The Pakistanis have let it be known that they want the US to suspend drone strikes against jihadis on their territory, thus eliminating one of the U.S.'s most effective weapons against our enemies.
Pakistan has also demanded that the U.S. to reduce the number of U.S. intelligence and Special Operations personnel in the country.
Fighting the war in AfPak is problematic without the ability to go after jihadis who perform terrorist attacks in Afghanistan and then flit back over the border to Pakistan, where they essentially have a safe haven in places like Waziristan.
The way things have worked is that the Pakistanis have fingered selected jihadis, usually after someone like Dick Cheney or Richard Holbrooke went there and demanded they do something to start earning the $7 billion in aid we give them.
But only certain ones, like the Tehrik-e-Taliban's(TTP) founder,Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a CIA drone strike. And that was because the TTP had targeted the Pakistani government and security forces.
Islamist terrorist groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and the the Haqqani Taliban group who concentrate on fighting us in Afghanistan and committing terrorist acts against India are a different matter,and they have deep ties with Pakistan's notorious ISI intelligence service.
Lashkar-e-Taiba,among things, was responsible for the 2008 attack on Mumbai, which was carried out with ISI connivance and support. And another sore point for the Pakistanis is that Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI has been subpoenaed a civil court case brought in New York in November in which Lt. Gen. Pasha was named as a defendant.
When CIA head Leon Panetta had a sit down with Lt. Gen. Pasha, one of the things on the agenda was that General Pasha wouldn't be summoned for questioning in the case during his visit this week.
The 'security arrangement' with Pakistan is crumbling steadily as the country goes more Islamist. This, essentially, is the fruit of Condi Rice torpedoing the administration of Pervez Musharraf in favor of Asif Zardari, whose nickname in Pakistan is "Mr. Ten Per Cent."
Now, Musharraf was not exactly a paragon of honesty, but he was, in the words of Tammany Hall founder William 'Boss' Tweed , 'a man who once you bought him stayed bought.' He kept things reasonably together, turned a blind eye when we needed him to and more importantly, kept the supplies flowing to Afghanistan. Things have gotten so far out of hand under Zardari that we can't even depend on our lifeline to Afghanistan staying open.
Because that's what it's really all about, and the reason we give Pakistan all that money and don't press them too hard over their nefarious activities.
At least 75% of the supplies for our troops in Afghanistan comes via the Pakistani port of Karachi and into Afghanistan via the Torkhum Pass. The $7 billion we give them is baksheesh, a bribe, nothing more, nothing less.
We're in this fix because one genius of a president went one country too far north to 'fight terrorism' and thought it was a brilliant idea to stick our men in a landlocked country surrounded by hostile territory. And then his clueless successor tripled down because he had to justify his idiotic campaign rhetoric on something he knew absolutely nothing about.
Remember? President Obama was going mend relations with our allies, and just because he was so awesome, our NATO allies were going to send more combat troops there. And he was going to pull American troops out of Iraq to go to the 'real war'.... he was going to 'invade Pakistan with a couple of brigades' and made much of the fact that he was going to 'follow bin-Laden to the ends of the earth" unlike Bush "who took his eye off the ball".
Remember all that?
At this point, we'd be far better off making deals with the individual Afghan tribal chiefs to buy their opium, give them a few arms to protect their turf and avoid paying taxes to the Taliban and then pulling most of our men and equipment out. And before we go, we'd do very well to apply a simple fix for the problem of Pakistan's nukes..it's called a pre-emptive strike. And while we're at it, grabbing rogue scientist AQ Kahn and having a nice conversation with him about what he sold and to whom might be a good idea. President Barack Obama would shudder in horror at the idea,but that's how we used to fight our wars. And win them.
To paraphrase a very wise man, only a fool leaves a loaded gun in the hands of an idiot - or a jihadi.
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