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| India-Pakistan |
| Pakistan could collapse in six months: Kilcullen |
| 2009-03-24 |
| The Pakistani state could collapse within six months if immediate steps are not taken to remedy the situation, warned a top adviser to the US Central Command. How will we be able to tell if it does collapse? David Kilcullen, who advises CENTCOM commander Gen. David H. Petraeus on the war on terror, urged US policymakers to focus their attention on Pakistan as a failure there could have devastating consequences for the entire international community. Our focus has been on Pakistain, and it's still failed. It's worked very hard to fail. In an interview with The Washington Post (Sunday Edition), Kilcullen, who is credited with the success of the US troop surge strategy in Iraq, warned that if Pakistan went out of control, it would 'dwarf' all the crises in the world today. "Pakistan hands down. No doubt," he said when asked to name the central front in the war against terror. Pakistain is Terrorism Central. Large areas are controlled by al-Qaeda and its surrogates, which include entire corps of the Pak military, while a venal and breath-takingly inept political oligarchy squabbles within itself over how to split a constantly diminishing boodle. All this is complemented by comic opera holy men complete with turbans, Dr. Stranglove clones, and bearded bandidos, and it's punctuated by the occasional earthquake and/or epidemic. Asked to explain why he thought Pakistan was so important, Kilcullen said: "Pakistan has 173 million people, 100 nuclear weapons, an army bigger than the US Army, and al-Qaeda headquarters sitting right there in the two-thirds of the country that the government doesnÃt control." That's about what I said, only with population figures. He claimed that the Pakistani military and police and intelligence service did not follow the civilian government; they were essentially a rogue state within a state. Actually multiple rogue states within a state. "Were now reaching the point where within one to six months we could see the collapse of the Pakistani state, also because of the global financial crisis, which just exacerbates all these problems," he said. "The collapse of Pakistan, al-Qaeda acquiring nuclear weapons, an extremist takeover -- that would dwarf everything we've seen in the war on terror today." Binny with nuclear weapons would be something out of either Fu Manchu or Austin Powers, I'm not sure which. Much worse would be nuclear weapons in the hands of Hafiz Saeed, who's looking forward to incinerating someone. Kilcullen, an Australian anthropologist who advises governments on Muslim militancy throughout the West, disagreed with the suggestion that it was important to kill or capture Osama bin Laden. He discussed two possible scenarios for catching the al-Qaeda leader. Scenario one is, American commandos shoot their way into some valley in Pakistan and kill bin Laden. This, Kilcullen said, would not end the war on terror and would make bin Laden a martyr. All depends on how he went down. If he went down fighting, yeah. If he's shot running away then we've got lots of propaganda. It'd be better than capturing him alive. If he dies lingering and gut-shot it could go either way -- depends on how much he snivels, which should be lots if we've got any kind of propaganda expertise at all. Even better would be if he was brain dead and we kept the carcasse going for year after year. The second scenario: a tribal raiding party captures bin Laden, puts him on television and says, "You are a traitor to Islam and you have killed more Muslims than you have killed infidels, and we're now going to deal with you." There ain't gonna be any tribal raiding party, but continue with your fantasy... They could either then try and execute the guy in accordance with their own laws or hand him over to the International Criminal Court. That'd be the absolute worst of all solutions. "If that happened, that would be the end of the al-Qaeda myth," said Kilcullen. Is Kilcullen talking? Or is he emitting verbal methane? The International Criminal Court is a joke. It's not even a funny joke. He said that three lessons learned in Iraq could also apply to Afghanistan. The first one is to protect the population. "Unless people feel safe, they won't be willing to engage in unarmed politics," he argued. Oh. Yeah. I shoulda thought of that... The second lesson is to focus on getting the population on America's side and making them self-defending. Village defense councils, is it? That always works. And then a third lesson is to make a long-term commitment. With B.O. in the White House. Right. Kilcullen said that the Obama administration's policy of reaching out to moderate elements of the Taliban also had several pitfalls. "If the Taliban see that we're negotiating for a stay of execution or to stave off defeat, that's going to harden their resolve," he warns. "I'm all for negotiating, but I think the chances of achieving a mass wave of people turning against the Taliban are somewhat lower in Afghanistan than they were in Iraq." I actually think the chances would be pretty good. I think that, given a bit of time and support, Petraeus could come up with a plan. Afghanistan's not as complicated in detail as Iraq was. The problem's almost entirely with the neighbors and the terrain. The Pashtuns are only 40 percent of the population, even though the remainder's split into a half dozen other main groupings, of which three or four are actually pretty civilized and none of which are particularly fond of Pahstuns. That puts us halfway to a solution there. Within Pakistain, the Balochs are pretty oppressed by the Punjabi-Pashtun alliance, as well. And the poor Sindhis are in the same boat. This is a house of cards that's just waiting for the right shake. Iran, the Balochs, and Sindh could all be handled, given the right approach. I'll admit that it probably won't be, given a showboating ward heeler playing at being president and a congress full of party hacks. But the solution is there. All it would take would be a bit of intelligence, which Petraeus has, and a smidgeon of ruthlessness, which B.O. only has in domestic politix. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #4 All of this was disturbing enough with Bush in the White House. With Obama it's terrifying. |
| Posted by: Ebbang Uluque6305 2009-03-24 12:32 |
| #3 I thought it had already failed |
| Posted by: rabid whitetail 2009-03-24 12:18 |
| #2 He claimed that the Pakistani military and police and intelligence service did not follow the civilian government; they were essentially a rogue state within a state. That is the main problem in Pak that the ISI/PAK Army(Real power in Pak) have more Jihadis/Islamist than any civilian GOVT we support!!!! |
| Posted by: Paul2 2009-03-24 07:51 |
| #1 When it fails, will it be OK to overfly it to resupply Afghanistan operations? Given that we made a deal with the Russians, I ain't holdin' my breath. |
| Posted by: gorb 2009-03-24 03:39 |