Pakistan-Afghan spat shows cracks in ‘war on terror’
By Danny Kemp and Rana Jawad
ISLAMABAD: If Osama bin Laden follows the news, the chances are he is enjoying the spectacle of “war on terror” allies Afghanistan and Pakistan at each other’s throats. President Pervez Musharraf recently accused President Hamid Karzai of being “oblivious” to events in his own country.
On Sunday, just after US President George W. Bush visited both nations, President Musharraf said intelligence about the presence of Taliban leaders in Pakistan provided by Mr Karzai during a recent visit was “nonsense”.
Kabul retaliated by stepping up calls for Islamabad to clamp down on Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents who allegedly launch attacks in Afghanistan from hideouts across the border in Pakistan.
Analysts say the row demonstrates that not all is well in the hunt for Osama bin Laden — said to be hiding on the rugged frontier — and warn that it could destabilise a critically important region of the world.
“What it shows is that Pakistan, Afghanistan and the US have been unsuccessful in trying to pacify the situation in the region,” defence analyst and retired general Talat Masood said.
“This altercation can seriously hurt the campaign against terror.”
Afghanistan and Pakistan have dispute over the demarcation of their borders since 1947 and ties have remained volatile despite many historical and ethnic links.
Islamabad helped Afghanistan drive out the Red Army, then it backed the Taliban, and finally allied with Washington after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
But being on the front line in Washington’s battle against Al Qaeda the past four and a half years has exacerbated underlying tensions and the latest dispute has been brewing for much of the last year.
It bubbled over after Bush said in Kabul that he would bring up the issue of “cross-border rebel incursions” with Pakistan. Then after meeting Musharraf the US leader said: “There is a lot of work to be done in defeating Al Qaeda.”
Gen Musharraf’s outburst came a day later.
“It is obvious that both Kabul and Islamabad are reacting to the growing US pressure on each to do more to stem the Taliban-led attacks on the American and Nato forces in Afghanistan,” said Riffat Hussain, director of the Regional Institute of Strategic Studies in the Sri Lankan capital Colombo.
Last year was the bloodiest since 2001 in Afghanistan, with attacks and clashes killing 1,600 people, many of them militants.
Pakistan says it is doing enough. It has 70,000 troops on the border and says it killed 140 pro-Taliban insurgents in a tribal area in fighting that started on Saturday — the same day Bush was in Islamabad.
Musharraf also rode out angry protests after a CIA airstrike on a tribal village in January killed 13 civilians — and not its intended target, Osama bin Laden’s deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
With Pakistan feeling snubbed, analysts said the spat could affect its ties with India, especially after Bush appeared to court New Delhi during his visit there with a civilian nuclear energy deal.
Pakistan also views India’s increasing closeness to Afghanistan with great suspicion, Hussain said.
Some Pakistani officials privately accuse India of fomenting unrest in its tribal areas and also in its troubled southwestern province of Balochistan — where a planned gas pipeline from Iran to India would pass through.
