Intelligence puts strain on US-Pakistan ties

The insurgents were talking by phone with their handlers in Pakistan throughout,and after the attack the mobile phones they used were recovered,leaving US intelligence analysts with “excellent information” about just who was involved,according to people with knowledge of the incident.

The information reinforced suspicions that the Inter-Services Intelligence was supporting the network,and contributed to Admiral Mike Mull’n’s claims just two days later that the group was “ a veritable arm” of the ISI.

Adm Mullen’s comments have prompted angry denials from Pakistan’s government and military. But the resulting furore has also exposed the shortcomings in Washington’s Pakistan policy,analysts say.

The Obama administration was already doing some soul-searching following the sharp deterioration in relations precipitated by the US’s surprise raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound near Islamabad in May.

But the attack on the Kabul embassy was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” says Bruce Riedel,a former intelligence agent who chaired President Barack Obama’s first review on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

US officials who have met Adm Mullen in Pakistan and Afghanistan in recent months say he had increasingly felt he was getting “jerked around” by officials such as General Ashfaq Kayani,the powerful head of Pakistan’s military,and Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha,head of the ISI.

Even though Adm Mullen might have gone “a little off the reservation” with his comments,analysts say,he is not alone in having that view.

The series of spectacular attacks from the Taliban this summer – and the ISI’s apparent support for them – has sparked an effort to test the Pakistanis by saying in public what officials have long been saying in private,according to people close to the White House.

The US’s strategic engagement with Pakistan has clearly not produced the kind of results the Obama administration was hoping for when it took office in 2009,despite billions of dollars in economic and military assistance.

Some officials think the US has a unique opportunity right now,with American forces in the south and east of Afghanistan,to break the nexus between the Afghan Taliban and the ISI.

Others,however,continue to believe that the Pakistani military must play an essential role in bringing the Taliban to the negotiating table. “There are men and women of good will who hold both of these views at the same time,” said one recently-departed senior official.

“I think that is why there has been such a kerfuffle over Mullen’s remarks – the people who want to break the links are happy to hear them,but the people who believe the Pakistani military can do it are not.”

The debate comes at a time when Washington’s security establishment is in a state of flux.

It has a new defence secretary in Leon Panetta,a new Central Intelligence Agency director in David Petraeus,and on Friday will get a new joint chiefs chairman when General James Cartwright takes over from Adm Mullen. Furthermore,Panetta arrives with an order to dramatically cut the Pentagon budget.

“It’s no surprise that these guys are looking a little flustered,” the former senior official said.The problem is that the US appears to have no good options.

Even Adm Mullen,in his Senate testimony last week,repeatedly said that there was no alternative to engagement with Pakistan. The state department believes that even more strongly.

But this will be an uphill battle,given that it is inconceivable that Congress would vote to send billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan while it is accused of supporting attacks that kill Americans,analysts say.

As it debates what to do,the Obama administration has been playing down the importance of the recent attacks,insisting that the Taliban’s operational ability has been significantly degraded.

This is missing the point,said Riedel.

“The attacks are designed to make a splash on TV so that voters in the US and Europe will come to the conclusion that this war is hopeless and therefore we should give up,” he said. “The battlefield is on the banks of the Potomac [river in Washington,not the rural areas of Kandahar province.”

© 2011 The Financial Times Limited