Pakistan and the U.S. signed an
accord governing supply routes for international forces in
Afghanistan as the South Asian nation’s spy chief heads to
Washington for talks this week aimed at easing irritants to
ties.
The agreement signed yesterday will release more than $1
billion in withheld American economic assistance, Pakistan
Television said, citing top U.S. embassy official in Islamabad
Richard Hoagland. Lieutenant General Muhammad Zaheer-ul-Islam,
the chief of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate,
or ISI, is scheduled to hold discussions with U.S. counterparts,
his first official visit since taking charge, according to a
Pakistani army statement.
“Reopening supply routes is one obstacle which has been
overcome,” said Ikram Sehgal, a Karachi-based analyst on
military affairs. “Pakistan wants a clear-cut role in the
Afghanistan end-game. The intelligence chief’s visit is probably
the beginning of those negotiations,” said Sehgal, editor of
Defence Journal, a monthly magazine.
Two larger obstacles to improved U.S.-Pakistani relations
remain, however, three U.S. officials said yesterday. They are
the Pakistani civilian government’s opposition to American drone
strikes on terrorist targets in Pakistan and the Pakistani
military’s reluctance to battle the Haqqani Network, based in
the tribal areas along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan.
The U.S. has continued the drone strikes despite public
Pakistani protests that they also kill civilians and fuel the
insurgency. Missiles fired from CIA-operated pilotless aircraft
killed seven Uzbek fighters July 29, Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper
reported, citing local residents. This was the fourth such
strike since the reopening of supply routes on July 4, according
to U.S.-based The Long War Journal, which tracks the conflict.
Greatest Threat
American officials in Afghanistan and Washington now
consider the Haqqani Network, known by the acronym HQN, the
greatest threat to American, allied, and Afghan forces and
targets in Afghanistan from Pakistani safe havens, said the
officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because
intelligence on the attacks is classified.
The latest State Department report on international
terrorism, released yesterday, stops short of reporting what the
U.S. officials said is longstanding covert support for the
Haqqanis from active duty or retired ISI officers.
“Despite increased pressure on al-Qaeda leadership in the
tribal areas of Pakistan, violent extremist groups continued to
find refuge within that country,” the report said. The
Pakistani military took action against violent extremist groups
such as al-Qaeda and the Pakistan Taliban and suffered numerous
casualties, according to the report. “However, Pakistani action
was not as strong against other groups, including HQN,” it
said.
Pakistani Support
A recent report on the Haqqani’s financing from the
Combating Terrorism Center at the U.S. Military Academy at West
Point, New York, went further, saying:
“In addition to private donors, the network has continued
to receive financial and logistical support from the Pakistan
military, and continues to maintain close operational ties with
the ISI. ‘If the Haqqani network were a sniper,’ said Afghan
Police General Mohammed Daud Daud, just weeks before he was
killed by a Taliban suicide bomber, ‘then the ISI would be its
trigger finger.’”
U.S. Pressure
“However,” the report continued, “Pakistan has resisted
U.S. pressure to launch military operations against the
Haqqanis, and then-CIA Director Leon Panetta has openly
confronted his counterpart in the ISI over evidence that
Pakistani authorities alerted Haqqani members ahead of a raid”
on an improvised explosive device factory in North Waziristan.
Pakistan, concerned about the growing role in Afghanistan
of its arch-rival, India, is seeking to safeguard a prominent
political role in Afghan governance for the country’s Pashtun
population after all U.S. combat troops leave in 2014, according
to analysts including Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the
independent Center for Research and Security Studies in
Islamabad.
Pashtuns dominate areas bordering Pakistan and can help the
country curb Pakistani Taliban groups that have taken shelter in
Afghanistan’s border provinces, Gul said by phone.
Even the agreement to reopen the supply routes from
Pakistan for North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces may be a
mixed blessing, the U.S. officials said yesterday. The routes
were closed in November after a U.S. military strike killed 24
Pakistani troops, and convoys resumed only this month following
an apology from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Two Routes
The formal accord allows the U.S.-led International
Security Assistance Force to use two land routes through
Pakistan to ship non-lethal supplies to Afghanistan until 2015.
It permits the movement of weapons needed for training Afghan
security forces.
It also will free as much as $1.2 billion in coalition
support funds for Pakistan from fiscal year 2011 that the U.S.
has withheld. The money is part of the U.S. Coalition Support
Fund to reimburse Pakistan for its support of U.S. counter-
insurgency operations, Pentagon spokesman Navy Captain John Kirby said on July 5.
While the Pakistani routes are shorter and less expensive
than the NATO forces’ Northern Distribution Network through
Central Asia, Russia, and the Caucasus, they also have been a
source of revenue for the Taliban and other militant groups that
have extracted payments in exchange for not attacking supply
convoys, the U.S. officials said.
Though the partial improvement in relations offers the U.S.
and Pakistan the chance to add momentum to talks after almost a
year of strained ties, analysts warned against expectations of
major progress.
“I think we’re back in the business-as-usual mode,” Gul
said. “What’s happening now is that both countries are learning
to tolerate each other despite the lingering disputes. This
trend will continue until NATO troops leave Afghanistan.”
To contact the reporters on this story:
Haris Anwar in Islamabad at
hanwar2@bloomberg.net;
John Walcott in Washington at
jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
John Walcott at
jwalcott9@bloomberg.net
Article source: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-07-31/u-dot-s-dot-pakistan-thaw-leaves-two-major-issues-still-frozen
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