THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue # 116, May 4, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
THE TALIBAN IN PAKISTAN: SIXTY MILES FROM THE CAPITAL
By Dr. Michael Rubin
THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION & THE WEAKNESS OF ITS FOREIGN POLICY IN THE MIDDLE EAST & SOUTH CENTRAL
ASIA: THE TALIBAN'S MARCH TO BUNER & THE U.S. RESPONSE -- OBAMA'S PERCEPTION OF THE UNDERLYING
PROBLEM IN PAKISTAN AS LACK OF GOVERNMENT SERVICES & THE NEED FOR AID & DEVELOPMENT -- SEEKING TO
NEGOTIATE WITH & ACCOMODATE THE TALIBAN -- USE OF "SMART POWER," RATHER THAN "HARD
POWER" -- DIPLOMACY AS THE VANGUARD OF U.S. FOREIGN POLICY -- WHAT THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS
OVERLOOKING, AS REGARDS THE TALIBAN INSURGENCY IN PAKISTAN: THE NATURE OF THE DANGER POSED BY
EXTREMIST IDEOLOGY, ESPECIALLY WHEN COMBINED WITH DIPLOMACY ALLOWING ISLAMISTS TO ESTABLISH SAFE
HAVENS FOR THEMSELVES -- WHAT PRESIDENT OBAMA & SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON NEED TO
UNDERSTAND: SOFT POWER, AID & DEVELOPMENT, NEGOTIATION, & ACCOMODATION ARE ABOUT AS EFFECTIVE
AT COUNTERING ISLAMISM AS LOLLIPOPS ARE AT CURING CANCER.
FULL STORY:
On April 22, 2009, several hundred Taliban fighters moved from their stronghold in the Swat Valley to the neighboring
district of Buner, just 60 miles from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
underscored the seriousness of the crisis, accusing the Pakistani government of "abdicating to the Taliban" and
suggesting that instability in Pakistan posed a "mortal threat" to international security. While the Taliban retreated to
Swat, the challenge they pose remains. Indeed, on April 30, General David Petraeus said that the Taliban's challenge
makes the next two weeks critical to Pakistan's survival.
These events illustrate the weakness of the Obama foreign policy. Addressing the U.S. House Foreign Affairs
Committee on the day of the Taliban's advance, Clinton declared: "The government of Pakistan must begin to deliver
government services, otherwise they are going to lose out to those who show up and claim that they can solve
people's problems." The issue in the Swat Valley, however, is not simply lack of government services.
Throughout his presidential campaign, Barack Hussein Obama articulated twin national security themes. First, he
dismissed the decision to liberate Iraq as "misguided" and promised, instead, to "refocus our resources on al-Qa'ida
in Afghanistan and finish the fight with the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11." Second, he promised "smart
diplomacy" toward friend and foe alike. His advisers spoke of smart power that would enhance aid and development.
"With smart power, diplomacy will be the vanguard of foreign policy," Clinton declared at her confirmation hearing.
Putting aside the fact that Joseph Nye, who coined the term smart power, meant it to complement, rather than replace,
the use of hard power, what the Obama administration misses is the nature of the danger posed by extremist ideology
-- especially when combined with diplomacy allowing Islamists to establish safe havens. Here, the Taliban advance
on Buner is instructive.
On February 15, 2009, after fighting for almost two years at a cost of 1,500 lives, the Pakistanis and the Taliban struck a
deal. The government of Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province signed the Malakand Accord with Sufi Mohammed,
head of the radical Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi (Movement for the Enforcement of Islamic Law). This
agreement imposed Islamic law on the Swat Valley, effectively handing control to the Taliban. This was not the first
deal struck between the Pakistani government and Islamist radicals -- Islamabad had reached similar accords in South
Waziristan, North Waziristan, and Bajaur. But it was the first to test the Obama administration's new approach.
Rather than view the Malakand Accord as a compromise to end bloodshed, the Taliban interpreted it as a display of
weakness to be exploited. No one should be surprised. In 2004, Abu Bakr Naji, a prominent jihadist ideologue,
published a treatise entitled The Management of Savagery (Idarat at-Tawahhush), a treatisie in which
he rebuffed earlier al-Qa'ida theoreticians to argue that the key to advanced jihad is first to hold territory and then to
impose a government that enforces Islamic law.
With their safe haven established, the Taliban doubled the number of fighters in the Swat Valley to at least 6,000,
enabling a column to move on Buner less than 10 days after Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari signed legislation
implementing the Malakand Accord. As the column advanced, a Taliban spokesman announced that Osama bin
Laden would be welcome in Swat.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is not alone in her refusal to grasp that the Taliban's challenge is essentially
ideological and not grievance-based. An April 17 article in the New York Times placed blame for the
Taliban's rise on the lack of land reform in the Swat Valley, where approximately 50 landowners dominated economic
life. True, Sufi Mohammed and his son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, a former ski lift worker in Swat who now heads the
militia of the Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat-e-Mohammadi, exploited the economic angle to win recruits, but this was only
part of their strategy.
They also used torture and execution to intimidate. Fazlullah is famous for broadcasting over the radio the names of
those deemed inimical to Taliban interests or disobedient to its rule. As the Taliban murdered their targets in the
Swat Valley, they displayed the mutilated bodies in local markets, promising similar treatment to anyone who
removed the macabre display. Clinton appears unaware that that those living under such a brutal regime are kept in
check by fear.
Nor does the call for land reform show much understanding of the region. The Swat Valley, a resort area, was
relatively well off until the Taliban took root. Sacrificing property rights to accommodate a utopian vision of social
justice might resolve one Taliban talking point, but the group would simply find another grievance. Land reform
would not end the Taliban's march, but it would further destabilize a teetering Pakistan.
Indeed, a constant feature of Islamist insurgency -- whether in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, or now Pakistan -- is
sabotage of economic development for the purpose of undercutting government control. This is why Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi in Iraq's Anbar Province and Moktada al-Sadr in Baghdad and southern Iraq both directed their forces to
destroy schools, sabotage electrical lines, and target development workers. If the economy is good, jihadists seek to
wreck it. While the West sees brain drain as a tragedy, radical Islamists see it as a godsend, simultaneously getting
rid of the pesky middle class and gutting the economy so they can fill the void. The antidote should be to
strengthen government control -- not to cede it, as Pakistan did.
So, what should the Obama administration learn from the Taliban's tactical victory? First, soft power and economic
development are irrelevant to this situation, unless they are enabled by hard power.
Second, engagement is no panacea. Not all our adversaries share Obama's good faith. The Taliban -- or, for that
matter, the Iranian leadership -- are motivated not by earthly desires, but by a religious ideology, one that brands
any government unwilling to bow to their demands as illegitimate and Satanic. To them, negotiations can be useful
only for gaining immediate advantage: The Taliban might gain safe haven; Tehran might gain time.
While it would be unfair to suggest that Obama himself has sought to engage the Taliban, senior officials
surrounding the U.S. President do urge talks. (The Clinton administration, it should be remembered, actually sent an
emissary to meet with the Taliban in 1997, and, even after 9/11, Secretary of State Colin Powell counseled reaching
out to the "moderate Taliban.") Further, it is clear that the President does not appreciate the dangers of granting
Islamists a safe haven. Weak condemnations of Zardari for doing this are meaningless, especially when the
administration simultaneously pursues policies that will provide terrorists and their supporters safe haven in Iraq
and Gaza.
Indeed, unless the President and the Secretary of State understand that soft power and accommodation are about as
effective at countering Islamism as lollipops are at curing cancer, the march to Buner may become the symbol of the
Obama Presidency, played out repeatedly, from Baghdad to Basra to Beirut.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Asia -- Central & South Asia -- India & Its Neighbors
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University, 1999) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr. Rubin was originally published in the Weekly Standard, May 11, 2009, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/2130/sixty-miles-from-the- capital)
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
May 3, 2009
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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