The Pakistani army showed no hesitation about pursuing and killing Taliban insurgents everywhere except in North Waziristan, one of the seven tribal areas where different terrorist groups have long enjoyed a privileged sanctuary. When the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, was in Washington six weeks ago, he briefed his American interlocutors on the army's plan for North Waziristan. He didn't want to produce another flood of refugees, and his special forces were operating stealthily against known hideouts in the tribal agencies. Close, but no cigar.
The bottom line, which he could not spell out without betraying the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI): Some of the insurgent groups, such as the Taliban operating against the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, continue to maintain secret links with ISI, the organization that midwifed them in the early 1990s. Pakistan also was one of just three countries (Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were the other two) that recognized the Taliban regime when it took over most of the country in 1996, until toppled by the U.S. invasion after Sept. 11, 2001.
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