Don't mention the Afghan-Pakistan war

Spectator, The, Jul 26, 2008 by Nelson, Fraser

At a recent dinner party in the British embassy in Kabul, one of the guests referred to 'the Afghan-Pakistan war'.

The rest of the table fell silent. This is the truth that dare not speak its name. Even mentioning it in private in the Afghan capital's green zone is enough to solicit murmurs of disapproval. Few want to accept that the war is widening; that it now involves Pakistan, a country with an unstable government and nuclear weapons.

But in fact the military commanders know that they are dealing with far more than just a domestic insurgency. Weapons, men and suicide bombers are flooding in from Pakistan every day. Like it or not, war is being waged on Afghanistan from Pakistan.

Consider the evidence: British forces in Helmand have achieved striking success in repelling the Taleban, but they can never eliminate the enemy entirely because of the constant stream of new recruits flowing over the border from the Pakistani town of Quetta. To Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith, head of Taskforce Helmand, it is a source of deep frustration. 'When pushed out of Helmand, the opportunities are there for the Taleban to recruit, equip and retrain on the other side of the border, ' he told me when I visited two months ago.

In theory, the Pakistani government has signed up to the war on terror and is trying as best it can to help us. But in practice, it is playing a dangerous double game. The Pakistani government, army and intelligence services all have their own distinct reasons for keeping the Taleban in business. The Pakistan army effectively ceded Quetta to the Taleban six years ago, for example, hoping their brutal methods would deal with local Baluchistan separatists.

Inside the UK Ministry of Defence the name Quetta is spat out like a curse by British commanders who know they are fighting a lopsided war. 'We have to start looking at this area as a whole battlefield, Pakistan included, ' one senior MoD source tells me.

'Because that's what the locals are doing. We have to think the same way.' But they cannot admit as much in public. Handling an insurgency is one thing, but any war involving a nuclear-armed country like Pakistan is almost too frightening a prospect to consider.

Quietly, the problem of Pakistan's terrorist-infested border areas has overtaken Iran to become the British government's most acute foreign policy challenge. In fact, the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) of Pakistan can lay good claim to be the most prolific terrorist zone anywhere in the world, thanks to its substantial al-Qa'eda camps.

The London, Madrid, Bali and Islamabad bombings were all planned there. MI5 believe half the British terror suspects they are currently monitoring were originally trained in Fata camps.

The problem is becoming too big to ignore. There are an estimated 8,000 foreign militants in Fata, from Arabs to Chechens, operating sophisticated training camps with impunity.

The American failure to understand the complexity of the Pakistan problem is perhaps one of the biggest strategic errors of the war in Afghanistan. President Pervaiz Musharraf reluctantly agreed to join the war on terror, and Washington was keen to take him at his word. But as the Taleban fell, the Pakistani security establishment opened an escape hatch for the enemy by removing their troops from the border of the Fata, allowing the Taleban to relocate. The jihadis now have bases, broadcasting stations and the protection of being in a territory that is part of a nuclear-armed state. The West invaded Afghanistan to stop terrorism being given a state home. Yet al-Qa'eda is alive, well and living in Fata.

Just what to do about this is a source of deep division in Washington. Pakistan is deeply nervous about any American incursions into its territory -- even if it is territory like Fata where the Pakistan army itself suffered heavy losses at the hands of the Taleban. Britain is pushing hard for a diplomatic solution, saying that no incursion can succeed without the backing of the Pakistani military, which is geared up to fight India, not to track down insurgents. And anyway, after years of failed policy, and being played like a fiddle by President Musharraf, America is losing patience. The Pentagon provided helicopter gunships to Musharraf that were intended for fighting the Taleban -- only to see them used to mow down separatists in the Baluchistan province.

America is increasingly taking matters into its own hands. First came the attacks from the unmanned drone aircraft, then the occasional missiles into known al-Qa'eda camps. Last month saw a further escalation.

The US Air Force sanctioned an air strike targeted at militants, but it killed 11 members of the Frontier Corps -- the Raj-era defence force which is supposed to be keeping the militants in check. The Americans refused to apologise despite demands from Pakistan that it do so. The Frontier Corps' uselessness, says the Pentagon, led to a 50 per cent rise in cross-border attacks. 'They're pretty much tribals themselves, ' said Dan McNeill, an American general who stepped down as head of Nato forces in Afghanistan last month.