Afghanistan-Pakistan Monitor (APM) No. 9

Article 1 "Afghanistan: The Taliban's High-Tech Urban Strategy-The Guerrillas Use Teams of Young Techies to Attack Afghan Cities," by Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai, Daily Beast/Newsweek, 28 May 2012. As brutal as the Taliban's leaders can be, they're not stupid. After two years of losing ground to the Americans in the countryside, they've concluded that splashy operations against urban targets have big advantages over attacks in rural areas: They generate more local and international publicity, require fewer fighters, and give the insurgents the appearance of being stronger than they may actually be. Taliban leaders have set out to transform and revitalize their war against President Hamid Karzai and the Americans, assembling dozens of technologically sophisticated young militants to help make it happen. However, one of the chief reasons behind the Taliban's strategic shift has been the lack of any plausible alternative. Since the U.S. military surge began two years ago, the guerrillas have been mostly driven out of their former southern strongholds. The Taliban's new urban strategy seems unlikely to fully offset the guerrillas' evident weakness and disarray in the countryside. It's true that the militants' high-profile suicide attacks will probably deepen the Afghans' sense of insecurity and intensify their fears that the Kabul government is too weak and incompetent to protect them. But rising violence in the cities won't add to the insurgents' popularity among the urban population.

Article 2 "Ready or Not: American Soldiers Prepare for Their Departure with One Final Push," Economist, 9 June 2012. Ghazni province has this summer been chosen for a push billed as the last big American offensive of the Afghan campaign. Thousands of American paratroopers have been sent to strengthen Afghan forces there and help them secure the road between Kabul, the capital, and Kandahar. Bar Adin Kheyl, a village in southern Ghazni, sits in an area where the Taliban have had free rein for years and have enforced a crude rural administration. Residents say the insurgents were disliked and feared while the government was absent and distrusted. When America sent thousands of troops to Helmand province and Kandahar province in 2010, Ghazni was overlooked. A small detachment of Polish troops failed to stop it sliding towards Taliban control. American commanders claim that much has changed since the arrival of their paratroopers. In Ghazni the once besieged administration operates with a new confidence. How much of this is permanent depends on the Afghan forces the 82nd Airborne leave behind.

Article 3 "As Afghan Exit Looms, U.S. Debate Rages over Haqqani Militants," by Missy Ryan and Mark Hosenball, Reuters, 4 June 2012. As the U.S. and other NATO nations prepare to withdraw from Afghanistan and their time grows short to cripple a still potent insurgency, debate is raging within the Obama administration about how to confront the threat posed by Haqqani militants-and about how actively Pakistan is supporting them. There are troubling links between elements of the Pakistani government and the Haqqanis, but how high those links go is an open question. U.S. officials should keep in mind that Pakistan is already looking past the departure of most U.S. troops, and that we are asking them to turn against an outfit they consider a valuable asset-and make an enemy out of a group that will be in the region forever. The Haqqani group's tenacious guerrilla tacticsæ´‹ore than those of the rest of the Afghan Taliban-may represent the future Afghan insurgency. Some experts say the group appears to have evolved beyond the goal of controlling its Afghan homeland, embracing more ambitious aspirations closer to those of Al-Qaeda.

Article 4 "Al-Qaeda Down, But Not Out in Pakistan," by Michael Georgy and Saud Mehsud, Reuters, 10 June 2012. Al-Qaeda leader Abu Yahya al-Libi, killed in a U.S. drone strike last week, was the latest victim of a series of unmanned aerial attacks that has crushed Al-Qaeda's network along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan. The downfall of the network in the border area started with the killing of Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani town in May last year, and the sustained campaign of drone attacks has further weakened the group. Residents in the area, Pakistani intelligence officers, and former militants said in interviews that the aerial offensive has put Al-Qaeda commanders and fighters on the defensive, restricting their movements and their ability to forge closer alliances with other militant groups. Financing is also proving troublesome, since it is traditionally done in cash and in person to avoid being tracked through the banking system. One senior Pakistani security official estimates there are only about eight core Al-Qaeda leaders left in Pakistan. But that does not mark the end of Al-Qaeda's leadership in the porous border frontier area between Pakistan and Afghanistan. It's a small number. But getting to them and their friends, like the notorious Haqqani Network, won't be easy. Intelligence, especially, is hard to come by.

Article 5 "Pakistan and the U.S.: Bazaar Bargaining," Economist, 9 June 2012. On 4 June an unmanned CIA "drone" aircraft struck in Pakistan's remote tribal area of North Waziristan, apparently killing Al-Qaeda's deputy leader, Abu Yahya al-Libi. The American administration cheered the news. Pakistan ought, by rights, to have cheered the news too. After all, Mr. Libi had called upon Pakistani Muslims to rise up against the civilian and military establishment. Instead, Mr. Libi's presumed death only deepened the rift between two supposed allies. Patriotic Pakistanis greatly resent the drone attacks over their territory. The country's armed forces felt humiliated by the secret American raid on Abbottabad a year ago that got Osama bin Laden. They were furious that 24 soldiers, manning a post on the border with Afghanistan, were killed last November by American aircraft in a ghastly "friendly fire" incident, and the government demanded an apology it has yet to receive. Talks continue in Islamabad in the search for a way out of a diplomatic morass that, among other things, risks complicating the planned exit of front-line Western troops from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. Given the tension, just keeping talking seems accomplishment enough. It is, says U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, a complicated relationship, "oftentimes frustrating, oftentimes difficult." But, he adds, the U.S. cannot simply walk away.

Article 6 "U.S. Pulls Out of Talks with Pakistan," by Julian E. Barnes and Adam Entous, Wall Street Journal, 12 June 2012. The U.S. is pulling its negotiating team from Pakistan without a deal to reopen critical U.S. and allied supply lines for forces in neighboring Afghanistan, the latest wrinkle in long and contentious talks. Despite the apparent fracture, however, U.S. and Pakistani officials said many of the details of a proposed deal to reopen the border crossing have been tentatively agreed upon. U.S. and Pakistani officials said last week that a deal appeared to be within reach to reopen the crossings. But tensions have flared over stepped-up U.S. drones strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas and over Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's sharp criticism of Islamabad for refusing to crack down on the Haqqani militant network, which has been behind a wave of attacks on U.S. and Afghan forces in Afghanistan.

Article 7 "U.S. Cozies Up to Pakistan's Archrival for Afghan War," by Spencer Ackerman, Danger Room (Wired.com), 5 June 2012. In a move that could rankle Pakistan, the U.S. military is encouraging Islamabad's arch rival, India, to deepen its involvement in the Afghanistan war. During a trip to India on Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta called on the world's most populous democracy to bolster its training of Afghanistan's army and police. Training those Afghan forces is a crucial step to (mostly) extracting the U.S. from the decade-long war. But so is getting Pakistan to step up on a range of issues, from re-opening trucking lanes for resupplying the war to cracking down on terrorism to brokering an accord with the Afghan Taliban. The U.S. is walking a delicate balance with the two nuclear South Asian powers, trying to develop and deepen relations with both. Sidling up closer to India is surely a sensible long-term geopolitical move, but it might also be an impediment to the U.S.' near-term interest in wrapping up the Afghanistan war.

Article 8 "The Ally From Hell," by Jeffrey Goldberg and Marc Ambinder, Atlantic, 1 December 2011. Much of the world, of course, is anxious about the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, and for good reason: Pakistan is an unstable and violent country located at the epicenter of global jihadism, and it has been the foremost supplier of nuclear technology to such rogue states as Iran and North Korea. It is perfectly sensible to believe that Pakistan might not be the safest place on Earth to warehouse 100 or more nuclear weapons. These weapons are stored on bases and in facilities spread across the country. The U.S. must, for its own security, keep watch over Pakistan's nuclear program-and that's more easily done if we remain engaged with the Pakistani government. The U.S. must also be able to receive information from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence directorate about Al-Qaeda, even if such information is provided sporadically. And the U.S. will simply not find a way out of Afghanistan if Pakistan becomes an open enemy. Pakistan, for its part, can afford to lose neither America's direct financial support, nor the help America provides with international lending agencies. Nor can Pakistan's military afford to lose its access to American weapons systems, and to the trainers attached to them. Economically, Pakistan cannot afford to be isolated by America in the way the U.S. isolates countries it considers sponsors of terrorism. Its neighbor Iran is an object lesson in this regard. For all these reasons, Pakistan and America remain locked in a hostile embrace.

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