We here at D&D are still enjoying our August recess, but fear not, we shall return soon.  In the meantime, the NYT featured a story today from Dexter Filkins about how the ISI used the CIA and American resources to arrest Mullah Baradar for their own, self-serving ends.

“We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” said a Pakistani security official, who, like numerous people interviewed about the operation, spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States. “We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians.”

Well that's discouraging.  And who could have ever imagined that was the case?

       

One of the major revelations to come out of the 92,000 previously classified documents recently released by wikileaks is that apparently the Taliban have on several occasions fired at U.S aircraft using surface to air missiles better known as MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems). The media has seized upon this story as yet another government blunder since after all wasn't it the U.S. government who originally supplied the Mujahideen with stinger missiles back in the 80's when they were fighting the Soviets? However, a closer examination of the specs on these stingers leads one to a far different and perhaps more dangerous conclusion; that Pakistan has begun to supply the Taliban with their own surface to air missiles to use against U.S. forces.

I had often heard that there were several hundred stingers unaccounted for after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan and when I was there this summer I asked the crews of helicopters I was flying on why it was that we no longer considered these weapons a threat. According to weapons experts, the batteries on stinger missiles are good for one shot each and they must be changed out if the delivery system is to be used more than once. Furthermore, the average shelf life of unused batteries is only 4-5 years. Meaning that any stinger missiles given to the Mujahideen in the 80's would no longer be effective today. While it is not beyond the realm of contemplation that a skilled technician could jerry rig some sort of alternative battery for these devices, such skill is likely out of the range of the vast majority of Taliban. These weapons are however still capable of exploding, only the delivery device is deactivated. As such a great deal of the remaining stingers left over from the 80's have probably since been turned into IEDs.

The fact remains however that the Taliban are getting fully functioning MANPADS from somewhere, which in all likelihood have been constructed in the last 4-5 years. The most likely candidate is Pakistan which is both the traditional patron of the Taliban and has for the last twenty years been a manufacturer of their very own surface to air missile known as the Anza. The Anza has an effective range of up to 5000 meters and could certainly have been behind the downing of several US helicopters in recent years. In recent years, Pakistan has advertised the Anza series for export,displaying it at the International Defense Exhibition (IDEX) 2007 event in the UAE.

Worst case scenario: The Pakistani ISI is directly providing the Taliban with surface to air missiles

Best Case: Pakistan is irresponsibly selling MANPADS on the open market and they are ending up in the hands of the Taliban through a middleman

News from the AP tonight that Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban second-in-command who was captured by the ISI with U.S. support several weeks ago, was deep in secret negotiations with the Afghan government.  At the time of his arrest, the news seemed to portend an abrupt about-face in Pakistan’s strategy.  It was hailed as a signal that Islamabad was reordering its strategic priorities, and would finally become an honest partner to the U.S. in fighting Islamic extremists.

Fascinating new story from the New York Times about the capture of Mullah Baradar earlier this week.  According to this story, it was an accident!  The Pakistanis had no idea that Baradar was at the meeting they raided, and only realized later that he was in custody.

The story briefly mentions the potential ramifications; most notably that Pakistan has NOT reoriented its strategic preferences and has NOT decided to crack down on the Afghan Taliban, which has been the meme in most analysis of the story.  Instead, perhaps this was a rather embarrassing mistake - an attempt to arrest a low-level suspect to appease the U.S. accidentally net the big fish that was supposed to be protected.  Or perhaps the Pakistanis who conducted the raid - noted only as "Pakistani counterterrorist officers" in the NYT - were not in contact with the ISI and therefore unaware that Baradar was receiving covert support.

This is all idle speculation, of course, but it warrants mention.  The biggest benefit from the Baradar capture was the perceived shift in Pakistani strategy and cooperation, but identifying it as a mistake means that the presumptive strategic breakthrough could be completely bunk.  And the fact that the CIA was not permitted access for two full weeks should certainly cast doubts on any claim of increased cooperation.

A bomb in Pune at the German Bakery killed 9 people and injured 57 more on Sunday. India is sadly no stranger to terrorism, but this attack, which is thus far unclaimed, proves that terrorist groups still have the capacity to initiate attacks inside India and brings troubling ramifications for India and the West.

The Mumbai attacks of November 2008 also explicitly targeted foreigners, most notably well-heeled business travelers at the Taj and Oberoi Hotels, but also common tourists at the popular Leopold's Cafe, featured in Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram, and foreign Jews at the Orthodox Nariman House.

At first blush, last weekend's attack on the German Bakery in Pune seems similar - attacking a spot always flush with foreigners. However, the demographics of the German Bakery set it apart from the Mumbai attacks. 

Tonight's Huffington Post headline reads: "America's Once Secret War in Pakistan Busts Wide Open". I must admit, I saw, I was intrigued, and I clicked. The story is one of tragedy.

"(AP/Huffington Post) -- SHAHI KOTO, Pakistan — A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and partly destroyed a girls' school in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday in an attack that drew attention to a little-publicized American military training mission in the al-Qaida and Taliban heartland."

At first blush, a shocker. The US has very publicly not sent active-duty combat troops into Pakistan, at the demands of the ISI and Pakistani Government -- not to mention for lots of other reasons. My first question: what were these soldiers doing in Shahi Koto? The answer is buried well below the fold in the HuffPo story:

"The soldiers were part of a small contingent of American soldiers training members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, Pakistan's army and the U.S. Embassy said. The mission is trying to strengthen the ill-equipped and poorly trained outfit's ability to fight militants.

The soldiers were driving to attend the inauguration of a different girl's school, which had been renovated with U.S. humanitarian assistance, the embassy said in a statement."

WELL. If a headline was ever duplicitous, demagogue-ish, and plain wrong, this is it. A secret war in Pakistan? Not so much. Evidently the Huffington Post decided that research was over-rated. They could have looked here, here, or here -- and found out that there were US Military Advisers training Pakistani Troops. Not only were these stories published in 2009, but they were the top results in a search I did using the Google. Do the editors at HuffPo read the NYT?

How's that research department working for you, Arianna?

But then, the ultimate shocker -- within the report itself, we have the blunt assessment from the always diplomatic Richard Holbrooke:

Holbrooke also said the U.S. has not tried to hide its training mission with the Pakistani military."

"There is nothing secret about their presence there," he told reporters in Washington."

Amen Richard, amen.

We have, in this country, a cult that fetishizes the revealing of secrets. Sometimes it is a good thing -- Woodward and Bernstein, Tobacco Whistle-Blowers, and Tail-Hook -- but sometimes its a very, very, bad and dangerous delusion -- Birthers, Birchers, and recent Nick Cage movies.

But when it comes to US Soldiers in the field losing their lives, that is what the story should be about. Lets focus on what is important, and honor them with just the facts, and only the facts.