The Washington Post
U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded that the major remaining concentrations of al-Qaida fighters are in western Pakistan, rather than in Afghanistan, but Pakistan has resisted U.S. pressure to launch large-scale attacks against them, officials in Washington and Pakistan said.
U.S. officials have pressed Pakistan to act against what they believe are groups of al-Qaida fighters concentrated in the Waziristan area of western Pakistan, near the Afghan border.
"We know where there is a large concentration of al-Qaida," one Pentagon official said last week, noting that there were several hundred in one border town, which he asked not be identified. But, he added, "Our guys haven’t been getting the cooperation" requested from the Pakistani government.
The Pakistani government’s reluctance to go after the pockets of terrorists in its territory is the first major difference to surface in the U.S.-Pakistani alliance against terrorism, which has been surprisingly strong since September.
If the intense U.S. pressure to mount an offensive along the Pakistani side of the border succeeds, it would mark a major widening of the 8-month-old U.S. counteroffensive against terrorism, in which overt combat has taken place only in Afghanistan. Pakistani officials also said it’s possible the United States could decide to act unilaterally against the terrorist pockets.
Defense officials said the Pakistani military has been moving very slowly, despite U.S. offers to provide intelligence, helicopters, special operations troops or conventional military units. For the last two weeks, one senior official said, "We’ve been after them (the Pakistanis) to attack, and we haven’t made much progress."
Another added: "We are trying to encourage, wheedle, coerce, urge the Pakistanis to move more aggressively" against al-Qaida fighters. "We’ve had some success, but movement is slow."
Pakistani officials responded that, with or without U.S. aid, they’re reluctant for several reasons to launch the attacks. They said they fear an internal political backlash, both in the unruly border area and from Islamic extremists across the nation. And they said their military already is strained by the standoff with India.
In addition, they said they lack confidence in U.S. intelligence reports about the supposed buildup of al-Qaida forces on their territory. "There can’t be any such large-scale concentrations in any area of Pakistan," Pakistani Brig. Javed Iqbal Cheema, director of the Interior Ministry’s crisis management cell, said Friday. "It isn’t possible."
A small number of U.S. special forces are already operating along the Pakistani side of the border, and covert U.S. patrols have crossed into Pakistan from Afghanistan.
"The territory is hostile to the U.S. forces and sympathetic to Taliban and Arabs," a Pakistani military official said. He indicated that the United States should reconsider before pushing Pakistan "to launch a military assault against thousands of well-armed, religiously motivated people."
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