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Pakistan Woos Insurgent Group
Pakistan Woos Insurgent Group
Spy Agency Presses Haqqani Network to Talk Peace, While U.S. Calls for Attacks
Spy Agency Presses Haqqani Network to Talk Peace, While U.S. Calls for Attacks
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG
ISLAMABAD—Pakistan's intelligence service is pressing the Haqqani network of insurgents to join nascent Afghan peace talks, even as U.S. officials demand an offensive against the group, highlighting tensions between the two nations two weeks after the U.S. infuriated officials here with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
U.S. officials have threatened more raids could be launched unless Pakistan moves swiftly against militants such as the Haqqani network, which U.S. officials consider the bloodiest and most irreconcilable of the groups battling coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The U.S. says the Haqqani network is aided by Pakistan's spy service, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, and is closely allied with al Qaeda. Under the leadership of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the group has blown up Kabul supermarkets, stormed Afghan government buildings and assisted the al Qaeda suicide bomber who killed seven Central Intelligence Agency operatives in Afghanistan in 2009.
Yet Pakistan's spy service, known as the ISI, has resisted taking on the Haqqani network. It now wants the group to explore a role in Afghan peace talks, say Pakistani officials and tribal elders with ties to the group, suggesting Pakistan is unlikely to heed the U.S. warning that it must act soon.
A tribal elder from North Waziristan, who has contacts with Mr. Haqqani's inner circle—much of it made up of his brothers, uncles and his father, the group's founder—said the network has been spooked by an unrelenting campaign of CIA drone strikes and the death of bin Laden. It may be increasingly amenable to talks, the elder said.
In one indication the Haqqanis are worried, their compounds in North Waziristan's capital, Miran Shah, largely emptied out in the days following the bin Laden raid, the elder said.
American officials say Mr. Haqqani, who is based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, is a potential target for a raid like the one that killed bin Laden. But their preference would be for Pakistan to take action in North Waziristan similar to its military offensives against the Pakistan Taliban in other parts of the tribal areas.
U.S. officials say they hope to use Islamabad's embarrassment over failing to find bin Laden—he was killed in a house a short distance from the country's elite military academy—to press for tougher Pakistani action against the Haqqanis and other militant groups that are focused on attacking U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
To drive home the point, the officials have publicly warned that U.S. intelligence analysts are poring over the trove of hard drives, handwritten notes and other materials taken from bin Laden's house for evidence of Pakistani complicity in shielding him. If the Pakistanis want to avoid the fallout of any potential revelations, they "need to get ahead of us on this and show they're willing to work with us," said a senior U.S. official.
While U.S. officials say Washington would talk with anyone who is serious about striking a peace deal, they don't believe Mr. Haqqani fits the bill. The Haqqanis haven't been included in recent efforts to open talks with the main Taliban leadership, headed by Mullah Muhammad Omar, U.S. officials say.
"I don't see any evidence that makes me think Haqqani is a guy we're going to want to be talking to," said a U.S. official.
After years of privately voicing their suspicions, American officials now openly accuse Pakistan of giving the Haqqanis succor in hopes of using them to maintain their own influence—and combat that of rival India—in Afghanistan's future.
A Pakistani defense official denied his government gives any support to the Haqqanis and called talk of them as irredeemably violent players "unhelpful."
He and other officials here said they are happy to see bin Laden gone—despite their objections to the unilateral raid—and would help the U.S. catch bin Laden's assumed successor, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other al Qaeda leaders still believed to be in Pakistan.
On Tuesday, Pakistani forces caught a mid-level al Qaeda operative in the Arabian Sea port of Karachi with assistance from the U.S., Pakistani officials said.
But the Haqqanis represent a more vexing problem, the Pakistani defense official said. Unlike the Arabs and other foreigners who make up al Qaeda, the Haqqanis hail from the Pashtun Zadran tribe, part of the fabric of eastern Afghanistan and North Waziristan. They can't be "picked off willy-nilly by drone strikes," the official said.
He argued the Haqqanis ultimately have to be won over through talks, just like the negotiations that the U.S. is trying to open with the main Taliban movement, although American forces are fighting the insurgents at the same time.
The official said Pakistan would use whatever influence it had over the Haqqanis—which he insisted was minimal—to bring them to the table. The official said the effort was being led by the ISI. The ISI didn't respond to requests to comment.
But in one indication of the ISI's thinking, a senior ISI official once said in an interview that he believed the Haqqanis could one day be "a force for peace" in Afghanistan.
Copyright ©2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/wsjo004.html
ISLAMABAD—Pakistan's intelligence service is pressing the Haqqani network of insurgents to join nascent Afghan peace talks, even as U.S. officials demand an offensive against the group, highlighting tensions between the two nations two weeks after the U.S. infuriated officials here with the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
U.S. officials have threatened more raids could be launched unless Pakistan moves swiftly against militants such as the Haqqani network, which U.S. officials consider the bloodiest and most irreconcilable of the groups battling coalition forces in Afghanistan.
The U.S. says the Haqqani network is aided by Pakistan's spy service, the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, and is closely allied with al Qaeda. Under the leadership of Sirajuddin Haqqani, the group has blown up Kabul supermarkets, stormed Afghan government buildings and assisted the al Qaeda suicide bomber who killed seven Central Intelligence Agency operatives in Afghanistan in 2009.
Yet Pakistan's spy service, known as the ISI, has resisted taking on the Haqqani network. It now wants the group to explore a role in Afghan peace talks, say Pakistani officials and tribal elders with ties to the group, suggesting Pakistan is unlikely to heed the U.S. warning that it must act soon.
A tribal elder from North Waziristan, who has contacts with Mr. Haqqani's inner circle—much of it made up of his brothers, uncles and his father, the group's founder—said the network has been spooked by an unrelenting campaign of CIA drone strikes and the death of bin Laden. It may be increasingly amenable to talks, the elder said.
In one indication the Haqqanis are worried, their compounds in North Waziristan's capital, Miran Shah, largely emptied out in the days following the bin Laden raid, the elder said.
American officials say Mr. Haqqani, who is based in Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal area, is a potential target for a raid like the one that killed bin Laden. But their preference would be for Pakistan to take action in North Waziristan similar to its military offensives against the Pakistan Taliban in other parts of the tribal areas.
U.S. officials say they hope to use Islamabad's embarrassment over failing to find bin Laden—he was killed in a house a short distance from the country's elite military academy—to press for tougher Pakistani action against the Haqqanis and other militant groups that are focused on attacking U.S. forces in neighboring Afghanistan.
To drive home the point, the officials have publicly warned that U.S. intelligence analysts are poring over the trove of hard drives, handwritten notes and other materials taken from bin Laden's house for evidence of Pakistani complicity in shielding him. If the Pakistanis want to avoid the fallout of any potential revelations, they "need to get ahead of us on this and show they're willing to work with us," said a senior U.S. official.
While U.S. officials say Washington would talk with anyone who is serious about striking a peace deal, they don't believe Mr. Haqqani fits the bill. The Haqqanis haven't been included in recent efforts to open talks with the main Taliban leadership, headed by Mullah Muhammad Omar, U.S. officials say.
"I don't see any evidence that makes me think Haqqani is a guy we're going to want to be talking to," said a U.S. official.
After years of privately voicing their suspicions, American officials now openly accuse Pakistan of giving the Haqqanis succor in hopes of using them to maintain their own influence—and combat that of rival India—in Afghanistan's future.
A Pakistani defense official denied his government gives any support to the Haqqanis and called talk of them as irredeemably violent players "unhelpful."
He and other officials here said they are happy to see bin Laden gone—despite their objections to the unilateral raid—and would help the U.S. catch bin Laden's assumed successor, Ayman al Zawahiri, and other al Qaeda leaders still believed to be in Pakistan.
On Tuesday, Pakistani forces caught a mid-level al Qaeda operative in the Arabian Sea port of Karachi with assistance from the U.S., Pakistani officials said.
But the Haqqanis represent a more vexing problem, the Pakistani defense official said. Unlike the Arabs and other foreigners who make up al Qaeda, the Haqqanis hail from the Pashtun Zadran tribe, part of the fabric of eastern Afghanistan and North Waziristan. They can't be "picked off willy-nilly by drone strikes," the official said.
He argued the Haqqanis ultimately have to be won over through talks, just like the negotiations that the U.S. is trying to open with the main Taliban movement, although American forces are fighting the insurgents at the same time.
The official said Pakistan would use whatever influence it had over the Haqqanis—which he insisted was minimal—to bring them to the table. The official said the effort was being led by the ISI. The ISI didn't respond to requests to comment.
But in one indication of the ISI's thinking, a senior ISI official once said in an interview that he believed the Haqqanis could one day be "a force for peace" in Afghanistan.
Copyright ©2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
http://freedomsyndicate.com/fair0000/wsjo004.html
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