Pakistan's Taliban are fracturing and the Pakistanis are saying "I told you so" to America. We, of course, want the Pakistanis to really go after the Taliban inside Pakistan to break them all:
"The disintegration ... has accelerated with the Pakistan military operation in South Waziristan and the drone attacks by the United States in North Waziristan," Mahsud said, referring to the two tribal agencies that are the heartland of the Pakistani Taliban.
Another factor is the divide-and-conquer strategy Pakistan's military has long employed in its dealings with militants. Commanders have broken away from the TTP and set up their own factions, weakening the organization. Battles have broken out among the breakaway factions, and in one particularly remote tribal region the TTP was thrown out. These growing signs of fissures among the disparate groups that make up the Pakistani Taliban indicate the military's strategy could be paying off. ...
There is no evidence so far that fissures within the militant structure in Pakistan are helping NATO and U.S. forces. ...
Analysts predict that over time, however, the internecine feuding in the Pakistani Taliban will take a toll on militants fighting in Afghanistan, making it increasingly difficult for them to find recruits and restricting territory available to them.
Pakistan's military has rebuffed appeals from Washington to take on all of the insurgent groups in the tribal region, saying it has neither the men nor the weapons to do so. Instead, Islamabad has pushed its divide-and-conquer approach, which is gaining some traction in the United States, according to two Western officials in the region.
So, yes, Pakistan is still a net plus for our war effort. The problem with accepting the Pakistani view on strategy is that while "divide and conquer" is a valuable tool, you have to include the latter part for it to be a real strategy for victory. Just dividing the enemy without conquering them knocks them back on their heels but it leaves them alive to reorganize and unify. Will we conclude from a period of inactivity while they are down but now out that we have won and can withdraw?
Worse, the Pakistanis in practice are dividing the Taliban so they can continue to support their own friendly factions of the Taliban. "Divide and support" is the result, along with allowing the other smaller unfriendly factions to survive. This just sets the stage for Pakistan's favored Taliban to take over the smaller Taliban factions one day, when we aren't as focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan. Then, Pakistan will have a tool to fight for a pro-Pakistan Afghanistan in their unhealthy focus on preventing India from gaining any perceived advantage in Afghanistan.
So I guess it really is a "divide and conquer" strategy. But we and the Pakistanis differ on who is doing the conquering. As Pakistan's approach "gains traction" in America, the fans of the approach here would do well to remember that Pakistan isn't trying to achieve the same conquest that we are.
