Imagine this scenario: within the space of a single day, two deadly bombs hit two different cities in two different countries. The death toll from each bomb is dozens killed and dozens more injured. Both bombs are placed by arms of the same terrorist organization.
Now suppose these two cities were in France and Spain. The two countries would immediately share all the information they with each other to find a solution to a shared problem. It’s common sense. But sadly in this case, the two countries are Afghanistan and Pakistan. They have not understood this logic of sharing information, even after years of being subjected to such terrorist attacks.
On 12 March, suicide bombings in the Pakistani city of Lahore killed 72 people and injured dozens. On 13 March, a bomb ripped through the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, slaying more than 30 people and wounding dozens more. More bombs exploded in the following days.
Under the cover of a benign government information-gathering program, a Defense Department official set up a network of private contractors in Afghanistan and Pakistan to help track and kill suspected militants, according to military officials and businessmen in Afghanistan and the United States.
The official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors from private security companies that employed former C.I.A. and Special Forces operatives. The contractors, in turn, gathered intelligence on the whereabouts of suspected militants and the location of insurgent camps, and the information was then sent to military units and intelligence officials for possible lethal action in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the officials said.
While it has been widely reported that the C.I.A. and the military are attacking operatives of Al Qaeda and others through unmanned, remote-controlled drone strikes, some American officials say they became troubled that Mr. Furlong seemed to be running an off-the-books spy operation. The officials say they are not sure who condoned and supervised his work.
The head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus, appeared on NBC Television’s Meet the Press, first to walk viewers through the US interventions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq and then to take a tour around other issues from Iran to Guantanamo Bay to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy on gays and lesbians in the military.
In contrast to previous appearances, when Petraeus was fighting his own President to get his version of US foreign and military policy, this was a stay-the-course interview behind agreed approaches. The message on Afghanistan was long-haul effort to win. On Pakistan, it was supporting Pakistani forces to vanquish the Taliban. He spoke in generalities about maintaining pressure on Iran, and beyond his main agenda, on the tricky issues like Guantanamo Bay and “enhanced interrogation” (torture), he evaded any definitive statements.
MR. DAVID GREGORY: General David Petraeus joins us live from U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida.
General, welcome to MEET THE PRESS.
GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS: Thanks, David. Good to be with you.
A US drone strike on N. Waziristan has allegedly killed Muhammad Haqqani, a son of guerrilla leader Jalaluddin Haqqani. The Haqqani network is considered particularly skilled insurgents, and is the faction closes to both the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence and to al-Qaeda. Jalaluddin’s health is said to be poor and he may have already turned most decisions over to his other son, Siraj. The Telegraph hinted that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence has ceased supporting the Haqqanis behind the scenes, and may even have helped the Americans target their drone strike.
According to Dawn, the governor of the Afghan province of Qunduz is reporting that Pakistan has “arrested Mullah Abdul Salam and Mullah Mir Mohammad, respectively the shadow governors of the northern Afghan provinces of Kunduz and Baghlan” in Pakistani Baluchistan (presumably in Quetta). Islamabad has yet to confirm the report.
UPDATE 1145 GMT: The Washington Post this morning has a very different view of US-Pakistan relations and the Mullah Baradar case:
The capture of senior Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan represents the culmination of months of pressure by the Obama administration on Pakistan’s powerful security forces to side with the United States as its troops wage war in Afghanistan, according to U.S. and Pakistani officials.
A new level of cooperation includes Pakistani permission late last month for U.S. intelligence officials to station personnel and technology in this pulsating megacity, officials said. Intercepted real-time communications handed over to Pakistani intelligence officials have led to the arrests in recent days of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Afghan Taliban’s No. 2 commander, and two of the group’s “shadow” governors for northern Afghanistan.
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Gareth Porter, writing for Inter Press Service, goes behind the official story of the US-Pakistan joint operation to break the “Old Taliban” in Afghanistan with the capture of the organisation’s second-ranking leader:
Contrary to initial U.S. suggestions that it signals reduced Pakistani support for the Taliban, the detention of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the operational leader of the Afghan Taliban, represents a shift by Pakistan to more open support for the Taliban in preparation for a peace settlement and U.S. withdrawal.
Statements by Pakistani officials to journalists prior to the arrest indicate that the decision to put Baradar in custody is aimed at ensuring that the Taliban role in peace negotiations serves Pakistani interests. They also suggest that Pakistani military leaders view Baradar as an asset in those negotiations rather than an adversary to be removed from the conflict. Read the rest of this entry »
Radio Azadi reports in Dari Persian that center-right Pakistani politician and former prime minister Nawaz Sharif says that the Pakistani government should initiate the reconciliation talks with the Taliban.
Then in the latter half of last year detailed studies of the drones began to appear. Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann first looked at the growth in the number of drone strikes in Pakistan. Then they analyzed the casualties from drone attacks in an effort to determine how many civilians were being killed in the strikes. They concluded that of the 750 to 1050 killed by drones between 2006 and October 2009, one third were civilians. Chiming in the same month was journalist Jane Mayer who in a lengthy and thoughtful piece in The New Yorker examined the expansion of drone attacks by the Obama administration, including their effectiveness, and legality.
The statistics related to the drones are startling. Since Barack Obama took office, there have been 58 drone strikes in Pakistan. This is 32 more strikes than occurred in the entire second term of the Bush Administration and represents nearly 70 percent of all drone attacks that have occurred in Pakistan since 2004. Below are statistics drawn from an effort to map out the location of the strikes using Google Earth.
Josh Shahryar writes for EA:
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