Yes, no.or maybe?


Written by Chris Cork • Cover Stories • August 2007

Would America attack the Taliban inside Pakistan? Quite possibly - but equally possibly you may not know if it did, comments Chris Cork

Just because we don’t speak about things publicly doesn’t mean we’re not doing things you talk about" So – perhaps inadvertently revealingly - said Frances Townsend, Home land Security Adviser to President Bush on 21st July. She was responding to questions asked during interviews she gave to CNN and Fox News as to why the USA does not conduct special operations against al Qaeda hideouts and safe havens it alleges exist in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan. She went on to say…"Our job is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table." Meaning that all options are on the table and that one of them may be to conduct one such against al Qaeda by US forces operating independently inside Pakistan – whether Pakistan likes it or not.

There had been a stream of bad news coming out of America and in the direction of Pakistan in the previous days, some of it connected to the perceived failure of Pakistan to pursue and eradicate extremist elements in the Tribal Areas, and related to that, reaction to the abrogation by the tribals of the agreement they made with the Pakistan government last September. The agreement was abrogated in the wake of the Lal Masjid operation which was widely seen in NWFP as a betrayal by the government, and threats of dire consequences followed in its wake.

The agreement called for ‘foreigners’ to be expelled or brought under control – they were allegedly in league with the Taliban fighting the coalition forces in south and east Afghanistan – and local conciliatory and conflict resolution systems would be brought to bear on any future dispute that might arise. To say that this agreement was met with slack-jawed disbelief just about everywhere else in the world apart from Pakistan understates the case by several orders of magnitude. Even the Pakistani Foreign minister, Kasuri, speaking on the BBC World Service on 23rd July admitted that the agreement had …"only been fulfilled in part" and that there were significant shortfalls in its implementation from the outset.

Shortly before Ms. Townsends’ comments President Bush had endorsed US intelligence reports that al Qaeda had built a safe haven in the Tribal Areas, had increased in strength and was even stronger than they were before the 9/11 attacks. There can be little more calculated to raise the anxiety of Uncle Sam than the news that al Qaeda is on the up-and-up. And when Uncle Sam gets anxious he gets trigger-happy, tending to shoot first and ask questions later.

Then America’s uber-bogeyman was stirred into the pot – the ever-elusive Osama bin Laden. National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell justified calls for American military intervention by proclaiming that Osama bin Laden was hiding on the Pakistan side of the Afghan/Pakistani border. He did not, of course, specify a location but did appear sure-enough of his intelligence to state this with confidence. A similar confidence perhaps to that displayed by Colin Powell when he briefed the United Nations General Assembly on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the 2003 invasion. A briefing replete with photographs and satellite imagery that in the end was proven to prove nothing of the sort - Iraq had no WMD’s and there is no proof in the public domain that Pakistan has Osama bin Laden either. Nobody has yet produced a picture of Osama and family enjoying an al-fresco breakfast in the vicinity of Waziristan, and one wonders what level of proof Mr. McConnell applied before making his statement.

Despite all this sabre-rattling both McConnell and Townsend were at pains to express the view that they supported the efforts of President Musharraf in ridding the area of miscreants and ne’er-do-well’s. So carry on as before Mr. President and we will, should the mood take us, pop over and bomb the living daylights out of anything that moves and a few things that don’t – which are both citizens and parts of your sovereign nation.

Pakistan was showered with the usual platitudes that said ‘…Pakistan has been a very good ally in the War on terror…’ as well as ‘…they get what the problem is. And we’re working with them to deny al Qaeda and the Taliban safe haven.’ Despite such diplomatic niceties the sword had clearly been drawn an inch or two from the scabbard, and Pakistan was mightily upset – as well it might be.

Mr Kasuri popped up several times on television bristling with indignation, and the elegant and icy spokeswoman for the Pakistan Foreign Ministry, both riposted McConnell and others saying ‘Where is the evidence – show us actionable intelligence and we will go and get bin Laden. If you know where he is, tell us.’ Which is all fair and right except that the Americans, or those of them in the State Department with suspicious minds and a close knowledge of the workings of Pakistan’s ‘sensitive agencies’, know full well that if they gave the Crown Jewels to the Pakistanis and asked them to keep them safe, there are those who would gift-wrap them and have them delivered by express donkey-cart to Mr. Bin Laden wherever he was hiding.

There is a depth of mutual mistrust that is only ever articulated seemingly by those outside the diplomatic communities of both countries, and it runs deep and wide. If the average Pakistani has a profound mistrust of America and its foreign policies; then be assured that Americans, average and otherwise, have an equal mistrust of Pakistanis specifically with a wider and less specific unease about Muslims more generally.

So would America cross the Rubicon and launch an attack inside Pakistan, and what sort of attack if they did? The answer to the first part of the question has to be ‘a definite maybe’. Was the US to have credible evidence of Osama bin Ladens position in Pakistan, or large concentrations of battle ready Taliban about to move into Afghanistan, then yes, there is a distinct possibility that they would, and damn the consequences.

There are several ways in which an attack could be carried out. The least publicly visible would be to wage a deniable covert action, involving Special Forces and CIA personnel or mercenaries. Such a campaign would be low on collateral damage and potentially high-value in terms of wanted individuals taken down. If such a campaign were ‘blown’ and the operations exposed, they could be denied as were the American mercenaries harvesting wanted men in Afghanistan four years ago. (All now freed from jail in Afghanistan and allegedly back in the field.) An operation such as this is relatively cheap and easy to sustain, can be long or short term and if successful may not be in the public domain for many years.

Secondly the well-tried expedient of an air strike against hard targets like compounds or point strikes against individuals by armed aerial drones is a possibility – indeed may already have happened. There are inconsistent but persistent reports of drones firing on targets in Pakistan in the last eight months. Heavily reliant on satellite imagery and elint to pinpoint the target there is always a risk of collateral damage which will inflame national passions even further. Predator drones could be flown from Kandahar or Bagram, have loiter-time on the Afghan side of the border and only enter Pakistan to actually commit the strike. They may not even have to do this if the target is close to the border. A larger scale air strike using B1, B2 or B52 bombers is extremely unlikely.

Also extremely unlikely despite the wilder fantasies of the conspiracy theorists in Pakistan, is a large-scale ground offensive across the border from Afghanistan into the Pakistan tribal areas. Such an operation is potentially catastrophic in terms of American casualties, diplomatic relations and the domestic political fallout in both Pakistan and America. Large air strikes are probably ruled out for the same reason, and intelligence is rarely precise enough to justify large scale bombing – American casualties are likely to be small or non-existent from such a strike, but civilian deaths could be in the hundreds or thousands.

Which leaves us with Option 1 – covert, deniable, low risk politically and, quite possibly, already in progress as these words are written and read. Both sides could ‘live’ with the fallout were such an operation exposed, and the risks for both sides of doing anything else by America is going to provide a steadying hand – or at least that is the conventional strategic wisdom. Wisdom, however, has never loomed large in the mind of George Bush - which may mean the bombers are lining up already.