With Friends Like These...

This editorial appeared in the New York Times yesterday; I hope Carlotta Gall is OK…

To learn why a resurgent Taliban is fighting American and NATO troops to a military draw in Afghanistan, you have to go to the frontier region on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Our colleague, Carlotta Gall, did just that last month and what she learned led to a physical assault on her by Pakistani intelligence officials and five hours in custody for her photographer, Akhtar Soomro. The Pakistani agents broke into her hotel room and copied her notes and computer files. They then tracked down and questioned everyone she had interviewed in Quetta, a border city.

We now know why. Ms. Gall’s reporting has determined that Quetta is an important rear base for the Taliban, and that Pakistani authorities are encouraging and perhaps sponsoring the cross-border insurgency. That is a role that Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf (pictured), denies. But residents of the border area, opposition figures and Western diplomats point to specific cases of Pakistani involvement. Americans need to know more about this collusion and to demand better answers from Gen. Musharraf.

There are many reasons that things are now going badly for the American-backed Afghan government. America shortchanged Afghanistan’s security in its rush to invade Iraq. European allies have inexcusably failed to provide NATO with enough soldiers to carry out the expanded Afghan security mission it took on last year and have imposed hobbling restrictions on the activities of those they did send. The government of the Afghan president, Harmid Karzai, is rife with corruption, and the regional warlord allies it depends on to control outlying areas are even more thieving as well as shockingly brutal.

These problems all need to be addressed. But the positive results will be limited as long as Afghanistan’s much more populous and powerful neighbor, Pakistan, provides rear support and sanctuary for the Taliban insurgency.

It is simply impossible to believe that this support takes place without the approval of the Pakistani military, the country’s dominant institution for a half-century.

Pakistan is now the third-largest recipient of American foreign aid. Yet more than five years after 9/11, the Bush administration has still not been able to secure Pakistan’s active and consistent support against the Taliban. The very least Washington should be demanding of President Musharraf is that he enforce an immediate halt on Pakistani military support for the Taliban insurgents who are crossing the border and killing American troops.

And I guess this, looking back, was Dubya’s “Mission Accomplished” moment for Afghanistan.

One more thing: don’t forget that, prior to his installation in that country, Karzai was a VP for Unocal, the company behind the Afghan oil pipeline deal that figured prominently in Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” (and I realize that that is the subject of a whole other post by itself).

Update 1/26: Shaun at Kiko's House has a great post on this, starting out as a remembrance of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and including a link to Gall's feature story in the Times.