ISLAMABAD – A former United States intelligence official has stressed onhow Pakistan has been the best counter-terrorism partner “in many ways”.
In an interview with The New Yorkerlink>,theofficial said “Nobody had taken more bad guys off the battlefield than thePakistanis.”
The writer cites a 2004 visit by then US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeldto Pakistan, handing a list of suspects to President General PervezMusharraf and conveying US President George W Bush’s “bewilderment andannoyance that most of the terrorists on the list were suspected of hidingout in Pakistan.”
The matter was looked into by the general himself, a participant in thesaid meeting told The New Yorker. Within a month, one of the top names onthe list was arrested by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
While the US appreciates the military intelligence for going all outagainst ‘certain’ terrorists, it has been accusing Pakistan of supportingothers. “It’s frustrating. Our talking points have been identical for thelast fifteen years: ‘You need to get tough on terrorism, and you need toclose the sanctuaries,’ ” one former intelligence official the newspaper.
But when it comes to al Qaeda, current and former US national securityadvisors believe the terrorist outfit’s operations in Pakistan do notrepresent the threat it once did. “The center of gravity for al Qaeda wasin the process of a fundamental shift from Pakistan to Syria,” said JoshuaGeltzer, the former senior director for counter-terrorism on Obama’snational-security council.
Speaking to The New Yorker, Joshua White, a former national-securitycouncil adviser in the Obama Administration stressed that while the“outstanding list of al Qaeda-affiliated figures is small. But the Haqqanilist is moving in the other direction.” According to White, when asked topressure Haqqanis, Pakistan was “at times minimally responsive, but wealways hit a wall.”
Although the White House seemed blind-slided by Trump’s tweets, theannouncement by the US State Department to suspend military-equipment aidechoed his stance. His national-security advisor HR McMaster also endorseda hardline stance against Islamabad – which the writer believes happenedafter McMaster saw a report titled “A New US Approach to Pakistan”by formerambassador to the US Husain Haqqani and Lisa Curtis, a research fellow atthe Heritage Foundation where they argued “Pakistan is not an Americanally.”
The publisher, however, highlights that the new hard-line approach is beingresisted by the Pentagon and State Department officials, who emphasise thatPakistan could cut off the land and air routes that the US uses to supplyAmerican forces in Afghanistan. According to the writer, a senior USAdministration official disputed claims that the Defence and StateDepartments were not part of developing the new approach, and thecharacterisation of Curtis and Haqqani’s paper as the ‘blueprint’ for thepolicy change. “There is a robust interagency process,” the official said.“There are many people involved in the policy process. There is adeliberative process.”
Speaking to The New Yorker, one former intelligence official sympathisedwith Trump’s position on Islamabad but pointed out that “even if Pakistanbecomes the most benign country in the world, Afghanistan is not going tobe Switzerland,” he said.