Predators Over Pakistan The U.S. drone campaign is effective—and legal. Why won’t the Obama administration’s lawyers defend it?

TheWeeklyStandard.com

BY Kenneth Anderson

March 8, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 24

Targeting terrorists and militants with Predator drone strikes is one campaign promise President Obama has kept to the letter. Missiles fired from remote-piloted “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs) at al Qaeda and Taliban leadership steadily and sharply increased over the course of 2009. Senior U.S. military and intelligence officials have called them one of the most effective tactics available to strike directly at al Qaeda and the Taliban. Indeed, CIA director Leon Panetta says that drones are “the only game in town in terms of confronting or trying to disrupt the al Qaeda leadership.” There is every reason to believe him.

In January 2010 alone, a dozen strikes were launched just in the Pakistani tribal region of Waziristan. With the beginning of the promised offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Predator attacks have likewise surged against targets in Pakistan, concurrent with moves by Pakistani intelligence to detain Taliban leaders, and also concurrent with the extensive use of UAVs on the battlefield in the Afghan offensive (primarily as an urban surveillance tool but also for missile strikes). Obama promised that his administration would go after al Qaeda and Taliban in their refuges in Pakistan​—​with or without the permission of the Pakistani government, he pointedly said—and so he has done.

The aggressive expansion of the Predator targeted killing program is the Obama administration’s one unambiguous innovation in the war against terrorists. The adaptation of UAV surveillance craft into missile platforms took place as an improvisation in 2002 under the Bush administration—but its embrace as the centerpiece of U.S. counterterrorism operations belongs to Obama. It is not the whole of it—the Obama administration has expanded joint operations with Pakistan and Yemen, and launched commando operations in Somalia against terrorists. But of all the ways it has undertaken to strike directly against terrorists, this administration owns the Predator drone strategy. It argued for it, expanded it, and used it, in the words of the president’s State of the Union address, to “take the fight to al Qaeda.”

As al Qaeda, its affiliates, and other transnational jihadists seek shelter in lightly governed places such as Yemen or Somalia, the Obama administration says the United States will follow them and deny them safe haven. Speaking at West Point, the president obliquely referred to so-called targeted killings—we will have to be “nimble and precise” in the use of military power, he said, adding that “high-ranking al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have been killed, and we have stepped up the pressure on al Qaeda worldwide.”

The Predator drone strategy is a rare example of something that has gone really, really well for the Obama administration. Counterterrorism “on offense” has done better, ironically, under an administration that hoped it could just play counterterrorism on defense—wind down wars, wish away the threat as a bad dream from the Bush years, hope the whole business would fade away so it could focus on health care. Yet for all that, the Obama administration, through Predator strikes, is taking the fight to the enemy.

And, let’s face it, in dealing with terrorist groups in ungoverned places in the world, we have few good options besides UAVs. Drones permit the United States to go directly after terrorists, rather than having to fight through whole countries to reach them. Maybe that’s not enough to win. Maybe “light-footprint” counterterrorism via drones turns out to be just the latest chimera in the perennial effort to find a way to win a war through strategic airpower. Yet even in a serious counterinsurgency on the ground, drones will still be important as a means of attacking terrorists while clearing and holding territory. The upshot? As long as we engage in counterterrorism, drones will be a critical part of our offense.

Obama deserves support and praise for this program from across the political spectrum. More than that, though, the drone strikes need an aggressive defense against increasingly vocal critics who are moving to create around drone warfare a narrative of American wickedness and cowardice and of CIA perfidy.

Here the administration has dropped the ball. It has so far failed to provide a robust affirmation of the propositions that underwrite Predator drone warfare. Namely:

n Targeted killings of terrorists, including by Predators and even when the targets are American citizens, are a lawful practice;

n Use of force is justified against terrorists anywhere they set up safe havens, including in states that cannot or will not prevent them;

n These operations may be covert—and they are as justifiable when the CIA is tasked to carry them out secretly as when the military does so in open armed conflict.

n All of the above fall within the traditional American legal view of “self-defense” in international law, and “vital national security interests” in U.S. domestic law.

There are good reasons for Republicans and centrist Democrats to make common cause in defending these propositions. On the one hand, they should want to aggressively protect the administration against its external critics—the domestic and international left—who are eager to prosecute Americans for their actions in the war on terror. They should also want to make clear that in defending drone strikes, they are defending the American (and not just the Obama) legal and strategic position. Moreover, it will be the American view of domestic and international law for future administrations, Democratic and Republican.

At the same time, congressional Republicans and centrist Democrats need to put Obama’s senior legal officials on the record and invite them to defend their own administration, defend it to the full extent that the Obama administration’s actions require. Which is to say, Congress needs to hear publicly from senior administration lawyers and officials who might be personally less-than-enthused about targeted killings of terrorists and not eager to endorse them publicly, or to do so only with hedged and narrow legal rationales from which they can later walk away.

Consider, for instance, the diffidence of Harold Koh, the legal adviser of the Department of State. In an informal public discussion with his predecessor, John Bellinger, aired on C-SPAN on February 17, he was asked about drones and targeted killings and declined to say that the practice was lawful. (Granted, it was in an unscripted setting, which cannot be taken as anyone’s last word and on which it would be unfair to place too much weight.) All he said was that if he concluded that it was unlawful, he would, if he thought it appropriate, resign his position. He added that he remained at his post. The statement falls far short of the defense one might hope for from such a high-ranking administration lawyer. More than a year into the new administration, that ought surely to strike the general counsels of the CIA, the Pentagon, the Director of National Intelligence, the NSC, and other agencies directly conducting these activities as somewhat less than reassuring.

In fact, the administration’s top lawyers should offer a public legal defense of its policies, and congressional Republicans and Democrats should insist on such a defense. This is partly to protect the full use-of-force tools of national security for future administrations, by affirming the traditional U.S. view of their legality. But it is also to protect and reassure the personnel of the CIA, NSC, and intelligence and military agencies who carry out these policies that they are not just effective but lawful policies of the U.S. government and will be publicly defended as such by their superiors.

Even as the Obama administration increasingly relies on Predator strikes for its counterterrorism strategy, the international legal basis of drone warfare (more precisely, its perceived international legal legitimacy) is eroding from under the administration’s feet—largely through the U.S. government’s inattention and unwillingness to defend its legal grounds, and require its own senior lawyers to step up and defend it as a matter of law, legal policy, and legal diplomacy. On the one hand, the president takes credit for the policy—as frankly he should—as taking the fight to the enemy. His vice president positively beams with pride over the administration’s flock of Predator goslings. On the other hand, the Obama administration appears remarkably sanguine about the campaign gearing up in the “international law community” aimed at undermining the legal basis of targeted killing as well as its broad political legitimacy, and ultimately at stigmatizing the use of Predators as both illegal and a coward’s weapon.

Stigmatizing the technology and the practice of targeted killing is only half of it, though. The other half is to undermine the idea that the CIA may use force and has the authority to act covertly under orders from the president and disclosure to Congress, as long provided in U.S. law. The aim is to create a legal and political perception that, under international law, all uses of force must be overt—either as law enforcement or as armed conflict conducted by uniformed military.

The Obama administration is complacent about this emerging “international soft law” campaign. But Obama’s opponents in this country, for their part, likewise underestimate and ignore the threat such a campaign presents to national security. That’s apparently because many on the right find it hard to imagine that mere congeries of NGOs, academics, activists, U.N. officials, and their allies could ever overcome “hard” American national security interests, particularly when covered by the magic of the Obama administration. Both liberal and conservative national security hands, looking at the long history of accepted lawfulness of targeted killings under American law, think, “Come on, there’s obvious sense to this, legal and political. These arguments in domestic and international law have long been settled, at least as far as the U.S. government is concerned.” But if there’s a sense to it, there’s a sensibility as well, one that goes to the overall political and legal “legitimacy” of the practice within a vague, diaphanous, but quite real thing called “global public opinion,” the which is woven and spun by the interlocking international “soft law” community and global media.

It’s a mistake to remain oblivious to either the sense or the sensibility. Outside of government, the oblivious include hard-realist conservatives. Inside government, some important political-legal actors are struggling impressively both to overcome bureaucratic inertia and get in front of this issue, and to overcome factions within government unpersuaded by, if not overtly opposed to, this program—particularly as conducted by the CIA. Those actors deserve political support from congressional Republicans and Democrats. Because obliviousness to the sensibility of lawfulness and legitimacy—well, we should all know better by now. Does anyone still believe that the international legal-media-academic-NGO-international organization-global opinion complex cannot set terms of debate over targeted killing or covert action? Or that it cannot overcome “hard” American security interests? Or that this is merely another fringe advocacy campaign of no real consequence, whether in the United States, or abroad in Europe, or at the United Nations?

T

he Obama administration assumes that it uniquely sets the terms of legal legitimacy and has the final word on political sensibility. This is not so—certainly not on this issue. The international soft-law campaign looks to the long-term if necessary, and will seek the political death of targeted killings, Predator drones, and their progeny, and even perhaps to CIA covert action, by a hundred thousand tiny paper cuts. The campaign has already moved to the media. Starting with Jane Mayer’s narrative of Predator drone targeted killing in the New Yorker last October, and followed by many imitators, the ideological framework of the story has shifted. In the space of a year—Obama’s year, no less—it has moved from Candidate Obama’s brave articulation of a bold new strategy for attacking terrorists to the NGOs’ preferred narrative of a cowardly, secretive American CIA dealing collateral damage from the skies. Here’s the thumbnail version of drone warfare, as portrayed in the media.

Focus first on the dozens of civilian victims in a Predator strike, particularly wives of the (merely alleged) al Qaeda suspect and many, many children. You don’t actually have to go to Waziristan, by the way, al Jazeera will have done all the “reporting” for you (relying on local, Taliban-influenced sources). Emphasize the casualties, without, however, comparing the casualties that would result from realistic military alternatives, which include bombing or perhaps a rolling artillery barrage by the Pakistani Army. Insinuate strongly that it is not known for sure (at least with courtroom levels of proof) if the target was al Qaeda.

more : http://weeklystandard.com/articles/predators-over-pakistan?page=4

"Where is U.S. Public Diplomacy?" Pakistani Diplomat Shamshad Ahmad Laments Deepening Gulf in U.S.-Pakistan Relationship,

In Article Titled "Where is U.S. Public Diplomacy?" Pakistani Diplomat Shamshad Ahmad Laments Deepening Gulf in U.S.-Pakistan Relationship, Says: "U.S. Image-Building is Now Left to the Pentagon – With Very Little Left to Non-Military Institutions for Articulating America's 'Ideas and Ideals' Overseas and Advancing Its Foreign Policy Goals" In a recent article, former Pakistani diplomat Shamshad Ahmad notes that it is the U.S. military, rather than the State Department, that is now leading U.S. diplomatic efforts overseas. This, he says, causes anti-U.S. resentment, particularly in Pakistan. Ahmad was Pakistani foreign secretary; in Pakistan, the foreign secretary serves directly under the foreign minister. In his article, Ahmad blames the U.S. government for "nearly abandoning" its public diplomacy efforts, which he says could project the cultural values of the American people. Noting the difficulty of the task of U.S. image-building in Pakistan, he adds that the October 2009 visit to Pakistan by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had revived hopes of change in U.S.-Pakistan relations, but that "the way things are unfolding, it seems we are heading into another cul-de-sac." Following are excerpts from the article:[1] "Since 9/11, It Has Been the U.S. Military or the CIA that Communicates with Foreign Audiences... U.S. Image-Building is Now Left To the Pentagon" "The post-World War II generation grew up admiring America's ideas and ideals, and always felt inspired by its universal values of freedom and democracy. As students in the 1950s and '60s, we were regular visitors to USIS (the United States Information Service centers), the best reading places in town with books on all subjects and journals and newspapers for every taste. In that intensely bipolar world, there could not be a better instrument of public diplomacy. "With the end of the Cold War, that approach is now history, and that diplomacy is nowhere in sight. Since 9/11, it has been the U.S. military or the CIA that communicates with foreign audiences. American diplomacy in Pakistan, in particular, is a classic example of this new approach. Our most distinguished frequent diplomatic interlocutors from Washington are not State Department officials but hardcore military commanders from the Pentagon and CIA functionaries. Admiral Mike Mullen, General David Petraeus, and General Stanley McChrystal are now household names in Pakistan. "According to a veteran U.S. diplomat, this 'mission creep' has gotten way out of hand. Pentagon-led U.S. public diplomacy is a dismal failure. Critics all around, Washington insiders and the public beyond the Beltway, members of both major political parties, even America's friends abroad, all recognize that U.S. public diplomacy has had a great fall. A number of separate studies, reports and findings on American public diplomacy issued by governmental and non-governmental commissions and groups also endorse this conclusion while urging remedial measures. "The common theme in these reports is that the U.S. now has totally different priorities to be followed in the world. In the past 10 years, its budget for foreign public diplomacy, which had been originally conducted by the U.S. Information Agency and now the State Department, has remained static. On the other hand, there has been a disproportionate increase in resources available to the Defense Department, for 'public affairs.' Thus, U.S. image-building is now left to the Pentagon, with very little left to non-military institutions for articulating America's 'ideas and ideals' overseas and advancing its foreign policy goals." "The U.S. Government Has Nearly Abandoned its Public Diplomacy Efforts to Project the Cultural Values of the American People" "It is 10 years since the U.S. government reorganized its public diplomacy effort, but one has yet to see any coherent display of U.S. public diplomacy that is sufficiently effective in long-term relationships and image-building. Instead, the relationship-building effort is limited to academic exchanges while the image-building efforts are left to the Pentagon, rather than the State Department. The U.S. government has nearly abandoned its public diplomacy efforts to project the cultural values of the American people through cultural presentations or full-fledged libraries, relying almost exclusively on provision of informational material via the Internet. "Even the laudable 'American Corners' – for all their value – are but small parts of larger institutions, such as local libraries that have their own missions. They can never present American culture the way that USIS libraries and centers once did. No wonder we are witnessing a clueless U.S. public diplomacy in Pakistan. Never in our history did we have so much public resentment against U.S. policies and behavior..." "Despite the America's expansive diplomatic footprint, the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan could not anticipate the backlash to the Kerry-Lugar Bill and also has not been able to handle the issue involving the movement of its diplomatic and consular vehicles. The Vienna Convention on diplomatic privileges and immunities provide the U.S. Embassy and the Pakistani Foreign Office a clear framework to resolve this issue amicably. Apparently, the U.S. Embassy has been bypassing normal channels and instead dealing directly with governmental agencies and functionaries in handling cases that could be best dealt with through the normal channels." "Washington's Continued Insensitivity to Popular Sentiment In Pakistan Only Reinforces the Global Perception That the U.S. Is Not a 'Steadfast and Reliable' Friend" "It has been our experience that as soon as the U.S. achieves its objectives vis-à-vis Pakistan, it loses interest in cooperating with us. Pakistan has been either consigned to benign neglect or hit with a succession of punitive sanctions that left in their trail resentment and a sense of betrayal. This sequence of 'highs and lows' turned into a love-hate relationship between the two countries. Every U.S. 'engagement' with Pakistan was issue-specific and not based on any shared perspectives. "Washington's continued insensitivity to popular sentiment in Pakistan only reinforces the global perception that the U.S. is not a 'steadfast and reliable' friend and that over the decades, the U.S. neglect and 'self-serving' exploitation of its friends had been contributing to most of the current problems in the world. There is no consistency between America's values and ideals and its actual practices. In fact, it follows two sets of values, one for itself and the other for the rest of the world." "Ms. Clinton Must Have Also Seen How Disturbed the Pakistanis Are About Their Country Being Treated as America's Traditional Fall Guy; They Consider the U.S. Responsible for All Their Terrorism-Related Problems" "During her recent visit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left a positive message in Pakistan. After eight years of the Bush administration, during which suspicions between the two countries had deepened, Pakistan now had a 'friendly' new administration in Washington, where, according to her, both she and her president, Barack Obama, were seeking to build a new bilateral relationship to be based on mutual respect. Getting this message across was an uphill task, as she herself admitted, even as she hoped that her visit would be the turning over of a new page in U.S.-Pakistan relationship. "Turning one page, it seems, was not enough. It has not changed the 62-year-long history of a relationship which has lacked continuity, a larger conceptual framework, and a shared vision beyond each side's 'narrowly based and vaguely defined' issue-specific priorities. It has been a curious, if not enigmatic, relationship, as it never had any conflict of interest, and yet it experienced repeated interruptions in its intensity as well as integrity. "We expected a positive turnaround in our relationship after her visit. But the way things are unfolding, it seems we are heading into another cul-de-sac. "Besides their persistent trust deficit, the two countries have had no control over the growing list of irritants. There are scary Blackwater stories, almost daily incidents involving interception of suspicious U.S. diplomatic and consular vehicular movement with fake identity papers for the vehicles involved, continuing drone attacks, non-disbursement of Coalition Support Funds, lack of any progress on market access and ROZs [Reconstruction Opportunity Zones proposed by U.S.], and now the inclusion of Pakistan in a short list of 'special interest' countries whose nationals will be subjected to enhanced screening on arrival in the U.S.. These are some of the irritants that need to be resolved through mutual discussions and diplomacy. "Ms. Clinton must have also seen how disturbed the Pakistanis are about their country being treated as America's traditional fall guy. They consider the U.S. responsible for all their terrorism-related problems. They are concerned over the growing Indo-U.S. nexus, beginning with their defense and nuclear deals three years ago and now developing into a multi-dimensional strategic partnership with ominous implications for the critical balance of power in the region and for Pakistan's legitimate security interests. This situation needs correction through a criteria-based approach for transfer of nuclear fuel and technology." "We Thought Washington's New Focus Would Be On the Pakistani People – Rather Than the Corrupt Ruling [Elite]... We Have Yet To See Any People-Centered Projects in the Cards" "One fears that the KLB [Kerry-Lugar Bill, now the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009] issue was the beginning of yet another 'estrangement' phase in our troubled relationship. For her part, Ms. Clinton wanted us to forget the unpleasant past and look to a promising future. She assured our people that this time the U.S. would not abandon them as it did after the Soviet withdrawal. She repeatedly said that the current U.S. engagement with Pakistan is going to be enduring, not transitory. These were welcome assurances. "Hillary Clinton had promised that she and her president were determined to redress this historic sense of injustice among the Pakistani people. The change of leadership in Washington did provide a watershed opportunity for 'remaking' of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. We hoped Vice President Joe Biden's vision of a new people-centered approach in transforming this 'transactional' relationship into a normal one would soon become reality. But there is no sign of this equation moving beyond the question of terrorism anytime soon. "Also on disbursement of U.S. aid under the KLB, we thought that Washington's new focus would be on the Pakistani people – rather than the corrupt ruling political and bureaucratic elite who have always abused this relationship for their own self-serving purposes. We have yet to see any people-centered projects in the cards. This is also an issue on which the U.S. missions in Pakistan must engage in, in a well-calibrated public diplomacy." Endnote: [1] The News (Pakistan), January 13, 2010. The article has been lightly edited for clarity.

Pakistan: Taliban behead 3 Sikhs for refusing to convert to Islam

JihadWatch.org

"A sizeable number of Sikhs lived in the tribal belt, particularly Aurakzai Agency, till the Taliban imposed jiziya or religious tax on them in 2009," in accordance with Qur'an 9:29. "Three Sikhs beheaded by Taliban in Pak," from the Economic Times, February 22 (thanks to all who sent this in):

NEW DELHI: In what threatens to cast a shadow on the upcoming Indo-Pakistan talks scheduled for February 25, three Sikh youths were beheaded by the Taliban in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA) region after they allegedly refused to convert to Islam. Their severed heads were dumped at a gurudwara in Peshawar.

The Sikh youths -- identified as Jaspal Singh, Sarabjit Singh and Baronat Singh -- had gone to realise the money owed to them by some people in the FATA region adjoining Afghanistan, when they were abducted by the Taliban militia. They were allegedly told by the Taliban to embrace Islam or face death. When the Sikh youth refused, their heads were chopped and sent to the Bhai Joga Singh Gurudwara in Peshawar.

A sizeable number of Sikhs lived in the tribal belt, particularly Aurakzai Agency, till the Taliban imposed jiziya or religious tax on them in 2009. Most members of the community, faced with increasing pressure from the Taliban to convert to Islam, have since fled to cities across Pakistan.

Posted by Marisol on February 21, 2010 8:00 PM


Comments on Jihad Watch:

savsiv | February 21, 2010 8:20 PM | Reply

Yes another reason to send more money to Pakistan and Afghanistan. Hey this is the "Islam is Peace" message by the Mohammedans, or "not in the name of Islam" or it is the Indians fault that these Taliban beheaded these Sikh youths.

Hugh | February 21, 2010 8:29 PM | Reply

We are all waiting expectantly, waiting for the anguished outcry, and fierce denunciation of this, from Pakistan, from CAIR, from the O.I.C.

And how curious it is to note how the report in the Indian paper matter-of-factly mentions the Jizyah: "till the Taliban imposed jiziya or religious tax on them in 2009." Yet, it appears not to make much of a difference in the behavior of the Indian government, surprisingly supine at times about the menace that Islam so clearly poses to all non-Muslims -- Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Buddhists, Christians, and even the handful of Jews -- in India, as it does everywhere else.

Still, it's better than no mention of the Jizyah, which is what you get in the American and other Western coverage of how the Taliban treated Hindus and Sikhs. Mention was made, fleeting mention, of Hindus being required to wear yellow identifying dress, but I do not recall ever seeing anything in the mainstream press about the imposition of the Jizyah.

In fact, I don't recall seeing the word "Jizyah" ever in any of the thousands of stories about Muslim-non-Muslim conflict, not once, in the New York Times, or the Washington Post, or any British publications. Why not? Why is it so impossible to inform non-Muslim readers about the legal status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule? Antoine Fattal, a Lebanese Christian, wrote a whole book about it. The American government has yet to see fit to have that book translated from the French. Why? What is it spending its hundreds of billions in that "war on terror" on? More cash for Muslims, so as to keeep them happy so they won't join the Taliban, or Al Qaeda, or a thousand other groups? Nothing left over to pay for a translation or two?

Jim Foster | February 21, 2010 8:34 PM | Reply

Outrageous crime.

MBR | February 21, 2010 8:37 PM | Reply

OT. Not black ops, black helicopters nor even Blackwater. But black screens.

On an earlier thread, Darcy complained of getting a black screen while on JW. I have noticed the same thing. It can be caused by setting, at least on Firefox 3.5.8, the zoom too large. Easily fixed by reducing the zoom, typically by keying control and minus.

It seems to occur for me only on JW, but not when using IE8. (I'm using Windows 7 BTW) People with smaller screen laptops will perhaps use the zoom more. Comments? Darcy?

savsiv | February 21, 2010 8:49 PM | Reply

The Mohammedans follow a criminal called Mohammad the prophet of the criminal and war ideology of Islam. For this reason Mohammedans are criminals by the fact that they espouse and revere Mohammad the prophet in behavior, acts etc.

darcy replied to comment from MBR | February 21, 2010 9:00 PM | Reply

Hi MBR - I'm glad I saw your post. Oh, so it's Firefox - well, that solves the mystery! It's only happened once, and I couldn't figure out what caused it! Thanks for your input, I'm glad I mentioned it.

As for the subject of this thread, I see the Barbarians are still "smiting at necks":

"Therefore, when ye meet the Unbelievers, smite at their necks..." -- Qur'an 47:4

The Koran - the gift that keeps on giving. Into the 21st century.

AJ | February 21, 2010 9:15 PM | Reply

Hugh says

"And how curious it is to note how the report in the Indian paper matter-of-factly mentions the Jizyah: "till the Taliban imposed jiziya or religious tax on them in 2009." Yet, it appears not to make much of a difference in the behavior of the Indian government, surprisingly supine at times about the menace that Islam so clearly poses to all non-Muslims"

Many in India are aware of jizya, and also the treatment meted out to hindus/sikhs under Islamic rule. These things were part of our high school history, so it is common knowledge.

Despite this awareness, most hindus attribute these things to some kind of radical Islam or fanaticism. The devout, religious Islamic rulers who imposed Jizya, in accordance with Islamic laws, are deviled as fanatics and misunderstanders of Islam. Whereas one tolerant 'muslim' ruler, Akbar, who ignored Islamic rules and was almost an apostate, is revered as an example of 'true muslim'.

This is the manner in which history is presented, and was written by our colonial era leaders, to foster an artificial sense of Hindu-Muslim unity.

Islamabad Boys

The New Republic.com
By: Michael Crowly

An American admiral, a Pakistani general, and the ultimate anti-terror adventure

On August 26, 2008, Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, touched down for a secret meeting on an aircraft carrier stationed in the Indian Ocean. The topic: Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The summit had been arranged the previous month. Mullen had grown anxious about the rising danger from Pakistan’s tribal areas, which Islamic militants were using as a base from which to strike American troops in Afghanistan and to plot terrorist attacks against the United States. He flew to Islamabad to see the country’s army chief of staff, Ashfaq Parvez Kayani. Kayani is Pakistan’s most important general, commanding its 550,000-man army. By some accounts, he is also the ultimate source of power in a militarized society that reveres its generals more than its politicians. Mullen had been blunt with Kayani: The United States needed Pakistan’s army to take on the militants flourishing along the border, he said. The days of Pakistan looking the other way--cutting deals and playing double games with the radicals--had to end.

It was hardly a painless request; the Pakistani military is organized for warfare against its arch-nemesis India, and many of its mid-level officers are sympathetic to the Taliban and, at best, wary of the United States. When the United States argues that smashing militants along Pakistan’s northwest border will improve the security of both countries, officials in Islamabad are often skeptical. In his conversation with Mullen, however, Kayani had agreed. He had even requested a second meeting, with other top Pentagon officials, to plot a comprehensive strategy.

(Click here to see photographs that Crowley took while on the road with Mullen.)

Finding a location was tricky. The Pakistani army was already fighting militants in the Bajaur tribal area, and the general couldn’t be too far from the theater. But a parade of U.S. generals arriving in nearby Islamabad with marching orders for the army could inflame anti-Americanism. So Mullen proposed meeting on the USS Abraham Lincoln, which was then patrolling the waters south of India and Pakistan. Several weeks later, the Joint Chiefs chairman alighted on the Lincoln in a C-2 Greyhound propeller plane. He was met by an impressive roster of American generals, including the top commander in Afghanistan, David McKiernan; Special Operations Command chief Eric Olson; and soon-to-be CENTCOM commander David Petraeus.

Landing by helicopter was Kayani, wearing green army fatigues and a black beret. Kayani has dark, sunken eyes, which lend him a mysterious air, one that matches his taciturn style. “He is sphinxlike,” says a congressional foreign policy aide who has dined with the army chief. “I wouldn’t want to play poker against the guy.” Together, the generals huddled for hours, as they planned how the U.S. and Pakistani militaries could cooperate in a crackdown on the radicals. (Kayani, a notorious chain smoker, emerged for regular cigarette breaks on the carrier’s deck.) “It was about this time that Kayani started to lay out in broad strokes what his strategy was going to be, how he was going to attack this,” says a Pentagon official.

Mullen was impressed. Unlike many of his countrymen, Kayani seemed to understand that, when it came to fighting the militants, Pakistan’s interests aligned with America’s. “[H]is principles and goals are to do what’s best for Pakistan,” Mullen told reporters when he returned from the Lincoln. “And everything he’s done … indicates that’s absolutely the case.”

Almost a year and a half later, Washington is still trying to assess Kayani’s reliability. His army has thrust into the tribal areas, as promised--most recently with an offensive into the Al Qaeda and Taliban stronghold of South Waziristan. But that campaign has captured or killed precious few militants; most have simply fled to new havens nearby. It remains to be seen whether Kayani and his compatriots continue the fight in earnest, or whether their efforts have been designed mainly to impress their American patrons, who send billions of dollars in military aid to their impoverished country. Kayani, after all, has rejected America’s most important request: that he take on Afghan Taliban groups within his borders, especially the fearsome commander Siraj Haqqani, who operates largely unthreatened in the safe haven of North Waziristan, where he also provides shelter to Al Qaeda operatives. As recently as mid-January, Pakistani officials told U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that any new offensive against militants would have to wait at least six months. Thus, a critical question remains unanswered: In the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, can Michael Mullen count on Ashfaq Kayani--and, by extension, Pakistan--as a reliable ally?

It was a chilly mid-December morning in Afghanistan as Mullen flew by Blackhawk helicopter from Kabul’s Bagram Airfield past the operatic snowcapped peaks of eastern Afghanistan, toward the Pakistan border. He landed at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Thunder, located outside the city of Gardez in Paktia province. Paktia is among Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas, thanks to its proximity to Haqqani’s North Waziristan base. At FOB Thunder, Mullen toured a joint command center staffed by Americans working alongside Afghans at long tables in front of laptop computers. One Afghan officer studied a detailed digital map showing the peaks and valleys of the local area. A monitor nearby displayed the live feed from a drone that appeared to be circling a rocky peak.

Mullen paused to talk to a commander of local Afghan army forces. “What are your concerns?” Mullen asked. We need more weapons, the general said. “Minister Wardak gave me the message on weapons,” Mullen replied, referring to his meeting the previous day with Afghanistan’s defense minister. The general also told Mullen that the AWOL rate for some units in the area approached 20 percent. Mullen nodded. “We know that has to get better,” he said.

As Mullen spoke, a large video screen above him carried updates about critical events in the area. EXPLOSION--PAKTIYA, GARDEZ DISTRICT, it presently announced. SIZ KIA, 12 WALKING WOUNDED. According to later reports, a bombing at the office of a USAID subcontractor that morning killed five non-American employees. The attack was most likely carried out by the Haqqani network, operating with impunity as Kayani’s forces mopped up to the south.

Although Mullen didn’t mention the Gardez bomb, he looked concerned all the same. But then, Mullen always looks concerned. He is tall and lean, and, with his ever-present wire-rimmed glasses and laconic manner, he can seem more like a high school science teacher than a senior admiral. Mullen was born in 1946, in Los Angeles, the oldest of five children. His father was a Hollywood publicist who represented the likes of Julie Andrews, Bob Hope, Carol Burnett, and Steve McQueen. His mother worked for a time as Jimmy Durante’s assistant. Mullen was an aimless teenager when a friend’s father, a Beverly Hills cop, encouraged him to consider attending the Naval Academy. “I had no long-term goals,” Mullen confessed to me on the flight home from Afghanistan. “My original plan was to leave the Naval Academy after two years.” But Mullen took a shine to the Navy and wound up climbing its ranks steadily--from commanding a gasoline ship to serving on a destroyer that shelled North Vietnam to leading U.S. naval forces in Europe. In 2005, he became chief of naval operations. Two years later, Gates unexpectedly chose not to reappoint then–Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace to a second two-year term. Gates feared his reconfirmation hearings would become a bitter forum for debating Iraq, and he wanted to find someone with no political exposure to the war. From his Navy perch, Mullen had little involvement in Iraq policy, making him a safe alternative.

Few tears were shed for Pace. Under Congress’s 1986 Goldwater-Nichols Act, the Joint Chiefs chairman is meant to be the “principal military advisor” to the president and the secretary of defense. But both Pace and his predecessor, Richard Myers, allowed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to bully them and served more as parrots than independent arbiters. Mullen, who was granted a second two-year term last September, concedes the nebulous nature of his job. “I am the nation’s most senior military officer,” he joked at a New York dinner last year, “but I do not command any troops. I do not field any equipment. I do not plan or execute operations, and I am not responsible for any particular region of the world. In fact, the more I talk, the more I want to ask myself, ‘What am I doing?’” Yet his tenure has been an important element of America’s tonal and philosophical shift from the chest-thumping of the high Cheney-Rumsfeld era. In a memorable December 2007 statement to the House Armed Services Committee, Mullen said of the country’s military engagements abroad, “In Afghanistan, we do what we can. In Iraq, we do what we must.” It was a frank concession that the military was overstretched. “He’s exceptionally forthright, honest, and no-bullshit--especially for a guy with that many stars on his shoulder,” says the congressional foreign policy aide.

Despite his showbiz roots, Mullen can be stiff, and he speaks in clunky jargon. Before a December USO performance at an air base in western Iraq, Mullen introduced the comedian Dave Attell as “someone who I know will be impactful in his humor.” (Attell subsequently regaled the troops with decidedly impactful jokes about sex toys, horny midgets, and masturbating with the aid of gravy. Mullen had already left the scene, thankfully.) But he does understand the power of public opinion. Last year, Mullen penned an article for the military publication Joint Force Quarterly decrying “a certain arrogance” in America’s approach to strategic communications. “Good communication runs both ways. It’s not about telling our story,” Mullen wrote. “We must also be better listeners. … [W]e need to worry a lot less about how to communicate our actions and much more about what our actions communicate.” Such frank talk was unusual for a senior military man, and it impressed public diplomacy specialists. Mullen’s emphasis on listening also put the admiral squarely in line with Obama’s foreign policy. It was a sign that Mullen is as much a diplomat as a warrior.

During his December visit to Afghanistan, Mullen--who strongly supports Obama’s troop surge--held a shura with a group of local elders on a U.S. base in Kandahar. “I would rather listen than speak,” said the admiral, who wore a tan desert camouflage uniform. “Tell me what you think I need to understand that I may not understand.” Mullen sat patiently as the men, grizzled under their turbans and dusty robes, bombarded him with rambling complaints about corruption and unemployment. He didn’t flinch when one tribal elder, upset that some Taliban detainees were being released by corrupt Afghan security forces, made a suggestion: In the future, he said, “just kill them on the ground. Do not turn them over to the Afghan forces.” At the session’s end, Mullen assured the men that he’d heard their concerns, especially on corruption. Of the detainees, he added diplomatically, “The solution to just kill them on the street probably won’t work for us.”

Mullen’s most important diplomatic mission, however, is not in Afghanistan but in Pakistan. Mullen had visited the nation just once before he became Joint Chiefs chairman. But, the more he grew concerned about the safe havens in Pakistan, the more he realized that Kayani was the key to doing something about the problem. He set out to cultivate a rapport with the general, and the two plainspoken military men found a connection. “We genuinely like each other,” Mullen told me. The two have now met at least 15 times and spoken on the phone countless more, discussing everything from how the U.S. and Pakistani militaries can coordinate their operations against the Taliban to the security of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. But, along with his pressure on Kayani to move against the radicals, Mullen has demonstrated America’s willingness to help. In early 2009, for instance, Kayani told Mullen that, to fight in the tribal areas, he would need more helicopters. But standard U.S. Blackhawks wouldn’t suffice. He needed the Russian-made Mi-17 helicopters on which most Pakistani pilots were trained. Mullen “shook the apple tree,” according to Captain John Kirby, a top Mullen aide, and tracked down ten of the choppers in U.S. inventory. “By midsummer, Kayani had them all,” says Kirby.

Meanwhile, Mullen has tried to show Kayani that he’s got his back in Washington, where Pakistan-bashing is easy and abundant. At the Pentagon, Mullen has called Kayani “an extraordinary individual.” In 2008 Senate testimony, he called Kayani “a very great leader” who “has the right focus.” Last April, Mullen even penned a gushy tribute to Kayani for Time magazine: “Here is a man with a plan, a leader who knows where he wants to go,” he wrote. Mullen is not the only one who believes in the Pakistani general--Kayani “fundamentally gets it,” says a senior American official in Islamabad--but the admiral’s public praise is unmatched. Mullen “has been a great support to Pakistan,” says Brigadier General Nazir Butt, Washington attaché for Pakistan’s Ministry of Defense. In recent policy debates about Pakistan, Butt says, Mullen “was the lone voice that I could notice defending the institution of the Pakistani military in Washington.”

On February 26 of last year, Ashfaq Kayani arrived at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, for his induction into the Army’s International Hall of Fame, created to honor the college’s prominent foreign graduates. In 1987 and 1988, Ashfaq Kayani, then in his late thirties, spent two years training in the United States (first in an officer course at Fort Benning, Georgia, then at Fort Leavenworth). Wearing a tan uniform with a red collar, Kayani fondly recalled his Kansas days. Recounting a reunion he’d had with his former American classmates the day before, Kayani said their rapport was as easy as it had been in 1988. “That was the kind of depth of interaction and understanding that we had developed,” he said. “[T]his has helped to develop a very good, very deep understanding with the Pakistan army and the U.S. Army, which we carry to this day.”

The warmth that Kayani feels toward the United States is likely the exception rather than the rule, however. Congress severed all military ties to Pakistan in 1990 to punish the country for its pursuit of nuclear weapons, ending exchange programs like the one that brought Kayani to Fort Leavenworth. Those ties were restored when the United States re-embraced Pakistan after September 11, and new exchange programs are underway. But many American officials fret that a “lost generation” of mid-level Pakistani military officers has been created, one whose members loathe the United States and have none of Kayani’s cultural ties to it. Certainly, anti-Americanism is rife in Pakistan, where the continued campaign of U.S. drone strikes against militants has driven Barack Obama’s approval ratings to an abysmal 13 percent. Given such antagonism, the United States is extraordinarily fortunate to have a man with Kayani’s Western-friendly background running Pakistan’s army.

Unlike Michael Mullen, Kayani is the son of a military man, from a working-class area of Pakistan’s northeastern Punjab province. Apart from a passion for golf--Kayani is the current president of the Pakistan Golf Federation--his life is utterly dedicated to the military. Kayani calls his army uniform his “second skin,” and one of his first actions as deputy army chief was to spend the Muslim holiday of Eid Al Fitr with troops on the front lines. He studiously avoids talking to the press (although American officials say he keeps a close eye on U.S. news coverage of Pakistan), and, with his American guests, he is friendly but decidedly no-nonsense.

Kayani is a protégé of former president Pervez Musharraf, who put him in charge of investigating two attempts on his life in December 2003. Kayani, then a mid-level army officer who had commanded units along the tense border with India, impressed the president. (“When Kayani got tough, the problems of coordination disappeared and the agencies started working like a well-oiled machine,” Musharraf later wrote.) He placed Kayani in charge of Pakistan’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in 2004, then named him his successor as army chief three years later. Kayani’s term expires in October, but American officials don’t rule out the possibility that he will be granted an extension or another top military job.

Though he holds no political rank, Kayani may be Pakistan’s most powerful man--perhaps more so than the country’s embattled president, Asif Ali Zardari. After the November 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, for instance, Zardari promised India that he would send the current ISI chief, Ahmed Shuja Pasha, to New Delhi to cooperate with the investigation, according to Daniel Markey, a former Bush State Department official and Pakistan specialist. Kayani objected and, Markey says, “That [promise] had to be walked back.” Kayani also played an integral role in brokering the return of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in fall 2007, as Musharraf’s grip on power was faltering, Markey says. And Kayani may have held the country together during a March 2009 political crisis. Zardari’s chief political rival, Nawaz Sharif, was defiantly rallying his supporters in the streets of Islamabad, threatening the president’s grip on power. Kayani refused Zardari’s request to stop Sharif’s march by force. But, according to David Ignatius of The Washington Post, Kayani did instruct Sharif to return home to Lahore--which he did. Despite this influence, however, Kayani is said to have no aspirations to the presidency, believing that military involvement in politics sullies the army’s prestige.

But Kayani’s campaign against the Islamists may pose a different sort of threat to the military’s standing. Many Pakistanis fail to understand why their army is fighting its own people--and incurring severe casualties (2,400 dead so far, more than double the U.S. toll in Afghanistan)--when they consider India their true enemy and an existential threat to their nation. The perception that Washington is forcing Pakistan’s government to do its bidding doesn’t help. Taking on the radicals, says Nazir Butt, “was a big strategic decision, and a big policy U-turn, and the nation was not ready for that. Launching operations and fighting your countrymen is not that easy. But, somehow, this doesn’t get registered in Washington.” In this sense, Kayani, too, is taking a risk of his own. Assuming, that is, that he means to finish the job

On the morning of December 16, 2009, Mullen and Kayani boarded a helicopter in Islamabad and flew a few dozen miles to the northwest, over the gorgeous Colorado-like mountain landscape of Pakistan’s Swat Valley. Last spring, the picturesque valley was overrun by Taliban fanatics who torched schools--flogging, beheading, and sometimes even skinning resisters. After terrorizing Swat, the Taliban advanced to within 60 miles of Islamabad. By summer, the army had begun a counteroffensive that eventually drove the militants back. Now Mullen was seeing the restoration of Swat for himself. At one point, the helicopter passed over the Malam Jabba ski resort, which the Taliban had torched. “You know, Fazlullah used to be a chairlift operator at Malam,” Kayani had told Mullen earlier, referring to a top Taliban commander. Back on the ground, the Pakistanis were eager to demonstrate their gusto for the chairman. From a high bluff, Mullen looked down as a few dozen Pakistani Frontier Corps troops reenacted the storming of a village, complete with live mortar explosions and attack helicopters zooming overhead.

On a flight from Islamabad to Kandahar that night, Mullen told reporters that he had once again been impressed by what he saw. “To see how much progress has been made--for all intents and purposes the insurgents are gone.” Asked to grade the Pakistani army’s counterinsurgency technique--which the United States has urged Kayani to employ in lieu of brute force that incurs collateral damage and breeds more insurgents--Mullen didn’t hesitate. “It’s exceptional. I give them an ‘A.’” Though Mullen was not able to visit South Waziristan, he was pleased by reports of progress there. “Kayani laid out this plan to me in early 2009. He has executed everything he said he was going to do,” Mullen said.

But the job is far from done. “It will be important for the army to continue its pressure in other areas of the FATA,” says Shuja Nawaz, a Washington-based expert on the Pakistani military, referring to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. The obvious next step is to pursue the militants into North Waziristan, home of Haqqani and his Al Qaeda allies. But, as recently as a December meeting with Petraeus, Kayani reportedly refused U.S. demands to pursue Haqqani. The general claims that his hands are full with operations in other areas. More relevant, perhaps, Haqqani has longstanding ties to the Pakistani military, which supported him during the Soviet era in Afghanistan. For now, Mullen seems to accept that there is only so much that can reasonably be expected from Kayani. “He’s done an awful lot,” Mullen replied when I asked about Kayani’s reticence to take on Haqqani. “Over two hundred thousand of his troops are engaged. He’s shifted from the conventional threat on the Indian border. … He’s lost hundreds and hundreds of soldiers in the fight.”

But then, Mullen returned to the essential question. “We have to get at the Haqqani network,” he told me, “we have to get at the Al Qaeda safe havens.” That cannot be done without Kayani’s help. Ultimately, however, that step serves America’s interests far more than those of Pakistan. Haqqani targets Americans, not Pakistanis. With their past ties to him, the Pakistanis also see Haqqani as a useful ally against possible Indian influence in Afghanistan, should the United States abandon the country as it did after the 1989 Soviet withdrawal.

For all the personal kinship, it may be that pushing Kayani to the next and hardest stage of his offensive will require old-fashioned realpolitik, a stronger appeal to his self-interest. Washington may need to offer Kayani not just better helicopters for counterinsurgency, but the thing Pakistan wants most: military hardware to defend against India. “Pakistan will drive the hardest bargain they can,” says the congressional aide. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it was the same dynamic that defined the relationship between Musharraf and George W. Bush, who sold Pakistan 36 F-16s in 2005--only to find that Pakistan was again cutting deals with the tribal-area radicals. “We have been telling ourselves for years that the Pakistanis are finally coming around. The hard truth is that the Pakistani army has played us very well,” says a U.S. government official who focuses on the region.

Mullen is gambling that he won’t be burned by yet another Pakistani double-deal. But there may be limits to what even the best-cultivated relationship can accomplish in a situation so tangled with old resentments and competing national interests. “One thing Mullen cannot do all by himself is to change how the Pakistanis look at America,” laments a Pakistani official. “This is a very American way of thinking--that an individual can swing everything. It can actually put people here into thinking there could be solutions that don’t really exist. So he can help the Pakistani military make certain choices, or help the Americans understand why certain choices are being made. But he cannot turn the ship of Pakistan in a narrow stream. Kayani can’t, and Mullen can’t.” Let’s hope he’s wrong.

Michael Crowley is a senior editor of The New Republic.

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Pakistan’s Rebuff Over New Offensives Rankles U.S.

By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: January 24, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Pakistani Army’s announcement last week that it planned no new offensive against militants for as long as a year has deeply frustrated senior American military officers, and chipped away at one of the cornerstones of President Obama’s strategy to reverse the Taliban’s gains in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When Mr. Obama announced his decision in December to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, he and his aides made clear that the chances of success hinged significantly on Pakistan’s willingness to eliminate militants’ havens in its territory, including in the tribal region of North Waziristan. United States officials described the American and NATO surge of troops as a hammer, but they said it required a Pakistani anvil on the other side of the border to prevent the Taliban from retreating to the mountains.

Now that strategy appears imperiled by Pakistan’s latest statement. On Thursday, soon after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived on a two-day trip to the country, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, rebuffed American pressure to step up attacks in North Waziristan. That area is the main base of operations for the Haqqani network, which stages operations against American and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. It is believed to be responsible for many of the attacks on Kabul, including a devastating assault early last week near the presidential palace.

Fighters from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban have also been concentrated in North Waziristan, including many who were driven out of their positions in South Waziristan by recent Pakistani Army operations.

“This has become the center,” a senior administration official said, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss American strategy publicly.

American officials said they had not been surprised by the Pakistani announcement. Since the last two years of the Bush administration, the United States has been arguing for a far more active Pakistani military presence in North Waziristan. But some said they had been surprised that the rebuff was issued while Mr. Gates was in the country, rather than after he left.

General Abbas told reporters it could be 6 to 12 months before the army consolidated its current operations and began any new offensive. Some American officials think it could be longer.

The critical question is how much the Pakistani decision will undercut Mr. Obama’s strategy. During a speech at West Point on Dec. 1, he said his administration would reassess the plan at the end of 2010, after all the troops deployed as part of the increase were in place. But if the Pakistani position does not change, the operations on Pakistan’s side of the border will not have begun by the time Mr. Obama has made his assessment.

Mr. Obama made no public demands on Islamabad when he announced the troop increase at West Point, but he said he was acting “with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.” He quickly added: “We need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.”

Mr. Obama praised the Pakistani Army for waging an offensive in Swat and South Waziristan, where the Pakistani Taliban were taking aim at the country’s fragile government. He promised to work with the Pakistanis to strengthen their ability to combat the militants, but he said the United States had “made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.”

Pakistani officials have not refused to go after Qaeda or Taliban fighters in North Waziristan. But they have made it clear that their forces are too tied up now to conduct new, larger operations on Washington’s schedule.

As a practical matter, American officials said, Pakistan’s inability or reluctance to open a new front in North Waziristan will increase the reliance on missile strikes from drones operated by the C.I.A. to disrupt attacks aimed at Afghanistan.

American officials said that Pakistani military leaders had never promised a specific timetable for beginning a new offensive, but that announcing a delay of as much as 12 months could aid the militants’ planning and morale on both sides of the border.

“It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising,” said a senior Defense Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his ties with Pakistani counterparts.

Mr. Gates and other American officials sought to put the best face on the situation last week, saying that the Pakistani Army was stretched thin from its previous offensives against militants.

“Pakistani leadership will make its own decisions about what the best timing for their military operations is, about when they are ready to do something or whether they are going to do it at all,” Mr. Gates told Pakistani journalists on Friday, the day after General Abbas’s comments.

“The way I like to express it is, we’re in this car together, but the Pakistanis are in the driver’s seat and have their foot on the accelerator,” Mr. Gates said. “And that’s just fine with me.”

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the military’s Central Command, said at a conference in Washington on Friday that American officials must be mindful of the limitations facing Pakistan’s military.

General Petraeus said that the Pakistani leaders would need to negotiate agreements with local tribal leaders to hold the gains that the Pakistani military has achieved in places like Swat and South Waziristan. But he emphasized that any deals must be more resilient than previous pacts in the tribal areas, which fell apart and allowed the militants to regain control.

Senior American officers in the region said that cooperation with their Pakistani counterparts had improved in recent months.

NATO military leaders, for instance, recently provided a detailed briefing on the campaign in Afghanistan to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani army chief of staff, a senior American officer said. Pakistani officers reciprocated last week with a briefing for NATO officers on their campaign plans, the American officer said.

7 Bodies Found With Warnings

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The bodies of seven people accused by the Taliban of spying for the United States were found in North Waziristan on Sunday, officials and residents said.

Notes attached to the bullet-ridden bodies accused the victims of working with the United States as it carries out a wave of drone strikes in the region, and warned that anyone else who did so would meet the same end.

Drone attacks in the region have increased significantly since the bombing of a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven Americans on Dec. 30.

Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.