DIVERGENCES

Yesterdays New York Times has a story that hints at divergences between the US and Pakistan in the war on terror in Afghanistan. Unnamed Pakistani intelligence officials are reported as having said that Pakistan had concerns that the US operational surge in Afghanistan could raise the pressures on Pakistan—particularly in the Baluchistan area where the troop strength was nowhere near what it was in FATA. They are also quoted as saying that perceptions differed over the threat from India and therefore Pakistan could not move troops from the east to the west. Pakistan has often indicated that the subversive activity in Baluchistan is from Afghanistan and that India is involved because it wants to create leverage in Kashmir. Lately Indians have been saying that activity in Kashmir is picking up again.

The US thinks that a body called the ‘Quetta Shura’ runs the Taliban operations in Afghanistan from Baluchistan and this ‘shura’ is tolerated by Pakistan as it poses no threat to Pakistan unlike the local Taliban in FATA and Swat. The US Secretary of State said in India that the ‘perpetrators of 9/11 were in Pakistan’. This was countered officially in Pakistan by a Foreign Office spokesman who said that they were in Afghanistan. The perception in Pakistan is that the US operations in Southern Afghanistan are not achieving success and now that sanctuaries in FATA cannot be blamed for the lack of success because of Pakistan military operations the US is talking of the ‘shura’ in Baluchistan. Over the last two weeks casualties have been high in Afghanistan and four aircraft have been lost raising the specter of ground to air weapons in Taliban hands. If true this could increase the scale of operations significantly.

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