Foreign Policy In Focus

What next -- will Pakistan's TTP sue her?

Of course, with all the Pakistani children that the United States has killed in drone strikes, the extent to which we have the right to condemn the Taliban for shooting Malala Yousufzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani girl who challenged its rigid views on education for girls, is debatable.

But the Taliban only compounded its crime when it tried to justify an act more befitting straight out of the 1300s, if guns existed then. At the Atlantic, Ron Synovitz writes about a letter in which

… the Tehrik-i Taliban Pakistan (TTP) states its case for the attack and threatens anyone who challenges its strict interpretation of Shari'a law.  … the letter says that "Yousafzai was playing a vital role in bucking up the emotions" of Pakistan's military and government "and was inviting Muslims to hate mujahideen."

… "[i]t is a clear command of Shariah that any female who, by any means, plays a role in the war against mujahideen should be killed." It then seeks to justify the shooting of the schoolgirl by citing passages from the Koran in which a child or woman was killed.

"If anyone argues about [Yousafzai's] young age, then [consult] the story of Hazrat Khizar in the Koran relating that Hazrat Khizar -- while traveling with the Prophet Musa -- killed a child," the letter reads. "Arguing about the reason for his killing, he said that the parents of this child are pious and in future [the child] will cause a bad name for them."

A mind like a steel trap -- one shudders to think that one day the Taliban, at least in its Afghan incarnation, may one day be represented at the United Nations.

In the meantime, the TTP has vowed, if she survives, to target Malala again.

In an article at Foreign Affairs that's not behind a pay wall, Barbara Elias-Sanborn (not behind a pay wall) explains how the reported death* of TTP (Pakistan's Taliban) head Baitullah Mehsud might result in the TTP announcing its loyalty to Mullah Omar, Afghan Taliban head. Thus would the two Talibans become one (to some extent, anyway).

She also writes:

TTP militants may eventually flip in favor of the Pakistani military [which] would likely grant the TTP operational freedom across the border in Afghanistan as long as it suspended violence against the Pakistani state. 

But …

… even an agreement along those lines might be short-lived: one effect of Pakistan's double game -- supporting U.S. interests in Afghanistan while surreptitiously sustaining Afghan Taliban elements -- is that both the country's U.S. allies and its Taliban ones mistrust it.

Live by a double-edged sword; die by it.

*Disputed by the TTP.

Not everyone is outraged by the NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. The Wall Street Journal reports:

As Pakistan's top leaders gathered Sunday to bury 24 Pakistani soldiers killed by NATO airstrike [two] Afghan officials working in the border area where the attack took place said Sunday that the joint [NATO-Afghan] force was targeting Taliban forces in the area when it received fire from the Pakistan military outpost.

Wait: why would Pakistani soldiers be firing upon NATO and Afghan forces -- seemingly in defense of Taliban forces? They weren't, of course.

A U.S. official in Kabul said insurgents may have been firing into Afghanistan near the Pakistani border outpost Saturday morning, which prompted coalition forces to strike back. … "It was a situation where insurgent forces butted right up against a Pakistani border post and used that as a firing position. When we fired back, we hit Pakistani security forces."

In other words, Pakistani insurgents got NATO, with its helicopters and fighters, to do its work for it and attack Pakistani military forces, as well as sow yet more discord between Pakistan and the United States. As for relations between those two:

"This is a need-based relationship. It will have its temporary hiccup, probably in the form of the suspension of NATO cargo," said Imtiaz Gul, director of the Center for Research and Security Studies, an Islamabad-based think-tank.

But

In September 2010, a NATO helicopter attack on a Pakistani border post in the tribal regions killed two soldiers. Pakistan closed traffic for NATO convoys for a few days but later reopened the route. … Since that incident, which blew over, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship has deteriorated.

And, of course

Pakistan's army was embarrassed and angered by the covert raid by U.S. Navy SEALs in May that killed Osama bin Laden in a Pakistani army garrison town. That came after a Central Intelligence Agency contractor shot dead two armed men in Lahore in January and was briefly jailed.

More than a hiccup, the NATO strike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers may be another nail in the coffin of the U.S.-Pakistani relationship.

India has always been considered a soft state and it is time we shed this image.

Writing at Truthout, J. Sri Raman is quoting senior BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party --sort of India's Likkud)  leader Yashwant Sinha, who also says (emphasis added), "India should reserve the right of surgical strikes and hot pursuit against Pakistan irrespective of the consequences."

Sinha is speaking about the U.S. attack on the bin Laden compound. (Never mind the consequences, such as, shortly afterwards, the twin bomb attacks  on the Frontier Constabulary in Shabqadar, Charsadda, Pakistan that killed 80.) As Raman writes:

One of the very first questions raised in India by the [SEAL attack] was whether this was or was not an example for this country to emulate. "Yes," said India's extreme right and the security "experts" that give its rhetoric some respectability. They continue their campaign for a similar operation or series of operations from New Delhi to eliminate sources of anti-India terrorism seen to be harbored on Pakistani soil.

Of course

The demand is not entirely new.  [For example, the] question that the Bush-ordered aggression on Iraq . . . provoked was: should not India, too, support "pre-emptive" strikes against terrorist targets in Pakistan and the Pakistan-controlled part of Kashmir?

Raman also cites

. . . a pro-covert-action propagandist as saying, "If a Pakistan-based terrorist group carries out strikes against civilians in Mumbai ... India must be able to assassinate its leaders and their financiers."

For his part, Raman adds

Don't the words sound eerily like someone speaking from the White House in early May?

But no one throws down the gauntlet with as much of a vengeance as Indian national security advisor Bharat Karnad, who Raman quotes.

Does the ... government, encouraged by the successful action to finish off Osama, have the guts, gumption, but mostly the will, to rethink its ... attitude, when it comes to doing what any self-respecting country would do when under terrorist threat - bump off those responsible in a major way for terrorist strikes within India?

After a grievous wound like the Mumbai attack, India would be better advised to concentrate more on making sure it never happens again than worrying about vengeance. Especially because, to terrorists, punishment is of zero value as a deterrent.

Meanwhile, as India pumps up the volume on calls for revenge and as the TTP (Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Taliban) demonstrate more stealth and skill in its  attacks within Pakistan, what's to stop Pakistan from claiming that India is responsible?