President General Pervez Musharraf has said that the infiltration into Afghanistan of Taliban fighters with sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas “had been reduced” and Al-Qaeda is “on the run” in Waziristan. He added that Nato and CIA agreed with him because the “spring and summer offensives” of the Taliban in Afghanistan had been blunted.
But a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) just released argues exactly the opposite. It claims that Al-Qaeda has safe havens in Waziristan and been so strengthened that it now poses a direct threat to the US mainland. It criticized General Musharraf’s “peace deals” with the Taliban in Waziristan because the hiatus had provided Al-Qaeda “space” for entrenchment in the area. More significantly, it suggested that if General Musharraf wasn’t up to the job of eliminating the terrorists in his territory the US should consider taking them out with or without the permission of the Pakistan government.
This has prompted Pakistan’s Foreign Office to say that the NIE report isn’t right and that Pakistan has fully cooperated in the war against terror whenever it has been provided with credible intelligence about the movements of the Taliban-Al-Qaeda network. So who’s right and who’s wrong?
There has been a spate of Taliban attacks on Pakistan’s security forces in Waziristan and the northern areas in the last two weeks in which nearly 150 people have been killed, mostly soldiers and local officials. This two-week toll is equal to the loss of lives in the last two years and suggests that General Musharraf’s rosy assessment may be a case of dissembling. The fact that the Taliban and its local supporters have unilaterally broken the truce and the government is running around desperately trying to patch it also implies that the stronger Taliban force has taken the initiative against a weaker opponent. The clinching fact is General Musharraf’s admission that Pakistan’s National Security Council recently decided to beef up troops and equipment in the troubled areas and persuaded the chief minister of the NWFP to back its plans. This was buttressed by news that the US government had sanctioned US$750 million for the Pakistan government’s anti-terrorist operations in FATA over the next five years and Pakistan was raising 15,000 new para-military troopers for deployment by December. Three days ago, there was news that government troops had used heavy artillery to attack suspected Taliban-Al Qaeda hideouts and camps in Waziristan.
But if the Pakistan government has a vested interest in downplaying its failures in combating the Taliban, the US government may now have a high stake in drumming up the threat from the same source. It is significant that the Homeland Security Secretary, Michael Chertoff, is a major inspiration behind the NIE and is making all the noises about the Al-Qaeda threat to the US rather than NATO which is the chief player on the ground. The Bush administration has, time and again, relied on the “fear factor” to shore up its plunging ratings with the American people. Its failure in Iraq has been compounded by its failure in Afghanistan. But for obvious reasons, it is convenient to blame Pakistan rather than admit its own strategic and tactical shortcomings in Afghanistan. Hence the NIE’s forecast that another Al-Qaeda attack on US soil is imminent and that it is Pakistan’s tribal areas which are “key elements” in the regeneration of Al-Qaeda’s “homeland attack ability”. Mr Chertoff also triggers the “fear factor” when says he would like the US Congress to modify visa free travel rules for visitors to the US as well as tighten screening of all air passengers with new technology.
The US strategy has produced immediate results. The Washington Post has editorialized that “if Pakistani forces cannot or will not eliminate the (Al-Qaeda) sanctuary, President Bush must order targeted strikes or covert actions by American forces, as he has done several times in recent years”. The WP takes the 9/11 Commission to task for saying that direct attacks on Al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan’s tribal areas would be disproportionate to the threat. “The US must not repeat that tragic misjudgment” it concludes. Indeed, Lee Hamilton, vice chair of the 9/11 Commission and member of President Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, says America should bomb Waziristan even at the risk of destabilizing General Musharraf.
The fact is that both the US and Pakistan governments are responsible for the revival of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Americans haven’t put in enough money in the last six years to wins hearts and minds in Afghanistan. They have made short term tactical alliances with warlords which have weakened their long-term strategic allies in Kabul. Hamid Karzai has been a weak and confused puppet whose inability to make the right tribal, ethnic and political alliances is marked. Their European allies in NATO remain squeamish about taking casualties or putting more money into the anti-terror kitty. Meanwhile, Pakistan has been unwilling to knock out the Taliban because it sees the Pakhtun Islamic force as a long term antidote or “balancing factor” to the pro-India Northern Alliance of Uzbeks and Tajiks that dominates Kabul.
The net result of both countries’ domestic and foreign policies is a lasting tragedy for both Americans and Pakistanis.