Pakistan delivers but doubts remain
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
ISLAMABAD - Pakistan has once again come up with a big fish for the United States with the arrest in the southern port city of a senior al-Qaeda operative.
Although there is some confusion as to the identity of the man, the arrest again underscores the importance of Pakistan in the US's struggle in Afghanistan.
On Sunday evening, Pakistan's security agencies leaked a report of the arrest of al-Qaeda operative Abu Yahya Azzam, but later information began circulating that the man was in fact another al-Qaeda operative, Adam Gadahn, an American-born convert to Islam whose Muslim name is Adam Yahiya Azzam. By Monday morning, security agencies clarified that the arrested person is indeed Abu Yahya Azzam, who is of Arab origin. The claims could not be independently verified.
The regime of former president Pervez Musharraf was adept at producing key al-Qaeda figures at critical junctures with the US. Islamabad, that is, the military, is doing the same now. On the one hand it wants to win US backing for an extension to the term of army chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiani, who is set to retire this year. Kiani is very popular with the US military establishment.
The military also wants to ensure that it gets a central role in the end game in Afghanistan, in particular in any negotiations with the Taliban. For its part, Washington wants to keep Pakistan subservient to Washington's policies.
The latest arrest follows other recent captures in Pakistan, notably those of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's supreme commander, and Mustasam Agha Jan, a close aide of Taliban leader Mullah Omar.
Washington will most certainly be delighted with this string of arrests, but it still treats anything that happens in Pakistan with some caution, as it did in Musharraf’s time in the years after Pakistan joined the "war on terror" in 2001.
United States special AfPak envoy Richard Holbrooke said in an interview with the Financial Times following the arrest of Baradar that he was not convinced that Pakistan had decisively turned against the Afghan Taliban. He declined to say whether the US was getting good intelligence from the joint interrogation of Baradar, but he said he had "no problems" with the Lahore High Court's denial of a request last week to transfer the Taliban commander to Afghanistan.
Over the past year, Pakistan has mounted several major military operations in the tribal areas against militants, with some success, and recently it claimed to have killed top Taliban commanders including Moulvi Faqir Mohammad and Qari Ziaur Rahman. These deaths have not been verified by independent sources. (For a face-to-face interview with one of the Taliban's most dangerous commanders, see A fighter and a financier Asia Times Online, May 23, 2008.)
However, suspicions linger in Washington that Pakistan still aims to keep some space for itself for a final maneuver and that, if Pakistan's military apparatus is not taken under firm control, Washington will not get its desirable results in Afghanistan.
These fears have been heightened by the Lahore court's decision not to hand over suspects; previously, people were passed on without question, many destined for the US detention centers at Guantanamo Bay or Bagram air base near Kabul.
Controlling Pakistan's military
A Pashtu-speaking retired Pakistani general and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, Ehsan ul-Haq, was the eyes and ears of his then-chief of army staff, Musharraf, before the October 12, 1999, military coup that brought Musharraf to power.
After the coup, Haq was promoted to Corps Commander Peshawar and soon after was made chief of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency - the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Musharraf was convinced of his loyalty.
However, when it became a question of appointing Haq vice chief of army staff and making him a full general, Musharraf saw in him an over-ambitious officer. He promoted him to be a four-star general and gave him the largely ceremonial position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of the Staff Committee.
This marked Haq's parting of the ways with Musharraf and his close military officers, including Kiani, who was then the director general of the ISI. Haq nevertheless developed good ties with American officials. Kiani, being Musharraf's spy master, warned that Haq was maneuvering against Musharraf and was trying to win favors in Washington.
Haq eventually ended up at a Washington think-tank, but continued to promote himself in Pakistan, using two of his closest friends - Saiful Islam, a son of Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, and Prince Ahmad, the chief of the armed forces of Bahrain.
As a rule in Pakistan, foreign companies with investment in Pakistan appoint a non-Pakistani as chairman, with the managing director being Pakistani. However, due to Saiful Adil's influence, Haq was appointed chairman of Pak-Libya Holding Company, which has large investments in Pakistan. This consolidated Haq's clout in Pakistan. Although he is disliked by the incumbent military leadership, Washington used Haq in setting up back-channel dialogue between Pakistan and India.
Haq using his friendship with Prince Ahmad to convince the Saudi rulers that he (Haq) should be the point man for consultations on the South Asian "war on terror" theater. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia therefore recently summoned Haq to Riyadh for an audience.
The next step, security sources tell Asia Times Online, will be a strong push by Washington to get Haq appointed as national security advisor to President Asif Ali Zardari in an attempt to get the military establishment fully under control. Although the military gets on very well with its counterpart in the US, there are clearly still those lingering doubts that Pakistan's generals will always put their own interests first.
Military headquarters in Rawalpindi are apparently ready to fiercely oppose any such oversight moves.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at
saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
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taliban ... grow in Afghanistan load em up on a truck and sell em few hundred kms down the road.
