The dangers in Pakistan, Afghanistan

chicagotribune.com

President Barack Obama barely touched on the Afghanistan war in his State of the Union address last week. He didn't even mention Pakistan, where Taliban terrorists are on the attack again.

We don't blame him:

•Last November, a U.S. drone strike killed Hakimullah Mehsud, the brutal Pakistani Taliban leader who led a network blamed for the deaths of thousands of Pakistani civilians in suicide bombings. That devastating blow offered Pakistan's leaders a prime opportunity to roll up even more Taliban commanders, to take the offensive in a fight that has raged for years.

Instead, Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif suspended counterterrorist operations against Taliban militants and sought to negotiate a deal to end the insurgency. Sharif agreed to allow the new Taliban leader, Maulana Fazlullah, time to consolidate his leadership over several Taliban factions, in hopes that Fazlullah would come to the negotiation table with greater political clout.

Never mind that such truces have failed over and over in the past decade.

What happened? Exactly what you'd expect. Fazlullah exploited the government lull to regroup and rearm. In recent weeks he has launched a major new offensive in three major cities, killing scores of people. The Taliban have attacked the major southern port city of Karachi, a hub of Pakistan's economy. Among those killed: Karachi's top counterterrorism police officer.

Sharif took office last May. He ran a campaign "that deliberately ignored the Pakistani Taliban, and tacitly has sent the message that cooperation with the U.S. should be limited," Anthony Cordesman, an expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told The Wall Street Journal.

The results are depressingly familiar. Sharif has learned the same lesson as previous Pakistan leaders: The Taliban have no interest in negotiating or sharing power. They're terrorists who target civilians. They must be defeated.

•The Taliban resurgence in Pakistan also looms as a threat to neighboring Afghanistan. Most U.S. troops are set to leave Afghanistan by the end of the year. In last week's speech, Obama repeated his pledge to deploy a robust residual U.S. force to mount counterterrorism operations and train Afghan security forces. All of that hinges on a security agreement negotiated last year by the U.S. and Afghanistan, but still unsigned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Karzai says he won't sign unless he gets more concessions from the U.S. Obama says the deal's done, take it or leave it. The U.S. has recently raised again the prospect of a "zero option," yanking all troops. The prospects of breaking this stalemate before Karzai leaves office after elections, slated for April: Nil.

There's plenty of speculation about Karzai's mental state and motivation. Maybe he wants to cut a better deal. Maybe he just wants to leave office with a flourish, bragging to his fellow countrymen that he stood up to the U.S. Either way, Karzai "has really gone from maddeningly unpredictable to dangerously erratic," White House adviser John Podesta told NPR late last year. The latest outrage: An Afghan-led prisoner review board recently ordered the release from detention of 37 insurgents, some of whom are accused of attacking U.S. troops. That was a direct thumb in the eye to Washington.

Astonishingly, Karzai now blames the U.S. for insurgent-style attacks to undermine his government, The Washington Post reports. He has compiled "a list of dozens of attacks that he believes the U.S. government may have been involved in," a palace official told the Post.

Whew. Dangerously erratic and a delusional conspiracy theorist.

The best U.S. option is, as much as possible, to ignore Karzai's ranting. He's a lame duck. There will be a new Afghan president soon. The major presidential candidates have indicated they would sign the agreement. There's still plenty of time to sign a deal and keep a robust force of Americans in Afghanistan. That's still vital for anti-terrorism operations.

If the U.S pulled all its forces from Afghanistan, drone bases in that country would likely have to be closed. That would cripple efforts to strike al-Qaida and Taliban targets across a wide swath of mountainous territory on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. It would let terrorists regroup and rearm with impunity.

That's why American forces must continue to target terror leaders and demolish safe havens in those countries. It's frustrating that the U.S. still can't depend on Pakistan or Afghanistan to be reliable partners.