US Won’t Rule Out Force in Pakistan
Push Against Al Qaeda May Backfire, Some Say
WASHINGTON — President Bush’s homeland security adviser said yesterday that the United States was prepared to take additional measures, including military force, to curb Al Qaeda’s operations in remote regions of Pakistan.
“Job No. 1 is to protect the American people. There are no options off the table,” said Fran Townsend, the White House aide, adding, “No question that we will use any instrument at our disposal” to deal with Al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden.
While Senate majority leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, agreed with that approach, Pakistan’s foreign minister criticized any possible US military intervention as counterproductive, saying it would further alienate the Pakistani public against the United States.
“Let the United States provide us with actionable intelligence and you will find that Pakistan will never be lacking,” Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri said earlier yesterday, responding to comments made by Townsend late last week. “Pakistan’s army can do the job much better and the result will be that there will be far less collateral damage.”
Kasuri, who appeared on CNN’s “Inside Edition,” said his country is committed to “controlling terrorism, and people in Pakistan get very upset when despite all the sacrifices that Pakistan has been making you get all these criticisms.”
Asked about Kasuri’s comments, Townsend said US officials were providing real-time intelligence to Pakistan’s military. “We worked very closely both with the intelligence service and the Pakistani military,” she said, noting that Pakistan’s military has taken hundreds of casualties in the fight.
Townsend’s comments yesterday on “Fox News Sunday” and the CNN program come at a particularly vulnerable time for Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf, who faces a multitude of connected problems.
Those issues include the disintegrating 10-month deal with tribal leaders to police Al Qaeda along the Afghan border, and a rash of violent episodes across the country, including suicide bomb attacks and a military raid on Islamabad’s Red Mosque.
In addition, the Pakistani Supreme Court last week reinstated the country’s chief justice, saying Musharraf did not have the power to suspend him. The ruling is expected to complicate the general’s attempts to be elected as president to a second term.
The high court, now on record for taking an independent stand against Musharraf, is expected to hear legal challenges to the president’s plan for the outgoing Parliament to decide whether to give him a new five-year term, rather than wait for parliamentary elections next year.
Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, also has come under increasing criticism for holding the posts of president and chief of the military.
Townsend emphasized that the United States wants to work closely with Musharraf, but she indicated that the Bush administration would be ready to take additional measures if necessary.
Asked whether the United States was doing all it could in the fight against Al Qaeda in Pakistan, she said: “Just because we don’t speak about things publicly, doesn’t mean we aren’t doing many of the things you are talking about.”
Some analysts said those comments would not help Musharraf.
“It doesn’t help at all to have a public fracas over this if we want Musharraf and his government to move against the folks in the mountains,” said Ray McGovern, a retired 27-year CIA analyst. “The right way, like in the past, is to work behind the scenes.”
McGovern, who has actively opposed the war in Iraq, said that since the Sept. 11 attacks against the United States, and the subsequent fight against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Musharraf has had a delicate balancing act: help the United States, but not to appear to jump at its command.
“The question was always whether he would be seen as a puppet of the US, and not acting in the best interest of Pakistan, and that has come home to roost,” he said.
Meanwhile, in Pakistan’s northwest tribal region, Islamic militants detonated bombs close to military convoys and attacked government positions yesterday, leading to fights that left 19 insurgents dead, government officials said. The fighting was the latest since militants announced the termination of a peace agreement with the government last week after the military’s raid on the Red Mosque.
The Bush administration released a National Intelligence Estimate last week that highlighted Al Qaeda’s increasingly comfortable hideout in the tribal areas of Pakistan.
President Bush, in his taped weekly radio address Saturday, said “one of the most troubling” assessments in the report was the finding that Al Qaeda was gaining strength in the tribal region of Pakistan.
The national intelligence director, Mike McConnell, said yesterday that he believed that bin Laden was living in the tribal region.
McConnell also said Musharraf’s deal with tribal leaders now appears to have backfired badly. “Al Qaeda has been able to regain some of its momentum,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Reid, the Senate majority leader, agreed with Townsend that the US should go after Al Qaeda militarily “wherever they are.”
“I don’t think we should take anything off the table,” Reid said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“Wherever we find these evil people we should go get them.”
Material from the Associated Press was included in this report. John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com
2007 The Boston Globe
When are we going to learn violence is not the answer. It seems you can throw mountains of evidence against these armchair generals and politicians but they are only more than willing to sacrifice lives needlessly.
The fact is no matter how many bombs you throw at them or how many bullets you fire, the only way to change this is by encouraging democracy in Pakistan.
If the U.S. steps in you can rest assured you are going to create more 9-11’s for us. Pliant Pakistani generals are not new and have been bending over to U.S. will for the last 60 years and subsequently wreaking havoc in the region against their neighbours and their own people.
This cycle needs to stop. We need to stop funneling money to these nuts. Its amazing how much faith americans have in their government.
It would serve Fran Townsend right if General Musharef issued a statement through reporters that his government had bequethed their nuclear arsenal to Muslim extremists in anticipation of US attacks on their soveriegn territory.
Let’s see how the US military and all the Homeland Security nincompoops deal with that one. Suicide muclear bombers might be kind of hard to pick out let alone stop.
It is not in the interest of Americans or the world at large for hostilities to be increased in any Moslem country.
It is in the interest of those wanting to increase the necessity and power of the ‘unitary executive’.
It is none of your business what happens in the mountains of Pakistan; that isn’t US territory, and you aren’t wanted there, so according to international law, it really is “off the table!” The vapid insanity of imperial aggression must not spread to Iran and Pakistan.
http://www.dreamingearth.net
…and Turkmenistan too then Bush will have Iran surrounded. Then the Arabs can attack in any direction…
Pakistan should be able to handle their own problems, chief among them seems to be a military dictatorship and the fact that large sections of the country are supposedly off limits to government control. Like the “safe” areas given to the rebels in Columbia, this is a mistake. If a government does not have sovereignty over the Whole of it’s area, it really has sovereignty over none. The same problem is being seen in the Kurdish section of Iraq. The president of Pakistan needs to allow free elections and the Pakistani army needs to move seriously against the Al Qaeda forces concentrated in the mountains.The United States should continue helping the Pakistani army with intelligence and support, without moving past its borders
Whatfools–
Quick correction that doesn’t change the thrust of your point–Pakistan and Turkmenistan are Turkic and not Arabic people. The Iranians are Persians. And ther are ethnic rivalries between them despite having Islam in common.
Impeachment now, then beginning the trial.
However, the trial will take time that is true.
It will be interesting for the American public to see the evidence presented in the prosecution and again in the defense during the trial.
Perhaps we will get to see the US government more clearly.
We have all the time in the world to advance the principles of democracy and work on practicing them.
One thing that ought to keep the Democrats from pursuing impeachment is that we may find that they were very willing collaborators in the crimes of the administration. It thus will make it just as hard to vote for a Democrat as a Republican
So let’s have an impeachment and a trial and then let’s clean house and find human beings to represent Americans in the Congress and Executive Branch
WAKE UP
violence is the answer
the only answer, always has been always will
Its not whether its right or wrong or who you are
human kind is genetically programed to violence, say whatever you want
show me a time in recorded history where this has has not been case
we will fight till the last stone is thrown
this is reality
Violence is not an answer, nor is it genetic, you ignorant simpleton.
As for Pakistan, they don’t need to do anything; it is a free world, and if Al Quieda wants to stay in the mountains, they have a right to. The way to prevent such groups from forming is to end the illegal invasions and wars, and to instead of funding Isreal’s death sprees, to use political power to force them to recognize Palestine’s right to exist as their own, seperate state. That is the only way to solve any problem, because there is no such thing as “evil,” everything has a cause; AQ is simply reacting to the injustice that american imperial crimes have destroyed the middle east with.
Cost of Zionist Israel to US taxpayers since 48..$2.5 - 3 TRILLION.
Just imagine what a “Peace Dividend” that would have purchased..
Do we remember Peace Dividends??
If Al Quieda has a “right” to occupy parts of Pakistan without Pakistan being able to do anything about it, then that country has no rights. As far as Isreal is concerned, if the entire country slid into the sea tomorrow there would still be fighting and killing going on in this part of the world. Israel has become the “boogyman” that every ill in the world can be blamed on.
If the US has ruled out force anywhere in the world it is news to me.
The USA failed to arrest/capture Mr. Bin Laden in December of 2001 at a place known as Tora Bora in Afganistan.
Why should we believe that the USA is serious now?
This is another farce perpitrated by the criminals running the USA.
Indeed, but not a farce, just politics.
The US has no interest whatsoever in capturing bin Laden or even establish whether he’s alive or dead. Al Qaida is a means, not an end, for both “al Qaida” and the US. Osama bin Laden is a symbol. As a symbol he’s important, as a man he’s not. Just as 911 has been consciously transformed into a symbol and by that stopped being a historical event. It transcended it’s own reality and became politically useful.
Needless to say, the US has a big stake in continuing these symbols, because it enables them to manipulate public opinion by grabbing it where they can rely on it being focussed and then bend it to their wishes.
The US wishes to keep Musharraf (or another obedient puppet) in power, because the US cannot allow a Pakistani government that listens to it’s people. US would immediately lose influence and free access for intelligence ops for example.
To keep Musharraf in power - presumably US’ first choice - they have to let him be able to buy the time he needs:
“…According to friends of Musharraf, he is not confident that a newly-elected assembly would elect him and believes he needs six months to “soften up” MPs. His problem is that his own term ends before that of the current assembly. To win a democratic mandate for a new term, he must either bring forward the elections or extend the term of the current assembly to give himself more time to win over MPs.
This can be done under the Constitution if it can be shown that a delay is needed to tackle “lawlessness”. The deteriorating security situation, particularly in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, would help him justify such a move.”
http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=9167
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IG25Df01.html