What To Do Next In Pakistan

What To Do Next In Pakistan

I can't believe that this is being leaked to reporters out of anything but a calculated effort to either prepare public opinion here for it, or to warn Musharraf that it is time to roll the dice--while he still has some dice to roll. From the January 6, 2008 New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.
Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections.
Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made, said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the highly delicate nature of the discussions.
Many of the specific options under discussion are unclear and highly classified. Officials said that the options would probably involve the C.I.A. working with the military’s Special Operations forces.
The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf. Early in his career, General Kayani was an aide to Ms. Bhutto while she was prime minister and later led the Pakistani intelligence service.
But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country. “After years of focusing on Afghanistan, we think the extremists now see a chance for the big prize — creating chaos in Pakistan itself,” one senior official said.

Part of what has made Pakistan a rather peculiar ally is that while Musharraf got on board after 9/11 with our concerns, there are substantial factions of the Pakistani intelligence services and military that are either sympathetic to, or actively supportive of al-Qaeda. Musharraf, understandably, was afraid to push too hard in trying to crush al-Qaeda operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghani border--areas that the central government doesn't really control. Push too hard, and al-Qaeda might successfully overthrow Musharraf, and gain control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, with enormously destructive results.

But it would appear that al-Qaeda may be reaching the point where Musharraf has nothing to do lose by pushing harder in the tribal areas, and allowing us to engage in operations against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan. Of course, that risks pushing neutrals within Pakistan into the al-Qaeda camp. This could get really ugly. But an al-Qaeda dominated Pakistani government would require us to either destroy their nuclear arsenal (which almost certainly can't be done in a subtle and bloodless way) or risk having them arrive in the U.S. via shipping containers.