US missile strikes 'destabilising' Pakistan: Report
Written By
DNA Web Team
| Updated:
American missile strikes and Pakistani military raids have reduced the al-Qaeda's global reach but heightened the threat to Islamabad.
American missile strikes and Pakistani military raids have reduced the al-Qaeda's global reach but heightened the threat to Islamabad as the group disperses its cells in the south Asian country and fights to maintain its sanctuaries, a media report said here on Wednesday.
The strikes and raids are proving effective, having killed as many as 80 Qaeda fighters in the past year, the New York Times quoted unidentified Pakistani intelligence officials as saying.
"But they (officials) expressed growing alarm that the drone strikes in particular are having an increasingly destabilising effect on their country, the paper said.
The officials, the paper said, also voiced fears that the expected arrival of 17,000 American troops in Afghanistan this spring and summer would add to the stress by pushing more Taliban fighters into Pakistan.
The assessment, the Times reported, was provided during a two-hour briefing by senior analysts and officials of Pakistan's main spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The analysis reflected the increasing public pressure on the Pakistani government to oppose the drone attacks, which are deeply unpopular here for the civilian casualties they have inflicted.
But it also underscored ominous signs of the al Qaeda's resilience and pointed to new and unintended dangers for American policy in the region — a rapidly destabilised, nuclear-armed Pakistan, a state with a weak civilian government and a military struggling to fight an expanding insurgency, the Times said.
The "sobering" Pakistani assessment, the paper added, was in contrast to the optimism voiced earlier this month by new American director of national intelligence, Dennis C Blair.
While the Pakistani analysts agreed with Blair that the al Qaeda's ability to conduct large-scale attacks against the United States was most likely degraded, it also signaled no cessation in attacks by the Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban aimed at undermining Islamabad, the paper said.
The Pakistani officials, the Times said, suggested that al Qaeda is replenishing killed fighters and midlevel leaders with less experienced but hard-core militants, who are considered more dangerous because they have fewer allegiances to local Pakistani tribes.
Al Qaeda is using sophisticated Web sites and sleeper cells across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia to enlist young fighters who were less patient or inclined to plan and carry out far-reaching global attacks and who had instead redirected their energies on more immediate targets and on fomenting insurgency in Pakistan, the officials were quoted as saying.
Qaeda leaders have also increased their financing and logistical support to the Taliban and other militant groups, having come to see the survival of Qaeda sanctuaries as dependent on the ability of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan to hold territory, the paper said.
"It’s morphing into a monster and growing uglier," one senior Pakistani intelligence official was quoted as saying.
Pakistani intelligence and military officials were quoted as saying there is no argument that Qaeda fighters must be hunted down; they provide targeting information to the CIA, which remotely pilots the drones.
But they complained that the missile strikes cause too many civilian casualties and that they hand the militants a propaganda windfall.
The Pakistani intelligence assessment, the Times said, found that Al Qaeda had adapted to the blows to its command structure by shifting "to conduct decentralised operations under small but well-organised regional groups" within Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The strikes and raids are proving effective, having killed as many as 80 Qaeda fighters in the past year, the New York Times quoted unidentified Pakistani intelligence officials as saying.
"But they (officials) expressed growing alarm that the drone strikes in particular are having an increasingly destabilising effect on their country, the paper said.
The officials, the paper said, also voiced fears that the expected arrival of 17,000 American troops in Afghanistan this spring and summer would add to the stress by pushing more Taliban fighters into Pakistan.
The assessment, the Times reported, was provided during a two-hour briefing by senior analysts and officials of Pakistan's main spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
The analysis reflected the increasing public pressure on the Pakistani government to oppose the drone attacks, which are deeply unpopular here for the civilian casualties they have inflicted.
But it also underscored ominous signs of the al Qaeda's resilience and pointed to new and unintended dangers for American policy in the region — a rapidly destabilised, nuclear-armed Pakistan, a state with a weak civilian government and a military struggling to fight an expanding insurgency, the Times said.
The "sobering" Pakistani assessment, the paper added, was in contrast to the optimism voiced earlier this month by new American director of national intelligence, Dennis C Blair.
While the Pakistani analysts agreed with Blair that the al Qaeda's ability to conduct large-scale attacks against the United States was most likely degraded, it also signaled no cessation in attacks by the Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban aimed at undermining Islamabad, the paper said.
The Pakistani officials, the Times said, suggested that al Qaeda is replenishing killed fighters and midlevel leaders with less experienced but hard-core militants, who are considered more dangerous because they have fewer allegiances to local Pakistani tribes.
Al Qaeda is using sophisticated Web sites and sleeper cells across the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia to enlist young fighters who were less patient or inclined to plan and carry out far-reaching global attacks and who had instead redirected their energies on more immediate targets and on fomenting insurgency in Pakistan, the officials were quoted as saying.
Qaeda leaders have also increased their financing and logistical support to the Taliban and other militant groups, having come to see the survival of Qaeda sanctuaries as dependent on the ability of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan to hold territory, the paper said.
"It’s morphing into a monster and growing uglier," one senior Pakistani intelligence official was quoted as saying.
Pakistani intelligence and military officials were quoted as saying there is no argument that Qaeda fighters must be hunted down; they provide targeting information to the CIA, which remotely pilots the drones.
But they complained that the missile strikes cause too many civilian casualties and that they hand the militants a propaganda windfall.
The Pakistani intelligence assessment, the Times said, found that Al Qaeda had adapted to the blows to its command structure by shifting "to conduct decentralised operations under small but well-organised regional groups" within Pakistan and Afghanistan.