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A combination of events brought Pakistan to the forefront on Monday, casting light on the complexity of the problem that the United States faces in attempting to stabilize operations in Afghanistan and pressuring Islamabad to reassert control over the jihadists operating on its side of the Afghan-Pakistani border.
In Washington, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani met with U.S. President George W. Bush, while in Islamabad, acting U.S. Central Command chief Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey met with Pakistan’s top generals, Ashfaq Kayani and Tariq Majid. In both negotiations, tensions ran high, with the Americans warning that they are growing increasingly impatient with lawlessness on the border and the Pakistanis replying that they are doing everything within their power to stop it.
Two incidents served to ratchet tensions even higher as the U.S.-Pakistani talks took place. First, the government in Islamabad retracted its decision on July 26 to bring the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency under civilian control. The ISI fiasco helps to explain the jihadists’ ineradicable involvement in Pakistan’s state structures, since the agency is notorious for having operatives with hidden links to jihadists. The prospect of bringing the ISI under the civilian government’s supervision was never actually feasible because the military — the real source of power in Pakistan — opposed it. Later came news that a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle had fired missiles at a religious school in South Waziristan, killing six civilians on Pakistani soil and fueling Pakistani hostility toward their own government and the United States.
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