The Progress Report wrote:
Swat Valley near Islamabad
No Longer A Forgotten War
From: The Progress Report [progress@americanprogressaction.org]
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2009 9:43 AM
To: tomc2322
Subject: No Longer A Forgotten War
COMPREHENSIVE APPROACH: The deployment of these additional troops is part of Obama’s commitment to make Afghanistan “the center of our global counterinsurgency campaign.” Part of this strategy requires building, training, and equipping the Afghan National Army. The new troops authorized by Obama will have a “dual mission” to “help double the size of the Afghan Army to 134,000 by the end of 2011 and provide security in Afghan communities, which increasingly are falling under Taliban control.” Accompanying Obama’s troop surge should be a corresponding civilian surge; McKiernan has already “pressed for more help from civilian agencies, both within the U.S. government and from other countries.” As the Center for American Progress has written, actions in Afghanistan also have an impact on Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons and a far larger population. Obama has recognized this fact and appointed Richard Holbrooke to be the Special Envoy to both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has acknowledged that “no improvement in Afghanistan is possible without Pakistan taking control of its border areas and improving governance.” This week, the Pakistani government made a concession to local Taliban leaders and agreed to enforce strict religious law in the Swat Valley, a resort near the Afghan border that was once known as the “Switzerland of Pakistan.” After being ousted from Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban has rebuilt strength in Pakistan; this recent Swat deal is similar to the ones struck in 2004, 2006, 2008, which ended up creating greater safe havens. Additionally, U.S. missile strikes on suspected al Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan have been extraordinarily effective in “tracking and killing high-value terrorist suspects,” but they have “not helped to prevent the spread of jihadist sympathies in the tribal regions and beyond, nor has it slowed the stream of militants and material into Afghanistan,” national security analyst Micah Zenko notes. “In fact, according to Pakistani intelligence reports, refugees from Afghanistan have flocked to the Taliban by the hundreds to avenge the drones’ killings of innocent civilians.”
Swat Valley, "Switzerland of Pakistan"
This is the approach that should have been used in Iraq as I have said all along. Rumsfeld and the rest of the neo-nutjobs could not have been more stupid if they had tried. A very large civilian agency “push package” should have been ready to land in Iraq and begin operations in the secure Green Zone. Representatives from various vital agencies should have been activated to man the day by day operations of an interim government in Iraq. Civilian agencies in Afghanistan is also a must. This will relieve the military of a mission that they are not trained to do.
Women under sharia law must hide their faces
Everyone must remember that the area of the Swat Valley in question is not along the Afghanistan/Pakistan border, but much deeper into Pakistan, near Islamabad. The Taliban is taking over the region and that can’t be good news. The problem I have with concessions to
the Taliban by the Pakistani government involves the treatment of the women, to whom this is clearly pointed. When Muslims speak of strict sharia law, they speak of “decency police” and rules on women that take them back to the stone age. Pakistan is once again placating the Taliban. It is compounding our efforts in Afghanistan to form a solid government.
When Afghan civilians are flocking to the Taliban by the hundreds we are not winning hearts and minds. Diplomacy with the Taliban is critical.
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