Is
The US Preparing
To Attack Pakistan?
By Eric Margolis
26 July, 2007
Ericmargolis.com
The
Bush Administration may be preparing to lash out at old ally Pakistan,
which Washington now blames for its humiliating failures to crush al-Qaida,
capture its elusive leaders, or defeat Taliban resistance forces in
Afghanistan.
One is immediately reminded
of the Vietnam War when the Pentagon, unable to defeat North Vietnamese
Army and Viet Cong forces, urged invasion of Cambodia.
Sources in Washington say
the Pentagon is drawing up plans to attack Pakistan’s "autonomous"
tribal region bordering Afghanistan. Limited "hot pursuit"
ground incursions by US forces based in Afghanistan, intensive air attacks,
and special forces raids into Pakistan’s autonomous tribal region
are being evaluated.
This weekend, the US national
intelligence chief and other intelligence spokesmen confirmed that strikes
against "terrorist targets" in Pakistan’s tribal belt
are increasingly possible. These warnings were designed to both further
pressure Pakistan’s beleaguered strongman, President Pervez Musharraf
into sending more troops to the tribal areas to fight his own people,
and to prepare US public opinion for a possible widening of the Afghanistan
war into Pakistan.
Pakistan’s 27,200 sq
km tribal belt, officially known as the Federal Autonomous Tribal Area,
or FATA, is home to 3.3 million Pashtun tribesmen. It has become a safe
haven for al-Qaida, Taliban, other Afghan resistance groups, and a hotbed
of anti-American activity, thanks mostly to the US-led occupation of
Afghanistan which drove many militants across the border into Pakistan.
Osama bin Laden is very likely sheltered in this region, as US intelligence
claims.
I spent a remarkable time
in this wild, medieval region during the 1980’s and 90’s,
traveling alone where even Pakistani government officials dared not
go, visiting the tribes of Waziristan, Orakzai, Khyber, Chitral, and
Kurram, and meeting their chiefs, called "maliks."
These tribal belts are always
referred to as "lawless." Pashtun tribesmen could shoot you
if they didn’t like your looks. Rudyard Kipling warned British
Imperial soldiers over a century ago, when fighting cruel, ferocious
Pashtun warriors of the Afridi clan, if they fell wounded, "save
your last bullet for yourself."
But there is law: the traditional
Pashtun tribal code, Pashtunwali, that strictly governs behavior and
personal honor. Protecting guests was sacred. I was captivated by this
majestic mountain region and wrote of it extensively in my book, "War
at the Top of the World."
The 40 million Pashtun –
called "Pathan" by the British – are the world’s
largest tribal group. Imperial Britain divided them by an artificial
border, the Durand Line, which went on to become, like so many other
British colonial boundaries, today’s Afghanistan-Pakistan border.
When Pakistan was created in 1947, the Pashtun were split between that
new nation and Afghanistan.
Pakistan’s Pashtun
number 28–30 million, plus an additional 2.5 million refugees
from Afghanistan. Pashtuns, one of the British Indian Army’s famed
"martial races," occupy many senior positions in Pakistan’s
military, intelligence service and bureaucracy, and naturally have much
sympathy for their embattled tribal cousins in Afghanistan. The 15 million
Pashtun of Afghanistan form that nation’s largest ethnic group
and just under half the population.
The tribal agency’s
Pashtun reluctantly joined newly-created Pakistan in 1947 under express
constitutional guarantee of total autonomy and a ban on Pakistani troops
ever entering there.
But under intense US pressure,
President Pervez Musharraf violated Pakistan’s constitution by
sending 80,000 federal troops to fight the region’s tribes, killing
3,000 of them. In best British imperial tradition, Washington pays Musharraf
$100 million monthly to rent his sepoys (native soldiers) to fight Pashtun
tribesmen. As a result, Pakistan is fast edging towards civil war, as
the bloody siege of Islamabad’s Red Mosque and a current wave
of bombings across the nation show.
The anti-Communist Taliban
movement is part of the Pashtun people. Taliban fighters move across
the artificial Pakistan-Afghanistan border, to borrow a Maoism, like
fish through the sea. Osama bin Laden is a hero in the region, and likely
shelters there.
The US just increased its
reward for bin Laden to $50 million and plans to shower $750 million
on the tribal region in an effort to buy loyalty. Bush/Cheney &
Co. do not understand that while they can rent President Musharraf’s
government in Islamabad, many Pashtun value personal honor far more
than money, and cannot be bought. That is likely why bin Laden has not
yet been betrayed.
Any US attack on Pakistan
would be a catastrophic mistake. First, air and ground assaults will
succeed only in widening the anti-US war and merging it with Afghanistan’s
resistance to western occupation. US forces are already too over-stretched
to get involved in yet another little war.
Second, Pakistan’s
army officers who refuse to be bought may resist a US attack on their
homeland, and overthrow the man who allowed it, Gen. Musharraf. A US
attack would sharply raise the threat of anti-US extremists seizing
control of strategic Pakistan and marginalize those seeking return to
democratic government.
Third, a US attack on the
tribal areas could re-ignite the old irredentist movement to reunite
Pashtun parts of Pakistan and Afghanistan into an independent state,
"Pashtunistan." That could begin unraveling fragile Pakistan,
leaving its nuclear arsenal up for grabs, and India tempted to intervene.
The US military has grown
used to attacking small, weak nations like Grenada, Panama, and Iraq.
Pakistan, with 163 million people, and a poorly equipped but very tough
550,000-man army, will offer no easy victories. Those Bush Administration
officials who foolishly advocate attacking Pakistan are playing with
fire.
Eric Margolis,
contributing foreign editor for Sun National Media Canada, is the author
of War at the Top of the World. Visit his website http://www.ericmargolis.com/
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