U.S. policy makers have pursued several initiatives to reduce tensions between Afghanistan and Pakistan in order to encourage both governments to concentrate their attention on countering the Taliban and al-Qaeda members operating on their territories. These measures have included establishing a joint center for exchanging intelligence, promoting economic cooperation among border communities, and encouraging Pakistani authorities to crack down on foreign fighters located in northwest Pakistan. Despite these efforts, Pakistani and Afghani leaders still disagree over important issues, such as whether to pursue political reconciliation with the Taliban.

BACKGROUND: The political crisis in Pakistan, symbolized by the government’s recent declaration of a state of emergency, has deepened U.S. anxieties about the relationship between Islamabad and Kabul. The October 2007 National Strategy for Homeland Security warns that al-Qaeda has “regenerated a safe haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas. American officials believe that improved relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, especially in the area of counterterrorism cooperation, are essential for managing this problem.”

In return for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s sustained support of Washington’s military, intelligence, and other efforts against al-Qaeda after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, U.S. President George W. Bush and other members of his administration have repeatedly defended the Pakistani president against those who complain about his alleged half-hearted commitment to suppressing the Taliban insurgency.

After Democratic Senator Barack Obama and other influential Americans openly raised the option earlier this year of sending U.S. combat forces into Pakistan to attack al-Qaeda elements without Musharraf’s consent, for example, Bush expressed confidence that Musharraf would suppress any al-Qaeda operatives detected in Pakistan by his own initiative.

Furthermore, the Bush administration has provided the Musharraf government with more than $1 billion annually in foreign assistance despite the Pakistani president’s failure to restore democratic rule in his country. Much of this assistance has gone to the Pakistani military, to help it buy advanced counterterrorist equipment, but the United States has also provided general and targeted economic support. At present, the administration is seeking to establish “reconstruction opportunity zones” along the Afghan-Pakistan border. Under the plan, goods produced in the zones could be sold in either country duty-free. In addition, the administration has requested a $750 million targeted aid program for the semi-autonomous Pakistani border region of the Federally Administrative Tribal Areas (FATA).

U.S. officials hope that these economic initiatives will both curb extremism by promoting socioeconomic development in regions prone to Islamist radicalism and strengthen general commercial ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Analysts believe that the presence of large Pashtun ethnic tribes on both sides of the frontier facilitates the infiltration of Taliban insurgents, many of whom are ethnic Pashtuns, across their 2,430-kilometer (1,510 mile) joint border.

In addition to supporting economic development in Pashtun-populated regions, the United States also took the lead in establishing a Joint Intelligence Operations Center in January 2007. The center provides a forum where analysts from Afghanistan, Pakistan and the NATO International Security Assistance Force operating in Afghanistan can share and evaluate data about terrorist activities along the Afghan-Pakistani border. Washington’s hope is that, by sharing intelligence assessments on a daily basis, Afghan and Pakistani military representatives will better understood each other’s security perspectives.

The Bush administration also played a major role in promoting the August 9-12 “Joint Peace Jirga.”  Over 600 representatives from Afghanistan and Pakistan attended this unprecedented tribal council, which included tribal leaders, government officials, community activists, business leaders, and other influential, primarily Pashtun figures from both nations.

The joint assembly idea originated during a White House meeting last September among Bush, Karzai, and Musharraf. Although news reports differ regarding which participant first proposed the jirga, U.S. officials have strongly supported the initiative. They hoped that the event would allow Afghanistan and Pakistan to mobilize traditional Pashtun tribal structures to reduce bilateral tensions, thereby highlighting their shared interests in regional stability. An estimated 40-50 million Pashtuns live on either side of the Durand Line, which formally divided the territory of Afghanistan and Pakistan. (Many in Afghanistan do not consider the Line a formal international border.)

Musharraf unexpectedly told Karzai the day before the joint jirga began that he would not deliver his long-planned opening address at the council. It later became apparent that he was consulting with his key advisers about whether to establish a state of emergency in Pakistan. After U.S. diplomats pressured Musharraf to rethink this last-minute decision, he ultimately accepted the Afghan president’s subsequent invitation to speak at the concluding session of the jirga.

IMPLICATIONS:  In addition to attending the jirga, Musharraf has taken other actions supported by Washington in the war on terror. In particular, his government has adopted a harder line toward the activities of Islamist extremists on Pakistani territory. In July, the Pakistani security services attacked the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and adjacent religious school in downtown Islamabad, controlled by radical clerics, with substantial loss of life as a result.

For months, senior U.S. officials have pressured the Musharraf government to move against Taliban and al-Qaeda bases in northwest Pakistan. In early July, White House Homeland Security Adviser Frances Townsend declassified parts of a recently completed National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the terrorist threat to the United States. The NIE determined that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were exploiting the controversial September 2006 truce agreement between the Pakistani government and the Pashtun tribal authorities in the FATA to reestablish their operations.

In accordance with the agreement, the Pakistani government increased its economic and military aid to the tribes and withdrew Pakistani army soldiers from their jurisdictions in return for tribal leaders’ pledges to deny foreign terrorists sanctuary. The tribal militias proved no match for al-Qaeda’s operatives, who began establishing training camps and fortified logistical strongholds throughout the FATA.

The evidence provided in the NIE persuaded Musharraf that the militants, who had sought to assassinate him on several occasions, planned to expand their operations into other regions of Pakistan and Central Asia. In response, Musharraf directed almost 100,000 Pakistani army troops to resume attacking al-Qaeda and Taliban concentrations in the FATA.

Major General David Rodriguez, head of all conventional U.S. forces in Afghanistan as commander of Combined Joint Task Force 82, subsequently told the media that intelligence sharing between U.S. and Pakistani analysts regarding Taliban cross-border activities had improved. He argued that the enhanced cooperation, along with more aggressive Pakistani military operations in the FATA, made the deployment of American troops on the Pakistani side of the frontier unnecessary.

Despite Musharraf’s belated arrival at the joint jirga, persistent Afghan-Pakistani differences were evident at the council. Karzai told the delegates that the Taliban threatened both Afghanistan and Pakistan:  “Unfortunately our Pakistani brothers are also under fire, and this fire, day by day, is getting hotter.”  In contrast, Musharraf said that only a small minority of Taliban members were “die-hard militants and fanatics.”  The rest were simply “estranged brothers and sisters” whose support could be gained through an effective “hearts and minds” campaign.

More disturbingly, FATA leaders sympathetic to the Taliban overwhelmingly boycotted the joint jirga. Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the head of the opposition Islamist Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islam party, which heads the government of Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan, termed the peace conference meaningless without the Taliban’s presence. The party’s secretary-general, Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, also skipped the council. Haideri termed the jirga “a display, which cannot produce the true views of the Afghan people.”  Although the province’s governor, Ali Muhammad Jan Aurkzai, did attend the jirga, he argued that “ground realities” required negotiating with the Taliban. “Unless that happens,” he added, “no matter what else we do I don't think the problem will be resolved.” 

CONCLUSIONS:  Although Karzai might prove willing to engage in a political dialogue with the Taliban, President Bush has made clear he opposed extending U.S. reconciliation initiatives to encompass the movement. At his meeting with Karzai earlier this year at Camp David, he called Taliban “brutal, cold-blooded killers” who adhered to “a vision of darkness.”  Meanwhile, Musharraf has strived to defend his actions as motivated by Pakistan’s national interests rather than fulfilling Washington’s wishes. On the occasion of his country’s 60th anniversary, Musharraf insisted to the media: “We are not confronting terrorism for America, we are doing it for ourselves.” Nevertheless, the embattled president may now feel pressured to either move closer to the United States, to shore up his support in Washington, or distance himself from U.S. counterterrorist initiatives, to burnish his nationalist credentials at home.

AUTHORS’S BIO: Richard Weitz is Senior Fellow and Director for Project Management at the Hudson Institute.