Friday, July 1, 2011

Taking Iraq's Tribal Playbook To Pakistan

From Wired.com:

Taking Iraq’s Tribal ‘Playbook’ to Pakistan




By Kris Alexander

January 16, 2008


2:45 pm


Categories: Af/Pak, Tactics, Strategy and Logistics








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"Pitting Sunni tribes against Al Qaeda-allied tribes has worked in Iraq," he Christian Science Monitor notes. "Will it work against the Taliban in Pakistan?"









Pakistan’s troubled tribal belt is emerging as the latest test bed of this counterterrorism strategy.



But last week, Maulvi Nazir, a pro-government Taliban commander, vowed to raise a militia to fight Baitullah Mehsud, a wanted Taliban commander who the Pakistani government blames for the

Dec. 27 assassination of Benazir Bhutto…



The two militia leaders, who operate near the city of Wana in South Wazirstan, are already enemies. The Pakistani government is relying on that enmity to accomplish what Pakistan’s military has failed to do: rid the area of foreign militants linked to

Al Qaeda and capture or kill Mr. Mehsud.









The new plan comes as Washington is openly considering direct intervention in Pakistan’s tribal belt, considered a staging ground that has allowed militants to launch their deadliest spate of attacks in Pakistan’s history.





"[The

Federally Administered Tribal Areas – FATA] continues to be of grave concern to us, both in the near term and in the long term," Admiral

Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a

Pentagon briefing last Friday. "It’s having a significant impact, not just in Afghanistan…. There are concerns now about how much they’ve turned inwards, literally, inside Pakistan."





Even Nazir is an unlikely ally. Young and battle-hardened, he endorses the same radical Islamist ideology as the militants he’s promised to fight, and has pledged his allegiance to Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s founding spiritual leader.



The vote is still out on the long-term viability of the Sunni Awakening in Iraq. Violence is down; but is it just a lull in the storm? I think the Monitor is making a stretch in their comparison of US policy in Iraq to what amounts to tribal rivalry in Pakistan. But with reports that the US is considering covert action in Pakistan, this could be a preview of what is to come. (Especially with reports of the Brits flipping a Afghan Taliban commander to the coalition’s side, and especially with the Marines — the architects of the Iraq tribal strategy — heading back to Afghanistan.)



A Taliban awakening, anyone?

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