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STRATFOR.com
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THE INTERNET SOURCE FOR GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
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Pakistan, India and the United States
November 27, 2001
Summary
With al Qaeda and Taliban elements fleeing Afghanistan, the United States will continue to grapple with strategic problems concerning its traditional ally, Pakistan. There are significant differences between what President Pervez Musharraf has said he will do to fight terrorism, what he intends to do and what he actually can accomplish. The threat of an imminent Indo-Pakistani war may be just the lever Washington needs to move Islamabad.
Analysis
The United States has been engaged in intense debate regarding the next steps it must take to eradicate al Qaeda. Two main strategies have emerged of late. One argues that there can be no solution to the problem of Islamic attacks on the United States until the regime of Saddam Hussein is eliminated. The other strategy argues that Iraq's role is secondary, and that the United States' primary mission is to prevent al Qaeda from establishing a command center in some other isolated country, like Yemen or Somalia.
Obviously, the strategies are not incompatible. Equally obviously, at least from STRATFOR'S point of view, the debate misses the point entirely: the next country on the agenda is Pakistan.
When planning for the Afghan campaign began immediately after Sept. 11, it was clear -- at least from a naive standpoint -- that Pakistan, which has an extensive border with Afghanistan and a long-standing strategic relationship with the United States, would be the strategic key to the campaign. The planners' first impulse was to deploy U.S. forces in Pakistan and prosecute the campaign from there. This proved impossible. Instead, U.S. ground forces had to deploy in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, while air attacks were carried out from carriers in the Arabian Sea and from strategic bombers on Diego Garcia and elsewhere. Clearly, some forces were deployed in Pakistan, but only under tight secrecy.
(The Rest of the Story)
(c) 2001 Stratfor, Inc.
Dan
Pakistan, India and the United States . . .