[R-G] Why Pakistan Is Unlikely to Crack Down on Islamic Militants

Sat Aug 2 14:13:34 MDT 2008

<http://www.mcclatchydc.com/100/story/46178.html>
Posted on Fri, Aug. 01, 2008
Why Pakistan is unlikely to crack down on Islamic militants
Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: August 01, 2008 10:05:22 PM

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration and its allies are pressing
Pakistan to end its support for Afghan insurgents linked to al Qaida,
but Pakistani generals are unlikely to be swayed because they
increasingly see their interests diverging from those of the United
States, U.S. and foreign experts said.

The administration sought to ratchet up the pressure last month by
sending top U.S. military and intelligence officials to Pakistan to
confront officials there with intelligence linking Pakistan's
Inter-Services Intelligence to the Taliban and other militant Islamist
groups.

When that failed to produce the desired response, U.S. officials told
news organizations about the visit, and then revealed that the
intelligence included an intercepted communication between ISI
officers and a pro-Taliban network that carried out a July 7 bombing
of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital.

The United States and Britain privately have demanded that Pakistan
move against the Taliban's top leadership, which they contend is based
near Quetta, the capital of Pakistan's Baluchistan Province, said a
State Department official and a senior NATO defense official, who both
requested anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly.

Pakistan has been given "a pretty unequivocal message" to end ISI
support for the militants and shake up the top ranks of the
intelligence agency, the senior NATO defense official said.

On Friday, however, Pakistan vehemently rejected the allegations of
ISI involvement in the Indian Embassy blast, which killed 41 and
injured 141.

U.S. officials and experts said there's little chance that Pakistan
will take any of the actions it's been asked to take.

"There is a limit to what we can do in Pakistan," said the State
Department official.

"The fact that we're reduced to trying to send messages to the
Pakistanis by putting stories in (newspapers) tells you we don't have
any good options," said a former senior intelligence official
knowledgeable about South Asia. "It also suggests that the high-level,
face-to-face contacts haven't worked so far. The trouble is, these
kinds of public threats are likely to backfire."

For one thing, the Taliban and other groups allied with al Qaida could
respond to any Pakistani crackdown by stepping up attacks inside
Pakistan, which is battling Islamic extremist violence, U.S. officials
and experts said.

Furthermore, they said, Pakistan's nearly dysfunctional, feud-riddled
civilian government has little power over the Army and the ISI. The
latest evidence was a botched attempt under U.S. pressure to put the
agency under the Interior Ministry before Prime Minister Yousaf
Gilani's three-day visit to Washington this week.

Pakistani generals and other leaders are also infuriated by President
Bush's pursuit of a strategic relationship with India, their foe in
three wars, as embodied by a U.S.-Indian civilian nuclear cooperation
pact that won United Nations approval Friday, the U.S. officials and
experts said.

"One thing we never understood is that India has always been the major
threat for Pakistan," said former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan Wendy
Chamberlain, now the president of the Middle East Institute.

Pakistan is alarmed by India's close ties to Afghan President Hamid
Karzai and its growing influence in Afghanistan, where a $750 million
Indian aid program includes the construction of a strategic highway
that will open the landlocked country to Indian goods shipped through
ports in Iran.

Pakistan, which refuses to allow Indian products through its port of
Karachi, has long coveted Afghanistan as a market, a trade route to
central Asia and a rear area for its army in any new conflict with
India.

"Pakistan over the last several years has increasingly come to believe
that it is being encircled by India and a U.S.-India-Afghan axis,"
said Seth Jones, an expert with the RAND Corp., a policy institute.

For these reasons, Pakistan's military leaders may have decided to
scale back their cooperation with the Bush administration's war
against terrorism and boost support for the Taliban and other militant
groups.

"We have created a set of perverse incentives for the Pakistanis to
continue their support for the Taliban," said a U.S. defense official,
who requested anonymity to speak frankly. "Pakistan does not view the
United States as a long-term player in the region and certainly
doesn't view Pakistan's strategic interests as congruent with ours,
and that divergence is getting larger, not smaller."

Without a strategy to allay Pakistan's fears, U.S. officials and
experts warned, there's little point in sending more U.S. and NATO
troops to Afghanistan as Bush, Democratic candidate Barak Obama and
his GOP rival, John McCain, all advocate.

Pakistan vehemently denies backing the Taliban and other insurgents,
pointing out that it's lost hundreds of troops in U.S.-funded
counter-insurgency offensives.

But many Afghan and U.S. officials scoff at Pakistan's denials,
charging that the Taliban leadership operates undisturbed in Quetta
and nearby tribal areas with ISI support, guidance, money and weapons.

Bush, anxious to maintain Pakistani support in the hunt for Osama bin
Laden and other al Qaida leaders, apparently believed that Pakistan
President Pervez Musharraf, the former Army chief, would rein in the
ISI.

But that hope has proved to be misplaced. Truces forged by the ISI and
the Pakistani army freed Taliban and other fighters to fight in
Afghanistan, where the worst violence since the 2001 U.S. intervention
is claiming higher U.S. casualties than in Iraq for the first time.

On Friday, five more NATO troops were reported killed in eastern
Afghanistan, a sector where U.S. troops are stationed.

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
CIA Deputy Director Stephen R. Kappes went to Pakistan to confront
Prime Minister Gilani, Army Chief of Staff Ashfaq Kayani and ISI
Director Lt. Gen. Naveed Taj with the intelligence linking ISI
officers to the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Afghanistan.

The Americans also documented other support that ISI officers have
been giving the Taliban and other militant groups, including advance
warnings of U.S. missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal region, said the
State Department official and senior NATO defense official.

"There is good evidence that elements of the ISI have re-engaged with
the Taliban," said the senior NATO defense official.

Gilani and his delegation heard similar complaints in Washington,
according to American and Pakistani officials. Pakistan Defense
Minister Ahmed Mukhtar told a television interviewer that Bush asked
during a White House meeting, "Who is in control of ISI?"