THE US is playing with fire in its quest to widen the war in Afghanistan to include the tribal regions of neighboring Pakistan. Having been burnt some 40 years ago when it took the war in Vietnam into Cambodia, the US is hoping that efforts made to root out Taliban insurgents taking refuge in Pakistan will rely heavily on the Pakistani military and tribal militias, avoiding the disaster that ensued when the US included Cambodia in its war strategy. Pakistan is nowhere near an exact parallel to Vietnam, but the current situation recalls the Vietnam era enough to make observers uncomfortable. During the Vietnam War, North Vietnamese troops and supply convoys were crossing the border into Cambodia and traveling south in order to enter South Vietnam from Cambodia, thus avoiding the militarized border between North and South Vietnam. The US ultimately opted to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia and then was instrumental in the overthrow of its well-loved and well-respected leader, Prince Sihanouk. Sihanouk, who had led a stable government, had turned a blind eye to the North Vietnamese use of Cambodia in an effort to prevent the war in Vietnam to cross the border. His successor was an incompetent toady of the US, who was eventually overthrown in alead-up to the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge, a movement originally backed by the US as its Chinese sponsors were seen as a foil to Russian designs on Southeast Asia. Although the US is conducting an orchestrated campaign against Afghan insurgents hiding in Pakistan, it is relying also on a Pakistani program that is arming local militias to take on the insurgents. The program has reduced Taliban activity but has created problems of its own as militia leaders are participating in the program in exchange for money and arms. As the provision of both has begun to slump, those leaders have raised the possibility of severing their cooperation with the government, raising the possibility of new mayhem emerging. Meanwhile, the US continues to send missile-firing drones over the tribal areas, targeting the insurgents, a program that can be very unpopular in Pakistan, especially when innocents are killed along with the insurgents. On the surface, the drones exemplify cooperation between the Americans and the Pakistanis, but recent accusations by the US and vehement denials from Pakistan that Pakistani intelligence officials revealed the identity of the CIA chief in Pakistan are more telling of the true nature of US-Pakistan relations. Uneasy alliances, insurgents taking refuge in a neighboring country, local militias funded by a distant government do not bode well for a resolution of the conflict and the implementation of stability in the tribal areas. Unfortunately, conflict appears to dominate the region's future. __
