A FOCUS ON PAKISTAN

With Iraq locked-into a feudal patchwork adorned by a hollow government, al Qaeda's role as a catalyst (or foco) for disorder is over. It outlived its usefulness, although it will quickly return to support the status quo the moment it is threatened by open civil war or an American change of heart re: the local militias it currently supports. This isn't, as some wrongly assume:

• A victory over a networked insurgency. In fact, just the opposite. The only US "success" in the "surge" was to accept the regional dominance of the open source insurgency and rebrand them as "legitimate" militias.
• A political victory over al Qaeda's political goals. Al Qaeda isn't a classic 4GW insurgency (Maoist) aimed at state replacement. It has the neither power, aspirations, nor the organization to propose a political replacement for the central state. All it does offer is the loose feudalism of an imagined Caliphate. A hollow state is a sufficient milestone, which is exactly what we have in Iraq.
• Acceptance of the US presence in Iraq. The current arrangement between Iraq's insurgency and the US military is one of convenience. It is in no way an acceptance of a long term US presence in the country. When this relationship sours, which is inevitable (which may occur at the most inopportune time), blood will flow again, and a chastened al Qaeda will return in a supportive role to aid local groups.

Onto Pakistan

Al Qaeda's departure from Iraq frees it up for a new focus on Pakistan, where it will:

• Extend the reach of the Taliban supported tribal revolt in the northwest territories into the major cities.
• Hit social and infrastructure systempunkts (critical nodes), as demonstrated by the attempted assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The intent of these attacks will be to create cascades of disorder that sweep the country.
• Manufacture a plausible promise (a compelling act that demonstrates the viability of further warfare) of an open source insurgency that will cobble together hundreds of violent groups unearthed through waves of disruption.

Ripe for Disorder

Pakistan is ripe for disorder due to an ongoing crisis of legitimacy. This is in no small part fostered by US attempts at brokering political change in the country and pressure on the military to confront with tribes in the northwest areas. In this environment, waves of disorder caused by al Qaeda and their allies will find fertile ground. Instead of uniting the country in broad opposition, it will divide it and foster the development of an open source insurgency that hollows out the state.

Comments

[NietzschesGhost]

I've been worried about Pakistan for a long time. While everyone is looking at Iran and it's alleged nuclear weapons programme, they have failed to notice the very real threat of a collapsed Pakistan - A country that already has nuclear weapons, the delivery systems to deploy them, and the scientists to replicate them. How many attempts have there been on Musharraf's life now? 4?

It was only a matter of time before *somebody* turned an eye toward Pakistan. Frankly, I'm surprised it took this long.

[Mikyo]

"I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But, i DO say, no more than ten to twenty million killed, TOPS. Uhhhh, depending on the breaks."

[Shaunak]

Pakistan has always been an unnatural state, forcibly cobbled up for political reasons. There is absolutely nothing in common between the Sindhis, the Baloch, the Punjabis and the Tribals from the North West Frontier, except for Islam.

Since its formation, the nation has been struggling to remain cohesive. The polity is almost entirely dominated by Punjabis, as is the Army which is the real power centre in Pakistan.

To retain its cohesiveness, it has always needed external threats to rally a largish segment of its population and to keep the radicals busy killing someone else. Notice its conflict with India which began in 1947 and continues unabated.

Pakistan tried to project itself as the bulwark of Islam against "anti-Islamic" forces. That led to a mini migration of sorts, with radical islamists from all over converging at Pakistan for training.

Unfortunately, controlling so many has now become nearly impossible for the Army. Compounding the situation is the fact that the US is leaning heavily on the leadership. The Pakistani Army has, for a few years now, displayed a split personality, overtly supporting the US but covertly protecting the radicals.

Now it seems things have come full circle. There is only so long you can stare into the Abyss before the Abyss begins staring back into you.

[Nils Gilman]

John, is your sense that AQ has 4GW ambitions in Pakistan -- that is, do they seek to take over the Pakistani state? I am not sure the answer is no -- they may want those nukes.

But if the answer is no, that all they seek is a weakened state within which they can operate more or less at will, at the nerve-center of the virtual Global Caliphate, then, in a sense, AQ has already won the GWOT. That is, the virtual caliphate has, in effect, already been instantiated, with nodes across the world from Waziristan to Anbar to Hamburg to London. Of course, the jihad will never end until all men's hearts are pure...

[Cody]

"With Iraq locked-into a feudal patchwork

"the loose feudalism of an imagined Caliphate"

wow, I thought feudalism died with the middle ages, but this totally makes sense. Are there any peasants? (seriously)

[adam]

Cody,

The Caliphate is a complicated issue (depending on whether you're Sunni or not). If you're Shi'ite it doesn't really apply, although there was a Shi'ite Fatamid caliphate in North Africa / Egypt.

At some points in history the Caliph (meaning, sort of, Successor or Representative - to the Prophet) was both a national and a spiritual leader (one other translation is Commander of the Faithful, or even Leader of the Knights of Islam, in much the same way as the President is Commander in Chief, or a Duke is simply another word for "Commander"). In the Koran the Caliph has certain additional powers over declaring a jihad (offensive or defensive) compared to the average Muslim, after all, he's meant to be the man in charge of defending Islam from all enemies, foreign or domestic.

Bin Laden, who is emphatic that he is not a Caliph, relies on an exceptional case for his defensive jihad, where Islam is under attack, but no Caliphate exists which means that each individual Muslim is required to fight the invaders in his own way. The classical example of this action is of course Saladin, a minor regional commander who, without orders (despite there being a Caliph), launched a counter-offensive against the Crusaders, ultimately annihilating the invaders at Hattin. To be honest people write PhD's about this, so to save everyone's time I'd point to the highly readable Johnson, Jihad and Just War, First Things: A Journal of Religion and Public Life, June 2002.

http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=2034&var_recherche=%22jihad+and+just+war%22

Anyway back to the Caliph. As with most religious movements over time (around 900AD to 1258) there was a steady separation of religion and state, with civil rulers such as the Seljuks running the state leaving the caliphs with a largely unimportant spiritual dimension. The Mongols ended the caliphate in 1258 during their invasion of Baghdad (note that in 2004 the US deployed Mongol troops in Baghdad... the first time that known Mongols had been allowed back into the city without being dragged through the streets and tortured to death for over half a millennium. The US really are quite clueless). Following this debacle any number of states declared that they were The Caliphate over the next few centuries the title held very little water.

The Caliphate remained in remission until 1880 when the Ottoman sultans attempted to revive it as part of their Imperial grandeur / attempt to hold off European colonialism. Turks accepted it, people under their rule lived with it. This title was eliminated in 1924 when the Turkish Army secularised Turkey. Please note that the Turks have always held the right to reinstate the Caliphate as part of their national identity. Its gone, but not forgotten, we'll know that things have gone completely pear-shaped in the Middle East if the Turks start the Caliphate up and look to the Middle East, not Europe for their future development. If this happens it'll be interesting to watch, preferably from Mars.

From 1924 onwards the Caliphate remained the obsession of non-ruling religious fundamentalists. Its a key part of Sunni theology and is often treated as a key sign of the failure of Islam against the West that there isn't a Caliphate with a central leader. To be fair the loss of Turkey as the central driving force of Islam has allowed the West to divide and rule in the Middle East, so there's a certain point to what they say. Its becoming increasingly a talking point in the Middle East that there is a need for a Caliphate, but its unlikely to come soon - perhaps another 50 years - and the new Caliph will be the one to overthrow the Western forces in the Middle East (including the pro-US governments of Jordan, Saudi and Egypt) and creating a new era of freedom. Your mileage may vary on that last bit.

As for peasants: yes. Pakistan has rather a lot of them and they can be both Muslim and Christian. They were recently agitating for ownership of the land that they have farmed on the military dicatorships army bases for the last four generations or so. The British set the farms up for the British army, with the workers being tenants (with attendant rights). In the last few years their rights have been under attack - the Pakistani government, just after the coup in 1999, declared that the Peasants were in fact contractors, not tenants, and that their contracts could now be cancelled at any time. Oddly enough this would give the military the land that the peasants use.

Naturally the peasants went, well, ape-shit. They refused to give the military their rent. The flashpoint was when some military police were refused a load of fire wood they wanted; the MPs went in and fired some warning shots - "accidentally" hitting some of the local kids. The upshot is that a small guerilla war - mostly based on passive resistance - broke out, which ended when the peasants party won every seat in the local elections.

[Cody]

Thanks, adam, those peasants remind me of Southeastern US sharecroppers during the Reconstruction era. (after the civil war)

[Barry]

"Pakistan has always been an unnatural state, forcibly cobbled up for political reasons. "

I guess that this will be one of those recurring themes, each time that the neoconment wish to launch a new war:

'___________ has always been an unnatural state....'