 President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani army are allowing Taliban militants a safe haven in the country's tribal belt in an effort to undermine the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, a key Pakistani provincial official said yesterday.
| Comes as a surprise, huh? I mean, they're so subtle about it, I'da never guessed. |
In an interview, Afrasiab Khattak, the 'peace envoy' of the government of the insurgency-racked North West Frontier Province, charged that Mr. Musharraf and the army are still dictating policy for the region, and that 'they want the Afghan government to fail. A hangover of the 'strategic-depth' policy is still running.' The Pakistan army's doctrine of 'strategic depth' requires a client regime in Kabul, so that Afghanistan will not side with India in the event of another India-Pakistan war. Islamabad backed the Taliban government of the 1990s in Kabul, but Mr. Karzai is hostile to Pakistan. Echoing Washington's concerns, Mr. Khattak said: 'Unfortunately, the [Taliban] sanctuaries have not been dismantled. They are still functioning.'
| Be careful starting your car, Mr. Khattak. And hire a food taster. |
Islamabad has repeatedly denied that it allows its soil to be used against foreign governments, but Washington and Kabul believe that the Taliban and al-Qaeda enjoy refuge in Pakistan's tribal zone, known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).
| Denials in the face of all the evidence are stoopid, but apparently they've been working. |
After February elections that restored democracy in Pakistan, Mr. Musharraf, who was army chief until the end of last year, was supposed to have retreated to a ceremonial role, while the military said it would be subservient to civilian rule. However, Mr. Khattak, who is a leader of the Awami National Party and heads the NWFP government's negotiations with militants, insisted that the army was still dominant. 'In the past, the Afghan policy has been led by the army. ... I have no reason for saying it has been reversed. Actions speak louder than words.'
The current military operation in FATA is limited in scope, raising questions about whether it is the start of a concerted move against the bands of extremists established across the tribal zone or just a stunt designed to give the appearance of a crackdown. The new Pakistani government has advocated peace negotiations, not military action, against the extremists in FATA and NWFP, alarming the United States and Afghanistan. Pakistan's homegrown Taliban movement has, so far, not been touched by the present offensive, which has targeted local fundamentalist groups in FATA's Khyber area. Pakistan's Taliban and their Afghan brethren are not in Khyber but are holed up in other parts of FATA.
 Yesterday, Pakistan's fitful military operation against Islamist extremists pushed into its third day, consisting primarily of isolated assaults on buildings used by warlords in Khyber agency. The army met almost no resistance. The main targets were the compounds of Khyber militant leader Mangal Bagh, whose religious warriors had for months been menacing the outskirts of the provincial capital, Peshawar. The lightly armed Frontier Corps paramilitary was used, rather than the regular Pakistan army. Mr. Bagh himself was across the other side of Khyber agency, close to the Afghan border in the remote Tirah Valley, when troops blew up his home in Bara town, which is just outside Peshawar. Whether the military now presses on to the Tirah Valley will be a key test of its resolve, experts said. 'If he [Bagh] is not pursued, then this is a PR exercise, which is very dangerous,' said Talat Masood, a retired general turned military analyst. 'It would be a grave mistake if they did not follow through and pursue this group to the Tirah Valley and also stop them escaping to Afghanistan. That would just embolden them.'
| The tribal lashkar joke flopped, so it can't be used again for awhile. Let's see how well the Frontier Corps joke works. |
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