LAHORE – Observing that the CIA did not trust the ISI because it had demonstrated repeatedly that it was “not trustworthy,” a top American daily said on Friday that Pakistan needed to be a given an ultimatum along the same lines as it was immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
“In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration famously sent Secretary of State Colin Powell to Islamabad to explain that the US was going to act forcefully to protect itself, and that Pakistan had to choose whose side it was on. It’s time to present Pakistan with the same choice again,” The Wall Street Journal said.
The newspaper said relations between Washington and Islamabad historically had never been easy, and now they seem to have reached something of a watershed, but the fault “is not all one-sided”. It said congressional potentates had made a habit of criticising Pakistan publicly even when it was cooperating with the US and deploying thousands of troops to fight the Taliban, and promised American aid had been haltingly disbursed.
However, the Journal said, Pakistan’s behaviour had not exactly been exemplary either. “Pakistan’s spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, has longstanding links to terrorist groups such as Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani network,” it said. “The government and military have made no move against the Quetta Shura, the operational nerve center in Pakistan of Taliban leader Mullah Omar,” the daily said, adding that Islamabad’s cooperation with Washington had also been “double-edged”.
“The government of President Asif Ali Zardari allowed the US to increase the number of drone strikes. Yet it has made a point of complaining about them publicly, playing a particularly cheap form of politics to shore up its waning popularity with a domestic constituency smart enough to see through the hypocrisy,” it said.
“The Pakistan Army was also happy to cooperate with the US when the targets of the strikes were members of the Taliban who had their sights set on Islamabad. But the army has been less cooperative when the targets were the Afghan Taliban based in Pakistan or the ISI’s terrorist partners,” the newspaper said.
No end to CIA ops in Pakistan
WASHINGTON – The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has no plans to suspend “operations” in Pakistan against terror suspects despite objections from leaders in Islamabad, a US official said on Thursday.
Pakistan has criticised missile strikes by US drone aircraft against militants in the country but CIA Director Leon Panetta has told intelligence officials that he has a duty to prevent attacks on the US, the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
“Panetta has been clear with his Pakistani counterparts that his fundamental responsibility is to protect the American people, and he will not halt operations that support that objective,” the official said. AFP
