Sunday, October 02, 2011

US struggles to chart fresh course with Pakistan

WASHINGTON: The White House’s attempts to set a fresh course with Pakistan are being hobbled by bad options, bureaucratic tensions and the desire to avoid severing a vexing but critical relationship.
In the wake of a blunt and public accusation by the top US military officer that Pakistani intelligence supported a militant attack on the US Embassy in Kabul, officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House are urgently debating an array of unattractive choices. Washington desperately wants to tighten the screws on the Haqqani network, a militant group US officials say was supported by Pakistan’s powerful ISI intelligence agency in the embassy attack and in other violence that threatens a smooth US withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In an op-ed published in the Washington Post on Friday, Pakistan’s president Asif Ali Zardri attempted to push back against US pressure to act against the Haqqani network. The president said Pakistan’s chief concern in tackling militancy was regional stability after the United States completed its withdrawal of combat forces from Afghanistan in 2014.
Despite mounting exasperation in official Washington, dramatic change in US policy looks unlikely in the short term toward Pakistan. “I don’t see that we have a comprehensive new strategy on Pakistan in the works,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who advised the highest levels of the Obama administration on regional policy. “I think we need one, or at least we need to reshape the one we have.”
In the face of Pakistani indignation, the White House and State Department appeared quietly to distance themselves from the remarks by Admiral Mike Mullen. “My understanding of the situation is that senior administration officials agree with Admiral Mullen’s statements,” said Lisa Curtis, a former State Department official and CIA analyst. “But they have not developed a Plan B for dealing with Pakistani malfeasance and that is why they are now walking back Mullen’s tough statements.”
A bureaucratic turf war continues in the meantime, with the Pentagon defending military-military ties with Pakistan; the State Department pushing reconciliation talks with the Taliban and Pakistan-based militants; the CIA holding onto its contacts with the ISI; and the US Agency for International Development arguing prosperity will further long-term US interests.
“What I keep seeing is that each part of the bureaucracy says we’ve got to get tougher on Pakistan, but not in my lane,” Riedel said. “If you take all those things together, where is the pressure?” The only thing that appears to be a virtual certainty in the Obama administration’s future policy is an intensification of drone strikes on militants in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions. “Air operations are not a problem,” one US official familiar with US counter-terrorism policy in Pakistan said. reuters

Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk

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