Afghanistan A “Sideshow” To Pakistan Says National Security Expert

By Ravi Bhatia – Talk Radio News Service

Conventional military approaches are not as effective as employing local law enforcement agencies to neutralize global terrorist networks such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban, said Brian Katulis, a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, on Monday.

“[Local] law enforcement and targeted intelligence actions are more effective then simply sending tens of thousands of troops to a place like Afghanistan,” Katulis told the Talk Radio News Service.

Fourteen Americans were killed Monday in Afghanistan in two separate helicopter crashes, including three representatives of the Drug Enforcement Administration. The causes of the crashes are under investigation. Despite Monday’s events and the fact that the Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of the opium that funds insurgent groups, Katulis believes that the situation in Afghanistan is a “sideshow” to the one in Pakistan.

“You’ve got an army [in Pakistan] of 1.5 million, they’ve got a nuclear weapon and it’s also where most of the Al Qaeda leadership has migrated,” he said. “It’s the place where the United States will never have significant numbers of U.S troops on the ground.”

Katulis last visited Pakistan in April. He went to Afghanistan in August for the first round of the elections, serving as an election monitor.

“The thing that really struck me when I was in Kabul … was the underdevelopment,” he said. “[There were] streets in the capital city, main thoroughfares, that weren’t paved. This really struck me after hundreds of billions of dollars spent by U.S taxpayers and more then eight years [under the Bush administration].”

When asked where he thought the money went, Katulis said, “The situation has deteriorated quite rapidly, but I do think there’s a possibility to stabilize the situation.”

Katulis also said that the Central Intelligence Agency should employ drone strikes on targets in Pakistan only sparingly because of their potential to kill innocent civilians. He refuted speculation that the CIA and other U.S agencies have underlying intentions for the Af-Pak region.

“It’s been publicly reported that the Central Intelligence Agency, among other agencies, has been involved with both countries,” he said. “I think that’s a good thing. I don’t think there’s anything more then what we see out there in the press in terms of what the objectives are. The broader goal is shared by many: to have a region that is much more stable, a region of the world where we don’t have to send men and women over to sacrifice their lives, a region that’s much more integrated with the rest of the world.”