US finally to target Quetta Taliban? Update: More on Paks and QST, ISI

Keep in mind that the Quetta Taliban are those directing the counterinsurgency at Kandahar and Helmand. In April:

US UAV attacks in Baluchistan?

Now:

US threatens to escalate operations inside Pakistan
The US has told Pakistan that it may start launching drone attacks against the Taliban leadership in the city of Quetta in a major escalation of its operations in the country.

Washington has long been frustrated at Islamabad's reluctance to target the Afghan Taliban's ruling council, the Quetta Shura, which is accused of directing large parts of the insurgency across the border in Afghanistan.

State department and intelligence officials delivered the ultimatum to Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's president, last week as he visited the US for the United Nations' security council sessions and the G20 economic summit.

Pakistan's government has argued the Quetta Shura, led by Mullah Mohammad Omar, does not harm Pakistan. It has said that dealing with other militants such as those in the Swat valley was a higher priority.

But last week Anne Patterson, America's ambassador to Islamabad, told the Daily Telegraph that the offensive in Swat was not targeting the insurgents posing the greatest danger to Nato forces in Afghanistan...

US unmanned drone strikes have so far been confined to Pakistan's federally administrated tribal border regions where Islamabad holds little sway. But attacks in or around Quetta, in Baluchistan, would strike deep into the Pakistan government's territory and are likely to cause a huge outcry in the country...

From Gen. McChrystal's "Initial Assessment":

...
The major insurgent groups in order of their threat to the mission are: the Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)...

The key geographical objectives of the major insurgent groups are Kandahar City and Khowst Province. The QST has been working to control Kandahar and its approaches for several years and there are indications that their influence over the city and neighboring districts is significant and growing [emphasis added, see start of this post and Update]...

The QST's main efforts focus on the governance line of operations. Security and information operations support these efforts. IsAF's tendency to measure the enemy predominantly by kinetic events masks the true extent of insurgent activity and prevents an accurate assessment of the insurgents' intentions, progress, and level of control of the population. Governance. The QST has a governing structure in Afghanistan under the rubric of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. They appoint shadow governors for most provinces, review their performance, and replace them periodically. They established a body to receive complaints against their own "officials" and to act on them. They install "shari'a" courts to deliver swift and enforced justice in contested and controlled areas. They levy taxes and conscript fighters and laborers. They claim to provide security against a corrupt government, ISAF forces, criminality, and local power brokers. They also claim to protect Afghan and Muslim identity against foreign encroachment. In short, the QST provides major elements of governance and a national and religious narrative...

Update: More on the US, Pakistan, and the Quetta Taliban:

...
As American troops move deeper into southern Afghanistan to fight Taliban insurgents, U.S. officials are expressing new concerns about the role of fugitive Taliban leader Mohammad Omar and his council of lieutenants, who reportedly plan and launch cross-border strikes from safe havens around the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta.

But U.S. officials acknowledge they know relatively little about the remote and arid Pakistani border region, have no capacity to strike there, and have few windows into the turbulent mix of Pashtun tribal and religious politics that has turned the area into a sanctuary for the Taliban leaders, who are known collectively as the Quetta Shura.

Pakistani officials, in turn, have been accused of allowing the Taliban movement to regroup in the Quetta area, viewing it as a strategic asset rather than a domestic threat, while the army has been heavily focused on curbing violent Islamist extremists in the northwest border region hundreds of miles away...

...although Omar and his associates now keep a low profile and move constantly among villages and mosques in the lawless Pashtun strip between Quetta and the border, Pakistani and foreign experts said Baluchistan has reemerged as a Taliban sanctuary, recruiting ground and command post...

Unlike Pakistani Taliban groups based farther north in the rugged mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the Quetta Shura is considered uninterested in operations inside Pakistan [emphasis added]. Pakistani officials have discounted the shura's dominance and even its existence. But U.S. military officials describe it as "effective" and a "viable command and control organization."

Critics have long raised doubts about whether Pakistan's security forces are willing to seriously pursue Taliban leaders and activities in Baluchistan...

"From our judgment, there are no Taliban in Baluchistan," said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, Pakistan's military spokesman [emphasis added]...

And on the US, Pakistan, and the ISI:

...
The ISI agreed to open its protective curtain slightly for me [David Ignatius, Washington Post] last week. This unusual outreach included a long and animated conversation with Lt. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the agency's director general, as well as a detailed briefing from its counterterrorism experts. Under the ground rules, I cannot quote Pasha directly, but I can offer a sense of how his agency looks at key issues -- including the Afghanistan war and the ISI's sometimes prickly relationship with America.

At an operational level, the ISI is a close partner of the CIA. Officers of the two services work together nearly every night on joint operations against al-Qaeda in Pakistan's tribal areas, perhaps the most dangerous region in the world. Information from the ISI has helped the CIA plan its Predator drone attacks, which have killed 14 of the top 20 targets over the past several years...

But on the political level, there is mistrust on both sides. The United States worries that the ISI isn't sharing all it knows about Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. The Pakistanis, meanwhile, view the United States as an unreliable ally that starts fights it doesn't know how to finish [emphasis added]...