Pakistan balks at pursuing anti-U.S. extremist groups

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Despite growing U.S. military losses in Afghanistan, Pakistan still refuses to target the extremist groups on its soil that are the biggest threat to the American-led mission there, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan told McClatchy Newspapers.

Eight years after Washington and Islamabad agreed to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida, Pakistan has "different priorities" from the U.S., Anne Patterson said in a recent interview. Pakistan is "certainly reluctant to take action" against the leadership of the Afghan insurgency.

As the war in Afghanistan becomes more brutal - and as its political and popular support wanes in the U.S. - Pakistan's refusal to act in support of American goals is undermining the U.S. effort to deny al-Qaida and other extremist groups a sanctuary in Afghanistan.

The most effective Taliban fighters, the Haqqani network of veteran Afghan jihadist Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin, operate out of the North Waziristan region of Pakistan's tribal territory. Taliban founder Mullah Mohammad Omar is widely thought to be based in the western Pakistani city of Quetta, from which he directs the insurgency through the so-called "Quetta Shura," or leadership council.

Experts on the Afghanistan war think that military progress and political stability won't be possible there unless the government roots out the havens the insurgents have established in western Pakistan. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based research center, concluded in its annual review this week that "Pakistan remained the biggest source of instability for Afghanistan."

Pakistani officials, however, say that their country's priority should be to tackle Islamic militants who threaten Pakistan. They charge that the U.S. is blind to Pakistan's concerns over traditional foe India as it presses Pakistan to redeploy forces from its eastern border with India to the western border with Afghanistan.

The disagreement between Washington and Islamabad was illustrated starkly this week when former President Pervez Musharraf acknowledged in a television interview that he'd diverted American military equipment that was meant to fight the Taliban in western Pakistan for use against India. "One doesn't care who one crosses," Musharraf told Pakistan's Express News.

In testimony Tuesday before Congress, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, said: "The Pakistani military ... consider their principal threat - their existential threat - to be Indian, not these extremists."

The U.S. has lavished praise on the Pakistani army for the offensive it launched in April against Taliban militants in Pakistan. The operation marked the first serious sign of determination to deal with armed extremists, but it hasn't extended to groups in Pakistan that fight exclusively in Afghanistan. Mullen said that Pakistan's recent anti-terrorism actions "had a big impact" although "it hasn't been perfect."

While Pakistan and the U.S. agree on targeting al-Qaida and, more recently, the Taliban Movement of Pakistan ("Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan"), they strongly disagree over action against Afghan insurgents operating from Pakistani territory.

"Where we differ, of course, is the treatment of the groups who are attacking our troops in Afghanistan. And that comes down to Haqqani and Gul Bahadur and Nazir, to a lesser extent Hekmatyar, and yes, of course, there are differences there," Patterson said, naming some of the most prominent extremist leaders. "We have a very candid dialogue about this with some frequency." Link...