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The Follies of Attacking Pakistan
According to the Murdoch Times the U.S. is preparing to raid Afghan resistance bases in Pakistan:
Reports from the area said that hundreds of Nato troops were airlifted across the mountains from the village of Lowara Mandi, which has been an important base for cross-border attacks in Afghanistan. Heavy artillery and armoured vehicles were also being moved into position.
That move may suit the aggressive liberal interventionism of Obama, but it does not make any sense. At Pat Lang’s site FB Ali has two pieces describing the current situation in Pakistan and the likely consequences of such a move.
If the US mounts sustained attacks on the tribal areas, this will be regarded by all Pakistanis as an attack on their country. The upsurge of anti-US feeling will be such that neither the government nor the military could thereafter afford to show any sign of cooperation with the US. That will seriously compound US problems in Afghanistan and the region.
The mood in Pakistan is already very bad. As a traveler just back from Pakistan reports:
[T]he annual GDP per capita is under $3,000. In spite of this, over the past few months, prices for seemingly everything except pirated DVDs have risen sharply. I paid the exact same for meat and vegetables in Karachi as I do in Washington, DC.
…
Usually, electricity would be out for an hour or two in some areas, at most once a day. This time, however, power goes out several times a day for anywhere between 5-12 hours, as part of nationwide power load sharing.
Additionally there is a severe water shortage and the coalition government is on the brink of falling apart. Today people stoned the Karachi stock exchange after shares plunged 30%.
The Pakistani government might indeed be tempted to turn that rage against away from itself and against the U.S.
Most ‘western’ media are currently propagating that the problems in Afghanistan would be solved if only Pakistan would fight the Taliban within its borders. That impression is certainly wrong. Most of the Taliban and other parts of the resistance do not even come from the Pakistani border area but are genuine Afghans. Except for a few cities the Taliban rule the whole south and east of Afghanistan and even some sectors in the west. The only stable areas are the north where the non-Pashtun warlords of the Northern Alliance are in charge and Herat in the west which is under benign Iranian control.
Fighting the Taliban in the Pakistani border areas would not change the general situation in favor of the ‘western’ forces and their puppets in Kabul. It would instead make the situation for the troops much worse.
Seventy percent of ISAF and U.S. supplies are landed in Karachi harbor and transported by private trucks through the Khyber pass into Afghanistan. Given the current mood in Pakistan, how long would that supply line stay open if the U.S. increases attacks on that country?
In the 1950s, in the wake of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” plan, Pakistan obtained a 125 megawatt heavy-water reactor from Canada. After India’s first atomic test in May 1974, Pakistan immediately sought to catch up by attempting to purchase a reprocessing plant from France. After France declined due to U.S. resistance, Pakistan began to assemble a uranium enrichment plant via materials from the black market and technology smuggled through A.Q. Khan. In 1976 and 1977, two amendments to the Foreign Assistance Act were passed, prohibiting American aid to countries pursuing either reprocessing or enrichment capabilities for nuclear weapons programs.
These two, the Symington and Glenn Amendments, were passed in response to Pakistan’s efforts to achieve nuclear weapons capability; but to little avail. Washington’s cool relations with Islamabad soon improved. During the Reagan administration, the US turned a blind eye to Pakistan’s nuclear weapon’s program. In return for Pakistan’s cooperation and assistance in the mujahideen’s war against Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Reagan administration awarded Pakistan with the third largest economic and military aid package after Israel and Egypt. Despite the Pressler Amendment, which made US aid contingent upon the Reagan administration’s annual confirmation that Pakistan was not pursuing nuclear weapons capability, Reagan’s “laissez-faire” approach to Pakistan’s nuclear program seriously aided the proliferation issues that we face today.
Not only did Pakistan continue to develop its own nuclear weapons program, but A.Q. Khan was instrumental in proliferating nuclear technology to other countries as well. Further, Pakistan’s progress toward nuclear capability led to India’s return to its own pursuit of nuclear weapons, an endeavor it had given up after its initial test in 1974. In 1998, both countries had tested nuclear weapons. A uranium-based nuclear device in Pakistan; and a plutonium-based device in India
Over the years of America’s on again off again support of Pakistan, Musharraf continues to be skeptical of his American allies. In 2002 he is reported to have told a British official that his “great concern is that one day the United States is going to desert me. They always desert their friends.” Musharraf was referring to Viet Nam, Lebanon, Somalia … etc., etc., etc.,
Taking the war to Pakistan is perhaps the most foolish thing America can do. Obama is not the first to suggest it, and we already have sufficient evidence of the potentially negative repercussions of such an action. On January 13, 2006, the United States launched a missile strike on the village of Damadola, Pakistan. Rather than kill the targeted Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s deputy leader, the strike instead slaughtered 17 locals. This only served to further weaken the Musharraf government and further destabilize the entire area. In a nuclear state like Pakistan, this was not only unfortunate, it was outright stupid. Pakistan has 160 million Arabs (better than half of the population of the entire Arab world). Pakistan also has the support of China and a nuclear arsenal.
I predict that America’s military action in the Middle East will enter the canons of history alongside Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Holocaust, in kind if not in degree. The Bush administration’s war on terror marks the age in which America has again crossed a line that many argue should never be crossed. Call it preemption, preventive war, the war on terror, or whatever you like; there is a sense that we have again unleashed a force that, like a boom-a-rang, at some point has to come back to us. The Bush administration argues that American military intervention in the Middle East is purely in self-defense. Others argue that it is pure aggression. The consensus is equally as torn over its impact on international terrorism. Is America truly deterring future terrorists with its actions? Or is it, in fact, aiding the recruitment of more terrorists?
The last thing the United States should do at this point and time is to violate yet another state’s sovereignty.
Posted by: John Maszka | Jul 19 2008 12:57 utc | 9
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