Al Qaeda Is Winning a War by Other Means

KARACHI -- Al-Qaeda's grand strategy is based on a simple notion -- given the American cowboy mentality, if the United States is confronted, it will react in an extreme manner.

Hence, with the small military successes of the Taliban in Afghanistan, al-Qaeda, through its media campaigns, has created a sense of American failures on the battlefield and challenged the ego of the world's superpower with its rhetoric.

The response of the George W Bush administration has been as expected, with a renewed effort to go after al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, even at the cost of isolation within the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and at the cost of alienating its frontline ally Pakistan, which is seriously divided over its role in prosecuting the "war on terror".

Islamabad was stunned by President George W Bush's speech at the U.S. National Defense University on Tuesday in which he named Pakistan as one of the major battlegrounds in the fight against terrorism and that the U.S. has stepped up raids into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan to attack militants.

On Wednesday there was another shock in the form of a detailed roadmap of American strategy outlined by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, during an address to the U.S. Congress. The key element of this is the conviction that the only way to win in Afghanistan is to open a new war theater in Pakistan.

The speech was in fact a tacit admission of the failure in Afghanistan seven years after the Taliban were ousted, and Mullen conceded that the U.S. was "running out of time" to win the war in Afghanistan and that simply sending in more troops would not guarantee victory.

"In my view, these two nations [Pakistan and Afghanistan] are inextricably linked in a common insurgency that crosses the border between them," he said, adding that he planned "to commission a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region, one that covers both sides of the border".

On Thursday, the U.S.'s all-weather partner, Britain, supported the U.S.'s recommendations, but NATO clarified its position that it had nothing to do with American policies and its mandate was restricted to the Afghan borders.

Bush is reported to have secretly approved orders in July allowing U.S. special forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan, and the Pakistani leadership was taken on board. Pakistani ambassador to Washington Husain Haqqani assured the U.S. that the Pakistan People's Party-led government would support the policy. This was further reinforced during Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gillani's visit to Washington.

Nevertheless, the issue has become a litmus test for the Pakistani security forces, which are now obliged to follow the U.S.'s dotted lines in conducting military operations in the tribal areas, despite the intense hostilities these create.

The latest offensive took place on Wednesday in Bajaur Agency on the border with Afghanistan this week where troops, supported by tanks and heavy artillery, are said by Pakistani officials to have killed 80 to 100 militants, including foreigners, with two soldiers killed. Militants use the tribal areas as bases for raids into Afghanistan. On Thursday, however, when the army sent in ground forces to secure the area, militants attacked their convoys and forced them back into their forts.

Pakistan's corps commanders began meetings on Thursday to discuss the situation. They realize they are unable to prevail against the militants in the long term, but they are under intense U.S. pressure to act. Army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiani has criticized the U.S. over this, even though he is well briefed by the U.S. on what is expected of Pakistan and of the U.S.'s cross-border intentions.

Kiani issued a statement saying that the rules of engagement with coalition forces were well defined and "within that, the right to conduct operations against the militants inside own territory is solely the responsibility of the respective armed forces".