Daily Times

Let’s elect President Musharraf for another five-year term. Having secured the presidency, the president can then afford to hold free, fair and transparent elections. Post-elections, a troika with the support of a genuinely representative government will be our best bet to tackle extremism and be accountable at the same time.
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is America’s “best-guess of America’s biggest worries by the world’s best-informed spies”. NIE, in effect, is the “coordinated judgements of the US Intelligence Community made up of 16 intelligence agencies and thus represents the most authoritative assessment of the Director of National Intelligence”.
NIE is a classified document. The parts that have been declassified state:
n Al Qaeda is better positioned to strike the West;
n Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri are increasingly directing global terrorist operations from a haven in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan;
n Al Qaeda has reconstituted its core structure along the Pakistani border;
n The primary development that has allowed all this to happen was the peace agreement signed last year between the Pakistani government and pro-Taliban tribal leaders;
n We assess that Al Qaeda has regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability, including: a safe-haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), operational lieutenants, and its top leadership;
n We judge that the United States currently is in a heightened threat environment;
n We assess that Al Qaeda will continue to try to acquire and employ chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear material; and
n Al-Qaeda is and will remain the most serious threat to the Homeland.
The CIA, FBI, Army Intelligence, Air Force Intelligence, Office of Naval Intelligence, Homeland Security, DEA, Marine Corps Intelligence and the National Security Agency have all reached a consensus: Al Qaeda has “safe-havens in Pakistan’s FATA”.
This much is clear from the declassified sections. What’s in the classified sections? According to Josh Meyer of the Los Angeles Times: “In recent years, US intelligence and counter-terrorism officials who focus on South Asia say they have watched with growing concern as Al-Qaeda has moved men, money, recruiting and training operations into Pakistani cities such as Quetta and Karachi…”.
NIE has put President George Bush in a dilemma: If Al Qaeda manages to attack the Homeland and the attack is traced back to Pakistan, Bush won’t be able to claim that he wasn’t warned. According to US News and World Report, “NIE puts pressure on the Bush Administration to take direct action to eliminate this new safe haven (www.usnews.com).”
Remember the 9/11 Commission? The Commission had concluded that tolerance of Al Qaeda’s sanctuary in Afghanistan was of “direct and indirect value to [it] in preparing the 9/11 attack”. The Commission’s recommendation: “The US government must disrupt such bases in the future using all elements of national power.”
Direct action could mean one of two things: A ‘snatch and grab’ operation by the United States Special Operations Forces (HQ: MacDill Air Base, Florida) whereby Green Berets ‘seize or kill’ high-value targets; or, for the US Army to take out Al Qaeda training-cum-planning camps, with or without Pakistan Army’s help. The problem with the first option is timely, actionable intelligence. The second option requires a significant surge in troops and two simultaneous surges — one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan — would need time to execute. Clearly, the second option is a lot more dangerous than the first one.
Ironically, bin Laden craves for NATO entry into Pakistan. Al Qaeda is convinced that such an entry will unite all jihadi forces in a resolve to take on al-Shaytan al-Akbar, the ‘Great Satan’.
Saleem Shahzad of Asia Times Online, among the best-informed investigative reporters in business, has reported the construction of a large US base “on a mountaintop at Ghakhi Pass on the Pakistan-Afghanistan (Bajaur) border”. Perhaps, in “preparation for an operation inside Pakistan (www.atimes.com; July 17).”
To be certain, none of this means that American forces are about to invade Pakistan. Our government has promised time and again that we shall “root out terrorism from our territory”. A lot of this is to keep us from breaking our promises. Of course, there is contingency planning. What if we don’t or can’t?

Dr Farrukh Saleem is an Islamabad-based economist and analyst