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Subject: 	[Marxism] Obama weighing major escalation inside Pakistan
Date: 	Wed, 18 Mar 2009 09:31:42 -0400
From: 	Louis Proyect <lnp3 at panix.com>
Reply-To: 	Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
<marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu>
To: 	aorta <aorta at home.nl>



NY Times, March 18, 2009
U.S. Weighs Taliban Strike Into Pakistan
By DAVID E. SANGER and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — President Obama and his national security advisers are
considering expanding the American covert war in Pakistan far beyond the
unruly tribal areas to strike at a different center of Taliban power in
Baluchistan, where top Taliban leaders are orchestrating attacks into
southern Afghanistan.

According to senior administration officials, two of the high-level
reports on Pakistan and Afghanistan that have been forwarded to the
White House in recent weeks have called for broadening the target area
to include a major insurgent sanctuary in and around the city of Quetta.

Mullah Muhammad Omar, who led the Taliban government that was ousted in
the American-led invasion in 2001, has operated with near impunity out
of the region for years, along with many of his deputies.

The extensive missile strikes being carried out by Central Intelligence
Agency-operated drones have until now been limited to the tribal areas,
and have never been extended into Baluchistan, a sprawling province that
is under the authority of the central government, and which abuts the
parts of southern Afghanistan where recent fighting has been the
fiercest. Fear remains within the American government that extending the
raids would worsen tensions. Pakistan complains that the strikes violate
its sovereignty.

But some American officials say the missile strikes in the tribal areas
have forced some leaders of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to flee south
toward Quetta, making them more vulnerable. In separate reports, groups
led by both Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in the
region, and Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, a top White House official on
Afghanistan, have recommended expanding American operations outside the
tribal areas if Pakistan cannot root out the strengthening insurgency.

Many of Mr. Obama’s advisers are also urging him to sustain orders
issued last summer by President George W. Bush to continue Predator
drone attacks against a wider range of targets in the tribal areas. They
also are recommending preserving the option to conduct cross-border
ground actions, using C.I.A. and Special Operations commandos, as was
done in September. Mr. Bush’s orders also named as targets a wide
variety of insurgents seeking to topple Pakistan’s government. Mr. Obama
has said little in public about how broadly he wants to pursue those groups.

A spokesman for the National Security Council, Mike Hammer, declined to
provide details, saying, “We’re still working hard to finalize the
review on Afghanistan and Pakistan that the president requested.”

No other officials would talk on the record about the issue, citing the
administration’s continuing internal deliberations and the politically
volatile nature of strikes into Pakistani territory.

“It is fair to say that there is wide agreement to sustain and continue
these covert programs,” said one senior administration official. “One of
the foundations on which the recommendations to the president will be
based is that we’ve got to sustain the disruption of the safe havens.”

Mr. Obama’s top national security advisers, known as the Principals
Committee, met Tuesday to begin debating all aspects of
Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. Senior administration officials say Mr.
Obama has made no decisions, but is expected to do so in coming days
after hearing the advice of that group.

Any expansion of the war is bound to upset those in Mr. Obama’s party
who worry that he is sinking further into a lengthy conflict in
Afghanistan, even while reducing forces in Iraq. It is possible that the
decisions about covert actions will never be publicly announced.

Several administration and military officials stressed that they
continued to prod the Pakistani military to take the lead in a more
aggressive campaign to root out Taliban and Qaeda fighters who are
attacking American forces in Afghanistan and increasingly destabilizing
nuclear-armed Pakistan.

But with Pakistan consumed by political turmoil, fear of financial
collapse and a spreading insurgency, American officials say they have
few illusions that the United States will be able to rely on Pakistan’s
own forces. However, each strike by Predators or ground forces
reverberates in Pakistan, and Mr. Obama will be weighing that cost.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on
“The Charlie Rose Show” on PBS last week that the White House strategy
review addresses the “safe haven in Pakistan — making sure that
Afghanistan doesn’t provide a capability in the long run or an
environment in which Al Qaeda could return or the Taliban could return.”
But another senior official cautioned that “with the targets now
spreading, an expanding U.S. role inside Pakistan may be more than
anyone there can stomach.”

As part of the same set of decisions, according to senior civilian and
military officials familiar with the internal White House debate, Mr.
Obama will have to choose from among a range of options for future
American commitments to Afghanistan.

His core decision may be whether to scale back American ambitions there
to simply assure it does not become a sanctuary for terrorists. “We are
taking this back to a fundamental question,” a senior diplomat involved
in the discussions said. “Can you ever get a central government in
Afghanistan to a point where it can exercise control over the country?
That was the problem Bush never really confronted.”

A second option, officials say, is to significantly boost the American
commitment to train Afghan troops, with Americans taking on the Taliban
with increasing help from the Afghan military. President Bush pursued
versions of that strategy, but the training always took longer and
proved less successful than plans called for.

A third option would involve devoting full American and NATO resources
to a large-scale counterinsurgency effort. But Mr. Obama would be bound
to face considerable opposition within NATO, whose leaders he will meet
with early next month in Strasbourg, France. At the very time the United
States is seeking to expand its presence in Afghanistan, many of the
allies are scheduled to leave.

As for American strikes on militant havens inside Pakistan,
administration officials say the Predator and Reaper attacks in the
tribal areas have been effective at killing 9 of Al Qaeda’s top 20
leaders, and the aerial campaign was recently expanded to focus on the
Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, as well as his fighters and
training camps. American intelligence officials say that many top
Taliban commanders remain in hiding in and around Quetta, but some
Afghan officials say that other senior Taliban leaders have fled to the
Pakistani port city of Karachi.

Missile strikes or American commando raids in the city of Quetta or the
teeming Afghan settlements and refugee camps around the city and near
the Afghan border would carry high risks of civilian casualties,
American officials acknowledge.

Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington, and Carlotta Gall
from Islamabad, Pakistan.



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