John D Negraponte, director of national intelligence, has joined the growing number of those who are blaming Pakistan for the dangerous situation now prevailing in the Pakistan-Afghanistan tribal belt. In an interview published by the Washington Post on Friday, Negraponte said with new fighting expected to break out next spring in , the Pakistani government would soon have to decide what it could do about the tribal authorities who had not been living up to their agreement to prevent Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters from moving back and forth across the border.
“Sooner or later, the government will have to reckon with it,” Negroponte said, but added that with elections in coming, the US understood that President Pervez Musharraf “has a domestic political balancing act to perform”. Referring to the accord signed by Pakistani government representatives with tribal elders in South Waziristan, Negroponte said “tribal authorities are not living up to the deal” and that back-and-forth travel by the Taliban and others “causes serious problems”.
The Post noted that Negraponte’s “downbeat assessment” was supported by a recent report by Anthony H Cordesman, a former Pentagon official, now with a think tank, who after his return from Afghanistan where he received briefings from a US embassy team, including US military commanders, said the Afghan insurgency grew in the past year because of financial and military aid from a sanctuary in Pakistan, while the weak Kabul government had not received enough military and economic support from NATO and the US.