Friction Between U.S. And Pakistan Over Talk Of U.S. Military Action

The uneasy relationship between the United States and Pakistan has just gotten a lot uneasier:

One of President Bush’s counterterrorism advisers said today that the United States would consider using military force inside Pakistan if it identified key Al Qaeda targets there, but the Pakistani foreign minister angrily rejected such talk as “irresponsible” and said American attacks in the sensitive border area could cause civilian deaths and enrage Pakistani opinion.

It’s a delicate issue, but the fact it has been raised at all is likely due to a combination of internal American political pressures plus the VERY real military reality that there is a massive hole in America’s war on terror strategy — and that gap is a kind of protective zone for Al Qaeda in Pakistan. The New York Times continues:

Frances Fragos Townsend, the homeland security adviser, said that if the United States had “actionable targets, anywhere in the world,” including Pakistan, then “we would pursue those targets.”

“There are no options that are off the table,” she said on CNN.

But a clearly testy Pakistani foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, warned against American attacks in his country; he said Pakistani forces were capable of policing the area and destroying Al Qaeda targets, but with less chance of killing civilians.

American senators of both parties largely supported Ms. Townsend, although they cautioned against undercutting Pakistan’s already embattled president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, with dangerously unpredictable results.

Ms. Townsend spoke days after a new National Intelligence Estimate found that Al Qaeda had reconstituted itself in the rugged northwestern provinces of Pakistan and was planning new attacks — a message that critics seized on to mean that the Bush administration’s focus on Iraq had diverted resources from a potentially more important front in the fight against Al Qaeda.

What has clearly become the Achilles Heel of Washington’s war against terror in general and Al Qaeda in particular has now created additional political problems for the administration in Congress, the Boston Globe reports:

The Bush administration is struggling to get congressional approval for millions of dollars in aid to a tribal paramilitary group in the semiautonomous region of Pakistan where Al Qaeda and the Taliban have gained such a foothold that they have been able to launch destabilizing attacks on both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The $300 million plan to transform Pakistan’s colonial-era Frontier Corps into a modern fighting force is a crucial piece of a new, $2 billion US-Pakistani counterinsurgency effort designed to wrest the region from extremist militants.

But this new funding request has run into resistance, in part because of congressional restrictions on aid to nontraditional military groups, and also because questions have been raised about whether the tribesmen who make up the Corps are friends or foes of the United States, according to congressional sources and US officials.

So what’s going on is a high-stakes, delicate political ballet contest for both sides that are involved:

FOR THE UNITED STATES: It clearly can’t continue to allow Pakistan’s remote areas to become, in effect, the new Afghanistan where Al Qaeda leaders including Osama bin Laden can hide, train militants who come from all over the world, and plan new attacks on American interests — and perhaps the United States homeland. But if it launches a military operation it must be a successful one, or it could backfire in the U.S. and all over the world. Any kind of military operation undertaken without the Pakistani government’s permission risks undermining the Pakistan government or triggering a massive backlash in Pakistan that could bring the already-beset U.S-friendly government down.

FOR PAKISTAN: It accepts tons of aid from the United States. Gen. Pervez Musharraf is walking a political tightrope. If he allows the U.S. to come in and do a military action, he could be called a sell-out. If he doesn’t, the U.S. may feel it has to go in anyway. If he clamps down ruthlessly and sends his troops into get Al Qaeda and his sympathizers, he could find himself in a massive fight with protests throughout the country. If he leaves the situation as it is, he could be pushed from power or even eliminated eventually by forces within Pakistan who are not pleased with him helping the U.S.