When the U.S. Army and Marine Corps released their FieldManual (FM) 3-24, Counterinsurgency, in2006, key military leaders and civilian advisers promised a different kind ofwarfare. Written as Iraq crumbled, the manual institutionalized key tacticaland operational methods that were geared to fighting against irregular armedfoes, rather than the maneuver warfare most of the U.S. military had preferred.The new theory was based around several key principles, including proportionateand precise use of force to minimize civilian casualties, separating insurgentgroups from local populations, protecting populations from the insurgents, theimportance of intelligence-led operations, civil-military unity of effort, andsecurity under the rule of law.

Some of these methods had already been practiced in Iraq byinnovative commanders, but Gen. David Petraeus, who oversaw the process of writingFM 3-24 and later went on to command U.S. forces in the country, was key to theirinstitutionalization and broad implementation in the context of an overalltheater-level strategy.

As President Barack Obama decided to "surge" forces intoAfghanistan in late 2009, former Joint Special Operations Command head Gen.Stanley McChrystal was tasked to follow the Petraeus playbook in Afghanistan.When he was relieved, Petraeus, the man many saw as having helped bringstability to Iraq, was called upon to do it again in Afghanistan. However,success has eluded the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), whichhas been unableto translate operational progress into strategic success. A number oftriumphant obituaries for counterinsurgency have since emerged, as it becomesclear that the campaign in Afghanistan is failing to deliver on its promises.

There are five inter-related drivers of this cauldron ofdiscontent with COIN: First, the rise of counterinsurgency as a standardpractice in the U.S. military left skeptical American officers and institutionswho preferred emphasizing conventional capabilities (large-scale armoredwarfare, for instance) feeling disenfranchised. Second, the common narrative ofthe war in Iraq viewed (and somestill view) Gen. Petraeus as the hero who brought counterinsurgency (andsubsequently stability) to the country. This narrative alienated some officerswho had already been using some counterinsurgency methods effectively beforethe introduction of FM 3-24. Third, among the commentariat, the caustic domestic political divisions from thefirst phase of the Iraq War, divisions that were aggravated in the lead-up tothe Afghan "surge", remain unhealed. Fourth, the military officers and thinktank scholars who became most closely associated with COIN's rise developed apartially-deserved reputation for cliquishness, self-reference, and conceit.And finally, there has been a dearth of clarity on the goals of the Afghancampaign on the policy and strategy levels.

Col. Gian Gentile (who represents the first, second, andfinal strands of anti-counterinsurgency discontent) presents one of his standardarguments in "COINis Dead: U.S. Army Must Put Strategy Over Tactics." He argues the UnitedStates military has failed in Afghanistan and Iraq because it allowed afascination with the tactical and operational methods of COIN to supersedeimplementation of an actual strategy in those conflicts. In fact, looking atoperations in Iraq and Afghanistan for lessons is a fundamentally misguidedventure, he argues. Rather, we can only view our experiences of the lastdecade as lessons in failure and return to embracing our conventionalcapabilities.

Others are preoccupied with the political battles behind counterinsurgency.Michael Cohen, a vocal critic ofthe war in Afghanistan, refusesto acknowledge that counterinsurgency lessons are worth keeping andinstitutionalizing until advocates of the population-centric approach inAfghanistan "loudly acknowledge - indeed even shout to the hills - that everytime someone recommends fighting a counterinsurgency this is [a] really,really, really bad idea...." This seems akin to arguing that we cannot updateour doctrine on nuclear warfare, expeditionary warfare, and other capabilitiesthat are far more costly until we "shout to the hills" that to use these wouldbe a "really, really, really bad idea." Advocates of maintaining counterinsurgencycapabilities have been happyto acknowledgethese campaigns tendto be long, hard slogs, but Mr. Cohen's criticism does not address the military'sneed to be able to adapt to contingencies as ordered. We cannot wish away theagency of our enemies.

Still others see those who support counterinsurgency's place inthe toolbox of American power as being part of a new "military-industrialcomplex." Major Mike Few, an armor officer (like Colonel Gentile) and editor ofSmall Wars Journal, arguesthat some think tanks and defense contractors have formed a "cottage industry"that champions counterinsurgency for ego and profit at the cost of "trillionsof dollars, thousands of lives and abandoned security projects elsewhere thatcould have benefited our republic exponentially more..."

For one thing, the weaponssystems, equipment, and capabilities necessary for modern "conventional"campaigns are far more costly and more lucrative for defense contractors (the2009 defense industry-subsidized congressional debateabout the F-22 reminded the world that the original military-industrialcomplex is alive, well, and costing the U.S. taxpayer for over-budget,malfunctioning weapons systems of questionable utility). Further, the use ofconventional capabilities against a major power may well take more militarylives than those we have lost in Iraq andAfghanistan. But this aside, our abilities to conduct counterinsurgencyoperations and major combat operations are not mutually exclusive. Moreover, aspeople like Maj. Few understand, John Nagl's Centerfor a New American Security -- the unnamed bogeyman in his critique andothers -- did not decide to go to war in Iraq or Afghanistan. Nagl was merely oneof many in the U.S. Armed Forces who sought to make the campaigns of twoconsecutive Commanders-in-Chief work.

Indeed, the debate surrounding counterinsurgency has becomehighly personal, emotional, and angry. This has been most recently demonstratedby the snideand personalrejoindersto a recent articleteasing out the lessons of Iraq by Dr.David Ucko of the National Defense University. Increasingly for somecritics of counterinsurgency, their opponents are not just wrong, but immoralliars. Yet for all of the heat this debate, it has produced little substantivediscussion of the future of counterinsurgency after the wars in Iraq andAfghanistan, or more broadly the appropriate uses of limited funds andmanpower.

Before declaring the death of counterinsurgency and maligningthose who see value in some of its precepts, analysts should ask if insurgencyis dead. Indeed, the most significant failure of these anti-COIN arguments istheir shared focus on the response to a problem -- counterinsurgency tacticsand strategy -- at the expense of the problem itself. None of these articlesproclaim that "insurgency is dead" because to do so would be absurd. Insurgencylives, and has proven itself throughout history as the best means by which tooppose established political and military power. AsAndrew Exum recently observed, about 80 percent of all conflicts since theend of the Napoleonic Era have been insurgencies or civil wars. Futureinsurgencies are all-but-certain to challenge American interests to the pointthat our civilian political leadership will need to decide if our military willbecome involved in countering them. And if insurgency lives, then so must counterinsurgency.

Critics also make the mistake of particularizing a form of counterinsurgencydesigned during a specific historical period meant to counter a distinctiveform of insurgency known as popularprotracted warfare. If anything, the key failure of counterinsurgency inthe past decade has been the myopic view of the military and key counterinsurgencyproponents that counterinsurgency could only take the form advocated byscholar-practitioners like the French officer David Galula (who developed histheories in Asia before implementing them in Algeria) and the British officerSir Robert Thompson in Malaysia, who were both grappling with different, lessevolved forms of violent struggle than what we have seen in Iraq andAfghanistan. Thus, for critics to proclaim the death of counterinsurgencymakes them guilty of the same error that they often pin on their opponents: relyingon an expired intellectual framework.  

The real question is: what form will American counterinsurgencytake in the future? It seems reasonable to argue that "big footprint," "population-centric"counterinsurgency is dead, but "small footprint" counterinsurgency that focuseson security force assistance, Special Operations, and/or foreign internaldefense lives on (see Yemen,the Philippines,and Somalia).But is it really inconceivable that we will ever again conduct another large-scalepopulation-centric counterinsurgency campaign? Those who think it impossible mightconsider how the United States would respond to violence spilling over theborder from catastrophic state failure and humanitarian crisis in Mexico, forinstance.

As always, our choices will be structured by the agency ofour competitors. Therefore, we would be foolish to avoid learning the tacticaland operational as well as the policyand strategic lessons of the last ten years. We must maintain our capabilities and competencies for counterinsurgency,if only because history has shown that they will come in handy again.

How we do this is what we mustdebate and discuss.

Ryan Evans is anassociate fellow at the International Centre for the Study ofRadicalisation and Political Violence and served in Helmand Province, Afghanistan as a Human Terrain TeamSocial Scientist. The views and opinions expressed here do not represent those of theDepartment of the Army, Training and Doctrine Command, or the Human TerrainSystem.

This morning Pakistan's Ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, resigned his post over the scandal known as "Memogate," whereby Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz alleged that he was asked by Amb. Haqqani to pass a memo to former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, asking for help in reigning in Pakistan's military establishment. But while Haqqani's resignation may signal an end to this episode, the prior evolution of events was nothing short of a witch hunt.

The ‘witch' in question varies depending on whom you speak to. If you're a member of Pakistan's opposition parties, Haqqani's actions were an act of treason, and his resignation is only a further admission of guilt. How dare he, they demand to know, ask for foreign (American) help to control Pakistan's military? How dare he be secretive about said actions?

If you're one of those in the ruling party, Mansoor Ijaz is a lying conspirator, a man not to be trusted. The revelation of the memo, they claimed, was really just an excuse to target democracy, to vilify the PPP government. Haqqani's resignation was not an admission of guilt, but a sacrifice in honor of said democracy.

In the serial drama also known as Pakistani politics, all the key elements have been in place - intrigue, cloak-and-dagger conspiracy, treason, and secrecy. From the outset, it plays out much like an episode of Game of Thrones, where in their thirst for power, the main actors all simultaneously destroy each other (or themselves). Except this is real life, and we've seen this episode numerous times before. Politicians are intent on leveraging "Memogate" for their own party ambitions in anticipation of the upcoming elections, while the military sits pretty on the sideline, their hands clean of the public mudslinging. As is often the case, dangling a threat to sovereignty or to Pakistan's security is enough to stir a feeding frenzy.

For those of us who read the memo in question, who perused through the BlackBerry messages exchanged between Haqqani and Ijaz, and who have read every imaginable op-ed and interview on the controversy, one thing is abundantly clear: even with Haqqani's resignation, we still are not entirely sure what happened. It is possible that we may never know. We should concern ourselves not with asking hypothetical questions, but asking the right questions. What constitutes treason within the Pakistani narrative? And why are many challenges to the current civil-military status quo met with such accusations?

In the case of this incident, Haqqani's alleged actions were called treasonous and unpatriotic because he is said to have attempted to challenge the security establishment, to hand over Pakistan's sovereignty to America. As Fasi Zaka noted in his op-ed for the Express Tribune the memo sought to allow "another state a unilateral deal of internal policy actions without any legal authority [that] bypasses all codes of conduct." Extra negative points if that foreign hand happens to be American.

But shouldn't we then place other purported back door dealings under similar scrutiny? Why do we continue to be incensed by the alleged attempts by a civilian politician to undermine the security establishment but fail to express similar outrage if the same security establishment undermines a civilian government, whether it be through military coups, backchannel talks with militants to retain strategic depth in Pakistan, or even purported deals permitting a U.S. operation against Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil.

The civil-military imbalance, as also noted by Mosharraf Zaidi for Foreign Policy, is the primary reason behind this disconnect. Pakistan's military, despite its flaws, has historically projected a stronger and more resolute image than any civilian regime. The national sentiment has long bought into this perception. The charge of treason against former Ambassador Haqqani is, therefore, subjective, laced with emotion, and used conveniently in the semantics of political pot shots to desperately curry favor among the masses. Treason makes for a good sound bite. But in throwing around such accusations, we lose sight of the bigger picture.

Haqqani's resignation today will be viewed as an admission of guilt to some and a sacrifice to others. But the bigger issue has been left untouched. In terms of Pakistan's broader civil-military relations, the sign is clear -- cross the military, and you will get burned. And as the mudslinging continued, it became increasingly clear that the only players getting dirty and tainted were the politicians. Long live democracy.

Kalsoom Lakhani is the Founder/CEO of Invest2Innovate (i2i), a start-up that aims to grow the social entrepreneurship space in new markets, beginning in Pakistan. She is based in Washington, D.C., and blogs at CHUP, or Changing Up Pakistan.

Over the past two years, the Afghan military and police have grown from a poorly trained and ill-equipped force of 191,000 to an increasingly effective counterinsurgency force of 305,000 volunteers who represent all ethnicities and tribes. Afghans are now responsible for security in seven areas of their country, and will assume lead security responsibility for 50 percent of the population by year's end. To ensure Afghanistan has the capabilities and capacity it needs to assume security responsibility from the international community, NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan (NTM-A) personnel are working hard with Afghans to develop the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), and help them overcome leader shortfalls and the barriers posed by Afghanistan's high rates of illiteracy. Due to unifying efforts under the NATO flag in November 2009, one-sixth of the world's countries are working together shoulder-to-shoulder to enable Afghans to achieve the security they deserve, the prosperity they desire and a future they determine for themselves.

Since the first day NTM-A began operations in November 2009, developing Afghan leaders has been and remains the command's number one priority.  Over the past two years, officers and non-commissioned officers in the Afghan Police grew by nearly 20,000 and will grow another 22,000 by November 2012. The same is true in the Afghan Army; officers and non-commissioned officers grew by 26,000 and are on a path to grow another 20,000 in the next year. Partnering with coalition units is key to the professionalization of these units, but growth could not have been achieved without establishing an indigenous training base and a standardized training and education curriculum. Major General Zamary, who leads the Afghan National Civil Order Police, recently told me "we need leaders who are educated because educated leaders are the key to an enduring force."

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During a Senate Armed Services hearing yesterday, Chairmanof the Joint Chiefs ofStaff Adm. Mike alleged what many of us have believed for some time: Elementswithin Pakistan's security services, perhaps most notably current and retired Inter-ServicesIntelligence Directorate (ISI) officials, provide operational support andresources for the Haqqani Network to wage their insurgency against U.S.,coalition and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan.

"With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conductedthat truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy," Mullen toldthe committee, referencing a massive bomb attack on a NATO base September10 as well as last week's attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul. "We also havecredible evidence that they were behind the June 28th attack against theInter-Continental Hotel in Kabul and a host of other smaller but effectiveoperations," he added.

By my count, there have been at least 15 other high-profileattacks going back to 2008 that can be publicly linked to the Haqqani networkbesides the attacks on the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters in Kabul earlierthis month. These include several complex attacks in Afghanistan's southeastthat involved suicide car bombs and gunmen armed with explosives and AK-47s,the bombing of the Indianembassy in Kabul that killed 41 and injured over 130 in July 2008, amulti-pronged attack on Afghan ministriesand the prison directorate in Kabul that killed 26 in February 2009, an assaulton a Kabul Bank branch that killed more than 40 in February of this year, andperhaps most notably, a complex nighttimeassault on Kabul's Intercontinental hotel during the height of this summer'sfighting season. During the attack on the Intercontinental, Afghan intelligenceinterceptedcalls between the attackers and Badruddin Haqqani who was directingthe assault from Pakistan. Furthermore, the Pakistani military has assisted theHaqqani network's expansion from North Waziristan into neighboring KurramAgency over the past year. This will provide the network with even moresanctuary and additional infiltration routes into southeastern Afghanistan.

But what can the United States do about this support for theHaqqanis? While it is important to maintain a relationship with Pakistan, it'salso necessary to distinguish between the civilian and military component ofour support. Pakistan's civilian leadership is not the harbinger of adecades-long policy of support for proxy groups such as the Haqqani network.And although the civilian government nominally controls the military, that'snot the case in practice. Therefore, any restriction on U.S. aid should becareful not to punish civil society.

Senior military leaders, such as army chief Gen. AshfaqParvez Kayani and ISI head Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, are the folks the U.S.need to be talking to. However, pressuring the military (of which ISI is apart) to take action against the Haqqanis is a non-starter. No possiblecombination of aidrestrictions, sanctions or public chastisement is capable of changing the military'srelationship with the Haqqanis at this point, not with U.S. forces inAfghanistan on the decline and the belief in Pakistan's military circles thatthe U.S. is not going to succeed in Afghanistan still prevalent. The onlyconceivable solution at this point is to go after high-value Haqqani targets evenmore aggressively than before. There is a senior leadershipcadre that, if removed from the fight, would have significant effects on thenetwork's command and control infrastructure. The Haqqanis are different fromother groups, such as the Pakistan Taliban, in this regard. The seniorleadership corps is based on familial relations, is extremely closely knit, is directlyresponsible for strategic, operational and often tactical guidance, and is theonly trusted group that liaises with elements of the Pakistani securityservices and the leadership of affiliatedterrorist groups in the tribal areas. The removal of the top-tierleadership, coupled with increased pressure on the group in easternAfghanistan, offers the best chance to degrade and possibly even neutralize thenetwork.

After Mullen's comments, it's pretty clear that some reallytough decisions will have to be made with respect to the Haqqani's sanctuary inPakistan -- despite Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik's recent remarksthat the country will never allow U.S. boots on Pakistani soil. Just today, Kayanistarkly rejected the allegations of a Pakistan-Haqqani relationship in responseto Mullen's testimony. Of course, any possible U.S. action in Pakistan willhave consequences -- but those consequences may not have as serious impact as somebelieve. Pakistan has the ability to shut down critical supply lines runningfrom their port city of Karachi to Afghanistan. However, given the military'sown economicinterests in keeping the lines open and the myriad criminal actors whoselivelihoods depend on taxing and extorting truckers, any long-term shutdown ismost likely a hollow threat. The United States has already explored increasing thecapacity of the northerndistribution network that has expanded significantly over the past severalyears.

Certainly, Pakistan has the ability to respond militarily tounilateral action in their tribal areas, but this would likely cause a completebreak in relations, and with that, an end to all militaryassistance that is critical not only for the Army's strength and survivalbut also their influence over Pakistan's civilian leadership. The United States withheld$800 million in military aid this summer which is only onethird of promised security assistance. Holding back or canceling the totalpackage would be a real blow to Pakistan's armed forces.

Additionally, limited U.S. unilateral action in Pakistan'stribal areas, at least conceptually, is not much different than the currentU.S. drone program that regularly strikes targets in Pakistan's tribal areas.Since the Pakistani military and government have largely ignored sovereigntyclaims and acquiesced to the drone strikes, it isn't a stretch to assume thatthey could treat limited, unilateral raids into the tribal areas in the samemanor -- even after Malik's statement. Speculation aside, the only thing that seemsclear amidst all the confusion is that if the U.S. doesn't follow through, ourwords will have even less meaning than they already do.

Jeffrey Dressler is a senior analyst at the Institute forthe Study of War and author of the ISW report, "The Haqqani Network: FromPakistan to Afghanistan."

Because of a suicide attacker with a bomb in his turban, Afghanistan's dim prospects for peace just got dimmer. The assassination of strongman and key historical and present Afghan political figure Burhanuddin Rabbani, head of the commission meant to negotiate with the Taliban, the High Peace Council (HPC), signals the massive challenges ahead in efforts to end the war. 

For many in the Afghan government, Rabbani's appointment to head the HPC was seen as a way to involve the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance, and in particular, Rabbani's Jamiat-e-Islami party, in the peace process. Jamiat, which has long been hostile to the Taliban, is an important force in northern Afghanistan, particularly among ethnic Tajiks. But many in the Taliban and in Pakistan met the appointment with derision. As the country's president in the mid-nineties, Rabbani presided over a brutal civil war that killed thousands and helped spawn the rise of the Taliban movement. In the late 90s, Jamiat was one of the Taliban's main foes in the latter's drive to conquer the north. Pakistan, meanwhile, has always viewed the India- and Iran-friendly Rabbani with hostility. 

Rabbani, who likely saw the peace process as a way to re-inject himself into the national political scene, initially took to his duties with alacrity. But it was unclear whether he was pursuing a sort of managed surrender (reintegration) or genuine negotiations. In any event, the lack of progress, hostility from the Taliban side and a spate of assassinations appeared to have turned him against a peace deal. He recently told the Afghan newspaper Hasht-e-Sob that the Taliban are a "catastrophe-creating movement" bent on the destruction of the country. "The Taliban's acts have defamed religious scholars and this movement calling itself Taliban creates disaster," he said. "They recruit soldiers among the youth and claim that they are from madrassas." 

In a stark message on the anniversary of the death of Afghan national hero and slain Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, he declared that:

The people are justifying the war they have waged and say that they are fighting the war because of the presence of the foreigners. This is not the case actually. This war was going on prior to the presence of the foreigners here and will continue after the foreigners go from here.

The remarks echo a deep resistance to a peace deal from erstwhile Northern Alliance elements, ranging from former National Directorate of Security (NDS) chief Amrullah Saleh to the powerful governor of Balkh province, Ustad Atta, who denounced efforts at negotiations on Afghan television yesterday. 

From the Taliban and Pakistani side, Rabbani and other Northern Alliance figures appear to be seen as impediments to a deal. "These people don't represent Afghanistan," a Taliban official in Quetta told me earlier this summer. "We can't ever have peace with them around." In fact, the spate of assassinations in northern Afghanistan in recent months-Kunduz governor Muhammad Omar, Kunduz Police Chief Abdul Rahman Sayedkheli, head of police for Northern Afghanistan Daoud Daoud, and others-could be seen as the steady elimination of elements standing in the way of a deal favorable to the Taliban. 

But it could all backfire. Remaining Northern Alliance figures will likely close ranks and conclude that any sort of rapprochement with the Taliban is impossible. Some, like strongman Abdul Rasoul Sayyaf, have reportedly looked to cultivate ties with India as a counterweight to what they see as an assassination drive spurred by Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI). Ex-Alliance commanders, aided by U.S. programs to create local militias, will likely accelerate their drive to rearm, possibly setting the stage for a future civil war. 

For now, the immense divides that plague Afghanistan will be on full display. Among some communities, Rabbani will be hailed as a hero, a wizened Islamic scholar and hero of the war against the Russians. In others, he will be remembered for scores of human rights abuses and widespread devastation during the last civil war. Either way, a peace deal in Afghanistan remains as unlikely as ever.

Anand Gopal is an independent journalist covering Afghanistan and the Middle East, and the author of the New America Foundation paper "The Battle for Afghanistan: Militancy and Conflict in Kandahar." Follow him on twitter @anand_gopal_

The successful conviction in Manchester, Northern England,of Munir Farooqi, Matthew Newton and Israr Malik, highlighted once again (as ifmore proof was needed) the existence of the dark connection between Britainand the war in Afghanistan. A former Taliban fighter who had returned toManchester after being picked up on the battlefield not long after the U.S.invasion by Northern Alliance forces, Farooqi ran a recruitment network inNorthern England that fed an unknown number of fighters to the fight alongsidethe Taliban in Afghanistan. What was most striking about the case, however, wasthe way it exposed the method by which recruitment cells operate in the UnitedKingdom, following a model that is likely emulated elsewhere in the west.

MunirFarooqi first came to the United Kingdom when he was about five years old.Born in Pakistan, he is part of the community of migrants from Pakistan whocame to the West during the first large-scale migrations in the 1960s fromtheir homes in South Asia. Brought up largely in the United Kingdom, he speakswith a pronounced regional British accent and is married with three children. Astrong part of him, however, remained attached to his community in South Asia,and following the American invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001 heimmediately headed back to join the Taliban. His experience on the battlefieldwas short lived, and by November he had been captured as part of a NorthernAlliance operation in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif. Held in one ofGeneral Rashid Dostum's prisons, he was fortunate enough to be moved to aPakistani jail, from where his British wife was able to come and fetch him fora fee in May 2002.

Once back in Britain he maintained his passion for the causein Afghanistan, and travelled back and forth to Pakistan. In 2003, borderagents stopped him as he returned from Pakistan and searching his luggage foundpicturesof him posing alongside armed men in the Swat Valley. Using such images andhis own personal experience as a former Taliban fighter with injuries to showfor it, Farooqi was able to conjure up the joy of jihad to disenfranchisedyoung men he would encounter amongst Manchester's Muslim community. Ashe put it when asked by an undercover officer whether he would want tofight again, "you know when you've tasted the honey....then you only wantmore...until Allah takes you from this earth."

He used two bases of operations to draw young men to hiscause. In public, he ran dawah(propagation) stalls in Manchester and nearby Longsight city centers. Herehe would welcome individuals in and try to share with them information on hisview of the world -- and it was at both of these that on separate occasions inNovember 2008 and January 2009 two undercover officers (who were unaware ofeach other) approached the stalls to make contact with the group. ApproachingFarooqi at the Longsight location, undercover officer "Ray" made contact onNovember 26, 2008. Over the space of the next couple of months, "Ray" convertedto Islam, and then on January 4, 2009, undercover officer "Simon" also madecontact with the cell approaching a stall being run in central Manchester byFarooqi and co-defendent MatthewNetwon, a convert who came across Farooqi in 2008 soon after he became aMuslim. Claiming to be a recovering alcoholic seeking meaning, "Simon" alsoconverted to Islam with the group, and slowly gained their confidence.

In bringing the men gradually into his web, Farooqi wouldtake them to his home from where he ran a massive operation churning outradical videos and books -- he was caught with some 50,000 items of literatureand 5,000 DVDs. Here he would weave them tales about jihad, drawing on his ownexperiences to gradually persuade them of the glory of fighting in Afghanistan.A charismatic figure, he was able to quickly persuade individuals to come tohis views, as characterized by Newton, who was rapidly drawn to Farooqi's wayof thinking after the two met. Newton, like Farooqi, was convicted of of "preparingterror acts, soliciting to murder and disseminating terrorist literature"and was sentenced to six years in jail.

Having drawn people in, Farooqi ensured that they stayedwithin his orbit, telling them which mosques to go to and following up withthem when they got into trouble. When another co-defendant, Israr Malik, wasincarcerated on unrelated charges, Farooqi made a point of visiting him in jailwhere he passed him radical material to share amongst fellow prisoners. A lost soulwho had become involved in criminal activity after breaking up with his girlfriend,Malik was drawn to one of Farooqi's stalls in 2008, only to become another inthe production line of radicals he was helping develop, with the intention ofpersuading them to go and fight in Afghanistan. He was also incarcerated fortwo counts of soliciting murder and preparing for acts of terrorism.

This model of recruitment was one that has been seen beforein the United Kingdom: Mohammed Hamid, the self-proclaimed "Osama bin London"who helped take over hook-handed radical imam Abu Hamza's mosque after he wasincarcerated, used to run dawah stalls in London, where he would make contactwith dispossessed young men and, eventually, another undercover officer. Areformed drug addict himself, Hamid ran discussion groups out of his home, hadbeen to Pakistani training camps, and offered connections for aspiring fighterswho wanted to go abroad. Most prominently, Hamid ran training camps in theU.K.'s Lake District that a number of the July 21, 2005 attempted bombersattended. He is currently finishing up a sentence in prison alongside a networkof young men he recruited, including some who were attempting to go to Somaliato fight and others who did in fact go.

It remains unclear exactly how many people Farooqi was ableto persuade to go and fight in Afghanistan. Oneestimate published in the local press said some 20 people had been sentover, A figure that seems quite low for an operation that could have been goingon for as long as eight years. However, this small number likely reflects thereality of how large the actual number of British citizens being persuaded togo and fight really is. As author and journalist JasonBurke put it recently, quoting British intelligence officials, "the yearsfrom 2004 to 2007 saw the highpoint of the flow of volunteers from the UK to[Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, or FATA]. Never more than afew score in any one year, their number has now been reduced to a handful." Butgiven recent stories of Britishmartyrs being praised in jihadi videos, former British prisoners turning up assuicide bombers in Kabul, and a small number of former Taliban fighterscontinuing to live in the United Kingdom, it seems likely that this trickle maycontinue for some time.

On Aug. 18, Pakistan's most powerful man, Army chief Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, secretly flew to Kurram agency in the country's Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and declared it free of "miscreants."

No doubt the Pakistani Army did a great job clearing militants from Central Kurram, the focus of the operation, as it did in areas like the Swat Valley. But Kayani's visit and announcement raise the following question: What do "clear" and "miscreants" mean for a Pakistani Army fighting to regain control of the area from a discreet force that can shift, hit, kill, and target anywhere, any place, and any time? And if the area had been successfully cleared, why did Kayani not travel by road, and why did he not meet the open jirgas of tribal elders in that area, as was the tradition when top Pakistani officials visited the tribal belt before 2001?

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