Blog:U.S. Pressures Pakistan to Target Afghan Taliban
WASHINGTON – The U.S. is stepping up pressure on Pakistan to widen the scope of an offensive against the Taliban in its tribal areas, fearful the current operation’s limits could blunt the impact of the fresh American troops Mbt being dispatched to neighboring Afghanistan.
For the past two months, Pakistan’s military has been driving against Taliban hideouts in the tribal area of South Waziristan in what U.S. officials describe as a welcome campaign against the militants. But the focus of the campaign is the main faction of the Pakistan Taliban — an offshoot of the Afghan movement; Afghan Taliban havens in Pakistan’s northwestern tribal areas and its southwestern province of Baluchistan remain unmolested.
With those sanctuaries intact, “our fear is that no matter how many boots we put on the ground [in Afghanistan], the enemy still has a place from where it can regroup, rearm and strategize,” said a U.S. military commander. To change that, “there will be a concerted diplomatic effort to address the sanctuary problem,” said a senior U.S. official in Afghanistan.
But Pakistan so far has no plans to move against Afghan Taliban havens in its territory, say officials from both countries.
“It would be very helpful if additional pressure could be put [by Pakistan] on the leadership elements that are causing problems in Afghanistan,” Gen. David Petraeus, the chief of the U.S. Central Command, told reporters Sunday at a security conference in Bahrain.
Pakistani officials say the militants attacking their own discount Mbt shoes people must be their primary focus. They also fear the U.S. surge could further destabilize Pakistan by angering the 27 million ethnic Pashtuns who straddle the border and make up the bulk of the Taliban.
“The U.S. wants the Pakistani military to fight all Taliban factions … without an understanding of the ground reality,” complained a senior Pakistani military official.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters over the weekend that Pakistani forces may soon move on another tribal area, Orakzai, where the bulk of the South Waziristan faction’s leadership and foot soldiers are believed to have sought refuge.
He made no mention of the two main Afghan insurgent groups the Americans want targeted: the Quetta Shura, the overall Taliban leadership council headed by Mullah Muhammad Omar, which U.S. officials say is based in Baluchistan; and the allied Haqqani network, based in North Waziristan.
The offensive in South Waziristan “is a start, from our point of a view. Mbts It’s a positive development,” said a senior U.S. military officer overseeing American forces in Afghanistan.
“But Pakistan’s military leadership needs to act against the Quetta Shura Taliban” and the Haqqani network, the official said. “We’re trying to make them realize you can’t eliminate one and leave the other in place.”
Washington has tried in recent months to woo Islamabad with a series of public carrots and private sticks. A $7.5 billion civilian aid package for Pakistan was recently approved, followed by a private warning that the U.S. could soon widen the geographic scope of a campaign of missile strikes against the Taliban from pilot-less drone aircraft, U.S. officials say.
U.S. allegations that Pakistan tolerates the Afghan Taliban are long-standing, and routinely denied by Islamabad. But the American complaints have become sharper and more widespread since the start of latest U.S. Afghan strategy review in September. The review culminated with President Barack Obama’s Dec. 2 speech announcing the deployment of about 30,000 more American soldiers and Marines to the region.
U.S. commanders are under tremendous pressure to show Mbt trainers progress before July 2011, when President Obama said American forces would slowly begin pulling back from Afghanistan.
The success of the new strategy “depends if Pakistan is willfully onside or not. If they are willfully onside, things will be good. Otherwise, things will be tough,” said a senior U.S. official in Afghanistan.
“Right now, with respect to the Afghan Taliban, they are not on the right side,” the official said.
Pakistan supported the Taliban government of Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, after which it backed the U.S.-led invasion that toppled the regime.
But U.S. officials believe Pakistan still has limited ties to the Taliban, hoping to use the militants as a lever to maintain its influence in Afghanistan and keep archrival India from deepening its ties to Kabul.
Pakistan denies any links to the Taliban. “For us, a terrorist is a terrorist, whether he operates on this side of the border or that side of the border,” Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told reporters at the Bahrain conference.
Despite the rancor, U.S. and Pakistani officials insist relations at the highest levels remain good, pointing out that cooperation has increased dramatically in the past two years.
The drone strikes are a prime example: Pakistan secretly aids the attacks, even as its own officials try to assuage public anger by condemning them.
But Pakistani officials are reluctant to allow American drones strikes beyond the tribal areas, especially in Baluchistan, fearing they could further deepen already widespread anti-American sentiment, potentially destabilizing Pakistan’s pro-U.S. government.
The U.S. diplomatic push began in late November when U.S. Shoes Mbt National Security Advisor James Jones traveled to Pakistan to personally deliver a letter from President Obama to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari asking for direct against the Afghan Taliban and al Qaeda, U.S. and Pakistani officials said.
