Pakistan delivers but doubts remain
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has once again come up with a big fish for the United
States with the arrest in the southern port city of a senior al-Qaeda
operative.
Although there is some confusion as to the identity of the man, the arrest
again underscores the importance of Pakistan in the US's struggle in
Afghanistan.
On Sunday evening, Pakistan's security agencies leaked a report of the arrest
of al-Qaeda operative Abu Yahya Azzam, but later information began circulating
that the man was in fact another al-Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, an
American-born convert to Islam whose Muslim name is Adam Yahiya Azzam. By
Monday morning, security agencies clarified that the arrested person is
indeed Abu Yahya Azzam, who is of Arab origin. The claims could not be
independently verified.
The regime of former president Pervez Musharraf was adept at producing key
al-Qaeda figures at critical junctures with the US. Islamabad, that is, the
military, is doing the same now. On the one hand it wants to win US backing for
an extension to the term of army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, who is set to
retire this year. Kiani is very popular with the US military establishment.
The military also wants to ensure that it gets a central role in the end game
in Afghanistan, in particular in any negotiations with the Taliban. For its
part, Washington wants to keep Pakistan subservient to Washington's policies.
The latest arrest follows other recent captures in Pakistan, notably those of
Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's supreme commander, and Mustasam Agha
Jan, a close aide of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
Washington will most certainly be delighted with this string of arrests, but it
still treats anything that happens in Pakistan with some caution, as it did in
Musharraf’s time in the years after Pakistan joined the "war on terror" in
2001.
United States special AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke said in an interview with
the Financial Times following the arrest of Baradar that he was not convinced
that Pakistan had decisively turned against the Afghan Taliban. He declined to
say whether the US was getting good intelligence from the joint interrogation
of Baradar, but he said he had "no problems" with the Lahore High Court's
denial of a request last week to transfer the Taliban commander to Afghanistan.
Over the past year, Pakistan has mounted several major military operations in
the tribal areas against militants, with some success, and recently it claimed
to have killed top Taliban commanders including Moulvi Faqir Mohammad and Qari
Ziaur Rahman. These deaths have not been verified by independent sources. (For
a face-to-face interview with one of the Taliban's most dangerous commanders,
see A fighter and a
financier Asia Times Online, May 23, 2008.)
However, suspicions linger in Washington that Pakistan still aims to keep some
space for itself for a final maneuver and that, if Pakistan's military
apparatus is not taken under firm control, Washington will not get its
desirable results in Afghanistan.
These fears have been heightened by the Lahore court's decision not to hand
over suspects; previously, people were passed on without question, many
destined for the US detention centers at Guantanamo Bay or Bagram air base near
Kabul.
Controlling Pakistan's military
A Pashtu-speaking retired Pakistani general and a former chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Committee, Ehsan ul-Haq, was the eyes and ears of his
then-chief of army staff, Musharraf, before the October 12, 1999, military coup
that brought Musharraf to power.
After the coup, Haq was promoted to Corps Commander Peshawar and soon after was
made chief of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency - the Inter-Services
Intelligence (ISI). Musharraf was convinced of his loyalty.
However, when it became a question of appointing Haq vice chief of army staff
and making him a full general, Musharraf saw in him an over-ambitious officer.
He promoted him to be a four-star general and gave him the largely ceremonial
position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Staff Committee.
This marked Haq's parting of the ways with Musharraf and his close military
officers, including Kiani, who was then the director general of the ISI. Haq
nevertheless developed good ties with American officials. Kiani, being
Musharraf's spy master, warned that Haq was maneuvering against Musharraf and
was trying to win favors in Washington.
Haq eventually ended up at a Washington think-tank, but continued to promote
himself in Pakistan, using two of his closest friends - Saiful Islam, a son of
Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and Prince Ahmad, the chief of the armed
forces of Bahrain.
As a rule in Pakistan, foreign companies with investment in Pakistan appoint a
non-Pakistani as chairman, with the managing director being Pakistani. However,
due to Saiful Adil's influence, Haq was appointed chairman of Pak-Libya Holding
Company, which has large investments in Pakistan. This consolidated Haq's clout
in Pakistan. Although he is disliked by the incumbent military leadership,
Washington used Haq in setting up back-channel dialogue between Pakistan and
India.
Haq using his friendship with Prince Ahmad to convince the Saudi rulers that he
(Haq) should be the point man for consultations on the South Asian "war on
terror" theater. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia therefore recently summoned Haq
to Riyadh for an audience.
The next step, security sources tell Asia Times Online, will be a strong push
by Washington to get Haq appointed as national security advisor to President
Asif Ali Zardari in an attempt to get the military establishment fully under
control. Although the military gets on very well with its counterpart in the
US, there are clearly still those lingering doubts that Pakistan's generals
will always put their own interests first.
Military headquarters in Rawalpindi are apparently ready to fiercely oppose any
such oversight moves.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can
be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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