US lacks good options for responding to successful terrorist attack linked to Pakistan

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US has few options for Pakistan-linked attack

ISLAMABAD — America’s ability to respond to a successful terrorist attack linked to Pakistan is extremely limited, despite recent talk of severe consequences and even unilateral U.S. military action if one should occur.

The issue is receiving renewed attention following published reports that Washington might consider a strike that goes beyond the CIA’s ongoing missile attacks by remote-controlled, unmanned planes.

It’s unclear whether Pakistan would agree and, if not, whether the U.S. would proceed anyway, jeopardizing an alliance that is critical for success in the war in neighboring Afghanistan.

“If they don’t take the Pakistani government on board and, specifically, if they do something against the wishes of the military, they run the risk of rupturing their ties,” said Riffat Hussain, professor of defense studies at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad. “Given their larger difficulties in Afghanistan, they need Pakistan’s strategic cooperation.”

The U.S. has ramped up planning for unilateral strikes following the unsuccessful attempt by Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad to detonate a car bomb in New York’s Times Square on May 1, The Washington Post reported, citing unnamed U.S. military officials.

Shahzad allegedly received training from the Pakistani Taliban in or around North Waziristan, part of Pakistan’s lawless tribal region.

U.S. strikes, which could employ small teams of Special Operations troops, would be contemplated only under extreme circumstances, such as a catastrophic attack that left the president convinced that the ongoing campaign of CIA drone strikes was insufficient, the newspaper said.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA official who has advised President Barack Obama on Pakistan and Afghanistan, said the administration’s first option would be to push Pakistan to take on militants in their mountainous sanctuary of North Waziristan.

“If the Pakistanis won’t do that, then there will be serious consideration about whether the United States needs to take unilateral action,” Riedel said in a recent interview published on the website of the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

It would be difficult to get Pakistan to agree to unilateral military action, at least in public, because of intense anti-American sentiment in the country, said Pakistani defense analyst Hazan-Askari Rizvi. Even covert action would be risky, because it could be uncovered by the media, he said.

“To me, unilateral action is not an option for the U.S. because it would totally undermine the Pakistani government and would create such a negative reaction in the country that the government would find it difficult to extend cooperation to the U.S.,” Rizvi said.

Pakistan’s leading English-language newspaper, Dawn, provided a glimpse of opposition to U.S. military action in an editorial Monday.

“It would be absurd for America to try to position itself as a friend and well-wisher of Pakistan if it were at the same time launching unilateral strikes inside this country,” it said. “Before continuing down this road, American officials need to pause and think harder about the ramifications.”

But the U.S. has few other options to make good on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent warning to Pakistan of “severe consequences” if a terrorist attack were traced back to the country.

Any attempt to pressure Pakistan by threatening to reduce aid would be limited by Washington’s dependence on the country for the Afghan war.

Up to 70 percent of the supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan are shipped through Pakistan, and the U.S. has little hope of depriving militants of their sanctuaries along the Afghan border without Pakistani help.

The limitations have been evident in the wake of the failed Times Square bombing.

Pakistan has detained nearly a dozen people in connection with the attempt, but it has maintained that it can’t launch an offensive in North Waziristan until it wraps up ongoing operations elsewhere in the tribal areas.

Analysts expressed doubt that even a bomb going off in a U.S. city would alter the Pakistani stance.

Many suspect Pakistan doesn’t want to cross Afghan Taliban fighters based in North Waziristan, as they could be useful allies if the Taliban returns to power after Western forces leave Afghanistan.

“Right now is crunch time for Afghanistan and the Afghan Taliban, and this is a card Pakistan has held for nine years and is not about to throw away because of increased American pressure,” said Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist who has written extensively on the region.

The bottom line is that a successful terrorist attack linked to Pakistan could present Obama with a nightmare scenario: an American public demanding retaliation and no good way to respond.