US forces and Islamic radicals are codependent

An interesting article from Graham Fuller, former CIA Chief of Station in Kabul:

Huffington Post
May 11, 2009

Obama's Policies Making Situation Worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan

[...] The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban -- like them or not -- as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001...

-- India is the primary geopolitical threat to Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Pakistan must therefore always maintain Afghanistan as a friendly state...

In the end, only moderate Islamists themselves can prevail over the radicals whose main source of legitimacy comes from inciting popular resistance against the external invader. Sadly, U.S. forces and Islamist radicals are now approaching a state of co-dependency...

If the past eight years had shown ongoing success, perhaps an alternative case for U.S. policies could be made. But the evidence on the ground demonstrates only continued deterioration and darkening of the prognosis. Will we have more of the same? Or will there be a U.S. recognition that the American presence has now become more the problem than the solution? We do not hear that debate... (link)

And Patrick Seale on the Obama administration's new focus on counterinsurgency:

Obama’s New Af-Pak Strategy
By Patrick Seale

MAY 15 - U.S. President Barack Obama has chosen to adopt a high-risk counter-insurgency strategy against the Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan...

What does the new U.S. strategy imply? It means, of course, being militarily agile, matching the insurgents’ hit and run tactics, and killing their leaders, when and where possible. But it also means the deliberate use of disproportionate force, even at the cost of massive civilian casualties. The key idea is to make life so intolerably dangerous and harsh that the local population will desert the insurgents, and that both will lose the will to fight. That is the theory behind the strategy.

Israel adopted a similar counter-insurgency strategy in its war against Hamas in Gaza last December/January. It did not, however, have the desired effect since Hamas remains very much in control of Gaza, and may even have increased its legitimacy...

Under American pressure, the Pakistan Army has also deliberately resorted to the disproportionate use of force, launching this month a sudden and massive assault on the Swat valley, which is said to have so far killed 700 militants. It has also forced hundreds of thousands of destitute civilians to run for their lives, thereby creating a vast and virtually unmanageable refugee problem...

But, in the meantime, counter-insurgency is a gamble because it sometimes has the opposite effect to what is intended. Instead of driving a wedge between the population and the militants it can bind them together in adversity. Instead of drying up the pool of jihadi recruits, it can swell their ranks.

Both Afghanistan and Pakistan have been destabilized by America’s war. The next six months will show whether the situation can be retrieved. If it cannot, there will have to be another change of strategy, perhaps something more radical like announcing a withdrawal of U.S. troops on the Iraqi model, and leaving the Afghans and the Pakistanis to work things out for themselves...

Probably the best way to defeat the activists is to stop killing Muslims. (link)