Brown's ambitious Af-Pak promise
Gordon Brown has announced a mini-surge of British troops in Afghanistan to help police the August presidential election there. He’s also promised a big increase in aid to Pakistan, with half of the money going to the Afghan frontier region, which Mr Brown has branded “the crucible of global terrorism”.
His 15-page strategy document (UK Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan: the Way Forward) highlights the “critical strategic importance to the UK” of what the Americans now just call “the Af-Pak theatre”.
Since the days of the Great Game in the 19th century, Britain’s sought to quell discontent in the mountainous and lawless borderlands the local tribes call Pashtunistan… and failed. Now Mr Brown’s making another concerted effort, working on those Pashtun hearts and minds, while still trying to kill more Talibs.
“I feel very negative about all this,” Dr Jonathan Goodhand, a specialist in this region at SOAS, told me. “The security trends are negative,” he said, talking about the whole Af-Pak theatre in general. “The Talibs will be very happy about the way things are going.”
Yesterday the Talibs north of Islamabad took a bit of a bashing when Pakistani forces reportedly reversed their recent advances in Buner district, killing 50 militants in the process. Dr Goodhand described what’s been going on up there as “deeply worrying”.
British officials, while not entirely complacent, aren’t exactly reacting like US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did last week. She accused the Pakistan government of “basically abdicating to the Taliban”.
One British official said: “We’re not expressing quite the same level of alarm… we are not concerned that Pakistan is about to collapse.” The truth is that the advance of the Taliban has sent a chill through Pakistan.
Other than not quite seeing eye to eye about this, the Brits say they’re fully congruent with the American approach.
British Af-Pak policy is cut-and-paste US Af-Pak policy, courtesy of Messrs Petraeus and Holbrooke. Like them, the PM said yesterday that “we can no longer consider the terrorist threats arising in the two countries in isolation from each other”.
In the Commons, Gordon Brown quoted Obama, who described the Islamist militants as “a cancer that risks killing Pakistan from within.”
The government’s document says there has been a nine-fold increase in suicide bombings in Pakistan since 2006, and 2,000 civilians and security force personnel were killed in terrorist attacks last year. Three-quarters of the most serious plots investigated in the UK have links back to Pakistan.
The trouble is, it’s incredibly difficult for journalists to assess what’s really going on. The Swat Valley and Buner is a no-go area for foreign reporters and with fighting going on, it’s dangerous for local journalists too.
And they’ve been threatened by Taliban posters on walls warning local journalists “bad consequences” if they don’t stop writing “pro-western articles.” The posters were reportedly signed by the Taliban suicide squad.
There’s also a revealing anecdote from a news conference in Islamabad, addressed by the military’s chief spokesman, Maj Gen Athar Abbas. He played a tape which he said was a recording of a mobile phone conversation picked up by surveillance.
In it, the leader of the Taliban in Swat apparently told his commander in Buner to have his men pack up their weapons “just to show the media” – and that they should just pretend to leave the area.
In his speech on Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy yesteday, Gordon Brown said: “There can only be one winner: democracy and a strong Afghan state.”
Dr Goodhand’s take on that? That what Mr Brown should be doing is lowering expectations, promising just to stabilise the situation, rather than promising the world.
In that alone, the Brits would have their work cut out.