Analysis: Pakistan PM's moment of truth

WASHINGTON, July 29 (UPI) -- Pakistan's new prime minister, Yousaf Raza Gilani, has been plunged into the heart of the storm: U.S. President George W. Bush and front-running Democratic presidential challenger Sen. Barack Obama are both focusing on him to clean out al-Qaida and the Taliban from their strongholds.

Gilani already has started taking action: Under U.S. pressure, the Pakistani army has replaced its ineffective Frontier Force fighting Taliban and al-Qaida supporters on its border with Afghanistan with regular army troops, but will it make any difference? And will a democratically elected government in Islamabad do any better than military President Pervez Musharraf did?

Gilani, currently visiting Washington, is still playing for time. Sources told UPI he promised Bush Monday that the Pakistani army, which still numbers 100,000 men in the frontier regions, would be sent to attack al-Qaida and Taliban bases in Pakistani territory, but only after Washington lavishly re-equipped them with body armor and night-vision goggles, and boosted its intelligence-sharing with Islamabad. That could take months.

Meanwhile, three-star Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, acting chief of U.S. Central Command, has been dispatched to the headquarters of the Pakistani armed forces in Rawalpindi to hand over a high-powered "sweetener" to the Pakistani air force, to help persuade its generals to crack down on al-Qaida and the Taliban at long last: Dempsey is there for the handover of four U.S. Lockheed Martin F-16 Fighting Falcons.

This dramatic flexing of U.S. military aid clout is bound to further strain U.S.-Indian relations. For the small, agile, excellent F-16 is capable of carrying nuclear weapons and is more than a match for India's Russian-supplied Sukhoi combat aircraft.

The more Pakistan can add to and upgrade its fleet of F-16s, the more it can extend its strategic nuclear striking capability against India beyond that provided by its relatively limited intermediate-range ballistic missile force.

As a result, the deal is likely to boost the communist-led forces in India's Parliament that opposed the ratification of the U.S.-India nuclear agreement.

At the same time, Bush has not waited for the Pakistani military to act: U.S. forces have been deliberately stepping up their war against the terror bases in northwest Pakistan in a way they have never before dared to do since al-Qaida's top leaders escaped U.S.-led Operations Anaconda and Tora Bora and fled across the mountains after the fall of their Taliban protectors in neighboring Afghanistan in late 2001.

According to Pakistani reports, the stepped-up U.S. activity Tuesday killed a crucial high-priority U.S. target.

Islamabad said a U.S. Predator unmanned aerial vehicle launched four missiles at a possible al-Qaida base in a madrassa, or Muslim religious school, in Pakistan's South Waziristan province, killing Mursi al-Sayid Umar, who U.S. intelligence believed to be a top al-Qaida expert in trying to create weapons of mass destruction using biological or chemical agents. The U.S. government had put a bounty of $5 million on his head. It may now be collected.

The killing of Umar was welcome news to Gilani as well, coming as it did right after he met with Bush at the White House. On Tuesday the new Pakistani premier also met with Obama, D-Ill., under intense security at Washington's Willard Hotel. Obama wants to boost the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan by at least 10,000 troops on top of the current U.S. deployment of 36,000 there.

However, Gilani was also served notice about how ineffective many of his current security forces in the northwestern part of his country are.

"On Sunday, the chief of the militants in Swat Valley, Mullah Fazlullah, held a press conference at which he pronounced that except for Peshawar Valley, the entire North-West Frontier province is in the hands of the Taliban," regional expert Syed Saleem Shahzad wrote July 30 in Asia Times Online.

"On Monday, the Taliban proved the point when they wiped out checkpoints of the security forces in Bajaur Agency and occupied a television booster of state-run PTV (Pakistani Television). The government's response was a call for the Taliban not to 'misbehave' -- the state apparatus is unable to mobilize its forces," Shahzad wrote.

Shahzad also noted that tensions were reported rising this week in Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, which, although in the country's far south, is home to a large Pashtun community containing large elements who support the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Since corralling Pakistan against its will into the war on terror following the al-Qaida attacks that killed more than 2,800 Americans on Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration has treated the longtime U.S. ally, and currently the only nuclear-armed Muslim state in the world, as a brittle stick that might snap apart if it is leaned on too much.

Now, at long last, Washington is leaning on Pakistan to finally deliver the goods in the war on terror, and Obama appears in agreement with Bush on doing so.

However, it remains an open question whether the Pakistani armed forces will be either capable or even willing to crack down on the militants and clean them out of their own organizations, especially the wealthy, secretive and powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency.

Previous civilian governments in Pakistan have never dared to force the nation's armed forces to clean house or impose any strict civilian-military accountability on them. As has been the case in Turkey, Pakistan therefore has been for more than half a century a genuinely but fitfully democratic country where the freely expressed will of the people in general elections has been overthrown repeatedly by the armed forces with general popular approval, or at least acquisition in the name of a higher national interest.

Now Gilani has been forced to tread where his predecessor civilian prime minister always feared to: It remains to be seen whether he will succeed, or even survive.