WASHINGTON (AFP) - US officials are hailing a new spirit of cooperation with Pakistan against the Taliban, but many remain sceptical whether its powerful spy agency has made a clean break with Islamic hardliners.
Agents from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) reportedly joined US spies in a recent operation that captured Afghan Taliban military commander Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in the Pakistani metropolis of Karachi.
Senior US general David Petraeus, who heads the Central Command, visited Islamabad on Tuesday and hailed "important breakthroughs" in Pakistan.Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that Pakistanis had come to regard Islamic extremists as a "direct threat to their state's survival" and also pointed to its military offensive in tribal areas.
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| Pakistani policewomen stand alert on a street in Karachi. AFP |
"I'm actually quite pleased to see the very vigorous response coming forth," Clinton testified before the House Appropriations Committee.President Barack Obama has put a high priority on nuclear-armed Pakistan as he sends thousands more troops to Afghanistan in a bid to root out Islamic extremism.
While most US officials believe President Asif Ali Zardari is sincere in opposing Islamists, they have doubted whether his civilian government can rein in ISI elements sympathetic to the Taliban.
Lisa Curtis, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation think-tank, said that while Pakistan may be responding in part to US pressure, it likely also wants to ensure its role in any settlement in Afghanistan.
"Given Pakistan's long track record of support to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan and India, it is too early to determine whether the most recent arrests signal a permanent reversal of its past policies, or merely a tactical shift to demonstrate its leverage in the region," she said.
Pakistani author Ahmed Rashid, considered an authority on the Taliban, suspected Baradar's arrest was an accident. He said ISI agents may have raided a meeting at the CIA's urging, not knowing it would net such a senior figure."Much of the American press has been hyping that this reflects a huge change in strategic policy for Pakistan," Rashid said. "I don't think that kind of strategic shift has really happened within the military or the ISI."
The ISI helped create the Taliban, which imposed a harsh version of Islam in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and sheltered Osama bin Laden.
In a newly published memoir, Abdul Salam Zaeef, who was Taliban-ruled Afghanistan's ambassador to Pakistan, related how the head of the ISI cried when telling him he would break off support following September 11.
"We both know that an attack on Afghanistan from the United States of America seems more and more likely. We want to assure you that you will not be alone in this jihad against America. We will be with you,'" Zaeef quoted ISI chief General Mahmud Ahmad as telling him.In the book, "My Life With the Taliban," Zaeef was harshly critical of Pakistan's then military ruler Pervez Musharraf, calling him a "secular man who does not believe in religion in his heart."
But despite close cooperation with the ISI, Zaeef said the spy agency also kept ties with Taliban rivals with an ultimate goal of exerting power in Pakistan's northern neighbour and blunting influence of rival India."The ISI extended its roots deep into Afghanistan like a cancer puts down roots in the human body; every ruler of Afghanistan complained about it, but none could get rid of it," he wrote.
Daniel Markey, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who recently visited Pakistan, said Baradar's arrest may show the fruits of the cooperation between the CIA and ISI on an operational level.
"This is not bad news; this is largely good news," he quoted informed people in Pakistan as saying. "But they certainly weren't willing to say this was a major breakthrough." |
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