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Obama, Pakistan and Mullah Omar

  Why Islamabad resists going after Quetta shura

 LAHORE: No matter how many troops President Obama orders to Afghanistan, victory will also require a surge across the Pakistan border that the Taliban and al Qaeda-but not American GIs-cross easily. The President knows this, but he hasn’t made Pakistan’s help any easier to obtain by signalling his intention to draw down a mere year after his surge troops arrive in Afghanistan.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Pakistan has slowly expanded its cooperation this year as its public and military have awakened to the threat from their own Islamist militants after a spate of terrorist attacks, including on the military headquarters in Rawalpindi. Long portrayed as noble bearded mountain fighters in Pakistan’s press, the Islamists are at last seen as an existential threat to Islamabad and Lahore. And this year the military has pushed the Pakistani Taliban from the Swat Valley and South Waziristan and, in contrast with past offensives, hasn’t for now ceded back the ground in a misconceived truce. This is progress.

But so far the generals have refused to take on other Islamists they don’t view as a danger and have long cultivated as strategic assets-that is, the Afghan Taliban. This means the Taliban government in exile in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, and Afghan insurgents loyal to the ailing Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Siraj based in North Waziristan. The so-called Quetta shura is led by deposed Taliban leader and Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar, who fled in 2001 and now directs the fighting in southern Afghanistan from Quetta. The Haqqani network is the largest insurgent group in eastern Afghanistan.

We’re told that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, in a private letter to Mr. Obama earlier this month, promised to take the fight to North Waziristan and Baluchistan. Merely to have a Pakistani politician acknowledge the existence of the Quetta shura counts as progress. The Pakistanis are reluctant to arrest their longtime proxies, Haqqani or Omar, but they could at least disrupt their headquarters and make it harder to operate from Pakistan.

As ever, the final decision rests with the Pakistan military led by General Ashfaq Kayani. According to a story in the New York Times, he has resisted the entreaties and told the U.S. that his troops have their hands too full with their own Pakistani Taliban to expand their operations.

Courtesy: The Post

1 thought on “Obama, Pakistan and Mullah Omar”

  1. The solution is clear and simple …. bomb Pakistan back to the stone age … which Obama is eventually going to do in the years ahead…….. !

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