Author: Declan Walsh
Publication: The Hindu
Date: December 2, 2010
URL: http://www.hindu.com/2010/12/02/stories/2010120251081300.htm
"No amount of money" will change
the policy, warned a U.S. ambassador.
Pakistan's Army is covertly sponsoring four
major militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and Mumbai attackers Lashkar-e-Taiba,
and "no amount of money" will change the policy, the U.S. ambassador
warned in a frank critique revealed by the State Department cables.
Although Pakistan had received more than $16
billion in American aid since 2001, "there is no chance that Pakistan
will view enhanced assistance ... as sufficient compensation for abandoning
support to these groups", Anne Patterson wrote in a secret review of
Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy in September 2009.
The assessment highlights a stark contradiction
- that one of Washington's key allies is quietly propping up its enemies -
and is an admission of the limits of U.S. power in a country that still views
India, not the Taliban, as its principal threat.
With Washington fearful of deploying troops
to fight al-Qaeda in Pakistan, money has been its main weapon since 2001.
It has given the Army $9 billion to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda in the
tribal belt; on 22 October the White House announced an extra $2 billion over
the next five years.
Pakistan has paid a heavy price, losing more
than 2,500 soldiers and many more civilians. Its generals insist they have
cut erstwhile ties with the Taliban and other militant groups. But secret
cables show U.S. diplomats and spies believe the Army and its Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI) spy agency continue quietly to back selected militant groups.
Four are named: the Afghan Taliban, its allied
Haqqani and Hekmatyar networks on the western Afghan frontier, and Lashkar-e-Taiba
on the eastern border with India. Some ISI officials "continue to maintain
ties with a wide array of extremist organisations, in particular the Taliban,
LeT and other extremist organisations", Hillary Clinton wrote in December
2009.
A senior ISI official said: "These are
assertions without evidence and nothing more than allegations or points of
view, as such do not merit a response." The main concern, he said, was
"how such sensitive information could find its way to a media outlet,
and continues to do so".
But Dr. Peter Lavoy, a senior intelligence
official, told a meeting of NATO allies in November 2008 that the ISI allowed
the Taliban's Quetta Shura leadership council to "operate unfettered"
in Balochistan, while it provided the Waziristan-based Haqqani network with
"intelligence and financial support to conduct attacks in Afghanistan
against Afghan government, ISAF and Indian targets ... Pakistan continues
to define India as its number one threat and insists that India plays an overactive
role in Afghanistan." The Army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, had been
"utterly frank" about the consequences of a pro-India government
coming to power in Kabul, noted a 2009 briefing before his visit to Washington.
"The Pakistani establishment will dramatically increase support for Taliban
groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan, which they see as ... an important counterweight."
Alarmed by the links with Haqqani, whose fighters kill American soldiers in
Afghanistan, and fearful that policy towards Lashkar-e-Taiba could trigger
nuclear war with India, U.S. officials have urged General Kayani to change
course. "The biggest single message Kayani should hear in Washington
is that this support must end," said one dispatch.
Yet there are also hints that ISI policy towards
militant groups is complex and changing. In a March 2009 briefing to FBI Director
Robert Mueller, the embassy noted that the ISI chief, General Shuja Pasha,
"continues to profess a determination to end ISI's overt and tacit support
for proxy forces". Speaking to the Guardian this year a senior ISI official
acknowledged "historical links" with the Haqqanis but insisted the
spy agency was not in a position to dictate action terms. Last spring General
Kayani and General Pasha flew to Kabul offering to broker peace with the Haqqanis.
The cables betray much American frustration
and anger at alleged Pakistani duplicity, but there is also questioning of
America's own covert policies. "Unilateral targeting" of al-Qaeda
operatives in the tribal belt - a euphemism for CIA-directed drone strikes
- had killed 10 of the 20 top al-Qaeda leaders, Ms Patterson noted last year.
But the drones could not entirely eliminate the al-Qaeda leadership and ran
the greater risk of "destabilising the Pakistani state, alienating both
the civilian government and military leadership, and provoking a broader governance
crisis without finally achieving the goal".
While American efforts are fixated on using
money to wean Pakistan away from militants, there is little fresh thinking.
One exception is last year's policy review by Ms Patterson, a well-regarded
diplomat who left Islamabad earlier this year.
Pakistani paranoia was fed by insecurity towards
India and America, she said. The only way to end support for the Taliban -
and ultimately root out the group - was to "change the Pakistan government's
own perception of its security requirements".
Resolving the 63-year-old Kashmir conflict
"would dramatically improve the situation", she said, adding: "We
need to reassess Indian involvement in Afghanistan and our own policies towards
India, including the growing military relationship through sizeable conventional
arms sales, as all of this feeds Pakistani establishment paranoia and pushes
them closer to both Afghan and Kashmir-focused terrorist groups while reinforcing
doubts about U.S. intentions." Such a suggestion is politically highly
sensitive. New Delhi has fiercely resisted any attempt to link Afghanistan
and Kashmir. Indian officials portray an ideological, power-hungry Pakistani
Army as the problem. Most of Pakistan's woes "can be traced to the capacity
and intentions of Pakistan's military", Indian Foreign Secretary Shivshankar
Menon told U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke in February 2009. Mr. Holbrooke
has pointedly avoided mentioning Kashmir.
Politicians in Washington are reluctant to
antagonise India, an emerging global power.
Ms Patterson's logic is shared by other western
diplomats. Last year the Spanish ambassador to Kabul, Jose Turpin Molina,
told his Pakistani counterpart that "It's over. You've won." The
Pakistani replied that his country was an ally of Spain, to which Mr. Turpin
said: "you are an ally to both sides". The Pakistani "laughed
heartily".
