Pakistan is an Iran all over again?
...If we have to rely on Sharif, we are in bigger trouble than anyone is willing to say. While he and Zadari are both corrupt, Sharif is also tied to the Muslim religious bigots. I am pretty sure he is not the answer to the problems Pakistan is having.The challenge in Pakistan is eerily similar to what the Carter administration faced with Iran: How to encourage the military to take decisive action against a Muslim insurgency without destroying the country's nascent democracy. And there's a deeper psychological factor, too: How to exercise U.S. power effectively without triggering a backlash from a proud and prickly Muslim population that is scarred by what it sees as a history of American meddling.
"My experience is that knocking them hard (the Pakistani government and military) isn't going to work," said Mullen. "The harder we push, the further away they get." For the crackdown on the Taliban to be successful, he said, "It has to be their will, not ours."
What encourages U.S. officials is that recent events have been a wake-up call for a Pakistani elite in denial about the Taliban threat. One top civilian official said he was less worried now than three weeks ago, because the military and civilian leaders in Islamabad have realized the danger they face. The Pakistani military has begun an effort to push back the Taliban, albeit with mixed results. The Taliban responded fiercely to an assault Tuesday in Buner and seized three police stations, kidnapping dozens of police and paramilitary troops.
"My biggest concern is whether they (the Pakistani government) will sustain it," Mullen said. He has told his Pakistani counterpart, Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, that "we are prepared to assist whenever they want." During his recent visit, Mullen toured two Pakistani counterinsurgency training camps and came away impressed.
Mullen said he hopes the Pakistanis will adopt a classic three-part counterinsurgency strategy -- clearing areas of Taliban control, holding those areas with enough troops so that the local population feels secure, and then building through economic development, with U.S. help.
Politically, the U.S. is looking increasingly to former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, whose Muslim League dominates the crucial Punjab region. Officials note that 60 percent of the Pakistani population lives in Punjab, and that Sharif has a popularity rating over 80 percent there.
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The administration needs to step back and take a look at enemy grand strategy. They were faced with an increase of US troops in Afghanistan that they knew, based on their experience in Iraq, they would not be able to handle. At first they attempted a logistic strategy attacking supply lines through Pakistan. As that failed they decided to put pressure on a weak Pakistan government to counter the US operation in Afghanistan. In other words they decided to enlarge the problem of the US supply lines.
What this suggest to me is that we need to increase our operations against the Taliban in their Pakistan sanctuaries and thereby make it more difficult for them to attack the government. At any rate, the current problems should be seen in light of events in Afghanistan.
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