[R-G] U.S. Steps Up Unilateral Strikes in Pakistan

[Anthony Fenton]

U.S. Steps Up Unilateral Strikes in Pakistan
Officials Fear Support From Islamabad Will Wane
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/27/AR2008032700007.html?hpid=topnews
By Robin Wright and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, March 27, 2008; A01

The United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against al- 
Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas,  
partly because of anxieties that Pakistan's new leaders will insist on  
scaling back military operations in that country, according to U.S.  
officials.

Washington is worried that pro-Western President Pervez Musharraf, who  
has generally supported the U.S. strikes, will almost certainly have  
reduced powers in the months ahead, and so it wants to inflict as much  
damage as it can to al-Qaeda's network now, the officials said.

Over the past two months, U.S.-controlled Predator aircraft are known  
to have struck at least three sites used by al-Qaeda operatives. The  
moves followed a tacit understanding with Musharraf and Army chief  
Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani that allows U.S. strikes on foreign fighters  
operating in Pakistan, but not against the Pakistani Taliban, the  
officials said.

About 45 Arab, Afghan and other foreign fighters have been killed in  
the attacks, all near the Afghan border, U.S. and Pakistani officials  
said. The goal was partly to jar loose information on senior al-Qaeda  
leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, by forcing  
them to move in ways that U.S. intelligence analysts can detect. Local  
sources are providing better information to guide the strikes, the  
officials said.

A senior U.S. official called it a "shake the tree" strategy. It has  
not been without controversy, others said. Some military officers have  
privately cautioned that airstrikes alone -- without more U.S. special  
forces soldiers on the ground in the region -- are unlikely to net the  
top al-Qaeda leaders.

The campaign is not designed to capture bin Laden before Bush leaves  
office, administration officials said. "It's not a blitz to close this  
chapter," said a senior official who spoke on the condition of  
anonymity because of ongoing operations. "If we find the leadership,  
then we'll go after it. But nothing can be done to put al-Qaeda away  
in the next nine or 10 months. In the long haul, it's an issue that  
extends beyond this administration."

Musharraf, who controls the country's military forces, has long  
approved U.S. military strikes on his own. But senior officials in  
Pakistan's leading parties are now warning that such unilateral  
attacks -- including the Predator strikes launched from bases near  
Islamabad and Jacobabad in Pakistan -- could be curtailed.

"We have always said that as for strikes, that is for Pakistani forces  
to do and for the Pakistani government to decide. . . . We do not  
envision a situation in which foreigners will enter Pakistan and chase  
targets," said Farhatullah Babar, a top spokesman for the Pakistan  
People's Party, whose leader, Yousaf Raza Gillani, is the new prime  
minister. "This war on terror is our war."

Leaders of Gillani's party say they are interested in starting talks  
with local Taliban leaders and giving a political voice to the  
millions who live in Pakistan's tribal areas. U.S. Deputy Secretary of  
State John D. Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard A.  
Boucher heard the message directly yesterday from tribal elders in the  
village of Landi Kotal in the Khyber area.

"We told the visiting U.S. guests that the traditional jirga [tribal  
decision-making] system should be made effective to eliminate the  
causes of militancy and other problems from the tribal areas," said  
Malik Darya Khan, an elder. "We also told them that we have some  
disgruntled brothers" -- an indirect reference to local Taliban and  
militants -- who should be pulled into the mainstream through  
negotiations and dialogue, he said.

"The tribal turmoil can be resolved only through negotiations, not  
with military operations," Khan added. But he and others have said  
little specifically about how the new government should cope with  
foreign fighters, causing the Bush administration to engage in heavy  
lobbying on that issue.

President Bush called Gillani on Tuesday, for example, to stress the  
importance of the U.S.-Pakistani alliance and to emphasize that  
"fighting extremists is in everyone's interest," a White House  
spokesman said.

Daniel Markey, a former State Department policy planning staffer who  
is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said "the  
new faces" in Pakistan's leadership "are not certain how they want to  
manage their relationship with the United States. You can't blame  
them," because they are pulled in opposite directions by their  
electorate and the Bush administration.

But Kamran Bokhari, a Pakistani who directs Middle East analysis for  
Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence group in Washington,  
said the new government will almost certainly take a harder line  
against such strikes. "These . . . are very unpopular, not because  
people support al-Qaeda, but because they feel Pakistan has no  
sovereignty," he said.

The latest Predator strike, on March 16, killed about 20 in Shahnawaz  
Kot; a Feb. 28 strike killed 12 foreign militants in the village of  
Kaloosha; and a Jan. 29 strike killed 13 people, including senior al- 
Qaeda commander Abu Laith al-Libi, in North Waziristan.

U.S. intelligence officials estimate that al-Qaeda has several hundred  
operatives in the Waziristan tribal region. "But as we learned on  
9/11, it only takes 19," said the senior U.S. official. "These are not  
Tora Bora bomb-everything operations," he added, referring to the  
blanket bombing of Afghanistan's mountainous area where al-Qaeda  
leaders were hiding in late 2001.

A spokesman at CIA headquarters declined to comment on the strikes.  
The agency officially maintains a policy of strict secrecy regarding  
its counterterrorism operations in the border region and does not  
announce Predator strikes.

But other U.S. officials said that after months of prodding, the Bush  
administration and the Musharraf government this year reached a tacit  
understanding that gave Washington a freer hand to carry out precision  
strikes against al-Qaeda and its allies in the border region. The  
issue is a sensitive one that neither side is willing to discuss  
openly, the officials said.

Asked to comment, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell denied that  
the two governments have an "arrangement" or an "understanding." But  
he said that they face a mutual enemy and that "everything we do to go  
after terrorists operating there is in consultation and coordination  
with the Pakistani government."

Thomas H. Johnson, a research professor at the Naval Postgraduate  
School in Monterey, Calif., said: "People inside the Beltway are aware  
that Musharraf's days are numbered, and so they recognize they may  
only have a few months to do this. Musharraf has . . . very few  
friends in the world -- he probably has more inside the Beltway than  
in his own country."

The administration's intensified effort against al-Qaeda also has  
benefited from shifting loyalties among residents of the border  
region. Some tribal and religious leaders who embraced foreign al- 
Qaeda and Taliban fighters as they fled from Afghanistan in 2001 now  
see them as troublemakers and are providing timely intelligence about  
their movements and hideouts, according to former U.S. officials and  
Pakistan experts.

"They see traffic coming and going from the fortress homes of tribal  
leaders associated with foreign elements, and they pass the  
information along," said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani journalist in  
Washington and the author of a book on Pakistan's army. "Some quick  
surveillance is done, and then someone pops a couple of hundred-pound  
bombs at the house."

Yet despite a series of strikes, some U.S. military officers and  
experts question whether the strategy will be effective and worth its  
political costs.

"Jarring information loose is a method, but is it the most productive  
method? No. You need exploitation, troops on the ground. It's a huge  
operational stress, and it's probably not going to get the senior  
leadership," said a military officer with long experience in the region.

Local politicians also complain that the strikes only encourage  
militants to undertake retaliatory actions in urban areas. The  
politicians point to the recent string of suicide bombings of high- 
profile government targets in Rawalpindi, Lahore and Islamabad as  
evidence that militants are determined to take revenge for losses in  
the tribal areas.

"There's no way Pakistan can afford to follow a policy that is causing  
a war at home," said Khawaja Imran Raza, a top spokesman for former  
prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N faction.  
"There's a need to revisit the policy and there's a need to reassess  
because the domestic cost is so huge. We have lost a prime minister --  
our top opposition leader. We have lost generals, and just look at our  
losses in Lahore."

In 2005, the United States also attacked al-Qaeda sites in tribal  
areas, killing top operative Abu Hamza Rabia. In 2006, a Predator  
strike targeting three top al-Qaeda operatives killed only local  
villagers.

U.S. strategy could backfire if missiles take innocent lives. "The  
[tribal] Pashtuns have a saying: 'Kill one person, make 10 enemies,' "  
Johnson said. "You might take out a bad guy in one of these strikes,  
but you might also be creating more foot soldiers. This is a war in  
which the more people you kill, the faster you lose."

Correspondent Candace Rondeaux in Islamabad and special correspondent  
Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.