EDITORIAL: Washington’s fractured policy articulation
Daily Times, January 14, 2007
The US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, Richard Boucher, was careful not to indict Islamabad for the deteriorating peace conditions in Afghanistan when he was in Kabul before coming to Islamabad. In Islamabad he was equally cautious, saying only that the “situation on the Pakistan-Afghan border had not changed despite a peace treaty between the government of Pakistan and the tribal elders in North Waziristan”. This was acceptable to the Pakistan government because it is no more than what most foreign officials have said on the issue. Equally, on the question of the fencing and mining of the Pak-Afghan border, Mr. Boucher was careful to say only that “no decision had so far been taken”, despite the fact that the US-propped Kabul regime has opposed Pakistan’s plans loudly and angrily.
But the scene in Washington was quite different. The US intelligence chief, John Negroponte, deposing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, reportedly stated that “Al Qaeda’s leaders are holed up in a secure hideout in Pakistan, from which they are revitalising their bruised but resilient network”. He said Pakistan was the centre of a web of Al Qaeda connections that stretched across the globe into Europe. “Al Qaeda is cultivating stronger operational connections and relationships that radiate outward from their leaders’ secure hideout in Pakistan”, he asserted. “Pakistan is our partner in the terror war, but it is also a major source of extremism. Eliminating the haven the extremists have found in Pakistan’s tribal areas is not sufficient to end the Afghan insurgency, but is necessary.” This is as damning an indictment of Pakistan as any by a senior official of its strategic partner in the war against terror!
Predictably, Pakistan’s Foreign Office has immediately rejoined by saying that Mr. Negroponte’s comments were “questionable criticism” and urged him to “acknowledge Pakistan’s role in breaking Al Qaeda”. General Shaukat Sultan, Director General of Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), speaking for the Pakistan army, then took a good shot at Mr. Negroponte where he was most vulnerable in his statement: if you know where the Al Qaeda leadership is inside Pakistan, why don’t you tell us? This compelled a White House spokesman to backtrack by changing the original text: Al Qaeda leaders had “secure hideouts” in Pakistan, he said, but this was very different from saying that Al Qaeda leaders are actually located in Pakistan. Until now, everyone who doubts that Pakistan is not doing the needful in regard to Al Qaeda is inclined to offer the loose but safe formulation that Osama Bin Laden and Co are “somewhere on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan”.
But anyone who hears this formulation for the first time must wonder at its physical impossibility. A border is a line, unless there is an agreed no-man’s land. It is not possible for a number of people to hide in a territory that is neither in Pakistan nor in Afghanistan. What the formulation means at best is that the Al Qaeda leadership keeps flitting between the two countries. In actual fact, it is a diplomatic bromide offered to two sensitive allies of the United States suffering from more or less the same malady of ‘ungoverned spaces’.
Mr. Negroponte was actually presenting his annual threat assessment report to the Senate as US director of national intelligence. He is not as yet the deputy secretary of state, the new post he will join after leaving his present job. He was not required to be diplomatic in his report before the Senate and therefore minced no words. The only thing that stood out was his assertion that Al Qaeda leaders were actually located inside Pakistan. It is only because he is soon going to be a very senior state department official that his statement and that of Mr. Boucher’s have tended to stand out in contrast.
The truth of the matter probably is that agencies other than the state department continue to issue statements saying “they believe bin Laden and other top terrorist commanders are taking refuge in the region, likely on the Pakistani side of the border”. And Pakistan continues to reject such claims. This time too there is some scope for ambiguity: Mr. Negroponte did not specify who the ‘leaders’ of Al Qaeda were. If you apply ‘leaders’ as a general term then a number of Al Qaeda leaders have actually been captured from the safe havens belonging to some of our religious parties. By extrapolation, Pakistan cannot dismiss the ‘assumption’ that Osama bin Laden too can be found in Karachi or Peshawar, but that has not happened.
No one is supposed to show certitude in the midst of insufficient specific knowledge. Pakistan has either taken action or accepted blame for it when it thought it had received ‘actionable intelligence’ that the top leadership was on its territory. Two strikes in Bajaur alone — after which two sets of people were killed in Afghanistan and in Dargai in Pakistan in retaliation — should be enough to make the Americans careful about accusing Pakistan directly of harbouring Osama bin Laden and Aiman al-Zawahiri.
It is true that Al Qaeda has its areas of influence inside Pakistan. If you hurt it in these areas, it hits back. What no one knows precisely is the physical whereabouts of the top duo of Al Qaeda. Thus no one can say that President Pervez Musharraf is letting Al Qaeda have its way, because he has nearly been killed after being targeted by Al Qaeda. Given this situation, is there confusion in Washington about how to assess Pakistan as an ally? Or is it a period of transition in which President George W Bush is shuffling his administrative hierarchies so furiously that Washington has started stuttering?
President Bush is shedding his neo-con partners at great speed. Mr. Negroponte has taken a kind of demotion to become the deputy secretary of state. Is Ms Rice on the way out and will Mr. Negroponte get rough with Pakistan? If Mr. Bush has a new policy on the cards he cannot depend on officers who have already articulated a different older stance and might find the new course difficult to follow. Is he going to get tough on Pakistan? Has Ambassador Ryan Crocker been shunted from Islamabad because he was unduly soft on President Musharraf and Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad redirected from Baghdad because he was too tough on Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki? Or is it going to be the same policy articulated by a different set of “good cops and bad cops”?
What is clear is that President Bush is passing through a most testing phase. He is increasingly isolated after not listening to the advice of his old mentors, including his father and his father’s friends. When he says that he wants to hold the old course until the end of his tenure in 2008, it must shake the loyalty of his most reliable comrades. Therefore no one should blame Pakistan if it starts hedging its bets with Washington until a clearer voice speaks from there. *
Also, See BBC story on the issue by clicking here
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