Page 2 of 2 Operation Breakfast redux
By Pratap Chatterjee
As in the 1960s in Cambodia, these strikes are having a devastating,
destabilizing effect, not just on the targeted communities in Pakistan, but on
public consciousness throughout the region. An article in the January 23 New
York Times indicated that the fury over these attacks has even spread into
Pakistan's military establishment which, in a manner similar to Sihanouk in the
1960s, knows its limits in its tribal borderlands and is publicly uneasy about
US air strikes which undermine the country's sovereignty. "Are you with us or
against us?" the newspaper quoted a senior Pakistani military officer demanding
of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates when he spoke last month at Pakistan's
National Defense University.
Even pro-American Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has
spoken publicly against drone strikes. Of one such attack, he recently told
reporters, "We strongly condemn this attack and the government will raise this
issue at [the] diplomatic level."
Despite the displays of outrage, however, the American strikes have undoubtedly
been tacitly approved at the highest levels of the Pakistani government that is
unable to control militants in its tribal borderlands. Similarly, Sihanouk
finally looked the other way after the US provided secret papers, code-named
Vesuvius, as proof that the Vietnamese were operating from his country.
While most Democratic and Republican hawks have praised the growing drone war
in the skies over Pakistan, some US experts are starting to express worries
(even if they don't have Cambodian history in mind). John Arquilla, a professor
of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School who frequently advises the
military, says that an expansion of the drone strikes "might even spark a
social revolution in Pakistan".
Indeed, even General David Petraeus, head of US Central Command, wrote in a
secret assessment on May 27, 2009: "Anti-US sentiment has already been
increasing in Pakistan ... especially in regard to cross-border and reported
drone strikes, which Pakistanis perceive to cause unacceptable civilian
casualties." Quoting local polls, he wrote: "35% [of Pakistanis] say they do
not support US strikes into Pakistan, even if they are coordinated with the GOP
[government of Pakistan] and the Pakistan military ahead of time."
The Pakistani army has launched several significant operations against the
Pakistani Taliban in Swat and in South Waziristan, just as Sihanouk initially
ordered the Cambodian military to attack the Khmer Rouge and suppress peasant
rebellions in Battambang province. Again, like Sihanouk in the late 1960s, the
Pakistanis have balked at more comprehensive assaults on the Taliban, and
especially on the Afghan Taliban using the border areas as "sanctuaries".
The new jihadis
What happens next is the $64 million question. While most Pakistani experts
dismiss any suggestion that the Taliban have widespread support in their
country, it is wise to remember that the Khmer Rouge was a fringe group with no
more than 4,000 fighters at the time that Operation Breakfast began.
And if Cambodia's history is any guide, the drone strikes do not have to create
a groundswell for revolution. They only have to begin to destabilize Pakistan.
The threatened spread of such strikes into the already unsettled province of
Balochistan, or any future American ground incursions into the country may have
that effect. A few charismatic intellectuals like Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot
always have the possibility of taking it from there, rallying angry and
unemployed youth to create an infrastructure for disruptive change.
Despite often repeated claims by both the Bush and Obama administrations that
the drone raids are smashing al-Qaeda's intellectual leadership, more and more
educated and disenchanted young men from around the world seem to be rallying
to the fundamentalist cause.
Some have struck directly at American targets, like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab,
the 23-year-old Nigerian who attempted to blow up a Detroit-bound plane on
Christmas Day 2009, and Dr Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, the 32-year-old
Jordanian double agent and suicide bomber who killed seven CIA operatives at a
military base in Khost, southern Afghanistan, five days later.
Some have even been US-born: like Anwar al-Awlaki, the 38-year-old Islamic
preacher from New Mexico who moved to Yemen; Adam Pearlman, a 32-year-old
southern Californian and al-Qaeda spokesman known as "Azzam the American" who
reportedly lives in the Afghan-Pakistan border regions; and Omar Hammami, the
25-year-old Syrian-American from Alabama believed to be an al-Shabaab leader in
Somalia.
Like the Khmer Rouge before them, these new jihadis display no remorse for
killing innocent civilians. "One of the sad truths I have come to see is that
for this kind of mass violence, you don't need monsters," says Craig Etcheson,
author of After the Killing Fields and founder of the Documentation
Center of Cambodia. "Ordinary people will do just fine. This thing lives in all
of us."
Even King Sihanouk, who had once ordered raids against the Khmer Rouge,
eventually agreed to support them after he had been overthrown in a coup and
was living in exile in China. Could the same thing happen to Pakistani
politicians if they fall from grace and US backing?
What threw Sihanouk's fragile government into serious disarray - other than his
own eccentricity and self-absorption - was the devastating spillover of Nixon's
war in Vietnam into Cambodia's border regions. It finally brought the Khmer
Rouge to power.
Pakistan 2010, with its enormous modern military and industrialized base, is
hardly impoverished Cambodia 1969. Nonetheless, in that now ancient history
lies both a potential analogy and a cautionary tale. Beware secret air raids
that promise success and yet wreak havoc in lands that are not even enemy
nations.
When his war plans were questioned, Nixon pressed ahead, despite a growing
public distaste for his war. A similar dynamic seems to be underway today. In
1970, after Operation Breakfast was revealed by the New York Times, Nixon told
his top military and national security aides: "We cannot sit here and let the
enemy believe that Cambodia is our last gasp."
Had he refrained first from launching Operation Breakfast and then from supping
on the whole menu, some historians like Etcheson believe genocide would have
been averted. It would be a sad day if the drone strikes, along with the
endless war that the Obama administration has inherited and is now spilling
over ever more devastatingly into Pakistan, were to create a new class of
fundamentalists who actually had the capacity to seize power.
Pratap Chatterjee is a freelance journalist and senior editor at
CorpWatch who has traveled extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has written
two books about the war on terror, Iraq, Inc. (Seven Stories Press,
2004) and
Halliburton's Army(Nation Books, 2009). For more information on Nixon's
secret campaign, he recommends Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon and the
Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross. (Simon and Schuster, 1979)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
