News last week that senior U.S. military commanders are pushing to send Special Operations ground forces into troubled tribal areas of Pakistan sent shock waves around the world.
And it prompted denials from NATO and Pentagon officials, who said there were no such plans.
We hope this was just a case of fed-up military leaders floating a trial balloon, because the U.S. is hardly in a position of opening what amounts to a new front in an already difficult and unpopular war.
Pakistan’s refusal to root out al-Qaeda militants in these sanctuaries is frustrating, no doubt, and threatens to undermine coalition gains in Afghanistan.
Attacks launched from that area across the border into Afghanistan are frequently blamed for the painstakingly slow progress in stabilizing Afghanistan. The Pakistanis, fickle allies at best, have resisted committing to a timetable for clearing the area of militant forces.
After The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, broke the story about the plan for ground raids, Pakistani officials expressed outrage.
“Pakistani forces are capable of handling the militant threat within our borders and no foreign forces are allowed or required to operate inside our sovereign territory,” Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the U.S., told the Pakistani newspaper Dawn.
The Pakistani position is not a mystery. They are hedging their bets in harboring insurgents, trying to maintain ties with militant groups that might be in a position to give Pakistan some influence in Kabul once U.S. forces leave the region.
Their ultimate aim is to ensure that arch enemy India does not gain too much sway in Afghanistan.
The U.S. has a delicate balance to maintain between pressuring Pakistan to help and taking matters into its own hands.
American patience for gaining Pakistani cooperation is wearing thin. But launching ground attacks into Pakistan without its permission is a recipe for further destabilizing an already dangerously unsteady region.
