Pakistan’s Under-the-Table Deal with al-Qaeda

During one of his campaign stops yesterday, President Bush touted his administration’s supposed success in combating al-Qaeda. One of his examples was Pakistan:

We’ve kept the terrorists from achieving their key goal, to overthrow governments across the broader Middle East and to seize control. Instead, the governments they targeted — such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — have become some of our most valuable allies in the war on terror. These countries are joined by the largest coalition in the history of warfare — more than 90 nations determined to find the terrorists, to dry up their funds, to stop their plots, and to bring them to justice.

[snip]

In Afghanistan, President Karzai’s elected government is fighting our common enemies. In showing the courage he’s showing, he’s inspired millions across the region.

Once again, reality catches up with the Bush administration’s foreign policy. Pakistan’s recent truce with the Taliban was widely reported in the media; here is a snippet from Newsday:

The Pakistani government signed a peace accord with Islamic militant rebels yesterday that leaves the militants – who call themselves Taliban and are closely allied with the Afghan Taliban movement – in effective control of most of the border region of Waziristan.

The deal, signed with Taliban based in North Waziristan, ended a 30-month-long military campaign that failed to secure control over the most isolated and ungoverned regions on Pakistan’s long border with Afghanistan. A similar truce was signed with militants in South Waziristan in February 2005.

Each deal is designed to give the government a face-saving exit from its offensive, which shattered villages and alienated residents, pushing them into the arms of the Taliban, say observers from the region, including South Waziristan journalist Sailab Mahsude.

The new agreement, obtained and translated by Newsday, declares formally that the North Waziristan militants will end attacks both on government targets here in Pakistan and across the border against U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan. But the real meaning is the opposite, tribal officials from the region said.

The accord asserts that “there will be no cross-border traffic for military activities,” but contains the loophole that “for traffic … for trade, business and family visits, there will be no restriction, according to the customs and traditions” of the border area. In practice, the ethnic Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border cross with little attention paid by Pakistani border guards, who traditionally are members of those same tribes.

Under the deal, Pakistan agreed that tribal paramilitary forces, rather than army troops, will handle border control duties, as they did before the recent army offensive. The poorly trained, underpaid paramilitaries have proved no barrier to Taliban infiltration past the border, U.S. troops say.

The South Waziristan peace deal has left the Taliban running a parallel government that has largely displaced Pakistan’s administration. The militants there openly recruit, train and send men to fight over the borders against the Americans.

The Newsday article omits the most damning statement by the Pakistani government — that if Bin Laden acts like a “peaceful citizen,” it won’t arrest him:

According to a transcript ABC News released of its phone interview with Director General, Inter Services Public Relations Major General Shaukat Sultan on the accord signed on Tuesday, this is what he said.

ABC: If [Osama] bin Laden or Zawahiri were [in Waziristan], they could stay [after the peace agreement]?

Maj. Gen. Sultan: No one of that kind can stay. If someone is there he will have to surrender, he will have to live like a good citizen, his whereabouts and exit travel would be known to the authorities.

ABC: So, he wouldn’t be taken into custody? He could stay there?

Gen: No, as long as one is staying like a peaceful citizen, one would not be taken into custody. One has to stay like a peaceful citizen and not allowed to participate in any kind of terrorist activity.

Pakistan now insists — not surprisingly — that the General was “grossly misquoted.” But in fact, the deal between Pakistan and the Taliban is actually worse than reports have indicated; as the Asia Times points out today, a little-noticed aspect of the deal calls for a moratorium on arresting members of al-Qaeda and the release of al-Qaeda members already in Pakistani custody:

On Tuesday, Pakistan agreed to withdraw its forces from the restive Waziristan tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in return for a pledge from tribal leaders to stop attacks by Pakistani Taliban across the border.

Most reports said that the stumbling block toward signing this truce had been the release of tribals from Pakistani custody. But most tribals had already been released.

The main problem – and one that has been unreported – was to keep Pakistan authorities’ hands off members of banned militant organizations connected with al-Qaeda.

Thus, for example, it has now been agreed between militants and Islamabad that Pakistan will not arrest two high-profile men on the “most wanted” list that includes Osama bin Laden, his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri and Taliban leader Mullah Omar.

Saud Memon and Ibrahim Choto are the only Pakistanis on this list, and they will be left alone. Saud Memon was the owner of the lot where US journalist Daniel Pearl was tortured, executed and buried in January 2002 in Karachi after being kidnapped by jihadis.
Pakistan has also agreed that many people arrested by law-enforcement agencies in Pakistan will be released from jail.

Importantly, this includes Ghulam Mustafa, who was detained by Pakistani authorities late last year. Mustafa is reckoned as al-Qaeda’s chief in Pakistan. (See Al-Qaeda’s man who knows too much, Asia Times Online, January 5. As predicted in that article, Mustafa did indeed disappear into a “black hole” and was never formally charged, let alone handed over to the US.)

Asia Times Online contacts expect Mustafa to be released in the next few days. He was once close to bin Laden and has intimate knowledge of al-Qaeda’s logistics, its financing and its nexus with the military in Pakistan.

“Now they [Pakistani authorities] have accepted us as true representatives of the mujahideen,” Wazir Khan told Asia Times Online at a religious congregation in Miranshah. “Now we are no longer criminals, but part and parcel of every deal. Even the authorities have given tacit approval that they would not have any objections if I and other fellows who were termed as wanted took part in negotiations.”

Wazir Khan was once a high-profile go-between for bin Laden and one of his closest Waziristan contacts. He was right up there on the “wanted” list. Now he can move around in the open. “The situation is diametrically changed,” he said.

The consequences of Pakistan’s deal with the Taliban are clear: more dead American soldiers in Afghanistan. As Bill Roggio, a conservative blogger associated with the excellent Counterterrorism Blog, notes:

With the Pakistani government ceding authority (but not autonomy) to the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Coalition and Afghan forces will now be placed in a more difficult tactical situation along the Afghan-Pakistani border. With the threat of the Pakistani Army removed in North and South Waziristan, the Taliban and al-Qaeda can now consolidate power and focus their efforts on attacking coalition forces in Afghanistan, as well as expand further into the greater North West Frontier Province. Operations such as Medusa in Kandahar and an offensive in the Konrangal River Valley in Kunar will become less of offensive actions and more like holding actions as the Taliban continue to operate from safe havens within Pakistan.