Daily Times

ISLAMABAD/WASHINGTON: Pakistan need not kill or capture militants such as members of the Haqqani network but could push them across the border instead, a senior US official said on Friday.

“Evicting the militants would put them at risk of attack from Afghan and US forces trying to keep Afghanistan from becoming a launching pad for strikes on the West more than 16 years after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.”

The United States had accused Pakistan of harbouring terrorist safe havens — a claim Islamabad strongly denies.

On January 4, Washington said it would suspend some security aid to Islamabad to get it to end “support” for the Afghan Taliban and the allied Haqqani network whose attacks in Afghanistan have killed US, Afghan and other forces.

The senior US official said in an interview that since the aid suspension – which US officials later said could affect as much as about $2 billion – the United States has not seen any sustained Pakistani effort against the militants.

The US official dismissed suggestions that pressure from Washington may backfire and suggested that Pakistan might start by taking smaller, tactical steps, including forcing such groups into Afghanistan before the spring fighting season begins.

“I don’t think Pakistan is feeling its oats. I think it is feeling pressure,” said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We have their attention.”

The official said the United States did not have a specific timeline to assess Pakistani cooperation, and would be looking to see if Islamabad would take “tactical steps such as actions against… (the) Haqqanis, pushing them across the border”.

“They don’t have to arrest them or kill them… just get them into Afghanistan, disrupt some of the infrastructure that exists, make it harder for them,” the official added. “We are about two months away from the fighting season, so now is the time to do some of this.”.

In a February 13 statement to Congress, US Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats said Pakistan would maintain “its ties with militant groups, restricting counter-terrorism cooperation” with the United States.

Published in Daily Times, February 25^th 2018.