'Secret' Troops a Last Chance for Pakistan -- and Maybe Us
By Jeff Stein | February 24, 2009 7:07 PM |
Special Forces troops tend to think they carry the fate of the world in their rucksacks.
In Pakistan, they may be right.
Years from now we may look back at the "secret" deployment of some 70 U.S. military advisers to Pakistan as a turning point in the global war on terrorism, the moment when a daring idea and brilliant execution snatched victory from a looming disaster.
Or the opposite: a Pakistani version of Ia Drang, the 1965 battle when North Vietnamese regulars showed they could go toe-to-toe with American troops, signaling a long, devastating and -- in that case -- losing war.
Make no mistake about it: Pakistan hangs in the balance.
President Obama suggested as much in his speech to Congress Wednesday night, when he said, "We will forge a new and comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan to defeat al Qaeda and combat extremism. Because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens half a world away."
A report to be released Wednesday by a task force of the prestigious, non-partisan Atlantic Council, chaired by Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, and Chuck Hagel, the much respected former Republican senator from Nebraska, is expected to underscore the urgency of the challenge.
A nuclear-armed, polyglot Islamic republic, under tremendous political and religious pressure, Pakistan could disintegrate if something dramatic isn't done -- now -- to destroy the advancing Muslim extremists and their Rosemary's Baby, al Qaeda, on the Afghan frontier.
The consequences for the entire region, not to mention ourselves, are incalculable.
On Sunday, Feb. 22, The New York Times rather breathlessly reported that "more than 70 United States military advisers and technical specialists are secretly working in Pakistan to help its armed forces battle al Qaeda and the Taliban in the country's lawless tribal areas."
"The Americans are mostly Army Special Forces soldiers who are training Pakistani Army and paramilitary troops," it added, "providing them with intelligence and advising on combat tactics."
None of this should have come as a surprise, much less a "secret," as military blogger Bill Roggio scoffed at The Weekly Standard: The Times itself had reported last March that the Pentagon was planning to dispatch about 100 SpecOps advisers to Pakistan.
But planning isn't doing. Plans get floated every day, not so troops.
As Eric Schmitt and Jane Perlez reported from the mountains of Pakistan's North West Frontier Province, "a secret task force, overseen by the United States Central Command and Special Operations Command ... started last summer, with the support of Pakistan's government and military, in an effort to root out Qaeda and Taliban operations that threaten American troops in Afghanistan and are increasingly destabilizing Pakistan."
What was new?
"It is a much larger and more ambitious effort than either country has acknowledged," they said.
It was acknowledged now, no doubt, to burnish Pakistan's do-nothing image in Washington, just as its foreign minister and army chief of staff arrived here for high level, three-way talks with U.S. and Afghan officials.
It might have provided fleeting cover for U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic agencies as well, who as I reported yesterday, didn't even have a concerted plan for dealing with Pakistan's tribal regions, where the Taliban and al Qaeda roam, as of mid-2008.
I suppose that they're lucky that the world's woeful economic news has blurred their perfidy.
But their luck, and ours, is about to run out, by almost all accounts.
When Islamabad's nuclear weapons fall into extremists' hands, not much else will matter.
Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.
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