Obama team does not have a plan for Pakistan

Washington Post:

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The Pakistani government was mired in political bickering. The army, still fixated on its historical adversary India, remained ill-equipped and unwilling to throw its full weight into the counterinsurgency fight.

But despite the threat the intelligence conveyed, Obama has only limited options for dealing with it. Anti-American feeling in Pakistan is high, and a U.S. combat presence is prohibited. The United States is fighting Pakistan-based extremists by proxy, through an army over which it has little control, in alliance with a government in which it has little confidence.

The tools most readily at hand are money, weapons, and a mentoring relationship with Pakistan's government and military that alternates between earnest advice and anxious criticism. As criticism has dominated in recent weeks -- along with reports that the administration is wooing Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari's principal political opponent, former prime minister Nawaz Sharif -- the partnership has grown strained.

"What are the Americans trying to do, micromanage our politics?" a senior Pakistani official said testily. "This is not South Vietnam."

As Zardari arrives this week for his first official visit with Obama -- part of a tripartite summit with Afghan President Hamid Karzai -- the administration has asked Congress to quickly approve hundreds of millions of dollars in emergency military aid for Pakistan. That money, and billions more over the next several years, is to come with new authority for the Defense Department to decide what to spend it on.

Obama has also backed a five-year $7.5 billion economic assistance package and is resisting congressional efforts to impose strict conditions on any aid to Pakistan. Last month, the administration orchestrated an international donors' conference in Tokyo that netted $5.5 billion in pledges for Pakistan.

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Security proposals up for discussion with Zardari and other members of his high-level delegation include counterinsurgency training for Pakistani army troops at U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, the United States or elsewhere. The administration wants to expand a small, in-country training force -- now limited to about 70 Americans -- that is working with the Frontier Corps, the local, poorly armed force in the border regions.

As 17,000 additional U.S. troops deploying to southern Afghanistan this spring and summer begin to push Taliban fighters toward the Pakistan border, there are hopes the extremists can be trapped in "hammer and anvil" operations with Pakistani forces in the southern province of Baluchistan. Right now, however, Pakistan fields only one army brigade and about 40,000 minimally trained and equipped Frontier Corps members in the vast region, according to U.S. officials.

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The story repeats the discredited canard that the missile strikes against al Qaeda and Taliban leadership are unpopular. They are surely unpopular with the Taliban and al Qaeda, but the rest of the people approve of them in the only survey ever taken on the subject. There is good reason for that approval since no one in their right mind wants to live under the rule of despotic religious bigots.

The Obama administration appears to be floundering around trying to figure out what to do with the Pakistani government. Since Obama signaled early on that he would ignore the government in the fight with the religious bigots, he has lost much of his leverage. Clinton has not helped with her undiplomatic rhetoric.

The most important thing they should accomplish on this visit is to get the Pakistanis to agree to counterinsurgency training of their troops in Pakistan. Doing it outside of Pakistan really makes no sense. If there is a concern about hostility to US forces, that should dissipate as they are seen helping Pakistan deal with the religious bigots.