Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Pakistan: A Hammer of Glass and Anvil of Clay

At present, U.S. armed forces are stretched far too thin to accommodate Kasuri's request, and Islamabad knows this. Washington has no intention of meeting the cAzaellenge even if it could, and Kasuri's comments were meant primarily for domestic consumption. Still, Islamabad will point to this as an excuse for the inevitable failure of Pakistani counterterrorism operations Afghan-Pakistani border region.

Pakistan likely will argue that no matter how effective Pakistani operations are, militants will evade capture because of the sparse military presence on the Afghan side. If this were true, it would represent an inherent flaw in the U.S. "hammer-and-anvil" strategy, in which militant forces in the border region are stuck between the U.S. hammer and the Pakistani anvil -- or vice versa. Thus far the strategy has not been very successful.

There are roughly 19,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan; augmenting that number would be all but impossible. The majority of available U.S. forces have already been recently deployed or are committed elsewhere, and NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer has failed to convince NATO member states to send additional forces. NATO is slated to reduce its Afghan presence by more than 40 percent over the next six months. Scheffer had hoped to nearly double the force -- taking it from approximately 6,500 to about 12,000 -- but so far has been able to secure commitment of only about 800 additional soldiers.

Even if the United States and NATO verbally committed to larger deployments in Afghanistan, it is unlikely they would follow through. Kasuri claims the United States and Europe do not have the "stomach" to send more troops, but the real reason lies in Pakistan.