International Security

David Rohde offers a riveting account in the New York Times of his kidnapping by the Haqqani network and captivity in Pakistan for over 7 months. He notes that Carlotta Gall, the intrepid NYT reporter in Quetta, never does interviews with the Taliban in person — only on the phone, as a safety measure. There’s a fine line between intrepid and reckless. For all that Gall has been subjected to in her years of living in and reporting from Pakistan, she has never become a victim (she’s been arrested and seriously harassed, but not kidnapped like Jill Carroll, Daniel Pearl, or Rohde). 

One of the most useful elements of his ordeal and the re-telling of it — he shows the complexity of the situation, e.g., the “Taliban” is not a monolith. There are Afghan Taliban, Pakistan Taliban, and some who are just plain criminals.  Between the story and the NYT blog which takes readers’ questions on it, there is a great opportunity to understand this layered world the U.S. is swimming through opaquely in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Drugs, money, religion, power, violence, and suffering.  It’s all there. Indeed, there are some clear villians but we are in no position to simply rush in and eliminate “the enemy”. Even our drone strikes do not offer the clean “win” we could wish for; killing civilians is a major setback for the U.S. forces and an effective tool in jidhadist recruitment. In Afghanistan, part of the problem is geography that’s working against us. In Pakistan, there’s that “small” issue of sovereignty. The Kerry-Lugar bill of aid to Pakistan doesn’t solve too much either since the Pakistanis feel it ends with a thud on a low note of disrespect.

Perhaps a more successful long-term strategy is a regional solution; one that addresses the sticking points among and between India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. We need to work on incentives that will appeal to each country and we need more civil affairs personnel than soldiers in Afghanistan.