Strategy impacting Afghanistan, Pakistan

KABUL, Afghanistan, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- The Afghan strategy announced by U.S. President Barack Obama calling for a troop surge of 30,000 has until July 2011 to run its course before any likely start of a troop drawdown, but its impact on Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan is already perceptible.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, bruised by election fraud accusations and faced with ever-escalating Taliban violence, is starting his second term under a tight deadline from Western powers that he either move quickly to clean up his highly corrupt government or lose their support.

That deadline was reinforced in Obama's Afghan strategy announcement, which, while assuring the United States has no interest to occupy Afghanistan, said: "This effort must be based on performance. The days of providing a blank check are over."

Obama said the United States "will support Afghan ministries, governors and local leaders that combat corruption and deliver for the people."

In fact, Obama's July 2011 exit plan is seen as a way to convince Karzai about the administration's resolve.

At his first news conference after being re-elected, Karzai conceded his government "has been seriously discredited by administrative corruption" and vowed to "remove this stigma."

The only difference since the announcement of the U.S. troop surge, which will also include several more civilians, appears to be the Karzai government will even be under greater scrutiny.

It was no surprise then that Obama's exit plan caused much concern in Kabul.

In an interview Sunday with CNN, Karzai promised to meet U.S. expectations but urged patience if Afghans are not able to take over responsibility for their country's security by July 2011. He also promised to continue cracking down on corruption.

Obama's strategy also had a clear message for Pakistan, the other half of the administration's AFPAK grouping, which is already struggling with its own monumental problems from the escalating militant violence across the country, an ongoing hard-fought military campaign against insurgents in South Waziristan, an unstable political situation that threatens to bring down President Asif Ali Zardari's regime, to a chaotic economy.

Pakistan is also criticized that its current military campaign is directed only against its domestic Taliban and not the Afghan Taliban, which its military helped create in the first place.

While saying his Afghan strategy is designed to "prevent a cancer (of extremism) from once again spreading through that country," Obama warned the same cancer has also taken root in the border region of Pakistan. The president assured his administration is committed to a partnership with Pakistan but warned it will not "tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known, and whose intentions are clear."

Obama's strategy was received cautiously in Pakistan, where there is no dearth of anti-American public sentiments.

The Zardari government, stung by Western criticism that it is not doing enough to capture al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden and other terror group leaders believed to be hiding in Pakistan's tribal areas, is concerned the U.S. strategy would also lead to more U.S. Predator drone attacks against terrorist hideouts in those regions.

The New York Times, quoting U.S. officials, reported that simultaneously with the U.S. troop surge, the White House authorized an expansion of the Central Intelligence Agency's highly successful drone program in the tribal regions. The report said there is even talk with Pakistan about strikes beyond the tribal areas and into Pakistan's Baluchistan province as that is where the leaders of the Afghan Taliban are believed to be holed up.

As far Baluchistan, Pakistan's Dawn newspaper quoted Candace Putnam, the U.S. consul-general in the violence-ravaged city of Peshawar, as telling a media roundtable last Friday: "I don't know where Osama bin Laden is on any given day, but we do know that some of the leadership is sitting in Quetta and that they travel back and forth from Afghanistan to Pakistan." Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan.

Last week in London, visiting Pakistani Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani said he doesn't think al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is in Pakistan, as many Western leaders believe.

Pakistani leaders also have been insisting the additional U.S. troops deployed in the southern regions of Afghanistan would only encourage the militants to seek refuge in Pakistan tribal areas, further threatening Pakistani security.

"Pakistan may be the worst victim of the surge. ... If things start to go wrong for Obama, Pakistan could easily be made into a scapegoat," Riffat Hussein, head of defense and strategic studies at Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University, told Dawn.