There is some fighting in Pakistan:
Fifteen militants and one soldier were killed on Thursday when the Pakistani military mounted another operation in a week of fighting designed to seize control of a remote but strategic valley in the northwest, the army said.
The military has faced fierce resistance from the Taliban and its allies in the Tirah Valley in the Khyber region since troops set out to dislodge insurgents from strategically important heights above the valley six days ago.
The Pakistani military will surely take the high ground. One day they might take it again. But nothing much will change. The Taliban are usually content to stay in their sanctuary and the Pakistani army is usually content to let the jihadis keep their sanctuary. Only when the jihadis start dreaming of ruling Pakistan rather than killing Afghans and Americans in Afghanistan does the Pakistani army rouse itself to knocking back the jihadis.
But the Pakistani army never tries to go for the kill. They just go through the motions of war and use all the dead Pakistani soldiers to push us back when we ask them to actually try to win their so-called war against the Taliban. Their soldiers are just jihad fodder.
I thought Pakistan would learn that they can't make a deal with the Devil. Perhaps I just needed to learn that once made, that deal can't be easily cancelled.
Our friends, the Pakistanis. But they have nukes. So having them as highly flawed friends is better than the alternative. That's the world we have.
UPDATE: Strategypage puts it well:
Pakistan is not making much progress in eliminating Islamic terrorism. A significant minority (20-30 percent) of Pakistanis still supports Islamic terrorism and the terror groups have no problem gaining new recruits. A larger fraction of Pakistanis oppose Islamic terrorism. The problem is that the Islamic terrorists are willing to die for their beliefs while most of those who oppose Islamic terrorism just want to get on with their lives. Faced with this, most Pakistanis try to stay out of the way of all the violence or, if they can afford to, immigrate. Meanwhile the economy is a mess, corruption is rampant and terrorists continue to slaughter Pakistanis regularly. Karachi is becoming particularly dangerous and out-of-control as the Taliban and other Islamic terror groups increase their presence in the nation’s largest city.
It's a shame when the best we can reasonably hope for is that Pakistanis just slaughter themselves and keep the rest of us out of it.
