Note that it was the sustained nature of these attacks that has now effectively disrupted the Afghani supply chain as the workers took account of the cost vs. the benefits of proceeding and did not like the yield:
Mohammad Shakir Afridi, president of the Khyber Transport Association, in the northwestern city of Peshawar said: “We have stopped supplies to foreign forces in Afghanistan from today.
“We have around 3,500 trucks, tankers and other vehicles, we are the major suppliers to Afghanistan, transporting about 60-70 per cent of goods.”
What’s left of the Pakistani state has grossly misjudged the right trajectory forward, as described in my brief on Pakistan dismantling the LeT -
In short, Pakistan needs to coopt the state building capacity of JuD without alienating the hierarchy that provides the social services while at the same time kililng their connectivity to other militant groups in the area. Any military attack, of any type - bombing, artillery, raid - results in the strategy collapsing. Removing the hierarchy does the same thing, at least until the state has time to coopt the players at the bottom of the LeT pyramid.
Instead, Pakistan is now banning the organization and shutting down it’s offices. In essence, it’s shutting down the state in the region in question.
This will only accomplish to increase the alienation (and depravity) of the groups in the region that were reliant on the social system provided by JuD. This will drive them to the black market. This will drive unbridled chaos in the region rather than controlled chaos.
Nils Gilman has the dynamic:
The majority of people in these locales of course merely become victims of the situation into which they are born. But there are some who refuse to be victims, and follow their entrepreneurial instincts (read: risk-willingness and bloody-mindedness) to make the best of their situation, using the channels provided by globalization to free themselves. These are the people who participate in the economy of deviant globalization.
Deviant globalizers know the state is neither going to help them close the gap with the rich world, nor protect them from the buffets of the global market. But for that very same reason, they are also not revolutionaries: they have no interested in seizing the state to enact development (that’s so twentieth century). Rather, they seek autonomy from the state, so that they can build their economic empires and establish alternative forms of legitimacy.
Former CIA case officer Larry Johnson, the Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio, Vanity Fair’s Craig Unger and myself were on a roundtable on John Batchelor’s show. It begins at the 20 minute mark. We discussed Pakistan in some depth, as well as the gaming of foreign policy.
A large percentage of critical supplies, fuel, and equipment travel through the mountains of the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan before reaching coalition troops. This has been a problematic arrangement as the very rugged terrain provides excellent cover for Taliban and independent entrepreneurs to attack, destroy, and steal from the convoys. Exploiting the inability of US troops to operate on Pakistani soil, the Taliban is constricting the supply artery with the intent of completely disrupting the supply chain. Bill Roggio has the details.
The price of protecting convoys has increased in step with the threat. Private security contractors now make between $500 and $800 per vehicle, with guards earning about $300 per month. This is interesting because it may have driven the attacks to make their way along the supply chain into the heart of Pakistan. Notably, they’ve moved beyond attacking the network edges (easier but less payoff unless sustained over a long period of time) and instead are focusing on network nodes (high yield but theoretically more dangerous).
Note that the facilities attacked are essentially left hollow (guards are left alive, buildings are left alone) while the supply packages are completely destroyed. It seems the attackers want to sustain this ability in their arsenal.
Pakistan has arrested the operational leader of the organization, charged with directly organizing, leading, and supporting the Mumbai overrun. However, Haifz Mohammed Saeed, the key founding architect of the organization is being left untouched since he has, for all appearances sake, moved on to run its social services arm - Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
Pakistan is attempting to pick apart the organization by recognizing LeT’s public divisions as valid. To make this work they will have to effective police JuD - regulating its financing, where the money is spent, and ensuring that the LeT internal divisions (military, social) operate independently of one another.
In short, Pakistan needs to coopt the state building capacity of JuD without alienating the hierarchy that provides the social services while at the same time kililng their connectivity to other militant groups in the area. Any military attack, of any type - bombing, artillery, raid - results in the strategy collapsing. Removing the hierarchy does the same thing, at least until the state has time to coopt the players at the bottom of the LeT pyramid.
Dawood Ibrahim presents as much of a threat to India as he does to Pakistan. In India, Dawood has a historical record of fracturing the state along religious fault lines.
In 1993, in response to the dismantling of a major piece of Muslim religious infrastructure, the Babri Masjid, Muslim and Hindu hardliners sparked riots all over the country, with a strong focus on Bombay. This sectarian violence was facilitated by Dawood’s black market firm, “D Company.”
An army of young, poverty stricken Muslim men, each paid a few thousand rupees were able to kill hundreds, cause massive economic damage, provoke a major Hindu extremist response, and drastically shift the demographics of the city as hundreds of thousands fled to areas of like-minded religious concentration. Acting swiftly to exploit the situation, D Company detonated a series of 13 bombs in Bombay, on what is referred to as “Black Friday.”
Dawood’s army of the young and poor is still in place in the largest slum in the world, which is located in the middle of Mumbai.
Captured on the Taj Palace Hotel’s CCTV system. Click here for the video.
According to the major private security providers in India, there has been a massive spike in terms of customers looking to add security, upgrade their in-place systems, or learn more about the process. This is largely due to governmen ordering public locations to increase security directly after the Mumbai attacks. Most locations are looking to buy the bare minimum to build surveillance, threat detection, and resiliency capabilities, seeking to offload the costs of increased security on the government.
Look, this is an unfortunate initiative. Instead of demanding the private sector meet a minimum standard, security services should partner and enable these high density locations to connect to one another and tap into core security information services. Information, i.e. keeping track of threats, fire brigades, police officers provide these places, each with limited means, to connect to one another and build collaborative security rather than simply throwing money away.
Note: in most cases, private security does not refer to private military contractors like Blackwater, but rather to mall/public security. These are not highly trained operatives with years of combat experience. Instead, these are guards who know how to provide medical care and handle a radio, some with weapons experience - the combination of which is useful in the right circumstances.
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