Pakistan’s Double-Cross

A reported American missile strike yesterday in the South Waziristan tribal area, which may have killed six people, has again triggered public anger at the United States across much of Pakistan. It follows an earlier helicopter-borne commando assault into Pakistan, after which a Pakistani military official warned that such incursions would provoke a military response. This time, the Pakistani authorities said that unilateral military action by the United States will not be tolerated.

It's hardly clear if President Bush, in his waning days in office, will halt cross-border attacks in Pakistan that he clearly believes are effective ways to chase Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists seeking sanctuaries in Pakistan's badlands. Still, such military strikes could undermine the tenuous cooperation that Pakistan has provided the United States in its battle against the reconstituted Taliban and the dregs of Al Qaeda.

Ironically, the United States is paying a price for its own errors. Contrary to popular belief and hoary statements from the White House, Pakistan's cooperation in the "war on terror" has always been fitful. During General Pervez Musharraf's tenure as president, he proved to be extraordinarily deft in dealing with the United States. He handed over a few key Al Qaeda operatives--he turned over the Tanzanian Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani in August 2004 and Abu Faraj al-Libi, a senior member of Osama bin Laden's circle, in May 2005--but the arrests were suspiciously well timed. They tended to occur alongside either important U.S. political events or U.S. criticism of Pakistan for its apparent failure to make much progress on the counterterrorism front.

Though this sleight of hand was obvious to close observers, the administration continued to rely almost exclusively on Musharraf and the Pakistani military. Little or no effort was expended to nudge Musharraf away from military rule. Not surprisingly, he and his military acolytes came to see themselves as indispensable to the United Sates. Thanks to this American indulgence, Musharraf's 2002 election brought an Islamist coalition into power and, under its watch, the Taliban reconstituted itself in Pakistan's western borderlands while other Islamist terror networks flourished inside Pakistan.

The central problem, of course, was that neither he nor crucial segments of the Pakistani military were willing to accept an independent and stable government in Afghanistan. So they used Islamists to destabilize Afghanistan and to needle India in Kashmir. Although a civilian government took power in February, it has not yet been able to shake the military's belief in the utility of the Islamist card. Meanwhile, the United States, facing mounting casualties in Afghanistan, has finally caught onto the Pakistan military's tolerance for Taliban activity on its soil. But striking inside Pakistan and hectoring its military brass won't elicit cooperation. Instead, given the terrain of Pakistan's western borderlands, the strikes are more likely to result in civilian casualties, provoke more public anger, and ultimately fail in suppressing the recrudescent Taliban.

To pursue a viable strategy against the Taliban, regardless of which party wins the White House, the United States must chart a new course. To begin with, it should tell Pakistani military that its continued dalliance with Islamists is unacceptable. Continued American military and economic assistance to Pakistan should then be made strictly contingent upon the visible cooperation of both the civilian and military components of the Pakistani government. Nor should Islamabad be allowed to continue to trumpet the canard that it is changing policy solely at America's behest. Instead, the Pakistani government should admit that its quest for a pliant Afghan regime through the use of a Taliban proxy is hardly in Pakistan's best long-term interests. Nor, for that matter, can Pakistan ever hope to dislodge India from Kashmir through support of Islamist terror. These entities, over time, develop goals of their own quite at odds with their sponsors. The sooner the United States can persuade Pakistan to abandon these noxious policies, the better the prospect of reining in terror across this troubled and critical region.