US shifts focus to Pakistan threat

By Kim Ghattas

BBC News, Washington

Increasingly worried about the threat from militant groups inside Pakistan, the US is trying to develop a comprehensive approach to tackling the security challenges this poses to Afghanistan, coalition forces there and, potentially, to the US itself.

US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates said on Tuesday he was "working very hard" to look into ways of sending additional troops to Afghanistan to counter the flow of insurgents from Pakistan.

A day earlier, a bipartisan bill was introduced in Congress, proposing to triple US humanitarian aid to Pakistan in order to boost civilian ties and move away from the more traditional military-to-military ties between the two allies.

The moves are also in response to growing US frustration with what it sees as Pakistan's lack of action against the pro-Taleban militants operating along the border with Afghanistan and its concern about peace deals that Islamabad has been signing with some of the radical groups in the Federally Administrated Tribal Areas.

"The bottom line is this: we are seeing a greater number of insurgents and foreign fighters flowing across the border with Pakistan unmolested and unhindered. This movement needs to stop," said Adm Michael Mullen, the US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has just returned from a trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Redeployment

On Sunday, an insurgent attack in Afghanistan killed nine US troops. Adm Mullen said the group that launched the attack trained in safe havens in Pakistan.

"We see this threat accelerating, almost becoming a syndicate of different groups who heretofore had not worked closely together," added Adm Mullen, speaking during a joint press conference with Mr Gates in Washington.

The ruling coalition is in a state of disarray and it is hard to guess as to who is calling the shots

Pakistani journalist

Although no recommendations about troop deployments have been made yet, Mr Gates's statement was the strongest and clearest to date that the US feels it needs to shift focus from Iraq to Afghanistan to deal with the growing insurgency there.

The US military is also hoping that with the return of five brigades from Iraq next week, its forces will be not be as thinly stretched and it will have more flexibility in its deployments.

Adm Mullen said that while additional US troops would have a big impact on the flow of insurgents, "it would be much better if there was that pressure on the Pakistani side".

During a visit to Washington last week, the Pakistani foreign minister, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, insisted that his country was doing all it could to fight the militants.

But Washington remains unimpressed and is pursuing somewhat unilateral actions to deal with the threat, including launching military strikes from Afghanistan across the border into Pakistan.

This has also considerably raised the tension between the two allies, especially after 11 Pakistani soldiers were killed in such a strike in June.

Release deals

Part of the problem is the sense that there is a leadership vacuum in Islamabad, five months after the elections, with the ruling coalition there wrangling about how to get rid of President Pervez Musharraf.

"The ruling coalition is in a state of disarray and it is hard to guess as to who is calling the shots. No one knows what kind of working relations this government has with the military high command," said a journalist from the Pakistan English language daily, The News.

US troops in southern Afghanistan

More US troops could be deployed to Afghanistan as others leave Iraq

Since the start of the year, the newly-elected civilian government has been signing peace deals with tribes and militants, hoping to bring some stability to the volatile border areas.

Under the agreements, the Pakistani military has been withdrawing from the areas and releasing militants from prison. But this has angered the US and Afghanistan, who have warned that in past these kind of agreements only led to an increase in violence.

Nato officials say that cross-border attacks increased by 50% in May. There is also concern about the content of the deals. A state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, recently said the deals were relatively secretive and it was unclear whether they included any specific prohibition of cross-border attacks and movements, something the US has been pushing for.

During the Pentagon press conference on Wednesday, Mr Gates said it was important that the Pakistani government understood the threat posed by the militants to Pakistan itself.

"One of the things that is really important is the civilian government gaining a full appreciation of the magnitude and reality of the danger posed to them by these groups and the lack of control or pressure in the FATA and in the north-west province," he said.

But the US is also concerned about the threat posed further afield by the militants and specifically to the US.

"I believe fundamentally if the United States is going to get hit, it is going to come out of the planning of the leadership in the FATA - al-Qaeda specifically," said Adm Mullen in June after another visit to Pakistan.

"That is a threat to us that must be dealt with."

Reorientation bill

The growing security threat and the failure of the Pakistani military to deliver is what prompted the bipartisan bill introduced on Tuesday by Democratic Senator Joseph Biden and Republican Senator Richard Lugar, which will bring the amount of non-military aid to Pakistan up to US$7.5bn (£3.75bn) over five years for development projects like schools, roads and clinics.

"For far too long, our policy towards Pakistan has been in desperate need of a serious overhaul," said Mr Biden, with Mr Lugar adding that "the legislation recognises that strengthening democracy and countering terrorism go hand-in-hand".

The bill "urges a reorientation of engagement towards the Pakistani people rather than merely towards the Pakistani government, military or civilian".

It also calls for greater accountability on security assistance and makes military aid conditional on the performance of the Pakistani military, although the president can waive this requirement in the interest of national security.

The senators are hopeful that the bill will be signed by the president and pass by year's end. But there are fears that it may be too late for a US war of the hearts and minds in Pakistan, and that the military approach will prevail for some time.

URL: https://newageislam.com/war-terror/us-shifts-focus-pakistan-threat/d/508