Daily Times editorial Dec 16, 2009

Unresolved inconsistencies

The New York Times has carried a story that claims Pakistan has rebuffed repeated US requests for a crackdown on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan. Washington dislikes Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj because they are accused of harbouring al Qaeda, control large swathes of territory in eastern Afghanistan, and are arguably one of the most effective insurgent groups battling the US and Nato forces inside Afghanistan. The Pakistani establishment on the other hand, views the Haqqani network as an asset that is critical to the regional realignments and repositioning in a post-US withdrawal Afghanistan, a withdrawal scheduled to begin from mid-2011. While juggling for turf and influence in Afghanistan after the foreign forces have departed might draw in Iran, China and Russia, it is the increasing influence of India in Afghanistan that has our military establishment really worried. India has managed its comfortable position in Afghanistan partly at least because of the $ 1.2 billion aid it is pumping into the country. The Pakistani military strategists’ worst nightmare is being squeezed in the ‘nutcracker’ of an Indian presence on its eastern as well as western border.
US Vice President Joe Biden, in a television interview, has reiterated the view widely held in the west that much of the terrorist threat emanates in Pakistan. Washington is redoubling its efforts to get increased Pakistani cooperation (mainly from the military), but in his words: “There is still a long way to go.” In answer to a question why, if the main threat emanates in Pakistan, the US is spending more resources on Afghanistan, Biden said the troops surge in Afghanistan is part of efforts to prevent a Karzai government failure, which the US cannot afford.
The Times characterises the Pakistani military’s temper at the repeated suggestions to ‘do more’ as “public silence, private anger”. COAS General Parvez Ashfaq Kayani has told the US that the Pakistani military ha s its hands full with the offensive in South Waziristan and elsewhere, and cannot open another front against the Afghan Taliban. Clearly, even when its hands were relatively ‘free’, the Pakistani military establishment, because of its concerns about the shape of the future in Afghanistan, remained unwilling to deny the Afghan Taliban the safe havens they enjoy in Pakistan.
Whereas the US has exercised restraint so far and tried to cajole the Pakistani military to take on the Afghan Taliban on its soil, it now appears that Washington’s patience may be running out. The Afghan Taliban are giving the US and Nato forces in Afghanistan a tough time, allegedly, in US eyes, because of the safe rear base areas they can launch from, retreat to, regroup, etc, inside Pakistan. Reports in the American media are reflecting this increasing impatience. One manifestation or indication of this is the not-so-veiled threat that if Pakistan refuses to move against the Haqqani network and Mullah Omar’s shura in Quetta, the US will widen its drone attacks to hit the Afghan insurgents inside Pakistan. Such a development would naturally give rise to new frictions between the US and Pakistan in an already uneasy alliance, and may even harden resentment against perceived US ‘bullying’. The US and Pakistan are both impaled on the horns of their respective dilemmas. The US cannot hope for progress in the struggle in Afghanistan, let alone ‘victory’, without taking out the rear base areas of the insurgents inside Pakistan. To do so risks alienating its uneasy ally, not to act risks defeat in Afghanistan in the long run. Pakistan, on the other hand, seems wedded so far to militarily wiping out any threat from local Taliban while preserving its covert alliance with the Afghan Taliban to be able, at a minimum, to have its slice of the cake in a post-US withdrawal Afghanistan. The two positions are so far irreconcilable, and if they remain unresolved, could cause a breakdown in the two allies’ relations and cooperation in the war on terror.