From 2001 to 2005, Afghanistan was pretty quiet and we got by with only one combat brigade there for the most part (plus supporting troops).
Starting in 2006, Afghanistan started to heat up as jihadis were hired in Pakistan and sent into Afghanistan for offensives that never really panned out--we killed these hired fanatics rather easily. As time went on, the Pakistan problem became more and more evident. The Pakistanis retreated in the face of their own jihadis' advances, which allowed Pakistan's frontier areas to become havens for supporting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Further developments took place in 2007 as the Iraq surge defeated al Qaeda in Iraq as a major force, which led al Qaeda to focus their efforts on Pakistan (and to a lesser degree Afghanistan), which made Pakistani-based jihadis more lethal.
Despite Pakistan's offensives of late against the jihadis in their border areas, the Pakistanis haven't even recouped their losses since 2006. And already they shy away from continuing the offensive to defeat their Taliban. Indeed, jihadis are still welcome in Pakistan:
Extremist groups in Pakistan are interlinked, and members often move among different groups. Bahawalpur and the surrounding area are important centers for other militant organizations in addition to Jaish-e-Mohammad, including Lashkar-e- Taiba , the group blamed for the devastating 2008 attack on Mumbai ; Sipah-e-Sahaba, a sectarian group linked to the killing of seven Christians last month in the Punjabi town of Gojra; and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, which is perhaps al Qaida's closest ally in Pakistan.
Although there's a major Pakistani army base in Bahawalpur, the bases of Jaish and other jihadist groups in and around the town attract little attention. The regional administration is aware of the new compound but untroubled by it. According to the senior police official for the area, Mushtaq Sukhera , it's been "thoroughly searched" and nothing suspicious has been found. Sukhera denied that there's any extremist threat in the town and said that while Jaish owns the new facility, "there's nothing over there except a few cows and horses."
The jihadis and their assets are fairly fungible, moving between the various jihad targets. The immediate problem for us in the field is this:
Between 3,000 and 8,000 jihadists from southern Punjab are fighting in Afghanistan or Pakistan's western tribal area, according to independent estimates, said Ayesha Siddiqa , an analyst who's studied the area. They're often known as the "Punjabi Taliban," while the main Taliban forces are ethnic Pashtuns, the group that straddles northwest Pakistan and Afghanistan.
And with Pakistan's large population, there are plenty of new recruits even as we kill off plenty. As long as the jihadis can recruit in Pakistan (and funnel recruits from the wider Islamic world), we will have trouble winning the military campaign.
As I've written, Pakistan is both a key asset in fighting in Afghanistan and a key asset for the jihadis to fight us in Afghanistan. They are the Black Sheep of the coalition fighting terrorism.
Right now, we have little choice but to balance our need for their help and our need to pressure them to stop doing what they do to hurt us.
Isn't foreign policy grand?
