The following excerpt is from the full article posted on the World Politics Review website.
http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/print/8712
However, there remains a fundamental disconnect between this maturing view of Pakistan and the policy it informs. At the same time that U.S. officials have become increasingly candid about Pakistan's malignant role in the Afghan War, they appear determined to pursue the same failed strategies that perpetuate this behavior. Only months after issuing a report to Congress stating that Pakistan's refusal to confront militancy "is as much a political choice as it is a reflection of an under-resourced military prioritizing its targets," the White House conducted a war review in December that concluded the U.S. must provide Pakistan with more military, intelligence and economic support.
One need only look at the views of the government's own experts to expose the absurdity of this strategy -- a task made easier by the thousands of diplomatic cables made public by the whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks. In their own words, U.S. officials put the lie to the notion that Pakistan has the will to confront militants but remains in need of more capabilities and aid from America. Exposing this myth as false is the easy part. The real challenge is determining why Pakistan is playing this double game and what the U.S. can do about it....
....Islamabad has for years angrily denied the existence of the Taliban leadership in Pakistan, even when confronted with volumes of U.S. intelligence showing they operate openly from the Pakistani city of Quetta, in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan. "Those who say that Quetta Shura or Taliban leadership exists in Baluchistan are involved in a conspiracy to destabilize the region. No extremist elements are present in the region," says the inspector general of Pakistan's Frontier Corps. Yet when the Taliban's second-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, began a series of secret negotiations with the Afghan government in 2009, he was immediately arrested by Pakistani forces, who clearly knew the intimate details of his location and day-to-day activities. "We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us. We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians," a Pakistani security official explained to the New York Times.
The story demonstrates clearly that Pakistan suffers not from a lack of capability but a lack of will. This point was expressed most lucidly by the former vice chairman of the U.S. Army, retired four-star Gen. Jack Keane in an interview with PBS Newshour. "Make no mistake about it," said Keane. "The evidence is unequivocal that the government of Pakistan and the military leadership of Pakistan aids and abets [militant] sanctuaries. We have clear evidence to that [effect]. That's the reality. It's not a question of unable or unwilling. They willingly support those sanctuaries."
Keane's final point is worth restating: Pakistan's problem is not a passive lack of will. According to hundreds of news reports, intelligence intercepts, militant confessions and third-party investigations, Islamabad is actively supporting and sheltering militant groups. The intelligence community has resigned itself to this fact. A 2008 presentation to NATO by Peter Lavoy, now chairman of the National Intelligence Council, describes how the ISI "provides intelligence and financial support to insurgent groups to conduct attacks in Afghanistan against the Afghan government, [the U.S.-led coalition], and Indian targets." In a similar vein, a 2009 State Department cable by then-Ambassador Patterson warned that Pakistan will "dramatically increase support for Taliban groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan" if a pro-Indian -- meaning non-Taliban -- government takes power in Kabul....
...Dealing with Pakistan will always require unique sensitivity given its strategic location, its rivalry with India, its relationship with Islamist militants and, not least, its nuclear weapons arsenal. However, those complications are exponentially compounded by Pakistan's importance to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. Geography makes Pakistan vital to the massive challenge of supplying more than 100,000 troops with enough food, fuel and arms to sustain a decade of war. Most of those supplies enter Afghanistan via two road links through Pakistan, after being offloaded at the Pakistani port of Karachi. The U.S. has doggedly pursued alternative logistics routes into Afghanistan, but even with the establishment of a Northern Distribution Network through Russia and Central Asia, and the airlift of sensitive military equipment and fuel, the Pakistani road links still account for at least half of all supplies. And it is improbable that share will be reduced much further.
Islamabad also has others means of leverage over the U.S. war effort. It could curtail the CIA's controversial unmanned aerial drone campaign, which is conducted from inside Pakistan; stop patrolling the already porous Afghanistan-Pakistan border; or cut off existing intelligence cooperation. Indeed, Pakistan has threatened such actions in the past, and twice shut the border -- in September 2008 and September 2010 -- to NATO supply trucks to protest crossborder raids into Pakistani territory. The risk that Pakistan may resort to such countermeasures has heightened in the aftermath of the incident surrounding Raymond Davis, a CIA contractor who was detained on Jan. 27, 2011, in Lahore after shooting and killing two Pakistanis he alleged were trying to rob him. Davis was released months later after a grueling diplomatic spat between Washington and Islamabad, but the affair has sent intelligence cooperation to an all-time low. In the months since Davis' release, Pakistan's leadership has grown more vocal in publicly calling for an end to the drone strikes entirely. CIA Director Leon Panetta has rejected that demand, insisting the strikes were a part of his "fundamental responsibility." However, the reality remains that Pakistan has a potent set of sticks at its disposal should it choose to brandish them.
In short, Washington is hamstrung and facing a terrible dilemma: confront Pakistan forcefully and risk suddenly and critically undermining the Afghan war effort, or continue to play the friendly benefactor while allowing Islamabad to gradually undermine the war effort. Most everywhere else in the world this is known as blackmail; in Washington it is called "strategic partnership."...