U.S. quietly sought Pakistani help to stop Haqqani attack

[Saifullah Sani]

U.S. quietly sought Pakistani help to stop Haqqani attack​

Posted at 08:48 AM ET, 09/28/2011
By Greg Miller
For years, U.S. officials have pushed Pakistan’s military to attack the Haqqani network, or at least block its ability to cross the Afghan border, or at least cut off whatever financial and other support Pakistan’s spy service continues to provide to the insurgent group.

All to little avail.

But it turns out that U.S. officials have at times also tried another, more humble approach: simply asking Pakistani leaders to appeal to Haqqani to refrain from certain attacks.

Earlier this month, Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, traveled to Rawalpindi to share intelligence with the head of Pakistan’s armed forces, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani. The intelligence indicated that the Haqqanis were planning a truck bomb attack on a U.S. military installation in Afghanistan.

A U.S. military official familiar with the Sept. 8 visit, which was first reported by The Guardian, said Allen asked Kayani to intervene not by disrupting the plot but by using his influence to dissuade Haqqani forces from carrying it out.

“We knew [an attack] was coming but we didn’t know where,” a U.S. military official said. “We didn’t know when, what trucks.”

Three days later, on Sept. 11, a truck bomb killed two Afghan civilians and wounded nearly 80 NATO soldiers at a military base in the Wardak province.

The official said the U.S. military had drawn “no conclusions” as to whether Kayani had tried to intervene. But Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, told a Congressional panel last week that the Haqqani network was a “veritable arm” of the Pakistani intelligence service--an assertion that other top U.S. officials involved in the region are calling provocative and overstated.

The Sept. 8 meeting and request suggests a U.S. resignation to two realities: the Pakistan-Haqqani relationship may never be severed, and CIA drone strikes and U.S. military raids aren’t enough to stop Haqqani attacks in Afghanistan.
U.S. quietly sought Pakistani help to stop Haqqani attack - Checkpoint Washington - The Washington Post

 

[Dark Eagle]

Pakistan warned the United States on Tuesday to stop accusing it of playing a double game with Islamist militants and heaped praise on "all-weather friend" China.

 

[Abu Zolfiqar]

the Americans and NATO themselves are in direct communication with the Haqqani network....surprising to see these blame-games but then again its more for domestic consumption than anything else

Siraj ud-Din Haqqani himself issues a statement that majority of his men feel safe and at home in Afghanistan (which is under NATO control at the moment) and I actually believe that because their so-called "safe haven" is where drones are allowed (by Pakistan government) to operate with impunity.


so it's very strange to attribute these attacks on Pakistan when in fact it isnt even just the Haqqani faction which is attacking them.......there are a plethora of taleban and pro-taleban factions in Afghanistan, the movement simply picked up steam and has painted themselves as more of a nationalist resistance force.....no different than when the soviets were there decades back and Haqqanis were blue-eyed angels of the CIA and all other backers of the mujahideen movement.