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By ERIC SCHMITT, MARK MAZZETTI and CARLOTTA GALL
Published: November 19, 2007
WASHINGTON, Nov. 18 A new and classified American military proposal
outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the
frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the
Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces
against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.
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Militants have extended their reach beyond the tribal areas.
If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy
that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military
trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary
force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias
that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said.
The United States now has only about 50 troops in Pakistan, a
Pentagon spokesman said, a force that could grow by dozens under the
new approach.
The proposal is modeled in part on a similar effort by American
forces in Anbar Province in Iraq that has been hailed as a great
success in fighting foreign insurgents there. But it raises the
question of whether such partnerships, to be forged in this case by
Pakistani troops backed by the United States, can be made without a
significant American military presence in Pakistan. And it is unclear
whether enough support can be found among the tribes, some of which
are working with Pakistan's intelligence agency.
Altogether, the broader strategic move toward more local support is
being accelerated because of concern about instability in Pakistan
and the weakness of the Pakistani government, as well as fears that
extremists with havens in the tribal areas could escalate their
attacks on allied troops in Afghanistan. Just in recent weeks,
Islamic militants sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban have
already extended their reach beyond the frontier areas into more
settled areas, most notably the mountainous region of Swat.
[The Pakistani president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, recommended late
Sunday that the Election Commission call for parliamentary elections
on Jan. 8, but he did not say whether emergency rule would be revoked
beforehand, Reuters reported early Monday.
"Inshallah, the general elections in the country would be held on
Jan. 8," the official Associated Press of Pakistan news agency quoted
Musharraf as saying late Sunday.]
The tribal proposal, a strategy paper prepared by staff members of
the United States Special Operations Command, has been circulated to
counterterrorism experts but has not yet been formally approved by
the command's headquarters in Tampa, Fla. Some other elements of the
campaign have been approved in principle by the Americans and
Pakistanis and await financing, like $350 million over several years
to help train and equip the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that
has about 85,000 members and is recruited from border tribes.
Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has used billions
of dollars of aid and heavy political pressure to encourage Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, to carry out more aggressive
military operations against militants in the tribal areas. But the
sporadic military campaigns Pakistan has conducted there have had
little success, resulting instead in heavy losses among Pakistani
Army units and anger among local residents who have for decades been
mostly independent from Islamabad's control.
American officials acknowledge those failures, but say that the
renewed emphasis on recruiting allies among the tribal militias and
investing more heavily in the Frontier Corps reflect the depth of
American concern about the need to address Islamic extremism in
Pakistan. The new counterinsurgency campaign is also a vivid example
of the American military's asserting a bigger role in a part of
Pakistan that the Central Intelligence Agency has overseen almost
exclusively since Sept. 11.
Small numbers of United States military personnel have served as
advisers to the Pakistani Army in the tribal areas, giving planning
advice and helping to integrate American intelligence, said one
senior American officer with long service in the region.
Historically, American Special Forces have gone into foreign
countries to work with local militaries to improve the security of
those countries in ways that help American interests. Under this new
approach, the number of advisers would increase, officials said.
American officials said these security improvements complemented a
package of assistance from the Agency for International Development
and the State Department for the seven districts of the tribal areas
that amounted to $750 million over five years, and would involve work
in education, health and other sectors. The State Department's Bureau
of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs is also
assisting the Frontier Corps with financing for counternarcotics
work.
Some details of the security improvements have been reported by The
Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. But the classified
proposal to enlist tribal leaders is new.
"The D.O.D. is about to start funding the Frontier Corps," one
military official said, referring to the Department of Defense. "We
have only got a portion of that requested but it is enough to start."
Until now, the Frontier Corps has not received American military
financing because the corps technically falls under the Pakistani
Interior Ministry, a nonmilitary agency that the Pentagon ordinarily
does not deal with. But American officials say the Frontier Corps is
in the long term the most suitable force to combat an insurgency. The
force, which since 2001 has increasingly been under the day-to-day
command of Pakistani Army units, is now being expanded and trained by
American advisers, diplomats said.
The training of the Frontier Corps remains a concern for some. NATO
and American soldiers in Afghanistan have often blamed the Frontier
Corps for aiding and abetting Taliban insurgents mounting cross-
border attacks. "It's going to take years to turn them into a
professional force," said one Western military official. "Is it worth
it now?"
At the same time, military officials fear the assistance to develop a
counterinsurgency force is too little, too late. "The advantage is
already in the enemy hands," one Western military official said.
Local Taliban and foreign fighters in Waziristan have managed to
regroup since negotiating peace deals with the government in 2005 and
2006, and last year they were able to fight all through the winter,
he said. Militants have now emerged in force in the Swat area, a
scenic tourist region that is a considerable distance inland from the
tribal areas on the border.
The planning at the Special Operations Command intensified after Adm.
Eric T. Olson, a member of the Navy Seals who is the new head of the
command, met with General Musharraf and Pakistani military leaders in
August to discuss how the military could increase cooperation in
Pakistan's fight against the extremists.
A spokesman for the command, Kenneth McGraw, would not comment on any
briefing paper that had been circulated for review. He said Friday
that after Admiral Olson returned from his trip, he "energized the
staff to look for ways to develop opportunities for future
cooperation."
A senior Defense Department official said that Admiral Olson had
prepared a memorandum on how Special Operations forces could assist
the Pakistani military in the counterinsurgency, and shared that
document with several senior Pentagon officials.
Four senior defense or counterterrorism officials confirmed that
planning was under way at the command headquarters.
One person who was briefed on the proposal prepared by the Special
Operations Command staff members, and who spoke on condition of
anonymity because the briefing had not yet been approved, said it was
in the form of about two dozen slides. The slides described a
strategy using both military and nonmilitary measures to fight the
militants.
One slide included a chart that categorized one to two dozen tribes
by location North Waziristan and South Waziristan, for example
and then gave a brief description of their location, their known or
suspected links to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and their size and
military abilities.
The briefing said United States forces would not be involved in any
conventional combat in Pakistan. But several senior military and
Pentagon officials said elements of the Joint Special Operations
Command, an elite counterterrorism unit, might be involved in strikes
against senior militant leaders under specific conditions.
Two people briefed on elements of the approach said it was modeled in
part on efforts in Iraq, where American commanders have worked with
Sunni sheiks in Anbar Province to turn locals against the militant
group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni extremist group
that American intelligence agencies say is led by foreigners.
The success of these efforts, together with the consensus in military
and intelligence circles that the grip of the original Al Qaeda in
the tribal areas continues to tighten at a time when the Pakistani
government is in crisis, led planners at the Special Operations
Command to develop the strategy for the tribal areas.
A group of Pakistan experts convened in March by the Defense
Intelligence Agency concluded that empowering tribal leaders could be
an effective strategy to counter the rising influence of Islamic
religious leaders and to weaken Al Qaeda. But a report on the session
found that such successes "would be difficult to achieve,
particularly in the north (Bajaur) and south (North and South
Waziristan)."
One person who had been brief on the proposal cautioned that whether
a significant number of tribal leaders would join an American-backed
effort carried out by Pakistani forces was "the $64,000 question."
Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti reported from Washington, and Carlotta
Gall from Islamabad, Pakistan. |
