[The strategy is emerging amid an increase in the pace of attacks
against Americans in Kabul, including a suicide attack on Saturday that killed
as many as 10 Americans and in which the Haqqanis are suspected . It is the
latest effort at brokering a deal with militants before the last of 33,000
American “surge” troops prepare to pull out of Afghanistan by September, and
comes as early hopes in the White House about having the outlines of a deal in
time for a multinational conference Dec. 5 in Bonn, Germany, have been all but
abandoned.]
By Eric Schmitt And David E. Sanger
 |
Jim Watson/Agence
France-Presse — Getty Images
Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke to the House Foreign
Affairs Committee last week about her trip to Afghanistan
and Pakistan.
|
WASHINGTON —
Just a month after accusing Pakistan’s spy agency of
secretly supporting the Haqqani terrorist
network, which has mounted attacks on Americans, the Obama administration is
now relying on the same intelligence service to help organize and kick-start
reconciliation talks aimed at ending the war in Afghanistan.
The revamped approach,
which Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called
“Fight, Talk, Build” during a high-level United States delegation’s visit to
Kabul and Islamabad this month, combines continued American air and ground
strikes against the Haqqani network and the Taliban with an insistence that
Pakistan’s Inter-Services
Intelligenceagency get them to the negotiating table.
But some elements of the
ISI see little advantage in forcing those negotiations, because they see the
insurgents as perhaps their best bet for maintaining influence in Afghanistan
as the United States reduces its presence there.
The strategy is emerging
amid an increase in the pace of attacks against Americans in Kabul, including a
suicide attack on Saturday that killed as many as 10 Americans and in which the
Haqqanis are suspected . It is the latest effort at brokering a deal with
militants before the last of 33,000 American “surge” troops prepare to pull out
of Afghanistan by September, and comes as early hopes in the White House about
having the outlines of a deal in time for a multinational conference Dec. 5 in
Bonn, Germany, have been all but abandoned.
But even inside the
Obama administration, the new initiative has been met with deep skepticism, in
part because the Pakistani government has developed its own strategy, one at
odds with Mrs. Clinton’s on several key points. One senior American official
summarized the Pakistani position as “Cease-fire, Talk, Wait for the Americans
to Leave.”
In short, the United
States is in the position of having to rely heavily on the ISI to help broker a
deal with the same group of militants that leaders in Washington say the spy
agency is financing and supporting.
“The Pakistanis see the
contradictions in the American approach,” said Shamila N. Chaudhary, a former
top Obama White House aide on Pakistan and Afghanistan. “The big question for
the administration is, What can the Pakistanis actually deliver? Pakistan is
holding its cards very closely.”
On Sunday, United States
intelligence officials deepened an investigation into what role, if any, the
Haqqani network played in the bombing in Kabul on Saturday.
Several current and
former American officials say the United States has tried this
bomb-them-to-the-bargaining-table approach before. In the 1990s, it helped
drive Serbian leaders to peace talks in Dayton, Ohio, but it has resulted in
little so far with the Afghan Taliban.
“I don’t think anyone
expects Secretary Clinton’s visit to produce reconciliation,” said Bruce O.
Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer and the author of “Deadly Embrace: Pakistan,
America, and the Future of the Global Jihad.” Mr. Riedel, who advocates a
policy of containment in Pakistan, added, “The deterioration of U.S.-Pakistan
relations is likely to continue.”
Senior Pakistani
officials say they are confused by a lack of clarity in the administration’s
long-term goals in Afghanistan, and are working with American officials to
hammer out specific plans after Mrs. Clinton’s visit. As an incentive, the
United States has offered Pakistan a prominent role in reconciliation talks.
But American officials have warned that they will take unilateral action if negotiations
fail.
Several administration
officials said they considered Mrs. Clinton’s trip to Kabul and Islamabad, from
Oct. 19 to 21, a success largely because it had happened at all.
In the months after the
killing of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil, talks were frozen, American
intelligence officers were denied visas, and the administration accused the ISI
of turning a blind eye to attacks on Americans launched from the country’s
tribal areas.
When Adm. Mike Mullen,
just days before his retirement last month as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, declared that the Haqqani network was “a veritable arm” of the Pakistani spy
service, President Obama and his aides were outraged, administration officials
said — not because they thought Admiral Mullen was wrong, but because his
remarks further inflamed the Pakistanis.
Mrs. Clinton’s trip was
intended to both re-establish ties and reiterate a strong message. She warned
Pakistan that the United States would act on its own if necessary to attack
extremist groups that use the country as a haven while they kill Americans.
To emphasize that point,
a flurry of C.I.A. drone strikes launched on Oct. 13-14 from
Afghanistan killed the third-ranking leader of the Haqqani network, near Miram
Shah in North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s tribal area.
Two other missile
volleys killed two senior operatives of Al Qaeda involved in overseas planning,
American officials said. On Thursday, American missile strikes killed five
members of a faction of the Pakistani Taliban.
But Mrs. Clinton, joined
by David H. Petraeus, the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not
use her meeting to insist, as she and other officials had in the past, that the
Pakistan military mount an offensive to root out the Haqqanis and other
militants that operate from sanctuaries in North Waziristan.
Instead, the
administration says, it is pressing the Pakistanis to provide intelligence on
the Haqqanis, arrest some of the group’s operatives and reduce ties to the
terrorist group — all steps well short of military action.
In its place, an
emerging American strategy aims to attack the Haqqanis on both sides of the
border. An eight-day NATO offensive this month involving 11,000 allied troops
and 25,000 Afghan security forces in seven provinces in eastern Afghanistan
killed or captured more than 200 Haqqani fighters and commanders, allied
officials said; the pressure on the Pakistani side is being generated almost
entirely by the drone strikes.
“That’s going to really
deter their ability to operate probably for some time, maybe into the winter
period,” Lt. Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, the second-ranking allied commander in
Afghanistan, said Thursday.
Mrs. Clinton also used
her meeting, according to officials familiar with it, to reassure the
Pakistanis that they would play a central role in any reconciliation talks.
“We’re at the point where Pakistanis have told us they’re going to squeeze the
Haqqani network,” a senior administration official said. “They’re satisfied
they’ve got a way forward on reconciliation. They’ve got a role to play.”
That means rekindling
talks with the Haqqanis that started in late August. That first exploratory
meeting was held secretly in the United Arab Emirates between a midlevel
American diplomat and Ibrahim Haqqani, a brother of the tribal network’s
patriarch. Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the head of the ISI, brokered the
meeting. American and Pakistan officials say little resulted from the session,
which came just two weeks before a 20-hour attack on the United States Embassy
in Kabul.
On Capitol Hill last
week, some lawmakers expressed skepticism about the administration’s approach
to the Haqqani network.
“So which is it, Madam
Secretary? Crack down or negotiate with the Haqqani network, or a little bit of
both?” asked Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican who
heads the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“It’s both,” Mrs.
Clinton said. “We want to fight, talk and build all at the same time. Part of
the reason for that is to test whether these organizations have any willingness
to negotiate in good faith.”
