Pakistan

New York Times journalist David Rohde's account of his kidnapping and subsequent escape from Taliban militants affiliated with the Haqqani network in North Waziristan region of Pakistan makes for riveting reading. It's an amazing story, and one has to admire Rohde's fortitude and survival instincts during his seven-month ordeal.

Read all of it, but I just have one comment about this bit from the epilogue:

My suspicions about the relationship between the Haqqanis and the Pakistani military proved to be true. Some American officials told my colleagues at The Times that Pakistan's military intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, turns a blind eye to the Haqqanis' activities. Others went further and said the ISI provided money, supplies and strategic planning to the Haqqanis and other Taliban groups.

Pakistani officials told my colleagues that the contacts were part of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan to prevent India, Pakistan's archenemy, from gaining a foothold. One Pakistani official called the Taliban "proxy forces to preserve our interests."

Meanwhile, the Haqqanis continue to use North Waziristan to train suicide bombers and bomb makers who kill Afghan and American forces. They also continue to take hostages.

We'll see how long this relationship holds, but if you need any convincing that the ISI at least tacitly allows the Haqqani folks to do their thing unmolested, consider this: To get to South Waziristan, where the Pakistani Army is engaged in a fierce battle with the Pakistani Taliban around the Makin area, which is dominated by the Mehsud tribal grouping, some units had to drive through North Waziristan. In fact, they drove right through the center of Miram Shah, the regional capital and Haqqani stronghold where Rohde made his escape -- and there was just one isolated IED attack along the way.

What does that tell us? At a minimum, it tells us that the powers that be in North Waziristan are being very cooperative and not coming to the Mehsuds' aid. And supposedly, the Haqqanis and their local allies, led by another Pakistani Taliban leader named Hafiz Gul Bahadar, have explicitly pledged not to interfere. The Pakistani military has struck a number of much-criticized peace deals with Bahadar over the last few years, and some say the security establishment in Rawalpindi is all too happy to keep this relationship alive so long as the Haqqanis and Bahadar only launch attacks in Afghanistan, not at home.

American officials have been hinting in recent weeks, however, that the Pakistani military is simply tackling one challenge at a time -- the Mehsuds -- and the Haqqanis may be next on their hit list. That's certainly what AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke and Amb. Ann Patterson seem to be telling Frontline, though one can detect a little daylight between the two U.S. diplomats. In Holbrooke's words, the Pakistanis "are quite clear in their own minds that Haqqani poses a threat to both Afghanistan and Pakistan." Patterson says, "[W]e're working with them on these, and I think they increasingly see these [other] groups as a threat as well" -- but Pakistan is not willing to turn on them yet.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is still conducting airstrikes in North Waziristan, which is still teeming with foreign militants and where it's widely thought that Osama bin Laden has hidden out at one point or another during the last few years. This is definitely a story to watch.

The indisputable logic of the Pakistani Taliban:

Meanwhile, a Taliban group also sent two letters to the Lahore Press Club – one on October 12 and the other on October 14 – warning that if the media “does not stop portraying us as terrorists ... we will blow up offices of journalists and media organisations”.

Think Stanley McChrystal's comments in London crossed a line generals should not cross? Try Pakistan, where the military has just shown a bald-faced willingness to dictate political outcomes when its core interests are threatened.

The story: After days of public protests, top Pakistani commanders have gone dramatically public with their objections to some of the strings attached to the new $7.5 billion U.S. aid bill, and especially to a provision requiring the State Department to report on whether the Islamabad government is maintaining "effective civilian control over the military."

I'm sure my colleagues at the AfPak Channel will be weighing in on this topic tomorrow, but here are some quick late-night questions.

First, why didn't anyone in Washington see this firestorm coming? Didn't the Pakistani military raise objections quietly during the many weeks this bill has been in the works? As cosponsor Sen. John Kerry announced when the bill was unanimously approved in the Senate, "The legislation passed today ... is the product of two months of bicameral, bipartisan, and inter-branch consultation." So there was ample time and opportunity for the Pakistani military establishment to make its red lines clear.

Second, how did we in the media fail to understand the likely depth of Pakistani domestic opposition to some of Kerry-Lugar's provisions? Were we too distracted by the McChrystal review and the U.S. domestic debate over Afghanistan?

Third, why is the three-way nonaggression pact between the civilian government led by President Asif Ali Zardari, the political opposition led by the Sharif brothers, and the military -- one of the unheralded achievements of U.S. AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke -- suddenly breaking down? Is there something else going on?

One obvious answer: politics. As this Daily Times editorial explains, the opposition is trying to force midterm elections and has "decided to go for the jugular" on Kerry-Lugar. It's notable, too, that the military's top general met this week with Punjab chief minister Shahbaz Sharif, the brother of former prime minister and bitter Zardari foe Nawaz Sharif -- raising the specter of a return to overt military involvement in politics. The civilian government is now reportedly in a panic, and the Pakistani media is swarming all over the controversy while Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Reza Gilani furiously backtrack on their once-vocal support for the bill.

Some of what is happening in Pakistan is surely the usual Kabuki theater, but there could be real consequences for U.S. goals in the region. As Imtiaz Gul warned last week on this Web site, if Kerry-Lugar's conditions "are viewed as coercive by Pakistani officials, they could prompt elements within the civil-military establishment to stonewall the aid and obstruct military cooperation." Never underestimate the power of parochialism.

One other casuality of this fight could be Pakistan's foreign minister, Shah Mehmood Qureshi, who has been visiting the United States and is being fingered by anonymous sources in the Pakistani press for failing to protect the country's national interests -- i.e., those of the military establishment. And some powerful folks in the military are clearly gunning for Amb. Hussain Haqqani, who has a long track record of criticizing the military and its meddling in politics, and is being accused of failing to keep the Army adequately informed.

Those two men, and the Zardari government, might survive this latest crisis of Pakistani democracy, but I'd bet the military takes its pound of flesh one way or another. Last July, when the civilian government clumsily tried to tame the ISI by putting it under the control of the Interior Ministry, the military swiftly showed everyone who's boss by rejecting the move. I expect this fight to be no different, and there are already signs that the Pakistani government may now reject the aid bill it had negotiated.

If that's indeed the case, then one of the barely disguised aims of the Kerry-Lugar bill -- boosting the civilian leadership over the Army brass -- will have backfired in spectacular fashion.

Noted terrorism expert and FP contributor Jarret Brachman had dinner with former Pakistani dictator President Pervez Musharraf last Friday, and wrote about it here (welcome to the world of new media, Pervez). For the record, Brachman describes Musharraf as "a gracious, humble and serious military man."

Some highlights of their conversation:

- He honestly believes that he transformed Pakistan from a backwards third-world garbage pit to a land of new opportunities and prosperity. That, for him, is the legacy that matters most.

- He seemed disengaged from al-Qaida overall, at one point forgetting the name of the jihadi godfather, Abdullah Azzam.

- He had no working knowledge of al-Qaida’s senior leadership below Bin Laden or Al-Zawahiri, which makes me think that he outsourced the entire al-Qaida portfolio.

- He stonewalled me on every question I asked involving Iran and Saudi Arabia. In fact, in his keynote addressed later that night entitled, “Internal and External Dynamics of Pakistan,” he didn’t mention either country. He also steered clear of my questions on the Pakistani ISI.

- He advanced the (now well accepted as false rumor) statement that Bin Laden is on kidney dialysis. When asked if UBL was in Pakistan, he responded by saying that’s like him asking if UBL is in the United States, “nothing more than unfounded speculation…”

- He seems to truly believe that he did everything he could against al-Qaida but that it was a series of American missteps, historically and currently, in Afghanistan that created the mess that exists today.

Makes you wonder who was running the al Qaeda portfolio in Pakistan, doesn't it?

In a talk given this afternoon at the Miller Center of Public Affairs, retired Gen.  John Abizaid outlined his view of U.S. involvement in the Middle East. He argued that it is foolish to approach issues on a country-by-country basis, complaining that "we look at Iraq through a soda straw. We look at Afghanistan through a soda straw." Instead, says Abizaid, the United States must develop a regional strategy that accounts for the roles of Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

For the same reason, he suggested, the debate over whether or not to send more troops to Afghanistan has been over-simplified; the discussion should be broadened to include the relative demands of Iraq, Afghanistan and the region at large.

Abizaid also emphasized the ideological nature of the conflict, and the need for soft power to address the root causes of radicalism. He noted that Baitullah Mehsud, the top Taliban leader, is referred to as "the commander of the faithful."

"While we may chuckle at that title," Abizaid said, "the people fighting for him do not." When asked whether there should be a shift to a counter-terrorism approach in Afghanistan that relies more upon targeted strikes than nation-building, Abizaid responded that such a plan is impractical. Stabilization in Afghanistan and Iraq is a precondition for effective counter terrorist operations, he argued, because it provides the infrastructure needed to develop the "superb, superb intelligence" needed.

The theme of the talk was that instability anywhere in the region is a serious threat to surrounding countries. With our "ground forces spread thin" and "our 24-7 forces totally engaged," the United States must more fully incorporate diplomatic, political and economic plans to get a handle on the region. A number of questions were directed to the resources required for such a broad regional approach, and towards the end of the talk, the retired general was asked if the situation would be better in Afghanistan had the United States not invaded Iraq.

"All's I know is that we did what we did, and we are where we are," he answered.

Nuclear secrets aren't the only thing A.Q. Khan steals. The world's most infamous proliferator, who was just released after five years of house arrest, has been caught stealing in a column for Pakistan's The News:

The newspaper column in question, “Science of computers — part I,” appears to have been lifted almost verbatim, from the computer science homepages of the University of Sussex, Imperial College London, and the University of Cambridge. A blow-by-blow comparison can be viewed in a letter to the editor of Pakistani daily The News, the same paper which carried the original column. (In the letter, the link to the University of Sussex is broken. Click here for the correct page.)

Also, "Random Thoughts" is probably not the best name for a newspaper column unless you're writing it on MySpace.

On ForeignPolicy.com today, Leonard Spector explains how the international community can still hold Khan responsible for his somewhat more serious crimes.

FAROOQ NAEEM/AFP/Getty Images

Today, FP's front page has an excellent article from Amjad Shuaib on the crimes and fall of former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf. As Shuaib notes,  the Pakistani Supreme Court's decision this past July to declare Musharraf's state of emergency proclamation unconstitutional means "he may be tried for treason -- and possibly executed." 

With that threat hanging over his head, one might expect Musharraf to escape to a remote island hideaway, or at least somewhere where he couldn't easily be found. Not so: instead, according to the Guardian, he's holed up in "an unassuming three-bedroom flat behind the shisha bars and kebab joints of London's Arabic quarter." Unconstitutional seizure of power aside, the only controversy Musharraf is attracting in Britain is his taxpayer/Scotland Yard-provided security detail. And while he lives decently well, the apartment is a far cry from the "Park Lane penthouses" his rival Nawaz Sharif used to own. 

Still, Londoners who don't want the dictator hanging around will get their wish after this week: "he starts a 40-day lecture tour of the US next Tuesday." 

John Moore/Getty Images

Over on the AfPak Channel and Stephen Walt's blog, a fight is brewing over the U.S. recommitment of troops and resources to war in Afghanistan.

Here's the battle in a nutshell. The Obama administration -- despite questions raised by eminences grises on Afghanistan, such as Harvard's Rory Stewart -- has chosen to double-down.

Walt argues that Obama's contention --"left unchecked the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans" -- is a myth. Therefore, realists should recognize it hardly justifies remaining in Afghanistan.

Not so, argue the AfPak Channel's Peter Bergen and NYU fellow Paul Cruickshank -- the Taliban do and would provide cover for al Qaeda, justifying the U.S. presence. (Here's a one-time tag for responses from within FP.)

We'll post more replies from other bloggers as they come in -- here's Windy security reporter Spencer Ackerman, for starters. If you've blogged it, leave it in comments!