The 9/11 Commission Report has been made public and has, since then, witnessed intense scrutiny and commentary in the international media. The Indian media and analysts have been exceptionally vocal about its findings on Pakistan's possible linkages with the 9/11 attackers and conspirators. There is no doubt quite a few conclusions in the report should make President Pervez Musharraf worry about its possible fallout in Washington. But the General has chosen to keep quiet. His reasoning is simple and quite right too. A significant amount of the Commission's findings is old wine in a new bottle. It has been known for quite sometime that many of the hijackers had either trained or transited through Pakistan, particularly via the terrorist capital, Karachi. This author has detailed Pakistan's 9/11 linkages in a book, Karachi: A Terror Capital in the Making (Observer Research Foundation), published in 2003. The linkages between the Pakistan Army and the Taliban, and hence with al Qaida, likewise, have been in public domain since the National Security Archives at Georgetown University, Washington DC, had put up a collection of declassified documents on its website. <br /> <br /> What neither the Commission nor the commentators have chosen to highlight are the two firm conclusions that can be drawn from the voluminous report. First, the report brings out, in exceptional clarity, the failure of US War on Terrorism. Second, the failure of the US Policy on Pakistan. Both the conclusions are organically linked. <br /> <br /> As the report pointed out, it was quite clear from the beginning itself that Pakistan was closely aligned with the Taliban. Its intelligence agencies and the Army were working with the Taliban in training the cadre, most of whom later became part of al Qaida ranks and possibly helped the attacks on the World Trade Center. To quote from the Report (page 64): ``It is unlikely that Bin Ladin could have returned to Afghanistan had Pakistan disapproved. The Pakistani military intelligence service probably had advance knowledge of his coming, and its officers may have facilitated his travel. During his entire time in Sudan, he had maintained guesthouses and training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistani intelligence officers reportedly introduced Bin Ladin to Taliban leaders in Kandahar, their main base of power, to aid his reassertion of control over camps near Khowst, out of an apparent hope that he would now expand the camps and make them available for training Kashmiri militants. `` The report, incidentally, also admitted (page 123) that ``Pakistan's military intelligence service, known as the ISID (Inter Services Intelligence Directorate) was the Taliban's primary patron, which made progress difficult``. <br /> <br /> Several declassified documents, now available in public domain, also clearly indicate the deep involvement of Pakistan military and intelligence in training the Taliban and al Qaida elements. These documents are from the archives of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, two arms of the US intelligence community responsible for external intelligence gathering and assessment. It is therefore established that the State Department and White House knew Pakistan's official involvement in global terrorism in detail. But the State Department was divided on how to handle Pakistan. A section felt that Pakistan should be categorized as a terrorist nation and additional sanctions imposed. The influential section in the establishment, like Mr Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, however, argued that Washington was ``stick heavy`` in its policy towards Pakistan and that additional sanctions could bankrupt the country and trigger ``total chaos`` in a nuclear-armed country with a number of radical Islamists waiting in the wings to capture power. The advice, which President Clinton accepted, was that Pakistan should be engaged. So the Clinton administration decided to persuade Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to try and influence the Taliban to dissociate itself from al Qaida and get bin Laden for the US, alive. Although Sharif promised to help the US, his Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf, launched a covert operation against India by capturing certain unoccupied heights in the Indian side of Kashmir. It is quite significant that President Clinton, who is today perceived as a friend of India, refused to designate Pakistan as a nation sponsoring terrorism and instead chose to exert diplomatic and economic pressure on Sharif to fall in line. <br /> <br /> The trend continued with the Bush Administration. In February 2001, President Bush wrote to President Musharraf pointing out that bin Laden and his al Qaida posed `` a direct threat to the United States and its interests that must be addressed``. Bush wanted Musharraf to use his influence with the Taliban to hand over bin Laden. On August 4 the same year Bush once again wrote to Musharraf requesting his support in countering al Qaida and its leader, bin Laden. Pakistan, however, continued to hedge and except rhetoric Musharraf did not offer much. Al Qaida attacked the US on September 11, 2001. Two days later, at a meeting chaired by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, it was decided to force Pakistan to help the US in its campaign against al Qaida in Afghanistan. This aspect of the report has, for some reason, not been analysed and commented upon as incisively as other issues. It deserves to be. This sequence of events betrayed the failure of US policy towards Pakistan. The US, despite its economic and diplomatic superiority, could not exert enough influence on the Pakistan military to cooperate in its campaign against bin Laden. Even a cursory reading of the report makes it quite clear that had Pakistan cooperated; there was a strong possibility that the WTC attack could not have taken place. <br /> <br /> The next sequence of events only further emphasizes the US failure. After the September 13 meeting, Pakistan was handed down seven directives and President Musharraf the same day`` agreed to every US request for support in the war on terrorism``. The next day, Musharraf even persuaded his commanders to go with him. This was the cornerstone of the much-debated US War on Terrorism. The success and failure of the campaign depended on President Musharraf's concurrence. A close analysis of the War on Terrorism reveal how dependent the US was on Pakistan. The question which the report fails to raise is what were the compulsions for Pakistan to tow the line after September 11 when the US administration, and no less than the President of the United States, had been trying to seek cooperation in neutralizing al Qaida and its leader, in Laden. And if we stretch the argument, why couldn't the US force Pakistan to comply with its directives on bin Laden before September 11? <br /> <br /> Therein lies the failure of the US policy on terrorism and Pakistan. The result is today obvious. Pakistan is one of al Qaida's core areas of operation. It is a strategic ally of the US against the latter's war on al Qaida. And this war is far from over. The reason is simple. The war has to be fought inside Pakistan if it has to be won. <br /> <br /> <em>* Views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Observer Research Foundation.</em>
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