Afghanistan's new great game: The undeclared wars within the war

[Robb]

Afghanistan's new great game: The undeclared wars within the war

Conventional Western public opinion regards the war in Afghanistan as a struggle between NATO and extremist Islamic militants. Since assuming office Barack Obama has redefined the conflict by calling it the Af-Pak war.

The US president's redefinition is recognition that the Taliban's nerve center, as well as al Qaeda's safe haven are across Afghanistan's border in neighboring Pakistan. In the forbidding tribal territories, Waziristan especially, another dimension of the same fierce conflict is underway with more Pakistani troops thrown into the fray than the whole of NATO deploys on its side of the Northwest Frontier.

But unlike Afghanistan where NATO allows journalists free access to combat operations, the Pakistani military remains media-averse and highly secretive of its own internal counter-insurgency efforts. On the surface of things, however Pakistan is NATO's and particularly Washington's staunch ally in the regional and global campaign against terror. It's a role for which Islamabad in dire economic straits is rewarded handsomely with a massive combined US economic and military aid package it could not do without.

But as British author Moni Mohsin, a lifelong student of Pakistan points out "Pakistan is also the only US ally, America frequently bombs with drone missile strikes, which sometimes kill terrorists and just as often kill civilians."....

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[Robb]

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