In the Arena
Uncategorized

PakAf

By Joe Klein | @JoeKleinTIME | April 14, 2009 | +

Time to reverse the shorthand, I think. Pakistan is seeming more and more a mess. Two reports today. This one, in the New York Times, is particularly scary: the Taliban and assorted Punjabi militants are making common cause, which presents a real threat to the Pakistani heartland. Also, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Taliban are consolidating their hold on Swat, turning it into a major base of operations.

Once again, there is no kinetic, bang-bang answer to this problem for the US and the rest of the world. It is up to the Pakistanis, especially the military, to decide how and, I suppose, whether to confront this threat. The most immediate  potential consequence has more to do with India than with Afghanistan: the more Pakistan becomes a safe haven for jihadis, the more likely it is that India will be attacked again–and the more likely that India will be forced to respond militarily. Very scary, all around.

Related Topics: Uncategorized

  • Latest on Swampland

    2012 Election May 25, 2012

    Obama Stumbles? Why the President’s Right to Talk About Bain

    The meme of the day in journo-world is that President Obama has stumbled at the outset of the general election campaign. The evidence for this? Well, uh, there isn’t very much, really–except that a few Democrats have criticized his campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital and that Obama’s fundraising is merely humongous, instead of obscenely humongous. The two phenomena are linked, of course: Obama isn’t getting the usual haul from Wall Street because he has outrageously–outrageously!–tried to regulate the bankers who did so much to crash the economy in 2008. The handful of Democrats squawking are people who either (a) get money from private equity firms or (b) have retired and joined Mondo Casino. But there is another side to this story:

    From our Partners

    Lewis Eisenberg, Major Romney Donor, Accuses Obama Of Demonizing Wall StreetHuffPost Politics

    Must Reads May 25, 2012

    Morning Must Reads: Haunted

  • http://smoothlikeremy.blogspot.com/ sgwhiteinfla

    Not that it would happen but if Swat Valley could be made to look like an inviting place to terrorists wouldn’t bombing it end up being like shooting fish in a barrel? Instead of hunting them we just wait for them to all settle in inside Swat and then take them all off the map. I know thats not a pc view of what we should do but if it happened I personally wouldn’t shed a tear.

  • stuartzechman

    Joe Klein:
    .
    So why include the “Af” at all?

  • Cliff

    Again, Joe Klein, any thoughts on this piece by Juan Cole:
    .
    http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/03/30/afghanistan/index.html
    .

    As for a threat to Pakistan, the FATA areas are smaller than Connecticut, with a total population of a little over 3 million, while Pakistan itself is bigger than Texas, with a population more than half that of the entire United States. A few thousand Pashtun tribesmen cannot take over Pakistan, nor can they “kill” it. The Pakistani public just forced a military dictator out of office and forced the reinstatement of the Supreme Court, which oversees secular law. Over three-quarters of Pakistanis said in a poll last summer that they had an unfavorable view of the Taliban, and a recent poll found that 90 percent of them worried about terrorism. To be sure, Pakistanis are on the whole highly opposed to the U.S. military presence in the region, and most outside the tribal areas object to U.S. Predator drone strikes on Pakistani territory. The danger is that the U.S. strikes may make the radicals seem victims of Western imperialism and so sympathetic to the Pakistani public.

    .
    It seems to contradict the alarms being raised about AfPak. How do I resolve this dichotomy?

blog comments powered by Disqus