Despite U.S. aid pledge, Pakistan plans no new offensives

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Despite U.S. aid pledge, Pakistan plans no new offensives
By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Friday, October 29, 2010

LAHORE, Pakistan — Despite the Obama administration's pleas last week at a top-level "strategic dialogue" and a new pledge of $2 billion in U.S. military aid, Pakistan has no near-term plans to launch new offensives in its tribal area to aid the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan, officials and analysts said Friday.

The focus of U.S. demands is North Waziristan, on the Afghan border, where Pakistan has provided sanctuary to the Haqqani network since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The Haqqani network is allied with the Afghan Taliban, which seeks the overthrow of the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai in Kabul. The U.S. government views Haqqani as dangerously close to al Qaida, whereas Islamabad apparently considers Haqqani a reliable ally that must be part of a political outcome in Afghanistan.

"The U.S. is pursuing a policy of isolating Haqqani," said Simbal Khan, an analyst at the Institute of Strategic Studies, a government-financed research center in Islamabad. "Pakistan wants to include all the border (insurgent) groups."

Pakistan sees Haqqani as a component of any final political deal, and due its share of power in any future government, but Washington thinks that the group is among the "irreconcilables," analysts said. Pakistan had backed the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, which ruled much of the country from the mid-1990s to 2001, and its relationship with Haqqani goes back to the 1970s.