Tag Archives: Al Qaeda

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Afghanistan: No Cause for Hope

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The unending conflict in Afghanistan poses the foremost threat to regional stability in Southern Asia. Although President Obama has tripled the number of U.S. forces to 100,000 in the two years he has been in office,,this surge in force levels has failed to effectively counter the long-term threat posed by the Taliban and its Al Qaeda partners. In 2010, every single month was worse than the preceding month in terms of the number of incidents, the casualties to ISAF forces and the killing of innocent civilians. Along the Af-Pak border, despite continuing drone attacks, there has been a steady deterioration in the ability of ISAF to eliminate safe havens for the Taliqaeda extremists. Even the Pakistan army has not fared well in its fight against the TTP cadres holding out in North Waziristan.

The report on the situation in Afghanistan released recently by the White House banks more on hope than reality. It admits that the “challenge remains to make our goals durable and sustainable.” Commanders on the ground, including General Petraeus, continue to claim that the security situation is improving steadily and that the Taliban offensive has been contained. In testimony before Congress in early March 2011, Petraeus claimed that the momentum achieved by the Taliban has been “arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of areas.” However, he stressed that the “successes are fragile and reversible.”

The Afghan National Army (ANA) and the Afghan police are to be entrusted with the responsibility to independently take over the security function from ISAF in selected provinces beginning in July 2011 so that the planned draw-down of forces can begin. So far the Afghan security forces have not exhibited the standards of professionalism, battalion cohesion and the qualities of junior leadership that are necessary for success in the complex and challenging security environment prevailing in Afghanistan. They still need ISAF officers and quick reaction teams to accompany them for operations, failing which they tend to lose unit cohesion very quickly and disperse in panic.

Negotiations with the so-called “good Taliban” have also floundered. None of the main Taliban leaders – Mullah Omar, Jalaluddin Haqqani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar – have shown any inclination to conduct serious negotiations with the Karzai government or directly with Western negotiators. They are, of course, keen to buy time by pretending to be interested in a negotiated settlement.  

The development work being undertaken by the Karzai government and the PRTs (provincial reconstruction teams) has not reached the poorest provinces as efforts are concentrated on areas that are well connected by roads. The PRTs spend large sums of money on security for their supply convoys and most of this money ultimately ends up as a source of funding for the Taliban. The traditional notion that development work can be successfully undertaken by external agencies has not been borne out over the last 10 years in Afghanistan. A better method would be assist the Afghans with aid, materials and expertise and let them take the responsibility for development. However, due to the lack of efficient governance and rampant corruption, this method is also has serious pitfalls.

The Taliban are fond of saying that the ISAF forces have the watches but they have the time. They are convinced that the U.S. and NATO forces do not have the political will or the military staying power to last the course and they are biding their time for the foreign forces to quit. Their Pakistani friends are giving them similar advice: hang in there; these guys will soon go away. The prognosis for Afghanistan is far from rosy and a spring offensive may soon muddy the waters further.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Pakistan’s Unsafe Nuclear Warheads

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Increasing urban terrorism and uncontrollable radical extremism in the tribal areas in NWFP-Pakhtoonkhwa and FATA in Pakistan’s north-west have led to internal instability in Pakistan. The ongoing crisis can be attributed to the resurgence of fundamentalist forces and the Army’s inability to fight them effectively. Consequently, the world faces the spectre of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorist organisations. The assassination of Salman Taseer, Governor of Punjab, by a specially selected bodyguard has led to speculation that perhaps the loyalty of some security guards of Pakistan’s nuclear warheads could also be subverted by Jihadi elements.

The possession of nuclear weapons by Islamist fundamentalist terrorists will pose a grave danger to international security. The Al Qaeda has declared war on the United States (US) and it allies, and Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri are known to have made attempts to buy nuclear warheads. Among Pakistan’s neighbouring countries, India will be particularly vulnerable if hard-line LeT or JeM terrorists and their Al Qaeda and Taliban brothers ever lay their hands on Pakistan’s nuclear warheads. India is one of the nations that the Al Qaeda has named as an enemy. Being a contiguous land neighbour, it is also easier to target, even if sophisticated delivery systems like ballistic missiles are not available.

There is a possibility that an Islamist fundamentalist regime might overthrow the civilian government with support from a radicalised faction of the army. In such an eventuality, the U.S. and its allies may justifiably form another ‘coalition of the willing’ to bomb the nuclear warhead storage sites in Pakistan from the air. The coalition forces could employ cruise missiles and fighter-bombers from stand-off ranges to physically destroy the warheads with deep penetration bombs. A non-kinetic option that employs high-energy microwaves to “fry” the electronic circuitry of the nuclear warheads may also be considered.

The clear and present danger, however, and one that continues to be underestimated, is from nuclear terrorism. Terrorist organisations may assemble radiological dispersal devices (RDDs) – ‘dirty bombs’ in which high explosives (RDX or TNT) are used to blow up and scatter uranium or other radioactive materials over a densely populated area, or to pollute a major water source. Crude RDDs do not require a very high degree of technological sophistication and can be assembled quite easily.

Contingency plans must be debated, analysed, approved, rehearsed and readied for execution to meet unforeseen eventualities. Maximum cooperation must be extended by the nuclear weapons states (NWS) to Pakistan by way of technology, intelligence and training to help Pakistan to secure its own nuclear warheads. While the world waits with bated breath for the crisis in Pakistan to blow over, the government of Pakistan would do well to ensure that all possible measures are adopted to further enhance the safety and security of the country’s nuclear warheads and delivery means.

(The writer is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi.)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

War Strategy in Afghanistan and Regional Concerns

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The long awaited review of U.S. and NATO strategy in Afghanistan was completed by the Obama administration in December 2010. The publicly released version of the report claimed major gains against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban, particularly in the core areas under their control for long including the Helmand and Kandahar provinces. However, the report acknowledged that the gains were fragile and could be undone unless the Pakistan army acted against the Taliban operating from safe havens in the NWFP and FATA with equal vigour.

The broad goal of the U.S.-NATO-ISAF war strategy in Afghanistan is to ensure that Afghanistan acquires the stability that is necessary to be able to control its territory so that the Taliban and Al Qaeda are prevented from operating successfully from its soil against the U.S. and its allies, and also to reduce the risk of a return to civil war. The U.S. plans to transfer all combat responsibilities to the Afghan security forces by 2014. President Obama cannot afford to lose a war on his watch and yet hope to win re-election in 2012. The exit strategy will be based on a phased drawdown with not more than 10,000 troops being withdrawn each year till an “equilibrium that is manageable” is achieved. The U.S. and NATO troops are still thin on the ground while the Taliban has shown a marked degree of resurgence.

Afghanistan lies on the strategic crossroads between South Asia and Iran, West Asia, the Caucasus and the Central Asian Republics. Its regional neighbours have important geo-political and energy security interests in the area. Neighbours like India have invested over US$ 1 billion and immense time and effort in the post-2001 reconstruction of Afghanistan, but have been completely marginalised in U.S.-NATO-ISAF discussions for the resolution of the ongoing conflict.

The foremost concern of Afghanistan’s regional neighbours is that the coalition forces will begin their deadline-mandated exit before putting in place a strong alternative force to continue their work. A major apprehension is that the Taliban will defeat the weak and poorly trained Afghan National Army, take over Kabul, extend their reach to the countryside in due course and once again begin to practice their peculiar brand of Jihad and cultural bigotry. Both Iran and China are wary of the return of Wahabi Islam to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s regional neighbours, including the CARs, China, India, Iran, Pakistan and Russia, must come together to seek a solution to the conflict. This would involve putting together a regional force, preferably under a UN flag, to provide a stable environment for governance and development till the Afghan National Army can take over. The diplomatic aim should be to work towards a stable Afghan state, which is governed by a dispensation that is neutral between India and Pakistan. It is in the regional interest to support the continued operational commitment of U.S.-NATO-ISAF forces beyond July 2011 till the situation comes under control and security can be handed over to the Afghan National Army.

(Gurmeet Kanwal is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies, New Delhi.)

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Bruce Riedel’s underwhelming new book

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It doesn’t tell us any more than we already know

It is hard to see what Bruce Riedel’s new book “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan, America and the Future of Global Jihad” seeks to do.

Book cover (credit:bestofferbuyuk.com

It covers the history of the United States’ relationship with Pakistan from Partition onwards, but is too brief and too shallow to provide a good picture. Dennis Kux and Howard Schaffer deal with this in much greater detail. As an analysis of Pakistani politics and civil-military relations, it is a subset of Stephen P Cohen’s excellent book. As a narrative of the creation and growth of the military-jihadi complex, it is supered by Ahmed Rashid and Hussain Haqqani, who go much deeper. Finally, as an account of the Obama administration’s handling of the war in Afghanistan-Pakistan, it has little to add to Bob Woodward’s book published last year.

Coming from one of the most astute analysts of Pakistan, and from someone who was “in the room” during important moments in contemporary history, the book is a disappointment. Mr Riedel could well have cited Kux, Schaffer, Cohen & Rashid as references in his introductory chapter and gone on to provide us with a deeper, broader analysis of Pakistan’s current situation and fleshed out the possible directions it may take in the future. Yet, we are left with just one single chapter on the implications of one single—what he calls “possible (but not probable)”—outcome: the implications of a jihadist state in Pakistan. That begs the question: what about the probable outcomes? Shouldn’t the book be discussing those in detail?

Perhaps because he is still too close to the policy-making in Washington, Mr Riedel uses statements like “the United States currently has better relations with both India and Pakistan than any other time in the past several decades”. This, after he lays out in great detail how deeply unpopular the United States is in Pakistan (not least because of Washington’s improved relations with India), how the Pakistani military is at loggerheads with its U.S. counterpart, and after mentioning incidents like the suicide attack on the CIA base in Khost. Let’s hope Mr Riedel was merely being diplomatic and politically correct, because the alternative is unflattering.

The disappointment deepens when you see the author accepting the trite argument that Pakistan’s insecurities vis-a-vis India will assuaged if there is a settlement of the Kashmir dispute, even on Pakistan’s own terms. A person who correctly sees a hasty U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan as a victory for Al-Qaeda’s global jihad somehow fails to consider the geopolitical implications of India yielding to Pakistan’s military-jihadi blackmail. To be fair, Mr Riedel recommends nothing more than what was agreed in India-Pakistan back channel talks, but even so, the premise that Pakistan will pose less of a threat to international security if only India were to make some concessions takes the heat off the protagonists—Pakistan and its scaffold states. And no, privately nudging the Indian leadership to pursue dialogue with Pakistan is unlikely to be any more effective than doing so publicly.

What is the book’s big prescription for Pakistan? The combination of carrots (Kerry-Lugar long-term aid) and sticks (drone attacks and suchlike) that are currently employed by the Obama administration. There is very little by way of identification and evaluation of other options. This might, again, be due to the fact the Mr Riedel was recently a part of, and still very close to, the ongoing deadly embrace. By that token, this book might have come too early.

Defence And Strategic Affairs Blog

Peace and Stability in 2011: Turbulence will Continue

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From the point of view of international peace and stability, 2010 ended on a positive note with the ratification by the U.S. Senate of the new START treaty that will further reduce deployed strategic nuclear weapons of Russia and the U.S. to 1,550 in seven years. However, in view of the ongoing conflicts and possible conflagrations, 2011 is likely to be a turbulent year.

The strategic stalemate in Afghanistan will continue with the Taliban and NATO-ISAF forces alternately gaining local ascendancy for short durations in the core provinces of Helmand, Marja and Kandahar. While U.S. forces may be expected to step up drone strikes in Pakistan against extremists sheltering in the NWFP and FATA areas, the results are not likely to appear justifiable in view of the diplomatic fallout in Pakistan. The Afghan National Army is still many years away from achieving the professional standards necessary to manage security on its own. Hence, it will be difficult for the U.S. to begin its planned drawdown of troops in July 2011.

The military stand-off along the 38th Parallel in Korea has further exacerbated the already unstable situation in East Asia caused by increasing Chinese assertiveness that appears out of character with its stated objective of a peaceful rise. Though the international community may be able to ensure that a major conflict does not erupt again between the two Koreas, the sub-region will remain volatile unless the Chinese use their influence with North Korea to persuade it to back off from the path of confrontation. As of now they do not appear inclined to do so.

Turmoil in West Asia will continue through 2011 as Israel stubbornly refuses to halt the construction of new settlements in the West Bank and the Palestinian militias are getting increasingly restive. Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the vaguely stated threats of several of its neighbours to follow suit will continue to add to instability in the region. Saudi Arabia, in particular, may fund Pakistan’s nuclear expansion programme as a hedging strategy against the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran. Such a course of action would be a disastrous blow to international non-proliferation efforts.

It can be deduced form recent arrests in the U.K. and elsewhere that international fundamentalist terrorists may succeed in launching another spectacular strike in the West. A successful strike would resurrect the al Qaeda and enable it to rally its wavering cadres. All in all, 2011 will see a continuation of ongoing conflicts without major let up.

(Gurmeet Kanwal is Director, Centre for Land Warfare Studies (CLAWS), New Delhi.)