Daily Times editorial Nov 18, 2009

“Do more” once more

The New York Times reports that US National Security Adviser James Jones carried a letter on his recent visit from President Barack Obama to President Asif Ali Zardari urging Pakistan to expand its operations against the Taliban and al Qaeda. The letter warned that the success of the new US strategy in Afghanistan depends on taking the fight to the militants from the ongoing offensive in South Waziristan and concentration on the Taliban attacking cities to groups using safe havens such as North Waziristan, where US intelligence says the extremists have retreated and where Jalaluddin Haqqani’s Shura is said to be based, to plot attacks against US troops in Afghanistan. The US wants President Zardari to rally political and national security institutions in a united campaign against the extremists. To sweeten the pill, President Obama offers a range of new incentives such as enhanced intelligence sharing and military cooperation.
The Pakistan Foreign Office has confirmed the delivery of the letter but declined to give details. Pakistani officials are said to have told the Americans they harbour two deep fears about Obama’s new strategy: the US would add too many troops on the Afghan side of the border and the American effort would end too soon. 30,000 plus troops added to the US contingent in Afghanistan could send Taliban fighters across the border into Pakistan, thereby complicating the South Waziristan operation. The long-term commitment of the US to see the struggle against the Taliban through in Afghanistan is also doubted, given the contradictory and sometimes alarming (from a Pakistani point of view) statements by top US officials. The latter concern persuades the Pakistani security establishment to retain its ties with the Afghan Taliban in preparation for the eventuality that the US and NATO may withdraw at some stage, leaving a virtual political vacuum that the discredited Karzai government would be hard put to manage.
While US President Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown have reiterated that al Qaeda still represents the greatest threat to US security, the State Department has complimentary things to say about the Pakistan army’s ongoing South Waziristan offensive. However, the demand to “do more” raises hackles in Pakistan, especially since it remained a constant refrain through the Bush years and now seems to have been resurrected under Obama. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi felt constrained therefore to state in answer to a question that Pakistan cannot be prodded into military operations by outsiders. He posited consultations with the military to determine what are Pakistan’s requirements and priorities.
The concerns of the US seem to be too narrowly focused on al Qaeda without giving due weight to the nexus between Osama bin Laden’s organisation, the Afghan Taliban and now, arguably, the Pakistani Taliban along with militant groups originally nurtured for the Kashmir struggle but who have now emerged from the deserts of south Punjab to make common cause with their extremist brothers in arms. Pakistan on the other hand, is hoist between taking on al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban and their allies while retaining the Afghan Taliban card close to its chest for a rainy day. This disjuncture between the respective positions and concerns of both sides in the uneasy US-Pakistan alliance may one day lead to divergence, unless both sides sit down and come to the conclusion that the militant threat is indivisible. There cannot be peace in either Afghanistan or Pakistan unless and until the extremist threat is crushed completely, irrespective of which banner the militants fight under.