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With their attacks this week on a Canadian patrol in Kandahar and a C.I.A. base near Khost, the Afghan Taliban’s Pakistan-based leadership has confronted President Obama with the need to exercise a basic military imperative: to hit back, swiftly and effectively, at the combatants responsible for the assaults.
Logically, and according to American military doctrine, the commander-in-chief of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan would order counter-strikes against the enemy’s command and control infrastructure.
But that would mean resolving the puzzle known as Pakistan, something Obama and his predecessors in the White House have consistently shied away from - a strategic weakness that has become the West’s Achilles heel in Southwest Asia.
The Khost and Kandahar outrages should bring Obama and his NATO counterparts to their senses, say their allies in Afghanistan.
“It’s time for honesty from our international partners,” Member of Parliament Shukria Barakzai tells Skyreporter, “and for honest action against Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban.
“If our international friends seek success in Afghanistan, and security for themselves at home, they know the real work must begin in Pakistan.”
Retaliation for the suicide bombing of the C.I.A. base near Khost means targeting the prime suspects: Sirajuddin Haqqani’s network of fighters and group commanders in Pakistan’s tribal areas, particularly in North Waziristan. (See Update below).
Haqqani and his men are among the targets C.I.A. personnel at Khost have been hunting with their pilotless drones for some time. Sources in Pakistan confirm that drone-launched missiles struck and killed two Afghan Taliban fighters the day after Wednesday’s suicide bombing.
But responsibility lies elsewhere for the Kandahar roadside bomb that killed four Canadian soldiers and Calgary Herald reporter Michelle Lang: within Taliban leader Mullah Omar’s sanctuary in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province, far to the south and west of Haqqani’s haunts.
Despite the Canadians’ heavy losses in Kandahar over the past four years, neither Obama nor his predecessor, George W. Bush, have directed the C.I.A. to paint their missiles’ infrared bullseyes on Omar’s leadership shura, based comfortably in Baluchistan’s capital, Quetta, and nearby towns like Kushlak.
From there, shielded by the Pakistan Army and untroubled by the threat of attack, Omar’s bagmen, recruiters, logisticians and group commanders have projected lethal force against not only the Canadians, but also British, U.S. and other NATO troops in Afghanistan's Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.
The West’s reticence in the face of Pakistan’s complicity is deeply troubling to Afghans who strive each day to secure their country’s borders.
One senior investigator with the National Directorate of Security, a field agent who follows leads on al Qaeda and Taliban figures in Pakistan, tells Skyreporter: “It’s very demoralizing for us, because we know that the C.I.A. and the other foreign agencies understand everything about the Pakistanis. But they keep it secret, and this hurts our effectiveness.”
The election of a new U.S. president last year sparked considerable hope in Afghanistan that the U.S. and its allies would shed this cloak of secrecy, and that wider public knowledge in the West about Pakistan’s clandestine schemes would enable Obama to act decisively. But so far, little has changed.
“No one is trying to stop this disease from its root causes,” says MP Barakzai. “The international forces are fighting the symptoms in Afghanistan, which are the fighters and the suicide bombers directed from Pakistani soil. The disease only spreads this way.”
Recent events support her view. Though Pakistan’s military operations in the past year have contained the domestic threat from the country’s home-grown Taliban, the Army has openly rebuffed U.S. requests for help in tackling specific Afghan opposition fronts like the Haqqanis’.
The aging founder of the group, Jalaluddin Haqqani, is kept alive through the efforts of physicians working for the Pakistan Army’s intelligence branch, the ISI, according to sources in Kabul and Peshawar. Even the capture and detention by the Haqqanis of a U.S. Army hostage, Private Bowe Bergdahl, has not loosened official tongues in Islamabad.
Given the Obama administration’s willingness to tolerate these affronts by their Pakistani “ally”, Canadian and British troops, and their families back home, can expect little relief from Mullah Omar’s roadside bombers and gunmen.
More soldiers will die, and many more Afghan civilians, too.
Mullah Omar will watch the spectacle on his satellite TV, safe in the knowledge that the world’s most powerful statesmen lack the will and the backbone to do anything about it.
Update: After this article was published, U.S. intelligence sources identified the Chapman base bomber as an al Qaeda double-agent being groomed by the C.I.A. for leads on Osama bin Laden's number two, Ayman al Zawahiri.
Siraj Haqqani is known to provide shelter for al Qaeda's leaders and followers in Pakistan. Not by coincidence, the Haqqanis have become the leading exponent of suicide bombing in Afghanistan.
Despite this, Americans continue to be disinformed about the Haqqanis and other leading Afghan opposition cutthroats like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. From Langley to Hollywood, these former favorites of U.S. aid in the 1980's enjoy ongoing cover.
Please see Skyreporter's January 25, 2009 entry New Afghan Blowback From "Charlie Wilson's Whitewash" on page 7 of Recent Stories.
