Vol. 71/No. 16      April 23, 2007

The U.S.-led imperialist occupation of Afghanistan and increased pressure by Washington on Pakistan’s rulers to take stronger action against Taliban militias operating within Pakistan, near its border with Afghanistan, is at the root of the crisis.

The Taliban ruled Afghanistan until 2001, when their regime was toppled by the U.S.-led force that invaded the country.

At the end of February, U.S. vice president Richard Cheney made an unannounced visit to Pakistan to warn Musharraf that military aid to his government could be cut off if Islamabad did not do more to stop al-Qaeda and Taliban forces from operating in western Pakistan.

In January the U.S. House of Representatives passed such a bill, as did the Senate in mid-March. The latter included an amendment by Democratic senators John Kerry, Joseph Biden, and Christopher Dodd specifically linking U.S. military assistance to Pakistan to “demonstrable progress” by Islamabad in preventing Taliban and al-Qaeda forces from using Pakistani territory.

Over the past five years, Washington’s military aid to Pakistan has skyrocketed. In the three years after the invasion of Afghanistan, it rose to $4.2 billion, compared to $9.1 million for the three previous years—a 45,000 percent increase, reported the Center for Public Integrity. Since 2001, the Pentagon has also had use of air bases in Pakistan.

“Pakistan and Afghanistan should be a single theater of operations as Taliban enjoy privileged sanctuaries in the tribal areas on the Pakistani side of a mythical frontier,” wrote Arnaud de Borchgrave, editor at large of the Washington Times, in a March 17 opinion column. “But NATO and U.S. troops cannot chase Taliban fighters back into Pakistan without triggering a chain reaction that could easily lead to the fall of President Pervez Musharraf.”

Washington is increasingly concerned about what commentators in the big-business media have described as the “Talibanization of Pakistan.” On March 23, Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), a U.S. private intelligence agency, said “Pakistan needs to figure out how it can continue to use the Afghan Taliban as an instrument in gaining influence in Kabul without Talibanizing its own territory.”

Among the Pashtuns, who live on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border, Stratfor said, “the Taliban is the most powerful movement.” However, its report concluded, “Pakistan’s efforts to block Taliban activity in its territory while it seeks to use the Pashtun jihadist movement to gain a foothold in Afghanistan are not going to work.”

The Musharraf government has been signing “peace pacts” with leaders in the semiautonomous tribal regions near the Afghan border to “fight terrorism.” The latest accord was signed March 26 with officials from the Bajur region. Summarizing the pact, Malik Abdul Aziz, head of Bajur’s tribal council, told the Associated Press that “local Taliban” living in the region “have assured us that they will not shelter foreign militants in their areas.” Similar accords were signed with local officials in north and south Wazirstan in 2005 and 2006.

Meanwhile, growing discontent among middle-class layers with the Musharraf regime has led lawyers to conduct street protests and boycott some court proceedings over the March 9 dismissal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Musharraf suspended the head of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, charging him with “abuse of power.” Chaudhry was beginning to question the disappearance of hundreds of people in Pakistan at the hands of government agents, reported the Christian Science Monitor. He also “had expressed his view that it was not legal under the constitution for Musharraf to seek another presidential term while remaining the Army chief,” the Monitor said.
 
 
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