The Boston Globe
GLOBE EDITORIAL Pakistan, the limited partner
March 1, 2007
BOTH PRESIDENT BUSH and Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, have spoken of the strategic partnership between their two countries. Since Musharraf took power in a military coup and presides over a regime that may be described as, at best, a severely compromised democracy, the primary basis for that strategic affiliation is the fight against Al Qaeda. So it was a sign that the US-Pakistan partnership is under stress when Vice President Cheney, accompanied by the deputy director of the CIA, flew to Islamabad Monday to meet with Musharraf. Indeed, Musharraf's office let it be known that Cheney "expressed US apprehensions of regrouping of Al Qaeda in the tribal areas and called for concerted efforts in countering the threat."
Cheney's visit coincides with hints that Bush is preparing to warn Musharraf that the Democratic majority in Congress may cut US aid to Pakistan unless he cracks down on Al Qaeda training camps in the tribal areas and Taliban fighters crossing into Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda's revival in North Waziristan has set off alarm bells because British citizens of Pakistani descent have been visiting Al Qaeda's camps there. Their Commonwealth passports facilitate entry into Canada, with its relatively porous US border. At the same time, Taliban fighters armed with roadside bombs are preparing a spring offensive in Afghanistan. Should a second Al Qaeda terrorist atrocity within the United States coincide with a return of the Taliban, two signal accomplishments of the Bush-Cheney team -- toppling the Taliban and uprooting Al Qaeda from Afghanistan -- would be undone.
Nevertheless, that team has little choice but to tread softly with Musharraf. It is true that the deal he made last September with tribal elders in the frontier provinces is not working. After the retreat of the Pakistani military, cross-border attacks into Afghanistan did not cease, foreign terrorists were not disarmed, and the Talibanization of the region was not reversed. But if Musharraf acts too forcefully against the Pashtun tribal groups, he risks a political backlash and perhaps even an Islamist coup. Threatening as the current situation is, having an Islamist regime ruling a nuclear-armed Pakistan would be far worse.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said this week: "The Pakistani leadership knows that Al Qaeda would like nothing better than to destabilize Pakistan and to use Pakistan as the base rather than Afghanistan for its operations." Musharraf should complete the purging of his intelligence agency, ISI, so he can use it to infiltrate Al Qaeda's camps, turn the tribes against the foreigners, and sabotage terrorist operations.
This policy promises no immediate gratification, but would avoid the disasters sure to come from US bombing runs or special forces' raids into Pakistan.
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