Much has been made of this week’s New York Times article accusing the Bush administration of allowing al Qaeda to rebuild in Pakistan’s tribal areas after it was chased out of Afghanistan following the 9/11 attacks, not least because the White House took its eye off the ball as it turned its attention to Iraq.

“The United States faces a threat from al Qaeda today that is comparable to what it faced on Sept. 11, 2001,” the newspaper quotes Seth Jones, a Pentagon consultant and a terrorism expert at the RAND Corporation, as saying. ”The base of operations has moved only a short distance, roughly the difference from New York to Philadelphia.”

Unsurprisingly, the article has been seized upon by the Obama campaign as evidence of the wisdom of the policies of  Senator Barack Obama, who has argued that the real threat to the United States lay in Afghanistan and Pakistan rather than Iraq, and stirred controversy by saying that, “if we have actionable intelligence about high-level al Qaeda targets in Pakistan’s border region, we must act if Pakistan will not or cannot”.

But what was surprising to me reading the article was how cautious the Bush administration was in its handling of Pakistan, in contrast to its pre-invasion approach to Iraq. The hunt for al Qaeda in Pakistan, the newspaper says, ”was often undermined by bitter disagreements within the Bush administration and within the C.I.A., including about whether American commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas”. Rather than send in ground troops, the Counterterrorist Center at C.I.A. headquarters preferred to carry out raids remotely, usiing missile strikes by Predator drones.

Most surprising, perhaps, was a story of how former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, criticised for his hawkishness on Iraq, refused to authorise a Special Operations mission in 2005 to capture Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy.  Though the plan to send in more than 100 U.S. commandos — what the newspaper says would have been the most aggressive use of American ground troops inside Pakistan — had the support of the C.I.A. director and the Special Operations commander, “the mission was aborted after Mr. Rumsfeld refused to give his approval for it”.

Did it really just come down to incompetence, in-fighting, indecisiveness, the distractions of Iraq and faith in Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf? Or was there a serious understanding in the Bush administration of the risks of sending ground troops into Pakistan, an ally it knew terribly well having worked with it to defeat the Soviet Union in Afghanistan? And if a hawk like Rumsfeld thought it was too risky, where does that leave Obama’s insistence that he is determined to go after al Qaeda in Pakistan?

If Obama were to win the U.S. presidency, he would still have the option of authorising missile strikes by unmanned Predators against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan. These have enraged Pakistanis in the past, because they have missed their targets and killed civilians, and because even an attack by a drone is an invasion of sovereignty.

Tellingly, the New York Times says those in favour of ground operations argue that the only way to catch bin Laden would be to capture some of his senior lieutenants alive. And that cannot be done by a drone.

1. It’s early days yet, but people are already trying to work out what any Israeli attack on Iran would mean for Pakistan. (The idea that Israel might attack Iran to damage or destroy its nuclear programme gained currency this week when former U.S. ambassador John Bolton predicted in an interview with the Daily Telegraph that it would do so after the November U.S. presidential election but before the next president is sworn in.)

Pakistan defence analyst Ikram Sehgal paints an alarming, and perhaps deliberately alarmist, picture in The News of what this could mean for Pakistan: ”Could Israeli or (US) planners afford the risk of leaving a Muslim nuclear state with the means of missile delivery intact if there is war with Iran? Can they take this calculated risk in the face of a possible Pakistani nuclear reaction because of military action on a fellow Muslim nation and neighbour…?” he writes. ”Should one not be apprehensive that India as the ‘newly U.S. appointed policeman of the region’ takes the opportunity … for launching all-out Indian military offensive….?”

Sounds like a prescription for the Apocalypse? Maybe, but perhaps worth taking apart to see whether this is a serious risk for Pakistan.

The nightmare scenario would require that Israel really was capable of taking out Iran’s nuclear installations and it is by no means clear that its air force has the size and reach to deal with Iran’s dispersed and well-hidden defences and targets.  The Americans, with their huge air strike capacity and firepower could have a go, but even then this would just give an excuse to Iran to leave the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and embark on a crash course to develop the bomb. (Both India and Pakistan developed their nuclear weapons while refusing to sign the NPT.)

You would also have to build in the fact that India has a ‘no first strike’ policy and that Pakistan has made clear it will use its nuclear weapons only if it feels its very existence is threatened. Pakistan also has a history of difficult relations with Iran, driven in part by rivalry over Afghanistan, by Sunni dominance over Pakistan, and by the sheer competitiveness of two countries which see themselves as the standard-bearers of Muslim glory in an earlier era. So it is not obvious that Pakistan would come to the rescue of Iran even if it were to be attacked by Israel.

Perhaps the fall-out of the sabre-rattling over Iran will be more mundane.

Pakistan is heavily touting a gas pipeline from Iran to India as a “pipleline of peace” that might bring Islamabad and Delhi together.  Yet at the same time the United States is leaning heavily on India not to agree to the pipeline project in order to put pressure on Iran over its nuclear programme, as this article in The Telegraph from Calcutta the makes clear.

It is not at all clear how all this will fit together in what appears to be a very unpredictable world. Views please?
 

Some people have begun to voice what has been for some time an unspoken fear in Pakistan - that of a U.S. attack.

What would happen if there were to be another big attack  on the United States that is traced back to militants holed up in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the Afghan border?

“Such an attack would immediately trigger massive bombing and an invasion of Pakistan by the U.S. and NATO,” says Riaz Haq in his blog Haq’s musings. “It could also result in the removal of the democratically elected government and installation of a new military regime in Pakistan,” he writes. “In addition to unparalleled death and destruction, such a scenario could turn Pakistan into a failed state with widespread unrest, homelessness, poverty, hunger and disease.”

Within the United States, he says, it would mean the election of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

A top adviser to McCain appeared to corroborate that bit at least when he was quoted as telling Fortune magazine that a Sept.11-type attack before the November election would benefit McCain. Charlie Black has since apologised for his remarks following widespread criticism.

Haq is the not the only one worrying about the months ahead. Pakistani blogger Farrukh Khan Pitafi  goes as far as to say : “Accept it or not, Pakistan is the next target of the U.S. invasion.” Over-reaction ?  Paranoia ?

You could argue both, but four months after Pakistan voted a civilian government into office there is a leadership void in  Islamabad, argues the New York Times, and perhaps that is feeding some of the insecurities. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in charge, and there is even less coherence on dealing with al Qaeda and the Taliban. The confusion is allowing the militants to consolidate their sanctuaries while spreading their tentacles all along the border area.

U.S. air strikes earlier this month in Pakistan’s Mohmand agency that killed 11 soldiers of the Frontier Corps,  followed up by a threat by Afghanistan’s Washington-backed President Hamid Karzai to chase down militants inside Pakistan, have heightened the anxiety.

But it isn’t just Pakistan. Descent into Chaos  is the title of reputed Pakistani journalist and author Ahmad Rashid’s latest book and it, according to the reviews, chronicles how the war against Islamist extremism is being lost in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia.
 

A New York Times report about Pakistan threatening to postpone or cancel an American programme to train a paramilitary force because of last week’s U.S. air strikes has been widely picked up in the Pakistani media.

Eleven soldiers from the Frontier Corps died in those air strikes in the Mohmand agency in circumstances that remain unclear. But the U..S.-Pakistan alliance forged after the September 11 attacks has been deeply scarred as a result, says the report. It quotes former Pakistan Army chief General Jehangir Karamat as saying that the United States deliberately targeted Pakistani forces and that there had not been a statement from the United States that this was friendly fire and that the intention was not to attack Pakistani forces.

The Frontier Corps is the very paramilitary force that Washington had begun spending $400 million to train in counter-insurgency techniques.

Such is the anger in Pakistan, inflamed further by Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s
threat to send troops in to Pakistan to stop cross border attacks, that defence expert Shireen M Mazari questioned whether America was a “dubious ally or an outright enemy.”

Air strikes are blunt instruments and rarely win hearts and minds, says writer Eric Margolis. Attacks by U.S. aircraft, Predator hunter-killer drones, U.S. special forces and CIA teams have been rising steadily inside Pakistan’s FATA, and instead of intimidating the Taliban, they have ignited a firestorm of anti-western fury among the tribesmen, he writes.

But the United States says cross border attacks into Afghanistan have been increasing - there were 50 percent more in April than the year before- attributing it to lack of pressure on the militants on the other side of the border.
 

Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi used an interesting choice of words when he talked to reporters in Paris about the new government’s relationship with President Pervez Musharraf.

Reuters Paris chief correspondent Crispian Balmer tells me that he said the ruling Pakistan People’s Party had established a working relationship with Musharraf after February elections in which the president’s political allies were defeated.

“The reason we have established that working relationship with him is to give stability,” he said. “We realise that this transition from dictatorship to democracy is a delicate transition and let’s not unnecessarily rock the boat.”

Those did not seem to be the words of a government that expects the embattled former army general to step down any time soon, despite a mass rally in Pakistan by lawyers fighting for the reinstatement of judges fired by Musharraf last year.

The Asia Times even suggests that the tide may be turning in favour of Musharraf after this week’s American air strike that killed 11 Pakistani soldiers near the border with Afghanistan. “… the US air strike has severely unsettled the country,” it says. “Musharraf, with his excellent rapport with Washington, is the man many see as the only person capable of preventing it from happening again.”

But even if he survives as president for now, many say his situation will become almost untenable when President George W. Bush, who prided himself on his personal relationship with Musharraf, leaves office next January. 

According to one comment on a blog I posted last month on Musharraf: “Given Pakistan’s history,  no ruler has survived more than a decade,  give or take a year or two. As Musharraf approaches the 10th anniversary of his coup against Nawaz Sharif next year, I think he is going to leave. But he’ll leave on his on own terms, not let the Sharif brothers hound him out.”

I finally got around to reading the full text of a speech by U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to the National Endowment for Democracy’s Pakistan Forum earlier this month and the following exchange caught my eye:

Question: “Does the Bush Administration still consider President Musharraf an indispensable ally?”

Negroponte: “Well, first of all, I think what you — your first question is prompted by the fact that at times in the past, when we talked about the war on terror, particularly in the wake of 9/11, we personalized the characterization of Pakistan’s collaboration with us by saying that Mr. Musharraf was an indispensable ally in the war on terror. And I myself used that phrase on a number of occasions.

“But it really is shorthand for the nation of Pakistan and it’s a shorthand for saying that we have an — I mean, Pakistan is in an indispensable situation in terms of dealing with the threats we confront in the war on terror because of the border area, because of al Qaeda, because of the position that this whole al Qaeda threat poses to our interests, the interests of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the rest of the world. So I think that’s — that would be what I’d say to that one.”

Am I alone in thinking that “shorthand” is an extraordinary word for the Americans to use about Musharraf? The reference is all the more interesting in the context of speculation on whether the rift between former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari will take pressure off Musharraf to quit.  

The Washington Post, in an article headlined “Sidelined Musharraf Still Exerts Influence“, says that the former army general has continued to influence the country from the shadows, even after his political allies were trounced in elections in February.

“In the past week, the coalition’s acrimonious split — over how and when to restore judges fired by Musharraf — has dashed some of the hopes for democratic progress generated by elections in February,” it says. “Just as swiftly, it has generated talk of Musharraf as the political beneficiary, chortling at his adversaries’ failures and sensing a chance for political muscle-flexing if not rehabilitation.”

An analysis in the Daily Times, however,  suggests the row over the judiciary could produce a backlash against Musharraf, particularly given a pledge by the lawyers’ movement to hold a major protest on June 10 to champion the restoration of the judges. The backlash would also hit Zardari, accused by some of his critics of bowing to American pressure and resisting demands by Sharif that Musharraf be forced out of office. 

“The lawyers and many civil society groups are expected to start street protests for the restoration of the judges. Several political parties are also expected to join them,” writes Hasan-Askari Rizvi in the Daily Times. “The PML-N (Sharif’s party) will certainly not hold back because such a situation would strengthen its position. The movement will target the government, especially Musharraf, and Asif Ali Zardari.”

It looks like volatile times ahead in Pakistan.
 

(Luke Baker is with the U.S. army in eastern Afghanistan) 

The snows have largely melted in the Hindu Kush and the high trails over the mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan are once again passable. What’s more, Tehrik-e-Taliban’s leader, Baitullah Mehsud, looks like he may secure a peace deal with Pakistan’s new leadership, including the possibility of Pakistan’s security forces backing off from attacking his hideouts in South Waziristan.

To many observers, those two developments lead to a conclusion: any spring offensive by the Taliban against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan could be that much more powerful this year, with Mehsud throwing his tactical weight behind the offensive without fear of being squeezed by Pakistan’s forces from behind.
 
The argument has a fair amount of logic on its side, but how likely is the whole scenario really?

On the Afghanistan side of the border, U.S. commanders seem unconvinced, even if they are not dismissing the possibility of some sort of offensive in the coming months. First, they say many of the traditional infiltration routes over the mountains have now been closed off or are under watch by special forces. Even if much of the border is likely to remain passable — there’s no way 16,000 or so U.S. troops could seal every mountainous nook and cranny along hundreds of miles of frontier — they are not expecting the overall rate of infiltration to change substantially from last year.

Secondly, rather than relations between U.S. forces and Pakistani troops breaking down in the wake of President Pervez Musharraf’s sidelining and the murmurs of a peace deal with Mehsud, they say cooperation remains strong. Senior U.S. officers meet once a month, face-to-face for what they call “border flag” meetings with senior Pakistani officers, sharing intelligence and building relationships. Junior officers have even more contact — they have exchanged mobile phone numbers with the other side and sometimes communicate by radio on a daily basis.

“I wouldn’t say it’s perfect all along the border, but generally relations are pretty good. Uneven but good,” one senior U.S. officer said this week to describe the ties.

On occasion U.S. forces need to seek and have received permission to cross into Pakistan’s territory to pursue militants, he said. American unmanned spy planes are not allowed to pass into Pakistan’s air space, but otherwise, relations seem to be sound.

Perhaps most crucially, U.S. officers say they have seen no signs yet of Pakistani troops pulling back from the border area — a demand Mehsud has made as part of any peace deal.

Those three factors alone may not rule out any spring offensive — certainly the Taliban remains strong across southern Afghanistan and shows no signs of weakening — but they hint that this year may not see the big spring offensive some have suggested.

The U.S. State Department has just released its 2007 report on terrorism worldwide and it doesn’t look like it is winning the war against al Qaeda seven years after the Sept 11 attacks. The group not only remains the biggest threat to the United States and its allies, but using the tribal areas of Pakistan it has rebuilt some of its pre-Sept 11 capabilities. And its top  leadership, especially Ayman al-Zawahri, has regained some of its control over the group’s operations worldwide, says the report.

It makes for sobering reading and some of the figures are worth recounting.

-  The number of what the report identified as terrorist attacks worldwide fell slightly in 2007, but the number of people killed in the attacks rose to 22,685, from 20,872 in the previous year which suggests that people around the globe were getting increasingly efficient killing other people, as Russ Travers of the National Counterterrorism Center put it.
  One factor contributing to the increased lethality of attacks: increased use of backpacks by suicide bombers that are easier to sneak into crowded areas.

- A 50 percent increase in suicide attacks worldwide over the previous year and this ranged from somebody as young as a 15-year-old boy to a 64-year-old man in the advanced stages of cancer, potentially the oldest.

 - Incidents fell slightly in Iraq, but still accounted for 45 percent of all attacks and 60 percent of all fatalities worldwide in 2007.

- Pakistan saw the grimmest change, a 100 percent increase in attacks, and injuries and fatalities quadrupled.

- A 16 percent increase in attacks in Afghanistan

- Well over 50 percent of those killed or injured were Muslims.

- 2,400 children were killed or injured in 2007 by suicide attacks, an increase of 25 percent.

 The one silver lining according to Oxford Analytica is that several radical groups, who are engaged in local conflicts, could be undermining al Qaeda’s appeal in some parts of the world by adopting its brand name.

Al Qaeda’s legitimacy rests on convincing supporters that it acts justly to defend Muslims against domination by foreigners. On current trends, this message may increasingly be undermined: as the State Department notes, several radical causes adopted al Qaeda’s ‘brand’ during 2006 and 2007, importing it into conflicts in Algeria and Libya as well as longer-established battlegrounds.

This insertion into intractable local conflicts — such as the confrontation between radical Islamists and the state in Algeria — is a key reason for the high share of Muslims in the global death toll from terrorism.

If al Qaeda’s potential supporters associate the group with the indiscriminate slaughter of their fellow practitioners — rather than daring assaults against US interests — its call to violence may no longer hit home.

Is that something the world can hold on to? Or is it a hopeless and unending cycle where the heavier the hammer used to crush the attackers, the more the backlash? Is it time to change tack?
 

Notwithstanding his weakened position at home, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf this week flies to China , the “all weather friend” that has stood by the country through all its troubles.
 
Unlike its American friends, the Chinese have not blown hot and cold, although there have been challenges such as attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan, including the execution of three workers near Peshawar last year and concern that the Islamist fervour sweeping the northwest parts of Pakistan was spilling over to neighbouring Xinjiang, China’s troubled, predominantly Muslim region.
 
But the Chinese do not give Pakistan lectures on democracy, the dangers of nuclear proliferation - which arguably isn’t surprising since some of it is traced back to the Chinese, according to non-proliferation experts- or threaten to bomb them into the Stone Age , which is what Islamabad says the Bush administration did to enlist its support in its war on terrorism days after Sept 11.
 
China, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told parliament in his opening address last week, was a time-tested ally and the friendship “was deeper than the Indian Ocean and higher than the Himalayas”. On Monday, a Shanghai shipyard launched the first of four frigates to be delivered to the Pakistan navy, while the Pakistani air force has already inducted a fighter aircraft co-produced with China. Beijing has also helped Pakistan build civil nuclear plants.
 
Pakistan’s alliance with China is far more enduring that the one with the United States, a scholar writing for the YaleGlobal Online argued last month, characterising the relationship with Washington dating back to 1954 as an intermittent, Cold War marriage of convenience. The current U.S.-Pakistan relationship has been built on security interests and is already looking fragile following the outcome of the February elections when the party supported by ally Musharraf was routed.
 
Pakistan’s alliance with China, in contrast, is based on permanent strategic interests and immutable issues of geography, including China’s desire for access to the warm waters of the Indian Ocean, scholar  Willem van Kemenade says in the article. And unlike the sometimes public polemics with Washington over the war on militancy, Pakistan and China are quietly cooperating to ensure things don’t go out of hand in China’s far west.  
                                                                                                     
Indeed, Musharraf will be winding up his visit in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where he is expected to appeal to local Muslims to cooperate with the authorities and not to be misled by followers of Tibet’s spiritual leader Dala Lama trying to stoke fires there,  as B.Raman, a former additional secretary at India’s Research and Analysis Wing, the external intelligence arm, says in a paper for the India-based South Asia Analysis Group.

So has China been a better friend than the United States and is the relationship as solid as ever?