Everyone agrees that events are fluid in General Petraeus’ broad domain, from Pakistan to Iraq, from Uzbekistan to the Horn of Africa. Wouldn’t you love to hear how his intelligence briefings are going these days? Come to think of it, there was an item about a raid on Wahhabists in Bosnia this week, too… so Petraeus’ shop may not be big enough…
We began with the big GOTCHA! headlines on the apprehension of the Taliban #2, Mullah Baradar, but experts on the region began making skeptical noises from the very beginning. One such expert spoke up at NRO-the Corner, where his note was soon followed by a summary piece co-authored by former Bush White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, focused on reporting from the New York Times:
…there’s a better-than-even chance that the administration is trying to turn a lemon into lemonade. Its public messaging is that the capture of Baradar is a huge win in the ongoing war with the Taliban. But is the administration concealing the downsides of the capture? We hope not. And we certainly hope the administration is not crowing about capturing Baradar in Pakistan in order to distract from the difficulties it has had on the home front with the KSM trial and Mirandizing the Christmas bomber. But if the Times story is accurate, the evidence is beginning to tilt in the wrong direction.
Our colleague JE Dyer has now written two pieces – The Pakistan Connection and Taliban Roll-Up: The Other Connections – further exploring the Baradar capture and subsequent events – mazy complexities in West-canted concentric networks of unknowns radiating at least as far as Moscow, Baghdad, and Dubai.
Returning to the initial event, Chet Nagle at The Daily Caller doesn’t hesitate to call the arrest “phony”:
With regard to this murky event I prefer the word detained, since Baradar and other senior Taliban leaders were captured once before—and released. In 2001, Baradar and several colleagues were taken by Afghan militiamen. Pakistan intervened and the Taliban bosses were sent on their way. Baradar will probably have the same good fortune again, after a decent interval.
He closes on highly speculative and even incendiary-looking suggestions regarding an apparent proposal to divert $7.3 Billion in Stimulus dollars to Pakistan, alongside the observation that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons factories have undergone “astounding modernization and expansion” over the period during which the country has received $12 Billion in aid.
If it’s a game, I’m not even sure who’s playing it for us at this point, or what they’re trying to achieve – other than keep it from impacting too much on the U.S. domestic audience, whichever way things go.
Comments 22
QUESTION FOR YOU fOREIGN pOLICY wONKABEES;
iF THERE’S ANY TRUTH IN THIS ARTICLE,why not some discussion.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/20/opinion/20iht-edgreenway.html?ref=global
February 20th, 2010 at 7:12 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
As far as I know, there’s certainly some truth in the article: It squares with what we’ve been hearing broadly since 2001 and what those paying close attention have known for much longer – though some of it rests on highly dubious assumptions (e.g., “suitcase nuke”). Generally speaking, I’m not sure what saying that AQ would be thrilled to kill 4 million people and that such an attack would change history accomplishes. We’ve all assumed for much longer that somewhere there were bad actors who would do great damage with WMD if they could. Long before 24, there were movies like TRUE LIES and BLACK SUNDAY, not to mention every other Tom Clancy novel featuring Jack Ryan.
February 20th, 2010 at 9:03 am
Sure, there’s a lot of truth to this. AQ has indeed sought to bring off a nuclear attack of some kind on the US. That was one of the key reasons to deny AQ private funding and state sponsorship. An improvised device has the best chance of doing serious damage if it’s put together with the advantages of deep pockets, and Saddam Hussein behind the curtain.
In the late Bush years it was clear AQ had been largely forced into hiding, small cells, anonymity, and heavy dependence on the territory of those who either couldn’t (Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen) or wouldn’t (Pakistan) help AQ develop a nuclear IED. How successful any continued efforts are will depend on whether AQ is able to reconstitute the breadth of its pre-9/11 organization, and perhaps gain the favor of a radical state.
I wouldn’t be too quick to look to Iran. The mullahs will want to work things their own way. They have intentions about ruling and sovereignty that AQ doesn’t have; they’re not interested in blowing their wad on a mushroom cloud photo op over Manhattan. AQ’s value to them resides in its ability to harass the West and dog the local Arab emirs (all of whom AQ considers corrupt and sold out to the West).
The roll-up going on in Pakistan tells me AQ won’t be able to look there for help with nuclear bomb-making in the near future either. The Pakis want control of what’s going on around them worse than they want someone else unleashing terror.
A radicalized Pakistani with expertise, operating on his own outside Pakistan, might be their best bet. If they’ve got bucks, AQ can probably get some material from North Korea. The shadowy Burma/Myanmar connection that emerged in public last year is something we should be watching closely. If they get something detonatable, bringing it in by private boat along our utterly unguarded coastline — anywhere — is the way to avoid detection. Myself, I’d spend the dough to move it through points A through Z, bounce it through Africa and South America, have it come in by boat from Mexico to a cove in Oregon, load it in a step-van and drive it from there to NYC or DC. And, of course, get some stupid American kids to do the road trip. Hook the specialists up with the bomb only when it’s on-site.
Rule of thumb learned from an intel career: if it can be thought of, someone is trying to do it. Trying to guard every square inch of the USA is a fool’s errand, however, which is why Bush chose to focus on busting ‘em up Over There, and trying to balance out the impacts of homeland security surveillance on civil life.
February 20th, 2010 at 10:47 am
I wouldn’t be too quick to look to Iran
Having just read your comments,why is their so much emphasis on Iran from Leeden,Bolton,Podhoretz,etc etc when it was AQ that was successful for BIGHIT1,my money is on AQ for BIGHIT2,isn’t it just plan inconvenient and out of our comfort/competence zone to deal directly with AQ? I’ve been reading your analyses for years about the Strategic aspects of the WOT,and it appears to be rational,but it has never made sense to me,that we can contain/destroy AQ by being in Iraq and Afghanistan. Haven’t we given AQ all the time they need to plan and launch BIGHIT2?
February 20th, 2010 at 11:09 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
Time is only one of the requirements for that BIGHIT
(and time has shown that being in Iraq has made little sense)
February 20th, 2010 at 11:20 am
fuster wrote:
@ Rex Caruthers:
Time is only one of the requirements for that BIGHIT
(and time has shown that being in Iraq has made little sense
Right ON Fus,To me,money is not an issue either,there’s plenty of money going to AQ from lots of sources. Why aren’t we tracking the money paths and removing the donors from the game? Maybe because the donors are the one and the same,suppliers of our energy fix.
February 20th, 2010 at 11:30 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
RCAR, first, we’ve put a lot of effort into breaking up AQ and denying it resources. So no, we haven’t been sitting on our backsides giving AQ time to come up with the next BIGHIT.
Second, I never thought Afghanistan was the main place we needed to be. We did need to be in Iraq. If we hadn’t taken out Saddam, we would indeed have been giving AQ time to develop a nuke. Nothing would have stood between AQ, Saddam, and that outcome. There would have been no natural “brake” on such a project. Merely dismissing the prospect is the product of neither analysis nor intelligent thought.
Third, Iran is a threat with nukes because IRAN is a threat with nukes. Iran could operate through Hizballah, which is already present all over Latin America and has already managed to sneak into the USA (see “The LatAm Gambit” at my blog for links on that). But Iran could also use the threat of nukes to intimidate her neighbors and us. Getting us to back down in individual situations, because Iran can threaten the Middle East region with nuclear weapons, is the mullahs’ main reason for wanting a nuclear arsenal.
Iran and AQ want to use nukes for different things. Both of them are bad.
February 20th, 2010 at 11:47 am
J.E. Dyer wrote:
Help me here.
February 20th, 2010 at 11:50 am
@ Rex Caruthers:
RCAR — we have been doing exactly that: going after AQ’s donors. What do you think all that Treasury surveillance has been about? AQ has been denied money. I think that’s the one of the main reasons they haven’t been able to mount BIGHIT2. They’re more dependent today than they used to be on drug trafficking to replenish their cash drawer.
The hundreds of smaller hits are much easier to fund.
February 20th, 2010 at 11:50 am
@ fuster:
You’re beyond help, Smidge. You know what the points and argument are.
February 20th, 2010 at 11:51 am
probably am beyond help, but that is just too, too far even for you.
gimme three sentences how Saddam=AQ nukes and I’ll shut up.
February 20th, 2010 at 11:55 am
Both of them are bad
But AQ is badder and Iran(less bad but still bad) seems to have priority.
February 20th, 2010 at 11:57 am
because Iran can threaten the Middle East region with nuclear weapons
Let’s put it not so nicely,Who gives a c–p about the NE,as long as we get our energy fix? We have no friends over there,just vendors.
February 20th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
The other main reason, I think, is deterrence, the (re-)establishment, reinforcement, and maintenance of which were also among the main justifications for OIF and for current operations in Afghanistan. Because the workings of deterrence are invisible, until they fail, it’s easy to underestimate. We may be undependable allies, but the upside of our democratic unpredictability is that potential sponsors and allies of AQ or of an overly aggressive Iran, among others, know that consequences may be extreme if future Big Hits or Series of Small Hits sufficiently piss us off. The particular AQ, Madhist, or Paki or other extremists may themselves be relatively undeterrable, but no terrorist is an island. Someone has to know what they’re doing, and someone else knows that someone, and all or most, along with many of their friends and most of what they hold dear in this world, would be put in imminent peril by another 9/11 or worse-than-9/11.
I even wonder whether the Unmentionables Bomber was intended to be successful.
February 20th, 2010 at 12:42 pm
CK MacLeod wrote:
AQ has been denied money. I think that’s the one of the main reasons they haven’t been able to mount BIGHIT2.
CK,Can you name a major money donar to AQ that has been identified,stopped from donating,and sanctioned for bad donating. I insist that AQ is loaded with money,and can raise what it needs,quickly.
February 20th, 2010 at 12:48 pm
@ Rex Caruthers:
Not my main area of interest, Rex. JED probably has much higher quality and more readily accessible info in her personal memory banks than I do – and it was her original point, not mine. But it’s my impression that the first-tier financing – i.e., banking – was pretty aggressively attacked. It’s the second and third tier financing via informal and traditional networks that’s harder to impair.
February 20th, 2010 at 12:53 pm
first-tier financing
Never was relevant,2nd/3rd tier is their first tier,what difference does it make to OBL if he gets his $s via goatherder. Anyway,our big three worries seem to be IRAN,Afghanistan,and Iraq,what happens when the troops leave? With AQ not really on the radar,doesn’t that remind you of recent history,in 2000/2001 the big three concerns were Iran,Lybia,and Syria-Lebanon,AQ was off the big screen.
February 20th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
I think that JED is correct about AQ having had their donor funding cut back. Someone extremely well-informed and well-placed confirms that.
I’ve also read things from Kilcullin and others agreeing that drugs are presently approaching half of the funding.
February 20th, 2010 at 1:19 pm
fuster wrote:
I think that JED is correct about AQ having had their donor funding cut back. Someone extremely well-informed and well-placed confirms that.
I’ve also read things from Kilcullin and others agreeing that drugs are presently approaching half of the funding
(1)The Economy is down so donaring is down,makes sense
(2)And selling Drugs won’t raise enough money for their activities???
(3)And what are we doing to stop the Drug trafficking channels for AQ?
Not much Right? Because our buddies in Afghanistan get their livlihoods from growing Poppies and selling refined Poppy mix to AQ,in other words,they are well funded.
February 20th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
I think that you might look to our offensive in Helmand as an example of something that we’re doing to stop their drug funding.
February 20th, 2010 at 1:38 pm
So, I guess no one is surprised at thishttp://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/20/pakistan-we-wont-hand-over-the-captured-taliban-leaders-to-the-u-s/
February 20th, 2010 at 3:36 pm
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/20/pakistan-we-wont-hand-over-the-captured-taliban-leaders-to-the-u-s/
A story saying that Pakistan won’t directly hand him over to us, but might pass him to Afghanistan shouldn’t surprise anyone.
That seems pretty much the right way to go, does it?
That somebody on HOTAIR is wondering about the deeper meaning seems pretty reasonable as well. There’s too much going on and not all that much information.
This came from Dawn quoting back to the WaPo. That there openly is a CIA presence in Pakistan might have meaning.
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/front-page/19-cia-post-in-karachi-helped-catch-top-guns-of-taliban-020-hh-04
February 20th, 2010 at 5:21 pm