Pakistan rejects US military role

Pakistan rejects US military role

By Farhan Bokhari in Islamabad and Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

Published: February 6 2008 22:06 | Last updated: February 7 2008 01:56

Pakistan has refused a US request to conduct joint military operations in its lawless northern tribal regions where al-Qaeda and Taliban militants have become increasingly active.

The Pentagon believes the Pakistani army needs help combating both al-Qaeda, which is operating from safe havens in the border region with Afghanistan, and the growing domestic threat from militants affiliated with the Taliban.

A senior Pakistani official said that Islamabad would not agree to conduct joint operations in the Pakistan Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata). The issue is sensitive for Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistan president and pro-US leader, who is facing growing pressure from political opponents to step down.

Robert Gates, US defence secretary, recently said the US was prepared to conduct small-scale joint operations inside Pakistan. Admiral William Fallon, head of US Central Command, recently flew to Pakistan for talks about improving military co-operation. The Pakistani official said Islamabad was considering the possibility of US officers spending short periods in Pakistan to train the army in counter-insurgency operations.

Mr Gates on Wednesday told the Senate that the Pakistani military had focused on the conventional threat from India for several decades, but was now recognising the growing threat from inside Pakistan.

”The Pakistanis, just as they recognise a new kind of threat to the stability of the country, are going to have to make some changes in terms of the training and equipping of their force,” Mr Gates told the Senate armed services committee.

US officials say General Ashfaq Kiyani, the new Pakistan military chief, realises his army, which was trained to fight a war with India, lacks counter-insurgency capabilities. But they say the issue of US forces operating inside Pakistan is so sensitive that Islamabad is unlikely to agree to joint operations.

Pakistan recently rejected a similar request from the US intelligence agencies to conduct covert operations inside its borders. In a sign of the importance the US places on the region, Admiral Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, and General Michael Hayden, head of the Central Intelligence Agency, recently flew to Pakistan to urge Mr Musharraf to agree to the operations.

Last week, Abu Laith al-Libi, a top al-Qaeda operative was killed with a missile strike on a house in the border area of Waziristan. The US and Pakistan have both refused to comment on the strike, which is reported to have claimed the lives of more than a dozen people. But a US military official told the Financial Times that the missile was not launched by the military, suggesting it was fired by the CIA.

Adm McConnell this week said al-Qaeda was using the Fata as a “staging area” to support Taliban attacks in Afghanistan in addition to training for operatives towards conducting attacks in Pakistan and elsewhere. In his global threat assessment, he added that there had been an influx of “western recruits” into the tribal areas over the past 18 months.

Western officials have becoming increasingly concerned about the stability of the Pakistani regime, given the growing insurgency in the north-west frontier province led by Baitullah Mehsud, a militant leader linked to al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The CIA and Pakistani authorities say he was behind the recent assassination of Benazir Bhutto, the former Pakistani prime minister.

Taliban militants fighting Pakistani troops along the Afghan border on Wednesday claimed to have declared a ceasefire. If confirmed, the move would be the first significant break for the Pakistani military since last year when Mr Musharraf ordered troops to storm a mosque in Islamabad, provoking a spate of suicide and armed attacks from Taliban militants. A Pakistani intelligence official said the militants appeared to be observing a ceasefire. But a western defence official warned that any ceasefire was unlikely to hold, especially because of Mr Mehsud’s alleged involvement in the assassination of Bhutto.