Third Time is NOT a Charm: Why Obama’s Af-Pak Plan Could Fail its Mission

Obama's Administration finally came up with a plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan, in the form of speech by the President, and in the form of a white paper. Surprisingly, the two do not overlap, as some commentators have rightly pointed. This mismatch can be attributed to the ambivalent position of the President to the issue. As New York Times informed over the weekend, the President's announcement came after a significant disagreement between the Vice-President Biden and Secretary of State Clinton on the scope and goals of US involvement in the region. The president promised 4,000 additional troops to be deployed on the ground as trainers, and in his speech focused exclusively on al Qaeda, as the main goal for the operation. There was no mentioning of nation-building, regional stability, or reform. This was, in effect, the Vice President's minimalist approach, tacitly approved by the Defense Secretary Gates, and perhaps the first defeat in what appears to be a repetition of triangular power-struggle for influence over the President by the Office of the Vice President, the State Department, and the Department of Defense.

US abandoned nation-building processes in Afghanistan twice in the past twenty years. The result was first the coming of the Taliban, then the establishment of al Qaeda there and subsequently 9/11, and now the failure of Pakistan and the creeping Talibanization of its North-West Frontier Provices and FATA. So, the real question is what this strategy will do to stabilize the region, if at all, and how. The starting point for this analysis must be an assessment of the preceding and current conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When the US and its allies invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, two goals merged into one – to chase/capture/kill al Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan, and to topple the Taliban regime. Since then the two goals somehow became one and the same rhetorical vehicle for policy in the region, which proved fundamentally flawed. Dealing with the Taliban is in a way much more different, complex, and sinuous than the much more straigthforward predominantly military way of direct confrontation and denying of safe have of al Qaeda. The Taliban, for example, come out from a defensive strategic position. They are operating from what they consider their own domain, their homeland, their own tribal environment. Al Qaeda is all but a guest, and more importantly, a different religious, cultural, and ethnic one, with goals that not necessarily overlap that of the Taliban. Certainly, not on the long run. Obama's plan seem to follow the flawed path of his predecessor's policy by not making this distinction. Even worst, in its minimalist approach, it focuses only on al Qaeda. There is no talk about the Taliban, there is no nation-building, there is no talk about linking financial and logistic support for both Pakistan and Afghanistan to performance, that is how successfully they tackle the wide-spread corruption and the vicious practice to play a double game with warlords, druglords, and extremists.

The Afghan Taliban were very different from al Qaeda, and their relationship was always more of a marriage of convenience than merger of ideology/theology. Initially, the Taliban emerged as a response to the constant state of civil war, insecurity, warlord fiefdoms, and lack of justice, ontological security, and order. Thousands of young, disgruntled, and disillusioned Islamists, who fought against the Soviets, went to madrassas (religious schools) in Pakistan to seek spiritual comfort and social integration. Armed with blind faith and indoctrinated in extreme and austere version of Islam, they returned to their villages in Afghanistan, and refused to accept the status quo. In a very simplified version, the Taliban (Talib means religious students who seek justice and knowledge) emerged as a natural response to the political bacchanalia and lawlessness reigning in Afghanistan. Mohammed Omar, a half-blind young and pious itinerant mullah from a poor Afghani village, was selected as a leader of the movement. The Taliban promised justice, security, order, and to call Loya Jirga – a traditional 'grand meeting' of all tribal leaders from all ethnic groups – to discuss the best future for the country. They soon lost their way, under the patronage of ISI (the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence Directorate – the notorious security services) and mutated into the monster the world knows, closing schools, beheading teachers of girls' schools, splashing with acid schoolgirls, persecuting and killing active women – journalists, doctors, teachers. The initial security, law and order, albeit based on religion – sharia, quickly lost its momentum and appeal. The Taliban initially banned the production of opium, but slowly returned to this crop. The regime got corrupted.

One significant factor for this retraction is to be found in the relationship of the regime with al Qaeda. Bin Laden's terrorist network, after being chased away from Sudan, and after being brought on the brink of financial collapse, found more than just a safe haven in Afghanistan. It found a state. But the two groups, Taliban and Arab al Qaeda operatives, remained very different. Or at least, they were. The Taliban never shared the pan-Islamic global jihadist agenda of al Qaeda, and more often then none preferred to stay in the shadow without attracting too much unwanted attention. Bin Laden, on the other hand, enjoyed his status of 'celebrity.' He issued a series of fatwas (religious decrees) which particularly irritated the Taliban, which considered him unworthy and not enough versed in Islamic law, to have authority to issue fatwas. The Taliban also feared that al Qaeda's activities will draw unwanted attention over Afghanistan and their regime. They were right. At one point in 1998 Mullah Omar even considered handing over bin Laden to the Saudis, but changed his mind in the last moment, returning the plane sent by the Saudi Prince empty.

Furthermore, there are significant differences between the Daobandi school of Islam, from which the Taliban are believed to have emerged, and the Arab Salafists of al Qaeda, who follow a twisted extreme interpretation of Islam, have a different take on the concept of jihad, and seek the restoration of the Islamic Caliphate. The Taliban, on the other hand, never really wanted that, but rather sought the establishment of some its own "Islamic emirate" within the borders of Afghanistan. The main theological differences between the two groups are well documented in an article on Al-Tibyan Publications called "Are the Taliban People of the Sunnah?" and are source of incessant tensions. In addition, the Arabs looked upon their Afghani hosts in condescending and patronizing way, as unsophisticated and uneducated people, unworthy the revalation of global jihadism.

Little is known about the time after al Qaeda and the Taliban were pushed in the lawless FATA region in Pakistan after the US invasion of Afghanistan. It is speculated that they found safe haven perhaps in North or South Waziristan. It seems, however, that overtime the divisions between the former partners in crime exacerbated. More recently, under unprecedented pressure from the US over ISI, and then respectively from ISI over their Taliban cronies, the Afghan Taliban sought to cut off altogether their relationships with al Qaeda. According to the leading security and intelligence monitoring service Jane's, Mullah Omar and the so called 'shura' council, based in Pakistan's Baluchistan province Quetta, have called off all connections with al Qaeda. According to UN's Sanctions Committee dealing with al Qaeda and the Taliban, in the shura are included most of the surviving leaders of the Taliban regime, among whom are the former defense minister Mullah Ubaidullah Akhund, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the former deputy minister of defense, and Mullah Abdul Bari Akhund, the former governor of Helmand province.

Two other Taliban camps, however, also exist: that of the veteran Afghan jihadist Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, and the Hizb-i-Islami faction of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Unlike the bumpy marriage of convenience between Mullah Omar's 'official' Afghan Taliban mobement and bin Laden during the Taliban era, Haqqani and Hekmatyar's networks have maintained long and cordial relationships with bin Laden's group. Intelligence reports suggest that perhaps bin Laden is even now hiding in North Waziristan in Pakistan, which is considered largely Haqqani's domain of reign. Last year Haqqani published what appeared to be an 'open letter' to Mullah Omar expressing sharp criticism of his leadership of the Taliban, and calling him a traitor. While there is no way of confirming the authenticity of this letter, it is clear that the Afghani Taliban are now sharply spli on the issue of al Qaeda.

One last piece of the puzzle is delivered by the role Baitullah Mahsud – the leader of the Pakistani Taliban, an offspring from the Afghan Taliban, and a former protégé of Mullah Omar – played in the pas three or four years. Since the pressure started to increase from Washington on ISI to cramp down on its protégés among the Taliban, Haqqani and Hekmatyar, the Pakistani Taliban became more active in their attempt to mirror the tactics of their brethren in Afghanistan. For the past two years their followers launched series of grave attacks on different targets inside Pakistan: in the summer of 2007 religious extremists occupied the Red Mosque in Islamabad and produced one of the worst stand-offs in the county's history with the Pakistani police, military, and security services; in December 2007 Pakistani Taliban are believed to have been behind the assassination of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as well as the massive suicide attack at her arrival procession, which killed over 160 people. More recently, only since September 2008, the Pakistani Taliban managed to organize suicide attack on the Marriott hotel in Islamabad (killing 55), to explode a car bomb near Buner killing 30, a suicide attack on a funeral procession in Dera Ismail Khan, killing 27; an audacious attack on the Sri Lanka cricket team, killing seven, another attack on policemen in Peshawar, killing eight,a  suicide attacke on a mosque near the Afghani border, killing 37, and just a few days ago a gunmen attack police academy in Lahore, killing a score of cadets. Behind all these is believed to be the Pakistani Taliban, led by the young and ambicious Baitullah Mahsud. Some observers, such as Ahmed Rashid, claim that Mahsud is taking his orders from al Qaeda, stays in regular contact with them, follows bin Laden's strategic plan how to destabilize Pakistan and then entrench into some of its provinces. Just days after the Lahore police academy attack Mahsud issued a blunt warning to the US that an attack on Washington is imminent, in what appears to be rather rallying propaganda rhetoric. For now.

ISI's patronage of Afghan Taliban now comes back home to ruster its offspring. In late January 2008 the Pakistani Taliban audaciously seized the Kohat Tunnel in the SWAT valley, which represented a key telecommunication link south of Peshawar, the capital of the North-West-Frontier Province. In mid February this year, to the dismay of the entire world, the Pakistani government in desperation sealed a deal with the Taliban in the SWAT valley to institute a sharia there and in the surrounding provinces.

The expansion of the Pakistani Taliban is faster than never before. Unlike in the case of Afghanistan, Pakistan also has nuclear weapons and is infested with global and regional jihadists actively searching outlet for their fanaticism. Even if the Pakistani Taliban managed to divorce themselves from al Qaeda, they represent much bigger danger for the region even than their Afghan mentors. Pakistan is the fifth most populated country in the world and the second biggest Muslim country. It is surrounded by no less volatile neighbors, waiting for explosion, too. Uzbekistan and Tajikistan are only two cases in focus, Kyrgyzstan and the separatist torn area of Kashmir being two other hot beds for Islamist activism and extremism. Two of the most troubling terrorist groups Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HT) and Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) originate from this region and already demonstrate all signs to be considered worthy partners for al Qaeda.

In short, Pakistan is a failing state, on the verge of collapsing into a status of a failed state, and Afghanistan has been for the longest time a failed state. Surrounded by extremists, insurgents, global jihadists, and religious nationalists, infested by extreme version of Daobandi Islamists, and torn apart by growing ethnic faulty lines tensions, these two countries can easily turn into the biggest security disaster for the entire world. An urgent need for comprehensive intervention, nation-building, and securing the peace is needed. But does Obama's new plan deliver that?

The President has chosen rather 'safe' the minimalist approach, over the more unpopular and thus 'dangerous' comprehensive one. This is both understandable and unfortunate. It is understandable, because he was elected with a clear mandate to bring the US troops home and put the Bush wars to an end. It is unfortunate, because in the light of the current situation, which I have laid down in some length above, this minimalist approach seems more an attempt to provide a temporary patch while taming down the populist anger. Vice President Biden, being well versed in the politics of the masses, was quick to strategize over domestically 'safe'  minimalist approach, while deflecting the future burden on sustaining peace and security in the region over the NATO's allies, as he has not seen the ineffective presence of NATO in Afghanistan so far.

Perhaps, afraid of not being distracted from its domestic agenda, or perhaps because he doesn't want to share the risks associated with a more comprehensive involvement in Afghanistan-Pakistan area, advocated by his former rival for the primary elections nomination Hilary Clinton, Obama has chosen the half-hearted approach, which if history is any indicator, is not only set to fail, but also equally disliked, criticized, and rejected by all parties involved. The troops on the ground are highly insufficient. If anything like the 'surge' in Iraq is to be repeated, it has to measure on equal par of deployed troops in orer to succeed.

The strategy of fighting over engaging the Afghan Taliban is also insufficiently substantiated, and not fully discussed. Carl von Clausewitz, the father of modern warfare strategy, has brilliantly concluded that defensive forces are always in better strategic position than offensive ones. When fighters are in defense, they have no other choice but to fight, as they have no place to go. That is the position of the Taliban today. With lost momentum about the US intervention in Afghanistan, and with lack of any credibility left in the Karzai's government, perhaps some engagement of the Taliban fighting to restore security and eradicate warlordism and corruption, is not such a bad idea. Not to mention that every year the US has a different idea about what to support financially in Afghanistan – education, infrastructure, anti-drug programs, agriculture, security, engineering, etc. Then all these programs are started and abandoned. Local warlord pocket a hefty commission for their 'support' of the initiatives, then through extortion they pocket some more, and finally they do their best to sabotage whatever is still lingering as an effort there, in order to maintain their monopoly.

The Obama's Afghanistan-Pakistan has one positive trait though – it finally recognizes the two countries as integral part of a single strategy. Unfortunately, the strategy is still too minimalist, too superficial, and way too insufficient, in order to succeed. What is needed insteade is a real nation-building commitment that would stand in sharp contrast with these PR window conferences, one being opened just yesterday, for showing off how much the West is dedicated to the Afghanistan stabilization. But, as an old Latin proverb sais: "Canes latrant, caravanna attamen it!"