Pakistani Outrage and the Imperative of Sovereign Control

JCS Chairman Mike Mullen was suddenly dispatched to Pakistan yesterday to deal with the uproar created by news of a US incursion into Pakistani territory. The new Pakistani administration continues to assert its own rights and seems eager to be seen as facing down the US, although military professionals on both sides would probably prefer to keep any chance encounters off the front page. Both Pakistani and international politicians have emphasized the importance of respecting Pakistani sovereignty, which leads us to an interesting gap in international theory.

Can nations reasonably expect the world to accept their sovereignty over areas they cannot actually control? The Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan has never fully submitted to national authority, and has been at blows with federal forces more often than not. This is the standard excuse for the inability to track down and capture key Al Qaeda figures. If internal forces do not respect the authority of Islamabad in the NWFP, then why should international law force external actors to respect that authority?

The answer to that question is fairly obvious: to prevent the type of foreign intervention that was demonstrated most recently in Georgia. But Pakistan is a special case, in that it contains a universally acknowledged international threat lodged within its borders. It is difficult to imagine a region more conducive to terrorist concealment than the NWFP, and if Al Qaeda could be dislodged from its stronghold, it would be severely, perhaps fatally weakened as an organization (although it would certainly live on as a source of guidance and inspiration). The unique value of the NWFP as a terrorist redoubt cannot be reproduced, and the incentive for the international community to secure that redoubt is immense. So why does international respect for sovereignty persist in this case?

International Law is yet to confront the reality that the NWFP and Afghanistan do not conform to the Westphalian state system that dictates every other aspect of international relations. The concept of sovereignty is difficult to grasp when that mantle is cast over areas that are de jure autonomous regions and de facto independent polities. It is time to account for actors within these actors that pose a threat, not just to the regime that claims sovereignty over the area or its neighbors, but to the international community as a whole.

[Edit: The US incursions actually took place in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), not the NWFP. I still stand by everything stated above, although FATA is even further from government control than the NWFP]

The Weekend Roundup

Time's been in short supply lately, so there's a slight backlog in recent developments. Here's a brief rundown:

On Friday, Muqtada al-Sadr officially extended his unilateral ceasefire by another six months. The announcement did not get a lot of play in the mainstream media, which has chosen to pretend that the surge is the only variable worth discussing. Most Americans probably failed to appreciate the importance of Muqtada's August withdrawal, even though the removal of the Mahdi Army gave the surge forces much-needed room to operate. Al-Sadr's extension keeps the recent Iraqi political momentum (okay, it's a relative term) alive, and also keeps al-Sadr's forces intact until the additional US brigades return home. A lot of hard work went into keeping Muqtada on the sidelines, and now the US and the Iraqi government have six more months to convince him that he should bury the AK for good. The real reckoning with Muqtada al-Sadr is a ways off, but at least he has allowed Petraeus to shore up the struggling Sons of Iraq without major Shia interference.

The New York Times Magazine has a devastating piece on the struggle for one of the nastiest corners of Afghanistan. It manages to capture the limitations of even the best COIN operators and emphasizes the strains placed on soldiers at the company level. (Spoiler: the stop-loss program does not win the Army any good-will.)

The underrated story of the day: Pakistan's accidental worldwide shutdown of Youtube. The explanation of how an act of national censorship went global is a rare look at the way countries seek to restrict the internet and how those same techniques can be applied to cyberwarfare.

The AP wire has news of Pentagon force projections for the summer. After the surge brigades leave, the US will still have 140,000 troops in Iraq, up from 132,000 before the surge. Afghanistan, the poor and increasingly ugly stepsister, will have its allotment of forces raised to 32,000. If the gains in Iraq hold up, expect to hear more and more about the backsliding taking place outside the cozy confines of Kabul.

Secretary Gates is busy conducting F-16 diplomacy with Indonesia. Worried about losing a valuable market in a country receiving millions in military aid, the Bush administration is trying to override Congressional concerns about the country's human rights record and kick-start the process of delivering training and equipment. The US only reestablished military ties in 2005, so the Pentagon is eager to curry favor with their Indonesian counterparts.