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good news, stratfor says pakistan is not a failing state
Breaking Down the Pakistani Supply Line Conflict
September 30, 2010 | 1752 GMT
LIU JIN/AFP/Getty Images
A U.S. Army AH-64 Apache attack helicopter in eastern AfghanistanSummary
A cross-border incident in which an International Security Assistance Force attack helicopter might have killed three Pakistani paramilitary Frontier Corps troops on the Afghan-Pakistani border has resulted in strong protests from Islamabad and the closure of the border crossing at Torkham, which is essential for sustaining operations in Afghanistan. Islamabad now appears intent on pushing for some changes to the nature and parameters of U.S.-Pakistani cooperation.
Analysis
The Pakistani government strongly condemned a cross-border incident Sept. 30 in which it claims attack helicopters providing close air support for International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) troops operating in Afghanistan deliberately targeted a Frontier Corps position. The Torkham border crossing in Khyber agency, the single most important border crossing for U.S. and allied fuel and supplies — some three-quarters of the total shipped through Pakistan cross here — has been closed in protest.
There actually appear to have been two cross-border incidents Sept. 30 — one before dawn, at around 5:20 a.m. local time and one at around 9:30 a.m. — with one incident resulting in the deaths of some three paramilitary Frontier Corps soldiers and the injury of three more. Both appear to have taken place northwest of Parachinar in the Kurram agency of the restive Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) along the border with Dand Patan district in Afghanistan’s Paktia province. The ISAF has claimed that close air support was being provided in order to suppress and destroy a mortar position, which the ISAF has insisted was in Afghanistan. Islamabad has claimed that the Frontier Corps position was deliberately targeted. ISAF troops operating near the border are regularly engaged, usually by militants, from the Pakistani side, and fighting essentially on the border is not uncommon. The Frontier Corps position could indeed have been deliberately engaged, and it could also have fired first upon the ISAF patrol. The tactical details of the incident remain unclear and in dispute. However, the incident has taken on a life of its own and the anger and protest it has sparked reflect a much broader issue.
The Pakistani military considers this pair of incursions the third and fourth in less than a week. It comes at a time when U.S. military and paramilitary operations in Pakistan, particularly unmanned aerial vehicle strikes in FATA, have intensified markedly. Such efforts and operations have always been difficult for Islamabad to tolerate, as they disregard Pakistani sovereignty, exacerbate already serious problems in the area for Islamabad and are wildly unpopular across the entire country.
On Sept. 28, Islamabad threatened to close the border to supplies for the war effort in Afghanistan if the attacks continued; that threat has now been carried out. The anticipated duration of this closure is not yet clear (past closures have been a matter of days), but there are considerable buffers built into the massive logistical effort to sustain the war in Afghanistan. Immediate operational effects from the closure are unlikely, and another more southerly crossing remains open. What is clear is that the Sept. 30 incident has risen above routine operations and rhetorical Pakistani protests to something of greater significance.
At this point, whatever the facts of the incident turn out to be (if both sides can even agree upon the facts), the importance has shifted to the discussions within and between Washington and Islamabad. The Pakistanis have been struggling to contain a mounting Taliban insurgency on their side of the border and have been hobbled by devastating floods. The flooding has created a humanitarian disaster that is still, months later, being brought under control. Public dissatisfaction with the civilian government over its response to the disaster has been mounting.
But the real power in Pakistan has long been the military. Its stability does not appear to have been significantly eroded in recent months; if anything, it is now more widely viewed as a competent alternative to the civilian government. But the need for U.S. assistance, including military assistance, to facilitate humanitarian and disaster relief efforts has only strengthened U.S. leverage over the Pakistanis (while there have been considerable international donations in fiscal terms, U.S. aircraft are of pivotal importance to immediate relief efforts).
The recent intensification of U.S. military and paramilitary operations in Pakistan is every bit as intolerable for the Pakistani military as it is for the civilian government. And Islamabad now appears set on using this latest incident as the casus belli for attempting to force Washington to dial back those efforts. No fundamental strategic or geopolitical issues or realities have shifted. The same underlying motivations, imperatives and constraints that have dictated policies on matters in Pakistan continue to apply. The question now is how hard and how far Islamabad intends to push the tactical issues, and how resistant Washington will be in response. As Pakistan has demonstrated with the closure of the border crossing at Torkham, Islamabad is not without its own leverage over Washington. The intelligence it chooses to share with the United States on al Qaeda, Taliban and other activities on both sides of the border, despite being limited and partial, is nevertheless of great significance to the U.S. war effort.
Our attention now turns to what new accommodation and understanding might be reached, the degree to which that new understanding entails rhetorical shifts and public statements and the degree to which there is meaningful change in operational impact.
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