WASHINGTON - The US intelligence
community's latest assessment of al-Qaeda and the
threat it poses to the homeland appears to have
both renewed questions about the wisdom of
invading Iraq and returned the spotlight to
increasingly strife-ridden Pakistan.
The
latest National Intelligence Estimate, a two-page
unclassified version of which was released in
Washington on Tuesday, found that al-Qaeda has
largely rebounded from its eviction from
Afghanistan nearly six years
ago and reconstituted both its central
organization and some of its training and
operational capacities, leading to a "heightened
threat environment" for the
United States itself.
According to the report, which represents
a consensus judgment of Washington's 16
intelligence agencies, the group's resurgence has
been made possible primarily by the "safe haven"
it has enjoyed in the tribal areas of western
Pakistan and also by its association with al-Qaeda
in Iraq, which has helped to "energize the broader
Sunni extremist community, [to] raise resources,
and to recruit and indoctrinate operatives".
Those conclusions were immediately seized
on by critics, including the Democratic leadership
in Congress, of the administration's anti-terror
strategy. They have long argued that the invasion
of Iraq in early 2003 not only diverted crucial
resources and attention from Afghanistan and
Pakistan, but also acted as an extraordinarily
effective recruitment tool for al-Qaeda and
like-minded militants.
"Iraq matters
because it has become a cause celebre and
because groups like al-Qaeda in Iraq and al-Qaeda
central exploit the image of the US being out to
occupy Muslim lands," Paul Pillar, a retired
senior Middle East analyst at the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), told the Washington
Post in an analysis titled "Intelligence puts
rationale for [Iraq] war on shakier ground".
As he did within the CIA before the
invasion, Pillar has argued that Washington's
military intervention in Iraq has actually fueled
radical Islamist forces, including al-Qaeda.
Indeed, the new estimate, the first on
al-Qaeda's potential threat to the United States
since the attacks of September 11, appears to have
revived a long-standing debate over the
administration's contention that Iraq constitutes
the "central front in the 'war on terrorism'," an
assertion President George W Bush himself has
curiously based mainly on a similar statement by
al-Qaeda's leader, Osama bin Laden.
Counter-terrorism experts, particularly
from the intelligence community, have long
questioned that thesis, and the latest estimate,
as indicated by the Post article's headline,
clearly backs them up by stressing that
Pakistan-based al-Qaeda and its extended network
of affiliates and operatives remain "the most
serious threat" to the US homeland.
The
Bush administration has long prodded the
government of Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf to attack suspected al-Qaeda bases in
the tribal areas that border Afghanistan, and its
army did so with some success between late 2001
and 2004, when it captured or killed a number of
high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives, sometimes with
the help of US intelligence and its Predator
missiles.
But after a series of clashes
with local Taliban and foreign forces, the army
over the past 18 months withdrew from North and
South Waziristan and other parts of the mostly
Pashtun Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA)
in exchange for pledges by tribal leaders there to
expel foreign fighters and prevent infiltration of
Taliban forces into Afghanistan.
In fact,
the army's departure left the region in the
control of the Pakistani Taliban, which provided
al-Qaeda the kind of safe haven it needed not only
to rebuild its capabilities, but also to begin to
exert its influence aggressively over neighboring
territories and even into Islamabad.
Indeed, it was last week's bloody
denouement to the protracted army siege of the
capital's Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) that resulted in
the breakdown of the Waziristan peace accords and
a series of attacks and suicide bombings,
including in Islamabad. Musharraf, who was
encouraged by Washington to confront the militants
who controlled the Red Mosque, has responded by
deploying troops into tribal areas.
"Some
military action is necessary and will probably
have to be taken," said Richard Boucher, assistant
secretary of state for South and Central Asia, who
announced that Washington hopes to provide most of
the US$350 million Musharraf has requested to help
train, equip and deploy Pakistani forces,
including a proposed new "Frontier Corps", to the
tribal regions to enforce the central government's
writ there.
Washington has already pledged
some $750 million over five years to FATA to
promote economic development, but total aid still
amounts to less than what the US military spends
in Iraq in just four days.
Boucher added
that the decision by Musharraf, who also faces a
growing opposition movement from the secular
political parties, to attack the mosque has
"pretty much crossed a line, and there's no going
back".
The Bush administration indeed
hopes that Musharraf and the military will carry
the fight into the tribal areas and, in so doing,
disrupt al-Qaeda's infrastructure there to the
greatest extent possible.
"I think that
what you will see is a disruption of extremists,
both al-Qaeda-related extremists and also local
extremists who are engaged in cross-border attacks
in Afghanistan," Robert Grenier, another former
CIA official, told a public-television interviewer
this week.
But more aggressive military
action also carries serious risks to Musharraf,
who, according to some accounts, was forced into
the withdrawal agreements by his own army
commanders.
"They're very afraid of
sparking a wider civil war among the Pashtuns of
Pakistan, because one has to remember that most
Pashtuns live in Pakistan, not in Afghanistan, but
they identify very closely with the Pashtuns of
Afghanistan," Anatol Lieven, a South Asia expert
at the New America Foundation, said on the same
program. "And the Pashtuns also contribute
disproportionately to the Pakistani army."
That concern was echoed by Alexis Debat, a
regional specialist at the Nixon Center in
Washington. "There are a lot tensions now between
Pashtuns and Punjabis, and if you hit the
Pashtuns, then the secular Punjabis are happy, and
if Pashtuns and Punjabis start killing each other,
the implications would be extremely serious," he
told Inter Press Service. "The thing I see as a
threat, even in the short term, is that Pakistan
just breaks down."
Another problem, he
said, is that "the Pakistani military does not
really have the capacity to fight an insurgency in
the tribal areas. The few operations they mounted
in [the Waziristans] really didn't go well at all,
and they just threw in the towel."
If
indeed the Pakistan Army proves either unable or
unwilling to undertake offensive operations,
pressure in the United States may grow for direct
US intervention beyond the covert intelligence and
limited special-operations cooperation that
Washington currently provides.
White House
spokesman Tony Snow commented, "We certainly do
not rule out options, and we retain the option,
especially, of striking actionable targets. But it
is clearly of the utmost importance to go in there
[Pakistan] and deal with the problem in the tribal
areas."
But most analysts warn against any
move in that direction. "It would lead to major
riots throughout Pakistan and the Arab world, and
it would lead to certainly a major insurgency
against US forces," Seth Jones, a South Asia
specialist at the Rand Institute, told the
American Broadcasting Co (ABC News).
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