Islamabad: Almost five years after thousands of Taliban fighters fled Afghanistan to escape a US-led invasion, Pakistan is still unable to shake off suspicions that it is allowing them to operate from its soil.
Just as India is losing patience with Pakistan’s failure to act more forcefully against militant groups, Afghanistan, the United States and other NATO powers have been telling Islamabad to get tougher with the Taliban.
"There is little doubt that top Taliban commanders find sanctuary within Pakistan and opportunity to plan and launch operations," Marvin G Weinbaum, a former analyst with the State Department’s intelligence bureau, wrote in a study published by the United States Institute of Peace last month.
"Islamabad’s efforts to check extremism and prevent the infiltration of anti-(Afghan) regime insurgents are accurately described as inconsistent, incomplete and at times insincere," he said.
The deployment of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan during the worst phase of the Taliban insurgency, with 1,700 killed so far this year, has once again put Pakistan’s role under scrutiny.
Whenever President Pervez Musharraf comes under pressure over the Taliban he points to three things; difficult terrain on the long frontier, inadequate attempts to control the insurgency on the Afghan side, and the hundreds of casualties the Pakistan army has suffered since deploying 80,000 troops in the border areas.
Analysts say the points are valid, although casualties have largely resulted from fighting al Qaeda militants in the Waziristan region, while there has been no confrontation with Afghan Taliban fighters further west in Baluchistan.
Baluch police said they arrested over 200 Afghan Taliban last week, but analysts are highly sceptical whether many of those detained were fighters, despite diplomatic welcomes given to the crackdown by Afghanistan and Britain.
INTELLIGENCE ‘ASSETS AND LIABILITIES’
For all Musharraf’s pledges to the global war on terrorism, there is an abiding feeling that militants are being left in circulation in order to retain leverage across Pakistan’s eastern and western borders.
Despite publicly abandoning the Taliban after al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States in 2001, analysts say Pakistani intelligence agencies probably want their options open due to both India’s growing friendship with Afghanistan and doubts about the durability of President Hamid Karzai’s rule in Kabul.
In his report, Weinbaum alluded to speculation that elements within Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, or still active retired officers, covertly support the Taliban.
"The jihadi and Taliban ‘assets’ have spawned more powerful anti-Pakistan, anti-Musharraf ‘liabilities’ at home and abroad. If these are not dismantled swiftly and decisively, General Musharraf and Pakistan will plunge into the eye of a storm," the Friday Times weekly concluded in its latest editorial.
IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM, TALK TO THEM
Last week, during a televised address that touched on the many crises afflicting his nation, Musharraf said al-Qaeda was beaten in Pakistan and the focus was now on the Taliban.
"We have designed a new strategy against Taliban," he said.
Foreign fighters would be eliminated, and cross-border infiltration into Afghanistan stopped.
The government would also seek a political solution to stop the Taliban imposing its ways in the semi-autonomous tribal lands and settled areas of North West Frontier Province.
More tribal police and paramilitary troops would be recruited and the authority of the political agent, the top civil administrator, and tribal chieftains restored through ongoing tribal councils, or jirgas.
This softer approach, according to analysts, was recognition that the military option risked creating a long running conflict with the fiercely independent Pashtun tribes.
"The change of policy is because of the feeling it could become an endless war," said Rahimullah Yusufzai, a veteran journalist and expert on tribal affairs based in Peshawar.
Ahmed Rashid, journalist and author of ‘Taliban’, foresaw Islamist parties who promote Taliban values becoming even stronger in the tribal lands, NWFP, Baluchistan as a result.
"The military strategy seems a cross-purposes. In seeking short-term peace agreements, the potential long term damage to Pakistan is incalculable," Rashid said.
