US faces dilemma as Pakistan grapples

The United States is facing a major dilemma as ally Pakistan grapples with surging militant violence fuelled by groups who may also have a hand in Afghanistan’s worsening security crisis, experts say. After Monday’s deadly suicide bombing in Pakistan’s capital Islamabad and alleged Pakistani involvement in another such attack in Afghanistan’s capital Kabul, one intelligence report said Pakistan lacked ‘willingness and ability’ to take on the rapidly rising threat posed by Islamist extremism and militancy. ‘The fact is that the civilian government and the country’s military establishment appear to be losing control of the situation,’ warned private US intelligence firm Stratfor in a report to clients after the twin attacks. In Pakistan, it said, there was a ‘national lack of acknowledgement that the country is being torn apart by religious extremism.’ Stratfor predicted ‘it is only a matter of time before Washington escalates its unilateral military operations deeper into Pakistani territory’ – a move experts warned could worsen ‘collateral’ damage and fuel anti-Americanism. US airstrikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, where Washington believes al-Qaeda and Taliban militants are hiding, is now regarded as almost a daily affair. As the new government of the prime minister, Yousuf Raza Gilani, struggles to adopt appropriate policies to a series of political, economic and security crises, the US president, George W Bush, is concerned the next major terrorist strike on the United States may be planned in Pakistan. ‘Washington finds itself in a difficult position,’ said Robert Hathaway of the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Centre for Scholars. The latest US strategy of launching unilateral air strikes on suspected militant hideouts inside Pakistan is causing casualties on innocent civilians and fuelling anti-American feelings, he said. It also does not promote the objective of convincing the Pakistanis that the fight against militancy and radicalism is their fight, he said. Most people believe a long term campaign to provide education, jobs and establishing a functioning set of governmental institutions in the tribal lands could help improve people’s lives and eventually ease the security crisis. ‘That’s a long term strategy but the problem is here and now, and it’s not yet apparent that anyone either in Washington or in Islamabad really knows how to connect the two – the long term solution with immediate problems,’ Hathaway said. He blamed the Bush administration for failing to adopt a coherent policy towards Pakistan since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States. ‘Seven years after 9/11, the United States is worse off in Pakistan than it was, American interests in the region were worse off than they were, and Pakistan is worse off than it was,’ he said. The United States is only now considering a new aid strategy for Pakistan that could triple unconditional non-security aid to 1.5 billion dollars annually for a 10-year period and tie security funding to counter-terrorism performance. In coming weeks, bipartisan legislation will be introduced in the US Senate laying the foundation for the new approach, officials said. The United States provided Pakistan more than 10.5 billion dollars for military, economic, and development activities in the 2002-2007 period. Internal government studies showed there was ‘no comprehensive plan’ to destroy the militant ‘safe haven’ in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a vast, impoverished, mountainous and unpoliced area along the border with Afghanistan.