January 22, 2007--Connect These Dots

Dot Number One:

An insufficiently-noticed article appeared in Sunday’s NY Times about Pakistan’s role in supporting the recent “Taliban surge in Afghanistan.” (Linked below.)

We are not talking about President Bush’s version of a surge, which most military, diplomatic, and political leaders oppose because they see it doomed to failure. The Taliban version, however, appears to be working—the same military, diplomatic, and political leaders are seeing increasing evidence that the Taliban are regaining control of more and more of the country. Opium production is way up, and the money derived from it is helping to fund their efforts.

What is not so well-known is how directly and significantly helpful our “ally” in the region, Pakistan, is in helping our “common enemy.” Carlotta Gall, the Times reporter, spend two intrepid weeks on both sides of the border, somehow managing to get Pakistani commanders and members of the all-powerful and dreaded Inter-Services Intelligence and Military Intelligence Agency to talk with her about what is really happening in this contested, most-dangerous part of the region.

She reports that her direct observations and deeply-off-the-record interviews with both Pakistani military and intelligence operatives reveals that “Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them.”

Dot Number Two:

Also on the front page of the Sunday Times is a report about the “rebuilding” of New Orleans—about a year and a half after Katrina, in spite of what public officials are claiming about how completely life as it was will be revived, most economists and demographers are coming to conclude that the city “will top out at about half its prestorm population. To quote one, the repopulation “based on what we know, will be a trickle.”

Dot Number Three:

The Times reported that this past weekend in Iraq was one of the deadliest for U.S. forces—more than a dozen were killed when their Black Hawk helicopter was shot down and an additional dozen were killed in Baghdad and Anbar Province. Twenty-seven in all. Some of the insurgents disguised themselves by wearing American military uniforms. And this week, the first contingent of 1,300 new troops, the vanguard of our surge, are set to arrive; and it is expected that they will be fully operational by the end of the month.

Final Dot:

“Four Pakistani plainclothesmen raided my hotel room, using a key card to open the door and then breaking through the chain that I had locked from the inside. They seized a computer, notebooks, and a cell phone. One agent punched me twice in the face and knocked me to the floor.”

Thus wrote the same Carlotta Gall of the NY Times. She continued, “All the people I interviewed were subsequently visited by intelligence agents, and local journalists who helped me were later questioned by the Inter-Services Agency.”