[R-G] US steps up plans for military intervention in Pakistan

[Anthony Fenton]

US steps up plans for military intervention in Pakistan
By Bill Van Auken
20 November 2007

http://wsws.org/articles/2007/nov2007/pak-n20.shtml

In the midst of public statements of support for “democracy” in  
Pakistan and the recent visit to Islamabad by the American envoy John  
Negroponte, Washington is quietly preparing for a stepped-up military  
intervention in the crisis-ridden country.

According to the New York Times Monday, plans have been drawn up by  
the US military’s Special Operations Command for deploying Special  
Forces troops in Pakistan’s frontier regions for the purpose of  
training indigenous militias to combat forces aligned with the  
Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Citing unnamed military officials, the newspaper reports that the  
proposal would “expand the presence of military trainers in Pakistan,  
directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now  
has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight  
Al Qaeda and foreign extremists.”

American military officials familiar with the proposal said that it  
was modeled on the initiative by American occupation forces in Iraq  
to arm and support Sunni militias in Anbar province in a campaign  
against the Al Qaeda in Iraq group there.

According to the Times report, skepticism that the same strategy can  
be adapted to the deteriorating situation in Pakistan centers on “the  
question of whether such partnerships can be forged without a  
significant American military presence in Pakistan.” The newspaper  
adds that “it is unclear whether enough support can be found among  
the tribes.”

While the Pentagon admits to only about 50 US troops currently  
stationed in Pakistan as “advisors” to the Pakistani armed forces,  
that number would swell substantially under the proposed escalation.  
The Times cites a briefing prepared by the Special Operations Command  
that claims the beefed-up US forces would not be engaged in  
“conventional combat” in Pakistan. It quotes unnamed military  
officials as acknowledging, however, that they “might be involved in  
strikes against senior militant leaders, under specific conditions.”

In other words, American Special Forces units would be used to carry  
out targeted assassinations and attacks on strongholds of Islamist  
forces.

In addition to the plan to recruit and train new paramilitary  
militias in the frontier region, Washington has developed a $350  
million program to train and equip the existing 85,000-member  
Frontier Corps, a uniformed force recruited from among tribes in the  
Pakistan border region.

There is also considerable skepticism about the prospects for this  
program. “The training of the Frontier Corps remains a concern for  
some,” the Times reports: “NATO and American soldiers in Afghanistan  
have often blamed the Frontier Corps for aiding and abetting Taliban  
insurgents mounting cross-border attacks. ‘It’s going to take years  
to turn them into a professional force,’ said one Western military  
official. ‘Is it worth it now?’”

There are growing concerns in Washington that the martial law regime  
imposed by the Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, at the  
beginning of this month might unleash revolutionary convulsions that  
could topple the military regime, which has served as a lynchpin for  
American interests in the region.

The Bush administration has repeatedly demanded that Musharraf take  
action against Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in the areas bordering  
Afghanistan. Residents on both sides of the border are ethnic  
Pashtuns. The latest US National Intelligence Estimate released last  
July charged that Al Qaeda had reestablished “safe havens” in  
Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

Taliban-aligned forces have been able to extend their influence from  
the Waziristan region along the Afghan border further into Pakistan,  
establishing control to the north over a large portion of the Swat  
valley in the North West Frontier Province.

According to press reports, over 1,000 civilians, members of the  
security forces and Islamist fighters have been killed in fighting in  
the region over the past five months.

Senior Pakistani military officials announced over the weekend that  
the army had massed nearly 20,000 troops backed by tanks and  
artillery for a major offensive in the Swat district aimed at  
wresting control from militias loyal to Mullah Maulana Fazlullah, a  
pro-Taliban cleric.

Such offensives have proven ineffectual in the past, however, in no  
small part due to the support that the Islamists enjoy within  
influential sections of the Pakistani military and intelligence  
apparatus, a relationship that was solidified during the CIA-backed  
war against the Soviet-supported regime in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

These forces have also gained strength as a result of popular  
hostility to the slaughter unleashed by the US occupation in  
neighboring Afghanistan, combined with resentment over the poverty  
and social inequality produced by the economic policies of the  
Pakistani regime.

A clear indication of the depths of concern in Washington over the  
unraveling of its client regime in Pakistan came Sunday in the form  
of an op-ed piece published by the New York Times under the bylines  
of Fred Kagan and Michael O’Hanlon. Kagan, a member of the right-wing  
American Enterprise Institute, is a longstanding supporter of the US  
war in Iraq and was a signatory of the Project for a New American  
Century letter in 2001 demanding that the Bush administration invade  
the country in response to 9/11. He drafted a document that served as  
a blueprint for the recent “surge” that sent 35,000 more US troops  
into Iraq.

O’Hanlon, a member of the supposedly more liberal and Democratic- 
oriented Brookings Institute, has also emerged as a prominent  
supporter of the “surge” in Iraq and last April co-authored a paper  
with Kagan setting out a “grand strategy” for US imperialism. This  
envisioned a war against Iran as well as interventions in North  
Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The document urged  
“finding the resources to field a large-enough standing Army and  
Marine Corps to handle personnel-intensive missions.”

The Times piece, entitled “Pakistan’s Collapse, Our Problem,”  
advocates the immediate consideration of “feasible military options  
in Pakistan.”

It states: “The most likely possible dangers are these: a complete  
collapse of Pakistani government rule that allows an extreme Islamist  
movement to fill the vacuum; a total loss of federal control over the  
outlying provinces, which splinter along ethnic and tribal lines; or  
a struggle within the Pakistani military in which the minority  
sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda try to establish Pakistan as  
a state sponsor of terrorism.”

The article cautions against complacency that the Pakistani military  
command and the country’s ruling elite will manage to maintain  
stability. “Americans felt similarly about the shah’s regime in Iran  
until it was too late,” it warns.

The two military analysts lay out alternate “scenarios” for US  
interventions. The first, consisting of a full-scale intervention and  
occupation, would, they say, require more than a million troops,  
making it politically and militarily unfeasible.

Instead, they suggest a possible Special Forces operation aimed at  
seizing control of Pakistani warheads and nuclear materials.

They put forward an additional “broader option” that would involve  
the deployment of “a sizable combat force” with the mission of  
propping up the Pakistani military and waging war on the pro-Taliban  
forces in the border regions.

“So, if we got a large number of troops into the country, what would  
they do?” the article asks. “The most likely directive would be to  
help Pakistan’s military and security forces hold the country’s center 
—primarily the region around the capital, Islamabad, and the populous  
areas like Punjab Province to its south.”

It adds: “If a holding operation in the nation’s center was  
successful, we would probably then seek to establish order in the  
parts of Pakistan where extremists operate. Beyond propping up the  
state, this would benefit American efforts in Afghanistan by  
depriving terrorists of the sanctuaries they have enjoyed in  
Pakistan’s tribal and frontier regions.”

Whatever limited lip service the US State Department gives to the  
call for ending the martial law regime imposed by Musharraf in  
Pakistan, the real aims and methods of the American ruling  
establishment—Democratic and Republican alike—emerge clearly in the  
Kagan-O’Hanlon article.

What is now being seriously contemplated is yet another colonial- 
style war in a region that stretches across the Middle East and  
Central and South Asia, from Iraq to Pakistan, with the objective of  
salvaging, with or without Musharraf, the Pakistani military—the  
corrupt and repressive instrument with which Washington has been  
aligned for decades.

The crisis in Pakistan is symptomatic of the ever-widening  
instability created by the two wars—in Afghanistan and Iraq—which  
Washington has waged to tighten the US grip over the region’s energy  
resources.

Now, with open and simultaneous discussions of possible military  
interventions in Iran and Pakistan, what is emerging is the growing  
threat of a global military conflagration.