The Boston Globe published an interview with Admiral William Fallon, the former CENTCOM commander who was relieved of command in March 2008 after just one short year. Admiral Fallon discusses the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. In a portion of the interview on Pakistan, he demonstrates why his tenure was short lived.
Admiral Fallon displayed a very real lack of understanding of the situation on the ground in the Taliban-controlled, al Qaeda sanctuaries of North and South Waziristan. He promotes the fallacy that the "local Taliban" drove out elements of al Qaeda and the Pakistani government's policy has been successful in dealing with the terror group. He claims al Qaeda, and not the Pakistani Taliban, are the root of the problems in Waziristan.
The real troublemakers are Al Qaeda who are a worldwide terrorist network who will do anything they can do have instability in the area, first of all, because it protects them. If they can have a cone of instability around them, then they can continue to exist where they are. And we're pretty certain, at least when I checked out, that they were up somewhere in those remote areas in Pakistan and Afghanistan where not only is the terrain about as challenging as you'll find anywhere on earth, but the tribal networks are very, very exclusive of outsiders.
They [the Pakistanis] were actually pretty successful in south Waziristan, which is one of the areas on the border. Why? They decided to act, which was nice, for a change. They got tribal support to help them get rid of the outsiders. Very interesting.
But they didn't get that kind of help up in North Waziristan, and they haven't yet. Why? Because the outsiders [in South Waziristan] were mostly Uzbeks. And they didn't treat the locals very well. And the locals picked up on it. And after a while, they said, "We'd be happy to get rid of some of these thugs for you."
It hasn't happened with Arabs from Al Qaeda They've been very clever about this. They've figured out how to get very close culturally. I'm not there, this is all second and third-hand but we get a lot of reports that indicate that this is the way it is. They've intermarried. They've taken great pains to be deferential to the local chiefs. And they've done, I'm sure they've greased the way fairly, so they've been much more successful.
There are plenty of problems with Fallon's narrative, I'll touch on the major ones..
First, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and I debunked the idea that the "good Taliban" drove out the Uzbek al Qaeda fighters out of the kindness of their hearts back in April 2007. The clashes between Nazir's Taliban in South Waziristan and Uzbek fighters from the Islamic Jihad Group were due to local issues of land ownership and intermarrying with the tribes, not out of a desire to rid the region of jihadis. Senior al Qaeda and Taliban leaders ultimately mediated the dispute.
The Pakistani government promoted the idea that Nazir's forces were "pro-government" because they fought the Uzbeks, however Nazir has openly supported al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Omar. Nazir routinely sends fighters into Afghanistan fight U.S. and Coalition forces. And Nazir doesn't harbor ill will towards Uzbeks of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan; Tahir Yuldashev, the group's leader, is thought to have been killed in a US airstrike on a meeting in South Waziristan. He was meeting with none other than Nazir, who was wounded in the attack.
Second, Fallon completely ignores the elephant in South Waziristan's room: Baitullah Mehsud, the commander of the Pakistani Taliban. Baitullah has been behind the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and a rash of suicide attacks throughout Pakistan as well as a military campaign in Pakistan's northwest. Baitullah and Nazir openly operate in South Waziristan; the government has essentially ceded this region to them.
Third, the "the outsiders in South Waziristan" are not mostly Uzbeks. Fallon should explain why several senior and mid-level al Qaeda leaders have been killed in U.S. strikes in South Waziristan. Also, the biggest U.S. cross-border incident inside Pakistan this year occurred in Nazir's tribal regions in South Waziristan. U.S. special operations forces conducted an air assault in an effort to take down some high-value targets.
Finally, Fallon said "I'm not there, this is all second and third-hand but we get a lot of reports that indicate that this is the way it is." Fallon clearly was getting his information from the Pakistani government, which had a vested interest to show some progress against al Qaeda in the tribal areas. Here's the rub: you don't need classified information to figure out what is happening in Pakistan's tribal areas. For all of Pakistan's failings, its press does an excellent job in providing the nuggets of information that allow you to paint a picture on what is happening in Pakistan.
