Pakistan has different view on U.S. effort in Afghanistan

McClatchy Newspapers

ISLAMABAD — The Pakistani government has some advice the Obama administration may not want to hear as it contemplates sending additional U.S. troops to neighboring Afghanistan: Negotiate with Taliban leaders and restrain India.

Pakistan embraces U.S. efforts to stabilize the region and worries that a hasty U.S. withdrawal would create chaos, but Pakistani officials worry that thousands of additional American soldiers and Marines would send Taliban forces retreating into Pakistan, where they’re not welcome.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s office said Friday that he told visiting CIA Director Leon Panetta of “Pakistan’s concerns relating to the possible surge of the U.S. and ISAF forces in Afghanistan, which may entail negative implications for the situation in Baluchistan,” the Pakistani province that borders Afghanistan to the south.

The Pakistanis’ advice is almost diametrically opposed to the strategy outlined by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. military commander in Afghanistan: Don’t send additional forces to protect Afghan cities, but send them to outposts along the Pakistani border — where McChrystal has withdrawn troops.

It’s just one example of how Pakistan, a critical U.S. ally in the struggle against Islamist extremists and a major recipient of American military aid, continues to deal differently with the violence that threatens not only the U.S.-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but also impoverished, nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The two countries’ divergent views of the threat posed by Islamist extremists and the Obama administration’s efforts to press Pakistan to move against groups that menace Afghanistan have produced strains between the two countries and between Pakistan’s civilian government and its powerful military and Inter Services Intelligence agency, as well as a growing drumbeat of Pakistani allegations about alleged nefarious CIA activities in Pakistan.

Instead of escalating the war in Afghanistan, however, top Pakistani officials are pressing the administration to try to negotiate a political settlement with top Taliban commanders that would allow the U.S. to exit Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials argue that such a negotiating strategy can’t work unless the rebel leadership is involved, right up to Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of the most dangerous insurgent faction, and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed founder of the Afghan Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s ally and host.