A top American expert on South Asia, Bruce Riedel, has urged enhanced economic and security assistance for Pakistan to reinforce its counterinsurgency efforts along the Afghan border as he also drew the Barack Obama Administration's attention to the importance of restoring America's image in the region.
Riedel, who advised President Obama on South Asian affairs during the election campaign, also weighed the drone attacks on the cost-benefit balance, saying they have eliminated some al-Qaeda militants but are also counterproductive.
"Among other things that we can do is increase our economic assistance and try to use the Friends of Pakistan (PDF), a group that was formed at the end of the Bush administration to provide more help," he told the [US’] Council on Foreign Relations.
"That's a mechanism for strengthening the hand of the civilian government in Pakistan," he said referring to significance of garnering greater economic support at the Friends of Pakistan forum.
The former National Security Council and CIA official called for provision of additional security equipments to Pakistan, particularly helicopters.
"And here is another opening for the United States to offer Pakistan the kinds of counterinsurgency training and doctrine and the kinds of equipment that would be useful in this war. Helicopters in particular. The Bush administration gave Pakistan about a dozen helicopters. What they really need is several hundred to operate in this very difficult terrain where air mobility is really the key to battlefield success."
Commenting on the issue of American unilateral strikes against suspected militant targets in the Pakistani tribal areas along the Afghan border, Riedel said "these Predator attacks have scored some important successes. Significant al-Qaeda figures have been killed."
"But they also have a counterproductive element to them, which is that they further the alienation of the Pakistani people away from us. One of the biggest challenges, if not the biggest challenge we face in Pakistan today, is that the American brand image has been badly eroded. Polling in Pakistan shows that a majority of Pakistanis blame America for the country's internal violence."
Riedel welcomed the development of trust between the top Pakistani and Afghan leaders but remarked that in view of the Taliban spreading their influence in several parts of Afghanistan and militancy in the Pakistani border areas the newly appointed US Representative Richard Holbrooke has inherited a difficult situation.
He said seeing the Afghanistan-Pakistan border problem in the regional context is "absolutely correct."
"All of these things are linked together. As I said, Pakistan's concerns in Afghanistan derive in large part from its concerns about India. It can't try to deal with these problems in isolation. But you also have to deal with them with a great degree of subtlety and sophistication, because there are decades-old fears among all the parties about American intentions."
Riedel elaborated that the people in both Pakistani and Afghanistan feel that America will use their country for the short-term interest in finding al-Qaeda, and then abandon them.
“Restoring the sense of America's credibility and its reliability, and its consistency, is going to be very, very important to persuading them that we're serious this go around." |
