Najam Sethi's Daily Times: Pakistan was not consulted on Bajaur missile strikes

EDITORIAL: Pakistan and US should play straight with each other

Some two years ago, says a report in a UK newspaper, American intelligence picked up electronic traffic indicating the possible presence of Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden in the Zhob area of northern Balochistan. Citing US and Pakistani intelligence and diplomatic sources, the report says that the US then sought permission from Pakistan to launch a laser-guided missile from a drone to take out Bin Laden and his associates. However, the paper’s sources say the Pakistani government prevaricated in granting permission for the strike, which allowed Bin Laden to move out of the area and cost America the chance to eliminate him.

The report claims that the account by a diplomat is corroborated by sources in the Pakistani intelligence who confirmed to the newspaper that the Americans did pick up Bin Laden’s spoor in Zhob, an area inhabited by Pashtun and Baloch tribes “sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban”.

The implication of the report is that some elements within the Pakistani government and/or intelligence might have wanted Bin Laden to escape. They delayed the transmission of the US request for the drone attack through official channels and perhaps tipped Bin Laden off before granting permission for the strike to materialise. “While Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, has vowed to eliminate terrorists operating within his country, elements within Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service may have sought to protect Bin Laden,” says the report. However, the most interesting part of the report, based on its US diplomatic source, relates to the recent US air strike in Bajaur Agency. The diplomat told the newspaper that the reason America decided to keep Islamabad in the dark before striking in Bajaur was its previous experience.

This is a very interesting bit of information and dovetails with what General Pervez Musharraf has said at least three times, the most recent being his January 29 statement that the US did not get Pakistan’s permission before striking in Bajaur. “This [attack] was definitely not coordinated with us. We condemn it and have objected to it as an issue of sovereignty. (But) we do know there are foreigners and Al Qaeda in that (area). It is my regret that there are (such) people there,” he said in an interview with the US newspaper The Washington Post. To the question about the identity of the foreigners, General Musharraf said, “Yes, indeed. We are investigating who got killed there. Probably — and I use that word carefully — there were five or six Arabs or foreigners killed there.”

This makes two things clear: the US did not consult Pakistan before the Bajaur operation; and there were foreigners in the area, though it is not clear who they were. So while Pakistan has protested the strike as a violation of Pakistani territory and the country’s sovereignty, General Musharraf has had to admit that the US strike was not undertaken in an intelligence vacuum.

This presents us with a worrisome situation. Islamabad inducted troops into the tribal agencies because Pakistan did not want the Americans to operate in the area. However, this policy required that Pakistan genuinely try to pin down the Al Qaeda-Taliban elements in the area. But the Americans seem convinced that it has done so selectively. Some observers allege that Pakistan has tried to target some Al Qaeda elements while allowing the Taliban to operate relatively freely. Be that as it may, it is clear that wittingly or unwittingly Pakistan has not been able to tap the activities of people who are wanted by the US and on whose movement it (US) is picking up intelligence. This is surprising because if these people are moving around in Pakistani territory, then Pakistani intelligence agencies should be able to smoke them out. Pakistan may not have access to the sophisticated electronic and satellite intelligence the Americans have but it has the advantage of human intelligence. If the newspaper report that some elements within the Pakistani intelligence may not want the elimination of senior Al Qaeda leaders is correct then the Pakistani government (read General Musharraf) needs to look into what kind of problems such a policy could entail.

The Americans are sure that they were justified in conducting the Bajaur strike. This is why the visiting under secretary of state, Nicholas Burns, did not offer an apology. Reports suggest that the United States has taken a policy decision to expand its top-secret plan to kill suspected terrorists with drone-fired missiles. For this purpose, “the CIA and the Pentagon have deployed several dozen Predator drones along the Pakistan-Afghan border and throughout Afghanistan and Iraq for attacking suspected terrorist targets”. This clearly shows that the US is not too concerned about the protests that have followed the attack in Bajaur and plans to strike whenever it gets intelligence about the movement of top Al Qaeda leaders.

Given these developments and reports emerging from the US and UK, Pakistan needs to be clear about what it wants to do. The policy, if there is one such, of selectively taking out Al Qaeda targets cannot be pushed interminably. The US is getting impatient. Pakistan has two options: either it can put the US on warning against intruding in Pakistani airspace, in which case the two sides could come close to an armed conflict in certain areas, or it can play straight ball with the US. The idea that elements from both policies can be wedded may have worked up to a point but is showing diminishing returns now. *