[R-G] Vested Interests Drove New Pakistan Policy

[Anthony Fenton]

POLITICS-US:  Vested Interests Drove New Pakistan Policy
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43909

WASHINGTON, Sep 17 (IPS) - The George W. Bush administration's  
decision to launch commando raids and step up missiles strikes against  
Taliban and al Qaeda figures in the tribal areas of Pakistan followed  
what appears to have been the most contentious policy process over the  
use of force in Bush's eight-year presidency.

That decision has stirred such strong opposition from the Pakistani  
military and government that it is now being revisited. Adm. Mike  
Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, arrived in Pakistan  
Tuesday for the second time in three weeks, and U.S. officials and  
sources just told Reuters that any future raids would be approved on a  
mission-by-mission basis by a top U.S. administration official.

The policy was the result of strong pressure from the U.S. command in  
Afghanistan and lobbying by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) and  
the CIA's operations directorate (DO), both of which had direct  
institutional interests in operations that coincided with their mandate.

State Department and some Pentagon officials had managed to delay the  
proposed military escalation in Pakistan for a year by arguing that it  
would be based on nearly nonexistent intelligence and would only  
increase support for the Islamic extremists in that country.

But officials of SOCOM and the CIA prevailed in the end, apparently  
because Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney believed they could not  
afford to be seen as doing nothing about bin Laden and al Qaeda in the  
administration's final months.

SOCOM had a strong institutional interest in a major new operation in  
Pakistan.

The Army's Delta Force and Navy SEALS had been allowed by the  
Pakistani military to accompany its forces on raids in the tribal area  
in 2002 and 2003 but not to operate on their own. And even that  
extremely limited role was ended by Pakistani President Pervez  
Musharraf in 2003, which frustrated SOCOM officials.

Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose antagonism toward the CIA was  
legendary, had wanted SOCOM to take over the hunt for bin Laden. And  
in 2006, SOCOM's Joint Special Operations Command branch in  
Afghanistan pressed Rumsfeld to approve a commando operation in  
Pakistan aimed at capturing a high-ranking al Qaeda operative.

SOCOM had the support of the U.S. command in Afghanistan, which was  
arguing that the war in Afghanistan could not be won as long as the  
Taliban had a safe haven in Pakistan from which to launch attacks. The  
top U.S. commander, Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, worked with SOCOM and DO  
officers in Afghanistan to assemble the evidence of Pakistan's  
cooperation with the Taliban. .

Despite concerns that such an operation could cause a massive reaction  
in Pakistan against the U.S. war on al Qaeda, Rumsfeld gave in to the  
pressure in early November 2006 and approved the operation, according  
to an account in the New York Times Jun. 30. But within days, Rumsfeld  
was out as defence secretary, and the operation was put on hold.

Nevertheless Bush and Cheney, who had been repeating that Musharraf  
had things under control in the frontier area, soon realised that they  
would be politically vulnerable to charges that they weren't doing  
anything about bin Laden.

The July 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the signal for  
the CIA's DO to step up its own lobbying for control over a Pakistan  
operation, based on the Afghan model -- CIA officers training and  
arming a local militia while identifying targets for strikes from the  
air.

In a Washington Post column only two weeks after the NIE's conclusions  
were made public, David Ignatius quoted former CIA official Hank  
Crumpton, who had run the CIA operation in Afghanistan after the Sep.  
11, 2001 attacks, on the proposed DO operation: "We either do it now,  
or we do it after the next attack."

That either-or logic and the sense of political vulnerability in the  
White House was the key advantage of the advocates of a new war in  
Pakistan. Last November, the New York Times reported that the Defence  
Department had drafted an order based on the SOCOM proposal for  
training of local tribal forces and for new authority for "covert"  
commando operations in Pakistan's frontier provinces.

But the previous experience with missile strikes against al Qaeda  
targets using predator drones and the facts on the ground provided  
plenty of ammunition to those who opposed the escalation. It showed  
that the proposed actions would have little or no impact on either the  
Taliban or al Qaeda in Pakistan, and would bring destabilising  
political blowback.

In January 2006, the CIA had launched a missile strike on a  
residential compound in Damadola, near the Afghan border, on the basis  
of erroneous intelligence that Ayman al-Zawahiri would be there. The  
destruction killed as many 25 people, according to local residents  
interviewed by The Telegraph, including 14 members of one family.

Some 8,000 tribesmen in the Damadola area protested the killing, and  
in Karachi tens of thousands more rallied against the United States,  
shouting "Death to America!"

Musharraf later claimed that the dead included four high-ranking al  
Qaeda officials, including al-Zawahiri's son-in-law. The Washington  
Post's Craig Whitlock reported last week, however, that U.S. and  
Pakistani officials now admit that only local villagers were killed in  
the strike.

It was well known within the counter-terrorism community that the U.S.  
search for al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan was severely limited by the  
absence of actionable intelligence. For years, the U.S. military had  
depended almost entirely on Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence  
Directorate, despite its well-established ties with the Taliban and  
even al Qaeda.

One of the counter-terrorism officials without a direct organisational  
stake in the issue, State Department counterterrorism chief Gen. Dell  
L. Dailey, bluntly summed up the situation to reporters last January.  
"We don't have enough information about what's going on there," he  
said. "Not on al Qaeda, not on foreign fighters, not on the Taliban."

A senior U.S. official quoted by the Post last February was even more  
scathing on that subject, saying "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut  
now and then."

Meanwhile, the Pakistani military, reacting to the U.S. aim of a more  
aggressive U.S. military role in the tribal areas, repeatedly rejected  
the U.S. military proposal for training Frontier Corps units.

The U.S. command in Afghanistan and SOCOM increased the pressure for  
escalation early last summer by enlisting visiting members of Congress  
in support of the plan. Texas Republican Congressmen Michael McCaul,  
who had visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, declared on his return that  
was "imperative that U.S. forces be allowed to pursue the Taliban and  
al Qaeda in tribal areas inside Pakistan."

In late July, according to The Times of London, Bush signed a secret  
national security presidential directive (NSPD) which authorised  
operations by special operations forces without the permission of  
Pakistan.

The Bush decision ignored the disconnect between the aims of the new  
war and the realities on the ground in Pakistan. Commando raids and  
missile strikes against mid-level or low-level Taliban or al Qaeda  
operatives, carried out in a sea of angry Pashtuns, will not stem the  
flow of fighters from Pakistan into Afghanistan or weaken al Qaeda.  
But they will certainly provoke reactions from the tribal population  
that can tilt the affected areas even further toward the Islamic  
radicals.

At least some military leaders without an institutional interest in  
the outcome understood that the proposed escalation was likely to  
backfire. One senior military officer told the Los Angeles Times last  
month that he had been forced by the "fragility of the current  
government in Islamabad," to ask whether "you do more long-term harm  
if you act very, very aggressively militarily".

*Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist  
specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition  
of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the  
Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.