Fox News: Increasing Violence in Pakistan Complicates Obama's War Deliberations
By Fox News Staff
New and increasingly deadly violence in Pakistan threatens to undercut any concessions under consideration toward the Taliban, making it difficult for President Obama to avoid escalating the war in Afghanistan.
Obama is torn between following the advice of his military advisers to deploy at least 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan on top of the 68,000 already there, or to heed the advice of his political advisers, including Vice President Joe Biden, who are urging him to scale back the war effort, consider allowing the Taliban into a political role in Afghanistan’s future and target Al Qaeda in Pakistan.
Complicating the war deliberations is a widening campaign of anti-government violence in Pakistan, which threatens the stability of a nuclear-armed country.
“The two countries are closely tied, the border between the two is porous and certainly there’s cooperation between radicals in both Afghanistan and Pakistan,” said Bernard Finel, a senior fellow at the American Security Project.
“Of course the Afghanistan Taliban is based in Pakistan right now, and that’s part of the reason why we see the spate of attacks,” he told FOX News.
On Thursday, teams of gunmen launched coordinated attacks on three law enforcement facilities in Lahore, Pakistan’s second largest city, and car bombs exploded in two cities near the Afghan border, killing 39 people.
Islamist militants are trying to scuttle a planned offensive into the Taliban heartland near Afghanistan. But President Asif Ali Zardari said the bloodshed that has engulfed Pakistan over the past two weeks would not deter the government from its mission to eliminate the violent extremists.
At the same time, Obama signed a bill Thursday that gives $7 billion in aid to Pakistan over five years, a measure that the nuclear-armed U.S. ally’s military had claimed was an intrusion into the Asian nation’s internal affairs.
The White House said the aid package signed Thursday provides $1.5 billion annually for economic and social programs as the Obama administration works to shore up Pakistan’s return to civilian rule and to encourage it in the fight against Taliban and Al Qaeda militants.
Obama met with his war council Wednesday for the fifth time, and they will meet one more time next week. A decision on how to proceed in Afghanistan is expected shortly after that.
Foreign policy analysts are split on whether Obama should ramp up the war in Afghanistan or focus on a counterterrorism strategy championed by his political advisers, including Biden.
“Personally, my view about this is we shouldn’t be increasing our sizes of forces in Afghanistan, and engaging in significant nation building activity in Afghanistan is probably pointless, that we can refocus more narrowly on counterterrorism,” Finel said.
“But Pakistan is still an open question and I think there are still legitimate concerns about what would happen if Pakistan were to become even less stable and what the implication would be for Pakistan,” he added. “But nonetheless, our ability to influence Pakistan is pretty limited. It’s a very big country, large military, proud population, strong nationalist sentiment and our leverage there is not strong.”
Former Ambassador Ronald Neumann said it’s worthwhile for Obama to review the strategy in Afghanistan but, echoing conservative lawmakers, warned that deliberations could weaken the U.S. position there.
“While we’re doing this, our debate’s causing great worry in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where people tend to see it as a demonstration of lack of will. And this poses a problem,” he said, “because if they’re afraid we’re leaving, any choice that is much less than Gen. McChrystal’s recommendation is going to be seen as the first step on our way out, and hence it will get in the way of anybody believing us or working with us or working with the Afghan government.
“So the debate itself becomes a factor in the decision,” he said.
Neumann dismissed any concerns about sending more troops to support what many say is a corrupt Afghan government.
“The troops are necessary but not sufficient,” he said. “Without the troops, you’re going to lose the war militarily before you can deal with either development and corruption.”
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/15/increasing-violence-pakistan-complicates-obamas-war-deliberations/
