South Asia Security Monitor: No. 260

PAKISTAN PLAYS A TRIPLE GAME…
U.S. officials applauded Pakistan earlier this year when its security forces arrested several high-ranking members of the Afghan Taliban, including the group’s number three, Abdul Ghani Baradar. Washington cheered Pakistan for breaking with its past policy of indifference or even active support for the militant group. However, Pakistani officials speaking to the New York Times have now confirmed that skeptics of those operations had reason to be suspicious: Pakistan only targeted and arrested Taliban members that were seeking a peace deal with the Afghan government. Interviews with Pakistani and U.S. intelligence officials have since revealed that Islamabad is concerned only with serving as kingmaker when the fate of Afghanistan is decided and was annoyed that Taliban members sought to “go around” Pakistan and negotiate a peace deal with the Karzai regime in Afghanistan directly. “We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” a Pakistani security official told the NY Times. “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.” The Taliban leader Baradar, meanwhile, is now “living comfortably in a safe house of Pakistan’s intelligence agency.” According to the security official, “he’s relaxing.” (New York Times August 22, 2010)

…AS THE U.S. SCALES BACK PRESSURE ON ISLAMABAD
As Pakistan’s faux crackdown on the Taliban is coming into focus, the U.S. military has admitted it has stopped “lobbying” Islamabad to crack down on the area of Pakistan’s tribal areas that serves as a stronghold for militants fighting the Coalition and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. U.S. intelligence has long identified North Waziristan as the largest safe haven for the Taliban and the Haqqani network, a ruthless militant group with links to al Qaeda. Washington has pressured Islamabad to root out militants in the region for years, to no avail. Now the military has decided the effort is “counterproductive,” as elements of Pakistan’s intelligence serves “are continuing to protect the Haqqani network to help it retain influence in Afghanistan once the U.S. military eventually leaves the country.” Pakistan has launched some “surgical” raids into North Waziristan and the U.S. has carried out an intensifying campaign of unarmed aerial drone strikes in there, ostensibly with Pakistan’s cooperation. However, the targets have mostly belonged to the Pakistani Taliban, which threatens Islamabad but plays a small role in Afghanistan. (Wall Street Journal August 13, 2010)

AQ TAKES A BACKSEAT IN AFGHANISTAN
Although al Qaeda garners frequent headlines in discussions of the U.S. war in Afghanistan, evidence is emerging that al Qaeda’s role in the actual fighting is surprisingly marginal. The Wikileaks documents, a volume of classified intelligence reports on the Afghan war revealed by the whistleblower website Wikileaks, record five years of the war effort from 2004 to 2009 in meticulous detail, yet generally make only rare and passing references to al Qaeda. In contrast to the hands-on role al Qaeda played on the battlefields of Iraq, military officials say al Qaeda’s strategy in Afghanistan centers largely on training, intelligence, and propaganda. An unclassified briefing by Maj . Gen. Michael Flynn presented last December noted that al Qaeda and its ranks of foreign fighters are often seen as a “handicap” by the Taliban. In Iraq, Sunni insurgents became alienated by al Qaeda, a group they saw as a foreign force trying to hijack their nationalist insurgency. (Washington Post August 23, 2010)

PENTAGON REPORT TOUCHES ON INDIA-CHINA CONFLICT
The Pentagon’s Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China has raised a stir in India by highlighting the placement of advanced Chinese missiles near India’s border. The Pentagon report notes that China has moved medium range CSS-5 ballistic missiles to its border areas, replacing aging, liquid-fuelled CSS-3 missiles. The report also noted that China is engaged in “massive road and rail infrastructure development along the Sino-Indian border” and that such activity, while mainly geared toward economic development, “also support[s] PLA operations.” In response, the Indian Defence Ministry said it was considering deploying the 2,000km-range Agni-II and 350km-range Prithvi III surface to surface ballistic missiles. In India’s lower house of parliament, the issue was raised by Reman Deka, a BJP MP who insisted India had not “forgotten the 1962 war” with China, while in the upper house, Congress MP Ashwini Kumar compared India’s $32 billion defence budget to China’s $150 billion. “It is high time that rising India stops being apologetic about its need to increase its defence expenses.” (Hindustan Times August 24, 2010; Brahmand August 17, 2010; Press Trust of India August 19, 2010)