Daniel Markey
Interviewee:
Interviewer:
The recent replacement of General
A. The Pakistanis have for a long time anticipated
Q. What would the Pakistanis like to see, ideally?
A. The Pakistanis would want to see an
Q. The Haqqani network is giving sanctuary to al-Qaeda and
A. That's exactly right. And of the various groups based inside of
Q. President Obama has seemed annoyed at people asking him about the
A. Everybody in the region has keyed on that date since Obama's West Point speech. There's no question that that was the headline -- for Afghans, for Pakistanis, for Indians, really for everyone. The rest of that speech got washed away, and that date remained fixed in people's minds. Afghans are concerned that that date means that will be the end of U.S. commitment. Pakistanis see an opportunity in that. Indians have been very worried. I'm told that the Indian government has been reassured that
Q. The Pakistani military chief, General
A. It's not entirely clear what either the Pakistani army chief or the head of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant General
Q. Talk about the connection between al-Qaeda, the Haqqani network, and the Taliban.
A. The Haqqani network is loosely affiliated with the Afghan Taliban leadership, which was formerly under Mullah Omar, and is often referred to as the Quetta Shura Taliban. So that would be the core of what used to run
The Haqqani network, though based primarily in North Waziristan inside of
But the Pakistani Taliban are those Pakistanis who have taken up a sworn allegiance to the broader Taliban and have directed their violence primarily toward the Pakistani state. They are who the Pakistani military has primarily targeted for violence in South Waziristan.
There are divisions between these groups, but there are also linkages, and the linkages are perhaps more troubling. One other troubling link is to groups that are now commonly called the Punjabi Taliban, distinct from the Pakistani Taliban. These are groups who are not primarily ethnically Pashtun and have bases of support in the rest of
Q. If President Obama asked you for advice, what would you give him?
A. Among other things, that Lashkar-e-Taiba in particular is of enormous concern. We haven't seen concrete, firm action by the Pakistanis. That's an area which some people say is a ticking time bomb in
Q. I assume you think it's important for General Petraeus to continue the planned offensive in
A. Petraeus has said several times that we're just beginning to get the inputs right in
By the end of the summer we'll finally have the resources in place, and it will take at least six months to really make a serious assessment whether it's starting to work. You've seen these stories about Special Forces operations that are beginning to really get plugged in and take down the number of mid-to-senior level Taliban operatives inside of southern
Available at Amazon.com:
At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes
- The Real Reason Why Afghanistan Is a Lost Cause
- The War Drones On
- When the 'Right War' Goes Wrong
- The Afghanistan Paradox
- Pakistan's Gambit in Afghanistan
- Obama Wasting Opportunities in Latin America
- Stopping Nuclear Proliferation Before It Starts
- Veiled Truths: The Rise of Political Islam in the West
- Steps to Stop Iran From Getting a Nuclear Bomb
- Iran: The Nuclear Containment Conundrum
- Iran: The Right Kind Of Containment
- China Is the Key to Handling Nuclear North Korea
- Coping With China's Financial Power
- What China's Currency Reform Means For Investors
- Russian-American Obstacles Overshadow Obama-Medvedev Meeting
- Russia's Courtship of Silicon Valley
- Ukrainian Blues: Viktor Yanukovych's Rise and Democracy's Fall
- Russia: Prisoners of the Caucasus
- The Afghan Challenge Is Far Tougher
- New Guard, Old Policy on Afghanistan
- Fear and Uncertainty in Afghanistan
- Afghanistan: Bribing the Enemy
- Afghanistan Poses Difficult Challenges
- Defining Success in Afghanistan
- Sad Stan, Famous Petraeus
- The Challenge of Reconciliation in Kenya
- The Tyranny of Unity in Zimbabwe
- Mexico: The New Cocaine Cowboys
- Under Santos Colombia Could Rise to the Next Level
- Autocrats' Latest Weapon: Indirect Censorship
- Latin America's Rich Should Be More Generous
- Castrocare in Crisis
(C) 2010 Daniel Markey, Foreign Affairs