U.S. steps up unilateral strikes in Pakistan

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U.S. steps up unilateral strikes in Pakistan

Officials fear support from Islamabad will wane as Musharraf loses

power

A series of recent attacks against small clusters of Islamic

militants in Pakistan were carried out by CIA-operated MQ-1B drones

& #8212; pilotless, camera-equipped aircraft operated by remote control and

armed with 100-pound Hellfire missiles.

By Robin and Joby Warrick

updated 12:51 a.m. ET, Thurs., March. 27, 2008

he United States has escalated its unilateral strikes against

al-Qaeda members and fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas,

partly because of anxieties that the country's new leaders will

insist on a scaling back of military operations in that country,

according to U.S. officials.

Washington is worried that pro-Western President Pervez Musharraf,

who has generally supported the U.S. strikes, will almost certainly

have reduced powers in the months ahead, and so it wants to inflict

as much damage as it can to al-Qaeda's network now, the officials

said.

Over the past two months, U.S.-controlled Predator aircraft have

struck at least three sites used by al-Qaeda operatives. The attacks

followed a tacit understanding with Musharraf and Army chief Gen.

Ashfaq Kiyani that allows U.S. strikes on foreign fighters operating

in Pakistan, but not against the Pakistani Taliban, the officials

said.

About 45 Arab, Afghan and other foreign fighters have been killed in

the attacks, all near the Afghan border, U.S. and Pakistani

officials said. The goal was partly to jar loose information on

senior al-Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden and his

lieutenants, by forcing them to move in ways that U.S. intelligence

analysts can detect. Local sources are providing better information

to guide the strikes, the officials said.

& #8216;Shake the tree & #8217; strategy

A senior U.S. official called it a " shake the tree " strategy. It has

not been without controversy, others said. Some military officers

have privately cautioned that airstrikes alone -- without more U.S.

special forces soldiers on the ground in the region -- are unlikely

to net the top al-Qaeda leaders.

The campaign is not specifically designed to capture bin Laden

before Bush leaves office, administration officials said. " It's not

a blitz to close this chapter, " said a senior official who spoke on

the condition of anonymity because of ongoing operations. " If we

find the leadership, then we'll go after it. But nothing can be done

to put al-Qaeda away in the next nine or 10 months. In the long

haul, it's an issue that extends beyond this administration. "

Musharraf, who controls the country's military forces, has long

approved U.S. military strikes on his own. But senior officials in

Pakistan's leading parties are now warning that such unilateral

attacks -- including the Predator strikes launched from bases near

Islamabad and abad in Pakistan -- could be curtailed.

" We have always said that as for strikes, that is for Pakistani

forces to do and for the Pakistani government to decide. . . . We do

not envision a situation in which foreigners will enter Pakistan and

chase targets, " said Farhatullah Babar, a top spokesman for the

Pakistan People's Party, whose leader Yousaf Raza Gillani is the new

prime minister. " This war on terror is our war. "

Leaders of Gillani's party say they are interested in starting talks

with local Taliban leaders and giving a political voice to the

millions who live in Pakistan's tribal areas. Deputy Secretary of

State D. Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State A.

Boucher heard the message directly from tribal elders in the village

of Landi Kotal in the Khyber area yesterday.

" We told the visiting U.S. guests that the traditional jirga [tribal

decision-making] system should be made effective to eliminate the

causes of militancy and other problems from the tribal areas, " said

Malik Darya Khan, an elder. " We also told them that we have some

disgruntled brothers " -- an indirect reference to local Taliban and

militants -- who should be pulled into the mainstream through

negotiations and dialogue, he said.

" The tribal turmoil can be resolved only through negotiations, not

with military operations, " Khan added. But he and others have said

little specifically about how the new government should cope with

foreign fighters, causing the Bush administration to engage in heavy

lobbying on that issue.

Series of covert attacks

President Bush called Gillani on Tuesday, for example, to stress the

importance of the U.S.-Pakistani alliance and to emphasize

that " fighting extremists is in everyone's interest, " a White House

spokesman said.

Markey, a former State Department policy planning staffer who

is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations,

said " the new faces " in Pakistan's leadership " are not certain how

they want to manage their relationship with the United States. You

can't blame them, " because they are pulled in opposite directions by

their electorate and the Bush administration.

But Kamran Bokhari, a Pakistani who directs Middle East analysis for

Strategic Forecasting, a private intelligence group in Washington,

said the new government will almost certainly take a harder line

against such strikes. " These . . . are very unpopular, not because

people support al-Qaeda, but because they feel Pakistan has no

sovereignty, " he said.

The latest Predator strike, on March 16, killed about 20 people in

the Shahnawaz Kot village in South Waziristan, a mountainous enclave

on Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan. According to accounts

confirmed by Pakistani officials, at least three missiles hit a

compound owned by Noorullah Wazir, a tribal leader in an area

implicated in numerous cross-border attacks by Islamic militants

into eastern Afghanistan.

The attack destroyed Wazir's home and damaged nearby buildings.

Among those killed were several Arab and Afghan militants, Pakistani

officials said. The identities of the dead have not been publicly

confirmed, although U.S. and Pakistani sources say that no prominent

al-Qaeda or Taliban leaders were among the victims.

An attack in the early hours of Feb. 28 struck a house in the

village of Kaloosha, also in South Waziristan, killing 12 people

described by local authorities as foreign militants. And on Jan. 29,

missiles fired by a CIA drone in nearby North Waziristan killed Abu

Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and the man believed to

be behind a bombing last year that killed 23 people at a U.S.

military base in Afghanistan.

All three of the precision attacks against small clusters of Islamic

militants were carried out by CIA-operated MQ-1B drones --

pilotless, camera-equipped aircraft operated by remote control and

armed with 100-pound Hellfire missiles.

Military mum on details

U.S. intelligence officials estimate that al-Qaeda has several

hundred operatives in the Waziristan tribal region. " But as we

learned on 9/11, it only takes 19, " said the senior U.S.

official. " These are not Tora Bora bomb-everything operations, " he

added, referring to the blanket bombing of Afghanistan's mountainous

area where al-Qaeda leaders were hiding in late 2001.

A spokesman at CIA headquarters declined to comment on the strikes.

The agency officially maintains a policy of strict secrecy regarding

its counterterrorism operations in the border region.

But other U.S. officials said that after months of prodding, the

Bush administration and the Musharraf government reached a tacit

understanding this year that gave Washington a freer hand to carry

out precision strikes against al-Qaeda and its allies in the border

region. The issue is a sensitive one that neither side is willing to

discuss openly, the officials said.

Asked for comment, Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell denied

that the two governments have an " arrangement " or

an " understanding, " but said that they face a mutual enemy and

that " everything we do to go after terrorists operating there is in

consultation and coordination with the Pakistani government. "

H. , a research professor at the Naval Postgraduate

School in Monterey, Calif., said: " People inside the Beltway are

aware that Musharraf's days are numbered, and so they recognize they

may only have a few months to do this. Musharraf has . . . very few

friends in the world -- he probably has more inside the Beltway than

in his own country. "

Shifting loyalties aid in fight

The administration's intensified anti-al-Qaeda effort also has

benefited from shifting loyalties among residents of the border

region. Some tribal and religious leaders who embraced foreign

al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters as they fled from Afghanistan in 2001

now see them as troublemakers and are providing timely intelligence

about their movements and hideouts, according to former U.S.

officials and Pakistan experts.

" They see traffic coming and going from the fortress homes of tribal

leaders associated with foreign elements, and they pass the

information along, " said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani journalist in

Washington and the author of a book on Pakistan's army. " Some quick

surveillance is done, and then someone pops a couple of

hundred-pound bombs at the house. "

Yet despite a series of strikes, some U.S. military officers and

experts question whether the strategy will be effective and worth

its political costs.

Shifting loyalties aid in fight

The administration's intensified anti-al-Qaeda effort also has

benefited from shifting loyalties among residents of the border

region. Some tribal and religious leaders who embraced foreign

al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters as they fled from Afghanistan in 2001

now see them as troublemakers and are providing timely intelligence

about their movements and hideouts, according to former U.S.

officials and Pakistan experts.

" They see traffic coming and going from the fortress homes of tribal

leaders associated with foreign elements, and they pass the

information along, " said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani journalist in

Washington and the author of a book on Pakistan's army. " Some quick

surveillance is done, and then someone pops a couple of

hundred-pound bombs at the house. "

Yet despite a series of strikes, some U.S. military officers and

experts question whether the strategy will be effective and worth

its political costs.

" Jarring information loose is a method, but is it the most

productive method? No. You need exploitation, troops on the ground.

It's a huge operational stress, and it's probably not going to get

the senior leadership, " said a military officer with long experience

in the region.

Fueling cycle of violence?

Local politicians also complain that the strikes only encourage

militants to undertake retaliatory actions in urban areas. The

politicians point to the recent string of suicide bombings of

high-profile government targets in Rawalpindi, Lahore and Islamabad

as evidence that militants are determined to take revenge for losses

in the tribal areas.

" There's no way Pakistan can afford to follow a policy that is

causing a war at home, " said Khawaja Imran Raza, a top spokesman for

former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N

faction. " There's a need to revisit the policy and there's a need to

reassess because the domestic cost is so huge. We have lost a prime

minister -- our top opposition leader. We have lost generals, and

just look at our losses in Lahore. "

In 2005, the United States also attacked al-Qaeda sites in tribal

areas, killing top operative Abu Hamza Rabia. In 2006, a Predator

strike targeting three top al-Qaeda operatives killed only local

villagers.

U.S. strategy could backfire if missiles take innocent lives. " The

[tribal] Pashtuns have a saying: 'Kill one person, make 10

enemies,' " said. " You might take out a bad guy in one of

these strikes, but you might also be creating more foot soldiers.

This is a war in which the more people you kill, the faster you

lose. "

Foreign correspondent Candace Rondeaux in Islamabad and special

correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this

report.