Pakistan's America Problem

By Zia Mian, Foreign Policy in Focus. Posted July 12, 2008.

The United States is struggling with Pakistan. The problem is manifold, encompassing a resurgent al-Qaeda, a Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan with bases in Pakistan, and Islamist militancy in Pakistan's tribal areas and North-West Frontier Province.

But most damaging of all for the United States is that people in Pakistan overwhelming see the United States as the problem.

Al-Qaeda's Persistence

Seven years after the United States and its allies attacked Afghanistan and al-Qaeda leaders fled into Pakistan, the group continues to take refuge in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the senior most U.S. military position,told The Washington Post that

Al Qaeda is resurgent there, lives in the FATA. The leadership's there; we know that. They're planning against us and they present a clear and present danger to the United States of America based on what they did before and what they are still trying to do.

Mullen told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "the most likely near term attack on the United States will come from Al Qaeda via these safe havens."

The New York Times reported in June that "Officials say the new camps are smaller than the ones the group used prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired CIA officer estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several hundred three years ago."

These camps have grown despite the promise to crack down on al-Qaeda from General Pervez Musharraf who ruled the country until the election of a democratic government in February this year. The United States paid heavily for this promise. In June 2008, a Congressional Research Service analysis reported that the United States had given Pakistan nearly $11 billion in military and economic aid since 2002. Over 70% of this money was for military-related programs. Independent analysts who first revealed the scale of U.S. financial aid to Pakistan as part of the so-called "war on terror" argued that the $11 billion "has likely been matched, if not exceeded, by additional classified funds provided towards intelligence and covert military action."

The Taliban's Resurgence

The concern for the United States is not just the reconstitution of al-Qaeda and what that might mean for another attack on the United States. Of equal importance is the linked problem in Afghanistan of the Taliban fighters who come across the border to fight and return there when pursued by U.S. and NATO forces.

Monthly U.S. casualties in Afghanistan are now at the highest level since the U.S. invasion in 2001. More U.S. and NATO soldiers have been killed in the past two months in Afghanistan than in Iraq. There are now 32,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, the largest number since the invasion, and President Bush says "We're going to increase troops by 2009." There are reports that the U.S. aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln is now moving into position to add great airpower to support coalition forces in Afghanistan.

With the future of Pakistan in the balance, the United States is at a loss for a strategy. They had bet on General Musharraf and his fellow generals and lost. President Bush is reported to have told journalists that the biggest challenge for the next president will be Pakistan, not Iraq or Afghanistan. The temptation will be to use yet more force, to reach further and more often across the border, and attack al-Qaeda and Taliban militants in Pakistan even harder. But this will only serve to strengthen the perception that the United States is at war with Pakistan and inevitably inflict more civilian casualties.

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Zia Mian is a physicist with the Program on Science and Global Security at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and a columnist for Foreign Policy In Focus (online at www.fpif.org).