The Times of India
US frets over Pak's deal with Taliban 18 Feb 2009, 0145 hrs IST, Chidanand Rajghatta, TNN
WASHINGTON: The Obama administration's yet to be formulated policy on Pakistan and Afghanistan is already being tested after Islamabad's defiant move to make another peace deal with the Taliban amid mounting US concern and frustration.
Both US and NATO officials have expressed disquiet about the latest ''peace'' deal in Swat, the kind which they say has in the past given Taliban and Al Qaeda elements space and time to regroup in Waziristan and other parts of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan.
US response to the rebellious Pakistani move has been muted given the upcoming review of Washington's Af-Pak policy, but on a four-country Asia visit to China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made no secret of American unease.
Washington is studying the agreement and trying to understand the Pakistani government's ''intention and the actual agreed-upon language,'' Clinton told reporters on Tuesday in Tokyo, the first stop.
However, she added that ''activity by the extremist elements in Pakistan poses a direct threat to the government of Pakistan as well as to the security of the United States, Afghanistan and a number of other nations not only in the immediate region.''
But rights groups, NGOs, and think-tanks, were more direct in expressing a sense of foreboding about a prospective takeover of Pakistan by the Taliban, which they said the deal presaged. Many saw it as Islamabad ceding territory to the extremists and abdicating its responsibility to the people of Swat, many of whom are opposed to the Taliban and their extreme version of Islam.
''The government is reneging on its duty to protect the human rights of people from Swat Valley by handing them over to Taliban insurgents,'' said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director. ''Previously the government has launched indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks against the Taliban that have mostly harmed civilians. Now the human rights of these civilians will be in jeopardy if they live under Taliban laws.''
Belated noises from Islamabad that the deal was at the behest of the people of Swat are being met with skepticism in the overseas Pakistani community, the media, and the think tank community, all safe from the Taliban's guns. ''Pakistan gives in to terrorists,'' raged Campbell Brown, a CNN anchor. On the blog American Thinker, one commentator remarked, ''That swirling sound you hear is Pakistan going down the drain...''
Pakistan's move comes amid a massive trust deficit between Washington and Islamabad, and just days ahead of a visit here by the country's army chief Pervez Kiyani, who was once seen as a hand-picked U.S ally, but is now regarded as a two-faced patron of terror, much the way his predecessor Pervez Musharraf is now being characterised.
Both Musharraf and Kiyani, and indeed the Pakistani military, have been exposed as duplicitous in a recent book called ''The Inheritance'' by New York Times reporter David Sanger in which he cites U.S intelligence phone taps that show Pakistani military's double-dealing.
In one telling excerpt, Sanger describes a telephone-tap transcript passed to Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence in May 2008, in which Kiyani is heard referring to the warlord terrorist Jalaluddin Haqqani as ''a strategic asset.'' Washington later intercepted calls from Pakistani military units to Haqqani, warning him of an impending military operation designed to prove to the US that Islamabad was tackling the militant threat.
''They must have dialled 1-800-HAQQANI'' a source tells Sanger. "]It was something like, 'Hey, we're going to hit your place in a few days, so if anyone important is there, you might want to tell them to scram''' The intercept was apparently the clue that led the CIA to uncover evidence of collusion between ISI and Haqqani in the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul -- an act that would put Kiyani in the dock.
-- My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty. - Jorge Louis Borges