PAKISTAN – AN INCONSTANT MOON
(….in a dysfunctional alliance)

American and Pakistani relations since the start of the Afghan War have been “scratchy” at best. Now, they’re as mutually uncomfortable as a jointly shared dose of poison ivy.
From the very beginning of that war both we and the Pakistanis have been working at crossed purposes with the result that Pakistan has been an inconstant moon….in a dysfunctional alliance.

The reason for such a situation is due to two radically different perspectives of what the end result of our operations in Afghanistan should be. For us, after charging into the country after 9/11 in our usual American mission-oriented mode, our purpose was to clobber the hostiles involved with that event, to then help the locals rebuild their country into some sort of peaceable and stable society, and then go home.

The Pakistanis, on the other hand, because of their paranoid views about India, particularly among its military upper echelons, and especially among the hierarchs of its ISI intelligence apparatus, have had absolutely no desire or intention to have Afghanistan become a peaceable and stable society, for fear India would then have much greater influence there, and thus Pakistan would be surrounded.

So it’s that paranoid perspective about India that has made it seesaw from one extreme of close co-operation and alliance with us, to outright double-dealing against us with both the Taliban and al Qaeda. And to this turgid stew of conflicting motives and chaotic internal politics, there lurks two over-riding monsters. That is, an uncertainty about the security of its nuclear weaponry and related materials; and, the strongly entrenched Haqqani opium empire, vertically integrated from poppy cultivation, to heroin processing, to international distribution of its product. Thus, much like other such drug cartels, it carefully corrupts large swaths of Pakistani officialdom, to maintain its position, while engaging in vicious attack and slaughter on anything and anyone it considers hostile to its interests.

The recent incident along the border area where 24 Iraqi soldiers died from drone and aircraft strikes, suggests it was a Haqqani initiated rather than a Taliban fire-fight related deal against our NATO forces involved. Hence the extreme reaction to that incident by the Pakistani government.

The irony here, of course, is that it is extremely dependent upon us for both economic and military assistance. Without these, its government would be even more impotent than it is now, to control those tribal areas where our declared mutual enemies hide out and roam freely to launch their cross-border attacks on our forces there.

Perhaps it’s time, given our planned “exit” schedule from Afghanistan, that we bluntly tell our erstwhile Pakistani allies….if you want our help vis a vis India, quit playing games with us. And in the process, let them be reminded that collateral damages occurring from our drone attacks are usually a case of –oops!- brought about by faulty intelligence on target data….rather than lousy marksmanship.

CENTURION