U.S. officials say there is mounting evidence that Pakistan's
chief intelligence agency has been encouraging a Pakistan-based
militant network to attack U.S. targets.
The allegations, if fully
confirmed, heighten a painful dilemma for President Barack Obama's
administration. Washington is under growing political pressure to take action
against the Haqqani network after a spate of deadly attacks U.S. officials have
attributed to it. These include last week's strike against the American Embassy
in Kabul, Afghanistan.
Some U.S. intelligence
reporting alleges that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence directorate (ISI)
specifically directed, or urged, the Haqqani network to carry out the September
13 attack on the embassy and a NATO headquarters in Kabul, according two U.S.
officials and a source familiar with recent U.S.-Pakistan official contacts.
However, officials cautioned that this information is uncorroborated.
Another U.S. official familiar
with internal government assessments said that at the very least, the available
intelligence strongly suggests the ISI has been egging on elements of the
Haqqani network to launch attacks at American targets in the region.
While American officials have
aired allegations of ties between the ISI and the Haqqani network in recent days,
they have not publicly cited evidence that the Pakistani agency, or elements of
it, urged its proxy to attack U.S. targets.
While the ISI's motives in any
such attacks are not clear, Pakistan has long wanted to play a major role in
Afghanistan's future after the departure of NATO troops, and to counter what it
sees as the growing influence there of arch-rival India.
This week, top U.S. officials,
including Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, demanded that
Pakistan's leaders take action against the Haqqanis, who are based in that
country's tribal areas and are considered among the most dangerous insurgent
groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.
Still, despite the threats and
an intensified campaign of violence that threatens U.S. efforts to stabilize
Afghanistan, the Obama administration has few options for increasing pressure
on Pakistan and none of them are good.
After years of efforts to
cajole, coax and threaten Pakistan into cracking down on a host of militants
operating from within its borders failed to bear fruit, U.S. officials are
exasperated.
For the United States one
alternative -- another cross-border raid, like the Navy SEAL mission that
killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in May -- may be tempting in some
quarters. But the risks are high and the backlash from Pakistan would be
fierce, almost certainly harming what counter-terrorism cooperation exists.
"LITTLE LEVERAGE"
"The (U.S.)
administration has thrown everything at this -- high-level meetings, tons of
money, all of these overtures, and it hasn't gotten us anywhere," said
Caroline Wadhams, a security analyst in Washington.
"This can't go on
forever," she said, "but the problem is that we have so little
leverage."
"Pakistan values its
relationship with the U.S. and is committed to eliminating terrorism in
Afghanistan and from our soil," said A senior Pakistani official. "We
will look at all evidence shared by the U.S. side and deal harshly with anyone and everyone
responsible for terrorism."
The long-simmering tension
between the sometime allies, sometime adversaries came to a head last week
after the brazen attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. It was a major blow as
Obama hopes to nudge Afghanistan toward stability and gradually bring home U.S.
forces after a decade of war.
Since then, American
officials, including Obama's ambassador in Islamabad and Mullen, his top
military officer, have issued unusually blunt criticisms of Pakistan's failure
to curb the Haqqani group -- and made frank statements accusing Islamabad of
links to the group.
Mullen, in a speech to the
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said Tuesday he had pressed
Pakistan's army chief in a four-hour conversation on Friday to break the
country's links with the Haqqanis.
"We covered ... the need
for the Haqqani Network to disengage, specifically the need for the ISI to
disconnect from Haqqani and from this proxy war that they're fighting,"
Mullen said.
The Haqqanis, just one of a
host of militant groups that have used western Pakistan as a base for attacks
in Afghanistan, are seen as allied to both al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.
Supported at times in the past by the CIA, they have had long-standing ties to
the ISI. [ID:nL3E7G524Z]
On Tuesday, regional tensions
soared even higher when a suicide bomber killed Burhanuddin Rabbani, the former
Afghan president who had headed efforts to secure a peace deal with the
Taliban.
While responsibility for the
attack remains unclear, the shocking assassination threatened to do even more
to reverse a tentative thaw in perpetually dismal U.S.-Pakistani ties a few
months after Osama bin Laden was killed near Islamabad. The initial conclusion
of U.S. government experts is that Rabbani's assassination was carried out by
Afghan Taliban and had no connection to the Haqqani network.
Vali Nasr, who until this
spring was a senior official in the U.S. State Department's
Afghanistan-Pakistan office, said efforts to prompt Pakistani action against
militants with increased public pressure had fallen short.
"They are not
blinking," he said.
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Source : Reuters
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