Saturday, January 7, 2012

Militants, Assemble! pt.2


I wasn't so far off in my last post. This quote appeared in an op-ed on Al Jazeera.

"Only one factor could possibly allow Mullah Omar to form a united AfPak front to launch the umpteenth summer offensive against US/NATO; the Pakistani ISI promising the Pakistani Taliban it would not attack them anymore - and neither would US drones. "

My hunch that ISI is behind the "council of elders" seems to be accepted knowledge. The author's assertion that the US would cease drone strikes is not a fully developed argument, however I think what he means is that the US will, by deafult, not be able to launch strikes in Pakistani territory for much longer given the deteriorated relationship between the US and Pakistan. Pakistan could easily claim that they have put a stop to the strikes-- but the argument is a tad disingenuous.

The rest of the article makes some good points (with a healthy dose of unnecessary one-liners), including:

"But still the Pentagon remains obsessed with keeping an army, however slimmed-down it may be, fighting the Taliban until... kingdom come?"

Right on.

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