The Afghanistan- Pakistan Theater

161 Pages·2010·1.6 MB·English

The Afghanistan-
Pakistan Theater
Militant islaM, security & stability
EditEd By
daveed Gartenstein-Ross
& Clifford d. May
FDD PRESS
A division of the
FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2010 by FDD Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
First Edition
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book,
write to: [email protected], or Permissions, FDD Press, P.O. Box 33249,
Washington, D.C. 20033
ISBN: 978-0-981-97123-0
Joshua T. White’s chapter “Pakistan’s Islamist Frontier: Islamic Politics and U.S. Policy in
Pakistan’s North-West Frontier” is adapted from his 2008 monograph of the same title,
with permission of the publisher. © 2008 by the Center on Faith & International Affairs
at the Institute for Global Engagement.
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross’s chapter “Religious Militancy in Pakistan’s Military and Inter-
Services Intelligence Agency” is adapted from his article “Fixing Our Pakistan Problem”
in the Spring 2009 issue of the Journal of International Security Affairs, with permission
of the publisher. © 2009 by JINSA.
Cover art: Michal Baranski / Shutterstock
Cover design: Spark Design / www.sparkdesign.net
Also by the Authors
Edited by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Clifford D. May
From Energy Crisis to Energy Security (FDD Press 2008)
By Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
My Year Inside Radical Islam
(Tarcher/Penguin 2007)
Homegrown Terrorists in the U.S. and U.K.:
An Empirical Examination of the Radicalization Process
(FDD Press 2009, with Laura Grossman)
Terrorism in the West 2008
(FDD Press 2009, with Joshua D. Goodman & Laura Grossman)

tAble of Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross 1
1 An Assessment of Pakistan’s Peace Agreements
with Militants in Waziristan (2004-2008) 7
Hassan Abbas
2 Pakistan’s Security and the Civil-Military Nexus 18
Shuja Nawaz
3 Religious Militancy in Pakistan’s Military and
Inter-Services Intelligence Agency 29
Daveed Gartenstein-Ross
4 Pakistan’s Islamist Frontier: Islamic Politics and
U.S. Policy in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier 41
Joshua T. White
5 Afghanistan’s Flawed Elections: Implications for the Insurgency 75
C. Christine Fair
6 The Drug-Conflict Nexus in South Asia:
Beyond Taliban Profits and Afghanistan 90
Vanda Felbab-Brown
7 Rough Terrain: The Human Terrain System in Afghanistan 113
Vanessa Gezari
8 The Enemy: Understanding and Defeating Jihadist Ideology 126
Sebastian Gorka
The Contributors 143
Index 147

ACknowledgments
this book is largely a product of the Foundation for Defense of Democra-
cies’ (FDD) 2009 Leading Thinkers policy workshop on Afghanistan and
Pakistan. This workshop brought together an impressive array of thinkers
representing a true diversity of perspectives, including experts with significant
regional expertise, leading academics, military strategists, former intelligence
operatives, members of the media, and the ambassadors of Afghanistan and
Pakistan. At times participants found great areas of agreement, at times their
differences led to sharp exchanges; but the conversation was never dull.
All of the contributors to this volume attended the Leading Thinkers confer-
ence, and we would like to thank them first. This book would not have been
possible without the excellent chapters we received from Hassan Abbas, C.
Christine Fair, Vanda Felbab-Brown, Vanessa Gezari, Sebastian Gorka, Shuja
Nawaz, and Joshua T. White. We are grateful to Toby Dershowitz and Alan
Mairson of The Dershowitz Group and FDD’s Sara Westfall for their thoughtful
work on this book’s layout and design. Melissa Newberg did excellent work
fact-checking the chapters, and Tara Vassefi contributed an important final read
through the manuscript to uncover remaining grammatical and typographical
errors. Gregg Carlstrom of Al Jazeera English also helped to ensure the quality
of the final manuscript through his excellent work as our outside reviewer.
This book is a product of the passion, dedication, and intelligence that
many at FDD have devoted to the organization’s significant projects. Though
there are many we could name, we would like to single out executive director
Mark Dubowitz and senior vice president of communications and operations
Bill McCarthy for their tireless efforts.
We thank the Li Ka Shing Foundation for its generous support for
our Leading Thinkers conference series, and this book. And we also extend
our heartfelt thanks to Bill Nixon, CEO of Policy Impact, and to his talented
staff, for all of their support and effort. Bill is truly an enlightened and
visionary Washington figure, and we are grateful for his abiding friendship.
—Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Clifford D. May
vii

Introduction
military operations in Afghanistan are heating up as I write this. Press
accounts suggest that NATO operations in Marjah have met with
early success1—but the key question in this theater has always been
what happens after an area is cleared of insurgents. To that extent, the
Obama administration has trumpeted a revised strategy for approaching a
war in which the U.S. has been embroiled for more than eight years. But
observers across the political spectrum agree that military operations alone
are not enough to secure Afghanistan against a powerful insurgency; and
moreover, any analysis of the war in Afghanistan that ignores the key role
played by Pakistan will offer an incomplete picture. A broader perspective is
needed, and this book brings together top minds who can help to provide it.
Afghanistan was supposed to be “the good war,” in contrast to the U.S.’s
war in Iraq. By 2003, the military was telling American officials that the Taliban
were a “spent force,” and CIA specialists and Special Forces units alike were
being reassigned to the Iraq theater.2 To say that those early proclamations of
victory were premature is an understatement. The failures of the U.S.’s Afghani-
stan policy over the past eight years should be familiar to most readers, including
the diversion of resources to Iraq, international forces that were “poorly config-
ured” for counterinsurgency,3 lackluster attempts at reconstruction, continuing
1