Baluchs are largely secular and have little truck with militants in the frontier zone. Second, it borders Iran, which has had its own history with Baluch separatism. A Baluch militia recently raided the Iranian city of Pishin, killing senior figures in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. A group of 11 Iranian agents were intercepted a week later in Pakistan, and later released. But the incident was a reminder that this border is not peaceful.
With every passing month, Barack Obama is sinking deeper into a long-term regional conflict in Afghanistan. The latest ominous sign was a report in the New York Times that America had threatened to target two Taliban groups sheltering in Pakistan if the government in Islamabad refused to do the job itself. This was characterised as a bald warning, rather than an ultimatum, and it went like this: unless the Pakistan army moved against Afghan Taliban leaders in the frontier town of Quetta, and the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, America would do so with drones. They could even deploy US special forces on Pakistani soil.
The last time US troops crossed the border to raid a village where militants were thought to be sheltering, there was such a political furore in Pakistan that the US was forced to promise never to use boots on ground again. Since then, relations between the US and Pakistan military have been patched up. A US drone killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-i-Taliban and Pakistan's public enemy number one, and the Pakistan army has conducted two large-scale operations against Taliban militants in Swat and South Waziristan, sustaining a bombardment of reprisals against civilian and military targets. The official line is that Pakistan is fighting its own war against militants, not a proxy one or America's. Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, whose authority is rising as his president's is falling, said that his civilian government did not distinguish between one militant and the next. That is only half the picture.
The other half is that, for all its co-operation with the US, the Pakistan army and the military-run Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) believe that India remains the strategic threat. They will not easily abandon the tools they have created to combat it. Still less will they do so if they know that the US will start pulling troops out of Afghanistan in 18 months' time. It may no longer control the Afghan Taliban in the way that it did a decade ago, but the Pakistan army has shown a marked reluctance to target leading Talibs in the Quetta Shura, with whom historically they have had no quarrel. On the one hand, the US demand is unsurprising. If thousands of extra US troops are to be sent to shore up Helmand, it makes no military sense to keep Baluchistan - on the other side of the border - a no-fire zone. But on the other hand, the threat of US action in Baluchistan represents a dangerous escalation. Mr Obama is demanding no less than that the Pakistan army reverse a policy it has pursued for decades in the name of a war it does not believe in.
There are other factors which might give the US military pause for thought. First, Baluchistan has its own insurgency, although the ethnic Baluchs are largely secular and have little truck with militants in the frontier zone. Second, it borders Iran, which has had its own history with Baluch separatism. A Baluch militia recently raided the Iranian city of Pishin, killing senior figures in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. A group of 11 Iranian agents were intercepted a week later in Pakistan, and later released. But the incident was a reminder that this border is not peaceful. Third, the drones that the US is threatening to deploy fly from a desert strip in Baluchistan itself. If the Pakistan army wanted to stop US drones, all it would have to do is close the airfield down.
For all these reasons, we are unlikely to see large-scale unilateral US action in Baluchistan. But the threat of cross-border raids highlights the dilemmas of the front-door approach. Because unless the US tackles the central cause of regional instability - the unfinished conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir - an Af-Pak policy makes little sense. It has to include India as well. Only Pakistan and India can jointly ensure a lasting peace in Afghanistan. But this is not the course on which America is currently engaged.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
With every passing month, Barack Obama is sinking deeper into a long-term regional conflict in Afghanistan. The latest ominous sign was a report in the New York Times that America had threatened to target two Taliban groups sheltering in Pakistan if the government in Islamabad refused to do the job itself. This was characterised as a bald warning, rather than an ultimatum, and it went like this: unless the Pakistan army moved against Afghan Taliban leaders in the frontier town of Quetta, and the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, America would do so with drones. They could even deploy US special forces on Pakistani soil.
The last time US troops crossed the border to raid a village where militants were thought to be sheltering, there was such a political furore in Pakistan that the US was forced to promise never to use boots on ground again. Since then, relations between the US and Pakistan military have been patched up. A US drone killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of Tehrik-i-Taliban and Pakistan's public enemy number one, and the Pakistan army has conducted two large-scale operations against Taliban militants in Swat and South Waziristan, sustaining a bombardment of reprisals against civilian and military targets. The official line is that Pakistan is fighting its own war against militants, not a proxy one or America's. Pakistan's prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, whose authority is rising as his president's is falling, said that his civilian government did not distinguish between one militant and the next. That is only half the picture.
The other half is that, for all its co-operation with the US, the Pakistan army and the military-run Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) believe that India remains the strategic threat. They will not easily abandon the tools they have created to combat it. Still less will they do so if they know that the US will start pulling troops out of Afghanistan in 18 months' time. It may no longer control the Afghan Taliban in the way that it did a decade ago, but the Pakistan army has shown a marked reluctance to target leading Talibs in the Quetta Shura, with whom historically they have had no quarrel. On the one hand, the US demand is unsurprising. If thousands of extra US troops are to be sent to shore up Helmand, it makes no military sense to keep Baluchistan - on the other side of the border - a no-fire zone. But on the other hand, the threat of US action in Baluchistan represents a dangerous escalation. Mr Obama is demanding no less than that the Pakistan army reverse a policy it has pursued for decades in the name of a war it does not believe in.
There are other factors which might give the US military pause for thought. First, Baluchistan has its own insurgency, although the ethnic Baluchs are largely secular and have little truck with militants in the frontier zone. Second, it borders Iran, which has had its own history with Baluch separatism. A Baluch militia recently raided the Iranian city of Pishin, killing senior figures in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. A group of 11 Iranian agents were intercepted a week later in Pakistan, and later released. But the incident was a reminder that this border is not peaceful. Third, the drones that the US is threatening to deploy fly from a desert strip in Baluchistan itself. If the Pakistan army wanted to stop US drones, all it would have to do is close the airfield down.
For all these reasons, we are unlikely to see large-scale unilateral US action in Baluchistan. But the threat of cross-border raids highlights the dilemmas of the front-door approach. Because unless the US tackles the central cause of regional instability - the unfinished conflict between Pakistan and India over Kashmir - an Af-Pak policy makes little sense. It has to include India as well. Only Pakistan and India can jointly ensure a lasting peace in Afghanistan. But this is not the course on which America is currently engaged.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk
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