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There is a linkage between the recent terrorist attack in Mumbai and the security situation in Afghanistan. Pressure on the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) led and United Nations mandated International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) will increase after the transfer of Pakistani troops from the western borders to the eastern borders due to escalating tension between India and Pakistan. According to the US-based Startfor, the Mumbai attacks were strategically planned by the extremist groups who want the pressure of the Pakistan Army off their backs. Any armed Indo-Pak skirmish has the potential to divert the international community’s attention from counterterrorist measures undertaken across the world.
The US needed to act promptly post-Mumbai terror attack. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s, unplanned visit was simply aimed at checking and removing the new impediments arising out of 26/11. Her visit was intended to soothe India’s anger and refocus Islamabad’s attention to the ongoing war against terror in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan.
Ties between US and Pakistan’s new government have been strained by the events across Pakistan’s Afghanistan border. There are repeated allegations of attacks in Afghanistan by the militants based in Pakistan’s tribal regions. There is a significant al-Qaeda presence in Waziristan and North West Frontier Province in Pakistan from where cross-border terrorist operations into Kandhar, Helmand, Zabul, Oruzgan and Farhan province of Afghanistan are carried out. These acts are the ones that are giving the toughest time to the NATO forces in Afghanistan. The Pentagon is increasingly becoming irritated and impatient about the ease with which Islamist militants have been able to cross into Afghanistan to attack Afghan and US troops and destroy NATO’s supply depots. In addition, there is vulnerability of the key supply route through Pakistan. There has been speculation that NATO is thinking of finding a new rail route for its supplies from Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. This route will require Russian backing.
According to recent report, three fighter planes of NATO forces allegedly violated Pakistani airspace in Chaman, a bordering town of Baluchistan with Afghanistan. On July 28, 2008, just before Pakistan’s Prime Minister Yousuf Gilani was to meet US President George W. Bush at the White House, an apparent US air strike targeted and reportedly killed a senior al-Qaeda member, an explosive and chemical weapons expert, in his hideout near the mosque in the South of Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan. Gilani later complained that Pakistan did not approve of the attack and that any unilateral US strikes in Pakistan territory violated Pakistan’s sovereignty. The act was justified under the international law that provides the right to “hot pursuit”. The law becomes more important when both NATO and Pakistan have no permanent presence in these areas. In addition, there is very little intelligence available for carrying out operations in the region. The concern is not that of the safe havens that these terrorist organizations are trying to establish in Afghanistan but that they have established their safe haven in Pakistan whereas in Iraq al-Qaeda is still trying to do so.
Further, the US has also been perturbed by moves from Pakistan’s government to conclude peace deals with tribal leaders in Pakistan in exchange for promises that the tribal leaders will stop sheltering al-Qaeda fighters and Taliban militants. However, the latest reports from Pakistan suggest that the accord has collapsed amid fresh violence in the north-western valley of Swat, where militants have resumed attacks on security officials.
Another issue of concern is that although Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) technically falls under the supervision of Pakistan’s government, its budget is controlled by the Pakistani army. US has failed to either contain or cooperate with ISI. Further, US military officials on the Afghan side of the border have often mentioned that they do not trust Pakistan’s security services with information about planned US military operations, saying the information has sometimes been passed on to militants.
Ahmed Rashid, Pakistani journalist, in his new book “Descent Into Chaos” argues that the ISI has established a series of private organisations, staffed by retired ISI officers and funded through Pakistan’s Frontier Corps budget. These are set up in order to put more distance in the relationship between its military leadership and extremist fighters. This has not prevented the extremist groups from continuing their activities. However, Zardari’s government has publicly acknowledged that elements within the ISI are sympathetic to Islamists in Pakistan and the insurgency in Afghanistan and those agents have been portrayed by Islamabad as “rogue” operators pursuing their own private agendas. In fact, retired General Hamid Gul, who was director-general of the ISI in the late 1980s and early 1990s and remains influential in Pakistan, openly sympathises with Taliban fighters. He was quoted as saying that he felt betrayed by the US for “countless broken promises” after the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989 and that made him become more sympathetic to Islamic extremists. He has even served as a political adviser to religious extremists in Pakistan.
To conclude, reforming the ISI is a precondition for Islamabad to resolve its own problems and play its role as an ally in the US-led war against terrorism. The US is edgy about Taliban insurgency in the south of Afghanistan that makes NATO forces rely on Pakistan for most of its supplies and provisions. The problem is not primarily that Pakistan is used as a staging ground for fighting in Afghanistan but that Pakistan is becoming more like Afghanistan. Thus, it is against the national interest of the US to arm Pakistan and consistently rely on Pakistan in its war against terrorism.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies)
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