Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

It's concerning enough that the Pakistani Taliban has responded to the offensive against them in the Swat Valley with bombings in Lahore and Peshawar. Clearly they are embedded enough in local populations to carry out attacks without a base of operations in Swat, even in cities like Peshawar which are not Taliban strongholds. Juan Cole makes the argument that this could all turn public opinion against the Taliban, which is possible.

While is is possible that the public will blame the government for stirring up so much trouble with the Swat campaign, it is also possible that the public will turn decisively on the Taliban. There are precedents for such loss of popularity. After the 1997 attack on innocent tourists in Luxor, Egypt, the Egyptian public turned against the Egyptian Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Grouping (al-Gama'a al-Islamiya), the two small terrorist groups that had committed many acts of violence in the 1970s and 1980s and had assassinated President Anwar el Sadat in 1981. EIJ declined into irrelevance in Egypt, and al-Gama'a al-Islamiya's leadership has renounced violence.

But what REALLY bothers me is the series of attacks over the border, in Iran. A Shiite mosque in Zahedan was struck earlier in the week, and yesterday, gunmen fired on a campaign office for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Preelection tensions rose Friday in Iran's religiously and ethnically mixed southeast after gunmen opened fire on the president's campaign office and a radical group claimed responsibility for the bombing of a mosque the day before that killed up to 23 people and injured scores.

Iranian authorities blamed the United States for the violence in Zahedan, on the border with Pakistan.

"The hands of America and Israel were undoubtedly involved in this incident," prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told supporters in Tehran, referring to Thursday's bombing of a Shiite mosque. "Although Wahhabis and the infidel and evil Salafis were an accomplice to the crime, they were being led from somewhere else."

Wahhabi and Salafi are puritanical schools of Sunni Islam rooted in Saudi Arabia. They have inspired Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda terrorist network, as well as the Taliban and other groups that denounce Shiite Islam, the majority sect in Iran [...]

Hours earlier, the Sunni militant group Jundallah, which is linked to Al Qaeda and draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, claimed responsibility for the mosque bombing on a Shiite holiday. It made the claim in a phone call to the United Arab Emirates-based Al Arabiya satellite news channel.

The caller claimed that the victims were hard-line pro-government militiamen discussing the June 12 election.

Now, this province is basically lawless anyway, so I don't want to make too much of it. But I fear that this widens the larger Shiite-Sunni struggle inside Islam, but that hardliner cleric trying to push blame onto the Americans is a ploy to increase tensions and move away from any reconciliation and negotiation. You can clearly see the tensions between Shiite Iran and their Sunni competitors here. You can also see it in Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki throwing up his hands at any further gestures to the Saudis, accusing them of allowing Sunni insurgents to flow through their borders. This is something that many of us worried about at the start of the Iraq conflict, the spread of sectarian violence throughout the region. I really hope this is not the beginning.

That Unintended Consequence

By most accounts, the Pakistani Army is performing well in the Swat Valley. The advance is slow but steady, and while the Taliban remains in control of some of the larger towns in Swat, the military is slowly squeezing them out and deliberately taking back the area.

But there are several concerns to this. First of all, the Taliban won't fight head on:

Highlighting the difficulty, some extremists are simply melting back into the civilian population so they can fight another day, as they have during previous clashes over the past 18 months in Swat.

"You cannot distinguish between a Talib and a normal citizen," said Maj. Gen. Sajjad Ali, who commands troops in the northern portion of Swat. "The area is densely populated, and it's very easy for the terrorists to hide."

Second, the assault has already created almost 2.4 million refugees, according to the UN, and that displacement has fostered yet more extremism.

The government has been overwhelmed by the human tide that has washed over the northwest as about 2 million people have fled fierce clashes in Swat. With Pakistan experiencing its largest exodus since the nation's partition from India in 1947, only a fraction of the displaced civilians are receiving assistance in government-run camps. The rest are fending for themselves or getting help from private charities, including some that are allied with the very forces the Pakistani army is fighting in Swat.

Refugee camps in Pakistan have been prime recruiting grounds for militant groups ever since the Soviet invasion forced millions of Afghans to cross into Pakistan in the 1980s. Now, concern is growing that this latest wave of displacement will create a fresh crop of Pakistanis with grievances against the government and loyalty to groups that seek to undermine the state through violent insurgency.

The government says it is aware of the peril, but it appears incapable of mustering the resources it needs to provide shelter, food, water and medicine to so many people.

In essence, the Obama Administration forced the Pakistani government to deal with the threat within their borders. The government simply has no means to deal with those affected by such an offensive, and so we all must live with the unintended consequences. That's not necessarily an argument for not embarking on the offensive in the first place. But surely we can recognize the complexity of the situation, and that even the assumed "good options" have terrible outcomes embedded within them. Obviously the short-term solution, since the offensive will not be called back, is to pour humanitarian aid into the country and hope that the refugee camps don't become breeding grounds.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

Pakistan has begun to bombard Taliban military positions in the Swat Valley, claiming to have killed 700 militants thus far. Refugee camps are filled to bursting as hundreds of thousands flee the generally urban areas, with 200,000 already arrived and up to 600,000 expected shortly.

So the Pakistani military is engaging in the same strategy of bombing raids that has angered the public when the US military engages in it. Juan Cole writes:

I am fearful that in order to root out a few thousand Taliban, the Pakistani military has been induced by Washington to create a new and massive social problem in the NWFP, which could create a whole new recruiting pool for radicals. The displaced Afghans of the 1980s, after all, were the group from which the Taliban were later drawn. It will be key, in avoiding this scenario, to have good swift repatriation programs when the fighting is over. And, the Pakistani military will have to learn to stick around instead of hurrying back to the border with India, in order to keep the militants from just coming right back in and terrorizing locals again.

This whole operation seems designed to reassure the Americans, through using their methods. A short-term bombing campaign without a sustained effort to keep the Swat Valley safe and populated with those displaced will fail, and probably make things worse.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

I'd like to know what triggered this, whether the White House simply demanded it or the Pakistani government realized the threat or what.

Pakistan declared war on its homegrown Islamic extremists Thursday in a dramatic move that could trigger a wider conflagration.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, in a late-night televised address to the nation, said Pakistan would launch a full-scale offensive against Pakistani Taliban guerrillas who've seized control of the vast Swat valley, which is about 100 miles north of the capital.

Pakistan will no longer "bow our heads before the terrorists," Gilani said in an 11 p.m. address as he called on citizens to rally behind the armed forces. He said that the government had tried peaceful negotiation with Taliban entrenched in the Swat valley, but the strategy hadn't worked.

Pakistan had "reached a stage where the government believes that decisive steps have to be taken," he said, and the army's job now was to "eliminate the militants and the terrorists."

This is very strange and I wouldn't take it at surface value. Especially because it appears to be a snap decision. After all, the country was clearly unprepared for the civilian exodus from Swat, suggesting that they never planned for it entirely.

Obviously the visit of Asif Ali Zardari to Washington could have sparked this. However, according to McClatchy some officials in DC still haven't seen army regiments pulled off of the border with India - so far just the paramilitary forces are leading the effort. I think the push from the Administration has been to forsake the illusion of a security need on the Indian border and put those troops into the fight. But for Pakistan to do that would unwind 60 years of history - they have always considered that the main threat. It's more likely that public opinion allowed Pakistan to move at this time.

The government's call to arms only seemed possible because of a seismic shift in public opinion against the militants, which only took place in the past few weeks after a deal with the Taliban in Swat went badly sour.

"After a long time, the people see a ray of hope," said analyst Khadim Hussain, of the Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, an independent research organization in Islamabad. "For the first time, the majority of the population, the people in the conflict zone, and the military, are thinking along the same lines."

Nawaz Sharif just spoke out against the Taliban occupation of Swat, giving the blessing for this offensive.

If the public opinion really has moved, that would really change the dynamic in Pakistan. However, a large humanitarian crisis numbering in the hundreds of thousands seems to be the consequence of this as well. Juan Cole has more.

Most Dangerous Trouble Spot In The World Update

Did anyone else find this article in the NYT yesterday really irresponsible?

WASHINGTON — As the insurgency of the Taliban and Al Qaeda spreads in Pakistan, senior American officials say they are increasingly concerned about new vulnerabilities for Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, including the potential for militants to snatch a weapon in transport or to insert sympathizers into laboratories or fuel-production facilities.

The officials emphasized that there was no reason to believe that the arsenal, most of which is south of the capital, Islamabad, faced an imminent threat. President Obama said last week that he remained confident that keeping the country’s nuclear infrastructure secure was the top priority of Pakistan’s armed forces.

But the United States does not know where all of Pakistan’s nuclear sites are located, and its concerns have intensified in the last two weeks since the Taliban entered Buner, a district 60 miles from the capital. The spread of the insurgency has left American officials less willing to accept blanket assurances from Pakistan that the weapons are safe.

Pakistani officials have continued to deflect American requests for more details about the location and security of the country’s nuclear sites, the officials said.

Look, the Taliban is in no position to overrun the Pakistani government. While the recent advances of Taliban forces in the Swat Valley region and elsewhere in Pakistan should concern policymakers, as well as the reluctance of the Pakistani forces to get into the fight, the civic structures inside Pakistan are not nearly as fragile as these responses would make you think. I have no doubt that the Taliban seeks an Islamic emirate in Pakistan, but at the same time, the largest mass gathering in the country in recent years sought to get the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court restored to the bench. You don't see such respect and admiration for the rule of law in a country on the verge of collapse. The democracy movement just pushed a dictator out of power. Tens of millions of people participated in this effort. They may not like the government they have, and Pakistan may have a history of military coups. But a Taliban takeover? Pretty unlikely.

I find Pakistan very dangerous now, as I always have. I don't think scaring people about loose nukes fits with reality, and it could be used to gain desired policies that don't make sense for America or Pakistan. Far be it from me to side with Pakistan on this question, but I feel like the quiet Americans always think they know better than the locals how to best secure countries abroad, but they are inevitably based on American goals than the goals of the other countries. Pakistan's government worries about India, but they only worry about the Taliban to the extent that the neighboring war in Afghanistan has increased tensions and inflamed the extremist element.

The US can help the situation in Pakistan, for instance by helping to fund educational development so that the decrepit schools can actually compete with madrassahs teaching a militant form of Islam. But talking about failed state in Pakistan is really unhelpful and misreads the threat.

Pakistan Fights Back

Since the Taliban took over a town just 60 miles from the Pakistani capital, it does appear that the central government got the message, at least.

After a week of strong criticism here and abroad over its inaction, the Pakistani military deployed fighter jets and helicopter gunships to flush out hundreds of Taliban militants who overran the strategic district of Buner last week, the military said Tuesday.

Pakistan also agreed to move 6,000 troops from its Indian border to fight militants on its western border with Afghanistan, according to a Pakistani official who did not want to be identified discussing troop movements in advance.

But American officials, who welcomed the redeployment, said Pakistan was still not doing enough to fight the insurgents, who are tightening their hold on the country. The Americans expressed frustration that Pakistan was still rebuffing their offers to train more Pakistanis to fight Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

I didn't think the Pakistanis could be moved at all on this front, so I'm happy. Clearly the Taliban showed by their actions a desire to aggrandize more power, and the vast majority of the Pakistani population actually does reject them, more so in the wake of the beating of a young woman in the Swat Valley, which is under Sharia law.

The Taliban views the offensive in Buner and the Lower Dir district of Swat as a violation of the peace deal they negotiated with the government. So this could get worse. But at least the Pakistanis are in the fight.

My Sharia

I'm trying to figure out whether this is good or bad.

Pakistan is to impose Islamic law in a vast region of the north-west called Malakand in an attempt to placate extremists, even as President Asif Zardari warns that they are "trying to take over the state".

Pakistani Taliban militants who are in control of the Swat valley in the region announced a ceasefire tonight, reacting to the government's agreement to bring in sharia courts.

Malakand is part of North West Frontier province, a regular part of Pakistan, not the wild tribal area, which runs along the Afghan border.

Critics warned that the new sharia regulations represented a capitulation to the extremists' demands, and that it would be difficult to stop hardliners elsewhere in the country from demanding that their areas also come under Islamic law.

"This is definitely a surrender," said Khadim Hussain of the Aryana Institute for Regional Research and Advocacy, a thinktank in Islamabad. "If you keep treating a community as something different from the rest of the country, it will isolate them."

Javed Iqbal, a retired judge, speaking on Pakistani television, said: "It means that there is not one law in the country. It will disintegrate this way. If you concede to this, you will go on conceding."

I think it's slightly more complicated. The legal process in this part of the Swat Valley was marked by corruption. The people in the area may prefer sharia, not of the Wahhabist variety but a Koranic interpretation of the law. Obviously, the retired judge is going to criticize it because it undermines his position.

However, this is a surrender, despite Pakistani troops outnumbering Taliban forces in the area by 4 to 1. Also, it's not a given that the residents prefer the Taliban.

"The TV channels, at first soft on the Taliban, have finally come around to seeing the terror in Swat for what it is. Swatis themselves have been intimidated into keeping silent about [self-appointed Swat ruler and extremist Maulana Fazlullah and criticising only the army and its 'collateral damage'. But the channels can no longer conceal the fact that the Swatis are now praying for America’s drone attacks in their valley as the last resort."

I am in no position to judge the truth of that statement, but if it’s even in spitting distance of accurate, that’s rather significant.

The Swatis will now live under a legal system preferred be (and in all likelihood ruled by) those same extremists who are intimidating them. The exchange here is not only supposed to be a cease-fire by the Taliban but also disarmament. We'll see how that goes.