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The loss of two American soldiers, early Sunday, in a brazen Taliban rocket attack on the Pentagon’s main airbase in Afghanistan, underscores a troubling inconsistency, one that U.S. and NATO officials are loathe to acknowledge, much less discuss.
Because even as a surge of additional American troops seeks to staunch the worsening bloodshed and regain the initiative for the U.S.-led coalition, it appears that the safest place in Afghanistan and Pakistan is among the Taliban’s ruling leadership council, nestled in their safe haven in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
The reason: Pakistan’s military continues to support Mullah Omar’s guerrilla fighters as a proxy force in Afghanistan, even while the Pakistan government and army prosecute offensives against a number of their own home-grown Taliban networks in places like Swat, Bajaur and Waziristan.
As a result, the C.I.A.’s drone attacks against Taliban and al Qaeda targets are still limited to areas far to the northeast of Omar’s Baluch strongholds.
The one-eyed mullah and his cronies remain able to command, arm and finance their main war effort in Afghan provinces like Kandahar and Helmand, while pulling off stunts such as the Bagram attack, lobbing four rockets into the air base, a short drive north from Kabul, and previously believed to be the safest American-controlled real estate in all of Afghanistan.
U.S. and NATO leaders have shown themselves to be powerless to adapt and respond to this dilemma. They and their generals and diplomats have been drawn deeper into the fitful, schizophrenic nature of Pakistan’s relationships with militant groups. They are compelled to heap praise on President Zardari and army chief Gen. Kayani for pursuing the homicidal terror chieftain, Baitullah Mehsud, in South Waziristan, but remain mute about the Quetta conundrum.
Occasionally, a revealing offhand comment breaks this silence, as was the case at Kandahar Air Field last week. Canada’s top general, Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk, told reporters that the Pakistan Army’s offensive is “having an effect, but an effect north of us.”
Gen. Natynczyk stated that cross-border attacks from “southern Pakistan” continue to pose a threat, a clear reference to Mullah Omar’s Quetta shura.
Sadly, fleeting moments of candor such as this have not pierced the realm of disinformation maintained by all the main parties to the Afghan war, from Pakistan to the U.S. and its NATO allies.
Though President Obama has voiced his determination to take a new, more decisive stance on Pakistan’s safe havens, his administration’s envoy, Richard Holbrooke, refrained from broaching the Quetta shura issue during his recent visit to the region.
As the attack on Bagram demonstrates so tragically, U.S. and coalition soldiers do not enjoy the luxuries of official deniability and arms-length diplomatic deception practiced by their civilian commanders.
They and their Afghan Army allies, and most particularly the civilian population, are squarely in the firing line, a firing line that originates in the safe houses and military compounds of Baluchistan, courtesy the officers and men of Pakistan’s ISI.
