Zardari on notice, as US courts Sharif

With the Pakistani Taliban gaining strength dramatically, relations between the US and Pakistan are badly frayed.

As American confidence in president Asif Ali Zardari’s government wanes, the Obama administration is reaching out more directly to his chief political rival Nawaz Sharif.

According to sources in Foggy Bottom, President Obama’s special envoy Richard Holbrooke is constantly on the phone with Zardari and now Sharif. The New York Times on Saturday reported, “American officials have long held Sharif at arm’s length because of his close ties to Islamists in Pakistan, but some Obama administration officials now say those ties could be useful in helping Zardari’s government to confront the stiffening challenge by Taliban insurgents.” 

The move also reflects the heightened concern in the Obama administration about the survivability of the Zardari government. Washington is notorious for trying to engineer domestic Pakistani politics.

Administration officials, however, hastened to point out to the NYT that no one in the Obama administration is trying to broker an actual power-sharing agreement between Zardari and Sharif. But they say that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Holbrooke have both urged Zardari and Sharif to look for ways to work together, seeking to capitalise on Sharif’s appeal among the country’s Islamist groups.

Unnoticed by the news media, the head of Pakistan’s ISI, Ahmad Shuja Pasha, flew to Washington last week to meet with CIA Director Leon Panetta. The US media said Washington wants the Pakistani Army and ISI to adopt a more aggressive counterterrorism approach and to move in and clean out the more hard-core areas of jihadi activity.

US army commanders lament that the army under Ashfaq Parvez Kayani is still mostly focused on India as the main strategic threat. US-based experts believe that elements of Pakistan’s powerful military and intelligence are defying an increasingly weak Zardari.

“The problem of Talibanisation is beyond the blocking capacity of constabulary forces,” said Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center, and the author of Better Safe than Sorry, the Ironies of Living with the Bomb.     

“Taliban irregulars will continue to intimidate and strangle settled areas within Pakistan unless their advance is contested by elements of the Pakistan Army. The Army, which has been trained and equipped to fight Hindus and not fellow Muslims, is understandably reluctant to engage in this contest unless and until it has the backing of Pakistan’s major political parties. This requires a much more widespread public recognition of the threat posed to Pakistan by obscurantists carrying Kalashnikovs and grenade launchers,” said Krepon. 

As Pakistan has begun to sink, a string of top US officials have made a beeline to India for discussions. Obama has put a new focus on rooting out extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan in his first 100 days, but not everyone is convinced he will get desired results.

Brahma Chellaney warned in The Spectator that, “The US military can never win in Afghanistan, or even secure a ticket out of that country, without first dismantling the Pakistani military’s sanctuaries and sustenance infrastructure for the Taliban and other state-reared terror groups such as LeT and JeM.”