Some people have suggested that we have now in Pakistan is a kind of clan feud, with the army indiscriminately punishing the entire Mehsud tribe, and the tribe indiscriminately launching attacks on army personnel.
The basis for this is the sharp division between South Waziristan (which is now being attacked) and North Waziristan -- where the Haqqani network is located, and where most of the attacks on Afghanistan are staged from.
The David Rohde cite is priceless. You don't often get a NYT reporter embedded that deep.
IMHO, the title of this post is kind of intentionally misleading headline-feint you often see in professional foreign policy journals. On the face of it, the answer is pretty clear No. But you don't want to insult the guys who might hire you :-)
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/10/22/are_the_haqqanis_next_on_pakistans_hit_list
Are the Haqqanis next on Pakistan's hit list?
Thu, 10/22/2009
New York Times journalist David Rohde's account of his kidnapping and
subsequent escape from Taliban militants affiliated with the Haqqani
network in North Waziristan region of Pakistan makes for riveting
reading. It's an amazing story, and one has to admire Rohde's fortitude
and survival instincts during his seven-month ordeal.
Read all of it, but I just have one comment about this bit from the
epilogue:
My suspicions about the relationship between the Haqqanis and the
Pakistani military proved to be true. Some American officials told
my colleagues at The Times that Pakistan's military intelligence
agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI,
turns a blind eye to the Haqqanis' activities. Others went further
and said the ISI provided money, supplies and strategic planning to
the Haqqanis and other Taliban groups.
Pakistani officials told my colleagues that the contacts were part
of a strategy to maintain influence in Afghanistan to prevent India,
Pakistan's archenemy, from gaining a foothold. One Pakistani
official called the Taliban "proxy forces to preserve our
interests."
Meanwhile, the Haqqanis continue to use North Waziristan to train
suicide bombers and bomb makers who kill Afghan and American forces.
They also continue to take hostages.
We'll see how long this relationship holds, but if you need any
convincing that the ISI at least tacitly allows the Haqqani folks to do
their thing unmolested, consider this: To get to South Waziristan,
where the Pakistani Army is engaged in a fierce battle with the
Pakistani Taliban around the Makin area, which is dominated by the
Mehsud tribal grouping, some units had to drive through North
Waziristan. In fact, they drove right through the center of Miram Shah,
the regional capital and Haqqani stronghold where Rohde made his escape
-- and there was just one isolated IED attack along the way.
What does that tell us? At a minimum, it tells us that the powers that
be in North Waziristan are being very cooperative and not coming to the
Mehsuds' aid. And supposedly, the Haqqanis and their local allies, led
by another Pakistani Taliban leader named Hafiz Gul Bahadar, have
explicitly pledged not to interfere. The Pakistani military has struck
a number of much-criticized peace deals with Bahadar over the last few
years, and some say the security establishment in Rawalpindi is all too
happy to keep this relationship alive so long as the Haqqanis and
Bahadar only launch attacks in Afghanistan, not at home.
American officials have been hinting in recent weeks, however, that the
Pakistani military is simply tackling one challenge at a time -- the
Mehsuds -- and the Haqqanis may be next on their hit list. That's
certainly what AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke and Amb. Ann Patterson
seem to be telling Frontline, though one can detect a little daylight
between the two U.S. diplomats. In Holbrooke's words, the Pakistanis
"are quite clear in their own minds that Haqqani poses a threat to both
Afghanistan and Pakistan." Patterson says, "[W]e're working with them
on these, and I think they increasingly see these [other] groups as a
threat as well" -- but Pakistan is not willing to turn on them yet.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is still conducting airstrikes in North Waziristan,
which is still teeming with foreign militants and where it's widely
thought that Osama bin Laden has hidden out at one point or another
during the last few years. This is definitely a story to watch.
Blake Hounshell