US secret plan to launch military operations in Pak held up

New York, Jun 30 (PTI) A secret plan by the US to launch
mission by Special Operations forces into Pakistani tribal
areas to capture or kill top al Qaeda leaders has been held up
for more than six months and there was "mounting frustration"
in Pentagon over the continued delay, a media report said.

Intelligence reports for more than a year had been
streaming in about Osama bin Laden's network rebuilding in the
Pakistani tribal areas, a problem that, the report said, had
been exacerbated by years of missteps in Washington and
Islamabad, sharp policy disagreements, and turf battles
between American counter-terrorism agencies.

The plan, outlined in a highly classified Pentagon order,
was intended to eliminate some of those battles, the New York
Times claimed.

The plan was meant to pave a smoother path into the
tribal areas for American commandos, who for years have
bristled at what they see as Washington's risk-averse attitude
toward Special Operations missions inside Pakistan.

They also argue that catching bin Laden will come only by
capturing some of his senior lieutenants alive.

But more than six months later, the Special Operations
forces are still waiting for the green light. The plan has
been held up in Washington by the very disagreements it was
meant to eliminate. A senior Defence Department official said
there was "mounting frustration" in the Pentagon at the
continued delay.

The story of how al-Qaeda, has gained a new haven is in
part a story of American accommodation to President Prevez
Musharraf whose advisers, the paper says, played down the
terrorist threat. It is also a story of how the White House
shifted its sights from counter-terrorism efforts in
Afghanistan and Pakistan to preparations for the war in Iraq.

Just as it had on the day before 9/11, al Qaeda now
has a band of terror camps from which to plan and train for
attacks against Western targets, including the United States,
the officials were quoted as saying.

The new camps are smaller than the ones the group used
prior to 2001. However, despite dozens of American missile
strikes in Pakistan since 2002, one retired CIA officer
estimated that the makeshift training compounds now have as
many as 2,000 local and foreign militants, up from several
hundred three years ago, the paper said.

The paper quotes American intelligence officials as
saying that the Qaeda hunt in Pakistan, code-named Operation
Cannonball by the CIA in 2006, was often undermined by bitter
disagreements within the Bush administration and within the
intelligence agency, including about whether American
commandos should launch ground raids inside the tribal areas.

Inside the CIA, the fights included clashes between
the agency's outposts in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Islamabad.
There were also battles between field officers and the
counter-terrorism center at CIA headquarters, whose preference
for carrying out raids remotely, via Predator missile strikes,
was derided by officers in the Islamabad station as the work
of "boys with toys."

The paper quoted current and former military and
intelligence officials as saying that the war in Iraq
consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from
the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence
officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the
tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because
they had been sent to Iraq.

Some former officials told the paper that Bush should
have done more to confront Musharraf, by aggressively
demanding that he acknowledge the scale of the militant
threat.

Western military officials were quoted by the Times as
saying that Musharraf was instead often distracted by his own
political problems, and effectively allowed militants to
regroup by brokering peace agreements with them.

Even critics of the White House, the paper notes,
agree that there was no foolproof solution to gaining control
of the tribal areas. But by all accounts the administration
failed to develop a comprehensive plan to address the militant
problem there, and never resolved the disagreements between
warring agencies that undermined efforts to fashion any
coherent strategy.

"We're just kind of drifting," Richard L. Armitage,
who as deputy secretary of state from 2001-2005 was the
administration's point person for Pakistan, told the paper.

Under pressure from Pakistan, the Bush administration
decided in 2003 to end the American military presence on the
ground. In a recent interview, Armitage said he had supported
the pullback in recognition of the political risks that
Musharraf had already taken. "We were pushing them almost to
the breaking point," Armitage said.

To have insisted that American forces be allowed to
cross from Afghanistan into Pakistan, Armitage said: "might
have been a bridge too far."

In order to keep pressure on the Pakistanis about the
tribal areas, officials decided to have Bush raise the issue
in personal phone calls with Musharraf.

But the conversations backfired, it said, adding two
former US government officials say they were surprised and
frustrated when instead of demanding action from Musharraf,
Bush instead repeatedly thanked him for his contributions to
the war on terrorism.