Towards Security in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Conn Carroll / February 26, 2009

National Journal is hosting an informative online forum this week on the Obama Administration’s strategy in Afghanistan. Heritage’s James Carafano identified the main points of a good strategy:

• Have the Pakistanis deal with the terrorist threat in their tribal areas, while Coalition forces defeat them in Afghanistan.
• Work to lessen tensions between Pakistan and India, so that Pakistan focuses on the internal threat.
• Help the Pakistanis develop the capacity to conduct effective, full spectrum counter-insurgency campaign.
• Continue to rely on unilateral military action in the tribal areas to protect troops fighting across the border in Afghanistan as well as to prevent a potential future catastrophic international terrorist attack, but calibrate military action (recognizing that each unilateral strike—especially involving civilian casualties—undermines U.S. broader goals).
• Develop the capacity of Afghans to become self-reliant in security, governance and development.
• Integrate coalition efforts (e.g. CENTCOM, NATO), programs (e.g. development assistance, military operations) and regional strategies (e.g. for Pakistan, Afghanistan, India) into a coherent effort.
• In the end, al Qaeda’s network and leadership in the region need to be destroyed and there needs to be a security-political settlement that deals with the long term future of the tribes that stride Pakistan and Afghanistan. (more…)