Pakistan must show greater returns for the billions of dollars it has received from the United States to hunt down al Qaeda and Taliban diehards, top US intelligence officials said on Wednesday.
Al Qaeda leaders, including Osama bin Laden are sheltering in Pakistan's lawless north-west, where tribal opposition to the US military presence in Afghanistan is hampering both Islamabad and Washington, they said. Appearing before Congress, Thomas Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence, was pressed on why bin Laden was still at large and the Taliban were resurgent despite America's lavish anti-terrorism funding for Pakistan.
He stressed that President Pervez Musharraf's government had little authority in the north-west regions bordering Afghanistan where tribal leaders sympathetic to the Taliban hold sway. But Fingar added: "The answer has to be yes, that provision of assistance should be properly tied to expected outcomes. And the outcomes for which people have committed, they should be held accountable for."
Since then, Pakistan has received roughly 10 billion dollars in US funding including for counter-terrorism operations along the Afghan border, according to Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The New York Times said in May that the payments continue even though Musharraf had decided last year to slash patrols through the anarchic border area where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters are most active. "It is a mixed picture," Fingar said, stressing that Pakistan had been "extremely helpful" in capturing, or helping US forces to capture, al Qaeda figures.
But addressing the House of Representatives armed services committee, the US intelligence chiefs expressed regret over the Pakistani leader's peace deal last September with tribal elders in North Waziristan.
The Waziristan region is a hotbed of pro-Taliban militants supporting the bloody insurgency in Afghanistan against the US-backed government of President Hamid Karzai. "We would agree that the peace deal in Waziristan has not been helpful in terms of the anti-terrorist effort," said John Kringen, director for intelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
"From our assessment, we have not seen developments going in that direction but actually in a negative direction," Kringen said. Fingar said the United States, in hunting down bin Laden and his lieutenants, would do nothing to undermine Pakistan's sovereignty "It's not that we lack the ability to go into that space. But we have chosen not to do so without the permission of the Pakistani government," he said. Fingar also said that Musharraf looks weaker after massive pro-democracy protests sparked by his suspension in March of Pakistan's chief justice.
"With tribal opposition to the US military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq widespread and elections expected later this year, the situation will become even more challenging - for President Musharraf and for the US," he added.
In Afghanistan, Karzai's beleaguered government faces "critical challenges" in establishing its authority while confronting rampant drug cultivation and smuggling, Fingar said. "The (Taliban) insurgency probably does not directly threaten the government, but it continues to deter economic development and undermine popular support for President Karzai," he told the House committee.
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