Pakistan: Mr Obama's Air War Coming to the Cities?

The New York Times reports this morning:

According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta.

That might mean little for folks who have not heard of Quetta, which is the capital of the province of Baluchistan in northwestern Pakistan. The city was briefly prominent in Western media in the first days of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, when there were massive demonstrations against the American bombing and even talk of a local uprising against the central Government.

If this step is adopted, however, it may pose a double challenge to the US and the Pakistani Government. It could spread the insurgency in Pakistan, rather than stopping support for the insurgency in Afghanistan. And it could be the sign that Pakistani sovereignty (and thus the Zardari Government) is dispensable.

US bombings and missile strikes have been carried out for years in the Northwest Frontier Provinces, and they have increased under the Obama Administration. This proposal, however, would take the air war to an area controlled by the central Pakistan Government rather than local tribes. And Quetta is no small town: the 2005 population was more than 850,000.

Of course, President Obama has yet to decide on the proposal, but the story in the Times, fed by civilian and military officials, is a clear sign of pressure for its acceptance. The airstrike expansion is not only in the report of General David Petraeus, which has been treated with scepticism by the President; it is also in a study by Lieutenant General Douglas Lute which has been received with general approval.

And there's more: "[Advisors to Obama] are recommending preserving the option to conduct cross-border ground actions, using C.I.A. and Special Operations commandos." A "senior official" confirmed, "It is fair to say that there is wide agreement to sustain and continue these covert programs. One of the foundations on which the recommendations to the president will be based is that we’ve got to sustain the disruption of the safe havens."

It seems, however, that those "safe havens" are growing ever-bigger. And it seems that the Obama Administration is on the brink of decisions that will turn those havens into a new centre of battle, one with far more dangers than the intervention in Afghanistan.