Pakistan Fight Stalls for U.S., page 1

WASHINGTON—The U.S. military has stopped lobbying Pakistan to help root out one of the biggest militant threats to coalition forces in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say, acknowledging that the failure to win better help from Islamabad threatens to damage a linchpin of their Afghan strategy.

Until recently, the U.S. had been pressing Islamabad to launch major operations against the Haqqani network, a militant group connected to al Qaeda that controls a key border region where U.S. defense and intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden has hidden.

The group has been implicated in the Dec. 30 bombing of a CIA base in Khost, a January assault on Afghan government ministries and a luxury hotel in Kabul, and in the killing of five United Nations staffers in last year's raid on a U.N. guesthouse.

But military officials have decided that pressing Pakistan for help against the group—as much as it is needed—is counterproductive.

U.S. officials believe elements of Pakistan's intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, are continuing to protect the Haqqani network to help it retain influence in Afghanistan once the U.S. military eventually leaves the country. U.S. officials say the support includes housing, intelligence and even strategic planning.

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Source: online.wsj.com...

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This is kind of angering, seeing how American tax-dollars have been flowing into Pakistan like water from a run-away spigot. Many people have been saying for a long time that the ISI has been friendly with militant groups in the border region, yet tax-payers were still being forced to pay for their luxuries. In fact, I don't think it would be unreasonable to assume that ulterior motives are at play here, though I'll digress on what those motives may be.

What do you, the reader, believe? Was Pakistan getting to close? Were they starting to become too effective? Was it becoming too obvious that we were basically paying terrorists, through the ISI? Is this an effort to appease the Pakistanis, sort of a favor to them?

It is my belief that the PTB are going to want this war to be drawn out, this way it will give us an excuse to plop down and stay. With that being said, I hardly doubt that the spigot would be turned off for any reason beneficial to either the Pakistani, Afghani or American public.

--airspoon