WASHINGTON – US Vice-President Joe Biden is set to take a message to Pakistan that the United States is prepared to supply more military, intelligence and economic aid its government wants, according to a report published in a leading American newspaper Saturday.
President Barack ObamaÂ’s administration is planning to send more help to Pakistan amid complaints from government officials there that the United States doesnÂ’t understand their security priorities or offer enough help.
According to the plan, decided on in last monthÂ’s White House Afghanistan war review, the US will offer more military, intelligence and economic support to Pakistan. The Obama administration also plans to intensify efforts to forge a regional peace.
Biden will travel to Islamabad next week for meetings with Army Chief General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and top government leaders, The Washington Post said. “Biden will challenge the Pakistanis to articulate their long-term strategy for the region and indicate exactly what assistance is needed for them to move against Taliban sanctuaries in areas bordering Afghanistan,” the newspaper said. Pakistani officials have complained that US military aid is both inadequate and late to arrive. The report on Obama’s Afghanistan policy review said unspecified ‘adjustments’ were needed for Pakistan.
One senior official told the Post the review concluded the United States must “make sure that our sizeable military assistance programmes are properly tailored to what the Pakistanis need and are targeted on units that will generate the most benefit.”
The official said other parts of the strategy include easing Pakistani fears that India is becoming a force in Afghanistan and working toward a political solution. “We think there’s a lot of room for improvement on that front,” the senior official said.
He said Pakistan is vital to efforts to negotiate with the Taliban. The Post report came a day after it made a strong case for strengthening President Asif ZardariÂ’s government.
The Post said some US military commanders and intelligence officers had proposed allowing US ground forces to launch targeted raids against insurgent stronghold, but Obama and his top national security aides rejected those suggestions. They concluded that the United States cannot afford to threaten or further alienate a precarious, nuclear-armed country whose cooperation is essential to the administration on several fronts.
The classified review pledged to ‘look hard’ at issues of economic stability, the Post said. It also directed administration and Pentagon officials to “make sure that our sizeable military assistance programmes are properly tailored to what the Pakistanis need and are targeted on units that will generate the most benefit” for US goals, said one senior administration official who participated in the review and was authorised to discuss it with the newspaper on condition of anonymity.
Beginning with Biden’s visit, according to the dispatch, the time may be ripe for a frank exchange of views and priorities between the two sides, another administration official said. The Pakistanis “understand that Afghanistan-Pakistan has become the single most important foreign policy issue to the United States, and their cachet has gone up.” But they also realise that they may have reached the point of maximum leverage, the official said, “and things about their region are going to change one way or the other” in the near future, as Congress and the American public grow increasingly disillusioned with the war and a timeline for military withdrawal is set.
“Something is going to give,” he was quoted as saying. “There is going to be an end-game scenario and they’re trying to guess where we’re heading.”
On intelligence, the administration plans to address PakistanÂ’s complaints that the Americans have not established enough outposts on the Afghan side of the border to stop insurgent infiltration, while pressing the Pakistanis to allow US and Afghan officials to staff border coordination centres inside Pakistan itself.
The administration also plans “redouble our efforts to look for political approaches” to ending the war, including a recognition that Pakistan “must play an important role” if not a dominant one, in reconciliation talks with the Taliban, the official said.
An intelligence estimate prepared for the review concluded that the war in Afghanistan could not be won unless the insurgent sanctuaries were wiped out, and that there was no real indication Pakistan planned to undertake the effort.
But the White House concluded that while Taliban safe havens were ‘a factor’, they were “not the only thing that stands between us and success in Afghanistan,” the senior official said. “We understand the general view a lot of people espouse” in calling for direct US ground attacks, he said of the intelligence estimate. But while the administration’s goal is still a Pakistani offensive, the review questioned whether ‘classic clear, hold and build’ operations were the only way to deny the insurgents free access to the borderlands, and asked whether “a range of political, military, counterterrorism and intelligence operations” could achieve the same result.
“That view represents a significant shift in administration thinking, perhaps making a virtue of necessity given Pakistani refusal thus far to launch the kind of full-scale ground offensive the United States has sought in North Waziristan,” the dispatch said.
“The challenge is that when you talk about safe havens in Pakistan, you imagine some traditional military clearing operation that then settles the issue,” the official said. While the Pakistani military has cleared insurgents from most of the tribal areas, it remains heavily deployed in those areas, where little building has taken place.