The Pakistan Update

by Wajid Ali Syed

You can’t fool all of the people all of the time. At some point reality catches up to you.

Just like it did in Pakistan over the past week.

During the six years that Osama bin Laden was “hiding” in his compound in Pakistan, experts compiled research, wrote reports and articles and convened panels at think tanks to convince the United States that the ISI — Pakistan’s infamous intelligence agency — has been playing a double game. But the ISI and the Pakistan army continued to benefit from the largesse of American aid and official gratitude for their assistance in the war on terror.

In an old interview, Pervez Musharraf, who was the Chief of the Army and head of the state from 1999 to 2008, said he wanted bin Laden captured anywhere in the world but Pakistan. At around the same time Benizar Bhutto accused Musharraf of hiding terrorists and said that bin Laden could be in the basement of the President’s house in Islamabad. As the world now knows, the world’s most wanted terrorist was a block away from the army garrison. The swaggering confidence of his hosts had to turn into unfathomable embarrassment.

This incident is not the first time the Pakistan Army has made claims that strained credulity. When A.Q. Khan was caught operating a nuclear bazaar that trafficked information to the world’s most notorious regimes, the official Army line was that it had no knowledge of his activities.

Because of arrogance, or overconfidence, the Army chose to overlook the fact that the US had been after bin Laden with force and determination years before 9/11. In mid-August of 1998, the then-Pakistan Army Chief General Jahangir Karamat met his American counterpart, General Joseph Ralston. At the dinner table, General Ralston informed General Karamat that in few minutes some sixty Tomahawk cruise missiles would be entering Pakistan’s airspace to hit a location in Afghanistan where bin Laden was believed to be operating training camps. Obviously, General Karamat was shocked.

The next time the US infiltrated Pakistani air space, it was General Kayani’s turn to be shocked. Only now the destination was different and the mission was a success.

But killing bin Laden does not mean that al Qaeda has been destroyed. It’s not solely a terrorist organization. It facilitates and funds other terrorist groups. According to American journalist and author Mary Ann Weaver, al Qaeda is like a clearinghouse from which other groups obtain funds, training, and logistical support. These other groups exist from Egypt to Algeria, from Yemen to Somalia, from Saudi Arabia to the Philippines and, of course, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Probably for this reason al Qaeda does not face a leadership crisis, as such. Interestingly enough, the next two frontrunners to take charge of al Qaeda could be residing deep in Pakistan.

Evidence shows that before settling in Abbottabad, bin Laden was seen in North Waziristan in the Tirah valley, then in Balochistan for a short time (probably meeting with the Quetta shura). Months after, he was spotted near Meran Shah with none other than Ayman al Zawahari. Later, al Zawahari was seen with Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of the Taliban in North Waziristan.

Balochistan’s Quetta Shura and North Waziristan still stand out as al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts. Now that the US has embarrassed the Pakistan Army and its intelligence network for being unaware of the presence of the world’s most wanted terrorist in their own backyard, American officials should keep up the pressure and demand the capture of all terrorist group members and especially their leaders. In a grim yet darkly amusing example of the militants’ ability to survive and thrive, in 2002 Taliban leader Mullah Omar escaped the US Army on a motorbike.

The official Pakistani response to bin Laden’s presence in Pakistan doesn’t hold water. But even if we give the Pakistan Army the benefit of the doubt for not knowing where bin Laden was, it has been an open secret that Jalaluddin Haqqani and Mullah Omar reside somewhere deep in Pakistan. The army does know about Mullah Omar and Haqqani, and the US has been asking it to take action.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator John Kerry are still on board, claiming that the US needs access to the Afghanistan supply routes via Pakistan. This official excuse to continue sending aid is that the ISI has been an invaluable ally in helping the US root out terrorists. Now the Pakistan Army should make a grand gesture if it wants to be taken seriously as a partner.

Meanwhile, the US should attach some strings to the aid it lavishes on Pakistan. The Pakistan Army has always been a powerbroker in the country, not answerable to anyone. It’s been said that Pakistan is not a country with an army, but an army with a country.

The US was treated to a dose of the Army’s determination to keep a grip on foreign cash during fuss kicked up over the Kerry Lugar bill, a measure that would provide $7.5 billion in non-military aid over a five year period to help the civilian government provide essential services to the population. The Urdu press went berserk, turning the proposal into a dark conspiracy aimed at undermining Pakistani sovereignty. The army exploited the outrage, carving out a good chunk out of the funds. Apart from foreign military aid, the army gets a lion’s share from the national budget without any accountability, funds that could otherwise be used to pay for education and infrastructure.

So, now that the Pakistan Army has been caught red handed eagerly accepting money to fight terrorism while claiming not to know that the world’s most notorious terrorist was living within a stone’s throw of that same army’s training academy, perhaps it’s time for the US to focus on supporting the country’s fragile political government and demand better results and more candor from the military.

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post

Tags: 9/11, A.Q. Khan, Abbottabad, Afghanistan, Al Qaeda, algeria, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Balochistan, Benazir Bhutto, double game, Egypt, Featured, General Ashfaq Kayani, General Joseph Ralston, Hillary Clinton, ISI, Jahangir Karamat, Jalaluddin Haqqani, John Kerry, Kerry Lugar Bill, Mullah Omar, North Waziristan, Osama Bin Laden, Pakistan, Pakistan Army, Pervez Musharraf, philippines, Quetta Shura, Saudi Arabia, somalia, urdu media, yemen

Posted in Blog, News | 2,065 Comments »

by Bruce Reidel

Osama bin Laden’s death is a severe blow to al Qaeda–but not its end. His death answers some key questions about the terror cell and Pakistan, but leaves some even more perplexing ones still open.

First, congratulations to President Obama and the CIA. From the very start of his administration he ordered an intense focus on al Qaeda and its leader. The trail had long gone cold due largely to the diversion of critical resources to Iraq back in 2002 and 2003. Obama rightly promised to focus on Pakistan, the center of the global jihad and the most dangerous country in the world, and his efforts have now paid off.

Many had questioned whether bin Laden was still alive almost ten years after 9/11. But there was never really any doubt. By eluding justice after his first attacks on America in 1998, bin Laden created a mystique of invulnerability. He remained not just a symbol of al Qaeda’s continuing threat but a real leader, issuing strategic direction and propaganda.

His death weakens al Qaeda’s cohesion and its image of being beyond the reach of America. It comes after two years of intense pressure on the group and its allies in Pakistan and Afghanistan from American drones in the skies as well as NATO boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Key lieutenants like his operational commander in Afghanistan, a fellow Saudi named Abdul Ghani, have been tracked down and killed just this spring. The pressure was designed to weaken al Qaeda’s operational tempo, disrupting its routines. The strategy has worked. Presumably his hideout deep in Pakistan also contained clues and data that will help further dismantle al Qaeda’s core.

But the terror cell has always known bin Laden was at risk and it has devolved much authority to his deputy, the Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri, and to others. Zawahiri has been the public face of al Qaeda for years. Just this year he has released five audio messages focused on the Arab spring (he put out only four in all of last year). Bin Laden in contrast was silent about the wave of revolutions in Arabia. The New Mexico born Yemeni Anwar Awlaki has emerged as another operational and propaganda hub with his on line English language magazine Inspire and his al Qaeda Yemen cell has tried to attack Detroit and Chicago already. We can expect effusive memorials from them to their fallen “martyr.”

And we should expect the threat of more al Qaeda attacks to remain real. This weekend, several terrorists linked to al Qaeda were arrested for plotting an attack in Germany. Last week, the group’s Maghreb affiliate struck in Morocco, killing Western tourists.

Obama was right to call his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Ali Zardari, to thank him for help in the chase. Zardari’s wife Benazir Bhutto was murdered by al Qaeda in 2007; the death of the country’s most popular and capable leader was perhaps the group’s biggest triumph since 9/11. Pakistan has yet to recover from her demise. Al Qaeda has been focused like a laser beam on Pakistan for the last decade. It rightly judges Pakistan to be both uniquely vulnerable in the Islamic world to jihadism and equipped with the ultimate strategic prize, the fastest growing nuclear arsenal in the world. With allies like the Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba, al Qaeda will remain a threat to Pakistan’s nascent democracy and to peace in the Indian subcontinent.

Obama should schedule an early Zardari visit to Washington and his own visit later this year to Pakistan to signal our support for democratic forces there. We also now know what many long suspected: that Bin Laden was not hiding in Pakistan’s tribal wastelands, but rather in its heartland. He was killed in Abbotabad, the home town of Pakistan’s first military dictator, Ayub Khan, just thirty miles from the capital Islamabad. This raises the question: who helped him all these years hide in-country? He was not alone in al Qaeda in hiding out in Pakistan’s towns and cities. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda, two key al Qaeda operatives, were caught in Pakistan’s urban centers. Mullah Omar, bin Laden’s Afghan Taliban partner (and the man he swore loyalty to even in the last few years) has long been thought to be hiding in Pakistan’s mega- port of Karachi. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has often publicly said she suspected some in the Pakistani establishment knew where to find bin Laden. She raised the right question. It remains a good one.

Al Qaeda long ago became more than a terror group. It is an idea, the concept of global jihad against America. It has an elaborate narrative to justify murder. But Bin Laden was caught off guard by the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions this winter and the wave of turmoil that has followed them. These popular uprisings challenged his whole worldview that terror and jihad were the only way to free Islam of its dictators and of what he called “Crusader-Zionist oppression.” The triumph of freedom in Tahrir Square was a blow to al Qaeda—a sign that aside from in Pakistan and Yemen, the group seemed increasingly marginalized. NATO is now fighting to free Libya, not to occupy it. Whether al Qaeda can adapt to the new Arab renaissance is an open question. Bin Laden won’t be able to answer it. Can his heirs?

Bruce Riedel, a former longtime CIA officer, is a senior fellow in the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. At Obama’s request, he chaired the strategic review of policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009.

Tags: 9/11, Abbotabad, Abdul Ghani, Abu Zubayda, Al Qaeda, Anwar Awlaki, Ayman Zawahiri, Ayub Khan, Benazir assassination, Benazir Bhutto, CIA, drones, Featured, Hillary Clinton, Islamabad, Jihad, karachi, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, Lashkar e Taiba, Mullah Omar, NATO, Obama, Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari, Taliban

Posted in Afghanistan, Blog, News | 1,021 Comments »

by Michael Gerson

Last week, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) was awakened by a 2:20 a.m. call. His first response was to fear bad news about his children or grandchildren. But when the American ambassador to Pakistan came on the line, Wolf immediately knew that his friend Shahbaz Bhatti had been killed. Bhatti was Pakistan’s federal minister of minority affairs, the only Christian in the cabinet and an advocate for the rights of religious minorities.

Wolf had sent letter after letter to the State Department, warning that Bhatti’s life was “in grave danger.” In December, along with then-Sen. Sam Brownback, he wrote Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “to ask that Ambassador Cameron Munter be immediately instructed to communicate to the most senior officials of the government of Pakistan that Minister Bhatti’s security is a matter of high importance to the United States.”

The recriminations are now thick in Islamabad, but for whatever reason the Pakistani government did not protect Bhatti. On March 2, as he left his mother’s house for a cabinet meeting, his black Corolla was ambushed. Bhatti was shot at least 20 times. The killers left behind a pamphlet claiming credit for the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda.

A few months previously, Bhatti had given a video interview that eerily, though not unreasonably, anticipated his own murder. “I’m ready to die for a cause,” he said, “I’m living for my community and suffering people, and I will die to defend their rights. So these threats and these warnings cannot change my opinion and principles.” The most admirable and risky of those principles was Bhatti’s opposition to Pakistan’s blasphemy law, used to harass and intimidate religious minorities, including unpopular Muslim sects. Two months before Bhatti’s death, the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, was murdered for criticizing the law.

Other Pakistani politicians, according to Wolf, now live in “absolute fear.” Pakistan’s government has no interest in reforming the blasphemy law. Following Bhatti’s murder, the two minutes of silence in parliament to honor him was a political compromise, because no member dared to offer a public prayer on his behalf.

If Bhatti’s murder is the last word, it will be a significant victory for extremism. America depends on cooperation with Pakistan to gain intelligence on tribal areas near Afghanistan. The United States is spending considerable amounts on aid to Pakistan, hoping to bring stability to lawless regions. But the political case for billions in civilian and military assistance becomes complicated if the Pakistani government seems helpless amid chaos, intimidated by radicalism and desperate to appease the unappeasable.

Events such as the murder of Bhatti elicit a difficult balance of attitudes. Some view every such killing as a confirmation of violence as the essence of Islam, thereby feeding the apocalyptic civilizational struggle that extremists fondly seek. Others, particularly in diplomatic circles, play down or ignore the role of religion in international affairs – an awkward topic on which they know little.

The alternative to a conflict of civilizations or uncomfortable silence is the steady, principled promotion of religious freedom. Freedom of conscience is not only an expression of respect for human dignity; it is essential to the consolidation of democratic institutions. Nations that honor religious freedom are far more likely to respect other rights. Nations that allow or encourage the oppression of religious minorities are enabling and rewarding extremism.

American leverage in these matters is limited, but it is worth applying what we have – something the Obama administration, to this point, has not done. Its National Security Strategy avoids the topic. It did not appoint an ambassador at large for international religious freedom – a congressionally mandated position – until a year and a half after it took office. (The confirmation of that ambassador, by the way, is now held up by Republican Sen. Jim DeMint.) “This has not gotten,” Clinton said at a recent hearing, “the level of attention and concern that it should. . . . I think we need to do much more to stand up for the rights of religious minorities.”

This was precisely what Bhatti was doing – defending the rights of believers in every faith, not just his own. But the source of his courage in the cause of pluralism was clear: “These Taliban threaten me. But I want to share that I believe in Jesus Christ, who has given his own life for us. I know what is the meaning of [the] cross, and I am following the cross.”

Which he followed all the way to the end.

This article originally appeared in The Washington Post

Tags: Al Qaeda, anti-blasphemy laws, cameron munter, christians, frank wolf, Hillary Clinton, Pakistan, Pakistani Taliban, religious freedom, sam brownback, shabaz bhatti, State department

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President Asif Ali Zardari and President Barack Obama met Friday morning at the White House to discuss the stressed relations between the two countries, as well as economic reform and security issues. The meeting was also attended by the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the US National Security Advisor and Counter-terrorism Advisor.

The top leaders wanted to catch up on how the situation had developed since they last met, said Pakistan’s Ambassador to US, Husain Haqqani in a briefing after the meeting. He emphasized that the meeting went smoothly and the American president assured his support to President Zardari. He said the two leaders talked about the US-Pakistan (more…)

Tags: aid, Asif Zardari, Barack Obama, Economic Reform, Hillary Clinton, Husain Haqqani, IMF, Pakistan Army, Terrorism, US Pakistan relations, White House

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by Steve Steve Luxenberg

President Obama urgently looked for a way out of the war in Afghanistan last year, repeatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him, according to secret meeting notes and documents cited in a new book by journalist Bob Woodward.

Frustrated with his military commanders for consistently offering only options that required significantly more troops, Obama finally crafted his own strategy, dictating a classified six-page “terms sheet” that sought to limit U.S. involvement, Woodward reports in “Obama’s Wars,” to be released on Monday.

According to Woodward’s meeting-by-meeting, memo-by-memo account of the 2009 Afghan strategy review, the president avoided talk of victory as he described his objectives.

“This needs to be a plan about how we’re going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan,” Obama is quoted as telling White House aides as he laid out his reasons for adding 30,000 troops in a short-term escalation. “Everything we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It’s in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room.”

Obama rejected the military’s request for 40,000 troops as part of an expansive mission that had no foreseeable end. “I’m not doing 10 years,” he told Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at a meeting on Oct. 26, 2009. “I’m not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars.”

Woodward’s book portrays Obama and the White House as barraged by warnings about the threat of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil and confronted with the difficulty in preventing them. During an interview with Woodward in July, the president said, “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger.”

But most of the book centers on the strategy review, and the dissension, distrust and infighting that consumed Obama’s national security team as it was locked in a fierce and emotional struggle over the direction, goals, timetable, troop levels and the chances of success for a war that is almost certain to be one of the defining events of this presidency.

Obama is shown at odds with his uniformed military commanders, particularly Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command during the 2009 strategy review and now the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

Woodward reveals their conflicts through detailed accounts of two dozen closed-door secret strategy sessions and nearly 40 private conversations between Obama and Cabinet officers, key aides and intelligence officials.

Tensions often turned personal. National security adviser James L. Jones privately referred to Obama’s political aides as “the water bugs,” the “Politburo,” the “Mafia,” or the “campaign set.” Petraeus, who felt shut out by the new administration, told an aide that he considered the president’s senior adviser David Axelrod to be “a complete spin doctor.”

During a flight in May, after a glass of wine, Petraeus told his own staffers that the administration was “[expletive] with the wrong guy.” Gates was tempted to walk out of an Oval Office meeting after being offended by comments made by deputy national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon about a general not named in the book.

Suspicion lingered among some from the 2008 presidential campaign as well. When Obama floated the idea of naming Clinton to a high-profile post, Axelrod asked him, “How could you trust Hillary?”

“Obama’s Wars” marks the 16th book by Woodward, 67, a Washington Post associate editor. Woodward’s reporting with Carl Bernstein on the Watergate coverup in the early 1970s led to their bestselling book “All the President’s Men.”

Among the book’s other disclosures:

– Obama told Woodward in the July interview that he didn’t think about the Afghan war in the “classic” terms of the United States winning or losing. “I think about it more in terms of: Do you successfully prosecute a strategy that results in the country being stronger rather than weaker at the end?” he said.

– The CIA created, controls and pays for a clandestine 3,000-man paramilitary army of local Afghans, known as Counterterrorism Pursuit Teams. Woodward describes these teams as elite, well-trained units that conduct highly sensitive covert operations into Pakistan as part of a stepped-up campaign against al-Qaeda and Afghan Taliban havens there.

– Obama has kept in place or expanded 14 intelligence orders, known as findings, issued by his predecessor, George W. Bush. The orders provide the legal basis for the CIA’s worldwide covert operations.

– A new capability developed by the National Security Agency has dramatically increased the speed at which intercepted communications can be turned around into useful information for intelligence analysts and covert operators. “They talk, we listen. They move, we observe. Given the opportunity, we react operationally,” then-Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell explained to Obama at a briefing two days after he was elected president.

– A classified exercise in May showed that the government was woefully unprepared to deal with a nuclear terrorist attack in the United States. The scenario involved the detonation of a small, crude nuclear weapon in Indianapolis and the simultaneous threat of a second blast in Los Angeles. Obama, in the interview with Woodward, called a nuclear attack here “a potential game changer.” He said: “When I go down the list of things I have to worry about all the time, that is at the top, because that’s one where you can’t afford any mistakes.”

– Afghan President Hamid Karzai was diagnosed as manic depressive, according to U.S. intelligence reports. “He’s on his meds, he’s off his meds,” Woodward quotes U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry as saying.

Obama kept asking for “an exit plan” to go along with any further troop commitment, and is shown growing increasingly frustrated with the military hierarchy for not providing one. At one strategy session, the president waved a memo from the Office of Management and Budget, which put a price tag of $889 billion over 10 years on the military’s open-ended approach.

In the end, Obama essentially designed his own strategy for the 30,000 troops, which some aides considered a compromise between the military command’s request for 40,000 and Biden’s relentless efforts to limit the escalation to 20,000 as part of a “hybrid option” that he had developed with Gen. James E. Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

In a dramatic scene at the White House on Sunday, Nov. 29, 2009, Obama summoned the national security team to outline his decision and distribute his six-page terms sheet. He went around the room, one by one, asking each participant whether he or she had any objections – to “say so now,” Woodward reports.

The document – a copy of which is reprinted in the book – took the unusual step of stating, along with the strategy’s objectives, what the military was not supposed to do. The president went into detail, according to Woodward, to make sure that the military wouldn’t attempt to expand the mission.

After Obama informed the military of his decision, Woodward writes, the Pentagon kept trying to reopen the decision, peppering the White House with new questions. Obama, in exasperation, reacted by asking, “Why do we keep having these meetings?”

Along with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan at the time, they kept pushing for their 40,000-troop option as part of a broad counterinsurgency plan along the lines of what Petraeus had developed for Iraq.

The president is quoted as telling Mullen, Petraeus and Gates: “In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’ We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] . . . unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.”

Petraeus took Obama’s decision as a personal repudiation, Woodward writes. Petraeus continued to believe that a “protect-the-Afghan-people” counterinsurgency was the best plan. When the president tapped Petraeus this year to replace McChrystal as the head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Petraeus found himself in charge of making Obama’s more limited strategy a success.

Woodward quotes Petraeus as saying, “You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

This story originally appeared in The Washington Post

Tags: Afghanistan, bob woodward, david axelrod, Hamid Karzai, Hillary Clinton, james jones, Mike Mullen, NATO, Obama, petrea, Robert Gates, thomas donilon

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by Matthew Lee

ISLAMABAD — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought Monday to convince skeptical Pakistanis that American interest in their country extends beyond the fight against Islamist militants by announcing a raft of new aid projects worth $500 million.

The projects, which include hospitals and new dams for badly needed electricity, are part of a $7.5 billion aid effort to win over Pakistanis suspicious about Washington’s goals here and in neighboring Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are being killed in ever greater numbers in an insurgency with roots in Pakistan.

Mistrust over U.S. intentions in Pakistan is in part due to Washington’s decision to turn away from the nuclear-armed country after enlisting its support to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

“Of course there is a legacy of suspicion that we inherited. It is not going to be eliminated overnight,” said Clinton following talks in Islamabad.

“It is however our goal to slowly but surely demonstrate that the United States is concerned about Pakistan for the long term and that our partnership goes far beyond security against our common enemies,” she said.

Clinton said the U.S. will complete two hydroelectric dam projects to supply electricity to more than 300,000 people in areas near the Afghan border, will renovate or build three medical facilities in central and southern Pakistan and will embark on a new initiative to improve access to clean drinking water in the country.

These projects and several others focused on promoting economic growth will cost some $500 million and will be funded by legislation approved by Congress to triple nonmilitary aid to $1.5 billion a year over five years. The initiatives mark the second phase of projects begun under a new and enhanced strategic partnership.

Clinton acknowledged rebuilding trust between the countries would be difficult, comparing the effort to launching a rocket into space.

“We’re trying to escape the bonds of gravity, leave behind an era of mistrust and launch a new period of cooperation,” she said during a town hall meeting attended by several hundred Pakistanis.

Despite the U.S. initiatives, Clinton faces challenges in appealing for greater Pakistani cooperation in cracking down on militants who use their sanctuaries in Pakistan to launch cross-border attacks against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The U.S. has had no success in pushing Pakistan to go after al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden or Taliban chief Mullah Omar, both of whom are believed to be hiding near the Afghan border.

“I believe they are here in Pakistan and it would be really helpful if we could get them,” said Clinton in response to a question during a contentious round-table discussion with Pakistani TV news anchors.

Many analysts believe Pakistan is reluctant to target Afghan Taliban militants in the country with whom it has historical ties because they could be useful allies in Afghanistan after international forces withdraw.

Pakistan has shown more interest in supporting Afghanistan’s push to reconcile with Afghan Taliban rather than fight them, a tactic the U.S. believes has little chance of succeeding until the militants’ momentum on the battlefield is reversed.

Clinton said Monday that any insurgents who wish to reconcile must lay down their arms, renounce any partnership with al-Qaida and accept Afghanistan’s constitution.

“We would strongly advise our friends in Afghanistan to deal with those who are committed to a peaceful future where their ideas can compete in the political arena through the ballot box, not through the force of arms,” said Clinton.

The U.S. has pushed Pakistan and Afghanistan to improve their often frosty relations and prodded the two countries to seal a landmark trade deal Sunday that was reached after years of negotiation. The pact, which eases restrictions on cross-border transportation, must be ratified by the Afghan parliament and Pakistani Cabinet.

U.S. officials said they believe it will significantly enhance ties between the two countries, boost development and incomes on both sides of the border and contribute to the fight against extremists.

While the United States has encourged more trade between the two countries, it has expressed concern about a deal with China that would give energy-starved Pakistan two nuclear power plants. Critics say transferring the reactors would violate international nonproliferation agreements.

Clinton said the U.S. was waiting to receive answers about the deal posed by the Nuclear Suppliers Group before deciding how to proceed. The group restricts nuclear trade with states that have not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or don’t have comprehensive safeguards.

Pakistan’s nuclear activities have been a particular area of concern since 2004 when the architect of the country’s nuclear program, A.Q. Khan, confessed to spreading sensitive technology to Iran, North Korea and Libya.

—

Associated Press writer Sebastian Abbot contributed to this report

Tags: aid, Hillary Clinton, Pakistan, Shah Memood Qureshi, Taliban

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by Mark Landler

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Afghanistan and Pakistan signed a landmark trade agreement on Sunday, auguring a thaw between these two perennially suspicious neighbors and handing the Obama administration a rare victory in its beleaguered war effort in Afghanistan.

The United States had prodded the two countries to sign the accord, calculating that it would bolster the Afghan economy by expanding its trade routes and curbing rampant smuggling. The pact would cover a multitude of trade and transit issues, ranging from import duties to port access.

Trade negotiations have dragged on fitfully since 1965, interrupted by wars, political coups, mutual distrust and the long shadow of India, which is not a party to the deal. The accord must still be ratified by the Afghan Parliament.

The United States used a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Islamabad and an international conference in Afghanistan this week to nudge both sides across the finish line. A beaming Mrs. Clinton watched the commerce ministers of the countries sign the accord.

“Bringing Islamabad and Kabul together has been a goal of this administration from the beginning,” said the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke. “This is a vivid demonstration of the two countries coming closer together.”

But the trade deal is one small piece of a tangled relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan that the United States is struggling to manage. American officials have long accused Pakistan of providing clandestine support to the militants who attack American-led forces in Afghanistan even as the Pakistanis say they support the American war there.

The United States had prodded the two countries to sign the accord, calculating that it would bolster the Afghan economy by expanding its trade routes and curbing rampant smuggling. The pact would cover a multitude of trade and transit issues, ranging from import duties to port access.

Trade negotiations have dragged on fitfully since 1965, interrupted by wars, political coups, mutual distrust and the long shadow of India, which is not a party to the deal. The accord must still be ratified by the Afghan Parliament.

The United States used a visit by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to Islamabad and an international conference in Afghanistan this week to nudge both sides across the finish line. A beaming Mrs. Clinton watched the commerce ministers of the countries sign the accord.

“Bringing Islamabad and Kabul together has been a goal of this administration from the beginning,” said the administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard C. Holbrooke. “This is a vivid demonstration of the two countries coming closer together.”

But the trade deal is one small piece of a tangled relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan that the United States is struggling to manage. American officials have long accused Pakistan of providing clandestine support to the militants who attack American-led forces in Afghanistan even as the Pakistanis say they support the American war there.

And while American leaders have encouraged warming ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan, they also fear that Pakistani officials want to exert too much control over Afghan politics.

The success of the deal is far from assured. Pakistan’s prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, alluded to potential domestic fallout at a meeting with Mrs. Clinton, who arrived under heavy security on Sunday.

“There are people, there are lobbies who don’t want this,” he said, noting that the deal’s opponents were agitating in the news media. But he added, “It is in the interest of Pakistan to have a stable Afghanistan.”

A critical provision of the deal would allow Afghan trucks to carry goods to Pakistani ports like Karachi or as far as Indian border posts, while Pakistani trucks could travel into Afghanistan. Under current law, goods must be reloaded at the border.

The accord cast a positive glow over Mrs. Clinton’s visit, which is meant to ease suspicions between Pakistan and the United States. She came with a number of initiatives in public health, water distribution and agriculture, to be financed by $500 million in American economic aid.

Among other projects, the United States will build a 60-bed hospital in Karachi and help farmers export mangos.

These projects, however beneficial in this economically fragile country, do not dispel other nagging sources of friction between the two sides. In addition to American doubts about Pakistan’s commitment to root out Taliban insurgents, there are new fears about Pakistan’s nuclear program.

Pakistan plans to buy two nuclear reactors from China, a deal that alarms the United States because it is cloaked in secrecy and is being conducted outside the global nonproliferation regime. Administration officials said Mrs. Clinton was expected to raise the issue with the Pakistanis.

Relations could be further tested if the Obama administration decides to place leaders of a major Pakistani insurgent group, the Haqqani network, on the State Department’s terrorist list. Islamabad maintains ties to the group through its intelligence service, and it is seeking to exploit those connections to extend its influence over Afghanistan.

For all that, tensions between the two sides have ebbed since Mrs. Clinton’s last visit here in October, when she was peppered with hostile questions in public meetings and bluntly suggested that people in the Pakistani government knew the whereabouts of Al Qaeda’s leaders.

Mr. Holbrooke noted a U-turn in Pakistan’s policy on issuing visas to American diplomats. For months, Pakistani officials had held up those applications, creating a huge backlog and frustrating the United States. But Pakistan issued 450 visas in the last five days, he said.

He conceded that public opinion polls here about the United States had yet to show much of a change. Conspiracy theories involving the United States are widely popular, with large numbers of Pakistanis blaming the United States for anything that goes wrong here.

Some analysts here said that the United States had failed to communicate its support adequately through the local news media. Mrs. Clinton may take more hits on Monday at a town hall meeting here.

Still, American officials were emphasizing convergence between the United States and Pakistan. While the Americans would like to see a more aggressive Pakistani military push in North Waziristan, the stronghold of the Haqqani network, they praised the military’s campaigns in South Waziristan and the Swat Valley, where Taliban insurgents had also made gains.

Pakistan’s battle has exacted a fearful toll. This month a suicide bomber killed 45 people in an attack on a Sufi shrine in Lahore. Many Pakistanis blame the war in Afghanistan for fomenting anti-Pakistan terrorism. Protest groups issued a statement, timed to Mrs. Clinton’s arrival, that called for an end to the war and for Americans and Pakistanis who are involved in clandestine air strikes on Pakistani targets to be tried for war crimes.

Mrs. Clinton’s initiatives are the first major disbursements of $7.5 billion in nonmilitary aid, over five years, pledged by Congress last year. The emphasis is on basic services like electricity and water, politically charged issues in this country, particularly during the hot summer.

“Our commitment is broad and deep,” said Rajiv Shah, the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, who is with Mrs. Clinton. “We will not do what we’ve done in the past.”

Administration officials said the project to upgrade Pakistan’s creaky power grid, which involves building dams and refurbishing power plants, had helped reduce chronic power failures. But on the day Mrs. Clinton landed, television reports here warned of further blackouts.

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This story originally appeared in the New York Times

Tags: Afghanistan, Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, china, haqqani network, Hillary Clinton, Makhdoom Amin Fahi, nuclear reactors, Pakistan, Rajiv Shah, Richard Holbrooke, trade deal, Yusuf Raza Gilani

Posted in Blog, News | 4,746 Comments »

By Nadir Hassan

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi came to Washington this week armed with a long list of topics to discuss. Or to be more accurate, he arrived with a hodgepodge wishlist of unrealistic propositions. However, the most unlikely proposal — that Pakistan be given a civilian nuclear deal similar to the one India was granted in 2008 — could be the one that finally wins those elusive “hearts and minds.”

It has become a mantra of the war on terror that poverty, desperation, and hopelessness breed militancy. A population that is contented, it is said, will never strap on suicide vests. Solving Pakistan’s power crisis, a source of great exasperation for many Pakistanis that is getting progressively worse with each passing year, should be a priority in Washington. And providing nuclear (more…)

Tags: Bilaterial Talks, Energy crisis, Featured, Hillary Clinton, Nuclear deal, Nuclear energy, Nuclear Technology, Qureshi meets Hillary, Shah Mahmood Qureshi

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The United States and Pakistan are pledging to boost and broaden relations to overcome mutual mistrust and suspicion that have arisen in recent years over Afghanistan and the fight against terrorism.

Launching high-level strategic dialogue in Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi vowed Wednesday to improve ties.

A day before the formal talks US Special Representative Richard Holbrooke said “We are out of the business of telling your country what you should do. Now we are listening to Pakistan.”

At a joint press briefing with Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir on Tuesday, the American envoy cited several examples of how the Obama Administration has been receptive to Islamabad’s ideas and has accordingly changed the policies it inherited.
For instance, he said, “every significant aid project is now done with the prior consultation and approval of the government of Pakistan.”

He said the US understand Pakistan’s position saying that “Pakistan is in dangerous neighborhood, a giant neighbor on one side and a neighbor torn apart by war on the other.”

The Obama Administration has also understood Islamabad’s call for coordination in the wake of additional American troops deployment in Afghanistan, Holbrooke said, taking note of the point that Pakistan was caught unawares in the first years of Afghan war when it did not maintain a large troops presence on the Afghan border.
Now, as a result of improvement in the policy, top US generals keep the Pakistani government informed about military efforts on the Afghan side.

Speaking in the regional perspective, Holbrooke said the war against militants in Afghanitan “is of immense national interest to the United States.” He noted a number of attacks on innnocent people including those in Pakistan were inspired by people trying to hide along Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
In this context, the diplomat praised a series of effective anti—militant campaigns Pakistan launched recently.

Tags: Ambassador Holbrooke, Bilateral Talks, Hillary Clinton, Pak US relations, Richard Holbrooke, Shah Mahmood Qureshi

Posted in News | 433 Comments »

Every now and then there are moments in the American media that defy description. Nevertheless they must be addressed.

Case in point: Washington Post “media critic” Howard Kurtz’s article today about FOX News Channel’s “reporters’” growing discomfort with the shenanigans of FNC darling Glenn Beck, he of the mighty chalkboard of insanity, his ludicrous fits of crying, his manic desire to be a political player, the fearmongering, paranoia and Stalin-Mao-Hitler-Marxist-Communist-Racist-Obama-hating cavalcade of madness. The meme that Beck is merely an entertainer and that FOX personalities are worried that the new star on the block could damage its relationship with the White House and the channel’s reputation are laughable at best. (more…)

Tags: American media, bill clinton, Featured, Fox, Glenn Beck, Hillary Clinton, Howard Kurtz, Howell Raines, New York Times, Pakistan Media, President Obama, Washington Post

Posted in Blog, The Ballot Box | 1,686 Comments »