Posted by: McQ on Friday, August 15, 2008 Many acknowledge that the Iraqi "awakening", which began in Anbar province, was partially driven by al Qaeda brutality. Another aspect, of course, was AQ's sometimes absurd, but brutally enforced dictums - such as women not being allowed to buy "male" vegetables such as cucumbers. But the callous and unflinching brutality and the murderous zeal in which it was carried out ostracized the Sunni community in Anbar from the al Qaeda terrorists there and caused them, eventually, to rebel. One has to wonder if the same sort of thing won't eventually happen in Pakistan's autonomous tribal area on the Pakistan/Afghan border: Al Qaeda and the Taliban are executing suspected U.S. informants in Pakistan in a campaign to terrorize potential spies and reinforce the authority of the militant organizations across the country’s vast and volatile tribal belt.Now they may actually have caught some spies in all of this, who knows? But in reality, this is the modus operandi for AQ (and the Taliban). They rule by terror, uncompromising religious zeal and brute force. It is truly their way or death. Because of that, no matter how difficult the life of those they infest has been, it is rarely as difficult, arbitrary or deadly as it is under AQ and the Taliban. As we saw in Iraq, then, they are their own worst enemy. To me the question is, how long will the population tolerate their brutal rule? And will they then act like the Iraqis did in Anbar? This is where I'm not quite sure. In Iraq, when given the choice between backing the US, who the Iraqis want out of Iraq and AQ, they chose the US because the US had come to be seen as an honest broker. There is no "honest broker" in the area of Pakistan where this is all occurring. The Pakistani army pretty much leaves the area alone and the tribes certainly have little use for the government of Pakistan as a whole. So I'm not sure of the answer here, but I am sure that at some point AQ and Taliban will push the population beyond the acceptable brutality threshold. What they'll do about it then is the question. Given the wild and fierce reputation of the tribes of the area they may solve the problem themselves and save us the problem. At a minimum we ought to explore and deploy any means we have to facilitate that sort of problem solving happening. |
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