Taliban capture not bad, but strategic?

It certainly counts as good news that one Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, said to be the Taliban military commander and second-in-command to the reclusive Mullah Omar, was captured a week or so in Karachi -- a port city far from the embattled frontier provinces -- in Pakistan. As this Register editorial notes, the war in Afghanistan was and is a bad idea, but any time an enemy of U.S. troops is neutralized, especially if there's a chance of getting actionable intelligence from him, that's not a bad thing. The people in the military don't set policies.

It's fascinating how many different stories about the capture are being bandied about, however. David Ignatius of the WaPo, who has a lot of CIA sources (and on some occasions is something of a shill), says the US and Pakistani intelligence folks had a surefire "no-fooling" tip that Baradar was going to be in that house. On the other hand, the NYT reports that Baradar was a bonus of the raid -- they had no idea he was there and it took them a while to figure out what -- who -- they had.

It's likely that it will be weeks before we have a semi-accurate idea of how Baradar was captured, and there are certain things we will never know. The important things is that it shouoldn't have been necessary and may not be the least bit important to U.S. interests. The only real U.S. interest is al-Qaida, not the Taliban, and being in a military adventure in Afghanistan and working with the sinister Pakistani ISI may well be the worst possible ways to do anything effective about al-Qaida -- which is nowhere near as formidable as our masters want us to believe anyway.

Taliban attack and a hollow U.S. strategy

I think it has been insufficiently appreciated just how thoroughly the Taliban attack in downtown Kabul earlier this week exposes the hollowness of what passes for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. (I suspect I'll make that the subject of a columns for Antiwar.com). The McChrystal counterinsurgency strategy outlined in the memo Woodward acquired last September was to focus on keeping the civilian population safe and gradually expand the area of safety while training more Afghan security forces, who would eventually take over the security assignment, as this Register editorial explains. The attack in Kabul makes a mockery -- almost certainly intentionally, as it was reasonably sophisticated and well-planned -- of the strategy, so it was successful from a terrorist or guerrilla perspective. It showed the civilian population in the capital city is vulnerable despite (because of?) the U.S. presence.

Marines push into Helmand, Afghanistan

In what is being billed as a test of Obama's more assertive Afghan policy, 4,000 Marines and a contingent of Afghan soldiers have launched an offensive into Helmand Province, reportedly a stronghold for the Taliban and a place where lots of opium poppies are grown. First reports indicate little resistance. I'll be surprised if that isn't because the Taliban have simply moved elsewhere or are hiding in the hills. Guerrilla forces have known forever that you avoid direct battles with better-armed conventional armies, but move out to live to fight another day, catching them by surprise if and when they start to get complacent.

Jihadists lose big in Pakistan

Here's the piece I did last week for Antiwar.com, on Pakistan in the wake of the recent parliamentary elections. It noted that while the headline was the defeat of the pro-Musharraf party, perhaps the most encouraging news was the decline in support for Islamist or jihadist-sympathetic parties, including the defeat of a Taliban-like party that had actually won control of one province. Such parties had averaged 11 percent support last election and 4 percent in this one.

Now 4 percent of a population can wreak havoc with suicide bombings and the like, but the bogeyman of there being a great danger of jihadists getting control of the government and getting access to nukes, often used to justify the U.S. staying and subsidizing pretty much forever, is extremely unlikely. (There are already Taliban sympathizers in the military and the ISI secret police.)

It's also the case in Iraq, where the war whoopers talk about al-Qaida in Iraq taking control of the country if we leave -- McCain said it almost exactly that way in his recent long-distance campaign trail colloquy with Obama. Most unlikely. More likely is that without U.S. troops as a target it would be harder to recruit AQI members, and the Iraqis themselves would suppress it, probably more brutally and thoroughly than the U.S. would even think of doing.

Bhutto determined after asassination attempt

Well, Benazir Bhutto's return to Pakistan was eventful enough, what with a suicide bombing that might well have killed her if she hadn't been tired and ducked down into the truck carrying her. Unfortunately, the Islamist rebels (some al-Qaida, some Taliban, some homegrown) are armed, dangerous and determined. Pakistan has been described as the most ungovernable country in the world, and it may have become even less governable.