To be or not to be?

Washington Post
The War in Pakistan
Wednesday, January 25, 2006

SHORTLY AFTER Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush famously declared that other countries must choose between supporting the United States and supporting terrorism, and that those that harbored al Qaeda would be treated as the enemy. In the years since, he has refrained from applying that tough principle in practice -- which is lucky for Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf. Ever since the war on terrorism began, this meretricious military ruler has tried to be counted as a U.S. ally while avoiding an all-out campaign against the Islamic extremists in his country, who almost surely include Osama bin Laden and his top deputies. Despite mounting costs in American lives and resources, he has gotten away with it.

Gen. Musharraf and his aides, such as Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, boast that Pakistan has arrested hundreds of al Qaeda militants and deployed tens of thousands of troops in the border region near Afghanistan. Yet Gen. Musharraf has never directed his forces against the Pashtun Taliban militants who use Pakistan as a base to wage war against American and Afghan forces across the border. He has never dismantled the Islamic extremist groups that carry out terrorist attacks against India. He has never cleaned up the Islamic madrassas that serve as a breeding ground for suicide bombers. He has pardoned and protected the greatest criminal proliferator of nuclear weapons technology in history, A.Q. Khan, who aided Libya, North Korea and Iran. And he has broken promises to give up his military office or return Pakistan to democracy.

The consequences of this record are that al Qaeda has continued to operate from Pakistan, while U.S. and allied troops have been unable to pacify southern Afghanistan. More than 125 American soldiers have been killed there in the past year, many of them by militants crossing the border. Osama bin Laden is apparently secure enough to have released an audiotape last week threatening more attacks inside the United States.

The Bush administration is still providing Gen. Musharraf $600 million in annual military and economic aid and treating him as a major ally. But in the absence of effective Pakistani action, it has also stepped up its own clandestine operations in the border areas where al Qaeda and its allies are based. At least three times in the past year, drone aircraft armed with missiles have attacked terrorist targets; most recently, a strike on a Pakistani village this month killed at least 13 people, several important al Qaeda operatives possibly among them.

In keeping with his double game, Gen. Musharraf's government publicly criticized the latest attack even though his intelligence service reportedly cooperated with it. Now he and Mr. Aziz, who met with Mr. Bush yesterday, are saying U.S. forces should carry out no more such attacks without Pakistani agreement. We'll assume that's more of their bluster. Even if it is not, Mr. Bush should ignore it. Gen. Musharraf perhaps cannot be forced to side decisively with the United States against the terrorists, as the administration once hoped -- though much more could be done to raise the price of his feckless cooperation. But Mr. Bush must take every available measure to eliminate the al Qaeda and Taliban operations in Pakistan. If targets can be located, they should be attacked -- with or without Gen. Musharraf's cooperation.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

Daily Times, January 26, 2006
EDITORIAL: Bajaur accusations recoil on Pakistan

The Pakistan government said last week that the bombing of a village in Bajaur on January 13 was carried out by Afghanistan-based American drones without informing Pakistan. It also claimed that 18 innocent people died in the attack. Three days later someone carried out a suicide-bombing in Afghanistan. The Afghans believe this was done by elements with sanctuaries in Pakistan. Did Kabul see this as some kind of revenge-killing? Certainly, a normally friendly President Hamid Karzai seems to think so. This is evident from the way he has welcomed Tuesday’s wave of public demonstrations in Afghanistan that followed the massive explosion that killed at least 22 men in the town of Spin Boldak on the border with Pakistan. There’s more confusion.

Initially, Pakistan seemed to be firm in its stance that the Bajaur attack was wrong. Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz went to the US saying he was sure there were no Al Qaeda leaders in the village where the Americans struck. But there were “leaks” in the Washington press that contradicted the Pakistani position. Then the US undersecretary of state, Nicholas Burns, toured Pakistan but did not apologise for the Bajaur action. Ominously, he also remained tight-lipped about who was right and who was wrong. Meanwhile, the national press in Pakistan has continued to condemn the Bajaur incident and lambast the Americans.

The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) government in the NWFP has passed a resolution in the provincial assembly demanding the immediate deportation of the American ambassador in Islamabad. Thousands have protested against America in the streets of Peshawar and other cities. The combined opposition leaders put on ceremonial turbans and tried to visit Bajaur in an act of collective protest, but were stopped by the government. Fiery speeches were made all over the country and for once the government seemed to be with the anti-American opposition. What happened then?

President Pervez Musharraf, who was in Norway lecturing the Nordics ironically on the subject of “Pakistan’s Role for Peace and Development in the Region and Beyond”, said that Al Qaeda fighters were probably killed in the air strike that killed 13 civilians in Damadola village in Bajaur Agency earlier this month. “Now that we’ve started investigating the reality on the ground, yes, we have found that there are foreigners there. That is for sure,” he said. Back in Pakistan there were signs of the coming cock-up in the “gap” that had appeared in the versions of the Bajaur incident put out by the political agent of Bajaur and the prime minister of Pakistan. Finally, it was Pakistan which was proved to have taken a wrong position on what had actually transpired.

Those in Pakistan who have been taking the establishment’s side on the ongoing Pak-Afghan differences over cross-border infiltration must now eat humble pie. They have to read the past with a different gloss. The journalists who got their ears tweaked in the past for reporting too close to the bone on the presence of the Taliban in Pakistan were right. Now the Americans are having doubts about President Musharraf too. Whose side is he on? The America military commanders in Afghanistan have never believed Pakistan’s side of the story. Now they have nudged Mr Karzai to send a blunt message to Islamabad. Protest marches against Pakistan as far away as Herat mean that the anti-Pakistan reaction is orchestrated.

The “leaks” in Washington are coming thick and fast. One official has revealed from his record of intercepted phone messages: “You can draw the Afghan-Pakistan border on a map by looking at the pattern of signal intercepts. The bad guys chatter away in Pakistan, feeling they are safe. That area lights up like a Christmas tree. Then they go silent when they cross into Afghanistan, where they fear getting hit.” In contrast, President Bush talked to Mr Aziz for two hours and described relations with Pakistan as “vital and strategic”. It appears that the red line has been drawn on how far President Musharraf can be trusted in Washington. The fallout in Pakistan, where a strong political consensus is developing against him and the US, will require a lot of damage control.

There is a need to remove the cobwebs from President Musharraf’s policy vis a vis Afghanistan. His operations in South Waziristan have not lent any clarity to his policy of fighting Al Qaeda. In Balochistan, official accusations that India is helping the rebellious sardars dovetail dangerously with rumours that America is behind the mischief. This is not what may be called a good conduct of declared policy, especially as things on the eastern front with India are not going well either. If President Musharraf is double-minded on the policy in the West, it is more dangerous for Pakistan than Afghanistan.