Bashing the Pakis

Elisabeth Bumiller and Jane Perlez have an article in The New York Times about Pakistan:

The nation’s top military official said that Pakistan’s spy agency played a direct role in supporting the insurgents who carried out the deadly attack on the American Embassy in Kabul last week. It was the most serious charge that the United States has leveled against Pakistan in the decade that America has been at war in Afghanistan. In comments that were the first to directly link the spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), with an assault on the United States, Admiral Mike Mullen (photo, at right), the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, went further than any other American official in blaming the ISI for undermining the American effort in Afghanistan. His remarks were certain to further fray America’s shaky relationship with Pakistan, a nominal ally.
The United States has long said that Pakistan’s intelligence agency supports the Haqqani network, based in Pakistan’s tribal areas, as a way to extend Pakistani influence in Afghanistan. But Admiral Mullen made clear that he believed that the support extended to increasingly high-profile attacks in Afghanistan aimed directly at the United States.
These included a truck bombing at a NATO outpost south of Kabul on 10 September, which killed at least five people and wounded 77 coalition soldiers— one of the worst tolls for foreign troops in a single attack in the war— as well as the embassy assault that killed sixteen Afghan police officers and civilians.
“With ISI support, Haqqani operatives planned and conducted that truck bomb attack, as well as the assault on our embassy,” Admiral Mullen said in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “We also have credible evidence that they were behind the 28 June attack against the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, and a host of other smaller but effective operations.” In short, he said, “the Haqqani network acts as a veritable arm of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency.” His remarks were part of a deliberate effort by American officials to ratchet up pressure on Pakistan, and perhaps pave the way for more American drone strikes or even cross-border raids into Pakistan to root out insurgents from their havens. American military officials refused to discuss what steps they were prepared to take, although Admiral Mullen’s statement made clear that taking on the Haqqanis had become an urgent priority.
Rehman Malik, Pakistan’s interior minister, has rejected accusations by the United States of ISI involvement in the attacks in Afghanistan. “If you say that it is ISI involved in that attack, I categorically deny it,” he said in an interview with Reuters. “We have no such policy to attack or aid attack through Pakistani forces or through any Pakistani assistance.” He also said his government would “not allow” an American operation aimed at the Haqqani network in North Waziristan, a remote part of Pakistan’s lawless tribal region. Malik seemed to indicate that American officials had threatened, in meetings in Washington with the head of the ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, that American troops were prepared to cross the border from Afghanistan to attack Haqqani militants. An American official would say only that David H. Petraeus, the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told General Pasha that the CIA would continue its campaign of drone strikes against the Haqqanis in Pakistan, and pursue them in Afghanistan. “The Pakistani nation will not allow the boots on our ground, never,” Malik said, in his interview with Reuters. “Our government is already cooperating with the US, but they also must respect our sovereignty.”
A senior American official said that no decisions had been made on actions the Obama administration might take against the Haqqanis. American covert raids into Pakistan are rare— only two, including the raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May, have become public— but some American intelligence officials argue that more aggressive ground raids in Pakistan are necessary.
The United States gives Pakistan more than two billion dollars in security assistance annually, although this summer the Obama administration decided to suspend or in some cases cancel about a third of that aid this year. Altogether, about eight hundred million in military aid and equipment could be affected. The suspension was intended to chasten Pakistan for expelling American military trainers this year and to press its army to fight militants more effectively. The decision was made after the Osama bin Laden raid in Pakistan, where the leader of al-Qaeda had been living comfortably near a top military academy.
Admiral Mullen will retire at the end of this month and, coming from him, the statements carried exceptional weight. For years he has been the American military official leading the effort to improve cooperation with the Pakistanis. But relations have reached a nadir since the Osama bin Laden raid. Pakistani officials were angered that they had not been told of the raid in advance, and questions remain about whether Pakistani intelligence was sheltering Osama bin Laden.
Although American military officials believe that the ISI is, in many cases, directing the Haqqani network to attack United States forces in Afghanistan, they did not go so far as to say that the ISI specifically directed the assault on the American Embassy. American military officials did not describe the kind of support they believe the ISI gave the Haqqani network for the embassy attack, and also offered no evidence for their claim. In July of 2008, the United States was able to determine that the ISI was behind the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, based on intercepted communications of ISI officers.
Admiral Mullen testified alongside Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta (photo, at left), who told the committee that the attack on the embassy and the assassination this week of Burhanuddin Rabbani, the leader of Afghanistan’s High Peace Council and a former Afghan president, were “a sign of weakness in the insurgency”. He cast the attacks as signs that the Taliban had shifted to high-profile targets in an effort to disrupt the progress that the American military had made. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack on Rabbani, which has dealt a potentially devastating blow to efforts to negotiate a peace with the Taliban.
In his remarks to the committee, Admiral Mullen voiced a stern warning to Pakistani officials, who he said were undermining their own interests as well as American interests in the region. “They may believe that by using these proxies, they are hedging their bets or redressing what they feel is an imbalance in regional power,” he said. “But in reality, they have already lost that bet. By exporting violence, they’ve eroded their internal security and their position in the region. They have undermined their international credibility and threatened their economic well-being.” He also said he did not think he had wasted his time by putting so much effort into improving ties with Pakistan’s government. “I’ve done this because I believe that a flawed and difficult relationship is better than no relationship at all,” he said. “Some may argue I’ve wasted my time, that Pakistan is no closer to us than before, and may now have drifted even further away. I disagree. Military cooperation again is warming.”

Rico says we should stop all aid to the Pakis, as well as everyone else in the region; nothing, not a dime in military aid, food, medical supplies, nada. Let 'em see if they miss us...