Obama makes a plea for Pakistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
NEW YORK - United States President Barack Obama's speech on Wednesday, the
second day of the 64th summit of the United Nations General Assembly, was a
strident challenge to world leaders - an ostensible rallying cry to join the US
and its allies in the war in Afghanistan.
"Those who used to chastise America for acting alone in the world cannot now
stand by and wait for America to solve the world's problems alone," said Obama,
in what many see as preparation for an expected troop surge in Afghanistan.
An even clearer signal of Washington's quest for stronger participation from
its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the non-NATO allies, was a
secret meeting between Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Central
Intelligence
Agency director Leon Panetta at New York's Barclay Hotel earlier this week.
The meeting, reluctantly confirmed by Pakistani officials, was meant to review
the next stage in the post-Afghan presidential elections and the regional "war
on terror" theater. This next chapter in the war, many experts believe, will be
its hottest time to date.
A formal request to Obama from the top US commander in Afghanistan, General
Stanley McChrystal, to send more troops in Afghanistan is likely to be made
soon. The Pentagon's rationale for the increase is the upward spiral of Taliban
violence - but some feel it has as much to do with protecting Pakistan.
Despite the excellent performance of the Pakistani armed forces against the
Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas and the Malakand area, Washington remains
unsure over the level of the Pakistan army's cooperation. The Pentagon was
quick to note that Pakistan army leaders recently refused a ground operation in
the North and South Waziristan tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, McChrystal is expected to ask for at least 40,000 additional troops
to be deployed mainly in the southern border provinces with Pakistan, such as
Helmand and Ghazni, and provinces such as Wardak and Kapisa, in Afghanistan's
northeast. The troops will reportedly undertake active operations against the
Taliban as well as regular ground campaigns.
The Obama administration is worried that if Pakistan changes course and becomes
inactive, US forces could be trapped along the border - resulting in an
horrific casualty rate that would be catastrophic for the White House in the
mid-term US elections next year.
The indications from different Asia Times Online sources are that next summer
the battle between the Taliban and NATO forces will no longer be restricted to
Afghanistan - it will expand inside Pakistan. The primary reason for this,
sources say, is the deployment of coalition forces in Afghan border provinces
such as Helmand.
The Taliban's main sanctuary in Helmand is Gereshk district, which borders the
Pakistani district of Noshki. The porous border between Noshki and Gereshk
serves as a haven for anti-Western Taliban fighters as well as anti-Pakistan
Baloch insurgents.
Neither Afghan nor NATO authorities have any control in the region - and
neither does Pakistan. As a result, it is inevitable that in hot pursuit of the
Taliban through the area, NATO troops will cross into Pakistan and expand the
war. This threat also looms over Afghanistan's Kunar province and Pakistan's
Mohmand area and some other tribal areas, but to a lesser degree compared to
Helmand.
In preparation for the anticipated military expansion, the US has revamped its
embassy in Islamabad, taken over a five-star hotel in Peshawar, the capital of
North-West Frontier Province, and procured other land in Pakistan. The US has
also rented 200 bungalows in the capital - a move now under investigation by
Pakistan - and increased the operations of controversial US contractors in the
country. The US is seemingly intent on directly targeting Taliban and al-Qaeda
operatives in Pakistani cities.
What is now a low-intensity insurgency in Pakistan may develop into a
full-scale offensive which sweeps through the country. In this scenario,
American resources would be insufficient and the US establishment is actively
looking for international help.
It may be a tough sell; the UN has noted that the number of foreign troops
killed in action so far this year is 334, the highest total since the invasion
of 2001. The UN also reports the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan this
year has jumped 24% compared to 2008 - making the coalition ever more
unpopular. So far, only Britain has committed to sending additional troops to
Afghanistan, and is unlikely to send more than 1,000 soldiers.
France, Germany and Italy - among other Western countries - have already been
shying away from combat operations. The recent killing of six Italian soldiers
raises yet another question mark about additional European support for the
Afghan war.
Although the world's reaction to Obama's military plea has yet to coalesce, his
administration was due to gather a blue-chip crowd in New York on Thursday to
give a boost to Pakistan. Obama and five high-ranking US officials were to
attend a summit-level meeting of the FODP - Friends of Democratic Pakistan -
including a host of world leaders [1] as well as other European Union officials
and officials of the Islamic development bank and the International Monetary
Fund.
In all, it has been a week of unprecedented pleas for international unity with
Pakistan - such support was not even seen during the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan in the 1980s. Still, pledges of support are not the same as boots
on the ground - and as the war in Afghanistan spills into Pakistan, the US may
find itself increasingly alone in Islamabad.
Note
1. The president of the Asian Development Bank Harukhiko Kuroda; Australian
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd; Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper; the Prime
Minister of Denmark, Lars Lokke Rasmussen; the European commissioner for
external relations and European neighborhood policy; French President Nicolas
Sarkozy; Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi; Japanese Prime Minister
Yukio Hatoyama; Korean President Lee Myung-bak; the Prime Minister of the
Netherlands, Jan Peter Balkenende; the Prime Minister of Norway, Jens
Stoltenberg; the Prime Minister of Spain, Jose Luis Rodriquez Zapatero; Swedish
Premier Fredrik Reinfeldt; Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan; the
United Arab Emirates ruler Sheikh Muhammad; UK Premier Gordon Brown; UN
secretary general Ban Ki-moon; and the president of the World Bank Robert
Zoellick.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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