Eleven days ago, the only country on earth who formally recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan agreed to surrender part of its own territory to that despicable group to save its own skin. In response to a wave of violence perpetrated by those black-turbaned thugs, Pakistan has agreed to withdraw its military forces from the Swat River Valley and permit the imposition of Islamic sharia law in exchange for a cease-fire and the promise of relative stability.
From Pakistan's perspective, it looks like a good deal. They're a Muslim country clearly sympathetic to the Taliban and the propagation of fundamentalist Islam, and their military and intelligence services have supported the Taliban materially in the past. The violence stops (at least directly against the government) and the immediate threat against the capital - Islamabad lies only 100 miles to the southeast - is averted.
From the Taliban's perspective, it looks like a better deal. They have intimidated a sovereign government into retreating. They can exercise their brand of medieval cruelty with the freedom they deny others, they can finish the job of ejecting Western tourists from the picturesque valley, they can intensify their attacks against US supply convoys and transform the area into a base from which they can launch attacks against Allied forces in Afghanistan proper.
From the perspective of the ordinary people of the Swat Valley just trying to survive, this agreement represents a nightmare of a deal. Their government has abandoned them to the savagery of the Middle Ages; they have no recourse, no appeal. During the terror offensive cited above, the Taliban kidnapped, tortured and beheaded hundreds of people, attacked and overran military and police installations and directed their greatest fury at education: They blew up 191 schools including 122 just for girls, leaving 62,000 students with nowhere to go. With the Taliban now officially in charge, life for these poor creatures has devolved from miserable to hellish.
From the perspective of the United States, of course, this agreement represents a strategic setback. The situation in Afghanistan has become so serious that even a socialist one-worlder like Barack Obama recognized the need for 17,000 additional troops. However, Highway 55, the major line of communication running from the Karachi seaport through the Khyber Pass and thence to Afghanistan, passes south of the Swat Valley and has been attacked ferociously and often as the Taliban attempt to disrupt Allied operations. With the withdrawal of Pakistani forces from the region and the impending closure of the airbase in Manas, Kyrgyzstan (under heavy pressure from the Russians), deploying those additional troops and supplying them will be extremely difficult. Moreover, it demonstrates the basic schizophrenic nature of our erstwhile Pakistani allies. On the one hand, they granted us access to their country after 9/11 and have at least attempted to throttle Muslim extremists, with varying degrees of enthusiasm and success. On the other hand, they allowed Osama bin Laden and his retreating Al Qaeda units to escape through Tora Bora in December 2001, they essentially gave them safe haven in the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas by not pressing them too closely and have now ceded control of part of the Northwest Frontier Province to those same savages.
For the Pakistani government to be unable or unwilling to exercise dominance over an area only two hours' drive from Islamabad illustrates how flimsy their resolve actually is, and validates the policy of unannounced Predator airstrikes of the past several months. However, the major point of this agreement is that, if Pakistan thinks that the violence can be stopped or at least contained within the valley of the Swat, if they think the Taliban will be satisfied, they are wrong...dead wrong.
History shows us that negotiating with aggressors buys more aggression. The North resorted to half-measures for 84 years, ensuring a catastrophic Civil War with the South. By betraying Czechoslavakia to Hitler in 1938, the Allies guaranteed World War II in 1939. Ceding control of Eastern Europe to the Soviets at Yalta guaranteed 45 years of confrontation, misery, death and horror during the Cold War. By not finishing off Saddam Hussein when we had the chance in 1991, the US guaranteed his continued brutality and the eventual return of American forces to Iraq. By capitulating to the demands of the Al Qaeda terrorists who bombed the Madrid railway system in 2004, by withdrawing their military from Iraq, the Spanish only guaranteed they would be attacked again. And by the Pakistanis sacrificing the Swat Valley to the Taliban now, they only guarantee a greater and deadlier crisis with the Taliban in the future. As Winston Churchill correctly observed, "An appeaser is someone who feeds a crocodile - hoping the crocodile will eat him last."
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