US positive about Pakistan’s Taliban fight

President Barack Obama sought on Wednesday to strike an optimistic tone about Pakistan’s counterinsurgency operations, to relieve political pressure on president Asif Ali Zardari, who has launched a belated military offensive against the Taliban.

Acknowledging that “the road ahead will be difficult”, Obama said he had made a “lasting commitment” to not only defeat extremism in Pakistan and Afghanistan but to salvage their shaky democracies.

“No matter what happens, we will not be deterred,” Obama said on Wednesday, with Zardari and Afghan president Hamid Karzai standing by his side at the White House, after a three-way huddle.

“We are helping Pakistan combat insurgency within its borders, including $400 million in immediate assistance that we are seeking from Congress, which will help the government as it steps up efforts against extremists,” said Obama.

The military’s recent strikes against the Taliban, though welcome, don’t signal a Pakistan policy shift. Islamic radicals are still seen as strategic assets in some barracks. US officials have urged Zardari to move troops, including the 11th infantry division, from Lahore and the east, where the army has been preoccupied with India, towards the western border, where the army is battling the Taliban.

The New York Times said Pakistani officials told their US counterparts that they were moving many troops towards the border with Afghanistan, which US officials described as “encouraging”. But the newspaper quoted Obama’s senior aides as saying that Pakistan’s military is ill-suited to carry out the kind of counterinsurgency operations needed to end the Taliban fighters’ control of Swat.

“They will displace the Taliban for a while. But there will also be a lot of displaced persons and a lot of collateral damage. They won’t be able to sustain those effects or extend the gains geographically,” said a senior administration official, who is closely following Pakistan’s military operations in Swat.

However, national security adviser James Jones said Zardari had assured the president he was focused on the Taliban threat, noting that was “very encouraging”.

The Americans, who have honed counterinsurgency skills in Iraq, are offering training for two battalions of Pakistani troops at their base in Kuwait. The Obama administration is also finalising an ambitious aid package.

However, this is not a slam-dunk, as many in Capitol Hill believe Pakistan is a lost cause. The house is seeking to attach strong conditions to a bill that would authorise $7.5 billion in non-military assistance to Pakistan. It wants Islamabad to keep up its side of the bargain and crush Islamic terrorist groups and the Taliban.

“Pakistan’s pants are on fire,” New York Democrat Gary Ackerman said bluntly while advertising his unhappiness with the Taliban incursions.

A 90-minute meeting that Zardari had with the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday did not help his cause in ensuring quick delivery of promised US aid.

“He did not present a coherent strategy for the defeat of insurgency,” Representative Howard Berman, a California Democrat who is the committee’s chairman told US media.

“I had a sense of what they are doing today. I did not have a sense of what they plan to do tomorrow.”