Yesterday, the International Crisis Group released a report that states what anyone who was/is paying any little bit of attention over there knows: The government of Pakistan is complicit in setting up a Taliban state in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan). That means our "buddy" Musharraf. I should say "continues to be complicit" when the word "Taliban" is mentioned, considering that the Pakistani "CIA," the ISI, fostered the Taliban. Also, with the Pakistani military being sporadically deployed over there, it further means that Pakistan has actively been supporting a resurgence of the Taliban. Pakistan has abdicated responsibility for that region of the country and won't bother bringing it in line. A tragedy for the real possibility of democracy in the region, Afghanistan. It's also a tragedy for you, dear reader, because I'm all pissed off and therefore will ramble.
For a country that thinks we had to do something after 9/11 and are action takers and "deciders," we sure don't really care to have our eyes on the ball. We let our "allies" shamelessly promote their autobiographies while fomenting insurgency against a neighboring country that we, ourselves, are propping up. We're funding both sides. How smart is that? So, where do you think OBL is hiding?
The only reason we're not all over Pakistan is because they have nukes. Nukes that, might I add, are controlled by the same parts of the military and ISI who're vehemently and unabashedly pro-Taliban. I wonder why American people are made to think getting nuclear power of any kind is scary? I'll answer that: we've got no clue how to designate "allies" or bothering to deal with them. Tossing a few accurate but broadly devastating 5ft long drone missiles at various apartment buildings is nothing. Boots on the ground is what's desperately needed in a place where diplomacy has only entrenched Taliban forces and attitudes.
Serious solutions to the Taliban resurgence in the Afghan-border area of Pakistan involves a long term shift of attitude in the Pakistani people, who're very anti-American government but broadly pro-Western. We can't rely on their desire to be more western (actually, just jealous of their older sister, India) to have any positive effect. We've got to be as aggressively diplomatic as we have been militarily, but this is much more difficult of a task than finding replacement soldiers to deploy or convincing Congress to fund the military (which, oddly, isn't very difficult at all). Supporting Afghanistan while not snubbing Pakistan is just as tough and long-term of a change proposal as the last one. We can attempt to use NATO as a proxy for some of the military actions and the UN as a proxy for the diplomatic, but they don't have the power, influence, and drama that comes with the word and force of the United States. Early in the response to 9/11, we pressured Pakistan to allow us to go into Afghanistan and to route their bastard stepchildren, the Taliban. Around that time, we assured Pakistan that we wouldn't break their sovereign territory and we've stuck to it. I think that was a mistake. We should've let them know that they're going to be our allies, but we'll "hot pursuit" up to and through hanging out for a while. The time for that has passed and we're now stuck with a very clear state-sponsored terrorist region. I'd go so far as to say FATA.pk's even clearer in it's state support than Hezbollah's origins with Iran, in order to emphasize how much of a mistake we made in not pressuring Pakistan to clean up their own house. So, with an overt military option off the table, we're left with milquetoast suggestions as in the ICG's report:
Press the Pakistan government to take action against pro-Taliban elements in FATA and publish monthly NATO figures of cross-border incursions into Afghanistan to encourage it to do more on its side of the border.
...
Press President Musharraf to allow free, fair and democratic elections in 2007 and give political and economic support for the process.
There're also the standard "give them economic reasons to not be so anti-"[American or anti-Afghani or pro-Taliban]" that are straight out of the large institutional state-building playbook (see IMF, WMF, etc.).
This isn't going to work. The Pakistanis won't enact a crackdown in FATA for fear of getting their asses beat like they've done in the past (only to be saved by US helicopters or drones) nor will they consider any outside pressure to reform their government as "beneficial," they'll simply consider all of it "meddling" and more reason to hate on the West. (See: Iran's attitude towards western influence calling for their reform, which manages to discount their internal reforms and give fuel to the conservative elements to repress any nascent reform movements.)
What it's going to do is what's been happening over these last 5 years: the west will continually forget that Afghanistan and Pakistan are having a low-level war and we'll focus on rebuilding things we can actually control (tsunamis and hurricanes and domestic health care, things w/o a "face") and they'll continue to be anti-Musharraf and anti-Afghanistan and anti-West. The ICG solutions look nice on paper, but aren't surgical or long term solutions.
The problem of the FATA is not a problem that can be dissociated from Pakistan, in general. It's not as if "Pakistan" is vexed as to what to do with this boil they have on their arm and they don't know how to lance it, it's that the FATA is simply a more conservative region in Pakistan. It's like some non-US person saying, "why don't you just nuke the red states?" (or blue states, however your preference).
Our major problem is that we don't care enough about that region to address it in ways that would be culturally and societally significant. We can press all our economic and military might to bear on them, but this modern era of American dominance has dulled people to the effects of the power of our money and war resources: it's not going away and it's just something the world has to live with and will. I don't know any place except maybe France where American goods, MTV, culture and language aren't regarded as totally and utterly "cool." We've won that bit and, in doing so, blunted that as a tool to use. At some point, offering more monetary incentives reaches a point of diminishing returns such that people don't need "cool American goods" directly, but can get "cool Western goods" passively, from Japan, say (since that's where we get ours). Similarly, with our military might, it's clear that all you have to do is run around a corner with slippers carrying an RPG and you'll frustrate the best teenagers our country can offer. See: Iraq. It's not that we don't have big scary weapons and can't kill all your base, it's that the threat of that isn't a deterrent. Apart from money and guns, we're out of viable options where we have any sort of influence.
Our minor problem is that we (and our actual allies) are persona-non-grata over there, so if we're seen doing something, even tangentially, it's effectiveness is diminished. We're not confident enough that enabling Russia or China (very distant "allies" if anything) to encourage Pakistan to stand down wouldn't backfire on us and give Russia and China more control in that region than we want them to have. Of course, we've got to enable Afghanistan to control their lands and should go to great lengths to make it look like Afghanis are controlling Afghanistan. Making diplomatic moves towards Iran would assist in securing Afghanistan's confidence. Some people in the State Department (and all of the Congress) seem to think that if we do similar parallel actions of "shoring up the neighbors" with regards to India (giving India nuclear materials, economic and military help) will be a shining carrot-like example to Pakistan - "look what being a nice ally gets you!" - and those people are willfully naive, willing to place their bets on the "future" rather than the unresolved and culturally and societally deep rivalry between India and Pakistan. It's encouraging Pakistan's ultra nationalists to "go it alone," without US help. Utilizing the UN is a similar situation to Russia and China, except our fear is not that they'd gain an upper hand, but that they'd be unable to follow through in putting diplomatic, economic and humanitarian pressure on Pakistan. Ideally, we should encourage an internal reform movement and not daemonize any startings of that, regardless of how it may come about. With Pakistan, this is much more opaque, since our official line is that Musharraf's our boy, when it's clear he's a skillful proxy that keeps us at bay while simultaneously shoring up his power base and making us look the fool. Iraq, Iran, Syria, Saudi and Afghanistan are all less opaque with regards to internal political reform movements, but we - as American people - can't get over not having some replacement for a "Cold War"-esque vague evil like the Russians.
We've got to commit to keeping the region in mind for a long term period and keep trying to solve it. That's not something that the domestically-focused American people (and domestically-focused Democrats) want to hear or even do. Further, we're just as reluctant to assume the mantle of world leader now as we were when we picked it up after WW2. It makes all the lesser western nations jealous and all the non-western nations switch pegging their economies from the Dollar to the Euro or the Pound (which, btw, they're doing).