Here’s yet another entry in the seeming stream of news stories suggesting that if Pakistan is defined as a loyal U.S. ally, then t may be time time to redfine the word “ally.” The latest: Pakistan has refused to crack down on the Haqqani network, which is believed to have taken action against the United States in Afghanistan. This is similar to the way Pakistan seemingly dragged its heels on Al Qaeda, culminating in the discovery that Osama bin Laden was living in Pakistan virtually in the middle of Pakistan’s version of West Point — and was taken out of circulation by a U.S. operation, sparking cries of outrage in Pakistan’s military and intelligence communities.
I predict this story will be one of several that will make it increasingly hard for Pakistan to get the funding it wants from the United States. From The Hindustan Times (a paper that I interned on in the early 1970s):
Amid a diplomatic row over links between ISI and the Haqqani group, Pakistan’s military will defy US and not take action against the militant network and foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar will continue with her Washington visit.
The premier on Sunday asked Khar to cut short her visit to the US and return to Pakistan to brief a meeting of the top political leadership that he intends to convene this week.
Despite the crisis, Pakistan’s military will not take action against the Haqqani network which Washington blames for an attack against its embassy in Kabul, despite mounting American pressure to do so, a Pakistani newspaper reported on Monday.
Pakistan’s army chief General Ashfaq Kayani met with his top commanders on Sunday in a “special” meeting to discuss the security situation, the military said, as the war of words with the United States escalated.
That emergency meeting came against the backdrop of sharp US allegations that the Pakistani army’s powerful spy agency supported the Haqqani militant group Washington blames for the recent attack on its embassy and other targets in Kabul.
The bin Laden discovery was one that fundamentally changed perceptions of Pakistan in the United States. Several incidents after that also lent credence to the notion that when it came to the war on terrorism was an incompetent enabler, at best, and playing a double game at worst.
The commanders agreed to resist US demands for a Pakistani army offensive in North Waziristan, where the United States believes the Haqqani network is based, the Express Tribune reported, quoting an unnamed military official.
“We have already conveyed to the US that Pakistan cannot go beyond what it has already done,” the official told the newspaper on condition of anonymity.
The United States has long pressed its ally Pakistan to pursue the Haqqani network, one of the most lethal Taliban-allied Afghan groups fighting Western forces in Afghanistan.
Pakistan denies it supports the Haqqanis and says its army is too stretched battling its own Taliban insurgency to go after the network, which has an estimated 10,000-15,000 fighters.
Analysts say the Pakistani military could suffer heavy casualties if it were to attempt a crackdown on the group, which has developed extensive alliances with other militant organisations in the region, and has mastered the rugged mountain terrain.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister told reporters that the United States and the CIA are partially to blame for the Haqqani network, Press Trust of India reports:
Pakistan’s interior minister Rehman Malik has contended that the US should share the blame for the rise of the Haqqani network as the CIA created the Taliban faction during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and trained its members.
“The Haqqani network was trained and produced by the CIA,” he said. The group did not originate in Pakistan and the US should not now speak about “things which happened 20 years ago”, he told reporters during an interaction here on Sunday.
However, he acknowledged that Pakistan had helped the CIA during the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The Haqqani network is now present in Afghanistan and “those claiming otherwise should give evidence of its presence in Pakistan,” Malik claimed. “We will fight the terrorists as our forces are capable of handling them and countering any challenge,” he said.
Malik was responding to accusations by top American officials that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence had supported the Haqqani network for carrying out a string of attacks, including one on the US Embassy in Kabul.
Jeff Smith, writing in Pakistan’s newspaper The Nation in an op-ed that needs to be read in full, puts it into context:
Indeed, a barrage of crises has been propelling the United States and Pakistan toward a reckoning for months. The year opened with the Raymond Davis saga, when Pakistan refused to grant diplomatic immunity to a US contractor who killed two Pakistanis in a mysterious confrontation in January. That was followed by the expulsion of US military trainers and intelligence agents and a diplomatic row over visas to US officials. A series of US drone strikes on al-Qaeda and Taliban targets in Pakistan’s tribal lands strained ties even further, as did the continuing refusal of the Pakistani military to launch an assault on North Waziristan. The discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden in May served as the grand finale.
The bin Laden raid raised red flags across Washington, not least on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers were told by then-CIA director Leon Panetta the Pakistanis ‘were (either) involved or incompetent.’ Many congressmen and senators, long in the dark or uninterested in South Asian affairs, were shocked to find the degree to which Pakistan was misusing American aid and harbouring US enemies. Key congressional leaders began demanding a fundamental reassessment of the United States’ Pakistan policy, and in July the US announced it was withholding $800 million in Pakistani aid.
Pakistan has fared little better inside the administration. Under former Defence Secretary Robert Gates, the Pentagon had been a staunch opponent of taking a tougher line with Islamabad. The defence department helped torpedo stiff restrictions on US aid to Pakistan in the $7.5 billion Kerry-Lugar bill. But now Gates is out, and tough talking Leon Panetta is in. As the United States’ top spy from 2009 to 2011, Panetta is intimately familiar with the ISI. He expressed his frustrations recently, explaining, ‘Time and again, we’ve urged the Pakistanis to exercise their influence over (the Haqqanis) and we’ve made very little progress. The message they need to know is: we’re going to do everything we can to defend our forces.’
Panetta will find an ally in his replacement at the CIA. David Petraeus carries his own intimate knowledge of Pakistan’s strategy, having served as the top US commander in Afghanistan for the past year. The Agency has its own bone to pick with Pakistan: the CIA blames the Haqqani network for a December 30, 2009 bombing at an agency outpost in Khost, Afghanistan that killed seven CIA officers – the single deadliest attack on US intelligence personnel in the Agency’s history.
M. Ed’s Note: see also here, for interview with leader of Haqqani on suicide bombings 2009
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.