[Peace-discuss] The Realist/Democrat war in AfPak

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Patrick Cockburn: The US strategy for Afghanistan won't work
	Covert operations only succeed when they have
	strong local allies who want outside support
	Monday, 15 September 2008
	Independent.co.uk Web

"Covert action is frequently a substitute for policy," was an aphorism first 
coined by the former director of the CIA Richard Helms. Its truth is exemplified 
by the decision of President Bush in July to secretly give orders that US 
special forces will in future carry out raids against ground targets inside 
Pakistan, without getting the approval of the Pakistani government.

Mr Bush's order is fraught with peril for the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan. 
In one respect, it is a recognition at long last by Mr Bush that the Taliban and 
their al-Qa'ida allies could not stay in business without the backing of 
Pakistan. This is hardly surprising, since it was Pakistani military 
intelligence which largely created them in the first place.

It was always absurd for the White House and the Pentagon to pour praise on the 
former Pakistani leader General Pervez Musharraf as their greater ally against 
terrorism, despite the clearest evidence that it was the Pakistani army which 
has been keeping the Taliban going since 2001.

True to Helms's nostrum, Mr Bush has not adopted a new policy, but is resorting 
to covert operations, the political disadvantages of which are obvious, and 
military benefits dubious. A good example of this is the first of these 
operations undertaken under the new dispensation. On 3 September, two dozen US 
Navy Seals were helicoptered in to South Waziristan in Pakistan, where they 
attacked a compound, aided by an AC-130 gunship. When they retreated, they said 
they had killed many al-Qa'ida fighters, though a senior Pakistani official 
later said that the true casualty figures were four Taliban and al-Qa'ida "foot 
soldiers" and 16 civilians, including women and children.

It is a curious way to usher in democracy in Pakistan. Once Pakistan emerges 
from its preoccupation with the Ramadan fast, it will create nothing but anger 
among Pakistanis. It will alienate the Pakistani army, which has been humiliated 
and disregarded. Politically, it only makes sense in terms of American politics, 
where it will be seen as a sign that the administration is doing something in 
Afghanistan. It also diverts attention from embarrassing questions about why the 
Taliban is such a potent force seven years after it had supposedly been 
destroyed in 2001.

Use of covert forces to achieve political ends with limited means has always 
held a fatal attraction for political leaders. CIA officials have become used to 
being dumped with insoluble problems, with peremptory orders to "Get rid of 
Khomeini" or "Eliminate Saddam." Plots to do just that are the common theme of a 
thousand Hollywood movies, which revolve around the dispatch of elite forces 
into enemy territory, where they successfully dispatch some local demon.

In reality, covert warfare seldom works. Up-to-date intelligence is hard to come 
by. Take, for instance, the repeated claims by the US Air Force that it had 
killed Saddam Hussein during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. This was meant 
to be based on up-to-the minute information, much of which turned out to be 
spurious. Of course Saddam had survived, though not the poor civilians who had 
the ill luck to live or work where the Iraqi leader was meant to be.

The media plays a particularly nasty role in all of this. Stories of the 
attempts to kill Saddam Hussein were given maximum publicity. Their total 
failure was hardly mentioned. The reaction of the Pentagon to the killing of 
large numbers of civilians in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Pakistan has 
traditionally been first to deny that it ever happened. The denial is based on 
the old public relations principle that "first you say something is no news and 
didn't happen. When it is proved some time late, that it did happen, you yawn 
and say it is old news."

For some reason, the Israelis have a reputation for being good at undercover 
operations. This is hardly difficult in Gaza, where the enemy is so puny and 
vulnerable. But while I was stationed in Jerusalem for this newspaper, Israeli 
intelligence was involved in a series of ludicrous fiascos. My favourite was 
when the chief Mossad agent in Syria turned out not to exist, though his Israeli 
handler happily pocketed several million dollars that the spy was supposedly 
receiving for his treachery. The handler concocted the agent's reports and one 
of these, falsely claiming that Syria was plotting a surprise military 
offensive, even managed to get the Israeli army mobilised.

Israel also provides a classic example of a covert operation that will produce 
limited gains if it is successful, and a diplomatic disaster if it does not. In 
September 1997, two Mossad agents carrying forged Canadian passports tried to 
assassinate Khaled Mashal, a Jordanian citizen, in the centre of the capital 
Amman. He was the head of the political bureau of Hamas in Jordan. The ingenious 
method of assassination was to inject a slow-acting poison into his ear as he 
entered his office. In the event, the would-be poisoner was captured after a 
chase through the streets of Amman. Four other agents took refuge in the Israeli 
embassy.

The mission had been given the go-ahead by the Israeli prime minister of the 
day, Benjamin Netanyahu, who had simply ignored the idea that it might go wrong. 
King Hussein was reduced to threatening to storm the Israeli embassy unless 
Israel handed over an antidote to the poison. Israel was forced to release 
Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, the head of Hamas, and other Palestinian prisoners from jail.

Covert operations only really succeed when they have strong local allies who 
want outside support. There are two recent outstanding examples of this. In 
Afghanistan in 2001, US special forces reinforced the anti-Taliban Northern 
Alliance and, most importantly, gave them forward air controllers who could call 
in air strikes. Two years later, US special forces played a similar role in 
northern Iraq, when they provided air support to Kurdish troops attacking 
Saddam's retreating army.

But if covert forces are acting alone, they are very vulnerable. What will 
happen to them in Pakistan if they get in a fire fight with regular Pakistani 
forces? What will they do if they are ambushed by local tribesmen allied to the 
Taliban? Usually, the first to flee in these circumstances are the local civil 
authorities and the civilian population, so the Taliban will be even more in 
control than they were before.

Helms's dictum was right. The Bush administration got itself into a no-win 
situation in Afghanistan. "The US attack on Iraq," writes the Pakistani expert 
Ahmed Rashid, in his newly-published Descent into Chaos, "was critical to 
convincing Musharraf that the United States was not serious about stabilising 
the region, and that it was safer for Pakistan to preserve its own national 
interest by clandestinely giving the Taliban refuge."

The covert action in Pakistan is merely an attempt to divert attention from the 
consequences of this bankrupt American policy.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/patrick-cockburn-the-us-strategy-for-afghanistan-wont-work-930874.html