NightWatch

For the Night of 4 October 2009

North Korea-China: China's Premier Wen Jiabao met North Korean premier Kim Yong Il on Sunday at Sunan airport at the start of Wen’s three day state visit. Despite the speculation, Wen’s trip is about restoring bilateral ties that have been strained since China supported sanctions against North Korea last May. The significance of the visit is that it is taking place. That means the strain since May has ended, but not that relations will ever be as they had been in the past.

North Korea-India: The Indian Navy detained a North Korean ship in Indian waters near Vatakara, Kerala State, southwestern India, China Daily reported 4 October, citing a statement from the Indian Defence Ministry. The navy and coast guard spotted the ship, Hyang Ro, anchored in Indian waters, and immediately detained the ship and its crew. Unnamed Indian sources said the preliminary investigations show the ship was bound for Pakistan via Colombo, Sri Lanka. A search is being conducted to make sure no illegal cargo is aboard. The Hyang Ro is owned by Pyongyang-based Sinhung Shipping Company, a state-owned export company.

The Indians are serious about enforcing the sanctions against North Korea, especially when the cargos are bound for Pakistan. The North Koreans are equally serious about continuing to try to ship their weapons.

Pakistan: Unnamed US defense officials said today that Pakistan has enough soldiers and equipment mobilized to launch a ground offensive against Taliban militants in South Waziristan, Reuters reported 4 October. The officials said that a Pakistani effort to eliminate Taliban and al Qaida sanctuaries in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan is critical to the success of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.

The Pakistani military has been imposing a blockade on the region, and used air and artillery attacks to harass the Pakistani Taliban. However, the Army has claimed that shortages in supplies are the reason for its delay in commencing ground operations in Waziristan. About 28,000 Pakistani forces are deployed to the region, according to a Pakistani military spokesman.

Comment: The Reuters item published the comments attributed to US defense officials without providing context. Still, the comments are odd because the US is applying a capabilities yardstick to the Pakistan Army that it does not apply to itself, the most powerful country in the world.

No public source has estimated the strength of the Wazir opposition fighters that the Pakistan Army might face. It might be a 1:1 ratio in which case the unnamed US defense officials need to work on their sums, before moving to higher math. The issues in South Asia seem to invite vacuous statements in the name of information operations, which the US does not seem to do well. But the statements do lack context.

Not lacking in context are the ten steps to victory in Afghanistan published by the New York Times. Each could be challenged in one or other way, but Paul Pillar’s comments about ending Pakistani patronage to the Afghan Taliban is on point. Pakistan’s continuing support to its proxy in the long fight against India is an open secret, just as its support to Kashmiri militants and separatists is. It has given up neither, just as the commitment to counter terrorism as a national security priority is a grand ruse for the Americans.

The one issue NW would take with Pillar’s comment is the benchmarks. Pillar’s metrics are soft and subjective, but the world has seen what Pakistan can do when its leaders set their minds to it. In 2003, when Musharraf was in power in Islamabad and Vajpayee in office in New Delhi, Musharraf ordered a military ceasefire across the Line of Control in Kashmir and instituted a sustained control regime on the Kashmiri militants supported by the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate.

The result of Musharraf’s orders were Inter-Services Intelligence agents were forced to reduce aid to the militants to bare sustainment levels; stopped infiltration; stopped the flow of arms and ammunition to the militants and into Indian Kashmir and confined militant leaders and supporters to camps back from the Line of Control.

To his credit, Musharraf maintained the ceasefire and the clamp down on the militants until his resignation in 2008. It was the longest period of comparative quiet along the Line of Control in decades. The point is Pakistan can control insurgency based in Pakistan. Omar and the Quetta Shura have safehaven in Pakistan because Pakistanis have concluded the survival of the Afghan Taliban is in Pakistan’s national security interests during the period after the Americans tire and leave again.

If the Pakistani leaders should get serious about booting the Quetta Shura, there will be plenty of metrics and easy to detect. They are not serious.

Putting the two comments together, it is vital that the US impose greater discipline on the big mouths who are leaking in the name of information operations or other misguided ideas. US successes in Afghanistan do not create a record that would justify anonymous US defense officials in presuming to preach to anyone, much less Pakistanis.

Secondly, the US record of engagement in south Asia is that of a nation with attention deficit disorder. Consider, in the past week Iran’s facility at Qom supplanted Pakistan and Afghanistan – real battle zones -- as the issues du jour. Perceptive Readers will presume this was a deliberate US stratagem. Thus, Pakistan’s focus on its long term interests and its long term, sustained loyal friends is well justified. Only China and the Pashtuns fall into those categories.

Finally, the collective wisdom of the US experts about Waziristan could fit into a small booklet and most of that would be plagiarized. The British, now, and the Pakistanis have first hand experience in mounting combat operations against the Wazirs. None were particularly distinguished, but at least they did not feature unnamed defense officials sitting in air conditioned comfort in Washington criticizing Pakistan.

Afghanistan: For the record. As for the record of US success in Afghanistan, a US spokesman said eight American soldiers and two Afghans were killed in an attack on two outposts in remote eastern Afghanistan. The military statement Sunday said a tribal militia launched the attack from a mosque and a nearby village in Nuristan Province. eastern Afghanistan.

This makes any US criticism of Pakistan look quite misaimed.

Afghanistan-The Netherlands: Update. The leaders of two parties essential to the Christian Democrat-led coalition in the Netherlands announced their parties will not vote to extend the presence of the 1,400-man Dutch contingent in Afghanistan. When the latest commitment expires in 2010, the Dutch soldiers will depart, according to the party leaders, who point out the Dutch soldiers already have stayed two years longer than first agreed.

Iran: Comment: The weekend press was over the top in repeating old news about the state of Iran’s knowledge of nuclear warhead design. This is old news. Last month The Associated Press and NightWatch reported on the draft study by the International Atomic Energy Agency that concluded Iran had the knowledge for making a nuclear weapon.

The big news this weekend, which no television or radio media repoprted, is that the Institute for Science and International Security has obtained more details from the same study and posted the information on its web site. More is not better and the new data in no way changes the bottom line from a month ago: Iran almost certainly knows how to make a nuclear bomb. Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan made certain of that several years ago. Those who have followed this story are well aware.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed El Baradei said that the conflict over Iran's nuclear program is "shifting gears" from confrontation into transparency and cooperation, and that nuclear inspectors will visit Iran's recently disclosed uranium processing facility 25 October, China Daily reported. El Baradei made the statement in Tehran following talks with Iranian officials, including nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi, about the recently revealed nuclear site, and said that the inspections will be conducted in accordance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

El Baradei lost his detachment about Iran years ago and failed to maintain discipline in his own organization. He opposes sanctions or other forms of coercion that would limit his access to Iran or prove the agency under his tenure failed in controlling, much less preventing, nuclear weapons proliferation.

Somalia: Update. The government in Mogadishu will not be able to defeat hard-line al Shabaab militants without international assistance to strengthen its security forces, Somali Interior Minister Abdukadir Ali Omar said 4 October. Omar said Somali security forces are not strong enough, and that African Union peacekeepers have a defensive mandate that prevents them from eradicating the al Shabaab militant group, which recently recaptured Kismayo port.

Omar’s timing in calling for outside troops could hardly be worse. The irony is that Afghanistan has no al Qaida presence, according to National Security Advisor Jones, today, but reinforcements for Afghanistan are being justified on the grounds of stopping al Qaida from re-establishing a base there.

Somalia is on the verge of becoming a new safe haven for al Qaida and any number of other terrorist groups. Unlike Afghanistan, Somalia is a region where the international terrorist threat is authentic, but only two African states, a few French and a few American security specialists and some Somali clans want to stop al Qaida from establishing a base in Somalia.

End of NightWatch for 4 October.