Arms and influence

Treaties and obligations

The White House and Defense Department have, for the last several years, been trying to "explore a new formula for our overseas presence." That's polite language for a permanent presence in the Middle East, based on "status of force agreements" (SOFAs) with countries like Pakistan. A recent diplomatic exchange between the United States and Pakistan provides a window into this campaign.

The United States has learned a hard lesson about democracy and constitutionalism. No declaration of war sanctioned the Iraq war. No Constitutional principle justified the warrantless wiretaps. No American law or treaty allowed Guantanamo Bay. All of these mistakes have hurt, not helped, the real fight against domestic and international terror.

There's another word for a SOFA: treaty. According to the US Constitution, the Senate must ratify any treaty. Using a different word than "treaty" does not change that obligation. The United States is asking Pakistan for permission to operate militarily inside Pakistan, while granting immunity to US personnel for any of their actions during these ventures.

Robots don't enforce the Constitution; people do. Those people--in Congress and the Supreme Court--are ultimately responsible for both any failure to uphold the Constitution, and any consequences that follow.

Optimism thwarted

Maybe blogs about national security often take a dour tone because of the subject matter. Or maybe if your bodily humors lean in a melancholic direction, you find yourself attracted to national security studies. Whatever.

Anyway, a few days ago, I was ready to say a few positive words about the Bush Administration's willingness to put some distance between itself and Musharraf. It may be a few years overdue, but it's there.

However, the "few years overdue" part is significant, given the volatility of Pakistani politics. No amount of Western support ensured the survival of Bhutto, Zia, or other past occupants of Musharraf's current role. Certainly, you don't want to undermine the top leader of Pakistan, but you don't want to bind your fortunes to his person too much.

While Musharraf is still alive, the role he played in US policy for Central Asia is in jeopardy. If Musharraf uses the Bhutto assassination to justify jailing more politicians and journalists, giving the security forces more latitude in deciding which war they want to fight, or suspending the elections, the US-Musharraf relationship will be effectively moribund. What then?

While US officials dither or decide, the problems that Musharraf was supposed to help the United States solve or contain remain. The civil war in Afghanistan continues; so do worries about Pakistan's nuclear arsenal.

Whoa, here comes that melancholy again.

The Bhutto assassination

Shocking. Horrifying. And, of course, it begs the question, "What now?"

Obviously, it's too early to pick a perpetrator. However, the strongest suspects are the Sunni militant groups, the Spah-e-Sahaba, or its rival splinter organization, Lashkar-i-Jangvi. Both are responsible for widespread terrorism in Pakistan, from attacks on minority Shi'ites to the assassination of journalist Daniel Pearl. Both believe the same as their Taliban and Al Qaeda allies, that the only legitimate government of Pakistan would be an Islamist state.

Benazir Bhutto, therefore, sits at the pinnacle of things that offend them. She is running for election, when these groups want elections to end. She is willing to work with the United States and Europe. And, of course, she is a woman.

However, Bhutto isn't the only target. On the same day, a sniper fired on Nawaz Sharif. The same group may be responsible for both assassination attempts; the group or groups responsible may be Spah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-i-Jangvi. We don't know yet.

That uncertainty, however, adds fuel to the already incendiary politics of Pakistan. Suspicion will also fall on Musharraf, particularly since it's likely that he will tighten police and military control, and possibly suspend the elections. The fact that Musharraf has also been the regular target of assassination attempts may be lost in the outrage over Bhutto's death.

The assassination occurs at a bad time for US officials. Already, high-ranking diplomats and military officers were quoted in a series of New York Times articles detailing the problems with the US alliance with the Pakistani government. Pakistani security forces aren't vigorously fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda cells within their borders, leading to the conclusion that billions of dollars of military aid were largely wasted.

The Administration is clearly putting some daylight between itself and Musharraf; now, with Bhutto's assassination, it will be more difficult to pressure him, the Pakistani military, or the intelligence services.

The worst consequence of Bhutto's assassination is heightened fear and anxiety. Militant Islamists aren't confined to the distant "tribal areas;" instead, they're able to kill even one of the best-protected leaders, in one of the most heavily-policed cities.

The survivor

Someone asked me last night, "How long do you think Musharraf can last? Another year? Less?"

I estimated that Musharraf would endure a lot longer than a mere year. Musharraf has been skilled at tilting in one political direction, then another, skillfully enough that both sides are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Today's news was a case in point. The US is inflicting some pressure on Musharraf (the exact amount is unclear) to do something about the Taliban and Al Qaeda forces ensconced in the "tribal region" of western Pakistan. While US pressure had something to do with the planned summit between Musharraf and tribal leaders who are ignoring or helping these insurgents, it was surely not the only reason behind the meeting. Musharraf needed to show the clans that span this region of Pakistan and Afghanistan that he still has the clout to expect good turn-out, and some willingness to listen to what he has to say.

Unfortunately, the meeting gave Musharraf a golden opportunity to pull out at the last minute. He can say that he is not willing to attend any conference that might jeopardize the interests of the Pashtuns, Baluchis, and other groups in this region. He can also make himself look, to a broader audience of Pakistanis, like a more independent leader than the other president in attendance, Hamid Karzai.

It was unlikely that anything substantive was going to emerge from this meeting, unless something had been worked out in advance. If American diplomats are fuming over his withdrawal, their frustration may be largely for show--or else they really don't understand the politics of Central Asia.

Taliban enclave in Pakistan

IN THE NEWS
The remnants of the Taliban obviously feel comfortable enough in Western Pakistan to announce the reconstruction of their Islamist government. This gesture of defiance is directed both westwards, towards Kabul and Washington, and southwards, towards Karachi.

Bullets over Baluchistan

IN THE NEWS
Suppose you had the opportunity to kill Ayman al-Zawahri, one of Al Qaeda's original leaders, and still one of the most important architects of terrorist operations that Al Qaeda has carried out, or more common today, sponsored. You had credible information that he would be at a particular village in the "tribal areas" of Pakistan at a particular date and time. Unfortunately, you also run the same risk you always face when these opportunities arise:

• The intelligence might be wrong. Even the most credible sources sometimes provide bad information, particularly when the customer, the US government, is eager to get it.
• You might not be able to mobilize a commando team for a raid on Zawahri's location.
• You might not be able to safely fly such a team into the village.
• The "information" about Zawahri's movements may have been the bait to trap US special operations forces (SOFs) in an ambush.
• If you try to kill Zawahri with an air strike, even the most precisely-guided missiles or bombs might not kill him.
• There's also the risk that either the commando or the air strike option might kill a lot of innocent bystanders. (However, the risk of unintended casualties is always higher for air strikes than commando raids.)

How low would the probability of each of these outcomes have to be for you to order the attack? That's the difficult question facing American leaders in these scenarios. Often, the process of assessing these risks takes too long, in which case the opportunity (and the terrorist) slips away. Decision-makers have to factor that additional dimension of risk into the tactical equation, before giving the go or no-go order.

Apparently, the US government thought it had a chance to kill Zawahri while he was traveling through Baluchistan. Unfortunately, local sources claim that the air strike killed 18 luckless residents of the village where he was supposed to be, but the attack missed Zawahri. Now, Pakistanis are loudly protesting the US attack on their territory.

While Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, has remarkable survival skills, he has to play a very delicate game to maintain his position--and, as several failed assassination attempts show, his life. No Pakistani is deluded about this continued support for US actions in neighboring Afghanistan. At the same time, Pakistanis remember that Musharraf gave A.Q. Khan, the government scientist who used his position as head of the Pakistani nuclear program to sell nuclear secrets to North Korea and Iran, an effective pardon. Musharraf keeps all his bases covered, and all his "allies" sufficiently confused about his real intentions to stay in power.

Therefore, we should expect for Musharraf to take some action to show that he does not approve of the US attack, without going too far to alienate his American ally. Unfortunately, given the level of unrest and dissatisfaction already swirling around Baluchistan, Musharraf will have to tilt very far toward the disgruntled parties, and very far from the United States. We'll have to wait and see the form in which this "tilt" takes.

Still, as tragic and regrettable an event as this appears to be, there are at least three questions a level above the incident itself worth asking:

1. What was the intelligence on which this attack was ordered?
2. How did military commanders in the area, and their civilian bosses in Washington, evaluate the options?
3. How important is it to kill Ayman al-Zawahri in the first place?

Naturally, we don't have the information to answer the first two questions. For a mix of reasons, some good (the protection of sources, if this attack was based on HUMINT instead of SIGINT), some bad (reflexive secrecy about everything related to counterterrorism, even when not merited), we're not likely to hear any relevant details for quite a while.

While we wait for further information needed to answer the first two questions, we can reach some conclusions on the third point, the value of killing Zawahri. Yes, Zawahri is a proven enemy of the United States. We'd all like to see him dragged to the bar of justice, or at least see him get his just desserts. However, Al Qaeda isn't the organization it was a few years ago. Rather than planning, organizing, and executing attacks itself, Al Qaeda is now a terrorist sponsor, offering advice, training, equipment, and finances to local terrorist groups, like the British cells that attacked London's subways last year. Certainly, Al Qaeda still has an important role in terrorist operations. The center of gravity, however, has shifted somewhat from Al Qaeda itself to local terrorist groups that might benefit from Al Qaeda's assistance, but don't necessarily depend on it.

In other words, the cost/benefit analysis for an air strike in Baluchistan looks much different today than it did right after the 9/11 attacks and Operation ENDURING FREEDOM. Was the chance to kill Zawahri worth the risk? On the benefit side, it's harder to justify.