New Zawahiri Tape Aims to Bolster Pakistani Taliban as COIN Fight Gets Scrapped

As if to remind people why there was a “serious” CIA program possibly aimed at assassinating members of al-Qaeda, bin Laden lieutenant Ayman Zawahiri has a new audiotape message to the Pakistani people. It’s what you’d expect: only Zawahiri’s allies in the Pakistani Taliban represent the historic mission of a Muslim bulwark to Indian aggression on the subcontinent; the Pakistani government is a “clique of corrupt politicians and a junta of military officers” in the thrall of the rapacious American crusader force; Muslims worldwide are under siege by that “new Crusade”; it’s obligatory to join the Pakistani “jihad” as a result. You’ve heard all this stuff before like it was the “War Angel” or “Forever King” mixtapes.

So why’s he releasing this tape now? Because for weeks, Pakistan has been saying that it’s on the verge of expanding its fight against the Taliban to the tribal areas that birthed it (and where Zawahiri and his friends are believed to be). But according to Bill Roggio, the coming offensive in the tribal areas won’t be a test of the Pakistani military’s emerging counterinsurgency capability, but rather a “punitive” campaign of air strikes.

A different official tells Roggio that the Pakistanis insist the Taliban will collapse as soon as leader Beitullah Mehsud is killed. Pretty much every painful lesson of counterinsurgency that the United States has learned over the last eight years in Iraq and Afghanistan is that insurgent movements are designed to survive in the event of decapitation. Removing the root causes of the insurgency is the only way to backstop the military action necessary to fracture it. Pakistan shows few signs of moving in that direction. And Zawahiri’s tape is designed to broaden the critique that the Taliban is making.