POSTPONED! Pakistan Event at Carnegie Endowment

I'd like to invite NSR readers to my lecture on Pakistan's counterinsurgency strategies (jointly hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Middle East Institute). In addition to some interesting history ill discuss emerging threats and recent stabilization efforts. Hope you can come.

Boosting American Policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Counterinsurgency, commonly referred to by its military acronym, "COIN," essentially boils down to armed nation-building -- a deliberate process of empowering people and weakening guerrillas until a state-friendly balance emerges. By contrast, counterterrorism seeks the tactical annihilation of the enemy. President Barack Obama's new Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy is an effort to do both:

promising to dismantle and disrupt al-Qaida while leaving the expensive and time-consuming job of definitively defeating it to Islamabad and Kabul. Call it COIN-lite.

Can such an approach work?

For now, yes. But if we extend the time horizon to 5-10 years from now, the outlook is less promising. Al-Qaida and its affiliates will receive a severely damaging blow, but they won't remain disabled for long. In medical terminology, the new strategy will stop the bleeding, but it cannot contain the risks of long-term infection.

America Must Win the War of Perception in Pakistan

President Obama's new Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy is status-quo plus -- counterterrorism sprinkled with elements of nation building in Afghanistan. However, long-term U.S. interests in the region depend on a stable Pakistan deterred from nuclear proliferation and fomenting regional insurgencies.

The real war in Pakistan, however, is not about military actions but about perceptions.

The United States has signed billions of dollars in aid over to Pakistan but sitting in Islamabad two weeks ago I could hardly find a happy Pakistani. The overriding narrative usually goes as follows: the U.S. sporadically uses Pakistan's military, colludes with local leaders, and leaves millions of Pakistanis to clean up the mess. Failing to explain or market its soft power -- aid for schools and hospitals -- Washington relies on Islamabad to highlight its goodwill and mistakes. While this ostensibly strengthens local governance and protects foreign aid workers, it has placed Pakistanis in a state of combustible ignorance. After eight years today most Pakistanis are equally anti-Taliban and anti-U.S. That spells failure for U.S. public diplomacy.

NSR Analysis: A Review of Haider Mullick's Upcoming Monograph

NSR Managing Editor, Jonathan Ruhe reviews NSR Editor in Chief's forthcoming monograph "Pakistan's Security Paradox: Countering and Fomenting Insurgencies" to be published by the U.S. Joint Special Operations University Press:

I’m glad to have the chance to preview my colleague Haider Mullick’s upcoming monograph on counterinsurgency (COIN) in Pakistan. Instead of summarizing the article’s main points, I’ll recommend taking some time to pore over its detailed analyses of an incredibly complex subject. I’m going to reflect on some of the broader implications of Pakistan’s new COIN policies addressed in this monograph.

Although there’s no shortage of punditry devoted to Pakistan’s myriad problems, Mullick’s monograph is one of the few to systematically and coherently address the sea-change quietly taking place in Islamabad’s formulation and implementation of COIN strategy and tactics.

In April 2009, the Pakistan Taliban had advanced to within sixty miles of the country’s capital, and Islamabad had been forced to cede judicial and administrative control over the Swat valley as the price of brokering peace. In essence, the Pakistani government had ceded the primary function of the state and the keystone of state sovereignty—maintaining a monopoly on the use of violence and authority within its own territory—to a non-state actor.