Reply #24: No [View All]

[kenny blankenship]

The situation in Pakistan is much more precarious than generally admitted in US media. The coastal city of Karachi is already partially under the domination of Pakistan's version of the Taliban. (Which means they probably have some form of resupply route over the sea) In certain sections of Karachi they rule the streets. They are the police --with checkpoints and the whole deal, especially after dark. The "Taliban" presence in Karachi is a dagger point at the throat of the country: do the wrong thing and they will push the dagger in. Meanwhile their mountain base, the entire border province of Waziristan, is beyond the reach of the govt. in Islamabad. The tribal people in the hill country don't necessarily view themselves as owing allegiance to the government in the lowlands, which makes for an exploitable division. Throughout history colonialists and insurgents alike have been able to identify and exploit the tension between highlander tribes and the dominant group of the country which tends to live in the flatland near the water. The British found tribes they could "work with" in Malaysia. We exploited tensions like these in Vietnam, Laos, and Nicaragua. In S.E. Asia we exploited the resentments of the Hmong people. In Nicaragua we exploited the resentments of the Miskito tribes. As we all know, the US exploited the same kind of division in Afghanistan, backing tribes in the hills against the Soviet backed government in the flatland. This time the hillbilly vs. flatlanders split is being used against us. Pakistan is much more advanced than Laos or Cambodia were in the 1960s, but like them it's also a country that can't control all of its border territories. Pakistan has deployed as many as 90,000 men into Waziristan and have been pushed out. They have garrison points there but they don't exercise control over the areas in between. To control a large area you need a road network, to move force around, to police the area, and to resupply your garrisons. In Waziristan the road network consists of two highways over which convoys of army trucks can travel. They wind endlessly in mountains and there are 10,000 chances for an ambush. Convoys of 50 men in armored vehicles and trucks disappear in Waziristan never to be seen again. Actually the men turn up frequently, but their heads do not. This places a certain drag on Pakistani military morale. The government has enough on its hands with possible heads of state being assassinated, former heads of state posing a constant coup d'etat danger, and so forth that it doesn't feel strong enough to keep kicking the hornet's nest in Waziristan. They don't want the US coming in, since they do not want to become another Iraq. About the best they can manage is to cordon the area off, which is in its way a backhanded acknowledgment of the real problem. The real problem is that Waziristan like Afghanistan exists in a perpetual dark ages. When you try to change the people living there you just end up killing them, and they kill you.