Pakistan Told to Ratchet Up Fight Against the Taliban

NEWYORKTIMES

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is turning up the pressure on Pakistan to fight the Taliban inside its borders, warning that if it does not act more aggressively the United States will use considerably more force on the Pakistani side of the border to shut down Taliban attacks on American forces in Afghanistan, American and Pakistani officials said.

The blunt message was delivered in a tense encounter in Pakistan last month, before President Obama announced his new war strategy, when Gen. James L. Jones, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, and John O. Brennan, the White House counterterrorism chief, met with the heads of Pakistan’s military and its intelligence service.

United States officials said the message did not amount to an ultimatum, but rather it was intended to prod a reluctant Pakistani military to go after Taliban insurgents in Pakistan who are directing attacks in Afghanistan.

For their part the Pakistanis interpreted the message as a fairly bald warning that unless Pakistan moved quickly to act against two Taliban groups they have so far refused to attack, the United States was prepared to take unilateral action to expand Predator drone attacks beyond the tribal areas and, if needed, to resume raids by Special Operations forces into the country against Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders.

A senior administration official, asked about the encounter, declined to go into details but added quickly, “I think they read our intentions accurately.”

A Pakistani official who has been briefed on the meetings said, “Jones’s message was if that Pakistani help wasn’t forthcoming, the United States would have to do it themselves.”

American commanders said earlier this year that they were considering expanding drone strikes in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, but General Jones’s comments marked the first time that the United States bluntly told Pakistan it would have to choose between leading attacks against the insurgents inside the country’s borders or stepping aside to let the Americans do it.

The recent security demands followed an offer of a broader strategic relationship and expanded intelligence sharing and nonmilitary economic aid from the United States. Pakistan’s politically weakened president, Asif Ali Zardari, replied in writing to a two-page letter that General Jones delivered from Mr. Obama. But Mr. Zardari gave no indication of how Pakistan would respond to the incentives, which were linked to the demands for greatly stepped-up counterterrorism actions.

“We’ve offered them a strategic choice,” one administration official said, describing the private communications. “And we’ve heard back almost nothing.” Another administration official said, “Our patience is wearing thin.”

Asked Monday about the exchange, Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said, “We have no comment on private diplomatic correspondence. As the president has said repeatedly, we will continue to partner with Pakistan and the international community to enhance the military, governance and economic capacity of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

The implicit threat of not only ratcheting up the drone strikes but also launching more covert American ground raids would mark a substantial escalation of the administration’s counterterrorism campaign.

American Special Operations forces attacked Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village near the border with Afghanistan in early September 2008, in the first publicly acknowledged case of United States forces conducting a ground raid on Pakistani soil.

But the raid caused a political furor in Pakistan, with the country’s top generals condemning the attack, and the United States backed off what had been a planned series of such strikes.

During his intensive review of Pakistan and Afghanistan strategy, officials say, Mr. Obama concluded that no amount of additional troops in Afghanistan would succeed in their new mission if the Taliban could retreat over the Pakistani border to regroup and resupply. But the administration has said little about the Pakistani part of the strategy.

“We concluded early on that whatever you do with Pakistan, you don’t want to talk about it much,” a senior presidential aide said last week. “All it does is get backs up in Islamabad.”

During his speech at West Point last week, Mr. Obama said that “our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.” But for the rest of the speech he referred to the country in the past tense, talking about how “there have been those in Pakistan who’ve argued that the struggle against extremism is not their fight, and that Pakistan is better off doing little or seeking accommodation with those who use violence.”

He never quite said how his administration views the Pakistanis today, and two officials said that Mr. Obama used that construction in an effort not to alienate the current government or the army, led by Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

Even before Mr. Obama announced his decision last week, the White House had approved an expansion of the C.I.A.’s drone program in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. A missile strike from what was said to be a United States drone in the tribal areas killed at least three people early Tuesday, according to Pakistani intelligence officials, The Associated Press reported.

Pakistani officials, wary of civilian casualties and the appearance of further infringement of national sovereignty, are still in discussions with American officials over whether to allow the C.I.A. to expand its missile strikes into Baluchistan for the first time — a politically delicate move because it is outside the tribal areas. American commanders say this is necessary because Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader who ran Afghanistan before the 2001 invasion, and other Taliban leaders are hiding in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province.

Pakistani officials also voice concern that if the Pakistani Army were to aggressively attack the two groups that most concern the United States — the Afghan Taliban leaders and the Haqqani network based in North Waziristan — the militants would respond with waves of retaliatory bombings, further undermining the weak civilian government.

Publicly, senior American officials and commanders take note of that concern. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton arrived in Pakistan in late October with offers of a strategic partnership. But General Jones followed Mrs. Clinton two weeks later carrying more sticks than carrots, American officials said.