Pakistan feeling pressure

Reuters:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai's threat of a cross-border pursuit of militants is more of a tactic to build pressure on Pakistan than a signal of real intent, analysts said on Monday.

Unnerved by Pakistan's efforts to make peace with militants in its tribal areas, Karzai made the warning on Sunday after the Taliban launched a bold and successful mass jailbreak in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.

The Pakistan Foreign Ministry summoned the Afghan ambassador to Islamabad to lodge a strong protest about Karzai's statement on Monday, spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said.

"When communication breaks down, opinions get fertilised," said Afrasiab Khattack, a senior leader of Awami National Party, an influential ethnic Pashtun nationalist party.

The Awami National Party is a secular party that competes with Islamist parties for influence over Pashtuns, the ethnic group most Taliban belong to.

"I think it's high time for them to open communication to avoid any further escalation," said Khattack, whose party is a junior partner in the 2 1/2-month-old coalition government in Islamabad and is in power in North West Frontier Province.

Analysts said Karzai's threat was a repeat of what some U.S. and NATO officials had suggested in the past, and the Afghan army couldn't act independently of U.S. and NATO military command on such a matter.

...
There are other indications that Pakistan is starting to feel pressure from outside the country over its deals with the Taliban. Jackson Diehl reports on a conversation with a Pakistan envoy to Washington.

...

I asked Haqqani if he and his new ministers in Islamabad had thought about what would happen to Pakistan and its newly reborn democracy if a major al-Qaeda attack against the United States succeeded and was traced back to the tribal areas. "What do you think keeps me up at night?" he answered. "We want to make sure that it doesn't come to that." Then he was off to the next stop on his tour, and his next plea for patience.
Actually the US has been pretty patient with Pakistan considering the mass murderer we want most is still hiding there. Pakistan needs to explain how its deals with the Taliban will lead to his capture and stop the attacks in Afghanistan. That is probably too tall an order for this government.

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