Indian RAW was leaned on for their connections in Pakistan, particularly in Balochistan, where a large number of Afghans were living as refugees, many of them ethnic Pashtun (the same ethnicity as the core group of the Taliban). India was happy to help as any increase of their influence in Afghanistan would help them augment regional dominance, particularly against Pakistan.
I should mention here that India not only has a number of consulates and embassies in Afghanistan but also a large assortment of rebuilding and infrastructure projects. They've also helped Afghanistan's civilian airlines get off the ground again. During the Taliban rule, India supported what is now known as the "Northern Alliance" and many of them are now in positions of power in the Karzai government. So India has its hand deep in the pockets of the Afghan government, if not the outlying warlords who control the south and southeast.
Despite all the hooplah in the media however, Pakistan's number one financier has been China for a number of years. China is building one nuclear (energy) reactor and there are plans to build up to 3 more. Chinese engineers are designing and managing huge construction projects in the NWFP and Balochistan to generate hydroelectric power as well as tap the natural gas reserves there. And Chinese money and expertise is just about done building a deep water port in Gwadar, Balochistan.
The tightrope walking act required by the west, particularly the United States, is to use China and India to balance eachother out without letting either one get the upper hand. Reading the tea leaves, it looks like between the end of 2001 and the beginning of 2005, America's main focus on building an ally was in Pakistan, primarily due to the "War on Terror" and the drive to kill or capture Al-Qaeda members. And Pakistan has been churning out arrests non-stop, including the biggest fish so far, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
Starting in 2005 however, the focus on Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan has moved somewhat to the back burner. The war in Iraq is now the priority and whatever top echelon Al-Qaeda who are still in the Pak/Afghan border are no longer calling the day-to-day shots. Besides, Bush noted just the other day that Osama's videotape in 2004 helped him win his re-election, and if you think Bush thought of that himself, you've been drinking the Kool-Aid again.
The Americans have been pushing hard on NATO to take over the pesky task of doing the actual fighting against the Taliban and indeed Britain just shipped over a few thousand troops to tackle Helmand Province. In other words, Afghanistan is no longer a priority. Karzai is in place, the aid is flowing in, and the Islamabad government is just going to have to fend for itself.
The new priority (outside of Iraq) is now China, which has Rumsfeld's mark all over it. And if China gets a firmer grip in Balochistan, particularly by shipping Middle East oil by rail from Gwadar, then that's going to increase their power. Now it's time to boost up India and that's what all the razzle-dazzle you saw over the past week was about.
Serving India's energy needs by greenlighting the pipeline from Iran, the nuclear exchange "deal", as well as paying them for destabilizing Balochistan helps them quite a lot. And most importantly, it keeps China in check. It also coincidentally puts India in America's favor, which hopefully will lead to some future military contracts, as Indian defense spending has steadily risen over the past two years.
There's also the oblique angle involving Russia here. Right now the Caspian Sea oil and natural gas has to be shipped or pipelined out via Russia and only Russia (except for one very long overland rail route to China). The clear geophysical shortcut would be through Iran, which currently has a government hostile to the United States. By encouraging Baloch unrest, this destabilizes Iran's eastern borders and gives the Tehran government something else to worry about (on top of the unrest in the west, Khuzestan).
Getting the pipeline to India via Pakistan (Balochistan) is just part of the long-range plan, with the hopes that it will be built and operational when some old fashioned regime change has been effected in Iran. That'll open the door to more pipelines to get Caspian oil and natural gas shipped out to allies without having to depend on Russia.
It's round 512 of the "Great Game" being played out in front of our eyes. And you can be darn sure that Pakistan is increasingly going to get the short end of the stick from America. This means less aid, less military contracts, and more "oops" bombings and cross-border raids by the American military.
Besides, the CIA already predicted that Pakistan will be a failed state by 2015. Time to get while the getting's good, as someone I know used to say.
Cross-posted from the new Flogging the Simian
Peace