The limits of Pakistan's push against the Taliban (Feature)

By Nadeem Sarwar Jan 25, 2010, 5:04 GMT

Islamabad - No matter how many more troops the US and its Western allies send to Afghanistan, many have long observed that the key to the success against the Taliban insurgency is in Pakistan.

Officials in Washington have acknowledged this, in part, and are increasing pressure on Islamabad to expand its existing military offensive against the Taliban to more areas in the restive tribal region near the Afghan border.

But Pakistan has its own limitations in cooperating against terrorism, which are defined by its long-term internal and external strategic as well as economic interests that the country would like to secure, regardless of whether the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) wins or loses in Afghanistan.

So far Pakistan has targeted only those militants who challenge the government, sparing the insurgents attacking the foreign forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Last October, Pakistani forces launched an operation in South Waziristan against the Taliban it held responsible for killing thousands of people, including former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, in a brutal campaign of suicide bombings over the past three years.

The military action, still ongoing, has dismantled Taliban hideouts and expelled thousands of their fighters from the region over which once they had complete control.

At the same time, however, thousands of pro-government Taliban fighters led by Afghan commander Sirajuddin Haqqani and his Pakistani assistant Hafiz Gul Bahadur in the adjacent district of North Waziristan move freely across the border to strike the NATO troops on the other side.

'In fact, the Pakistani authorities have serious doubts over the prospects of the US winning the war in Afghanistan despite the troop surge,' said Tanvir Ahmed Khan, a former Pakistani foreign secretary and now chairman of the state-run think-tank, the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.

'The main reason for Pakistani scepticism is that the Obama administration has linked the deployment of 30,000 additional troops with the withdrawal of its troops,' added Khan.

The fears are that Taliban might just conduct a tactical retreat to Pakistan's tribal region or to Afghanistan's mountains and rural areas to avoid a confrontation with the intensified NATO military presence, and wait for July 2011, when the US plans to start its draw-down.

By preserving its capacity to wreak havoc across Afghanistan, the Taliban would then have more chance of making a deal with the retreating NATO forces and becoming at least a part of the Kabul government.

And that possibility, however remote it may be, causes Pakistan to see the Taliban as a useful future ally to protect its interests in Afghanistan against its arch-rival India, which retains significant influence over Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his allies from the former anti-Taliban Northern Alliance.

Among the other concerns in Islamabad is how to sell the US war against the Taliban in a country where the general sentiments are predominantly anti-American, even if its international allies ensure that its interests will be protected in post-NATO Afghanistan.

Feeding on the conspiracy theories propagated by the Islamists and conservative groupings, many Pakistanis believe the US presence in Afghanistan is part of a bigger hegemonic design by the West to occupy Muslim countries and de-nuclearize Pakistan.

Officially, Pakistan has not acknowledged any of these considerations of course, and instead claimed that it has too much on its plate to advance any further against the Taliban.

A few hours after US Defence Secretary Robert Gates reiterated his country's wish to see Islamabad move into all-out action against Islamist militants during his visit of the country last week, the Pakistani military ruled out expansion of its operation to the redoubt of the Afghan Taliban - North Waziristan.

Pakistan's chief military spokesman, Major General Athar Abbas, told reporters that his troops would require six months to a year to consolidate the gains they have made against militants in other parts of the country - and then consider going further.

And that would be shortly before the summer of 2011, when the US will start pulling out soldiers, according to the plan announced by US President Barack Obama in December.

Analysts believe such calls from the US and other NATO allies are expected to remain unheeded, unless the international forces manage to make a miraculous breakthrough against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

'I don't see the situation being changed. With one or another excuse Pakistan will continue to delay the North Waziristan operation,' said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a prominent Pakistan analyst and former visiting professor at New York's Columbia University.

And that brings Pakistan to the paradox of being a key international partner in the fight against terrorism and hub of Islamist terrorism at the same time, a situation where it has remained since it joined the US in its efforts against militancy in 2001.