Pak Peace
Mulled amid ceasefire. US apparently thinks it’s a good idea. Bloomberg:
Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) — Pakistan needs to reach a political settlement with pro-Taliban leaders in its tribal region because the government’s previous agreements have proved ineffective, the U.S. State Department said.
An accord where militants “lay down their arms, join the political process, avoid violence and have guarantees for it, I think that would be something,” Tom Casey, deputy department spokesman, said in Washington yesterday. Agreements reached in 2004 and 2006 in North and South Waziristan didn’t “produce the results” intended.
Forces loyal to al-Qaeda-linked Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud announced a cease-fire in South Waziristan yesterday, Agence France-Presse reported, citing a spokesman for his Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan movement. The Pakistani military said it wasn’t aware of any truce declaration, AFP reported.
President Pervez Musharraf made agreements with tribal leaders in North and South Waziristan for non-Pakistani gunmen to be expelled from the region that borders Afghanistan. Al- Qaeda leaders have since established a base in the border area, U.S. intelligence agencies said last year, and Pakistan’s army has been battling pro-Taliban fighters in the Swat Valley.
“We all want to see actions taken to respond” to extremists in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Casey said, according to a State Department transcript. “We want to see it addressed and we want to continue to work with the government of Pakistan on it.”
I’d be curious to find out why (A) the Pak Taliban want this ceasefire and this peace and (B) why either Mush or the United States think they are any more likely to live up to their terms this time. Mush just wants to get through the election, and would be delighted to have some “peace in our time” to crow about. Thsi story is written to suggest the United States wants a peace deal, but as you look at what is quoted, Casey doesn’t sound overly optimistic anything accceptable will be achieved. It all comes down to terms and the extent anyone expects them to be observed. The State Department also may share Mush’s limited goal here. Too bad, because unless the Pak Taliban have figured out for themselves they can buy some breathing space with a manuever like this, then their ceasefire suggests they are under the gun, maybe vulnerable to further pressure. Maybe the Pak Taliban is getting nervous about things like this. AP:
U.S. military advisers are helping the Pakistanis double the size of their elite commando force in an ongoing effort to blunt the rising threat of terrorist groups and anti-government militants operating in the country’s unruly tribal areas, a senior Pentagon official said Wednesday.
The one problem with the theory that the U.S. is playing along with Mush is, this AP report suggests, the U.S. seems to be distinctly unenthused about the prospect:
Any agreement by Pakistan to a cease-fire would likely be frowned on by its Western allies.
A truce in North Waziristan in September 2006, which collapsed the following July, was widely seen as giving Taliban and al-Qaida a freer hand to stage cross-border attacks into Afghanistan and expand their reach inside Pakistan.
In Washington, the State Department said it was aware of media reports about a possible deal, but did not know of any specific proposal for a new cease-fire and signaled that it would oppose any agreement that resembled the last truce.
“We would certainly want to see that any arrangement made was effective at pursuing President (Pervez) Musharraf’s goal and pursuing our goal, which is being able to defend against these kinds of extremist groups,” deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters. “We want to see an agreement that is effective, the last agreement was not effective by President Musharraf’s own admission.”
Back to Bloomberg:
Pakistan has deployed more than 100,000 soldiers in the tribal region to combat Taliban and al-Qaeda terrorists crossing the frontier, Musharraf said in December during a visit to Islamabad by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Pakistan has ruled out allowing any U.S. military operation against al-Qaeda fighters on its territory.
100,000 more reasons to want peace!
Mehsud’s forces will observe an indefinite truce, AFP cited his spokesman Maulvi Omar as saying by telephone yesterday.
“It is not a formal agreement with the government forces,” Omar said. “We have done it voluntarily” because the army curbed its operations recently.
…
The military on Jan. 4 bombed Mehsud’s suspected hideout in South Waziristan, Dawn newspaper reported at the time. Mehsud is still hiding in the area and there are reports he is ill, the official Associated Press of Pakistan cited Major General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, the director-general of military operations, as saying at a briefing last month.
Maybe this jihad thing has just become a damned nuisance. Anyway, if there are to be talks, and the United $$$tate$ ha$ any influence, I’d suggest Mush and Mehsud are strongly encouraged to agree to Term One, Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahri and Azzam the Yank, et al, are declared apostate murderers and handed over. In whatever form the Waziris care to hand over apostates. All other business proceeds from that point.
Topics: Pakistan
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:37 pm on Wednesday, February 6, 2008
One Response to “Pak Peace”
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February 8th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Truce? It sounds to me like it is time to hit them as hard as possible.