Author: John F. Burns
Publication: The New York Times
Date: September 15, 2001
In intensive talks here and in Washington
over the last 72 hours, American officials have demanded that Pakistan
agree if necessary to allow American ground troops and special forces units
to operate from this country, senior officials said.
Pakistan's ruling generals have
also been told that they must allow Pakistan's airspace and its military
airfields, as well as its powerful military intelligence apparatus, to
be used for attacks against targets in Afghanistan that appear to be under
review in Washington.
Beyond this, the officials said,
the United States has demanded that Pakistan place the Taliban rulers of
Afghanistan under what would amount to immediate siege, cutting off fuel
(the Taliban's sole supply), denying use of Pakistani banks (crucial to
what is left of the Afghan economy) and halting all other forms of support.
Some of these demands were reported today in The Washington Post.
All other countries that border
landlocked Afghanistan, and particularly Iran, are hostile to the Taliban
and support the Northern Alliance, which is fighting a rear-guard action
to hang on to isolated pockets of territory that amount to about 10 percent
of the country.
Without Pakistan, the Taliban, who
play host to the terrorism suspect Osama bin Laden, would never have swept
across Afghanistan and succeeded in imposing their purified and regressive
form of Islam.
Confronted by the American demands,
President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and a group of fellow generals met
today in a tense, seven- hour conference at army headquarters, then delayed
for at least another day any public response to President Bush's demand
that they commit Pakistan to an all-out effort to capture or eliminate
Mr. bin Laden and his network in Afghanistan.
The length of today's meeting itself
suggests that even the military is divided on the issue.
A statement issued after the meeting,
in Rawalpindi, 20 miles from Islamabad, said the generals had agreed on
"recommendations" to put before the cabinet and National Security Council
on Saturday.
The delay seemed to be a formality,
or a bid to gain time on an issue that has thrown Pakistan into perhaps
its most severe political crisis.
All the signs are that General Musharraf
will agree to steps that will align Pakistan, at least formally, with the
international coalition that the Bush administration wants behind it as
it prepares military steps to smash the bin Laden network.
But the uncomfortable truth is that
the attacks on New York and the Pentagon have heightened the quandary that
Pakistan has confronted since it emerged as a nation in 1947: whether to
continue to straddle the divide between pro-Western, secularist elements
and deeply conservative Muslim groups, some with extremist agendas, or
to cast the country's lot decisively with the West.
Behind the wall of secrecy that
surrounded today's discussions, it was a fair guess that one issue that
caused dissension was the American demand for access to everything that
Pakistan's shadowy military intelligence agency, the Interservices Intelligence
directorate, or ISI, knows about the bin Laden network.
American officials want to know
about his hideouts and his bases, how he supplies his mainly Arab force
of several thousand men, and how he operates a supporting network that
runs deep into Pakistan.
All or much of this is certainly
known to the ISI, which has operated as a fief ever since it was designated
as the key agency handling weapons flows, training and other support for
the Muslim guerrillas fighting Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980's
- aid that was mainly American.
The ties with the Afghans carried
into the post-Soviet period in Afghanistan, with top ISI officers adopting
pro-Islamic and anti-American views, and continuing to support some of
the most militant guerrilla commanders when they formed the military backbone
of the Taliban.
At crucial moments in the Taliban's
rise, Pakistani officers in Afghan disguise and units of Pakistani troops
reportedly provided the decisive edge in Taliban military operations. So
it was no surprise today that one influential voice raised against accepting
Mr. Bush's demands for cooperation was that of Hamid Gul, a retired general
with links to pro- Taliban Islamic groups in Pakistan who was ISI chief
in the closing years of the anti-Soviet struggle.
"Afghans defeated one superpower,
and by the grace of God they will defeat another if the United States decides
to attack Afghanistan," he said.
On Islamabad's streets today, many
Pakistanis offered sympathy for the United States.
"Not good," said a 40-year-old minivan
driver, Ejaz Hussain, when asked about the attacks. "Not good for New York,
not good for America, not good for Pakistan." American reporters were greeted
with handshakes in malls and hotels.
But in the mosques and in every
village and town, Muslim clerics are powerful figures, and many have backed
militant political groups that have links to the Taliban.
"The destruction in America was
God's warning in response to its anti- Muslim policies," Qari Hussain Ahmed
Madani, a cleric in Peshawar, on the Afghan frontier, told worshipers.
"A couple of attacks has turned America from a superpower to a zero power."
