Pakistan's Radicalisation & NATO Hunt For Taliban/Qaeda Fighters.

The leading Neo-Salafi imam who recently held many student hostages at Islamabad's radical Lal Masjid (Red Mosque), Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, campaigned to have Shari'a, the religious law of the Qur'an, enforced in Pakistan. He said this would apply to Afghanistan and other Muslim countries.

Since September 2006, NATO forces in Afghanistan have been pressing Islamabad for the right to conduct extensive hot-pursuit operations into Pakistan to target Taliban and al-Qaeda bases. According to Asia Times Online, NATO and its US backers have got their wish: their forces will start hitting targets wherever they might be. NATO intelligence has pinpointed at least four centres in the tribal areas of North Waziristan and South Waziristan on the border with Afghanistan from which Taliban and Qaeda operations inside Afghanistan are run. These bases include arms caches and the transfer and raising of money and manpower, the latter in the form of foot-soldiers to fight with the insurgency.

Operations inside Pakistan might be carried out independently by the US, probably with air power, by Pakistani forces acting alone or as joint offensives. In all cases, though, the US will pull the strings, for instance by providing the Pakistanis with information on targets to hit. President Musharraf has apparently already told his military commanders, the National Security Council and decision-makers in government of the development.

An agreement is said to be in place for increased operations on Pakistani soil, given the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and US fears of al-Qaeda using Pakistan as a base for planning operations in the West.

Recently, US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) drones targeted a madrassa in North Waziristan, and 20 people were killed. CIA drones tried to take out al-Qaeda No 2, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon and the Neo-Salafi's main ideologue, in January 2006 in Bajur Agency. Zawahiri survived as he was told in advance of the US attack by Pakistani intelligence officers, but 18 people died. In December 2005, al-Qaeda leader Hamza Rabi'a was killed by a CIA predator aircraft in the town of Mir Ali, North Waziristan. However, new operations are expected to be much larger in scale.

In recent meetings at both the policy and operational levels between Washington and Islamabad, it was acknowledged that Pakistan simply could not control its border with Afghanistan. Pakistan has established numerous military posts in the tribal areas, but with distances of as much as 20 km between them they cannot stop the cross-border flow, especially given the rugged nature of the terrain.

On the Afghan side of the border, NATO and the Afghan National Army have established posts, but they are even less numerous than on the Pakistani side and, given their isolation, are open to enemy fire. While most of the Taliban's cross-border activity takes place from the Waziristans, it extends to Chaman, Zhob and Noshki in the south-west and Bajur and Mohmand in the north-west.

In North West Frontier Province, the settled towns of Tank, Laki Marwat, Bannu and Dera Ismail Khan have all but been taken over by the Pakistani Taliban and they recruit from these areas. The circle is expanding up to the Valley of Peshawar, which includes Peshawar city and Mardan. However, the Taliban's influence in the Valley of Peshawar is still basic.

On the other hand, a pro-Taliban force named Tehrik-i-Nifaz-i-Shariat-i-Mohammadi (TNSM) has spread rapidly, and its influence ranges from Bajur, Malakand, Swat Valley and Mingora. The TNSM sent 10,000 men to Afghanistan in 2001 to fight against the US-led invasion. The organisation is dedicated to the enforcement of Islamic laws. Like the Pakistani Taliban, the TNSM uses scores of illegal FM radio stations as a propaganda tool, and its popularity increases with every passing day.

All these Taliban/Qaeda zones on the Afghan border have links with the Red Mosque in Islamabad, run by the outspoken brothers Abdul Aziz and Ghazi Abdul Rasheed. The brothers were pro-Taliban and ran large Islamic seminaries for boys and girls.

Musharraf faces intense opposition over his suspension of his chief justice on charges of malfeasance. Both political and religious opponents are riding the bandwagon with a vengeance, especially as the country faces presidential elections this year.

Visiting senior American officials, including Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, recently spelled out to Pakistani opposition leaders that the US was still behind Musharraf, although it will support the participation of secular, democratic political parties in government.

That development occurred even as Washington voiced its dissatisfaction over Musharraf's performance with regard to the Taliban: it pointed to Pakistan's clear involvement in supporting the insurgency in Helmand province since 2006. The US was even prepared to withdraw its support of Musharraf, who seized power in 1999, but after a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney to Pakistan, the general remains in favour. Cheney's office runs the US' Pakistan policy.

The US needs Pakistan's support should it attack Iran (covert operations into Iran are reportedly already taking place from Pakistan), and is concerned over the revival of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Pakistan. With regard to the latter, the head of the US Central Command, Admiral William Fallon, followed up Cheney's visit, warning Islamabad that the US needed Pakistan's assistance and approval to confront the Taliban/Qaeda bases. He made it clear that any delay on the part of Pakistan to allow NATO operations could result in another major terror operation in the West.

Musharraf has agreed to take some prisoners from the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Now he is opening his doors to the US soldiers. It is a move fraught with danger for Musharraf and Pakistan, and one which could influence the direction of both the war in Afghanistan and the "war on terror".