U.S. plays for high stakes on Pakistan-Afghan border

By Zeeshan Haider - Analysis

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may not have been shy about projecting U.S. military power, but even he didn't dare send American troops into Pakistan's tribal lands to snatch or kill al Qaeda leaders.

But now Pakistanis fear the U.S. presidential campaign has heated up the foreign policy debate over how to handle the Taliban and al Qaeda threat to a point where American leaders could throw caution to the wind by taking unilateral action.

"If this was a possibility in the past, it's a high possibility now," said a senior security official in the northwestern city of Peshawar, shuddering at the statements coming from the United States.

In 2005, Rumsfeld reportedly aborted a mission to eliminate Ayman al-Zawahri, al Qaeda's second-in-command, because it involved too many troops, chances of success were too uncertain, and the danger of riling the situation in Pakistan was too great.

The risks today may be even greater, with Pakistan going through a precarious transition to civilian-led democracy and tribesmen across the northwest reaching for their guns.

"If Americans hit the Pakistani side, they will make more enemies for themselves," Ayaz Wazir, a former Pakistani ambassador to Kabul, said.

TALIBAN PROTECTION

Mounting casualties among Western troops across the border in Afghanistan have fuelled alarm, as have intelligence assessments that al Qaeda could organize strikes on Western soil having regrouped in the tribal areas under Taliban protection.

The United States is now piling resources into Afghanistan, where the Taliban insurgency is stronger than ever 6-½ years after U.S.-backed forces drove the Islamist militia and its al Qaeda guests into the mountains on the Pakistan border.

With Western forces pressing into areas where the militants had ranged, there have been more encounters, more casualties, and more talk of ordering "hot pursuit" into Pakistani territory.

Talat Masood, a former general turned political analyst, said U.S. Congressional hearings, the media and think-tanks were generating the kind of hype that could persuade President George W. Bush to authorize an intensification of air strikes and even limited ground operations in the tribal belt.

"Pakistan must have to take action on its own. It is left with no other option," Masood told Reuters.

An American incursion would be a call to arms for tribesmen who had hitherto shunned the insurgency based in the ethnic Pashtun tribal belt straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and undermine the fledgling civilian, coalition government.

"Anti-American sentiments will rise exponentially," Masood wrote in the Daily Times. "The civilian government would be destabilized and moderate forces will be further marginalized."

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