[R-G] Ex-Pakistani Official Says Policy on Taliban Is Failing

[Anthony Fenton]

Ex-Pakistani Official Says Policy on Taliban Is Failing
By JANE PERLEZ
Published: January 27, 2008
New York Times
http://snipr.com/1ye43

SHERPAO, Pakistan — In the walled courtyard of the modest whitewashed  
mosque, a suicide bomber worked his way into in the middle of a  
packed congregation and unleashed his explosives during prayers last  
month, killing 53 villagers and wounding 143 others.

The target of the attack, the former interior minister, Aftab Khan  
Sherpao (pronounced Share-POW), whose ancestral village sits at the  
foothills of the tribal region where the Taliban and their partners  
in Al Qaeda roam largely unfettered, was left unscathed.

But the second attack in eight months on Mr. Sherpao, 64, who was  
until recently his nation’s most senior law enforcement official,  
left him more frustrated and more outspoken about the failure of the  
government to respond aggressively to the rapidly spreading Taliban  
insurgency that is seeking to destabilize Pakistan.

The weakness of the Pakistani police and the army response to  
determined and religiously motivated Taliban fighters was allowing  
the insurgency to get stronger day by day, he said.

“The police are scared,” Mr. Sherpao said. “They don’t want to get  
involved.” The Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that could help  
in tracking down leads on suicide bombers, was “too stressed,  
fighting all over,” he said. The Pakistan Army has forces in the  
tribal areas where the militants have built their sanctuaries but the  
soldiers have remained in their headquarters. “They are not moving  
around,” he said. “That’s their strategy.”

Last Sunday, another attack near his village illustrated the gravity  
of the quickly deteriorating situation, compounded by the fact that  
the militants were able to get away with their attacks unpunished, he  
said.

Mr. Sherpao said he was awakened by a telephone caller who said that  
a senior official of the Intelligence Bureau, one of Pakistan’s most  
powerful intelligence agencies, had just been assassinated as he  
walked to the mosque in his village near Charsadda, where Mr. Sherpao  
had been the target of a suicide bomber last April.

“The Taliban came in two vehicles,” Mr. Sherpao said. “They said to  
the intelligence officer, ‘Are you so and so?’ When he said ‘Yes,’  
they shot him dead.”

The failure to investigate aggressively, Mr. Sherpao said, had  
emboldened the insurgents who interpret the government’s inaction as  
an inability to or an unwillingness to investigate.

A report released this month by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies,  
a nongovernmental research center based in Lahore, said suicide  
bombings in Pakistan had soared to 60 last year from 6 in 2006.

A document from the Interior Ministry last July warned the government  
of President Pervez Musharraf that the Taliban were spreading so fast  
that “swift and decisive action,” was needed to prevent the  
insurgency from engulfing the rest of the country.

Six months later, the picture was “very bleak,” Mr. Sherpao said. “It  
has increased, with no checks anywhere,” he said of the insurgency.

The recommendations in the Interior Ministry document for pushing  
back the militants — including enhancing local law enforcement and  
mobilizing public opinion — had not been followed, he said.

Mr. Sherpao, who comes from the Pashtun ethnic group that dominates  
the North-West Frontier Province and is the same ethnic group of the  
Taliban he wants to defeat, appeared depressed and uncertain that the  
government could prevail.

In the North-West Frontier Province, there was a risk of “total  
Talibanization,” he said.

Military and police actions were not the only factors necessary to  
turn around the situation, he said, adding that moderate political  
forces need to join hands.

“You need focused efforts and a clear perception of what you want to  
do,” he said. “Unless you involve the political parties, civil  
society, religious leaders, this is not going to make any headway.”

The Taliban, he said, were able to outmaneuver the government because  
they were well financed, were skilled at propaganda, and were even  
paying political candidates opposed to them in the tribal areas to  
keep them from participating in elections.

This grim assessment by Mr. Sherpao, who is one of Pakistan’s best- 
known politicians, comes as senior officials in Washington have said  
they are increasingly concerned about the growing efforts by the  
Taliban and Al Qaeda to destabilize the government.

The Bush administration has discussed in recent weeks sending more  
military trainers to assist the Pakistan Army in counterinsurgency  
tactics. The administration is also debating whether to strengthen  
covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The leader of United States Central Command, Adm. William J. Fallon,  
met the new chief of the Pakistan Army, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, during a  
visit to Islamabad last week to discuss proposals by the administration.

In most cases, Mr. Sherpao said, the police have had a boilerplate  
approach to solving the suicide bombings. They have blamed them on  
Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of a new association of Taliban militia  
in the tribal areas, who has been cited by Washington as having links  
to Al Qaeda, and left it at that, Mr. Sherpao said. “Not one suicide  
bombing has been resolved,” he said. “They just link it to Baitullah  
Mehsud, and that’s all.”

The director of the C.I.A., Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said last week  
that he believed terror networks directed by Mr. Mehsud were  
responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the opposition  
leader and former prime minister of Pakistan.

In a measure of the fast moving strength of the jihadists, Mr.  
Sherpao said the militants’ bases were no longer confined to North  
and South Waziristan, two districts inside the tribal area that have  
long been considered training grounds for suicide bombers.

The militants were now spread across the entire tribal region,  
including the district of Mohmand, which abuts the village of Sherpao  
and is close to Peshawar, the capital of the North-West Frontier  
Province, he said.

Three months ago, Mohmand was free of the Taliban, Mr. Sherpao said.  
Now, he said, the district was being used as a base to strike at the  
area around his village, and the bigger town of Charsadda where Mr.  
Sherpao survived a suicide bomb attack at a political rally last April.

In Swat, a scenic area outside of the tribal areas to the north, the  
Pakistan Army has been fighting the Taliban the last several months.  
The insurgents had displayed tactical skill, Mr. Sherpao said, by  
refusing to fight as a group, and instead had blended into the  
civilian population.

In an interview in the family compound, Mr. Sherpao’s son, Sikander,  
31, who is a member of the provincial assembly of the North-West  
Frontier Province, said the Taliban had expanded easily in the  
Mohmand district adjacent to their village because there were was no  
resistance from the authorities there. The Taliban then proceeded to  
give the local population a sense of quick justice that was denied  
them by the weak government.

“About four months ago, the Taliban said they were going to arrest  
the thieves and the gamblers in Mohmand,” said Sikander Sherpao, who  
holds a business degree from Drake University in Des Moines, and was  
injured in the suicide attack at the mosque. “When you let them do  
that, the Taliban feel they have a free hand.”

At the same time, he said, the Taliban had attracted local criminals  
into their ranks. “I know a lot of car thieves who are now Taliban  
emirs,” he said.

The Taliban were financing their activities with profits from the  
duty-free car trade with Afghanistan, and by raiding trailers  
carrying supplies by road for the United States military in  
Afghanistan, he said.

Taliban warlords could soon dominate as the North-West Frontier  
Province disintegrated into chaos, Sikander Sherpao said. “Doomsday  
scenarios are being discussed, especially the way things have gone in  
the last three to four months,” he said.