Pakistan gets even trickier

The US must be really fed up with the Taliban/al-Qaeda sanctuary. The questions are: how much will the likely new Pakistani president cooperate with the US (and ISAF and the Afghan government)? how tolerant can he be of US incursions in the face of public opinion? and how strong a line will the government/army take within Pakistan? And then there's the matter of getting ISI under control.

1) US actions:

Even as angry protests spread in Pakistan, Pentagon officials said Thursday that the number of cross-border commando missions may grow in coming months to counter increasing violence in Afghanistan.

The developments threatened to aggravate U.S.-Pakistani tensions just before the country's presidential election Saturday, in which attitudes toward the United States are likely to be a key issue. The U.S. raid Wednesday and its aftermath also fanned a long-standing debate within the Bush administration over how to deal with militants in Pakistan.

Pakistani officials said U.S. troops flew into South Waziristan by helicopter in the raid and that as many as 20 people were killed, many thought to be civilians. The White House, State Department and Pentagon all moved to clamp down on administration discussion of the assault, but government officials confirmed the broad details provided by the Pakistani government [more on the raid here from Bill Roggio in The Long War Journal].

U.S. military officials insisted that there was no new policy authorizing an increase in raids into Pakistan. Assaults by U.S. special operations forces into Pakistan have taken place before, and U.S.-operated unmanned aircraft have attacked sites believed to be used by militants.

But pressure has been building within the military for more aggressive use of existing practices as U.S. casualties have increased with the rising number of attacks carried out in Afghanistan by militants based in Pakistan.

"You can't allow a haven," said a military officer, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity about the raid. "You have to get to the areas that they rest, relax and train."

Many within the Pentagon and among military officers in the region are skeptical about the value of increased U.S. operations in Pakistan. These officials believe that stepped-up operations risk a backlash and that a better approach would be to steadily press the Pakistani military to take on the extremists.

In Pakistan, parliament passed a resolution Thursday condemning the raid, a day after the government lodged a diplomatic protest with the U.S. ambassador.

The frequency of U.S. raids in the future may depend on the Pakistani reaction. U.S. officials are monitoring both the public response and the private reaction from leaders of the fledgling Pakistani government. Some military officials considered the initial Pakistani response relatively restrained, although protests continued to build.

Military officials said that the U.S. had used existing authorities negotiated with former President Pervez Musharraf to launch the raid. A senior military official said the volatile political situation in Pakistan had prevented any new negotiations for U.S. operations in the country.

The U.S. has long claimed the right to cross the border in "hot pursuit" of militants. Although the details are unclear, Wednesday's raid does not appear to be a case of hot pursuit...

2) Pakistani reaction:

Outraged by the deadly first known ground assault into Pakistan's tribal belt by US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, both houses of parliament on Thursday unanimously asked the government to take measures to "repel such attacks in the future with full force".

After fiery debates over Wednesday's pre-dawn helicopter-borne raid that reportedly killed at least 20 people in a village in South Waziristan agency, the demand was made in a resolution passed unanimously by the National Assembly and the Senate separately that also wanted the government to tell the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan that such violations were "bound to force fundamental changes of foreign policy" by a key ally in the so-called war on terrorism...

3) New Pakistani president:

Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of Benazir Bhutto, is set to become president on Saturday, an accidental ascent for a man known more as a wheeler-dealer than a leader. He will start his tenure burdened by a history of corruption allegations that cloud his reputation even as they remain unproved.

Though he has won the reluctant support of the Bush administration, which views him as a willing partner in the campaign against terrorism, Mr. Zardari will assume the presidency with what many consider untested governing skills as a tough Taliban insurgency threatens the very fabric of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state of 165 million people.

It remains to be seen how forcefully he will act against militants in the face of Pakistani public opposition to American pressure. Nor is it clear how much influence he exerts over the still powerful military and the nation’s premier spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence.

The editor in chief of the Daily Times, Najam Sethi, once an opponent and now a supporter of Mr. Zardari, said the elevation of Mr. Zardari would suit the Americans. Mr. Zardari, he said, “will learn on the job.” And indeed, Mr. Zardari, 53, has shown canny political skills as he has moved in the last two weeks to outmaneuver his former coalition partner, Nawaz Sharif, who served twice as prime minister...

Mr. Zardari will now become the civilian official Washington relies on as it tries to persuade Pakistan to take a stronger stance against militants who are using the northern tribal areas as a sanctuary to attack American and NATO forces in Afghanistan. Despite their reservations, American officials prefer him to Mr. Sharif because they believe that Mr. Zardari’s Pakistan Peoples Party, more secular than Mr. Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-N, will be more likely to confront militants.

Mr. Zardari has displayed a sudden willingness to take on the Taliban, saying last week that he would ban them and freeze their assets, a starting point strongly favored by the State Department, though it would have limited practical impact...

But as Mr. Zardari moved to the fore, some efforts to please Washington have exposed his uneasy relationship with the military, and Inter-Services Intelligence, the powerful spy agency he accused of assassinating his wife last December.

An effort to control the agency and impress the Bush administration failed in July. Washington has said that the agency is involved in sabotaging American interests by supporting the Taliban in the tribal region. Mr. Zardari and an Interior Ministry official directed that the agency report to the Interior Ministry; the military swiftly ordered that the notice be retracted.

“His first attempt to get control of the army and ISI was a total failure that showed a naïveté about how the army and the ISI work,” said Bruce Riedel, a member of the National Security Council in the Clinton administration who now advises the Obama campaign on Pakistan...

Interesting and dangerous times ahead. Remember those Pakistani nuclear weapons.