Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan has less to do with military action than ‘turning the war over to the Afghans.’ ‘The challenge lies in leveling the playing field by inserting operatives into the Taliban. Since the Afghan intelligence services are inherently insecure, they can’t carry out such missions. American personnel bring technical intelligence to bear, but that does not compensate for human intelligence.’

This is where Pakistan enters the picture in the whole troop surge strategy in Afghanistan.

Pakistan, in fact, plays a critical role. Even Obama explicitly said so. ‘He made it clear that he expects Pakistan to engage and destroy Taliban forces on its territory and to deny Afghan Taliban supplies, replacements and refuge.’

Most importantly, Pakistan’s role is in the purview of intelligence since ‘the only entity that could conceivably penetrate the Taliban and remain secure is the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).’

Obama hopes that the ISI will provide crucial knowledge to Americans and Afghans on ‘Taliban plans and deployments’ because ‘this would diminish the ability of the Taliban to evade attacks.’

Obama thinks that the war will be won through its intelligence aspect. That is why Pakistan is the fulcrum, and the ISI is the center of gravity. ‘If the war is about creating an Afghan army, and if we accept that the Taliban will penetrate this army heavily no matter what, then the only counter is to penetrate the Taliban equally.’

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Via STRATFOR