In December, when President Barack Obama announced his new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, he cast it in simple terms. The goal of the military and diplomatic push, he said, was to "break the Taliban's momentum" and give the governments in Kabul and Islamabad some time to restore order.
There are some encouraging signs that the U.S. really has seized the initiative -- American forces on the move in Helmand province, militant leaders nabbed in Pakistan. But it's a little early to declare the Taliban's momentum broken.
The U.S. military is now one week into Operation Moshtarak, a slow and deliberate campaign to clear -- and for once, hold -- the militant stronghold of Marja in Helmand Province. It's still early days, but across the border in Pakistan, events have unfolded at a more dramatic pace. Late last week week, Mullah Baradar, the Taliban's chief military officer, was arrested in Karachi. Two more militant “shadow governors” were arrested this week.
Now, a U.S. drone strike in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region has hit the network of al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked warlord Sirajuddin Haqqani. Agence France-Presse, quoting a senior Pakistani security official, said the strike killed Haqqani's younger brother, along with some foreign operatives; the attack, AFP noted, further tightens the net on the Taliban leadership in Pakistan.
So is this a turning point? Is Pakistan -- long reluctant to go after the Taliban -- finally stepping up to the plate?
U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke, on a visit to Islamabad, said the capture of Baradar was a "very significant" event that "represents another high-water mark for Pakistani and American collaboration." And the Washington Post, reporting from Karachi, said the recent arrests of senior Afghan Taliban leaders in Pakistan marked "the culmination of months of pressure by the Obama administration on Pakistan's powerful security forces to side with the United States."
Take a closer look, however, and things aren't quite so clear. Joshua Foust flags this interesting piece in the New York Times: The capture of Baradar may have been just a lucky break, and not part of a deliberate effort by Pakistan to go after the Taliban chief. "All this is not necessarily related to a rational decision at the top of the Pakistani military to see things our way,” one White House official tells the paper. "I don’t see any big shift yet."
Perhaps, then, it's a bit early to start predicting outcomes. As Foust notes, accounts of the capture of the other Taliban leaders are quite muddled. And furthermore, he writes, "the Pakistani government’s inability to discuss any of these captures in any consistent or meaningful way should be raising flags to all the people who think these arrests represent a sea change within Pakistan."
[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]
