Pakistan's deal and US troops in Afghanistan

Ralph Peters:

THE 36,000 US troops in Afghanistan are prisoners of war. They're still armed and fighting. But their fate lies in Pakistan's hands, not ours.

It's time to rethink our nonstrategy in Kabul. We got our initial actions right in the autumn of 2001, slaughtering terrorists, toppling the Taliban and empowering would-be allies. But we've been getting it wrong every year since.

We're now on the verge of doubling our troop commitment to a mismanaged war that lacks sane goals and teeters toward inanity. And we're putting our troops at the mercy of one of the world's most-corrupt states - Pakistan - which has cut a deal with extremists to enforce Sharia law a short drive from the capital.

After taking apart al Qaeda's base network and punishing the Taliban, we should have left the smoking ruins. This should have been a classic punitive expedition: We're not obliged to rehabilitate foreign murderers.

As for those who exclaim that "We would have had to go back!" - well, so what? Had we needed to hammer Afghanistan again in 2007 or 2008, that still would've been cheaper in blood (ours and the Afghans') and treasure than trying to build a "rule of law" state where no real state ever existed.

Staying left us with criminally vulnerable logistics - ever the bane of campaigns in the region. The Brits and the Soviets both learned the hard way that superior fighting skills don't suffice in Afghanistan: You need dependable, redundant supply lines.

But we rely on a long, imperiled land route through Pakistan for up to 80 percent of our supplies - a route that Pakistan can close at any time.

And the Pakistanis have closed it, just to make a point.

I'm convinced that the recent flurry of successful attacks on supply yards in Peshawar and along the Khyber Pass route were tacitly - if not actively - approved by the Pakistani intelligence service (the ISI) and the military.

Previous attacks were rare and unsuccessful. Suddenly, in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, our trucks were burning. The Pakistanis were making the point that we're at their mercy: They wanted us to rein in a (rightly) outraged India.

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I don't agree with all of this. but I share Peters' concern about our main supply line. However I think the problems there spring from the success of our Hellfire strikes inside Pakistan. The problems along the MSR started before the Mumbai attacks and I think those attacks themselves were intended as a distraction for Pakistan forces that have been moving against the Taliban along the border.

What makes the deal in the Swat Valley so troubling is that it clearly will not be beneficial to Pakistan and will be beneficial to our mutual enemy. The belief that a deal can be struck with "moderate" Taliban has been proven wrong before in Pakistan. If there were any moderates in this group they would not be Taliban to start with. The fact that the price of the "truce" was allowing the absurdities of shari'a law suggest there is absolutely nothing moderate about these clowns.