Mission Almost Impossible

(Québec) “With a friend like that, who needs enemies?” Hillary Clinton must have said to herself after her first visit to Pakistan this past weekend.

The U.S. Secretary of State in fact committed herself to an almost impossible mission, to reestablish confidence between her country and Pakistan. Pakistan is her principal ally in the war in Afghanistan, a war that has been conducted in part on their territory. This was, say some, the most painful and difficult trip by Clinton since she took up her position directing American diplomacy. In fact, the situation deteriorates and gets more complicated almost daily for the two allies.

When Clinton voiced her skepticism of the inability of the Pakistani government to locate the leaders of Al-Qaeda in their territory, it gave away something of her continued impatience. Clinton is apparently the highest member of the United States Government to speak out openly about American frustrations with Pakistan since September 11, 2001.

She almost accused her hosts of “complicity” – without actually saying the word – with the sworn enemy of the United States over the past eight years. This is at any rate what the media extracted from her speech. One could, if necessary, forgive the Pakistanis who are in power their relations with the Taliban (at one time the Afghans and Pakistanis were like brothers and sisters) but not their relations with Al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden.

More than ever, Clinton now sees clearly the trap in which the United States risks getting stuck with Pakistan in the next days and weeks, when Barack Obama completely subscribes to the strategy of sending reinforcements to Afghanistan.

Many speakers have bitterly criticized Obama for the aerial war that is already being conducted by the United States against enemies in tribal zones where the Al-Qaeda leaders are taking refuge. These strikes are of course aimed at the leaders – not Afghan or Pakistani or Pashtuns, but mostly Arab foreigners. The strikes, however, cause terribly more civilian casualties, and these citizens arePakistani and Pashtuns. These tribal zones, on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Kabul claims as “national” territory, are a beautiful escape from the authority of the Pakistani State, where nonetheless fellow nationals live and die.

Now, the purpose is to support or amplify the strikes that the American reinforcements that are projected to be in Afghanistan will make. What would happen if these precise strikes were instead aimed at the city of Quetta, where leaders of Al-Qaeda are also hiding? Quetta is not an everyday village in the mountains or in the valley, inaccessible to the media and to the authority of the Pakistani State, but a large city where the regime in Islamabad exercises sovereignty.

Over and over, horrific scenes of the bloody attempts on Peshawar of the past few weeks, attributed to Al-Qaeda, have caused scandal. Imagine the same scenes of horror, in a large urban zone, easily, or at least more easily, accessed by the media, but this time attributed to the operations of the U.S. military in the territory of their “ally”.

All this to avoid a battle on the ground in the famous and difficult “tribal zones” on Afghan territory.

One can appreciate the frustrations of Clinton and the hesitation of Obama.